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To proceed against individual errors, however, is a
difficult business, and this for two reasons. In the first
place, it is difficult because the sacrilegious remarks of
individual men who have erred are not so well known to us so
that we may use what they say as the basis of proceeding to
a refutation of their errors. This is, indeed, the method
that the ancient Doctors of the Church used in the
refutation of the errors of the Gentiles. For they could
know the positions taken by the Gentiles since they
themselves had been Gentiles, or at least had lived among
the Gentiles and had been instructed in their teaching. In
the second place, it is difficult because some of them, such
as the Mohammedans and the pagans, do not agree with us in
accepting the authority of any Scripture, by which they may
be convinced of their error. Thus, against the Jews we
are able to argue by means of the Old Testament, while
against heretics we are able to argue by means of the New
Testament. But the Muslims and the pagans accept neither the
one nor the other. We must, therefore, have recourse to
the natural reason, to which all men are forced to give
their assent. However, it is true, in divine matters the
natural reason has its failings.
***
By this truth, too, are refuted the Gentiles, who, taking
their beginning in the errors of the philosophers we have
listed, posited that the elements of the world and the
powers in them are gods; for example, the sun, the moon, the
earth, water, and the like.
***
Thus, then, is removed the error of the Gentiles, who said
that God is the soul of the heavens, or even the soul of the
whole world. Thereby they defended the error of idolatry, by
saying that the whole world was God not by reason of the
body but by reason of the soul; just as man is said to be
wise not by reason of the body but by reason of the soul. On
the basis of this error the Gentiles thought it to follow
that, not unfittingly, divine worship should be shown to the
world and its parts. The Commentator also says that this
point was the place where the Zabii stumbled and fell from
wisdom—because, namely, they posited that God is the form of
the heavens [In XII Metaphysicorum].
***
If, again, there are several gods, the nature
of the godhead cannot be numerically one in two of them.
There must, therefore, be something distinguishing the
divine nature in this and in that god. But this is
impossible, because, as we have shown above, the divine
nature receives the addition neither of essential
differences nor of accidents. Nor yet is the divine nature
the form of any matter, to be capable of being divided
according to the division of matter. It is impossible,
therefore, that there be two gods.
Then, too, the proper being of each thing is
only one. But God is His being, as we have shown. There can,
therefore, be only one God.
Moreover, a thing has being in the manner it
possesses unity. Hence, each thing struggles as much as it
can against any division of itself, lest thereby it tend to
nonbeing. But the divine nature has being most powerfully.
There is therefore, in it the greatest unity, and hence no
plurality is in any way distinguished within it.
Furthermore, we notice in each genus that
multitude proceeds from some unity. This is why in every
genus there is found a prime member that is the measure of
all the things found in that genus. In whatever things,
therefore, we find that there is an agreement in one
respect, it is necessary that this depend upon one source.
But all things agree in being. There must, therefore, be
only one being that is the source of all things. This is
God.
Again, in every rulership he who rules
desires unity. That is why among the forms of rulership the
main one is monarchy or kingship. So, too, for many members
there is one head, whereby we see by an evident sign that he
to whom rulership belongs should have unity. Hence, we must
admit that God, Who is the cause of all things, is
absolutely one.
This confession of the divine unity we can
likewise gather from holy Scripture. For it is said in
Deuteronomy (6:4): “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one
God”; and in Exodus (20:3): “You shall not have strange gods
before Me”; and in Ephesians (4:5): “One Lord, one faith,
one baptism.”
Now by this truth are refuted those Gentiles who accepted a
multitude of gods. However, many of them said that there was
one highest God, by whom all the others whom they named gods
were according to them caused. For they attributed the name
of divinity to all everlasting substances, and this
especially because of their wisdom and felicity and the
rulership of things. This manner of speaking is found also
in Sacred Scripture, in which the holy angels, or even men,
or judges, are called gods. Thus, this verse of the Psalms
(85:8): “There is none among the gods like You, O Lord”; and
elsewhere: “I have said: You are gods” (Ps. 81:6). Many such
expressions are found in different places in Scripture.
Hence, it is mainly the Manicheans who seem opposed to this
truth, in that they posit two first principles of which one
is not the cause of the other.
The Arians likewise attacked this truth by their errors, in
confessing that the Father and the Son are not one but
several gods; although the authority of Scripture forces me
to believe that the Son is true God.
