Prayer of submission

Schema about the Nature, Attributes and Communication with God

The presentness of God

See the Prayer Conversation with God about his presentness

Second Part

2. Perfection of God - The most perfect being

We think of God as the most perfect being, the one to which no-other can be more perfect; there is nothing he could be, that he is not. But Divine perfection is ontological: he is metaphysically perfect (RTCG 56). We cannot look at the perfection of God as an addition of qualities in a simple being, or as having any quality or property eminently. That would be incoherent. The most perfect being should be unchangeable and not subject to the changes of time; he must know everything, the future included.

2.1. Logically possible qualities

God must posses on eminent degree all logically possible qualities, not all possible or existent qualities, because there are physical properties which are incompatible to each other and incompatible with his nature, as heavy and light, long and short, yellow and blue, hot and cold, and so on; but as God is not a physical entity, he does not have to have physical properties. Qualities are called also properties; God doesn't have to be all properties.

The fact that God does not have some properties does not mean that God lacks some perfection; it means that some properties are not logically possible for God to have. God does not have material properties in an immaterial way, which would be senseless. Matter is not possible in God, because matter is limited by itself.

We may say the same of other physical properties, as shape, weight, color, temperature, density, etc. So, the similarity between physical things and God is their existence only, because they have a "parallel" existence. Although, the existence of God is essentially different from the physical existence. Aquinas says that the "the only genus to which God could belong is the genus of existence" (Summa Theologica, qu. 3, art 5).

But in reality God does not have qualities, or properties; he is the qualities themselves in an ontological unity. God does not have wisdom; rather, he is the Wisdom itself, as the Being, the Existence, the Life, the Action, the Energy, the Power, the Holiness and the Love, and so on. All his qualities are identical with each other in an ontological simplicity.

2.2. Ideas or Forms in God

If we say that material things exist in God as ideas, or Forms (Plato's interpretation, RTCG 54, 57), or possibilities, we must clarify that being God the simplest one, he cannot have different ideas; we may talk, analogically, of ideas, but they identify with his essence or nature; they are all eternal, immutable and necessary.

For Aquinas, God is the supreme abstract Form. God is the pure Form, the "sum" of all Forms, essences, qualities, in one indivisible reality (RTCG 63, 66).