God's Beautitude

by G Deegan

In a well-known passus of the Metaphysics Aristotle writes that God's activity is joy. (Metaphysics, 1072 b 16). This conclusion follows from a comparison of God's activity with the best which man temporarily enjoys. But Aristotle also argued that all beings strive for pleasure. In doing so they imitate the supreme pleasure of the First Mover whose activity is pleasure. (Met. 12, cc. 7 & 9). This activity is contemplation (Met. 1072 b 24-30). In his theology Aristotle transposes the popular concept of the blessed life of the gods: God's life consists in self-knowledge accompanied by joy. Some critics find fault with the idea of a Being shut up in unceasing and changeless contemplation of itself. But this criticism betrays a lack of metaphysical insight and of the capacity to think along the lines of the 'via negativa' and the 'via eminentiae'.

St. Thomas takes over Aristotle's definition of pleasure as the unhampered act of a habitus in conformity with the nature to which this habitus belongs. (In VII Ethicorum lectio 12). In view of this definition the conclusion imposes itself that God's self-knowledge and love are joy. Thus Aquinas closes his treatise of God with God's bliss.

In our question (I:26) Aquinas sets out from a definition of the happiness proper to man: beatitude is the perfect good of an intellectual nature which knows its own self-sufficiency in the good it has - to which something good or bad may happen and which has the mastery over its own operations (I, 26, 2). This definition minus the human limitations has two main elements: to be perfect and to possess knowledge. Both are proper to God in a most excellent way. Hence bliss is proper to God in a superlative manner.

The elements of this definition are taken from Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", where Aristotle defines happiness as a good which is self-sufficient (E.N. 1, c. 5) and as an activity of the soul implying a rational principle (E.N. 1098 a 12). The perception of one's own goodness is pleasure (E.N. 1170 b 8). Misfortune reduces or destroys happiness (E.N. 1100 b 22). In taking over this definition Aquinas lays greater store than Aristotle had done on the good in which and through which happiness is found. He also adds the domination over one's own operation and in this way introduces the will. This explains the place of our question at the end of the treatise on God's operation.

As all things strive to attain their perfection, a being endowed with intellect seeks happiness, which consists in the intellectual operation in which it grasps, in a sense, all things. This also applies to God. It must be noted that his thinking and being are the same reality and both can only be distinguished by reason (I, 26, 2). The implication of the second article is that one is only happy through knowledge and through awareness of goodness and perfection.

In the last two articles of the Question St. Thomas argues that God is the beatitude of the blessed in heaven and that divine bliss comprises any happiness. For whatever good is desirable, it is present to God in a more excellent way.

This article posted Dec 2005. It was published in Universitas Number 12 (Dec 2005)
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