'Being' as movement

[a mere housewife]

I was wondering if it is proper to think of God's being in terms of 'movement', as it is ours (Aquinas spoke of this, Warfield confirms it: I can find the reference if needed). "In Him we live and move and have our being" --the idea of Aquinas as I understand it was that there was no being without knowledge of God and that knowledge was movement -- the suffering and the acting of the mind through the objects of sense, and in 'naming' or knowing things participating in the realities behind their appearance. So all things stand for God, and as we know them for what they are in that which they cohere, we live or move in the knowledge and worship of Him.

(I was thinking that if this is true -- if there is no movement without knowledge and there is no knowledge without worship-- if the creature can only 'live' in this participation of symbols or appearances of the reality toward which the soul moves-- then Christ, the revelation of the Father, the true God as well as the true Manifestation of God, the true Symbol in His nature as Logos, is 'our life' in this way also?)

I was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts on Aquinas' ideas; if I have misunderstood them. Also if they trace back to the being of God in this essence as 'movement' or if God's being is not revealed for us to know in that way?

 

[R. Scott Clark]

The short answer is no. Thomas had an equivocal notion of being derived in part from the neo-Platonist Plotinus.

The biblical doctrine of God is that he is and that he is simple. That isn't to say that there is no movement within the Godhead (inasmuch as eternal begotteness and eternal procession can be said to be a sort of movement). It is important, however, to affirm that God is not becoming. He is fully actualized.

For this reason, the Reformed taught an analogical knowledge of God. Thomas affirmed this formally, but was inconsistent with it. As you suggest below, for Thomas, by gaining true empirical knowledge, we know universals. By knowing universals, according to Thomas, we come to know being, by knowing being, we know the divine being. Before you know it, we're climbing the ladder of being toward divinization.

What he failed to do (at least consistently) is to to distinguish between God's "being," and ours. He equivocated and has us participating in the divine being. This is unacceptable. We do not and never shall participate in his being. Thomas taught flatly that justification/sanctification is divinization or participation in the divine being.

rsc

I was wondering if it is proper to think of God's being in terms of 'movement', as it is ours (Aquinas spoke of this, Warfield confirms it: I can find the reference if needed). "In Him we live and move and have our being" --the idea of Aquinas as I understand it was that there was no being without knowledge of God and that knowledge was movement -- the suffering and the acting of the mind through the objects of sense, and in 'naming' or knowing things participating in the realities behind their appearance. So all things stand for God, and as we know them for what they are in that which they cohere, we live or move in the knowledge and worship of Him.

(I was thinking that if this is true -- if there is no movement without knowledge and there is no knowledge without worship-- if the creature can only 'live' in this participation of symbols or appearances of the reality toward which the soul moves-- then Christ, the revelation of the Father, the true God as well as the true Manifestation of God, the true Symbol in His nature as Logos, is 'our life' in this way also?)

I was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts on Aquinas' ideas; if I have misunderstood them. Also if they trace back to the being of God in this essence as 'movement' or if God's being is not revealed for us to know in that way?

 

[a mere housewife]

Thank you, Dr. Clark.

I do remember the distinction between God's being as fully actualized and ours as 'becoming' -- and there was something about the 'realization' of God's being in the movement our knowing Him-- I wasn't sure the 'participation' language was that of divinisation or simply as Scripture states, 'In Him we live and move and have our being.'

I liked some of the concepts: I thought some of them fit into ectypal theology very well, in that we have knowledge as we participate in this plane of reality, and that only in participating on this level can we hope to know God -- and that unless we know God in the 'image of invisible things' we know nothing: that seems in one way flatly against mysticism that goes for something more direct than revelation in analogy and symbol, and ultimately more direct than the Word and than Christ, the final Word. But I don't want to swallow something whole that is as you say 'equivocal' with what is revealed and what is unrevealed....