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Beauty, Transcendence
and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation
THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE

I nterpreters of Thomas Aquinas have long argued about whether he

holds that beauty is a “transcendental”, that is to say a feature of re-
ality coextensive with all that exists, like unity, goodness and truth-
fulness1. In the first part of this essay I will argue that Aquinas can be
read to affirm in an implicit way that there is beauty in everything
that exists. He also affirms clearly that this beauty derives from God,
who is uncreated beauty. In the second part of the essay I will consid-
er what it might mean from a Thomistic point of view to speak of a
transcendent divine beauty, and what is cannot mean philosophical-
ly speaking, given Aquinas’ other metaphysical commitments, partic-
ularly with respect to his doctrine of divine simplicity. In the final
part of the essay I hope to treat the question of how the beauty of the
creation both manifests and conceals divine beauty, and to give spe-
cial attention to the topic of the hierarchy of perfections in creatures
(as being, living and intellectual). My argument will be that Aquinas’
hierarchical understanding of reality is inclusive in character, so that

1 A helpful survey of modern scholarly opinions is presented by J.A. AERTSEN in

Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought. From Philip the Chancellor (c.a. 1225) to
Franciso Suárez, Brill, Leiden 2012, 161-76. J. MARITAIN argues that beauty is a tran-
scendental in Art and Scholasticism: with other essays, trans. J.F. Scanlan, Scribner’s,
New York, NY 1939. E. GILSON speaks of pulcrum as “the forgotten transcendental”
in Elements of Christian Philosophy, Doubleday, New York, NY 1960, 159-63. J. WIPPEL
does not include beauty in his account of the transcendentals in Aquinas, in The
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquians: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being, The
Catholic University of American Press, Washington, DC 2000, 192-94. J.A. AERSTEN
himself seems to be of two minds. In his earlier work, Medieval Philosophy and the
Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas, Brill, Leiden 1996, 335-359, he speaks of
beauty as a kind of transcendental, while in the later work noted above he express-
es reticence. See also the brief but insightful interpretation of P. PORRO, Thomas
Aquinas. A Historical and Philosophical Profile, trans. J. TRABBIC – R. NUTT, The Catholic
University of America Press, Washington, DC 2016, 203-205, who treats beauty as a
transcendental in Aquinas’ thought.
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172 Thomas Joseph White

an order of political and religious ethics derives from the natural or-
der of beauty. The world’s natural beauty ought to be respected and
cared for in ways that acknowledge the intrinsic ontological integrity
of all lesser realities but also their inclusion within an order that sus-
tains rational creatures, and their reference to the divine.

1. Beauty as a Transcendental Feature of Reality

The notion of a transcendental feature of being has its proximate ori-

gins in the 12th century theories of Philip the Chancellor, who first
composed a treatise on the subject. However, the remote origins of
the notion can certainly be found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where
there are overt discussions of the fact that unity, truth and goodness
are features of reality that are co-extensive with being2. Aristotle
sought to identify in the Categories and in Metaphysics IV and V, the
categorial modes of being that are irreducibly diverse genera of be-
ing. These are the distinct ontological features of reality: substances,
natures, quantities, qualities, relations, habits, actions, passions,
time, place, position. For example, all substances have diverse qual-
ities and quantities, but none of them are merely identical with their
qualities or quantities, nor are quantity and quality reducible to one
another. The categories are properly basic features of reality then.
However, Aristotle also sought to identify features of being that
“transcend” the diverse genera and that are found in all that exists,
albeit in analogically diverse ways, not in generically or specifically
identical modes. For example, one may speak of a good quality, such
as human affability, as distinct from a good quantity, such as a suf-
ficient amount of water, a good place, such as where we plan to
meet, or substantial goodness, such as that of the intrinsic goodness
of any human being. In each of these cases, one discovers ontologi-

2 The study of notions “convertible” with being has its prehistory in the philoso-

phies of Aristotle and Plato (See, for example, Republic 507b; Sophist 245c-255e, 260a;
Metaphysics C, 2, 1003b23-1005a18; K, 3, 1061a15-17; Nic. Ethics I, 6, 1196a23-34). Avi-
cenna spoke in different places of being (esse) as res, aliquid, bonum, verum, and unum
(Metaphysics I, c. 4, 27 and 30; c. 5, 31-34; c. 8, 55-56; IV, c. 3, 212). The first systemat-
ic treatment of the topic, however, was presented by Phillip the Chancellor in his
Summa de bono (ca. 1225-1228), at Paris, and the topic was subsequently explored
by Alexander of Hales and Albert the Great. For studies on the transcendentals, see
particularly J.A. AERTSEN, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals and Medieval
Philosophy as Transcendental Thought.
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 173

cally distinct forms of goodness, just as one also encounters distinct

forms of unity, truth (inherent intelligibility in things) and being.
These transcendental modes of being are designated in analogical
ways, not univocally, because they are not proper to any particular
species of being or genera of being. Rather they are common to
every genus, and therefore “transcend” the specifications of any one
univocal designation. We cannot rightly say, for example, that only
trees exist, or that only substances have unity, or that goodness is al-
ways a quantity. Every genus of thing exists, since being is common
to all. Every genus is characterized by unity in some sense, as when
we speak of one quality or one quantity or one place. Goodness is
not reducible to one genus of being, like quality or quantity, but is
analogically common to every genus of being.
Aquinas has distinct textual accounts of what he takes to be the
core transcendental notions. For the most part they seem conceptu-
ally coherent with one another. In the famous text of De Veritate q. 1,
art. 1, he names as transcendental notions ens, res, unum, aliquid,
verum, and bonum. The logic of the distinctions is presented with ad-
mirable clarity. Being [ens] can be considered either per se or with re-
spect to another. If per se then one can think of the “content” of what
exists either positively (as res or “a determinate reality”) or negative-
ly (as unum: that which is indivisible). If a given being is considered
with respect to another being, then it can be considered either in dis-
tinction from it (as aliquid or “something actually other”) or by fit-
ting conformity to the soul (convenientia). If the latter is the case, this
can be considered two ways, either with respect to intellect (verum,
all that is, is somehow true), or with respect to appetite (bonum, all
that is, is somehow good)3.

AFFIRMATIVELY: RES (determination of essence)

IN ITSELF

NEGATIVELY: UNITY (a given reality is unified in itself)

EVERY BEING
IN DISTINCTION: ALIQUID (actuality in alterity)

IN RELATION TO ANOTHER

BY FITTING CONFORMITY TO THE SOUL

INTELLECTUALLY: TRUTH
IN APPETITE: GOODNESS

3 The table below is indebted in part to that presented by AERTSEN in Medieval

Philosophy as Transcendental Thought, 222.

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174 Thomas Joseph White

What does this analysis mean concretely? Consider the example

of a large oak tree. That tree has a given natural form or inherent de-
termination of essence as a tree of a given kind. It has a unity as well,
that marks it off ontologically from other realities around it. It is in-
herently intelligible as an actually existing reality in distinction from
others (aliquid) and in relation to them. Its being has an intrinsic in-
telligibility such that we can study and understand it. It also has an
intrinsic goodness, especially when the tree flourishes, such that we
could speak about whether the tree is healthy and robust or whether
it is still growing to its perfection. All of these features of being ap-
ply not only to the whole substance of the tree in its unity and total-
ity, but also to the diverse categorial properties or modes of being,
such as the tree’s particular quantity, qualities, relations, time and
place and so forth. The tree’s quantitative parts have a given deter-
mination, unity, intelligibility and so forth, but so do the tree’s qual-
ities, and its relations to its surrounding. The being, unity, truth and
goodness of the tree are features we find “throughout” its ontologi-
cal constitution, both in its form and material elements, in its sub-
stance and in its diverse properties.
Aquinas offers an epistemological analysis of the natural unfold-
ing of our concepts of being in Summa theologiae I, q. 5, a. 2. The ac-
count complements the ontological reflections of De Veritate q. 1, a.
1 that we have been exploring above. In this context at the start of
the Summa, Aquinas is considering the goodness of God, after hav-
ing considered God’s being or existence, and prior to the considera-
tion of God’s unity and living activity as a mystery of truth. His
treatment of divine attributes, then, does not follow the same order
as his treatment of the transcendental notions. But he notes all the
same even here that our notions of being and of actuality both pre-
cede our notion of goodness since the knowledge of the latter pre-
supposes the knowledge of the former.

