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We are told that the first question asked by the infant Thomas Aquinas was: ‘What is God?’ The pursuit of that question became his life's work; to it he gave all his energy and ability. Yet from the time of his earliest writings he had reached the conclusion that in this life he would never find the answer. ‘Nescimus', he will say—'We do not know.’ And he will repeat St John Damascene's ‘In Deo quid est, dicere impossible est —.'It is impossible to say of God what he is.’ St Thomas says this over and over again in his writings, from the earliest to the last. He insists not only that we do not know what God is—the essence, nature and ‘whatness’ of God—but also that we cannot know it: non possumus. He loves to repeat the assertion of the Mystical Theology of'the pseudo-Denys that the most perfect union with God is union with the utterly Unknown.
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- Copyright © 1952 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 e.g. in Summa Theologica, I, i, 7 ad 1. All references are to the Summa unless otherwise stated.
2 Ille qui melius unitur Deo in hac vita unitur ei sicut omnino ignoto .(e.g.I,xii,13,1.)
3 I, xii, 13. Cf. De Divinis Nominibus I, 3: ‘The last achievement of which we are capable in this life in knowing God is the realisation that he is beyond anything we can think, and so the naming of God which is by way of denial (remotio) is supremely appropriate’.
4 cf. Bhagavadgita,II, 69: ‘ … knowledge of the Atman is dark night to the many… What they think is daylight to the seer is darkness.'
5 It seems useful to understand our psychological image of God, not only (or necessarily) as a visual phantasy or concept, but as the focus of a whole complex of conscious or unconscious ideas, feelings, emotions, views and associations, often very tenacious, which should be no less subject to revision if we are to guard against ‘peril of idolatry'.
6 e.g. ‘They that make them [inanimate idols] shall become like them.’ (Psalm 113, 8.)
7 ‘He who reverently pursues the Boundless, even though he will never attain it, will himself advance by pushing forward in his pursuit.’ (Quoted In Boeth. De Trin. II, 1 ad 7.)