Handout for Monday, November 2, 2015
Theology Meeting
Review: Our continuing themes
Begotten – brought forth, not made, not created,
Consubstantial - of the same substance
Food for Thought – Translations from the original.
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt. 24:35) {R. Barron
Catholicism, p.13)
“Sky and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Mt. 24:35) {The New
Jerusalem Bible}
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Symeon the New Theologian (b. 949 – d. 1022)
Facilitator Comments from Wikipedia
One of his main written themes was about the importance of experiencing directly the grace of God,
often referring to his own experiences of God’s divine light. Another common theme of his writings was
the importance of putting oneself under the guidance of a spiritual teacher. Symeon was the first
Byzantine mystic to freely share his God encounter experiences, which were given in the context of his
teaching that the direct experience of God was something to which all Christians could aspire. His other
main teaching is that the power of the Holy Spirit transforms individual lives and creates the profound
mystical union with God that is the end result of living a holy life.
Symeon referred to this as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, compared to the more ritualistic Baptism of
water. Symeon argued that Christianity is too focused on obeying church rules and Church rituals
instead of focusing on actual and direct experience of God. In Discourses, Symeon writes his conviction
that the life of a Christian must be more than obeying church rules. A Christian life must include
personal experience of the presence of the living Christ, as was his experience as a Byzantine mystic.
{History of the Catholic Church: “Simeon’s approach was mystical, based primarily on the liturgy and the
experience of monastic life, the lived faith as distinct from speculation.” p.196}
Anselm of Canterbury (b. 1033 – 21 April 1109)
Facilitator Comments from Wikipedia
He is particularly famous as the originator of the Ontological argument for the existence of God and the
Satisfaction theory of atonement. A precursor to his argument for the existence of God is contained in
his theory of knowledge tract in De Veritate where Anselm affirms the existence of an absolute truth in
which all other truth participates. This absolute truth, he argues is God, who is the ultimate ground or
principle both of things and of thought.
Handout for Monday, November 2, 2015
Theology Meeting
Anselm sets forth the argument for goodness in all things which can only be thus through the presence
of goodness itself. His Monologion proof argues from the existence of many good things to a unity of
goodness, a one thing through which all other things are good. He argues that things are called “good”
in a variety of ways and degrees, which would be impossible were that not some absolute standard
and some good in itself, in which all relative goods participate.
This reasoning is inductive however, so Anselm postulates his famous “ontological argument,” a proof
that by itself would be enough to show that God really exists; that he is the supreme good, who depends
on nothing else, but on whom all things depend for their being and for their well-being. Anselm defined
his belief in the existence of God using the phrase “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
If this phrase existed only in the intellect, then it would not be “that than which nothing greater can be
conceived,” since it can be thought to exist in reality, which is greater. It follows, “that than which
nothing greater can be conceived,” must exist in reality.
Satisfaction Atonement
Sin incurs a debt to divine justice, a debt that must be paid somehow. Thus, no sin can be forgiven
without satisfaction. However, the incurred debt is something far greater than a human being is capable
of paying. All the service that a person can offer to God is already obliged on other debts to God. The
only way in which the debt can be satisfied – that humans could be set free from their sin – was by the
coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. He himself would have to be sinless, thus having no
debt that he owed. His death is something greater than all the sins of all humanity. His death makes a
superabundant satisfaction to the Divine Justice.
Thomas Aquinas (b. 1225 – 7 March 1274)
Facilitator Comments from Wikipedia
According to Thomas, God reveals himself through nature, so to study nature is to study God. The
ultimate goals of theology, according to Thomas, are to use reason to grasp the truth about God and
to experience salvation through that truth. Thomas believed that the existence of God can be
demonstrated. Briefly, in the Summa Theologica and more extensively in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he
considered in great detail five arguments for the existence of God.
1. Motion: Some things undoubtedly move, though cannot cause their own motion. Since there
can be no infinite chain of causes of motion, there must be a First Mover not moved by anything
else, and this is what everyone understands by God.
2. Causation: As in the case of motion, nothing can cause itself, and an infinite chain of causation is
impossible, so there must be a First Cause, called God.
3. Existence of necessary and unnecessary: Our experience includes things certainly existing but
apparently unnecessary. Not everything can be unnecessary, for then once there was nothing
and there would still be nothing. Therefore, we are compelled to suppose something that exists
necessarily, having this necessity only from itself, in fact itself the cause for other things to exist.
Handout for Monday, November 2, 2015
Theology Meeting
4. Gradation: If we can notice a gradation in things in the sense that some things are more hot,
good, etc., there must be a superlative that is the truest and noblest thing, and so most fully
existing. This then, we call God.
5. Ordered tendencies of nature: A direction of actions to an end is noticed in all bodies following
natural laws. Anything without awareness tends to a goal under the guidance of one who is
aware. This we call God.
Concerning the nature of God. Thomas believes the best approach is to consider what God is not. He
proposed five statements about divine qualities.
1. God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.
2. God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of
God’s complete actuality.
3. God is infinite. That is God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically,
intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size
and infinity of number.
4. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God’s essence and character.
5. God is one, without diversification within God’s self. The unity of God is such that God’s essence
is the same as God’s existence. In Thomas’s words, “in itself the proposition ‘God exists’ is
necessarily true, for in it subject and predicate are the same.
Nature of the Trinity. Thomas argued that God, while perfectly united, also is perfectly described the
Three Interrelated Persons. These three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are constituted by their
relations within the essence of God. This Trinity exists independently from the world. It transcends the
created world, but the Trinity also decided to give grace to human beings.
Nature of Jesus Christ. The purpose of Christ’s Incarnation was to restore human nature by removing
the contamination of sin, which humans cannot do by themselves. “Divine Wisdom judged it fitting that
God should become man, so that thus one and the same person would be able to both restore man and
to offer satisfaction.” Thomas argued in favor of the satisfaction view of atonement; that is, that Jesus
Christ died “to satisfy for the whole human race, which was sentenced to die on account of sin.”
Goal of human life. Thomas identified the goal of human existence as union and eternal fellowship with
God. This goal is achieved through the beatific vision, in which a person experiences perfect, unending
happiness by seeing the essence of God. This vision occurs after death as a gift from God to those who
in life experienced salvation and redemption through Christ.
“While Aquinas’ thought enjoyed preeminence in the Church, it was by no means universally followed.
Pope Leo XIII initiated the “Thomistic Revival,” affirming that Catholics should embrace truth wherever it
is found but extolling Aquinas as the primary philosopher, the source of a unified view of reality that all
Catholics should achieve.”
{Modernity, History of the Catholic Church, p. 363}