Thanks for reading these brief blogs. You know the plan is to expose you to virtually the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church over about a one year period. Just 5 minutes a day of this reading will get you there!
We are looking at St. Thomas Aquinas’ demonstrations from natural reason that there must be a God. We arrive today at his fourth demonstration from “Gradation.” He notices that we speak of things as being more or less beautiful and more or less true and more or less good. He then argues that for this to be the case there must be such a thing as goodness, beauty and truth. He argues that the being who contains all of these qualities in their fullness we call God (or perhaps the being who is goodness, beauty and truth). This warrants some reflection and should bring up a question too.
If you follow Aquinas you might be wondering if this proof unwittingly proves that there are two gods (one good, true and beautiful and one bad, false and ugly). Remember that evil is not so much a thing as the absence of good. Evil is actually less real than good; just like darkness is not really a thing by itself since it is just the absence of light. In fact when you get darkness and light together you don’t get anything but light. Light dispels the darkness. Evil is not evil per se, it is the absence of good.
So one of the things that blows my mind is that, strictly speaking, God does not love me. God IS love with me. Love is not something God does; it is something he is. This means he can never stop loving. It also means that anytime I love God is somehow present there.
 | About Pat Arensberg Patrick Arensberg is the Director of Religious Education for the Archdiocese of Mobile. Previously, he taught for 17 years at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, where he served as Chairman of the Theology Department. He attended the Gregorian University in Rome and holds an M.A. in Theology from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. He is married to Connie and they live in Mobile with their 5 children. |
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