After all this build-up, we finally get to say something that feels very basic: God is intelligent. But by now we have learned how careful we have to be when we apply a name to God. Watch Aquinas go through the three steps: first, we find a perfection in creatures that seems applicable to God […]
In this reading we broach the very difficult question of whether we can talk about God at all. Given that we have three more years of Theology ahead of us in the curriculum, one hopes so. And yet the Church’s own councils have spoken of God as “ineffable” and “incomprehensible”; the Fourth Lateran Council declared […]
Last class we began to think about the infinity of God’s perfection. This time we round out our meditation by considering what perfections are found in God, and how. I’ve created a short audio recording covering all three chapters, but I hope it will be helpful. Click here to download or listen straight from this website […]
When we covered these chapters in class, I was tired and unclear. Students were heroic and energetic, eagerly pursuing the new realms of hamster deities and pop-tart cats, but the first two sections were a bit like a ship without a captain. Several of you asked me to record something about the two meanings of […]
Our assignment for today covers many chapters, but they are short and many of them similar in structure. The high point of the reading is when we conclude that God is one, which is also the central teaching of the Old Testament. But like the Old Testament, our Compendium reading takes on a journey from […]
With these chapters, we enter the heart of classical philosophical thought about God. We begin to see why God is so very hard for us to understand, and why a pagan philosopher would have been excited to read Exodus 3, where God says of himself, “I am who am.” I had to something a little […]
We continue to ask what a “first mover” is like by exploring the idea of eternity. As he will do many times in the coming chapters, St. Thomas teaches us that our words have to grow, to open up and be purified, before we can apply them to God. Download links for the audio files are […]