God and the Language of Participation

Rudi te Velde (Tilburg)

1. Introduction
Thomas Aquinas’ way of thinking about God and his relation to the world is often represented
in the literature as a clear and unequivocal case of theism.1 Far from being a precise and well-
defined concept, ‘theism’ usually functions as a schematic and descriptive picture of how the
divine is conceived of in the monotheistic religions. Theism, then, stands for the conviction
that God exists, that is, a most perfect, substantial, and person-like entity existing apart and
independently from the world. Furthermore, the theistic God is an intelligent, willing, and
powerful agent who is the perfectly good creator and governor of the world.
The most salient feature of the theistic God in the theological imagination is that He
exists independently and apart from the world. The word ‘transcendence’ is often taken to
mean precisely this: God exists somewhere in a transcendent realm outside the human world
and nature. Theism emphasizes the independence and transcendence of God vis-à-vis the
world in such a way that the relation of God to his creation is easily conceived of in a more or
less extrinsic manner.
Although it is not difficult to recognize in Aquinas’ conception of God the general
features of theism, I argue that, nevertheless, his God cannot be labelled in a clear and
unambiguous sense as a ‘theistic’ God. The language of theism emphasizes the distinction
between God and the world. It speaks of God as an extraordinary entity – a supreme being –
located in a transcendent realm above the world. According to Aquinas, however, it is not
possible to speak of ‘distinction’ without ‘identity’. For him, ‘distinction’ is not a descriptive
term by which God is somehow located there, over and against the world here, as if God
occupies a certain region of reality. Distinction (God is not the world) goes together with
identity (God is the world in some sense). Instead of an abstract transcendence, over and
against the immanence of the world, Aquinas offers us a speculative notion of excessive
transcendence. Terms as ‘excessive transcendence’ or ‘exceeding presence’ reminds one of
the striking expression Aquinas employs in describing the causal relationship between God
and creatures. Quoting Pseudo-Dionysius, he explains that one cannot speak of God as if He

1
See, for instance, N. Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism. Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa contra
Gentiles I, Oxford 1997.

1
is this but not that; on the contrary, God is “everything as the cause of everything” (omnia ut
causa omnium).2 This phrase must be interpreted in the light of the Neoplatonic notion of
causality, according to which the cause is said to be its effect in the manner of the cause. The
first cause cannot be characterized in terms of one among others, as a particular entity
distinguished from other particular entities, but only in relation to all things, the whole of the
reality of which it is the cause. Thus, God is in a certain manner everything, although not
everything is God. This Dionysian expression speaks the language of participation, in which
identity – God is everything – goes together with distinction – God is the cause of everything
and is as such distinguished from everything. Here we meet the limits of a theistic description
of the divine: according to Aquinas, God is not simply a being among other beings, albeit of
the most perfect kind. He is Being Itself (ipsum esse per se subsistens), and as such He
comprises in himself the fullness of being. In the following I intend to examine the
consequences of this view for what it means to speak of God in terms of transcendence and
independence.

2. The different senses of ‘transcendence’.

The notion of transcendence and the related term of immanence are notoriously vague and
ambiguous. In general, it may be said that the notion of transcendence refers to a beyond, an
exceeding of a realm characterized in terms of immanence, whether the immanence of finite
reality or the immanence of what lies within reach of our cognitive powers. ‘Transcendence’
is a relational word. A reality is characterized as transcendent in relation to another reality
which points beyond its limits to something transcendent. Transcendence is usually opposed
to immanence, but at the same time transcendence, as something beyond, must mark its
presence in the sphere of immanence through a kind of transcending movement or orientation.
The sphere of immanence must be, so to speak, more than purely immanent and self-sufficient
if it is to relate from within to something that transcends it. If immanence – for instance, the
immanence of the world – were to be taken in an absolute sense, as being nothing more than it
is, then transcendence would lose its meaning.
The term ‘transcendence’, as it is commonly used with regard to the question of God,
does not belong to Aquinas’ vocabulary. We should, therefore, start with an exercise in
clarification. What does it mean, from the perspective of Aquinas, to call God ‘transcendent’?
In what different senses does the term ‘transcendence’ apply to God? Four different meanings

