God and the One

Monistic Tendencies in St. Thomas Aquinas

A Term Paper
Presented to the Faculty of
The Department of Philosophy
School of Arts and Sciences
University of San Carlos
Cebu City, Philippines
May 1, 2019
___________________________________________
Submitted by:
Alisaca, Ryan Vincent F.
MA Philosophy
Dislcaimer:

St. Thomas was obviously no monist, and I do not wish to paint him as such. Indeed, what

is to be presented will be merely a speck, or a straw if you will, of St. Thomas’ work. I must admit

that to read St. Thomas as simply a philosopher would only give us half the picture of what he was

trying to say. I believe his philosophy is greatly intertwined with his theology, and to separate them

would not at all lead us to the things the Angelic Doctor wanted us to understand.

We are immediately convinced that in reality we experience becoming, that we ourselves

experience change. This is not so nonsensical and absurd. Ordinary and everyday experience

seems to mandate to us some sense of becoming. We sleep and then wake up. We get hungry and

eat, then we become full. We walk around. Vehicles roar past us when we run in hurry to our

workplaces. Day passes and night immediately follows. The sky darkens and we see the stars. I

can stand and then stand up later on when I need to. I have earlier not yet written this paper, and

yet here I am experiencing a deluge of words which seem to burst forth from nothing but happening

somewhere in my brain. The list of ordinary everyday experience that involve change and

becoming will go on and on. I, therefore, stop at this point. These examples are meant simply to

drive home a point: it is obvious, and painfully obvious at that, that in reality, there is becoming;

change is real. Indeed, we assure ourselves of an unexamined spontaneous conviction which is

nonetheless a conviction which is reasonable given the amount of experience we have as regards

that conviction.

We are, however, mere mortals. And to speak here of mortals is not simply to make

everything else in my assertions sound mysterious and mystical. On the contrary, I refer here to us
who are by our very nature limited in understanding and in all other capacities. This in contrast to

a Divine Being, God if you will, who must be seen as ultimately and absolutely perfect. This being

I shall later on talk about in the light of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The mere mortal that we are is being accused of thinking merely in terms of opinions and

not of truth. As already exposed above, we almost always hold a spontaneous conviction on the

reality of change given the data gathered by our senses, i.e. the data of becoming. But this is an

uncritical conviction. And we have already seen how radically incorrect our experience-based

spontaneous convictions can be. We once thought that the Earth lies at the center of the universe

and that the sun revolves around the Earth because of the evidence of experience. Our ancestors

thought that the Earth is flat because of the seemingly dropping horizon when they observe the

ocean. Today, people who still cling to this belief are called stupid and uneducated (the flat-

earthers). If spontaneous convictions can be erroneous in the past, then spontaneous convictions

today might still be susceptible to error if left unexamined. And if these convictions are left

unexamined, they are merely opinions whose truths are yet to be affirmed.

The accuser is Parmenides. And his accusation bears heavily upon us: “They are borne

along, both deaf and blind, mazed, hordes with no judgment, who believe that to be and not to be

are the same and not the same, and the path of everything is one that turns back upon itself.”1

Parmenides, here, speaks of a contradiction in our judgment which comes from our sensual

experience of reality. In his deductions, which we shall see later on, reality as experienced

immediately by us is not real. In other words, the world, as experienced by the senses, is not real.

1
Parminedes, Fr. 6 in W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1965), 21.
And if we experiences change through our senses, and if we know of becoming through

experience, then change too must be unreal.2

Deducing the One

Parmenides starts out with a tautology: that what is, is. Commentators are divided on

the interpretation of this line.3 I, however, am inclined to say that since tautologies do not at all

give new information, Parmenides was not trying to assert a thesis that this or that exists, or that

whether he was referring to something at all. The tautology was meant to show the condition sine

qua non for the possibility of all sensible and reasonable thought or speech. Explicitly, we can

only think reasonably of anything at all if it could possibly exist. I say possibly because the objects

of our thought may not necessarily be existing, and yet we might still be able to think of them in a

reasonable way. We can, for example, think of mermaids and unicorns. This possibility does not

totally negate the existence of a particular instantiation of any being whatsoever. And they can still

be categorized as “what is” in this sense. However, we cannot reasonably think of a square-circle,

or a rectangle-triangle. And no particular instantiation for any of these concepts (if they can be

called concepts) can be possible at all. Nay, they are no concepts but mere sounds, vocal blasts

that are merely produced by the human mouth and vocal cords. They cannot be, and do not belong

to “what is” in this manner. Thus, if anything is, it can be a subject to any speech, and we are able

to talk about it in a reasonable way. If anything is not, then it cannot be spoken about in any

