Peace: A Case Study of Divine Names, Divine Naming, and the Transcendentals

Joshua P. Hochschild

Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Divine Names, ch. 11

[The divine peace] joins all things to its own self, inasmuch as it gives to all things in its mode that they should enjoy this divine peace, both the lowest creatures and whatever is lowest in whatever creature; … for nothing is so low in things that it does not participate in any divine gift, from which participation it obtains that it should have connatural friendship for other creatures and that it should be ordered to God, as to a last end, which is to enjoy God.

              …The divine peace itself proceeds to all things, according as through its likeness it hands itself on to all things, according to the propriety of each thing; and nevertheless it super-flows according to the abundance of peaceful fecundity, namely because there is more power in God for making peace, than there is in things for receiving, and for this reason the emanation of peace from God is above every receptibility of things…

              …Nothing totally falls from the unitio of peace; yet each thing desires and loves what is conformed to itself, yet flees the contrary: for it is impossible that there should be any being which totally flees unitio and desires otherness and discretion, which is according to a fall from natural peace. (from Lectio 2, §912, and Lectio 3, §921)

Francis McMahon, “A Thomistic Analysis of Peace,” The Thomist 1.3 (1939): 169-192

What is important to emphasize in this relation of order to peace is the unity characteristic of ordered things. Ordered things share in tranquillity precisely to the degree of their unity. It is this note of unity which formally gives them peace. That is why, though a being may be devoid of a plurality of parts, it may enjoy peace, and may have this peace to a greater degree than composite natures, insofar as its degree of unity surpasses them.

To link peace with unity, of course, is to carry the problem to the transcendental plane. It is to link peace with a property of being itself. Unity, truth, and goodness are convertible with being. A nature, howsoever low it may be in the scale of reality, participates in these attributes to the degree that it participates in being. The greater its share of being, the greater is its share in the attributes that follow being. But more than this, it is also a fact that as all things desire the preservation of, and increase in, their being, likewise aII things are in quest of unity. And where there is unity, there is peace.

The quest for peace, therefore, is as extensive as the quest for the enrichment of being. Every order of creatures is marked with this pursuit of peace, from the angelic natures down through the rational animals to the lowest order of being, wherein the creature, though deprived of consciousness, seeks through its natural appetite, and in its particular manner, the tranquillity of order. The cosmic sweep of the notion of peace is proper to Christian philosophy. In analyzing the nature and foundations of peace, we are not concerned with some superficial thing in the sphere of reality, but with an element that is part and parcel of the innermost structure of being itself. (pp. 170-171)

Other references:

Carl, Brian T., “The Transcendentals and the Divine Names in Thomas Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92.2 (2018): 225-247.

Meinert, John, “Peace and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas.” European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas 37.1 (2019): 18–34.

Meinert, John, Peace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas: Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2024).

Reichberg, Gregory, “Human Nature, Peace, and War,” in Walter Simons, ed., A Cultural History of Peace in the Medieval Age (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020), pp. 33–50.