2
Cf. S.Th. I, q.4, a.1.

2
of ‘transcendence’ may be distinguished. First, the basic sense of divine transcendence in
scholastic theology is conveyed by the notion of simplicity (simplicitas).3 It is by reason of his
simplicity that God is absolutely transcendent with regard to the world. Simplicity is the
property of intelligible causes and principles to which composed and material things must be
reduced. As such, it is the final term of a reductive movement towards something that has the
priority in the order of being. According to Thomas’ ontological conception of intelligibility,
the very being of things cannot be explained unless there exists a first being (primum ens)
which does not depend for its existence on a prior cause. Such a first being must be utterly
simple, that is, not a whole consisting of parts. As applied to God, simplicity means that God
is not part of the world but that He, being the first in the order of being, is radically distinct
from everything else, which has being derived from a cause. To characterize God in terms of
simplicity belongs to the via remotionis, the way of knowing God from creatures by removing
from him the composed and material mode of being of creatures. The very distinction
between the Creator and the whole of created reality is established by removing from God the
composition which formally characterizes the mode of being of creatures, that is, the
composition between essence and being (esse). God is his being (est suum esse), while each
creature has being or is composed of essence and being.
Simplicity alone, however, is not enough to have transcendence in the specific
Christian sense. Even the One of Neoplatonism is utterly simple and is as such distinguished
from everything which proceeds from the One. But the Neoplatonic One is not a free creator.4
This seems to me to be the second relevant aspect of divine transcendence in Aquinas: God is
not necessitated by his nature to create, but is essentially a voluntary agent who out of love for
his goodness wills that other things should participate therein. God is the most perfectly
liberal giver, because He does not act from any need but only out of his goodness.5
The third aspect of divine transcendence that can be distinguished in Aquinas is the
transcendence of God in the order of human knowledge. We cannot know what God is (quid
Deus sit), only what He is not. As Aquinas says, “The divine substance surpasses every form

3
In the Summa theologiae as well as in the Summa contra gentiles Aquinas starts his treatment of God with the
notion of simplicity. To be God means to be utterly simple, without any composition. As such, divine simplicity
implies ontological independence: God does not depend on a prior cause. For a more extensive analysis of divine
simplicity, see my book Aquinas on God (Ashgate, 2006), p….
4
The view that God creates out of natural necessity instead of by free decision of his will is particularly
associated with the Neoplatonistic thought of Avicenna; see De pot. q.3, a.15, 16.
5
See S.Th. I, q.44, a.4, ad 1: “Et ideo ipse solus est maxime liberalis: quia non agit propter suam utilitatem, sed
solum propter suam bonitatem.” It seems to me, however, that this view of divine generosity does not contradict
Neoplatonistic necessitarianism. There must be more to divine freedom than generosity. In this sense, according
to Aquinas, God can be understood to act in his creation by free will, as is explained below.

3
that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is.”6 God is
greater than all we can say, greater than all we can know; He is beyond the comprehension of
every created mind. Following a broad and consistent biblical and Christian tradition, Aquinas
stresses time and again that God is an inaccessible and incomprehensible mystery: “No man
has ever seen God” (John 1:18). In this sense, God is said to be transcendent, because our
knowledge of God does not succeed in expressing adequately what He is.
The fourth and last meaning of transcendence refers to the distinction between nature
and grace. Grace may be described as a transcending presence of God in the human soul by
which the soul is ordered, by means of the infused virtues (of faith, hope, and charity), to the
supernatural good of eternal life, which surpasses the human good as proportioned to the
natural powers of man. The supernatural gift of grace opens man to God beyond the capacity
of his nature. The transcendence of God in the order of grace shows an analogy with the
transcendence of God as the first principle of nature. In both cases, the dynamic relation to
God as transcendent principle and goal is founded in a communication of a divine likeness
(similitudo) in the creature. Thanks to grace, as a participated likeness of God in the soul, the
human creature is ordered to God in a new way, namely, as object of his supernatural
beatitude. There is no transcendence, one might say, without a corresponding immanence (the
participated similitudo of God in the creature).
Above are outlined different aspects of divine transcendence, which all, in different
ways, emphasize the radical distinction between God, the free creator, and the whole of
created nature. The term nature, especially, stands for the sphere of immanence, of what
things are in themselves and what they are able to do by their natural powers. God is then
transcendent in the sense that He is not part of nature nor in any way continuous with nature.
He exceeds the whole of nature by his free transcendence, which manifests itself most clearly
in the special love of grace by which the human creature is elevated to a union with God in
knowledge and love beyond the capacity of nature.

