Thomas Aquinas’s Negative Theology

David Peroutka

Affirmations that concern God have to be negated. Yet ultimately, at the level of „eminence“, affirmations and negations unite. By this eminence, or the negation of negation, Thomas Aquinas intends no silencing of reason but rather a negation of limits (i.e. a negation of negation). The result is a pure and full affirmation that cannot be formulated in a positive way. Thus, paradoxically, the grounding of negative theology is pure and un-limited positivity. This infinite being includes all perfections and these enter here into full coincidence, even though at the finite level they are different and „contradictory“. (Similarly, the square and the circle co-incide if we attribute to them infinite surface.)