Aquinas on the Being in God and in Proper Nature

Abstract

Among the many debates concerning God’s relation to the world, the teaching of the existence of the idea of created beings in the eternal Word is noteworthy. This brings the question of exemplarity, which denotes not only the similarity of the effect to the cause, but also the asymmetrical relationship that exists between the Creator and creation, which is one of transcendence. This opens up the question of how creatures exist in their own nature and what epistemological significance it has to know things in the light of the Word. God is not the first but the last object of human knowledge. For Thomas Aquinas, this opens up a number of interesting questions about the cognition of things in God, and thus guides soteriological and eschatological reflection. For Aquinas, being in God would mean that there is dependence in existence because God conserves theesseof all things, but also that the creature is related to the divine essence when it is in God as in the power of the agent or as in the knower. At the same time, although the existence in God, first as an idea, is more perfect, because of God’s perfection, nevertheless, to exist in own nature is more perfect from another perspective. This seems to be a very important claim against the occasionalist approach, according to which a being does not have its own nature because God acts in its place. For Aquinas, God’s respect for the nature of created beings marked the proper understanding of divine action in the world.

Keywords

• divine ideas
• intellect
• will
• exemplarism
• thomas aquinas
• soteriology