God as Alpha and Omega

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." --Revelations 22:13

To this point, we have discussed God in two ways – as the uncaused cause and as the ultimate end for man.

God, as the uncaused cause, is the alpha, the beginning. Aquinas proved this by explaining that since all things are effects of that which caused them, some thing must have been the first cause. We call that uncaused cause, God.

God, as the ultimate end sought by man, is the omega, the end. Aquinas discussed human action as always seeking an end, which is good. God is defined as that which fulfills all desire, goodness itself. God is "the supreme good," "the good, whereby each thing is good" (Summa Contra Gentiles, Ch. 17).

It would be tempting to say that by this argument, there are two gods. One serves as the uncaused cause; the other serves as the end. It is not immediately evident that the two are the same, yet we are told so in scripture: "I am the Alpha and the Omega."

Upon further examination, it will be made clear that there is, in fact, one and only one God.

The end begets the beginning

How do mystery writers do it? They get the ending and write backward. Neat trick!

The same works with human actions and, by our definition of God as ultimate end, God as well.

"For He is the end of all things, yet so as to precede all in being. Now there is an end which, though it holds the first place in causing in so far as it is in the intention, is nevertheless last in execution. This applies to any end which the agent establishes by his action." (Summa Contra Gentiles, Ch. 18)

The thing that causes desire and action is the thing itself. In this way, the thing is both the cause and the end.

Not clear yet? Here’s an example.

Let’s say I am hungry, and I want a hamburger. My desire for a hamburger is result of not only hunger, but also prior knowledge of what a hamburger is. If I had no prior knowledge of what a hamburger is, I would not desire it. I cannot want a hamburger if I don’t know what a hamburger is!

Now, I have eaten the hamburger. My desire for the hamburger led me to perform the action of finding a hamburger and eating it. I have achieved the good intended by my action. In this way, the hamburger is the end of action, but in that I had the desire for it in the first place, it also served as the cause. The hamburger was the beginning and ending of my desire.

This point might be easier to understand if I say that I have a craving for falafel. If you do not know what falafel is, then the chances are you have no craving for it. Now that I have mentioned it to you, you have some knowledge of it, even if it is only that something called falafel exists. If someone were to ask you later today, "Do you want to try some falafel?" perhaps you would say yes because you heard someone mention it before, but you wouldn’t have the same type of desire for it as you do for your favorite foods. Falafel, by the way, is ground spiced chickpeas and fava beans shaped into balls and fried. You can get it at Greek restaurants, and it is REALLY GOOD!

At the toy store

Here’s an even better example. Imagine a three-year-old child on the way to the toy store. The child has no specific toy in mind on the way. There is no specific toy that is intended by the trip.

The child enters the store and sees for the very first time a red, fuzzy Tickle-Me-Elmo doll. The child immediately wants the doll.

What made the child want the doll? The answer is the doll itself.

On the way to the store, the child could not have wanted the Tickle-Me-Elmo doll, because the child had no clue what the Tickle-Me-Elmo doll was.

This is the basic principle behind advertising. People who advertise know that no one is going to buy their product if they don’t know their product exists!

As this relates to God

In the Genesis creation story, it is emphasized that all things created by God are good: "God saw how good the light was" (Gen. 1:4). "God saw how good it was" (Gen. 1:10). And so on. The point made is that all that draws existence from God is necessarily good because God is the supreme good.

Human actions, by their very nature, aim toward ends, which are good, as we have stated before. Each individual action aims toward its end, which is sought because it is known by us to be good in that it is perfective of our desire.

In the same manner, God, which has already been proved to be the cause of existence (us included), is sought as the end of all ends – that which fulfills all desire. Yet, the supreme good is sought ONLY because we have some idea of what GOOD is.

Think about this for a second. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a millionaire? You would have all the money you would need! You would be able to fulfill your every desire! Anything you want would be yours!

Of course, in truth, you would still have unfulfilled desires. You would still feel the need to eat and would seek food to fill that need, for example. In actuality, you would have many desires that would remain unfulfilled.

But, the fact that you can imagine fulfilling so many desires is a result of your ability to fulfill at least one desire. Someone who has always been hungry, who has never eaten, cannot imagine what it is like to be well fed. Someone who loses his eyesight at some point in his life knows what he is missing, while someone who has always been blind can really only guess what seeing is like. Want a challenge? Try describing the color red to a person who has been blind his entire life. There is no frame of reference. Color is a visual sensation, yet you would be forced to describe it using other senses such as smell, hearing, and touch. Only a person who has seen color could envision the color red in any meaningful visual sense.

Conclusion

God, by definition, is the supreme good, that which fulfills all desire. Man, by his very nature, desires and acts according to those desires. Man acts to achieve an intended end.

In that man acts for good, it necessarily follows that man has some idea of what good is (here the good refers to that which is perfective of the act). Since that which is good derives its existence from the supreme good, it necessarily follows that man has some idea of what God is, even though this knowledge is imperfect. Anyone who fulfills some desire has an imperfect knowledge of God.

Since God is that which fulfills all desire and man by his very nature desires, it also necessarily follows that man can not have complete knowledge of God in this life.

Proceed to Article V: God as form of all that exists