In idea being is prior to goodness. For the meaning signified by the

name of a thing is that which the mind conceives of the thing and in-
tends by the word that stands for it. Therefore, that is prior in idea,
which is first conceived by the intellect. Now the first thing con-
ceived by the intellect is being; because everything is knowable only
inasmuch as it is in actuality. Hence, being is the proper object of the
intellect, and is primarily intelligible; as sound is that which is pri-
marily audible. Therefore in idea being is prior to goodness4.

4 S.Th. I, q. 5, a. 2. We should note that “actuality” is listed here as a transcenden

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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 175

We find another account of the ontological order of transcenden-

tal notions presented in De Veritate q. 21, a. 1. In the first questio of
this book (q. 1, a. 1), Aquinas was considering the transcendental no-
tion of truth. Here he is considering the transcendental notion of
goodness5. He reiterates the idea of truth and goodness as concepts
that denote being insofar as it is relational. He adds, however, some
important qualifications. “Truth” denotes being insofar as it is capa-
ble of specifying the intellect that understands it, perfecting it in this
way. The notion of species here recalls the idea of res: all that exists

tal feature of being. Aquinas commenting on Metaphysics H, 8, 1050b5-16, notes that

actuality and potentiality are modes of being that apply not only to movement (ca-
pacity to move versus actual movement) but also to the existence (esse) of substance.
In IX Meta., lec. 9, 1869 (ed. Marietti, 450): «Sed id quod possible est esse, contingit
non esse in actu. Manifestum est ergo, quod illud quod possibile est esse, contingit
esse et non esse. Et sic potentia simul contradictionis est, quia idem est in potentia
ad esse et non esse». «But what is capable of existing may possibly not be actual.
Hence it is evident that what is capable of existing may either exist or not exist; and
thus the potency is at one and the same time a potency for opposite determinations,
because the same thing is; in potency both to existence and non-existence» (See also
lec. 3, 1805; lec. 5; 1825, lec. 9, 1868-71). Consequently, Aquinas sees that for Aristot-
le the question of the actuality and potentiality in the being of the substance reveals
a capacity of an essentially determined being to exist or not exist, and it will eventu-
ally be seen that this leads us back to a necessarily existent being in whom the sub-
stance and being in act (or ousia and energeia) are absolutely one (In XII Meta., lec. 5,
2494; lec. 7, 2524-27). (Translation taken from AQUINAS, Commentary on Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, trans. J. Rowan, Dumb Ox Books, Notre Dame, IN 1995).
5 De Veritate q. 21, a. 1: «The true and the good must therefore add to the concept

of being, a relationship of that which perfects. But in any being there are two aspects
to be considered, the formal character of its species and the act of being by which it
subsists in that species. And so a being can be perfective in two ways. (1) It can be
so just according to its specific character. In this way the intellect is perfected by a
being, for it perceives the formal character of the being. But the being is still not in it
according to its natural existence. It is this mode of perfecting which the true adds to
being. For the true is in the mind, as the Philosopher says; and every being is called
true inasmuch as it is conformed or conformable to intellect. For this reason all who
correctly define true put intellect in its definition. (2) A being is perfective of anoth-
er not only according to its specific character but also according to the existence
which it has in reality. In this fashion the good is perfective; for the good is in things,
as the Philosopher says. Inasmuch as one being by reason of its act of existing is such
as to perfect and complete another, it stands to that other as an end. And hence it is
that all who rightly define good put in its notion something about its status as an end.
The Philosopher accordingly says that they excellently defined good who said that
it is “that which all things desire”» (Translation from AQUINAS, Truth, trans. by R.W.
Schmidt, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, IL 1954). See the pertinent remarks of
J. AERTSEN in Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought, 230.
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176 Thomas Joseph White

insofar as it exists implies some kind of interior ontological determi-

nation capable of informing our intellectual knowledge by its intrin-
sic intelligibility or truthfulness. The water molecule, for example,
has an intrinsic determination that is different from that of a mouse,
the color blue, one’s relation to one’s aunt, or the capacity to play the
violin. Truth declines transcendentally across these distinct ontolog-
ical categorial modes of being (substances, essences, qualities, quan-
tities, relations, habits, etc.). When we know the truth about such di-
mensions of being, it perfects our intellect.
Meanwhile, goodness denotes the perfective character of exis-
tence not insofar as it is assimilated to understanding, but insofar as
one being draws another toward its intrinsic perfection. Here too the
notion is nuanced. Goodness pertains to a perfection intrinsic to a
given reality itself, insofar as that reality flourishes and reaches its
perfection. But goodness is also defined relationally. It is something
perfective of other realities around it, either by becoming an end
pursued, or a good means toward an end6. Implicit in this idea is the
understanding that good realities can be mutually perfective. If one
being attains a perfection that is appetible to another, it can in turn
contribute to the perfection of the other in its own species. The ex-
amples could be diverse. The mature rabbit can help perfect the ma-
ture wolf. But we may also say that the perfect math professor con-
veys wisdom that perfects in turn the student, or the friend who
loves according to virtue and with genuine personal love of anoth-
er, invites the friend who is loved to a reciprocal love of the other
that is virtuous and perfective and in turn perfecting.
The relational characteristics of being as both true and good are
grounded for Aquinas, then, in the things themselves, by virtue of
their being. In this line of thinking we do not ever say correctly that
a human being truly is a professional chess player, or truly is acting
in a morally just way in the midst of a genocide simply due to our
relational apprehension of him or our attraction to his moral quali-
ties, but also always more fundamentally because these ascriptions are
characteristic of his being as such, of what he really is in himself.
Evidently, none of the analysis of Aquinas discussed thus far
contains any mention of beauty. He does not list it as a transcenden-
tal term in his texts on transcendental notions. Perhaps then one
should simply exclude it from any textually responsible Thomist ac-
count of his teaching on this subject. However, at least two well-

6 De Veritate q. 21, a. 1, corp.

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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 177

known texts should give us reason to pause before reaching such a

conclusion. One is found in his Commentary on Dionysius’ Divine
Names, cap. 4, lec. 5. The other in his discussion of the beauty of the
eternal Son of God in a discussion of the Holy Trinity in the Summa
theologiae I, q. 39, a. 8.
In the first of these texts, Aquinas is commenting on Dionysius.
The extended text is analytically dense and quite remarkable.
Aquinas is discussing the ways in which one might say that God is
beautiful, and in what ways one might not say so. I will return to his
topic below. Here, however, it is pertinent to consider Aquinas’ dis-
cussion of the presence of beauty in all that exists. He makes six
main points7. First, all beauty comes from God insofar as God is the
cause of all that exists. Second, he gives a first definition of beauty.
Beauty can be defined ontologically as the splendor (claritas) that re-

7 In Divinis Nominibus cap. 4, lec. 5, para. 348-49: «pulchrum de Deo dicitur se-
cundum causam […]. Dicit ergo primo quod ex pulchro isto provenit esse omnibus
existentibus: claritas enim est de consideratione pulchritudinis, ut dictum est; omnis
autem forma, per quam res habet esse, est participatio quaedam divinae claritatis; et
hoc est quod subdit, quod singula sunt pulchra secundum propriam rationem, idest
secundum propriam formam; unde patet quod ex divina pulchritudine esse om-
nium derivatur. Similiter etiam dictum est quod de ratione pulchritudinis est conso-
nantia, unde omnia, quae, qualitercumque ad consonantiam pertinent, ex divina
pulchritudine procedunt; et hoc est quod subdit, quod propter pulchrum divinum
sunt omnium rationalium creaturarum concordiae, quantum ad intellectum; concor-
dant enim qui in eamdem sententiam conveniunt; et amicitiae, quantum ad affec-
tum; et communiones, quantum ad actum vel ad quodcumque extrinsecum; et uni-
versaliter omnes creaturae, quantamcumque unionem habent, habent ex virtute pul-
chri» (Latin edition from in Librum Beati Dionysii de Divinis Nominibus Expositio, ed.
C. PERA, Marietti, Rome-Turin 1950). «The beautiful is said of God according to
cause […]. He [Dionysius] says therefore first that from the Beautiful esse [existence]
comes to all existing things: for it is clear from the consideration of beauty, as was
said; but every form, through which a thing has esse, is a certain participation of the
divine brightness; and this is what he adds, that singulars are beautiful according to
a proper notion, i.e., according to a proper form; whence it is apparent that from the
divine Beauty the esse of all things is derived. Similarly, also it was said that conso-
nance is from the notion of beauty; whence all things, which pertain to consonance
in any way, proceed from the divine Beauty. And this is what he adds, that because
of the divine Good there is concord of all rational creatures with respect to intellect:
for they agree who come together in the same opinion and friendship with respect
to affection; and communication with respect to act, or something extrinsic; and uni-
versally all creatures, whatever unity they have, they have from the power of the
Beautiful» (English translation H.C. MARSH, Cosmic Structure and the Knowledge of
God: Thomas Aquinas’ In Librum beati Dionysii de divinis nominibus exposition, UMI
Diss., Ann Arbor, MI 1994, 361-362).
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178 Thomas Joseph White

