Abstract

It is often said that if God exists, he is strongly comparable to what is not divine. In particular, it has been claimed that for God to exist is for a person to exist. In what follows I show how, esteemed theologian though he is commonly taken to be, Thomas Aquinas adopts a strongly different line of thinking according to which we seriously do not know what God is. In doing so, I draw attention to his use of nominal definitions in his arguments for ‘God exists’. I also highlight his teachings that God is simple and that words used to talk about God in subject-predicate sentences always ‘signify imperfectly’.