3. “The Christian Distinction”

The analysis of the different senses in which God can be said to be ‘transcendent’ is in a
certain sense only one part of the story. It is that part which emphasizes the distinction and
consequently the negative transcendence of God as existing apart from the world. God is not a
factor among other factors in this world, He is not a being among other beings. Transcendence

6
S.c.G. I, c.14.

4
in this sense results from a separation from the sphere of immanence in such a way that it may
easily lead to an external God existing outside the world. The language of distinction alone is
not sufficient to determine the relationship between transcendence and immanence. It may
facilitate the idea of God without the world, and consequently a world which can be
understood in its natural constitution without God.
Is it not true, one might object, that Aquinas understands God’s transcendence in such
a way that He can possibly exist without the world? Does the notion of free transcendence –
that is, the first two meanings of transcendence taken together – not imply that God exists
independently from the world, wholly perfect and self-sufficient, and free to choose to create
or not to create? There is enough in Aquinas that seems to warrant such a – theistic – view of
God’s absolute independence. This view is also recognizable in the way Robert Sokolowski,
for example, formulates what he calls the “Christian distinction”. For Sokolowski, the free
transcendence of the Christian-biblical God must be understood in the light of the Christian
distinction between God and the world. That is, “the distinction between the world understood
as possibly not having existed and God understood as possibly being all there is, with no
diminution of goodness or greatness.”7 What to think of this contrafactual possibility of a
“God without the world”? In my view, there are good reasons to emphasize the biblical view
of the radical distinction between the Creator and the whole of creatures. For Aquinas, it is
important to prevent any thought of God as somehow an item in the world, on however
grander a scale than the rest of us. That would be idolatry: equivalent to making God a
creature. In the relationship between creatures and the Creator, Aquinas implies, creatures are
utterly and totally indebted to God for their existence, whereas God is in no way dependent on
or indebted to creatures. Granted that God in this sense can be said to be absolutely
independent, I still have a problem with how Sokolowski formulates the Christian distinction.
He formulates the distinction as a possible separation: God is separated from the world in
such a way that He is possibly all there is, without the world. God’s freedom in his act of
creation is then understood in a negative manner in terms of possible indifference to the
existence of other things. It is as if the intention is to highlight God’s freedom by cancelling
the reality of creation, thus God ‘as if the world didn’t exist’.
There is something paradoxical in speaking of God “as possibly all there is”. It is a
way of thinking about God in which the condition of the possibility to think and speak
meaningfully of God is cancelled. According to Aquinas, it is not possible to say anything

7
Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology, Notre Dame/London,
1982), p.23.

5
meaningful about God without presupposing the actual existence of the world. We come to
know about God, about his independence, his perfection, his sovereignty, and so on, from his
creation (per effectum). We cannot, it seems, posit a divine reality and deny at the same time
the conditions of the possibility of positing such a reality; and those conditions entail the
existence of another thing which is related to God as his effect. Conceiving of God without
creation would, I think, lead to a false idea of God, a false idea of divine transcendence, in
which the ‘distinction’ is posited without ‘identity’ or, what amounts to the same thing, in
which ‘identity’ (God in himself) is posited without taking into account the constitutive role
played by ‘distinction’, as if we can think of God directly. The ‘identity’ of God cannot be
expressed by us in any way other than by distinguishing God as cause from all his effects.
Any attempt to think of God absolutely, as possibly all there is, results in an aporia. Consider
the following text:
“God has no need of us, He has no need of the world and heaven and earth at all. He is
rich in Himself. He has fullness of life. All glory, all beauty, all goodness and holiness
reside in Him. He is sufficient unto Himself, He is God, blessed in Himself. To what
end, then, the world? Here in fact there is everything, here in the living God. How can
there be something alongside God, of which He has no need? This is the riddle of
creation.”8
This is Karl Barth’s version of the Christian distinction. His hyperbolic way of speaking
cannot hide the paradox: from the reality of creation we come to know of God, as most
perfect and exceeding cause of everything that exists, in such a way that we might feel
tempted to conceive of God without creation. If God exists – self-sufficient fullness without
any lack or need – why should there be anything else? In God there is everything. God is
conceived of in such a manner that the very existence of other things becomes unexplainable.
For Aquinas, however, God cannot be said to be ‘everything’ or to possess in himself
the fullness of perfection except in relation to ‘all beings’ of which God is the universal cause.
The ‘concept’ of God is the concept of the universal cause of being, the intelligibility of
which can only be determined negatively and indirectly from the effects. There is no way, in
Aquinas’ view, to approach God directly and to think of him apart from the causal
relationship of creation. In conceiving of God as possibly all there is, as an unmediated
absoluteness, there is a tendency to overlook the mediated character of our knowledge of God
per effectum. One speaks of God – like Barth in the cited passage – while forgetting the

8
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, London: SCM Press, 1949, ch.8; cited in Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas.
Versions of Thomism, Blackwell, Oxford 2002, p.42.