sults from form. Everything has a formal determination of some

kind insofar as it has existence (esse). Therefore, insofar as anything
exists (and has some formal ontological content) it has some degree
of beauty. Third, the splendor of the form in created things is a par-
ticipation in the divine splendor from which it originates. The divine
nature is the transcendent exemplar of beauty in diverse finite creat-
ed realities. Fourth, then, (and perhaps most importantly) “ex divina
pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur”: literally, the existence of every-
thing originates from divine beauty. Fifth, a second definition of
beauty is considered. Beauty can be defined ontologically as a prop-
erty of being that emerges from proportion or harmony (consonan-
tia). For example, authentic relationships of personal friendship im-
ply spiritual harmony or concord, and are beautiful and noble in this
respect. Sixth, then, the concord or beautiful harmonies we find in
the created order are expressive of the wisdom of God, who is the
author of creation.
Evidently, if the existence of everything derives from divine beau-
ty, and if everything that has existence is in some way beautiful by
virtue of its intrinsic form, then it would seem to follow logically
that beauty, for Aquinas, is a characteristic of being that is coexten-
sive with all that exists. We see a similar idea expressed in the afore-
mentioned passage of the Summa theologiae. Here however, Aquinas
gives a more synthetic definition of beauty in things that combines
both the definitions found in our previous discussion (claritas and
proportio), but also adds a third, integritas: ontological integrity or
wholeness.

Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of the Son. For beau-
ty includes three conditions, “integrity” or “perfection”, since those
things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due “propor-
tion” or “harmony”; and lastly, “brightness” or “clarity”, whence
things are called beautiful which have a bright color8.

Aquinas is discussing essential attributes of God that might be

appropriated to one person of the Holy Trinity more fittingly than
another. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all beautiful because
God is beautiful in essence and the three persons are each the one
God. However, we can appropriately attribute beauty to the Son in

8 S.Th. I, q. 39, a. 8 (All translations of the S.Th. are taken from Summa Theologica,

trans. English Dominican Province, Benzinger Brothers, New York, NY 1947).

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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 179

a fitting way because the Son derives eternally from the Father as the
eternally begotten Word and Wisdom of the Father, through whom
all things are made. Beauty tracks onto the notions of integrity or
specific determination, of proportion or harmony, and of splendor.
The Son is the eternal Word of the Father who has in himself all that
is in the Father (the “species” of the divine essence that he receives
from the Father) and who exists in eternal harmony with the Father,
as the splendor of the Father.
The implication of this point of view is readily apparent. God is
essentially beautiful, and God has created all that exists in light of
the eternal Word and Wisdom of God, who is the Son. Consequent-
ly, all that exists and that derives from God is in some way beauti-
ful. The beauty in things themselves has a three-fold foundation.
Most fundamentally there is the integrity or wholeness of a thing. A
given tree is beautiful because it is integral, having all its limbs,
leaves, and flowers, having reached its maturity and magnificence.
Second there is proportionality. A tree is beautiful because of the
proportions that emerge from the perfection of its form. The quanti-
tative arrangement of the branches in proportionate arrangement to
one another is beautiful, but so are the arrangements of the colors of
the trunk, leaves, and flowers, which are harmonious in qualitative-
ly as well as quantitatively proportionate ways. Most ultimate in the
order of beauty is splendor. When the form is integral and perfect
and expresses itself through the right proportion of harmonious per-
fections of quality and quantity, what emerges is an innate splendor
or clarity of form. A tree that is beautiful has a splendid magnifi-
cence that derives from its ontological perfection, its integrity and
harmonious proportions.
We should note that this idea of beauty can clearly pertain to
spiritual realities or activities as well as physical or material things.
Clearly this must be the case because it is a perfection susceptible of
being ascribed to God and to the divine nature. We can easily con-
sider examples from human agency. The virtuous person who is tru-
ly temperate has a temperance that is integral or whole (both across
diverse cases of temperance and across time, perduring in charac-
ter). The beauty of the virtue is exhibited in the spiritual harmony it
evokes in a person’s reasonable actions, as he is proportionately
temperate in relation to diverse conditions and persons, so as to ex-
hibit friendliness, thoughtfulness, justice, and affability. (Temper-
ance is ultimately at the service of justice and charity). In a most
beautiful case, temperance makes a person more spiritually beauti-
ful or radiant, as a person who lives in reasonable ways in the serv-
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180 Thomas Joseph White

ice of love in his thinking and acting toward others and toward God.
The point in giving this example is to make clear in a simple way
that beauty is defined by Aquinas in such a way that it can readily
be considered co-extensive with all that exists – both material and
immaterial – a transcendental feature of reality.
If this is the case, we must ask, in turn, what exactly is the rela-
tionship between truth, goodness and beauty? We should note that
Aquinas’ definition of beauty grounds the attribute in the given
form or species of a thing. This seems closely aligned with the tran-
scendental notion of res (intrinsic determination), and that of truth
(the intellectual grasp of the species or form of a thing). Beauty has
its foundation in the truth of a reality as formally determined in
some way. Furthermore, beauty has some likeness to the transcen-
dental goodness, since both of them attract another in a relational
way. Goodness denotes a perfection in things that can in turn per-
fect others in accord with their own end. What is good can become
a goal that another reality pursues so as to flourish. Beauty denotes
something else that is analogous. It attracts admiration and love, but
of a given kind. It’s goodness is intellectual or contemplative in na-
ture. Beauty is the splendor of the species or form, and its attraction
is that of the truth or formal determination of a reality insofar as it
has the power to garner our admiration. In other words, when beau-
ty does attract, whether intellectually or sensibly, it does so by virtue
of the splendor of the form, which is capable of eliciting the appetite.
We might say that beauty is the goodness of the truth of a thing, the
delightfulness (or appetibility) of its intelligibility. To state things in
this fashion is to place emphasis on the formal determination as the
key element, rather than the splendor, a decision which gives prima-
cy to the truth of the beautiful reality, and only secondarily empha-
sizes its goodness. However, we could also say that beauty is the
species or formal determination of goodness. This way of speaking
places emphasis on the goodness of beauty but notes that it implies
formal determination (and thus a truth) of a definite kind. This is
why beauty invites admiration, while goodness perfects. Goodness
is grounded in final causality, while beauty is grounded in formal
causality. Beauty has the power to hold our gaze. Goodness has the
power to give our lives ultimate purpose or meaning. The two are
not to be confused, even if they are often found together.
Does this analysis suggest then that beauty is a “blended tran-
scendental”, a mere combination of truth and goodness, or some-
thing that results from the two of them? If so, is the denotation of
beauty as a transcendental something gratuitous, since it is a notion
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 181

contained implicitly in those of verum and bonum? The concept of

beauty as we have defined it here is co-extensive with being and
does arise implicitly from an enriched consideration of truth and
goodness, in their relationship to one another. Beauty is the attrac-
tive appeal of the form, and so a particular kind of goodness of intel-
ligibility embedded in the ontological truth of things. But the concept
is adds something essential to our concept of truth and goodness as
such, since beauty is a distinctive feature of reality, and one that any
robust metaphysical analysis of being needs to take account of.
Aquinas’ definition is powerful precisely because it allows us to tru-
ly distinguish truth, goodness and beauty which remain irreducibly
distinct features of reality, and to see their interrelation as dimen-
sions of being. Far from being gratuitous, this metaphysical reflec-
tion provides an organically united conceptual analysis of very ele-
vated topics that are of central importance to human understanding.