***
The position of Hermes is disposed of by these
considerations, for he spoke as follows, as Augustine
reports it in the City of God [VIII, 23]: “Just as God is
the maker of the celestial gods, so man is the maker of the
gods who are in the temples, content in their nearness to
man. I mean the animated statues, endowed with sense and
spirit, that do such great and unusual things; statues that
foresee future events, predicting them from dreams and from
many other things, that cause weaknesses in men and also
cure them, that give sorrow and joy, in accord with one’s
merits.
This view is also refuted by divine authority, for it is
said in the Psalm (134:15-17): “The idols of the Gentiles
are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands. They have a
mouth and they do not speak... neither is there any breath
in their mouths.”
***
Therefore, it is clear from what we have said that the cult
of latria is due to the one, highest God only. Thus
it is said in Exodus (22:20): “He who sacrifices to the gods
shall be put to death, save only to the Lord”; and in
Deuteronomy (6:13): “You shall fear the Lord Your God, and
shall serve Him only.” And in Romans (1:72-73) it is said of
the Gentiles: “For, professing themselves to be wise, they
became fools, and they changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a
corruptible man and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts and
of creeping things”; and later (verse 25): “Who changed the
truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the
creature rather than the Creator, Who is God above all
blessed for ever.”
So, since it is unfitting for the cult of latria to
be offered to any other being than the first principle of
things, and since to incite to unworthy deeds can only be
the work of a badly disposed rational creature, it is
evident that men have been solicited by the urging of demons
to develop the aforesaid unworthy cults, and these demons
have been presented in place of God as objects of men’s
worship because they craved divine honor. Hence it is said
in the Psalm (95:5): “All the gods of the Gentiles are
devils”; and in 1 Corinthians (10:20): “the things which the
heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to
God.”
***
But malign spirits strive to corrupt the truth of the faith,
just as they make bad use of the working of wonders, in
order to lead to error and weaken the proof of the true
faith, even though they do not perform miracles in the
proper sense, but things that appear wonderful to men, as we
showed above—so also they abuse prophetic prediction, not,
of course, prophesying, but foretelling certain things
according to the order of causes hidden to man, so that they
seem to know in advance future events in themselves. Now,
though contingent effects come from natural causes, these
spirits, as a result of the subtlety of their understanding,
can know more than men as to when and how the effects of
natural causes may be obstructed. So, in foretelling future
things, they appear to be more astonishing and more truthful
than men, no matter how learned the latter may be. Of
course, among natural causes, the highest and farthest
removed from our knowledge are the powers of the celestial
bodies. That these are known to the spirits under
discussion, in accord with what is proper to their nature,
is evident from earlier explanations. Therefore, since
all lower bodies are controlled through the powers and
motions of the higher bodies, these spirits are far more
able than any astronomer to foretell future winds and
storms, changing conditions of the atmosphere, and other
such things which occur in the changing of lower bodies as a
result of the motion of the higher bodies. Also, though
celestial bodies can make no impression directly on the
intellectual part of the soul, as we showed above, a good
many men follow the impulse of their bodily passions and
tendencies, on which we have shown that the celestial bodies
do have an influence. In fact, it is only possible for wise
men, of whom the number is small, to resist this kind of
passion by using their reason. So, the result is that
many predictions can be made concerning man’s acts, although
even these spirits fail at times in their predictions
because of freedom of choice.
However, they do not make their predictions of what they
foreknow by enlightening the mind, as is done in the case of
divine revelation. Indeed, it is not their intention that
the human mind be perfected in order to know the truth, but,
rather, that it be turned away from the truth. Now, they
sometimes predict, indeed, by impressing the imagination,
either during sleep, as when they show the signs of certain
future events through dreams, or while one is awake, as is
apparent in the case of people in a trance or frenzy who
foretell future events. At other times, too, they do it
through external signs, for instance, by the movement and
chirping of birds, and by means of the appearances of the
inner parts of animals, and by the drawing of certain kinds
of mathematical figures, and in other like ways which seem
to work by some kind of lot. At still other times, they do
it by visual apparitions and by predicting future events in
speech that can be heard.