6
epistemological position from which one is speaking and thinking of God. God is then
conceived of as ‘everything’, but without addition of the necessary qualification ‘as cause of
everything’. The result is what I call an ‘unmediated absoluteness’.
The basic principle of Aquinas’ theology is that God can only be thought of in an
intelligible way on the basis of his effects, thus in presupposition of the causal dependency of
all things with respect to a first cause. The conditions under which the reality of God acquires
its intelligible form for us are articulated in the language of participation; and participation
implies distinction as well as identity. The language of participation underlies the threefold
mode of our thinking and speaking about God, the Dionysian triplex via of causality,
negation, and eminence. To be God is to be the cause of all things, which differs from all
things not by lacking the perfections found in things, but insofar as God gathers the many and
different perfections in a more eminent manner in the unity of his essence.9 This is where the
idea of fullness comes from, the fullness of life or the fullness of being. It is not the fullness of
a God without the world, but it is the original fullness of the world from which every
creatures takes its life and being and goodness.
It follows from this that it is not possible to think of God independently of creation. If
God is said to exist independently of the world in the sense that He does not need the world in
order to be God, this says something about what it means for God to act and to create, namely,
He does this not in order to acquire some perfection He lacks, but to communicate his
perfection to something other than himself out of sheer goodness. Independence is a mark of
God’s sovereignty by which He causes other things to be; it is not the independence of being
without the world. In short, if we think of God as being a substantial reality, existing
independently and apart from the world, we should not forget the conditions of intelligibility
under which such a positing of an absolute reality becomes meaningful for us. According to
Aquinas, we do not have direct access to the reality of God and, therefore, we cannot think of
God as a thing existing out there, being possibly all there is.

4. God’s freedom as Creator

The question arises of whether the critique of what I consider to be a false idea of divine
independence has as a consequence that God is always in the process of creating and is,
therefore, essentially involved in his creation. If it is argued that the very intelligibility of the

9
The basic text in which Aquinas explains the threefold structure of our knowledge about God per effectum is
S.Th. I, q.12, a.12. Cf. my book Aquinas on God (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2006), p. 75. For a detailed treatment of
the triplex via, see also Gregory Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God, Washington D.C., 2004.

7
idea of God cannot be conceived apart from the causal relationship between God and creation,
then the consequence seems to be that God has never been without his creation, or even that
God is essentially involved in the process of creating the world. For Aquinas, however, it
remains true that God exists independently from creation, even if God cannot be thought of
independently from creation. Creatures do not proceed from God by natural necessity but by
the free decision of God’s will.10 Although God is eternal, the whole of creation has a
temporal beginning, proceeding from the divine will. This is firmly held by Aquinas.
However, his thesis of the temporal beginning of creation should be interpreted carefully,
since it could easily be taken in support of the false picture of God as a supreme reality
existing from all eternity ‘before’ the world, an absolute ‘indifference’, in the light of which
the difference of creation becomes an unexplainable riddle.
Let us, therefore, consider the thesis of the temporal beginning of creation. Given that
creation had a beginning of duration, the name ‘creator’ applies to God temporally (ex
tempore), according to Aquinas.11 God is given the name creator from the time that creatures
began to exist. This does not mean that a temporal succession in God must be assumed in the
sense of a ‘before creation’ and an ‘after creation’, or that his act of creation was somehow an
actualisation of a previous potency. In the strict sense, one cannot speak of God as existing
‘before’ creation. There is no change on the part of God between the possibility of creation
and the actuality of creation.12 If there is no before and after in God, why then can it not be
said that God is creating from all eternity? Simply because the effects of his creative act have
not been in existence from all eternity. How do we know this? Aquinas’ answer is that this is
revealed to us in the first sentence of Scripture (“in the beginning”). We may say, thus, that
God is inseparable from his creative act from all eternity, but not that this creative act is
inseparable from the existence of creatures, which proceed from it in time.
Proceeding from the actual existence of creatures, God must be conceived of as the
infinite power of being. The infinite power of God’s essence is, as such, fully determined and
completely in act with respect to any possible creature. God is Being itself (ipsum esse), pure
act (actus purus), and, therefore, He is the sufficient cause with respect to any possible being.
Given the existence of God, the complete and active power to create whatever He wants to
10
See, for instance, the discussion in De pot. q.3, a.15: “utrum res processerint a Deo per necessitatem naturae
vel per arbitrium voluntatis.”
11
Cf. S.Th. I, q.13, a.7. Aquinas’ treatment of the name ‘creator’ is more complex than suggested. The name
‘creator’ signifies directly the essence of God and the corresponding relation to creatures consequently. Insofar
as the name ‘creator’ implies a relation, it is said temporally of God, not insofar as it signifies the divine action
which is identical with the essence of God. See ibid., ad 1.
12
This is why it must be said that to be God means to be Creator, even if the name ‘creator’, implying the
existence of external effects, applies temporally to God.

