The Life of God

[What philosophe .. commonly und … tand by Life. ]

For the correct understanding of this attribute, the life of God, it is necessary to explain in general terms what in the case of each individual thing is meant by its life. We shall first examine the opinion of the Peripatetics. By life they understand ’the continuance of the nutritive soul, accompanied by heat'

the cause they imagined there to be three souls, the vegetative, the sensitive, and the intellective, which they attribute exclusively to plants, animals, and men, it follows, as they themselves acknowledge, that all else is devoid ofl ife. Even so, they did not venture to say that minds and God are without life. Perhaps they were afraid of fulling into the contrary view, that if these were without life, they were dead.

So Aristotle in his Metaphysics Book 11 Chapter 7 gives yet another definition of life, applicable only to minds, namely, that life is the operation of the intellect, and in this sense he attributes life to God, as one who understands and is pure activity?

However, we shall not spend much effort in refuting these views. For as regards the three souls that they attribute to plants, animals, and men, we have already sufficiently demonstrated that these are nothing but fictions, having shown that in matter there is nothing but mechanical structures and their operations.

As to the life of God, I do not know why in Aristotle it should be called activity of intellect rather than activity of will, and the like. However, expecting no reply to this, I pass on to explain, as promised, what life is.

[To what things life can be attributed. ] Although this term is often taken in a figurative sense to mean the character of a man, we shall briefly explain only what it denotes in a philosophical sense.

If life is also to be attributed to corporeal things, nothing will be devoid of life; but if only to those things wherein soul is united to body, then it must be attributed only to men, and perhaps also to animals, but not to minds or to God. However, because the word ’life’ is commonly used in a wider sense, there is no doubt that it should also be attributed to corporeal things not united to minds and to minds separated from body.

[What life is, and what it is in God.]

Life is the force through which things persevere in their own being.

This force is different from the things themselves. This is why we say that things themselves have life.

But the force whereby God perseveres in his own being is nothing but his essence, so that those speak best who call God 1ife.'

There are some theologians who hold the opinion that it is for this reason - that God is life and is not distinct from life-that the Jews when they swore an oath used to say “by the living Jehovah,” and not “by the life of Jehovah;’ as Joseph, when swearing by Pharaoh’s life, said “by the life of Pharaoh.”