Although the last of these ways is obviously the work of
evil spirits, some people have made efforts to explain the
other ways in terms of natural causes. They say, in fact,
that when a celestial body moves toward definite effects in
these things here below, some signs of the result of the
influence of the same body appear, because different things
receive the celestial influence in different ways. On this
basis, then, they say that the change that is produced in a
thing by the celestial body can be taken as a sign of the
change in another thing. Hence, they say that movements that
are apart from rational deliberation, such as visions in
people who are dreaming and in those who are out of their
mind, and the flight and crying of birds, and the drawing of
figures, when a person does not deliberate on how many
points he should draw, are all the results of the influence
of a celestial body. So, they say that things like these can
be the signs of future effects that are caused by the motion
of the heavens.
However, since this has little reason, it is better to think
that the predictions that are made from signs of this kind
take their origin from some intellectual substance, by whose
power the aforesaid motions occurring without deliberation
are controlled, in accord with what befits the observation
of future events. And while these movements are sometimes
controlled by the divine will, through the ministry of good
spirits, since many things are revealed by God through
dreams -- as to Pharaoh (Gen. 41:25), and to Nebuchadnezzar
(Dan. 2:28), and “lots that are cast into the lap, that are
also at times disposed of by the Lord,” as Solomon says
(Prov. 16:33).Yet most of the time they happen as a result
of the working of evil spirits, as the holy Doctors say,
and as even the Gentiles themselves agree. For Maximus
Valerius says that the practice of auguries and dreams, and
that sort of thing, belongs to the religion in which idols
were worshiped. And so, in the Old Law, along with idolatry,
all these practices were prohibited. Indeed, it is said in
Deuteronomy (18:9-11): “beware lest you have a mind to
imitate the abominations of those nations,” that is, those
that serve idols; “neither let there be found among you
anyone who expiates his son or daughter, making them to pass
through the fire; or who consults soothsayers, or observes
dreams and omens; neither let there be any wizard nor
charmer, nor anyone who consults pythonic spirits, or
fortune tellers, or who seeks the truth from the dead.”
***
Thus, of course, one avoids the error of certain ancient
Gentiles, who used to hold that “the same periods and events
of time are repeated; as if, for example, the philosopher
Plato having taught at the school in Athens which is called
the Academy, so numberless ages before, at long but certain
intervals, this same Plato and the same school, and the same
disciples existed, and so also are to be repeated during the
endless cycles yet to come”; so Augustine describes the
position in the City of God. To this position, so he himself
tells us in the same place, some like to refer the words of
Ecclesiastes (1:9-10): “What is it that has been? The same
thing that shall be. What is it that has been done? The same
thing that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new,
neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it
has already gone before in the ages that were before us.”
This is not, indeed, to be understood as though things
numerically the same are repeated through various
generations, but things similar in species. So Augustine
explains in the same place. And Aristotle at the end of
De generatione [II, 11], taught the same thing, speaking
against the group mentioned.
***
It is,
furthermore, found expressly in Scripture that the Son of
God is a creature. For Sirach (24:12, 14) says: “The creator
of all things said to Me: and He that made Me rested in My
tabernacle”; and again: “From the beginning, and before the
world, was I created.” Therefore, the Son is a creature.
What is more,
the Son is numbered among creatures. For it says in the
person of Wisdom: “I came out of the mouth of the most High,
the firstborn before all creatures” (Sirach 24:5). And the
Apostle says of the Son that He is “the firstborn of every
creature” (Col. 1:15). The Son, then, seems to belong to the
order of creatures as one who holds the first rank therein.
The Son,
moreover, says in John (17:22), praying for the disciples to
the Father: “The glory which You hast given Me, I have given
to them; that they may be one, as We also are one.”
Therefore, the Father and Son are one as He wished the
disciples to be one. But He did not wish the disciples to be
essentially one. Therefore, the Father and Son are not
essentially one. Thus it follows that He is a creature and
subject to the Father.
Now, this is the
position of Arius and Eunomius. And it seems to have arisen
from the sayings of the Platonists, who used to hold that
there was a supreme God, the Father and Creator of all
things, and from Him there emanated a certain “Mind” in
which were the forms of all things, and it was superior to
all things; and they named this the “paternal intellect”;
after this they put the soul of the world, and then the
other creatures. Therefore, what is said in sacred Scripture
of the Son of God they used to understand of the mind just
mentioned; and the more so because sacred Scripture names
the Son of God “the Wisdom of God” and “the Word of God.”
And with this opinion the position of Avicenna agrees; he
holds that above the soul of the first heaven there is a
first intelligence moving the first heaven, and further
beyond this he placed God at the summit.