8
create is given as well. However, in order to understand how God can be the sufficient cause
of a multitude of distinct creatures one must assume knowledge in God. Only insofar as God
is a knowing agent can He produce immediately, through exemplary forms (ideas) existing in
his intellect, a multitude of diverse effects. Thus, God must be the cause of all things
according to his intellect, and consequently according to his will. In this manner Aquinas
argues that the divine will is the principle of the production of all things. But is this will with
respect to creatures a free will?
Against the Neoplatonic doctrine of necessary emanation, Aquinas argues that the
infinite essence of the first cause cannot express itself with natural necessity in any finite
creature. Aquinas accepts the Neoplatonic principle that any nature, insofar as it is actual and
perfect, aims to communicate its goodness to something else. Any agent intends to express
itself – its perfection and form – in something else. In the case of creation, however, the
‘diffusion’ of divine goodness cannot be a matter of natural self-expression. The only instance
of natural self-expression Aquinas acknowledges is the natural generation of the Son by the
Father in God himself. Here, in the Trinitarian procession of the Son from the Father, the
principle of natural procession holds: “From one only one proceeds”.13 It is, however, not
possible for God to communicate one single likeness of his infinite essence to something
other than himself, since no single finite being can receive in itself an adequate likeness of
God’s infinite goodness. The likeness of the divine goodness can only be received in
something other than God by way of an ordered totality of many and distinct creatures. This
means that a principle of differentiation (the divine “wisdom”) must be assumed in God,
according to which He produces directly a manifold of ordered effects, each according to its
proper idea. The principle of the production of creatures, preconceived according to their
proper ideas in God’s wisdom, is God’s will. This means that God produces the universe of
many and distinct creatures according to the manner in which He wills them to exist, distinct
from his own manner of existence.14 From the biblical revelation it appears that God wills
creatures to exist with a temporal beginning to their existence. This temporal beginning has no

13
See De pot. q.3, a.15: “Unde hoc solum ab eo procedit naturaliter quod est sibi aequale, scilicet Filius.
14
With regard to the temporal beginning of creation, I refer to an interesting discussion in the Commentary on
the Liber de causis. Here, Aquinas points out the difference between the proper condition of the divine will itself
(eternal, unchangeable) and the condition of the intentional object of the divine will (temporal, changeable).
“Just as the infinite God could produce a finite universe according to the plan of his wisdom, so the eternal God
could produce a new world according to the same plan of wisdom.” (Commentary of the Book of Causis, prop.
11, translated by V. Guagliardo, C. Hess, R. Taylor, Washington, D.C. 1996, p.86). God produces something
which conforms to himself distinctively according to the plan of wisdom.