2
W.C.K. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 4.
3
Ibid., 14
reasonable way. It may be said, therefore, that Parminedes identifies “what is” with “what can be

talked about”, and “what is not” with “what cannot be talked about”.4

It is in here that we see that by nothing, Parmenides might not have only meant negation

of something. ‘Nothing’ here is a contradiction, the most explicit form of any non-being. What is

not cannot be talked about. What is both ‘not’ and ‘cannot be talked about’ is nothing. There is no

point in speaking about these things. They do not bring us any new knowledge whatsoever. As

already mentioned earlier, they are mere sounds, equivalent to a dog’s bark.

Thus, Parmenides tells us that to speak of that which exists i.e. “that is”, is the one and only

true way. Now, since “it” (I daresay ‘it’ means everything that ‘is’ or exists) exists, it cannot non-

exist at the same time or we would be brought to a contradiction.

It is now at this point that Parmenides tells us that change and becoming is unreal. In

Fragment 8, he tells us that becoming, namely any kind of starting point of existence or any kind

of perishing of existence, is impossible. Something, or “what is” could not have come from nothing

(ex nihilo nihil fit), and something or ‘what is’ cannot be reduced to nothing, that is, if anything

has a more or less consistent logical notes, then they will always be real and they cannot be unreal

because to be unreal is to be a contradiction. Thus, what exists cannot change, and all that exists

can only be a continuous whole.5

It will be objected that there is a distinction between what can only have, at the moment, a

logical existence or an existence simply in the mind but has a possibility for real existence, and

what is really existing. The objection bears upon us, because if anything which is not yet existing

4
Ibid., 15.
5
Ronald Hoy, “Parminedes’ Complete Rejection of Time,” The Journal of Philosophy 91, No. 11 (1994):
111.
at the present moment but is capable of existing when given the appropriate causes, then there

might really be some sort of becoming i.e. from logical existence to real existence. Here I will

assert that for Parmenides, these things ultimately exist in reality. In other words, all things whose

logical notes are capable of being in union, whose logical notes are consistent and non-

contradictory (e.g. a glass mountain, a unicorn, a griffin, an electric shirt) are already in existence

in reality, and exists in the fullest sense of the word. It will inevitably be asked, “where are they?”

to which I would like reply, “at some future time or at some other parallel worlds.” Perhaps parallel

words are too much for us to accept, but it is not a contradiction and there is logical warrant for us

to reject that proposition although it might be susceptible to Ockham’s razor. Let us therefore focus

on “some future time.”

The assertion that all things exists, including glass mountains and griffins, is consistent

with Parmenides’ monism. Here I repeat that for Parmenides, there is no becoming. Hence, if that

were so, then the logician the Parmenides was would have thought that it was impossible that

possible things would have some sort of becoming. Therefore, it would not be farfetched for us to

think that Parmenides would have thought that everything, every possible thing, already existed if

he believed that reality is unchanging and one.

The analogy for the One is perhaps that of a pole. We may want to divide the pole into

parts in our minds using measuring standards. The reality, however, is that the pole is one

continuous matter. It is in keeping with Parmenides’ thought that this analogy works. After all, for

Parmenides, reality is a continuous whole. There is no special ontological status for any parts of

reality.6 In more explicit terms, Parmenides does not only deny change. His monism is already a

6
Parmenides, Fr. 8 v. 22-25.
complete denial of time. Whatever we regard in different times as past, present, or future are

actually just one reality. We might be tempted to think that the future is simply “not yet”. But then

again, we are told ex nihilo nihil fit. From where then does the future come from? Not from nothing

certainly. Indeed, if we are to be consistent with our reasoning, then we must admit that the future

already exists. All of time and all of reality already exists.

