Personal God and Classical Theism: Friends or Foes?
We often hear the claim that the notion of a personal God is incompatible with the classical theistic understanding of God which conceives of God as the absolute and necessary condition of reality, simple, perfect and transcendent in Himself, and distinguished from His creation. Yet, they argue that this seems to be at odds with the claim of the Christian faith which posits a personal God.
In this article, I’ll be using Cardinal Tommaso Maria Zigliara, O.P. (1833–1893), who was one of the greatest Scholastics and Thomist theologians and philosophers of the 19th century in the Leonine era.
I will be using his famous Thomistic philosophy manual, Summa philosophica in usum scholarum (3 vols.) which covers a variety of topics including logic, ontology, psychology, cosmology, as well as moral and natural theology.
The following translation is taken from the second volume of his work, which is on Cosmology, Psychology and Natural theology.
VI. On the Personality of God. The use has spread among pantheists of denying God’s true and real personality, so that those who defend a personal God are accused by them of anthropomorphism, as if the notion of personality cannot apply to God without anthropomorphizing Him, or constituting Him in the image and likeness of humans. These views are widely disseminated in Hegelian philosophy, as can be seen in Vera’s Introduction à la philosophie de Hegel. Avant-propos, p. 20, and the following (2nd edition). However, to deny the existence of a personal God is tantamount to denying God Himself, nor does asserting the personal nature of God lead to anthropomorphism. Let us prove both assertions.
VII. The Admission of a Personal God. We defined elsewhere a suppositum, which is a perfectly subsistent substance, self-owned and incommunicable to another. From this it follows that since substantiality, by virtue of its subsistence, is the perfection by which substance exceeds accidents, a fortiori, perfect subsistence, by which a substance becomes self-owned and incommunicable to another, exhibits true and real perfection. And because a spiritual nature is the most perfect among beings, a subsisting complete subsistence (which is therefore called a person, as we stated in Ontology loc. cit.), implies something supremely perfect. Or, as St. Thomas says in STh. I, q. 29, a. 3, “Person signifies what is most perfect in all nature — that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature.” We have indeed proved the truly and really existing First Efficient Cause of all substances, the Most Perfect Being, the Supreme Reason ordering all created things towards their end; therefore, the first Substance truly exists, most perfect in the notion of subsistence, and therefore fully self-owned and incommunicable, supremely intelligent, most notably endowed with the requisites for the notion of personality; and this first substance is called God. Consequently, God is truly a person, with a personality distinct from other things, as proven against pantheists. However, the term “person” is not applied to God in the same way as it is to creatures but in a more excellent manner, just as other names are attributed to God in a more excellent manner than to creatures.
Those who wish to deny a personal God should indeed be considered atheists. For without a doubt, they either concede that God is a real substance, perfectly subsistent and intelligent in Himself, and by this admission, they must acknowledge God as personal, as is evident from what has been said, or they deny to God proper perfect substantiality and intelligence, and in this second hypothesis, God becomes something abstract or indeterminate, like every universal, as the adversaries indeed contend. However, what is abstract, as abstract, and what is indeterminate, as indeterminate, etc., exists not in reality outside the mind but in the mind itself, without its proper actions; for they do not act unless through singulars. Therefore, an impersonal God is merely a concept of reason, and thus by word only God is left, while in reality God is removed.
Moreover, not only are the assertions about anthropomorphism absurd but also blatantly ridiculous. For they suppose that the notion of personality requires a body, or that real infinity is incompatible with personality; yet they fail to realize that if personality is a perfection derived uniquely from a spiritual nature, then to any subsisting substance, the notion of personality must correspond to the extent to which it is more spiritual, dissociated from and independent of the body, and possesses the most perfect nature. Now, God is in the highest degree of spirituality and infinite perfection. Therefore, He is in the highest degree of personality, so that personality in God not only does not imply anthropomorphism but essentially excludes it.
—Card. Tommaso Maria Zigliara, O.P., Summa philosophica in usum scholarum, t. 2, Theologia naturalis, De simpliciatate Divinae naturae, pp. 414–416.
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