Divine Essence Research Articles

On the Ethics of Sanctified Sacrifice: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

On the Ethics of Sanctified Sacrifice: John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany

Giving a Good Account of God: Is Theology Ever Mathematical?

The Thomist 70 (2006): 367-93 GIVING A GOOD ACCOUNT OF GOD: IS THEOLOGY EVER MATHEMATICAL?1 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING Heythrop College, University ofLondon London, England OME YEARS AGO I examined a thesis for the Catholic University of Leuven written purporting to offer a definitive mathematical proof for the reality and necessity of the Divine Trinity. At its heart lay an equation, which-it was argued-if factored on both sides, produced the result that three is equal to one. On first acquaintance I was impressed, if a little baffled, until I took myself again through the steps of the proof (enlisting the help of a banker, someone for whom mathematics really counts). Offering only the reason (quite correctly) that factors may be used to simplify equations, my candidate had divided by a factor of three on one side of his equation and nine on the other. The numerically agile will know that this indeed yields the result that three is equal to one. The candidate had neglected to ensure that the same factor was used on each side of the equation to which factors are applied: the thesis, mathematically at least, was false. Nevertheless the underlying instinct for this student's argument stands in a tradition that stretches back at least as far as Descartes, if not all the way to Plato and the Pythagoreans: that the mathematical may inform the theological, and even be used to demonstrate (or in Descartes's case, prove) certain kinds of theological truth. What is at issue here is the relationship between 1 A version of this paper was given at the Cambridge 'D' Society on 10 March 2006, by kind invitation of Dr. Douglas Hedley and Dr. Chris Insole of the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty. 367 368 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING philosophy and theology-taking the commonly understood view of mathematics as a form of rational thinking, von Leibniz's claim that logic is mathesis genera/is. The philosophical and theological are thereby inherently united; they can be made to treat of the same things in the same way. Notwithstanding a vigorous polemic against this view from at least as far back as Luther up to Karl Barth and beyond, the possibility of this connection is retraced by Denys Turner in the central contention (I hesitate to say argument, since the very premise of the book is that none need be supplied) of his Faith, Reason, and the Existence ofGod, that "the existence of God is rationally demonstrable."2 In fact many contemporary theologians, especially those declaring themselves to be among the most orthodox, make little or no distinction between philosophy and theology (theo-ontologies abound). There is a presumption that the existence, being, or essence, of God can, by means mathematical, logical, or analogical, be bound to the being of being human. This connection is negative: we remain orthodox provided we say nothing of the 'whatness' (quidditas) of the divine essence, only that it is, or that an argument can be had by which means it could thereby be said 'to be' (which I take be the essence of Turner's argument absconditus). I want to examine this claim by appealing to Martin Heidegger's critique of the relation between mathematics and theology, especially in relation to Descartes, in notes he made between 1938 and 1939-especially in relation to his reading of Nietzsche, and made available in his Collected Works only in 1999. Heidegger makes a series of astonishing polemical remarks about the relation of theology and mathematics. He begins by speaking of the age of the "theologies," which is at the same time the age of the "end of all metaphysics"; he means by this our 2 D. Turner, Faith, Reason, and the Existence ofGod (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ix. We should exercise caution: Turner only purports to argue that he does "no more than to give further reasons of a theological nature why Christians should think, as a matter of faith" that his conclusion is right. This, however, is to make his argument belong solely to theology, while holding out the promise that it might also, or really does, belong to philosophy, independent of the question of faith...

