In a previous post, I wrote:
Thomas, in question 3 of the Summa, adumbrates the simplicity of God: that God’s existence is his essence, and that God has no (non-metaphorical) predicate that is not also his essence. If we can say “God is good,” for example, then it is necessarily true that God is goodness. So also for “one,” “beautiful,” “real,” etc.
Now given the doctrine of divine simplicity, the same move can be made with respect to anger. That is, if God is angry, then it necessarily follows that God is anger itself.
From here it follows that if God is not anger itself, then it is not the case that God is angry.
Now I’ve never known of a theologian willing to claim that God is anger itself. And there are many reasons for this, not least that this would “reify” or “hypostasize” anger, giving it an ultimate, uncreated ontological status completely independent of the Fall (of man & angels).
But do you see what’s going on? Since we know that it is not the case that God is anger itself, it necessarily follows that God is not angry.
Does Scripture (and the liturgy) speak of “the wrath of God?” Yes, it does. However, it is important to keep that strain of thought in its proper (marginal) place. It is true only in a distant and radically derivative sense. (I need to think more about this.)
One last note: notice that all of this presupposes the simplicity of God. In other words, it assumes the classical doctrine about God that, in particular, he is in no way subject to temporality (pace the likes of that “open theist” Greg Boyd and that “process theologian” Alfred North Whitehead and all their respective followers), which is wholly and completely a created thing. Otherwise, this line of thinking, which demonstrates that God is not angry, fails.
Geek alert: only theology & philosophy nerds should read this post. (It is a distillation of one swath of my study project for comprehensive exams.)
In Question 11 of the Prima Pars of Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, he treats the question of the unity of God.
In this particular section of his “Treatise on God” (usually considered to be questions 2 – 26 of the Prima Pars), he makes statements which, “by good and necessary inference” allow the reader to conclude that God is not numerically one.
But to see this, one must first take a quick plunge into the way that the ancients thought about number, for upon this way of thinking, Thomas is wholly dependent.
Two quick points to make here: 1. that “one” is convertible with being; 2. that “the numerical one” is different from “the one that is convertible with being.”
First, that oneness is convertible with being. Thomas, in question 3 of the Summa, adumbrates the simplicity of God: that God’s existence is his essence, and that God has no (non-metaphorical) predicate that is not also his essence. If we can say “God is good,” for example, then it is necessarily true that God is goodness. So also for “one,” “beautiful,” “real,” etc. [By the way, an interesting corollary of this doctrine is that we can be sure that, in a meaningful sense, God is not angry. See this post.]
Because God is simple in this way, it is impossible that he exists “through another,” which is the medieval (and ancient) way of saying that he is uncaused. But if he is uncaused, then must be necessary. Right: God does not exist contingently, like material beings, but rather necessarily. (Note: Averroes believed that a) material beings, i.e., the celestial bodies, exist necessarily; b) that effects, like Plotinus’ Nous and the heavenly bodies, can exist necessarily. Thomas disagrees with him, agreeing with Avicenna that spatial extension is convertible with contingency.)
All of this means that God is what you might call “full being.” Or “Being itself.” Or “Being as Such” (as long as, by that last denomination, you don’t mean “Being in General:” shame on you, Francisco Suarez).
Now, if you like Thomas Aquinas then you also have to like Parmenides (at least in a qualified way). Thomas, like Plato & Aristotle before him, gives Parmenides a qualified “high five” for his insight that being must be one. If two things exist (Aristotle & Thomas would say, “… exist in the full and proper sense”), that is, then this necessarily implies “privation,” or what Parmenides calls “non-being” (if for no other reason than that “A” is not “B.”).
But … what do we (or does Parmenides) mean here by “one?” Thomas think, in Article 1 of Question 11, that he means “undividability.” That is, the one thing that exists cannot be “sliced and diced” such that you can chop A in half and get two A’s, two of the same thing. This is how being must needs be for Parmenides: undividible.
One more point. In this article Thomas also teaches (following Avicenna) that this kind of oneness is different from numerical oneness. The latter, he thinks, would imply an actual numeric infinity (off limits for him), and would “add something” to God in the same way that white “adds something” to the substance of Socrates.
Hence, for Thomas (and for me) God is one, but God is not numerically one.