2. The Beauty of God

Clearly Aquinas affirms that God is beautiful, but what can it mean
to say this? St. Thomas typically avoids offering any definition of
God in his writings, and instead makes thematic appeal to the three-
fold via taken from Dionysius the Areopagite in his On the Divine
Names, c. 7, 3. God is known per viam causalitatis as the transcendent
cause of creatures. Because creatures must in some way resemble
their cause as his effects, certain attributes of creatures that imply no
intrinsic imperfection (such as being, unity or goodness) may be as-
cribed to God in an analogical way. However, due to God’s utterly
ineffable and transcendent manner of existing, these attributes must
be thought per viam negationis, or remotionis, that is to say, by negat-
ing or removing from them all that pertains necessarily to creature-
ly imperfection. Finally, per viam eminentiae, these analogical ascrip-
tions given to God may be thought to exist in him in an all-surpass-
ing, preeminent way, not found in any creaturely form9.

9 S.Th. I, q. 12, a. 12: «From the knowledge of sensible things, the whole power of

God cannot be known; nor therefore can his essence be seen. But because they are
his effects and depend upon their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know
of God whether he exists, and to know of him what must necessarily belong to him,
as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by him. Hence, we know
of his relationship with creatures in so far as he is the cause of them all; also, that
creatures differ from him, inasmuch as he is not in any way part of what is caused
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182 Thomas Joseph White

According to this way of thinking, creatures do resemble God as

the effects of the Creator resemble their cause, by similitude. There-
fore, they allow us to signify positively what he is essentially, by
analogy. However, this process of signifying must be qualified by a
series of well thought-out negations, since God is also in many re-
spects unlike or dissimilar to his created effects. Our names for God,
then, can be true and accurate, but they do not suggest any immedi-
ate or direct apprehension of what God is in himself. The essence of
God is truly signified by our use of the divine attributes, but God’s
divine nature remains incomprehensible10.
Aquinas defines beauty in creatures by noting three characteris-
tics: the integrity of the form, its emergent properties of proportion
or harmony, and its expressive splendor. He also makes clear in his
Commentary on the Divine Names that these notions can be employed
analogically to speak about the uncreated beauty of God. However,
when considering this procedure in accord with the three-fold viae
mentioned above, one must take account first and foremost Aquinas’
doctrine of divine simplicity, which surely is of consequence for
thinking about any attribution of beauty to the divine essence.
In Summa theologiae I, q. 3, Aquinas considers divine simplicity in
several respects, four of which are particularly consequential for our
consideration11.

by him; and that creatures are not removed from him by reason of any defect on his
part, but because he super-exceeds them all» (Translation slightly modified). Note
that just after this text Aquinas proceeds to clarify (in q. 13) the analogical character
of the knowledge this way of thinking permits. For similar texts, employing the
triple viae, see Summa Contra Gentiles I, c. 30; In Divinis Nominibus, c. 7, lec. 4; De Po-
tentia Dei, q. 7, a. 5, ad 2.
10 The divine names are ultimately always positive in signification, meaning that

the denote something of what God truly is in himself. Radical apophaticism is ex-
cluded by Aquinas, against what he takes to be the excessive skepticism of Mai-
monides. See De Potentia Dei, q. 7, a. 5: «The idea of negation is always based upon
an affirmation: as evinced by the fact that every negative proposition is proved by
an affirmative: wherefore unless the human mind knew something positively about
God, it would be unable to deny anything about him. And it would know nothing if
nothing that it affirmed about God were positively verified about him. Hence fol-
lowing Dionysius [Divine Names, c. 12], we must hold that these terms signify the di-
vine essence, albeit defectively and imperfectly» (Translation from Aquinas, On the
Power of God, trans. English Dominican Province Newman, Westminster, MD 1952).
I explore this topic in greater detail in T.J. WHITE, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A
Study in Thomistic Natural Theology, 2nd edition, Sapientia, Naples, FL 2016, chapter 8
and appendix 2.
11 The summary offered here of Aquinas on divine simplicity is a succinct echo
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 183

First, St. Thomas affirms that God does not have a body12. There
is no hylomorphic composition in God of form and matter. Conse-
quently, he is not complex in the way any material body is complex,
nor can the divine essence be represented physically or sensibly.
Furthermore, our conceptual notions of natures are all drawn by ab-
straction from sensate individuals, but God is not a sensate individ-
ual, and so none of our abstract concepts could be perfectly ade-
quate for thinking about what God is essentially. Aquinas’ reflection
on this point is evidently radically apophatic.
Second, there is no distinction of individuality and natural form
in God13. For example, every human being or orange tree or dia-
mond is one individual of a given kind, within a larger set of natu-
ral kinds composed of a plurality of individuals (many human be-
ings, orange trees or diamonds). However, God is not an individ-
ual of a given kind, a god among gods or one kind of thing among
others. Rather, God is outside every species and genus of being, as
he who gives being to all that exists (across all genera and species),
and who himself transcends every particular realization of created
existence. God is the only God, and God is his own deity. There is
no larger generic set of beings that he could be thought to be in-
cluded within.
Third, there is in God no distinction of essence and existence14. He
does not receive his being from another, nor can he fail to exist. Con-
sequently, he does not participate in existence or receive his being
from another. In this sense, he is wholly unlike realities that are on-
tologically contingent or that have a potency for non-existence. Fur-
thermore, because God is the author of all that exists, he cannot be
conceived of as something within the transcendental range of being,
a member of the total set of created beings (what Aquinas calls ens
commune15). Transcendental notions do not signify God directly16. He

of two longer treatments. See Thomas Joseph White, “Divine Simplicity and the
Holy Trinity”, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Vol. 18, n. 1 (2016): 66-93;
“Nicene Orthodoxy and Trinitarian Simplicity”, American Catholic Philosophical Quar-
terly (2016): vol. 90, 4, 727-750.
12 S.Th. I, q. 3, aa. 1-2.
13 S.Th. I, q. 3, a. 3.
14 S.Th. I, q. 3, a. 4.
15 See, for example, S.Th. I, q. 3, a. 4, obj. 1 and ad 1, and Summa Contra Gentiles

II, c. 54, para. 10.

16 See the argument of S.Th. I, q. 4, a. 3, echoes Aquinas’ presentation of the sci-

ence of metaphysics in the proem., In Meta. He argues in both places that God is
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184 Thomas Joseph White

is only intelligible for us as the origin and author of all that falls with-
in the transcendental range of being, and not as that which is onto-
logically common to all created being.
Fourth, there exists in God no distinction of substance and prop-
erties (or “accidents”)17. This is due to the fact that properties always
actuate a latent potency in a substantial being. For example, the hu-
man capacity for violin playing is a potency in human nature that is
not actuated in most people but that is actuated over time by a per-
son developing the actual property of that artistic skill. There is
nothing like this in God, who (on Aquinas’ account) does not be-
come more perfect ontologically through his initiatives in regard to
creation, but who is the unilateral giver of being to all that is creat-
ed. Nor does God self-perfect by generating his own developmental
properties over time. God simply is and is perfect eternally. Conse-
quently, we can of course say that God is wise, good, or beautiful,
but we should also add that whatever God is, God is his wisdom,
goodness or beauty. It would be metaphysically absurd for a human
being to say, “I am wisdom”, or “I am he who is”, but in the case of
God, these significations are rigorously correct, even if in saying this
we still have no immediate knowledge of God in himself18. Such af-
firmations are true, and yet the inner mystery or essence of God re-
mains numinous and incomprehensible for us.
How do these four considerations of divine simplicity affect our
understanding of divine beauty? As noted above, divine names im-
ply that God is the cause of perfections in creatures so that perfection
names like beauty can rightly be attributed to God. All that exists is
beautiful, and beauty is in some way an expression of the splendor
of a formal determination or nature. Consequently, the divine nature
or essence may be said to be beautiful, as the transcendent, hidden

known only as the cause of the subject of metaphysics and does not fall under the
subject of that study as its formal object. While metaphysics can consider ens qua ens,
or being that is common to all created realities, it only approaches God as the tran-
scendent cause of the subject matter of its study. Being itself in creatures is not re-
ducible to a particular species or genus and can be known only analogically because
it is present in every essential kind of thing, nor reducible to any essential kind. This
is the case for the other transcendentals as well. But when we speak of what people
call God we speak of the cause of all created being, and so there is another level of
conceptual remove entailed. God is known by analogical significations due to the
ontological similitude between creatures that have being, unity, goodness, etc. and
God who is the origin of these features of reality.
17 S.Th. I, q. 3, a. 6.
18 S.Th. I, q. 13, aa. 3-5.
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 185