Visionary Landscape in Coleridge and Yeats

Although Yeats declares himself as last romantics, it is highly controversial to situate him in the romantic tradition inaugurated by Coleridge's and Wordsworth's theories of the imagination. It is my argument that whereas the romantics often takes the natural landscape as referential and as a means for visionary ends, Yeats makes use of the same landscape to bring divine voices into existence. Among the great romantics I take Coleridge for my argument, since like Yeats he directs his endeavors to the supernatural. In Coleridge's Nightingale: A Conversation Poem, the narrator attempts to articulate the experience of nature in an unmediated form, without projection of one's desire onto nature. He attempts to vision of the harmonious correspondence to nature first in gentle Maid and then his baby. The question remains open, however, whether a perceived harmony expressed in the poem is also limited and confined by the fragmentary view of the narrator himself. In Frost at Midnight the narrator finds himself cut away from the outside world. As an answer to his emptiness he projects onto his son the harmonious state in which the outer world corresponds to the inner world of the child's feelings. The narrator's dependence upon a futuristic vision leaves the question of whether the vision is an expression of an epiphany of the truth perceived or merely a projection of his desire to escape his being disconnected from the outer world onto his son. Vacillation between perception and imagination, which often occupies Coleridge's poetics, suffers much shift in Yeats who with much hesitation turns his attention away from complex dialectic between mind and nature or from choosing one over the other. A part of The Wandering of Oisin shows us well that the image of the shell there is only a mirror for a dream which is no longer that of the shell but the subjective dream of the poet's imagination. To the extent that the shell is a thing in nature, however, the image remains in essence natural, But Yeats already attempts to escape the danger ingrained in the fusion of the perceived object and the perceiving consciousness into one as early as in 1990. In Symbolism of Poetry, Yeats makes it clear that his symbol is not simply to evoke its inexhaustible traditional meanings but an intangible reality of the divine essence. Yeats intends to write divine voices into existence and to rediscover the long-unity between man and the gods. Yeats's poetics will be allegorical because the meaning of the symbol is revealed by a key and this key is given as the divine order itself. But it may be realistic in order to make certain that the symbols will be easily recognized and read. This is explicit when Yeats openly tells us that a natural object in a landscape is also to be read symbolically as in Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931 where Yeats makes the divine symbol fit neatly within the picture of the concrete scene as well as in the network of the symbol. His main purpose for the natural landscape here is to constitute the divine symbols and gain their deeper structural unity and most of their intellectual content by writing divine voice into existence, by recording the signals that reach him from a divine realm.

Aquinas, the Trinity and the Limits of Understanding

Abstract: Thomas's trinitarian doctrine is commonly criticized as being abstract and unbiblical; several writers have offered defences against this charge, but these perhaps ignore too much the genuinely reticent and apophatic aspects of Thomas's thought. In three particular places, it is argued, Thomas can be read as deliberately saying things that are unexplained and unexplainable. The areas considered are: the notion of processions in God; the presentation of the persons as subsistent relations; and the relationship between the subsistent relations and the divine essence.

II–Richard Cross: Relations, Universals, and The Abuse Of Tropes

Scotus's belief that any created substance can depend on the divine essence and/or divine persons as a subject requires him to abandon the plausible Aristotelian principle that there is no merely relational change. I argue that Scotus's various counterexamples to the principle can be rebutted. For reasons related to those that arise in Scotus's failed attempt to refute the principle, the principle also entails that properties cannot be universals.

THE STELA AS A CULTURAL SYMBOL IN CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY MAYA SOCIETIES

In Classic Maya society, the stela was an important medium through which historical information was conveyed. Stelae are free-standing stone slabs carved in low relief that usually depict portraits of rulers, which are accompanied by hieroglyphic texts recording the rulers' identity and actions. Recent research has focused on the stela not only as a carrier of information but also as an important cultural symbol in its own right. In 1985, Linda Schele and David Stuart proposed that the Classic Maya called the stela ate'-tun, orstone-tree. This identification led to the recognition of cultural continuities among the Highland Maya in Chiapas who, on occasion, substitute trees for individual crosses on their cross shrines. In 1996, Stuart suggested that the ancient Maya word for stela waslakamtun, orbig stone, emphasizing that the stela was an embodiment of the royal self in the sense that it shared some of the divine essence of the ruler. Drawing on epigraphic research, anthropological theory, the ethnographic literature, as well as personal field observations, I propose that certain spiritual and symbolic concepts of the stela continue to live in the crosses among the Maya today and that these concepts should be considered when we evaluate ancient contexts of meaning for the Maya stela.

Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher by Ann Hartle

BOOK REVIEWS 317 second and deeper reason is that to begin the treatise on God with the person of the Father would be to treat the Father in an extensive manner before having grasped the Father in his relation to the Son, which would be tantamount to thinking about the person of the Father prerelationally. In Emery's eyes, then, since Thomas's theology of God is resolutely relational, it is only fitting that he should begin his treatise on God with the one divine essence. Emery's second reason is quite ingenious and turns the tables on Thomas's critics, though it is perhaps a tad too ingenious to argue that in order to emphasize God as personal one should begin with God as essential. I would like to recommend a third possible reason for Thomas's order ofpresentation, which as a Christian monotheist he may have felt congenitally though he never adverts to it explicitly: from the perspective of a Christian religion that grew out of a revealed Jewish monotheism, it would appear quite fitting that a speculative treatment of God should mirror the historical course of revelation about that God. The revelation of monotheism had to come first, with good reason, for to think about Trinity before monotheism is firmly entrenched in the human mind would almost certainly end up inviting in the multiple divinities of polytheism. Thomas has to show that the confession of the Trinity is the Christian form of monotheism, and the best way to do this is to start off with the one God and then introduce the divine subsistent relations as both identical with the one God and distinct from one another. From this viewpoint, Aquinas's order of presentation turns out to be more historically astute than his historical-minded critics have imagined. Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California GREGORY ROCCA, 0.P. Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher. By ANN HAR.lLE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 296. $60.00 (cloth}. ISBN 0-52182168 -1. Howsoever great Montaigne's standing as a man of letters, he occupies a negligible place in most standard "histories" of philosophy. Even as compared with the other philosophers of his age-that the historians should name it the "Renaissance" provides as clear an indication as any to just how derivative a group ofthinkers they suppose them to be-the author ofthe Essays is generally ranked in the second tier. While many of his contemporaries dreamed of the rebirth of a "Platonism" of one form or another, he seemed to proselytize for one of the lesser schools of philosophical antiquity-scholarly opinions vary as to whether his ultimate allegiances were to Stoicism, Epicureanism, or 318 BOOK REVIEWS skepticism- which all have in common, despite or because of the differences between them, the propensity to reduce philosophy to a moral doctrine. Or if the attempt is not made to reconcile Montaigne's endless borrowings from ancient writers of every stripe by alleging some sort of development on his part, they are taken as proof of an eclecticism lacking all rigor or consistency. It is generally agreed, in any case, that he is not a philosopher in the strict or highest sense of the word, notwithstanding his exceptional ability to wield a pen. In Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Ann Hartle seeks to set straight this piece of the record. On her view, Montaigne was a philosopher of the very greatest stature, whose writing "takes up the most philosophical questions in a profoundly original, comprehensive, and coherent way" (1). Her thesis should make her book of interest to any philosophically inclined reader, and especially to those who desire better to grasp the great temporal or rather argumentative fault lines of philosophy's course through history. It ought also to earn for the book the particular attention of Thomists and other friends of high Scholasticism, who better than most ought to know how much can be learned about one's friends from their foes. For whatever else we might say about Montaigne the philosopher, he has few rivals in the breadth and depth of his opposition to medieval philosophical theology, which he had experienced at fairly close quarters...

The problem of the Desiderium Naturale in the Thomistic tradition

The theory of the desiderium naturale in St. Thomas Aquinas has raised some of the most difficult questions in the history of Roman Catholic thought. At issue is whether a natural desire to see the divine essence can be reconciled with the necessarily supernatural and gratuitous manner of this desire's fulfillment. The 16th century Dominican, Cardinal Cajetan strove to mollify the problem by proposing a duplex ordo in which the hypothetical state of pure nature would have its own natural end distinct from man's supernatural end. This ostensible solution to the issue was regnant until the broad ranging criticisms of the Nouvelle Theologie in the 20th century (represented especially by Henri De Lubac). The theologies of grace, which emerged after this critique---most notably that of Karl Rahner---sought to remedy the Neoscholastic separation of nature and grace by an equally problematic integration of the two orders. We propose that the dangers inherent in both the extrinsecism of Cajetan and the immanentis...

L'uomo e la donna nella dottrina di san Tommaso d'Aquino

The theory of the desiderium naturale in St. Thomas Aquinas has raised some of the most difficult questions in the history of Roman Catholic thought. At issue is whether a natural desire to see the divine essence can be reconciled with the necessarily supernatural and gratuitous manner of this desire's fulfillment. The 16th century Dominican, Cardinal Cajetan strove to mollify the problem by proposing a duplex ordo in which the hypothetical state of pure nature would have its own natural end distinct from man's supernatural end. This ostensible solution to the issue was regnant until the broad ranging criticisms of the Nouvelle Theologie in the 20th century (represented especially by Henri De Lubac). The theologies of grace, which emerged after this critique---most notably that of Karl Rahner---sought to remedy the Neoscholastic separation of nature and grace by an equally problematic integration of the two orders. We propose that the dangers inherent in both the extrinsecism of Cajetan and the immanentism of Rahner can be addressed by turning to alternative interpretations of the desiderium naturale (in particular that of Domingo Banez), which do greater justice to the harmony and integrity of the orders of nature and grace.

