Jun 16 2008
The Goodness of God
God is the Supreme Good. he is the Efficient Cause of all things, whence all derive their beings, and have a desire for Him in order to participate in His likeness, for the likeness to the agent is the perfection proper to each thing. Wherefore, if His very likeness is an object of desire, much more is God Himself to be desired. Hence He is not only Good, but He is simply Goodness itself. Good, therefore, belongs t Him as the Source of all perfections, and as the First Cause, not as the agent of like nature with the effect, but as One not belonging to the same order as the effect, either according to species or genus; in a super-excellent way the First Cause of all things, not of the same kind, but outside of genus, and the principle of existing creatures; whence he is called the Supreme Good.
God only is Good by His Essence. The rule of goodness is that of the degree of perfection which is possessed, and perfection is threefold; as, for instance, the first perfection of fire consists in the existence which is given by its substantial form; its second perfection is found in the accidents added to it for its perfect action, such as heat, dryness, lightness, and so on; its third perfection, that it remains in its own place.
Such perfections as these belong to no creature by its own essence, but in that way to God only, whose Essence is His Existence, and in whom there is nothing accidental. For such things as are said to be accidental in others belong to Him essentially, as, for example, to be powerful and wise. Nor is He related to an end, for He is Himself the Last End of all things. Hence God alone has all perfections by His Essence; and so He only is essentially Good. Each thing is called good by the Divine Goodness; from the Exemplar, the First Efficient Cause and the Final End of all goodness. Each thing is good formally by its likeness to Him. This goodness is one, and it is also multiform.
From A COMPANION TO THE SUMMA by Walter Farrell:
Goodness
Another caution that may not be amiss is that we have an entirely accurate notion of the particular attribute under discussion. Thus, to speak of the goodness of God in the sense of sanctimoniousness is to divorce the discussion from reality, as, well as to flavor it distastefully. The notion of goodness adds nothing to being but the smack of desirability, that is, a thing can be good, desirable, only insofar as it is possible or thought to be possible; it can be pursued and enjoyed only insofar as it has being. We do not desire an automobile that can be folded up and dropped into a purse. We can see the advantage of a servant with five arms, but we do not advertise for such a one. We do, however, have a real desire for real things–for friends, a ham sandwich, new clothes, knowledge. It is this smack of desirability that goodness adds to being which is at the root of all activity.
Activity, then, is striving for the desirable thing, for something good; boredom, on the other hand, is the absence of knowledge of and interest in the good and is the nearest approach to stagnation to be found among living things. As a matter of fact. everything in the world has its desirable something, its goal. Concretely that goal is the completion, the perfection, the complete fulfillment of the particular creature; every creature is good in proportion as it is, it is better in proportion as it has approached its goal. Briefly, a thing is good insofar as it is real. Bluff, defect, incapacity have nothing desirable about them because there is nothing real about them. But He Who is, the cause of all reality, the perfect Being, is the highest goodness for He is the most real Being. Not that He has goodness; rather He is goodness, as He is reality. On His goodness all other goodness is modeled, from His goodness all other goodness proceeds; all other goodness is a similitude, a participation, a limited miniature of the limitless goodness of God.
Because of the smack of desirability which goodness adds to being, God is most desirable, most lovable. So true is this that everything in the universe hustles eagerly to this goal of goodness, each in its own way: man with alert steps along the dangerous road of knowledge and love, brutes with the unerring aim of instinct, the inanimate world with the blind, plodding step of physical necessity devoid of all knowledge. For each creature in the universe is spurred on to action by the goal of its own perfection, a goal which is nothing but a similitude, an image, a mirroring of the goodness of God.