cause of the beauty present in all things. However, we must remove

from perfection terms attributed to God any notion of ontological
imperfection (by way of negation) so as to posit them of God in a su-
per-eminent way. Furthermore, beauty was defined in creatures by
recourse to three notions: integrity of form, proportionality or har-
mony, and splendor or radiance. However, in light of the meta-
physics of divine simplicity, we clearly cannot attribute the modali-
ties of beauty we find in creatures directly to God. What might we
say, then, about the beauty of God when employing Aquinas’ Dio-
nysian framework for divine naming?
First, God is not a body or a hylomorphic subject, composed of
matter and form. But beauty as we experience it in physical realities
always emerges in a material form, with its own integrity, quantita-
tive and sensibly qualitative proportions, as well as physical splen-
dor. By contrast, if God is beauty, his beauty is literally hidden from
view. There is no icon of God, no sensate representation of the inef-
fable divine essence. Nor can the formal beauty of God be conceived
after the pattern of a nature or essence abstracted by us from a ma-
terial subject, like the beauty of a human being, a star, or an orange
tree. The immaterial beauty of God transcends all our abstract con-
ceptual notions.
Second, God is not an individual of a common kind, nor is he a
member of a larger genus. Therefore, the beauty of God is not that of
a particular kind of reality19. Rather, it is the uniquely transcendent
beauty that is the cause of all else that exists, the beauty that gives be-
ing to the world20.
Third, God does not receive his existence from others and is not
a member of the transcendental set of all created beings (ens com-

19 In Divinis Nominibus, c. IV, lec. 5, para. 345.

20 Aquinas makes this point quite clearly in In Divinis Nominibus, c. IV, lec. 5,
para. 343 (Marietti): «Excessus autem est duplex: unus in genere, qui significatur per
comparativum vel superlativum; alius extra genus, qui significatur per additionem
huius praepositionis: super […]. Et licet iste duplex excessus in rebus causatis non
simul conveniat, tamen in Deo simul dicitur et quod est pulcherrimus et superpul-
cher; non quod sit in genere, sed quod ei attribuuntur omnia qaue sunt cuiuscumque
generis». «But excess is twofold: one in genus, which is signified through the com-
parative or superlative; the other outside of genus, which is signified through the ad-
dition of the preposition “super” [outside] […]. And although this twofold excess in
caused things does not come together simultaneously, nevertheless it is said in God
simultaneously both that God is most beautiful and super beautiful [beyond all cre-
ated beauty], not that God is in a genus, but since all things which are in any genus
are attributed to God».
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186 Thomas Joseph White

mune). Therefore, the beauty of God is not a part of the transcenden-

tal range of beauty found in all existence. Rather, this beauty is
known only by analogy as the unique total cause of all created exis-
tence, as the beauty that gives being to all else that is beautiful. Nor
can God be alienated from this attribute, because God is not contin-
gently beautiful. Rather this property must be attributed to him eter-
nally and in ontological distinction and independence from the
whole created order.
Finally, there is no composition in God of substance and proper-
ties, and so one must also say that God is his own beauty, and that
in God beauty is identical in some way with being, goodness, wis-
dom and power21. These divine names are appropriately drawn
from distinct features of created reality to denote by analogy some-
thing that is mysteriously one in God himself.

21 In Divinis Nominibus, c. IV, lec. 5, para. 345-47: «sed Deus quoad omnes et sim-

pliciter pulcher est. Et omnium praemissorum assignat rationem, cum subdit quod
ipse est pulcher secundum seipsum; per quod, excluditur quod non est pulcher se-
cundum unam partem tantum, neque in aliquo tempore tantum, neque in aliquo lo-
co tantum; quod enim alicui secundum se et primo convenit, convenit et toti et sem-
per ubique. Iterum, Deus est pulcher in seipso, non per respectum ad aliquod de-
terminatum et ideo non potest dici ad aliquid sit pucher et ad aliquid non pulcher
et neque quibusdam pulcher et quibusdam non pulcher. Iterum, est semper et uni-
formiter pulcher, per quod excluditur primus defectus pulchritudinis, scilicet vari-
abilitas. Deinde, cum decit: et sicut omnis […] ostendit qua ratione dicatur Deus su-
perpulcher, in quantum in seipso habet excellenter et ante omnia alia, fontem totius
pulchritudnis. In ipsa enim natura simplici et supernaturali omnium pulchrorum ab ea
derivatorum praeexistunt omnis pulchritudo et omne pulchrum, non quidem divisim,
sed uniformiter per modum quo multiplices effectus in causa praeexistunt». «But
God is beautiful in every respect and simply. And he [Dionysius] designates the
reason of all the foregoing, when he adds that God is beauty in himself; through
which it is excluded that God’s beauty is not according to one part alone, nor in
some time alone, nor in some place alone; for what is befitting to something accord-
ing to itself and first, befits it wholly and always an everywhere. Moreover, God is
beauty in himself, not with respect to something determinate [according to a finite
form], and for this reason neither can it be said that in some respect God is beauti-
ful and in some respect he is not nor that in some ways God is beautiful and in some
ways not beautiful. Again, God is always uniformly beautiful, through which is ex-
cluded the first defect of beauty, namely of variability. Then when he says “and as
of all beautiful etc.” he shows why God is called “beyond” the beautiful. And he
says that God is excellently and before all others the fountain of all beauty. For in
God’s simple and supernatural nature itself all beauty and every beauty of all beau-
tiful things derived from it preexist, not indeed dividedly, but uniformly through
the mode in which multiple effects preexist in a cause» (Marsh translation, p. 661,
here slightly modified).
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 187

If we return to the three-fold definition, we can consider the

apophatic character of God’s super-eminent beauty. There is integri-
tas in God because the divine essence is one, albeit of a wholly oth-
er order than anything we can conceive of directly. If this form of
God’s very being is identical with God’s eternal truth and goodness,
then surely we may say by analogy that God’s divine form is splen-
did and eternally beautiful.
May we attribute a beauty of proportionality or harmony to the
divine essence? In a human being, spiritual properties may emerge
progressively that are complex and beautiful in nature due to their
proportionate arrangement. A discursive philosophical argument
may be beautiful, due to its integrity as expressed through a com-
plex, proportionate chain of reasoning, attaining to a kind of intel-
lectual splendor or nobility in its true conclusions. But in God, di-
vine knowledge is of a higher order that is non-compositional. In a
human being, a spiritual moral virtue like charity or justice may
emerge over time and appear beautiful in its diverse, complex and
proportionate expressions. But God is eternally charitable and just
and these properties are in some way indicative of the divine
essence as such. Therefore, the beauty of God’s truth and goodness
are simply identical with what God eternally is.
We may conclude then that there is no compositional propor-
tionality of quantity or quality in God and therefore no strict anal-
ogy of beauty between creatures and God in this particular sense.
However, the beautiful proportions of complex created things, both
within themselves and among themselves (as diverse realities relat-
ed to one another) are beautiful by virtue of the existence and for-
mal determinations that God has given them. Therefore, they are
expressive in their created complexity of what must exist in God in
a wholly other, higher, and utterly simple way. The wisdom of God
is eternally beautiful and he expresses this wisdom within the com-
plexity of creation by giving radiantly intelligible forms that are
truly beautiful to so many diverse and complementary beings. The
goodness of God is eternally beautiful and he expresses this good-
ness within the complexity of creation by giving spiritually and
sensibly attractive forms to so many diverse and complementary
beings. The wisdom and goodness of God’s beauty are expressed
outwardly by the giving of existence to the created world, in it in-
nately attractive intelligibility, and in the splendor of its diverse
and manifold created forms.
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188 Thomas Joseph White

