"From God as Absolute Intelligence, follows, necessarily, the concept of God as Absolute Will. He wills what is not Himself freely, because it is not necessary to His perfection and beatitude. From this follows His Omnipotence.
"His Providence is the ordering of all things, both universal and singular, with reference to an end, for it extends as far as His knowledge and causality.
"The casual is with respect to a particular cause, not to the universal.
"Ills, corruptions, defects, are permitted in particular things, contributing to the greater good of the whole." (History of Philosophy—Elmendorf—p. 121.)
"The system of philosophical theology set forth in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, is of supreme importance in Ecclesiastical History, not only as intellectually perhaps the most perfect work of the Scholastic age, but because it has been adopted as the authoritative standard of doctrine in the Roman Catholic Church. Such pre-eminence is reported to have been assigned to Thomas by the saying of his great master, Albert, that he had "put an end to all labor even unto the world's end." * * *
"In the great controversy of the schools, Aquinas cannot be ranked strictly with either the Realists or the Nominalists; his position has been described as an Aristotelian Realist. Like the orthodox in general he ranged himself with the modern section of the Realists, who while holding that Universals—namely, genera and species—are more than mere mental abstractions, and have a real existence, yet limited them to an existence in the individual, and refused to attribute to them any antecedent or independent existence." * * * *
"In this work of buttressing authority by philosophy, and vindicating orthodoxy by the light of nature, as the way was led by Albert, so his greater pupil carried it on to perfection; and the consequence has been that the stately edifice of Systematic Theology, reared in the Church of the West by the labors of the Schools, repose on the foundation laid by the great luminary of Pagan Greece." (Smith's Students' Ecclesiastical History, Vol. II, pp. 512-515.)
Eckhart, Mystic: Born, it is thought, at Strasburg, 1250 A. D. Taught and preached through Germany. Follows to some extent Erigena, tending, unconsciously, to emanistic pantheism. "The inner ground of man's soul is Divine, a 'spark' of Deity; knowledge is a real union of subject and object. The soul's highest power is an immediate intuition of the 'Godhead' transcending the determinate.
"The Absolute is impersonal, concealed even from thought; of the 'Godhead' no predicates may be used; it is hidden in eternal darkness. In the act of self-knowledge, God is developed as the Trinity, the form of 'Godhead' which beholds itself with love;—the subject is the Father, the object is the Son, the love is the Holy Spirit. * * * *
"God is the essence of all essences, which are ever in Him; in sending forth His Son, He sends forth all things (ideal world). In space and time, natura naturata, are the Three Persons of the Trinity, eternal as the world is, but in natura non naturata is only the 'Godhead.'