Hierarchy of Beings: God, Angels, Humans, and the Soul

Hierarchy of Beings

Hierarchy of beings: God (pure and infinite spirit, uncreated), angels (created and finite spiritual beings), rational human soul (embodied, finite, and created), sensory-irrational animals, vegetables, and inorganic forms.

Principles of Existence

Essentially non-Aristotelian principles of existence: Monism posits only one Being (God), while Aquinas supports a pluralism of beings, with God as the primary being and numerous created beings. God is necessary and cannot not exist. Creatures are contingent, existing but not necessarily so. Creatures are composed of essence and existence (received from God). God's essence and existence are identical, devoid of composition.

Existence is the act of existing. Essence (nature) is hylemorphism. Spiritual substances are just form.

Theology

Evidence of God's Existence

Two questions: Is God needed? Is God possible? Our senses cannot directly perceive God; we see the effects of God as the cause.

Thomist Ways:

1. Cosmological Argument (Via the Movement): A first mover, unmoved by anything, is God.
2. Causation Argument: A first cause, not an effect of another, is God.
3. Contingency Argument: A being whose existence depends on itself is needed.
4. Degrees of Perfection Argument: A maximum perfection is needed as a benchmark.
5. Cosmic Order Argument: A supreme intelligence is necessary to guide nature.

Nature of God

a) The Divine Essence: Attributes (entitative) of God include simplicity, absolute perfection, goodness, infinity, immensity, immutability, eternity, oneness, and unity.

b) Divine Essence and Language: Two approaches:

• Via Negation: Denying creatures attributes that cannot apply to the divine essence.
• Via Analogy: Elevating positive attributes of creatures to their maximum degree.

The Human Being

The human being consists of a spiritual soul and a material body.

Origin of the Soul

The soul is created by God and was not pre-existent.

Substantiality of the Soul

The soul exists independently and is immutable. It is destined to unite with the body to form a single individual. This union is substantial, not localized to a specific part of the body but present throughout. (Inherited from Aristotle, who admitted a unique, rational soul with vegetative, sensitive, and rational powers.) The human soul is immortal.

Consciousness

Consciousness arises from the collaboration between material things, the senses, and the understanding. The senses capture particular forms. Common characteristics are universal. Through sensory data, understanding develops universal concepts via abstraction (separating the form from the understanding). The cognitive process begins with sensation, where the senses perceive objects and their qualities. This image passes to internal senses, notably the imagination, where we have a representation or "ghost" of things. To reach the intelligible universal, understanding is divided into two types: the intellect (working on the ghost, revealing the intelligible form) and the "expressed kind" (the universal concept).