THE KNUCKLEHEAD
'
S GUIDE TO COVENANTAL THEOLOGY
45
St. Thomas called it what he thought was its real name, the Deus
Unus, the One God.
St. Thomas's naming thus is an absolutely fundamental mistake of
Catholic theological science. For unfortunately, this is the scheme that
Aristotle's resolution actually represents:
One (= First Cause, etc.)
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many many many many
<-- As usual, nothing can go here: this
is the One, remember, by definition
absolute, unrelated to all else, needing
nothing else, implying nothing else, as
all Thomists, and St. Thomas himself,
insist.
Oops. Therefore, Aristotle's scheme is not a real solution to the
conundrum. In fact, it is self-contradictory, and it is so at its crucial
point, its very first step, its very First Sentence. The First Sentence, by
definition, is utterly complete within itself, and thus can have no
relation or implication beyond itself.
It is logically necessary for the One, the First sentence, to have no
inherent relation to anything but itself. For example, it has to be time-
less, in order that time itself can be an implication of it. Unfortunately,
it is also logically necessary in this scheme for all sentences to have an
inherent relation. This is a blatant contradiction -- the two statements,
both absolutely necessary to the scheme, can not both be true.
Aristotle's scheme actually fails even before it starts. The
Perfection of Perfection that makes the whole scheme go can not be
inherently related to anything else. By definition, it is perfect,
complete, One, in itself.
But why this One, which makes everything else related, would
want to be related to anything else is completely unanswerable --
worse, it is self-contradictory -- in this scheme.
In the end the Aristotelian scheme requires either that the gap
between Form and Matter be really unbridgeable, as in Platonism, or it
requires something that may look familiar to readers of this book:
many
many many many
many many many many many many
many many many many many many many
many many many many many
many many many many many many
many many many many many
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.