Aristotle has a solution to Parmenides’ monism, and it is pertinent to our present

discussion. Aristotle believes that there is change, and that Parmenides’ assertions are a product of

a failure to distinguish various types of change. Hence, for Aristotle change is not the emergence

of something from nothing, but rather that a persistent thing has modifiable attributes. In this

regard, there is no contradiction in change. A person may be in one sense i.e. that he is, and at the

same time he may not be in another sense i.e. that he does not have this or that quality.7

Aristotle’s response, however, actually fails. What Parmenides wanted to show, and which

is also the key issue here, it that “…whether, when we describe change of any sort (including

Aristotle’s change in properties), we commit ourselves to the reality of the future from which the

new situation arises, and/or the reality of the past to which it passes.”8 We are then given a problem.

If the future or the past is of the same ontological status with the present, then surely, Aristotle’s

description of change (which is change in properties) can only be an illusionary change because

all these possible property changes would already exist, and we are back to square-one.

Parmenides therefore leaves us with a strong monism, one which completely rejects time

and change. There is no distinction between the past, present, and future. If we believe that the

future is ‘not yet’ and the past ‘no longer’ but assert that the present is real, then we fall into a

7
Adrian Bardon, A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time (New York, Oxford University Press, 2013), 23.
8
Ibid.
contradiction. By asserting that the present is real, we must also yield to the conclusion that the

past and the future must be real as there can be no becoming whatsoever (something can only come

from something).

St. Thomas and God

For St. Thomas Aquinas, God does not admit of change for and in Himself. In other words,

God, for St. Thomas, is Immutable. Not only is God immutable, He is altogether immutable. He

cannot change in any way. He cannot be a subject to any kind of temporality. Now for St. Thomas,

God is immutable for three reasons. First, because He is pure act. Second, because God does not

have composition but is utterly simple ontologically speaking. Third, because God is infinite and

already has everything in Himself.9 Let us expound on them one by one.

First, that God is pure act implies that there can be no trace of potentiality in Him. Hence,

everything already ‘is’ in God in the fullest sense of the word. For if there would be anything that

would be a possible being for God, then there would be potentiality in God, and he would no longer

be pure act. If we were to speak strictly, griffins and glass mountains would already have real

existence in God (but not yet in the world).

Second, that God has no composition and simple implies that God must indivisible and

wholly existent. Meaning, God must be the same always. We may create logical distinctions when

we try to understand the nature of God. Nevertheless, like the pole divided logically into segments

of centimeters, God is actually still one and wholly one.

9
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Vol. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province
(New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007) Q. 9, A. 1.
 Third, that God is infinite and already has everything in Himself implies, as already

mentioned in the first reason, that God already has everything in himself. That is to say, glass

mountains and griffins already exist really in him. St. Thomas tells us at this point that God simply

comprehends Himself and therefore there is really nothing new in His knowledge.10

God and the One

At this point, we are now able to see traces of similarities between Parmenides’ the One

and St. Thomas’ God. In Parmenides’ monism, the world is conceived as wholly one, an

undifferentiated unity. This world already consists of everything that might possibly exist. This

world, since there is no movement in it can also be, in a sense, pure act. Perhaps, the only difference

we can surmise between Parmenides’ the One and St. Thomas’ God is that for St. Thomas, God is

a creator, and is wholly distinct from the world while Parmenides does not really endorse any sort

of Divinity in his the One.

Now, given the distinction between God and the world, it might be useful for us to speak

of how an unchanging God relates to a changing world. Indeed, it would be problematic if God

would have knowledge of a changing world because if so, then there would be traces of change in

God and He would no longer be immutable. But if God is immutable, then even His knowledge of

the world cannot change. But how does God know of different times in the world? St. Thomas

tells us that God’s knowledge is wholly eternal. As such, it embraces all of time. God should

therefore experience everything as wholly present.11 We are also given an analogy by St. Thomas

10
Ibid.
11
Aquinas, Summa, Q. 14, A. 13.
in order for us to be able to more fully appreciate God’s eternal glance. We might be able to

imagine God as similar to that of a person on a watchtower watching a caravan pass by. The person

on the tower, unlike the people in the caravan itself, can see the whole caravan from its beginning

to its end.12

St. Thomas here might be endorsing some sort of deterministic world-view, erasing in

God’s perspective the distinction between the past, present, and future.13 Here, we are once again

offered Parmenides’ conception of the world i.e. one and wholly continuous.