3. Created Order as Concealment and Manifestation

of Divine Beauty

By considering God as he who is simple, unchangingly eternal,

good, wise, and beautiful, we can begin to perceive a certain kind of
“creation mysticism” that arises from thinking about the creator. As
the cause of all that exists, God is he who sustains all things in be-
ing, and so he is immanently present to all that exists, or is “om-
nipresent”. In the words of Dionysius the Areopagite, «God is all
things insofar as he is the cause of all things», and in the words of
Augustine, «God is closer to us than we are to ourselves»22. At the
most intimate interior level of all that exists, God is hidden but ut-
terly present as he who gives existence to all that is.
This also means that realities that spring from God, and that are
more manifest to us, are a kind of visible expression or natural
“sacrament” (sign and instrument) of the presence of God. The
beauty and complexity of nature, its immense, intricate order and
vast history, are visible expressions of the infinite hidden wisdom of
God. His divine eternity and wisdom are manifest in the unfolding
effects of time and creaturely history. The creation is the written
tableau on which God expresses his being outwardly.
So too, the human soul is the special expression of the mystery of
God, because the human being possesses intellectual understanding
and moral freedom. Whereas God is infinitely wise and good, the
human soul is capable of becoming progressively wiser and better.
The soul is an image of God, then, a created reality that reflects in a
special way the hidden presence of the omnipresent God who cre-
ates the spiritual soul and upholds it in being. God sustains us in be-
ing and is present in the most intimate depths of our soul, beckoning
to us as rational creatures by the natural attraction of his uncreated
truth and goodness. We are naturally able to think about God and
search for him, he who is hidden in the very depths of our being.
How does this monotheistic vision of creation relate to the ques-
tion of created beauty? From what we have argued it follows that
the created world is a kind of iconostasis of God. On the one hand,
it serves to manifest, however imperfectly, the hidden beauty of

22 Dionysius, The Divine Names V, 4 (PG 3:817). My translation is based on Aqui-

nas’s Latin rendering of the phrase in S.Th. I, q. 4, a. 2: «omnia est, ut omnium causa».
AUGUSTINE, Confessions III, 6, 11: «interior intimo meo et superior summo meo» (more
interior to my innermost and higher than my highest self); translation by the author.
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 189

God. The creation is not God but God is omnipresent within all
things, more interior to them than they are to themselves, as the in-
ward cause of their very being. Consequently, their beauty is a ex-
pression of God’s eternal wisdom. On the other hand, the world of
finite beings is so utterly unlike God and wholly disproportionate to
God ontologically, that it cannot communicate any direct knowl-
edge of what God is in himself. Therefore, the same beauty that is
present in all that exists also conceals God. He remains hidden from
sight, as the unknown ground of creation.
The world that God has created is beautiful in diverse ways, and
a deeper reflection on that beauty is helpful as means of reflecting on
the strangeness and transcendence of divine wisdom, the origin of all
created beauty. Based on Aquinas’ three-fold definition of beauty, we
can note that each thing that exists is beautiful by reason of its inher-
ent form: its integral wholeness, its manifold proportionate proper-
ties and its expressive splendor. As already noted, such formal beau-
ty in things reflects in however faint a way the transcendent beauty
of God, and relates each individual reality, however seemingly in-
significant, directly to God as the primary author of its beauty. How-
ever, there is also an integrity of order between diverse individual
forms of created reality, and a corresponding proportionality and
splendor that emerges from the order that exists between them. From
collective order, natural beauty emerges on a much larger scale.
Beauty is not only in individuals, then, but also in common goods or
in variously arranged, holistic groups of beings, be they non-living,
living, or properly intellectual in kind23. Most especially, the ultimate

23 In Divinis Nominibus, c. IV, lec. 5, para. 340: «est autem duplex consonantia in

rebus: prima quidem, secundum creaturarum ad Deum et hanc tangit cum dicit
quod Deus est causa consonantiae, sicut vocans omnia ad seipsum, inquantum conver-
tit omnia ad seipsum sicut ad finem, ut supra dictum est et propter hoc pulchritude
in Graeco callos dicitur quod est a vocando sumptum; secunda autem consonantia
est in rebus, secundum ordinationem earum ad invicem; et hoc tangit cum subdit,
quod congregat omnia in omnibus, ad idem. Et potest hoc intelligi, secundum sen-
tentiam, Platonicorum, quod superior sunt in inferioribus, secondum participatio-
nem; inferior vero sunt in superioribus, per excellentiam quamdam et sic omnia sunt
in omnibus; et ex hoc quod omnia in omnibus inveniuntur ordine quodam, sequitur
quod omnia ad idem ultimum ordinentur». «But there is a twofold consonance in
things: first according to the order of creatures to God; and he touches upon this
when he says that God is the cause of consonance, just insofar as he calls all things
to himself insofar as God converts all things to himself as to an end, as was said
above, and because of this beauty in Greek is called “kallos” which is taken from call-
ing. But the second kind of consonance is in things according to their order to each
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190 Thomas Joseph White

teleological order that exists between hierarchically differentiated

goods (non-living being, living beings, and rational, human beings)
forms a kind of collective common good that has emerged over a vast
time, and which is itself beautiful in its proportionate diversity. The
universe in its hierarchical dimensions, set against the backdrop of a
vast temporality, reflects the unfolding effects of an eternal wisdom,
an uncreated beauty, which lies hidden behind the ontological “nar-
rative” of finite being as its unseen composer.
The notion of the world of existents as an orderly, beautiful, and
ontologically interdependent system of beings is very ancient in
western philosophy. Perhaps the most seminal text in Hellenistic
philosophy is found is Aristotle’s Metaphysics XII, c. 10, where the
philosopher discusses the goodness of diverse realities in terms of fi-
nal causality, and addresses the way in which their mutually coor-
dinated activities can be understood as a kind of imitation of God,
who is pure actuality, and the primary cause of their being. In this
passage, Aristotle famously compares the world metaphorically to
an army that is arranged under a general, in which all are pursuing
a collective end, but in various ways that are mutually complemen-
tary, so that each reality can achieve its own end only in interde-
pendence upon the others, within a larger collective whole. Just as
the soldiers act in conformity with the governing idea of the gener-
al, so by similitude the beings in the world act in such a way as to
imitate the goodness of the transcendent God who is perfect in actu-
ality. The image is interesting because it suggests not only that all
things can come to their perfection in distinct ways, but that they can
do so only because they depend upon one another non-competitive-
ly, and that in doing so they also approach most ultimately the tran-
scendent perfection of the primary cause, God.
Aquinas uses this idea of collective final causality in the universe
to reinterpret Dionysius on the topic of creation and efficient causal-
ity. Dionysius speaks of God communicating being out of the re-
sources of his own goodness24. Here, the ontology of goodness is un-
derstood primarily in terms of efficient causality. God loves his own

other; and he touches upon this when he adds that God can be understood accord-
ing to the statement of the Platonists that superior things are in inferior things by
participation but the inferiors are in the superiors through a certain excellence, and
thus all things are in all things. And because in all things are found in a certain or-
der, it follows that all things are ordained to the same end» (Marsh trans. p. 359,
slightly altered).
24 DIONYSIUS, The Divine Names IV, 7 (PG 3, 700).
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 191

infinite goodness, and from the perfection of this love, he wills to

freely give being to other realities, as a sheer gift, not to somehow
develop his own potential, but as a free expression of divine wisdom
and goodness. Where Dionysius emphasizes God as the transcen-
dent efficient cause, Aristotle emphasizes the final causality of God:
all things imitate God’s perfection in their own limited way, but do
so also in mutual reliance upon one another. Aquinas joins these two
ideas together25. God gives being to a world in which all that exists
is in some way good and beautiful. This gift of being is the expres-
sion of God’s uncreated wisdom, goodness and beauty. Ultimately,
God’s activity of creation (his transcendent efficient causality) it
most intelligible in light of God’s own final causality. God’s eternal
knowledge of himself and his eternal love of his own infinite good-
ness are the ground of all creation. Creation is a diffusion of divine
goodness, having its deeper ground in God’s own perfect actuality.
Created realities themselves in turn act to imitate God, or even in a
sense return toward God by operating in accord with the innate
structures of their being26. Each form is like God in a given way.
Creatures come to be perfect over time, and do so through mutual-
ly dependent forms of collective existence, or in the context of creat-
ed “common goods” where they can only flourish in ontological so-
cieties of reciprocal causation. However, the whole common good of
the universe exists ultimately for God himself, the uncreated com-
mon good. God is the ultimate end of all things because all things
exist and act to perfect themselves in some real sense in virtue of
God’s wisdom, and in view of God’s ontological intentions for the
universe. This notion of God as a transcendent common good is in-
clusive. There is no rivalry between the final ends of creature and
the final end of God as the common good of the universe. Things
that pursue their own particular ends (such as human beings or an-
imals, to take evident examples) become what God intends them to
be as they attain their own intrinsic perfections, often in mutual de-
pendence upon other realities that in turn act according to intrinsic
natural operations or perfections which characterize them in their
being as well.

