Plato’s Parmenides and St. Thomas’s Analysis of God as One and Trinity

PLATO'S PARMENIDES AND ST. THOMAS'S ANALYSIS OF GOD AS ONE AND TRINITY SHERWIN KLEIN Fairleigh Dickinson University Hackensack, New Jersey IN HIS CRITICISM of the Neopfatonic interpretation of the Parmenides, Cornford says, "The fanguage throughout is as dry and prosaic as a textbook on algebra; there is little here to suggest that the One has any religious significance as there is in the other case to suggest that x, y, and z are a trinity of unknown gods." 1 I agree with Cornfo11d that the Neopl1 atoniJc interpreta.tion is very speculative and seriously flawed. Nonethe1ess, the "negative theology" these interpreters attribute to Plato is instruic1tive. More than this, it can be shown that opinions like Cornford's are, to say the least, unimaginative. I intend to est1 ablish, in the first and main part of this artide, the logical agreement between the PJatonic and Thomistic analyses of an absoJuteiy simple unity. The argument at Parmenides 137b-142a, Blato's analysis of the absoluteJy one, prov ]des a basis for determining what God, as an absolutdy simple unity, is not. By applying this 'argument in the Parmenides to St. Thomas's discussion of God as one, I shaill show that what appears to be " as dry and prosai:c as a textbook on algebra " has, contrary to Cornfo11d, " religious significance." In the second part of this article, I shall use the arguments at Parmenides 157b-159b and 159b-160b to determine what can 1 Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's Parmenides, trans. with introduction and commentary by Francis MacDonald Cornford (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939), p. 131. 229 230 SHERWIN KLEIN be predicated of God, if St. Thomas's analysis of the Trinity is to aoco:rd with the articles of faith (God as an abso1utely simple unity as weU as a Trinity). Once again, we shall see the ":religious significance" of Plato's analysis and the irony of Cornfo11d's suggestion about the meaninglessness of applying Plato's analysis to " a trinity of unknown gods." I We should first he clear about how St. Thomas uses the term "one" as applied to God. In Q. n, A. 1 of the Prima Pars (The Unity of God) ,2 he distinguishes between one as "the negation of division" and one as "the principle of number." The first sense, which he calls the transcendental sense, applies to God; in this sense the one is opposed to the many as the undivided is :to the divided. Human beings cannot know what God is, but we can determine what God is not, e.g., not-many, the transcendental sense of being absolutely simple. (The human intdlect can only know the composite or tha,t which pertains to the composite; it cannot know that which is abso1ut ~ly sample or undivided.) St. Thomas says, "He is supremely undivided inasmuch as He is divided neither actually nor potentially by any mode of division; since He is altogether simple." 3 If we :compare the analysis of God as absolutely one or simple with the first hypothesis of the one in the Parmen~des, i.e., if the one is one, what can be predicated of it, then we shall notice an important similarity. If the one is simply one, none of the categories which can determine the nature of the one are predicable of it. Similarly, God as absolutely one or simple cannot be understood in ,a positive manner (His nature is incomprehensible) . However, He can be understood negatively . And what we can say negatively about God parallels 2 References are to the Summa Theologica in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aqu-Ynas, ed. Anton C. Pegis, vol. I (New York: Random House, 1945). a ST, I, q. 11, a. 4, c.; Pegis, p. 90. PLATO AND AQUINAS 231 Plato's determination of what is not predicable of the one as simple. To show what God is not, we must negate what does not apply to Him; this reveals the simplicity of God. If the one is one (in St. Thomas's transcendenta.l sense of "one " as simple ), says Plato, it cannot be many and, therefor:e, cannot have...