God’s non-temporal nature allows him to know everything including all of time as true. It

is in this regard that we come to understand that knowing for God must not be a temporal act. It is

not an act which implies any change whatsoever in Him. God simply knows in a one simple act of

knowing. Everything is present to Him as if he sees a tall pole.14

It therefore clear to us that the world’s unchanging nature must be a conditio sine qua non

for God’s immutability. Indeed, for us to reasonably think of God as completely unmoving and as

completely immutable, then we must posit that God’s knowledge of the world must also be

unchanging. This can only be done if the world itself is actually unchanging, for if God’s

knowledge of the world is unchanging but the world actually turns out to be changing, then God’s

knowledge would not be real. There would be a contradiction in Him and He would no longer be

God. It must first be asserted, therefore, that world must be unchanging.

12
Thomas Aquinas, Compendium Theologiae, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1947) Ch.
133.
13
Andrew Brenner, “Aquinas on Eternity, Tense, and Temporal Becoming,” Florida Philosophical Review
10 No. 1 (2010): 17.
14
John H. Boyer, “Eternal God: Divine Atemporality in Thomas Aquinas,” in News from the Raven: Essays
from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought, ed. Darci N. Hill (Newcastle Upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 273-274.
 Indeed, a world-view like Parmenides’ is what we need as a conception of the world if we

want to be consistent with our idea of an unchanging God. If God is immutable, then the world too

must be immutable, eternal, and unchanging. Here, we sink into some sort of determinism. But

that is the prize of strict logic reasoning. Perhaps I may have pushed St. Thomas’ and Parmenides’

theses to their extremes. Nevertheless, I believe I have shown some monistic tendencies in St.

Thomas Aquinas. Allow me to push a little further.

Conclusion: God and the One are one

My conclusions may be too extreme, and many objections may be raised against it.

Nevertheless, let me assert that given the ontological similarities between God and the One (which

is, in my reading, the world), it might already be logically unnecessary for us to make a distinction

between God and the world. Let us dispel any confusions first. I do not assert that God does not

exist, nor do I assert that God and the world are one in a pantheistic way. I simply say that the

distinction between the world and God might not be logically relevant and necessary given the

reasoning we already had earlier.

Indeed, if the world and God are but immobile things, then they both must be eternal. Both

cannot admit of change, and both must have no genesis or annihilation. And if we are to say that

both also have everything in existence already, then they might not be very different at all. Would

it not be easier to think of them as one and same if this is really the case? Perhaps it will be objected

that there is still one final distinction: that God is necessary while the world is merely contingent.

That distinction, however, does not really hold any water if we posit that the world is eternal and

unchanging. If all the events in the world simply ‘is’, then the world must be necessary because if

it were not, then nothing would exist. Indeed, the distinction is not logical but a product of choice,

a choice to believe that there is somewhere out there a higher being whose perfection surpasses
the world’s. And yet, that same idea of perfection will force us to admit that the world too must be

eternal and unmoving, and we are back to square one: the world and God must have a similar

nature. And if this is so, might it not be more useful to think that there is only the world or God

and that we are only using different names to refer to the same thing?
 Bibliography

Aquinas, Thomas. Compendium Theologiae. Translated by Cyril Vollert. St. Louis: B. Herder
Book Co., 1947.

______________. Summa Theologica Vol I. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican

Province. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007.

Bardon, Adrian. A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time. New York: Oxford University Press,
2013.
Brenner, Andrew. “Aquinas on Eternity, Tense, and Temporal Becoming.” Florida
Philosophical Review 10, no. 1 (2010): 16-24.

Boyer, John H. “Eternal God: Divine Atemporality in Thomas Aquinas,” in News from the
Raven: Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance
Thought, edited by Darci N. Hill. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2014. 262-285

Guthrie, W.C.K. A History of Greek Philosophy Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1965.

Hoy, Ronald C. “Parminedes’ Complete Rejection of Time.” Philosophical Studies Series 87

(2001): 105-129.