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THOMAS AQUINAS DEBATES THOMAS AQUINAS AND LOSES
Round Nine
The following is from The Light of Faith by Thomas Aquinas, ISBN 0-965-057895, page 25, but before reading it, some readers may not know how the word "accident" is used by Aquinas, so for those readers:
"Accident" means the property or quality of a thing which is not essential to it, as whiteness is to paper or yellow is to banana or orange is to an orange. The color is not essential to the thing (the paper, the banana, the orange).
"Accident" can also mean those qualities that are in opposition to substance, such as sweetness, softness, dull or bright, wet or dry; or accident can mean things not essential to a body such as clothes. So we can say that clothes are accidents of a body, or flavor is an accident of a fruit, or cold is an accident of ice. Accidents, therefore, are not essential to substance or to the thing itself.
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Absence of Accidents in God
It is also clear that there can be no accidents in God. If all perfections are one in Him , and if existence, power, action, and all such attributes pertain to perfection, they are necessarily identical with His essence. Thus none of these perfections is an accident in God.
Furthermore, a being to whose perfection something can be added, cannot be infinite in perfection. But if a being has some perfection that is an accident, a perfection can be added to its essence, since every accident is superadded to essence. But, as we have shown, God is of infinite perfection according to essence. Consequently there can be in Him no accidental perfection: whatever is in Him, is His substance.
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CARMEN:
The Hindu Holy Book, the Bhagavadgita (II-24) says it much better than I can:
"He is uncleavable, He cannot be burnt. He can neither be wetted nor dried. He is eternal, all-pervading, unchanging, and immovable. He is the same forever."
Now as Aquinas states above that "there can be no accidents in God" and that none of His perfections is an accident, then when he states that "a being to whose perfection something can be added, cannot be infinite in perfection" then he is also saying that nothing can be added to God Who is absolute perfection. If that is the case, God would not be God if something is added to God.
But, as brilliantly as Aquinas expounds on the subject of there being no accidents in God, he completely shows his ignorance of divine truth by stating on page 230:
"Therefore divine Wisdom who had made man, took to Himself a bodily nature and visited man immersed in things of the body, so that by the mysteries of His bodily life He might recall man to spiritual life.
"Furthermore, the human race had need that God should become man to show forth the dignity of human nature, so that man might not be subjugated either by devils or by things of the body."
CARMEN:
WOW! Where did Hitler come from if God purposed a plan, in which by becoming man, man would not be subjugated "either by devils or things of the body"? So much for Aquinas' god who becomes man to "show forth the dignity of human nature" and then fails miserably in his plan. Why would an infinitely intelligent God undertake such a plan, give up his Godhood by changing His nature by becoming mutable, and since He was also omniscient and knew with foreknowledge that His plan would fail, why would He do such a stupid thing if He was infinitely intelligent? He wouldn't, and He didn't. Aquinas was suffering from the "trinity box" syndrome. He was stuck in the trinity box in which his church placed him, and he couldn't get out.
Now let's talk about basics. Aquinas states that nothing can be added to God and then adds a human nature to God by stating that "divine Wisdom who had made man, took to Himself a bodily nature". How can God take a bodily nature to Himself if nothing can be added to God? He cannot without making Himself imperfect, but God is absolute perfection and it is impossible for God to add to Himself. If He adds to Himself, He becomes imperfect because you cannot perfect absolute perfection, which God is. If God adds to Himself, He becomes mutable, because He will have changed, but God is immutable, and therefore, it never happened, that He took on a bodily nature.
God is absolute perfection and Aquinas' contradictions are so apparent that one can only wonder why his writings were not exposed sooner. Joe Campbell wrote a book called Power of Myth, and the reason why Aquinas' writings have not been exposed is because of the Power of the Church.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Slowly, the church's power is diminshing, and slowly but surely, its mythological theology will be exposed. The three-headed monster known as the trinity, will slowly disappear from the souls of God's creatures to be replaced by His divine truths, that He is one, indivisible, and the Father of ALL His creatures. No one has the keys to His kingdom except Himself. All you need to do is ask Him to open the door, and it shall be opened unto you.
In the most holy and pure indivisible God. May His mercy and His light shine on each and every one of His creatures.