9
rational necessity in it. The rational notion of creation does not necessarily include a
beginning of duration.15
We must conclude that God’s freedom with respect to creation is not so much a matter
of sovereign indifference to the existence of the world (understood as possibly not having
existed), as of being free with respect to the conditions of existence of creatures. God wishes
to communicate his goodness to others as much as possible; this is precisely what God is. He
wills both himself to be, and other things to be, himself as the end, and other things as
ordained to that end.16 But why, then, is the divine will with respect to other things free? And
what does this freedom mean? Aquinas argues that no possible degree of finite goodness on
the part of creatures can necessitate the will of God, since what God wills of necessity – his
own perfect goodness – cannot in any way be increased by the goodness of something else. It
is not so that God, willing necessarily his own goodness as finis, must will other things as
necessary means without which He cannot attain his finis. He does not need other things, He
wills them out of love for his goodness. In so far as God’s will – which is the inclination to
diffuse his goodness to others – is not necessitated by any finite degree of goodness of other
things, then creation is only possible as an act of divine freedom by which God communicates
his goodness to others under the conditions He has envisaged for them in his wisdom. The
free transcendence of God is not a freedom of indifference prior to the decision to create the
universe. It is essentially a freedom according to which God allows other things to share in his
goodness in a manner and under the conditions He determines for them, as distinguished from
his own divine manner of being. In this sense, the phrase ‘Christian distinction’ can be
accepted only if it is taken to mean that the principle of distinction lies in God himself.
What I mean by this can be explained by considering how Aquinas reads the formula,
“God is everything as the cause of everything”. For Aquinas, it belongs to the concept of God
that he comprises in himself the perfections of all things in the manner of cause. Being the
first efficient cause of all perfections in reality, God must be universally perfect. The idea of
universal perfection means that God is somehow everything, although not everything is God.
Perfection in this sense qualifies in an important respect what it means to call God
transcendent. While the notion of simplicitas leads us to think of God as radically
distinguished from everything, the notion of perfectio gives us to understand that God is

15
Cf. De pot. q.3, a.14, ad 89 arg. in contr.
16
S.Th.I, q.19, a.2: “…pertinet ad voluntatem divinam ut bonum suum aliis per similitudinem communicet,
secundum quod possibile est. Sic igitur vult et se esse, et alia. Sed se ut finem, alia vero ut ad finem.”

10
distinguished from everything else insofar as he is the cause of everything, being everything
in a more eminent way than creatures are in themselves.
This comprehensive identity of God as including everything is certainly not meant in
an openly pantheistic sense, since the language of identity goes together with the language of
distinction. God is what creatures are, but in simple unity, as identical with being itself;
creatures are what God is, but as divided and composed, each distinguished from being itself.
The excessive transcendence of God, being all things in the way of their exceeding cause, is
not contrasted to immanence but includes it. The efficient causality of God is, so to say,
enriched by the notion of participation in such a way that it enables Aquinas to express the
intimate, permanent presence of God in his creation. In his understanding of divine creation,
Aquinas aims to combine Aristotle’s efficient causality with Plato’s participation. Each thing
receives its being from God, who is Being itself by his own essence, and is consequently as a
being most intimately and immediately related to God.
“Being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally present within all things,
since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing…Hence it must be that God
is in all things, and innermostly.” 17
One may speak here of a transcending immanence of God in all things, transcending because
the divine operation within each thing does not interfere with its proper natural operation. It is
a presence within things which is truly creative, that is, not repressing or replacing the proper
activity of creatures but making it possible by setting it free in its own existence and
operation. Here we have a kind of freedom on the part of creatures, which is the effect of
creation, a freedom which consists in being a ‘self’, with a proper nature and a proper
operation through which a thing is able to realize itself. Creation opens a field of immanence,
of what things are in themselves. God is everything but not everything is God; there exists
something else, really distinct from God and established in its own non-divine sphere of
existence.
Instead of nature, I speak here of the ‘self’ of creatures. Creatures are not simply a part
of the divine ‘self’, but they are ‘selves’ in their own right. It is tempting to use the term
‘autonomy’ here, although this term does not fit the logic of participation. What I want to
stress, however, is that creatures are not puppets controlled in their movements and actions by
the great boss of the universe; at least, I feel this picture distorts fundamentally the sense of

17
S.Th. I, q.8, a.1.

11
creation as Aquinas views it. Nevertheless, their being ‘selves’ requires the permanent and
intimate operation of the divine power by which they are given to themselves.