25 See in particular S.Th. I, q. 5, a. 4, which comments on the text of Dionysius ex-

plicitly, and In Div. Nom c. 4, lec. 5, para. 352 (on the efficient causality of divine
beauty) and para. 353 (on the final causality of divine beauty).
26 On the beauty of God as the exemplary cause of creation, see In Div. Nom c. 4,

lec. 5, para. 354-355, which follow upon the consideration of efficient and final
causality in the two previous paragraphs.
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192 Thomas Joseph White

Aquinas accepts the basic understanding of created reality as hi-

erarchically differentiated that one finds in classical neo-Platonic au-
thors, Christian and non-Christian alike27. There are realities that
have being and are physical in kind but that are not alive. There are
realities that are physical and living but that do not have knowledge.
There are realities that are living and have sensate knowledge but
have no rational knowledge or deliberate freedom. And there are
beings that are alive and are characterized not only by sensate
knowledge, but also by intellectual understanding and the capacity
to love by means of deliberate freedom. Each of these kinds of reali-
ties reflects something unique about the beauty of God28. At the
same time, each of these kinds of realities can contribute to the good
of the others, but in a hierarchically differentiated way. Aquinas
thinks that it is possible for living things to emerge ontologically
from non-living things, but he also argues that even if such emer-
gence takes place, the specific form of living things is different in
kind from that of non-living realities29. Non-living things exist prin-

27 See, for example, Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 22, where this metaphysical view

of the ontological hierarchy of being is clearly presented.

28 The physical non-living universe does not need living beings in order to reflect

something of the governing wisdom, grandeur and power of God. Its physical mag-
nitude, vastness, intricacy, intelligible historicity, and temporal order all seem to re-
flect something of the divine beauty. But this also is refracted amidst the physical
contingency, ontological fragility, and sheer material and accidental arbitrariness
that characterize much of its internal order. Living beings are unlike non-living
things and like God by virtue of the fact that they are alive, but of course their life is
physical in its realization and not spiritual or everlasting. Consequently, they can be
said to imitate the eternal life of God primarily by reproduction and self-propaga-
tion, a form of ontological persistence through time that resembles the unchanging
eternity of God in a ontologically faint and imperfect but real way. Ecosystems of liv-
ing creatures depend upon one another even when their inhabitants prey on one an-
other or especially in such cases, and evolutionary systems suggest that the realiza-
tion of new differentiations among various living things occurs in great part in reac-
tion to and thus ontological dependence upon the pressures brought to bear from
the operations of other living and non-living things in a shared environment.
29 St. Thomas thinks that it is possible at least in principle for living things to arise

historically from non-living material bodies, even if life represents a principle not
merely reducible to material parts and their quantitative arrangement (S.Th. I, q. 69, a.
2; q. 71, a. 1, ad 1; q. 73, a. 1, ad 3; q. 118, a. 1, sed contra). Consequently, Aquinas is able
to situate a differentiated hierarchy of being (from non-living beings to plants to ani-
mals) within a gradated ontological spectrum that allows for the progressive emer-
gence of higher forms from lower ones. See on this topic with regards to evolution,
Lawrence DEWAN, The Importance of Substance, in Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic
Metaphysics, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, DC 2006, 96-130;
also available on the internet: www3.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/ti/dewan.htm.
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 193

cipally to create a context or setting in which living things can

emerge. Plants exist for the sake of animals, and plants and animals
exist for the sake of human beings. Human beings exist for the sake
of life in community with one another and ultimately for God. The
visible cosmos exists so that human beings may live in pursuit of
union with God by grace, in friendship and society with one anoth-
er, and in harmony with the wider created order30.
The interdependent hierarchy that emerges from differentiated
kinds of beings gives rise to a larger overarching order, one that im-
plies all three notes of beauty. This cosmic and ontological order has
its own relative integrity, and proportionality or harmony between dis-
tinct kinds of beings, and splendor that is present in the ontological
“mystery” of the universe. Distinct kinds of beings are characterized
by distinct operations, and therefore they pursue distinct ends31.
Nevertheless, the distinct kinds of beings we find in the universe can
be seen as profoundly complementary, set within a larger cosmic
and ecological framework. This physical world capable of support-
ing the existence of living things, is capable of becoming a theatre for
human rationality and freedom, where specifically human commu-
nities can flourish. This overarching ontological order is beautiful in
its own way, even if it is strange and vast, and seemingly imperson-
al in many respects. The detection of its deeper purpose can seem
elusive or enigmatic to the human mind.

30 Summa Contra Gentiles, III, c. 22, para. 8-9: “And since a thing is generated and

preserved in being by the same reality, there is also an order in the preservation of
things, which parallels the foregoing order of generation. Thus we see that mixed
bodies are sustained by the appropriate qualities of the elements; Plants, in turn, are
nourished by mixed bodies; animals get their nourishment from plants: so, those
that are more perfect and more powerful from those that are more imperfect and
weaker. In fact, man uses all kinds of things for his own advantage: some for food,
others for clothing […]. Other things man uses for transportation […]. And, in addi-
tion to this, man uses all sense objects for the perfection of intellectual knowledge.
Hence it is said of man in the Psalms (8:8) in a statement directed to God: «You has
subjected all things under his feet”, And Aristotle says, in the Politics I [5: 1254b 9],
that man has natural dominion over all animals. So, if the motion of the heavens is
ordered to generation, and if the whole of generation is ordered to man as a last end
within this genus, it is clear that the end of celestial motion is ordered to man, as to
an ultimate end in the genus of generable and mobile beings» (Trans. by V. BOURKE,
Summa Contra Gentiles III, Hanover House, New York, NY 1957).
31 Aquinas’ understanding of natural end is analogical and quite flexible, mod-

est enough to accommodate even the operations of atoms or minerals as realities

having intrinsically oriented and statistically predictable agency that stems from
their intrinsic forms.
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194 Thomas Joseph White

Aquinas’ hierarchical understanding of reality is inclusive in char-

acter, so that an order of political and religious ethics derives from the
natural order of beauty. The world’s natural beauty ought to be re-
spected and preserved in ways that acknowledge the intrinsic onto-
logical integrity of all lesser realities but also their inclusion within an
order that sustains rational creatures, and their reference to the divine.
How might we think in this respect about the moral orientation of the
human person to the larger world of non-living things and non-hu-
man living things? Four succinct points of consideration are in order.
First, it is legitimate for human beings to make use of non-living
realities and non-human living things in view of the good of the hu-
man community. Human beings have an ontological dignity and
nobility that is greater than that of all other created realities due to
the existence in them of the spiritual soul. Society is rightly warrant-
ed to protect human life at all stages, from conception to natural
death, and this protection includes the obligation to make good use
of natural resources (including non-human animals) for the flourish-
ing of the human community. To deny the hierarchical differentia-
tion of human beings in relation to non-human creatures does noth-
ing to advance the cause of respect for other forms of life or being.
The free conquest of nature by intelligent animals of science and in-
dustry can only be understood and brought into measured employ-
ment by the right use of the philosophical and moral faculties of this
same intelligent creature. The denial that this spiritual element of re-
ality exists in man does nothing positive to advance the project of a
harmonious existence for human beings within the wider context of
their physical and living cosmos.
Second, all this being said, human beings can acknowledge rea-
sonably and freely the deeper order of the cosmos, and its beauty,
and should act accordingly in ways that respect the relative integri-
ty, order and beauty of non-human realities. This ontological in-
tegrity in non-human realities is intrinsic to what they are, not mere-
ly instrumental or anthropocentric. That is to say, non-human reali-
ties do not have an ontological meaning or purpose only insofar as
they are useful to human beings or susceptible to arrangement with-
in a human order. They have being, goodness, and beauty in them-
selves from God the creator that exists independently of the human
community, and that could in principle continue to exist once that
community ceases to be. A theocentric and religious understanding
of cosmic order, and an intrinsicist metaphysical account of the in-
herent integrity and dignity of non-human nature are not rival un-
derstandings but are mutually reinforcing ideas.
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 195

