"It is because the contemporary alternatives seem so one-sided and are not more evidently solutions to the problems which Thomas faced, and partly solved, that we return to him and to the tradition of theology and philosophy in which his Summa Theologiae appears: theology as the science of the first principle and this as the total knowledge of reality in its unity." -- Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself (Oxford University Press, 1987), p.159.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Q26 A3: Whether God is the beatitude of each of the blessed?
No. God is indeed the last end of a rational creature, as the thing itself, but created beatitude is the end, as the use, or rather fruition, of the thing because as regards the act of understanding, beatitude is a created thing in beatified creatures.