5. The Self-Transcending Love of Nature

We address now the question of how nature can acknowledge the fact that it is given to itself,
to its own sphere of immanence, by the creative act of God. How can nature, endowed with its
own immanent teleology, acknowledge something beyond itself? Aquinas deals with this
topic in discussing whether nature loves God more than itself. The question he poses is, “Does
the creature love God more than itself with a natural love?”18 Aquinas’ answer to this question
is interesting because it shows how he intends to reconcile the apparent opposition between
immanence and transcendence by means of the concept of participation. In asking whether we
love God more than ourselves with a natural love, it might seem that the one form of love is
necessarily at the expense of the other. If nature always and necessarily seeks its own
perfection and good, how, then, can it love God more than itself? If the immanence of nature
is such that it always returns to itself, the divine good seems to be desirable only insofar as it
fulfils the need of nature. The alternative would be that nature, in loving God more than itself,
is forced to sacrifice itself for the sake of that higher good of God. It appears that the problem,
stated in these terms, arises from the assumption that it is necessary to choose between God
and oneself, that the immanence of nature is in some way opposed to the transcendence of
God.
Aquinas first discusses a possible solution which is based on this assumption. One
might say that a creature loves God more than itself with a natural love in the sense that it
desires the goodness of God for itself more than it desires its own goodness, simply because
God’s goodness is greater than its own. But in an absolute sense one must hold, according to
this position, that a creature loves itself more than God because it loves itself more intensely
and principally. Out of the principal love for oneself one desires the goodness of God.
Aquinas rejects this solution. It is simply not true, he says, that nature values itself and seeks
its own perfection above anything else. When we consider the natural movement of things, we
see that every natural thing, which in virtue of what it is belongs to another, is principally and
more strongly inclined to that other to which it belongs than to itself.19 Aquinas illustrates this
with an example: one can observe that the part naturally exposes itself in order to safeguard

18
S.Th. I, q.60, a.5: ‘utrum angelus naturali dilectione diligat Deum plus quam seipsum’. In his answer Aquinas
extends the issue to the creature as such.
19
Ibid.: “Unumquodque autem in rebus naturalibus, quod secundum naturam hoc ipsum quod est, alterius est,
principalius et magis inclinatur in id cuius est, quam in seipsum.

12
the whole, as, for instance, the hand exposes itself without deliberation to a blow for the
whole body’s safety.20 Thus the hand, as part of the body, values the well-being of the whole
body more than its own. It is natural for the hand to ‘love’ the good of the body more than its
own good, because it belongs to the body. The same may be found, although not as a natural
but rather as a rational and deliberate inclination, in the virtuous citizen who judges it to be
right to expose himself to the danger of death in order to defend and preserve the state in its
whole. For Aquinas this is not simply a matter of enlightened self-interest of the citizen who
thinks the welfare of the state to be a necessary condition of his own individual welfare. The
common good of the state is not extrinsic to the particular good of the individual. The just
citizen understands himself and his moral identity as part of the whole.
The relationship between part and whole serves as a model to clarify the relation
between God and the creature. God is not a particular reality over and against the particular
reality of the creature. He is the universal good, to which no creature can add a positive value
of its own. There is, therefore, no meaningful choice to be made between love for God and
love for oneself, for in loving oneself one loves God all the more, being the universal good
from which each creatures derives its own particular good. Here, Aquinas speaks the language
of participation. In the ontological framework of participation, an intrinsic form of goodness
must be assigned to every finite being, which is valued and acknowledged in each thing’s
natural love for itself. This intrinsic and participated form of goodness is not something to be
valued in isolation from the creature’s belonging to the universal good. The creature is what it
is because it shares in the universal good. In this sense, according to Aquinas, the relation of
nature to itself, that is, the relation of immanence, which underlies the natural desire for own
perfection, is not opposed to the relation to God, that is, the relation of transcendence. For
Aquinas, the relation of transcendence is not to be regarded as a relation to the absolute Other
in which the ‘self’ of nature does not return to itself. This would mean that transcendence is
only conceivable as a sort of breach from outside in the economy of the natural desire for self-
fulfilment. Viewed in terms of participation, the relation of transcendence is a relation,
implied in the relation of nature to itself, to its own universal source, which transcends by
comprehending and pervading all finite forms of goodness and being from within. Nature, in
Aquinas’ view, reflects upon itself and seeks its own perfection in all its natural activities.
This may be called the principle of immanence. The important point now is that this
immanence is not an immanence closed off against transcendence, let us say, the immanence

20
Ibid.: “Videmus enim quod naturaliter pars se exponit, ad conservationem totius : sicut manus exponitur ictui,
absque deliberatione, ad conservationem totius corporis.”

