Q1-4 cont'd (Q4)

OK, so the simple version for all of Question 4 would be something like this:  Everyone agree with Thomas because the alternative is a theological muddle that looks like this and this.  But of course this isn't sporting.

Question. 4 - THE PERFECTION OF GOD (THREE ARTICLES)

Article. 1 - Whether God is perfect?

This is really reducible to the act/potential distinction, again.  If we regard God as we regard a block of wood, then we say He is less perfect than a table, a chair, a bedstead made from the wood.  But it is our narrowing of the question, and our inapposite treatment of God as among the things of the universe, that leads us to err.  Realizing that a craftsman capable of realizing a table from a block of wood is more actual than wood or table, so that the craftsman in some way constitutes the block's potential and the actuality of the table, we realize that it is incorrect to conclude that actuality necessarily results from "being made" or that perfection (full actualization) must be the result of a perfecting process.

Article. 2 - Whether the perfections of all things are in God?

Diversity of perfections in Creation follow from diversity of proportions and resemblances to the divine perfection.  It helps if you keep conceiving of the divine perfection as relentlessly personal and interpersonal.  God has all the perfections of all things in the sense that a craftsman already has all the perfections of a table; and God has all the perfections of all things in the sense that a craftsman already knows the wood block has all the perfections of a table (in potential).  God is the craftsman for whom to think of the wood block, to see the potential table in the woodblock, to make the table real, and to make the woodblock itself real are not finally different things.

Article. 3 - Whether any creature can be like God?

Short version:  Yes, insofar as God has formed them, they are in their actuality impressions of the divine perfection in the matter which God realizes in order to manifest that perfection in these forms.  And insofar as God forms any particular creature to be like God in more complex and interactive ways, some creatures may be seen to be distinctively "in the image and likeness of God."  But this likeness remains awash in the unlikeness between the always already actual being of the Creator and the realized potential of matter-formed creatures.

This non-reciprocal copula of Creator/creature likeness we here first name "analogy."