What is God like?
From the arguments to the God of classical theism — the divine attributes that follow.
The Five Ways each conclude to a first term: an Unmoved Mover, a First Cause, a Necessary Being, a source of all perfection, an ordering Intellect. A natural question follows: are these five different things, or one? And once we have arrived, what must such a being actually be like?
Aquinas argues that the terminus of each way is one and the same being, and that its nature can be unfolded by reasoning carefully from what the arguments already established. We do not first assume God and then list His traits; we read the attributes off the conclusions themselves.
When the existence of a thing has been ascertained, there remains the further question of the manner of its existence, in order that we may know its essence.
They all point to one being. Each way ends in something that is first, uncaused, and not dependent on anything else. But there cannot be two beings that are each utterly first and independent: to differ, one would have to lack something the other has, and a being that is Pure Act and Being Itself lacks nothing. So the conclusions converge: there is one ultimate source.
Pure Act: no unrealized potential. The First Way ends in something that is actual through and through. From this single point most of the classical attributes follow:
- Immutable. To change is to move from potency to act; a being with no potency cannot change.
- Eternal. Time measures change. What cannot change is not measured by time; it simply is, without before or after.
- Immaterial. Matter is a principle of potentiality; Pure Act has no matter and so is not a body.
Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable.
As God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal.
Being Itself: existence without limit. The Third Way ends in something whose very essence is to exist. Because its existence is not received into any limiting essence, it is unlimited: infinite and perfect, lacking no perfection of being.
- Simple. It has no parts to be composed: no body, no distinction between what it is and that it is. It does not have existence or goodness; it is them.
- One. As argued above, there cannot be two unlimited beings, so this being is unique.
There is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His 'suppositum'; nor His essence from His existence... Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple.
Hence it is manifest that God is 'one' in the supreme degree.
Source of all perfection: goodness, intellect, will. The Fourth and Fifth Ways end in the source of every perfection and the intelligence ordering things to their ends.
- Good. Everything seeks its own perfection, and the source of all perfection is perfect goodness itself.
- Knowing. The one who orders all things to their ends does so as an intellect; a being that is Pure Act possesses understanding without limit: omniscient.
- Powerful. As the first cause on which all being depends, nothing lies outside its causal reach: omnipotent.
To be good belongs pre-eminently to God. For a thing is good according to its desirableness.
In God there exists the most perfect knowledge.
The God of the philosophers — and beyond. Reason, then, carries us further than some first cause. It arrives at a being that is one, simple, eternal, immutable, infinite, perfect, good, all-knowing, and all-powerful: the God of classical theism.
But this is still the God of the philosophers. Reason has shown us a great deal about His nature, yet it has not told us which God this is among the ones people actually worship: whether He is a distant abstraction or a personal God who knows and loves, and whether He has ever spoken, entered history, and drawn near.
That is a further question, and the beginning of a different road.