13
of a self-sufficient natural order. In Aquinas’ view, the natural inclination of any finite being
towards its own good exhibits the structure of what may be called ‘self-transcendence’. With
the term ‘self-transcendence’ I mean that nature, in its love for God, does not turn towards
something external to itself, in such a way that it has to give up itself, but that every nature, in
turning to itself, turns first and foremost towards that universal good which is God. Under this
good all creatures are comprised, because every creature naturally belongs to God, in its entire
being. In affirming itself and its goodness, therefore, every creature affirms more and
principally God as the universal source of its goodness.
We see here how Aquinas’ ontology of participation differs from the nominalist
ontology of the later medieval period. According to this ontology, each thing is primarily
itself, an individual substance in its own right. The consequence of this view can be seen, for
instance, in Hobbes, for whom each human being is an atomistic self, primarily aiming at
preserving its existence and maintaining itself against extrinsic forces. For Thomas, the
finitude of created nature does not have the sense of being closed off from transcendence;
finitude must be understood in terms of participation in the sense of being related to itself as
part of a comprehensive and transcending whole so that nature in its being has already
transcended the limits of its particular identity.
Participation allows for a certain mediation between the self-centeredness of nature, as
the principle of self-realisation, and its God-centeredness. This is clearly expressed in the
following passage:
“Nature turns towards itself, not merely according to what is singular to it, but much
more as to what is common, for everything is inclined to preserve not merely its
individual self, but likewise its species. And much more has everything a natural
inclination towards what is the absolutely universal good.”21
Only in the light of this self-transcending tendency of nature, in Aquinas’ view, can we
understand that natural love is perfected by the supernatural love of charity, instead of being
destroyed by it. There is, principally, no opposition between a self-centred love of nature and
the God-centred love of charity. Charity commands us to love God more than ourselves; but
nature already does this by its natural inclination. It may even be said that the transcendence
of the love of charity is not in a strict sense self-less. It includes the command to love
ourselves as belonging to God.

21
Ibid. ad 3.

14
6. Reconsidering theism
I began by questioning whether it is appropriate to label Aquinas’ conception of God as
theistic. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that his speculative understanding of God in
terms of subsistent being itself, comprising in itself the diverse and manifold forms of being
in simple unity, unfolds in reference to a general theistic framework which underlies the
modus significandi of the Christian-biblical discourse on God, the world, and man. According
to this modus significandi, God is spoken of as a personal entity above and apart from the
world, which intervenes somehow in the course of events in this human world. The problem
of theism, then, arises when the scheme of this modus significandi, or form of representation,
becomes reified as a general description of how things are. Within this perspective, the
distinction between God and the world – God as being there and the world as being here – is
simply taken as a given and is not understood as distinction.
In the contemporary theological discussion, a theistic God has become for many more
and more problematic, because of its association with an external God, a God who is ‘located’
in a supernatural realm above and apart from the human world. The problem of such a theistic
God, it seems to me, is that it easily blends with the idea of a divine master plan of a most
perfect and all powerful being to which the whole of nature and human history is immediately
subjected. In the light of such a conception of God there no longer seems to be a place for the
facts of natural evolution or for contingency in human history. Under the supervision of such
a God, everything seems to be necessarily in accordance with the master plan without the
existence of open questions or, in other words, of contingency. If God exists according to this
idea of theism, how then can anything else exist according to its own mode of temporal and
contingent existence? For Aquinas, this is exactly what God is: where God is present, another
thing comes to existence, not as an expansion of God’s being, but as a free gift of being.
It is not my intention here to exonerate Aquinas from all problems of theism or, for
that matter, from the charge of ontotheology. In a certain sense, Aquinas’ thought is more
ambiguous than we would like it to be. I am, nevertheless, convinced that Aquinas is an
important and valuable discussion partner, from whom one can learn that to think
metaphysically about God does not mean to think about some extraordinary and supreme
being, exemplifying the best we can conceive of, as if God can only be approached by leaving
the imperfections and the finitude of worldly existence behind us. Nothing needs to be left
behind in order to think of God, since God is ‘everything as the cause of everything’.
Transcendence cannot be severed from immanence, and the immanent shows us the relation
to transcendence in the very heart of it. For only through the mediation of immanence by

15
transcendence can the immanent be.22 Misled by a false idea of transcendence, some might
assume that to think of God leads us away from the very being we encounter in and around
us; but in truth it causes us to think of the inherently excessive nature of being, of any being.
Each particular thing gives witness to the excessive nature of being in the sense that it is a
place for transcendence to occur. We cannot keep reality as it allows itself to be seen and to
be thought of within the boundaries of the purely immanent, since it is always more than we
can capture in our description of it. To be a creature, so to say, is not an extrinsic
denomination, not something that is added to it from outside, from which one should even
abstract in order to explain the phenomenon scientifically; it is the mediation by
transcendence by which the immanent is and is itself, differently the same as that transcendent
plenitude.

22
Conor Cunningham, The Geneology of Nihilism, Routledge, London 2002, p.173.

16