The Dialectic of Divine Love: Pannenberg's Hegelian Trinitarianism

Abstract: In this study of Pannenberg's social trinitarianism, I first present his Hegelian‐dialectical approach to the problem of the unity and plurality in God, highlighting his many innovations, such as the mutual reciprocity of the divine persons, the mutual mediation of the divine essence and the three persons, the essence as self‐manifestation and a force field, the Holy Spirit as the divine essence, which is love. Second, I discuss serious reservations about some of the consequences of these innovations, such as the monarchy of the Spirit, the elevation of the divine essence as an entity above the three persons, the failure to explain the specificity and equality of each person, and others.

Kernel of the Kernel, Concerning the Wayfaring and Spiritual Journey of the People of Intellect, A Shi`i Approach to Sufism

Kernel of the Kernel is a recension by Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad HusyanHusayni Tihrani (d. 1995) of the oral teachings of Allamah MuhammadHusayn Tabatabai (d. 1982), one of the most prominent Iranian ‘ulama of thetwentieth century. The main text has chapters entitled “Kernel of the Kernel,”“Description of the Realms Preceding the Realm of Khulus,” “UndifferentiatedDescription of the Path and Methods of Wayfaring toward God,” and “Differentiated Description of the Path and Methods of Wayfaring towardGod.” Kernel of the Kernel concludes with a general index, an index ofQur’anic verses and ahadith, an index of the sayings of the Shi`i Imams, andan appendix of notes on saints and scholars cited in the text that contains briefbiographies of 37 people.The book consists of Allamah Tabatabai’s teachings, which are augmentedby an interesting commentary/introduction by the editor, AllamahTihrani. Its core part is further prefaced by the translator’s (Muhammad H.Faghfoory) introduction and informative notes on Allamah Tihrani’s life andwork. Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s foreword is the external shell that puts the text’sgeneral esoteric trajectory and the characters involved in composing it in context.Nasr’s foreword, the translator’s notes, and the editor’s introduction areinterspersed with teachings and stories of the lives of the Shi`i sages and scholarsof the past several centuries. This makes the text of interest to students ofSufi hagiography in general, and of Shi`i intellectual life in particular.Kernel of the Kernel is in the genre of the Shi`i tradition of explicatingthe stages of the spiritual path and the doctrinal foundations of wayfaring.Allamah Tihrani begins by discussing the complementary relationshipbetween Islam’s exoteric and esoteric aspects, and argues that the straightpath means combining both of these aspects. As much as contemplation,intellection, logic, reason, and rational argumentation are praised, it is bysubmitting the heart that inward witnessing is achieved. This complementaryrelationship is the book’s underlying theme. Thus, the discussions on“the spiritual traveler” and “immersion in the Divine essence of the Lord,”for example, are balanced with such topics as “the station of being presentin the world of multiplicity while simultaneously witnessing and experiencingthe realms of Divine Lordship.” The text follows with a descriptionof the inner meanings of Islam, faith, migration, spiritual struggle, submission,and ritual practices. At every step of the spiritual path, the authoraffirms the complementary nature of the relationship between wayfaring inthe spiritual realm and being in this world. The last chapter is a condenseddescription of the path and the methods of wayfaring ...

Jan van Ruusbroec, mystical theologian of the Trinity

Jan Van Ruusbroec (1293-1381), a Flemish mystical theologian, was one of the most original Trinitarian thinkers in the medieval West. Yet, his works - written in Middle-Dutch - have remained relatively unknown. In this book, Rik Van Nieuwenhove presents the first major study in English of Ruusbroec's thought. Van Nieuwenhove explores in detail Ruusbroec's theology of the Trinity, his anthropology, Christology, and his understanding of union with God. Van Nieuwenhove's study reveals that Ruusbroec, while incorporating aspects of the rich theological and spiritual tradition that preceded him, wrote at the beginning of a modern age in which mystical theology changed radically in nature. Ruusbroec claimed that the divine Persons are subject to an eternal dynamic of procession or out-going from the Father, on the one hand, and returning to the shared divine essence, on the other. The human person is called to participate in this continuous ebbing and flowing by leading a life that combines contemplation and charitable activity. Ruusbroec argued that mysticism should be interpreted in terms of a transformation of the human person rather than in terms of an immediate experience of God. Jan van Ruusbroec, Mystical Theologian of the Trinity is an innovative, original study of one of late medieval theology's undiscovered treasures. Written in clear, accessible language, this new interpretation of Ruusbroec's theology will appeal to all those interested in mysticism, medieval theology, and the doctrine of the Trinity.