Third, human beings should acknowledge the ontological in-

tegrity of non-human physical and living beings for distinctly reli-
gious reasons, above all, insofar as these realities truly reflect in their
very being something about God, his uncreated wisdom and beau-
ty. To destroy a given species of non-human animal, for example,
due to reasons of economic and industrial expediency, is to destroy
something that has developed through time as an emanation and ex-
pression of uncreated wisdom. It is broadly morally impermissible
to extinguish once and for all any irreducibly distinct species of liv-
ing thing, since each natural kind stems ultimately from the uncre-
ated logos of God, and is in some way a distinctive finite expression
of God’s infinite uncreated beauty32. Likewise, to destroy a large-
scale ecosystem through deliberate negligence is, in some cases, to
harm the common good of the created order in a longstanding and
seriously deleterious way. God is closer to all created realities than
they are to themselves, and sustains them in being as outward ex-
pressions of himself, so that if a large interdependent network of
natural beings is irreversibly damaged or eradicated, one acts im-
plicitly upon the very integrity of God’s creation and his expressions
of divine wisdom.
Fourth, non-human creatures do exist for human beings in some
real sense, to sustain them in being, but also as the mediating format
through which human beings can discover God and live in commu-
nity with other human persons. To destroy aspects of the non-hu-
man creation irresponsibly then can affect the human community it-
self in two significant ways. First, it can do long term harm to the en-
vironment that sustains the human community, not only physically
and materially, but also intellectually and spiritually. In this sense,
an ascetical uses of environmental resources forms part of the way
in which one generation of human beings justly prepares a place for
the next generation. Second, negligent destruction of the environ-
ment can also disfigure those who act against lesser non-human re-
alities themselves, teaching us in turn to misperceive what we our-
selves are as human animals. For example, the purposefully cruel

32 I am not asserting that the extinction of a given species must always be an in-

trinsically evil act. If the last of a species of venomous serpents were threatening a
helpless human child, it would be morally licit to kill the serpent in order to save
the child and perhaps in given circumstances even morally incumbent. But as a
more general principle, the preservation of species types seems morally warranted
as a framing principle for approach human responsibility toward the natural envi-
ronment.
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196 Thomas Joseph White

mistreatment of non-rational animals by a human being (through

abuse or torture) entails a cruelty toward what is animal not only in
another and but also by implication in ourselves. By acting to inflict
pain without just cause, a human agent acts by violence not only
against another but also against his own animality. In doing so,
however, he also acts in turn inevitably against his own rationality,
since the kind of rational agent he is is animal in kind. This specific
example points toward a wider generic point. The person who cal-
lously disfigures the natural world, acts also in an implicitly destruc-
tive way against the ends and aims of contemplative rationality and
responsible human freedom, precisely because the person acts
against the native context (the natural environment) in which our
distinctively human and embodied (non-angelic) rationality and
freedom are meant to flourish.
Finally, there is a fundamentally aesthetic point we should make
regarding the moral value of the cultural admiration of beauty for its
own sake. The transcendentals co-exist in the world with their pri-
vations: being and non-being, unity and multiplicity, good and evil,
truth and falsehood. Where there is real beauty in the world, then,
there is also the possibility of ugliness. The world is beautiful and is
also suggestive of the possibilities of distinctly human forms of arti-
ficial beauty. The natural environment of human beings is a setting
in which human art can develop, as human beings educe artefactu-
al beauty from the natural forms and qualities they find pre-existing
them in the world. The pursuit of humanly formed beauty takes
place against the backdrop of what is naturally given. But the natu-
ral order and its beauty can also be rendered ugly, as can the world
of human artifacts. Magnificent forests can be destroyed unnecessar-
ily and unreflectively to produce a collectively tolerated form of so-
cial suffering that is termed by euphemism “modern architecture”.
The modern world is in many respects a world of terrific ugliness.
Modern moral theory is not typically given to arguing for or against
human actions on the basis of the ugliness or beauty that they pro-
duce, but this suggests a serious failure and perhaps obsolescence
on the part of typical modern moral theory, not a problem with aes-
thetic arguments. Those who make the universe or the human cul-
ture of art into a sphere of ugliness act in ways that are in some way
inhumane and unethical, in the sense that they act against the beau-
ty that is present in the world, or that might be present in human so-
ciety, and because they diminish the degree the overall goodness
that is present in the world and that is possessed by the common
good. A certain kind of respect of nature entails a respect of natural
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 197

beauty and an acknowledgement of its inherent value, against those

who would trivialize its importance or adopt an instrumentalist ap-
proach to the use of nature to its aesthetic detriment. A rightly or-
dered sense of the common good should seek to integrate the order
of artistic beauty and efficiency into the natural order of beauty, and
vice versa. Human beauty can adorn nature, and natural beauty can
exist at the heart of human civilization. The religious acknowledge-
ment of God in community should take account of both these aspi-
rations.

Conclusion

Ultimately a theocentric understanding of beauty interprets the cre-

ated world ontologically in light of God. An anthropocentric account
of the centrality of the human community within the larger cosmos
sees the beauty of the world as being in some way of utility to the
flourishing of the human community. These two visions are not op-
posed to one another. Nor are either of them opposed to a metaphys-
ical and ethical vision of beauty in non-human creatures, one that ac-
knowledges their intrinsic ontological worth and purposes apart
from human beings. The hierarchy of being is inclusive. Human be-
ings should acknowledge the order of nature that pre-exists them
precisely so as to live in the midst of nature with wisdom and aes-
thetic moderation. God’s creative action gives being to all things, so
they can never rightly be understood to exist in ontological or moral
rivalry with God himself. Rather, God who is the unseen and natu-
rally unknown giver of all that exists and of all beauty that is present
in the world sustains creatures in being precisely in their most noble
operations of flourishing and self-realization. In one respect, God
has created the vast, beautiful cosmos and the strange and wondrous
development of living creatures in view of the emergence of human
beings, in whom the created world becomes self-aware and capable
of spiritual love. In another respect, God has created all things in
view of himself, his own eternal goodness. Human beings insofar as
they are metaphysicians can learn to acknowledge, then, not only the
beauty and dignity of the creation that pre-exists them, and their
own hierarchical status within creation, and but also especially the
Creator, the uncreated beauty from whence all things come forth,
and to which they all inevitably return.
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198 Thomas Joseph White

A Brief Christological Epilogue

The analysis I have offered here emphasizes the apophatic character

of our knowledge of God, who is simultaneously manifest (imper-
fectly) and concealed (in great part) from human understanding, by
the beauty of the world. This approach leaves out one key idea: that
God might cross the ontological threshold that distinguishes him
from his own creation, and manifest himself intelligibly and visibly
in created form. That is to say, God can express his own essential
and eternal beauty outwardly by taking on the form of a human na-
ture, by becoming man. The Christian confession of the Incarnation
claims that God has made himself known in a particular way first in
the election of the people of Israel, and ultimately in the person of Je-
sus of Nazareth, who is God made human. That mystery is itself
beautiful by a kind of integrity, proportionality and splendor that
are of a higher order. The human form of Christ- his human life, ac-
tions, teachings, sufferings, execution, resurrection- are all discrete-
ly beautiful, and they in turn both manifest and conceal his divine
form. The divinity of Christ is revealed through his human agency
and his human suffering, which are both obscure and luminous,
plain but also splendid. This theological postscript is important for
thinking about all we have said previously on the subject of divine
beauty and created beauty. There is a third kind of beauty present in
the world that we can know about only in light of revelation: beau-
ty that is both divine and human, existing in one person. The meta-
physics of the Incarnation exists not as an extraneous supplement to
our reflection on the beauty of creation, but as its deepest element. It
is in Christ and the Church that created beauty begins actively to as-
cend into the sphere of the divine. Grace does not destroy nature,
but heals and transforms it. Everything that rises must converge. But
that is a reflection for another day.
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Beauty, Transcendence and the inclusive Hierarchy of Creation 199

ABSTRACT

xxx

Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas have long argued about whether he holds

that beauty is a “transcendental”, that is to say a feature of reality coexten-
sive with all that exists. In this essay I argue that Aquinas can be read to
affirm in an implicit way that there is beauty in everything that exists. This
beauty in turn derives from God, who Aquinas says is beautiful. In the sec-
ond part of the essay I consider what it might mean to speak of a transcen-
dent divine beauty, and what is cannot mean philosophically speaking, giv-
en Aquinas’ other metaphysical commitments with regard to divine sim-
plicity. In the final part I treat the question of how the beauty of the creation
both manifests and conceals divine beauty, and to give special attention to
the topic of hierarchy of perfections in creatures. My argument is that
Aquinas’ hierarchical understanding of reality is inclusive in character, so
that an order of ethical and religious ethics derives from the natural order
of beauty.

KEYWORDS

xxx

TRANSCENDENTALS / BEAUTY / DIVINE SIMPLICITY / HIERARCHY / ENVI-

RONMENTALISM