In this way,
then, the Arians were inclined to think that the Son of God
was a kind of creature, pre-eminent over all other
creatures, the medium by which God had created all things;
they were all the more so inclined by the fact that certain
philosophers also held that things proceeded from their
first source in an order, resulting in the creation of all
things through one first creature.
***
Furthermore, since the proper action of
anything at all follows its very nature, a thing’s proper
action is fitting to nothing to which the nature of that
thing is not fitting; thus, what does not have the human
species does not have the human action. Now, the proper
actions of God belong to the Son: to create (as already
shown), to contain and conserve all things in being; and to
wipe away sins. That these are proper to God is clear from
the foregoing. But of the Son it is said that “by Him all
things consist” (Col. 1: 3-7); and that He upholds “all
things by the word of His power, making purgation of sins”
(Heb. 1:3). The Son of God, then, is of the divine nature,
and is not a creature.
But because an Arian might say that the Son
does these things not as a principal agent, but as an
instrument of the principal agent which acts not by its own
power but by the power of the principal agent, our Lord
excluded this argument, saying in John (5:19): “what things
soever the Father doth, these the Son also doth in like
manner.” Then, just as the Father operates of Himself and by
His proper power, so also does the Son.
***
Since, however, truth cannot be truth’s
contrary, it is obvious that the points of Scriptural truth
introduced by the Arians to confirm their error cannot be
helpful to their teaching. For, since it was shown from
divine Scripture that the essence and divine nature of the
Father and Son are numerically identical, and according to
this each is called true God, it must be that the Father and
Son cannot be two gods, but one God. For, if there were many
gods, a necessary consequence would be the partition in each
of the essence of divinity, just as in two men the humanity
differs in number from one to the other; and the more so
because the divine nature is not one thing and God Himself
another. This was shown above. From this it follows
necessarily that, since there exists one divine nature in
the Father and the Son, the Father and the Son are one God.
Therefore, although we confess that the Father is God and
the Son God, we are not withdrawing from the teaching which
sets down that there is one only God, which we established
both by reasonings and by authorities in Book I. Hence,
although there is one only true God, we confess that this is
predicated of the Father and of the Son.
***
Thus, then, it is clear that the testimonies
of the Scriptures which the Arians were taking for
themselves are not hostile to the truth which the Catholic
faith maintains.
***
Consideration must, furthermore, be given to
this: Since in any nature the procession of the son from the
father is natural, from the fact that the Word of God is
called the Son of God He must proceed naturally from the
Father. This is in agreement with the things said above, as
one can perceive from what takes place in our intellect. For
our intellect knows some things naturally; thus the first
principles of the intelligibles, whose intelligible
conceptions—called interior words—naturally exist in the
intellect and proceed from it. There are also certain
intelligibles which our intellect does not know naturally;
rather, it arrives at the knowledge of these by reasoning.
The conceptions of these last do not exist in our intellect
naturally, but are sought after by study. Manifestly,
however, God understands Himself naturally just as He is
naturally. For His act of understanding is His being (as was
proved in Book I). Therefore, the Word of God understanding
Himself naturally proceeds from Him. And, since the Word of
God is of the same nature as God speaking and His likeness,
this follows: This natural proceeding is unto a likeness of
Him from whom He does proceed with identity of nature. But,
this is the essential of true generation in living things:
that which is generated proceeds from him who generates as
his likeness, and as identified with him in nature.
Therefore, the Word of God is truly begotten by God speaking
the Word; and His proceeding can be called “generation” or
“birth.” This is why the Psalmist says: “This day have I
begotten You” (Ps. 7:7); that is, in eternity which always
is present and in which essentially there is neither past
nor future. In this way the falsity of what the Arians
maintained is clear, that the Father generated the Son by
His will. For things which are by will are not natural
things.
***
It seems, therefore, that the Holy Spirit,
since He does not receive the divine nature by generation,
does not receive it in any way at all. He thus appears not
to be true God.
Now, this was the position of Arius, who said
that the Son and the Holy Spirit were creatures: the Son, to
be sure, greater than the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit
the servant of the Son; just so, he said that the Son was
lesser than the Father. Arius was followed in respect of the
Holy Spirit by Macedonius, “who rightly held that the Father
and the Son were of one and the same substance, but was
unwilling to believe this of the Holy Spirit. He said that
the Holy Spirit was a creature.” Hence, some call the
Macedonians Semi-Arians, because they are in partial
agreement with the Arians, and in partial disagreement with
the same group. |