Infimus gradus libertatis? Descartes on indifference and divine freedom

Descartes held the doctrine that the eternal truths are freely created by God. He seems to have thought that a proper understanding of God's freedom entails such a doctrine concerning the eternal truths. In this paper, I examine Descartes' account of divine freedom. I argue that Descartes' statements about indifference, namely that indifference is the lowest grade of freedom and that indifference is the essence of God's freedom are not incompatible. I also show how Descartes arrived at his doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths by consideration of the nature of God's freedom.

Developing an Apophatic Christocentrism

A thoroughly apophatic commitment to divine unknowability appears incompatible with the claim that God is known in Christ. The theological writings of Maximus the Confessor, however, provide a way of combining these two theological imperatives so that the more authentically apophatic one is, the more christocentric one will be (and vice versa). This relationship is expressed most clearly in Maximus's exposition of the transfiguration, in which Christ is both the source of illumination that constitutes human knowledge of God and, in his ineffable brightness, the only proper basis for human recognition of the inherent unknowability of the divine essence.

The Divine Essence and the Conception of God in Spinoza

I argue against a prevailing view that the essence of Godis identical with the attributes. I show that given what Spinoza says in 2d2 – Spinoza'spurported definition of the essence of a thing – the attributes cannot be identical withthe essence of God (whether the essence of God is understood as the distinct attributesor as a totality of indistinct attributes). I argue that while the attributes do notsatisfy the stipulations of 2d2 relative to God, absolutely infinite and eternal power does satisfythose stipulations. Hence, I conclude that absolutely infinite and eternal power is God'sessence and that the attributes are expressions of that power.

Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on the Existence of God as Self-Evident

Thomas Aquinas holds that the existence of God is self-evident in itself (because God's essence is his existence) but not to us (since we do not know the divine essence). Giles of Rome agrees with the first part of Thomas's claim, but he parts company with Aquinas by maintaining that God's existence is self-evident to the wise. Since the wise can know that God is his existence, they cannot think of him as not existing. This paper reexamines Thomas's teaching in the light of Giles's criticisms. By examining closely what is involved in the claim that God's essence is his existence, and how one's knowledge of this claim is related to the knowledge that God exists, it argues that Thomas's position has the resources to withstand Giles's objections.

Filosofía y teología en Ramón Llull: demostratio per aequiparantiam

Fruit of the peculiar methodology of the Llull' system philosophical, and jointly with their evangelising mission, the demonstratio per aequiparantiam is erected as the definitive tool to combine Philosophy and Theology, Reason and Faith, indispensable elements to end up knowing the divine essence. With everything, this knowledge, according to Llull, it cannot only be carried out by means of Faith or Reason for themselves, but, rather, for reason of a comparison of both disciplines. In such a way, by means of a demonstration that is defined in comparative terms, the man can end up understanding superior entities to his intellect -such as the divine one-, because a correspondence settles down among same elements (per aequalia).

Two Models of the Trinity?

Contrary to a common assumption, I argue that there is full agreement between East and West on the issue of the relation between the divine essence and the divine persons. I defend this claim by using the understanding of universals found in D. M. Armstrong to cast light on the theories. Taking Gregory of Nyssa and John of Damascus as representatives of the Eastern tradition, I show that this tradition sees the divine essence as a numerically singular object that is wholly present in each divine person. The Eastern tradition explicitly sees this object as a universal. The Western tradition – exemplified in Augustine and Aquinas – likewise sees the divine essence as a numerically singular object that is wholly present in each divine person. But this tradition customarily denies that such an object could be a universal, on the merely philosophical grounds that universals are divided amongst the particulars that share them, and thus cannot be numerically one. Having shown the fundamental consonance of the two traditions, I argue by way of conclusion that differences between social and non–social theories of the Trinity depend entirely on the nature and extent of the features that are supposed to distinguish the persons from each other.

