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Whether beatitude belongs to God?
Beatitude belongs to God in the highest degree. This is to attribute what is perfect, glorious, intelligent, possessing every excellent virtue and manner, the maximum of love and charity, and the climatic state of being. All of this rightly and justly belongs to the Living God who is all of these things. Whether God is called blessed in respect of His intellect? To be and to understand is one in the same with God, for He is simple. For all things move to attain happiness by way of its nature, so as to find rest in its calculated end, and it just so happens that beatitude is the perfect good of an intellectual nature. Furthermore, the intellect as we know it is the soul wrapped in a human body. But God is the First intellect, to which all intellects spring forth from. In this, He is the maximum of all things, and so it is rightly said that we should call Him blessed in respect to His intellect. Whether God is the beatitude of each of the blessed? Beatitude is said to be the supreme good in an absolute manner. Since life in the spirit is of an intellectual existence and being, it can be said that beatitude is of an intellectual attainment and state of glory. The calculated end for the intellectual being is rest and glory in Him, and it could be understood that everyone is blessed from the occurrence that someone knows and understands God, and in another way, the act of understanding this through the created is what beautifies creatures. However, in God, this is uncreated, and has always been there from the beginning. So, the Lord for the Lord’s sake, as who is the Reward of all rewards, fulfills what is sought in the created who seeks it, and in this way, God is the beatitude of the blessed. Whether all other beatitude is included in the beatitude of God? What is beautiful, attractive, and worthy of admiration and exaltation is found in God who pre-exists all things that are desirable to the highest degree. For what riches may attain, God has through complete self-sufficiency. For what is sought out after fame, God obtains this in that everything living admires and moves to Him (even when rejecting Him, unbelievers and those in denial know the idea of Him is something beyond them, and in this way they also admire Him). For what is power on earth in the material principle, is omnipresence and might in God to the highest degree throughout the universe in what exists, doesn’t exist, and could exist. For what is ownership, possession, property, and false “love” to creatures (equating what is love with sexual immorality and decadence); in God it is Fathership to ownership, the breaking of a yoke to what is owned and controlled, good stewardship in what someone is responsible and accountable for, and the wishing of the ultimate good for the sake of another out of love to what is sexual immorality. So, in all of these things humans and creatures seek on earth and in the material principle His presence, and are led back to the Divine Beatitude which is in God who are all these things to the highest degree at the height of His maximum.
I am blessed to be a Third Order Lay Dominican. However, the ideas expressed in this post are my own and do not represent the endorsement of or position of the Order of Preachers as a whole.
Commentary regarding Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae derived from: ST part (I), Q. 1-26 from newadvent.org with permission. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
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mr. scott lowry, op
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