Response to Irvin Yalom

First, I would like to applaud Committee on Psychiatry and Religion for its selection of Dr. Yalom to be recipient of this award-not for stated reason that he dedicated himself to religious questions (though with antireligious perspective), but because they knew deep down that he is a believer. In fact, everyone is a believer, doubters and negators being real believers. As Jung said, are all wired for God; we all need God. The atheists too need a God, however nonexistent He might be. Marathon swimmer and author, Lynne Cox, a confirmed nonbeliever, has a charming anecdote: Late afternoon. I am standing above Western Wall, also known as Wailing Wall, in old section of Jerusalem. All cracks [in Wall] are filled with paper. Some are brittle and yellow, some are mere fragments, and some are in airmail envelopes and hotel stationery. I could see a few with words exposed: there was one in French, others in German and Hebrew and Russian and English. I wondered what these prayers were all about. Were they praying for someone who was ill, for friends, for family, for peace or prosperity? What were their hopes and dreams? Did they really believe they could get a message to God through this wall? Every single crack in wall to my right and left, above my head and beside my feet was filled with paper. I kept looking. Three meters above my head was a hole size of a tennis ball. I crumpled my note up into a tight wad, looked around, hoping that no one was watching. I leaned back and tossed my message. We negate God, we complain about Him, we accuse Him of all sorts of things. But, at end of day, we still pray that He exists. Similarly, Karen Armstrong tells a story of Jews in concentration camps who decide one afternoon to put God on trial. God is brought up on charges of cruelty and betrayal. Despite believing that God is supposed to counter evil, this impromptu death-camp court finds no evidence of divine intervention in their horrible world nor any extenuating circumstances that relieve God of culpability. The Rabbi announces verdict: God is guilty as charged. But then Rabbi glances up at those assembled and announces that trial has concluded, It is time for evening prayer. Not unlike this Rabbi, after a very persuasive argument negating God's existence, Dr. Yalom glanced up at us and said, I quote, Divine Essence. Now that we have firmly established that Dr. Yalom is a believer, let me move on to content of his talk. Based on his early experiences, Dr. Yalom grew up to consider faith as a burden. God brings no burden. The distasteful training cloaked in rigidity and authoritarianism that he was unfortunately subjected to is commonly practiced religionism, not religion. We all know that, if anything, all religions teach tolerance, love, and compassion. God brings no burden. Sophists say, in fact, that man and God are like a bird and its wings. Imagine if a bird were unaware that its wings enabled it to fly; they would only add extra burden of weight. Dr. Yalom says his understanding of existence led him to inescapable scientific world view, however lamentable it was. Extraordinary claims of religion require extraordinary evidence, he says: facts! As far as I am concerned, it is facts that require explanation. Even Stephen Hawking is yearning to know the mind of God. There is a cap on actual knowledge we have about ourselves, obtained via psychology, philosophy, or science. In fact, there is a potential for a degenerative process. The search for meaning of life through these avenues has brought man to impasse, because Man is fundamentally more than he can know himself, Victor Frankl says, an existentialist, mind you ...... The existence of God can neither be proven nor disproven, because proof and disproof are exercises of logos (logic), which is human attempt to master reality through language. …

Beatitude in the Structure of Aquinas' Summa: Is Ia 26 a Stray Question?

Aquinas is extremely careful in a series of prologues interspersed throughout his Summa Theologiae to announce step by step what he is going to do. He offers broad overviews as well as detailed introductions, or prologues, showing the precise function of each of the over 510 questions (divided into some 3500 articles) it comprises. Thus it is easy to construct a chart outlining this massive work with main headings (Parts), subheadings, all the way to individual questions and even articles. However, one question, Question 26 of the First Part (Ia 26), apparently escaped his planning and is not included in any of his introductions. Its topic is the divine beatitude. It is divided into four articles, and is inserted at the end of his treatise on the divine essence, just before he begins the treatise on the distinctions of Persons (as announced in Ia 2 1 prol.). In his consideration of the One God, Aquinas begins with the divine substance and then passes to God's operation, and the headings of the latter consideration are God's knowledge, God's will, and God's power (as announced in Ia 14 1 prol.). One would expect from Ia 2 1 prol. that after the treatment of God's power, Aquinas would have moved directly to his treatment of the Trinity. Instead he inserts the unannounced question on God's beatitude, announces in its prologue that it follows the consideration of those things which pertain to the divine unity, but then closes it with the following words: "We have now spoken enough concerning what pertains to the unity of the divine essence" (Ia 26 4 ad 2). Not only is the question unannounced, but whether it is to be included in the treatise on the divine essence is unclear. Why is this topic important enough for Aquinas to awkwardly insert it here, seemingly beyond his original intention? What role does the theme of beatitude play in the unfolding of the Summa?