Esse Est Essentia

I’d actually like to begin the year by probing a somewhat unexpected topic—medieval philosophy of God—and how it relates to our experiences here. Even if you don’t believe in God at all, bear with me; I’m trying to make a broader point here—entirely unrelated to God. The prevailing philosophy of the High Middle Ages termed itself “scholasticism,” and I think you can imagine what it entailed. Imagine monasteries bursting with debates about “quiddities,” “efficient causes,” “accidentals of the Blessed Sacrament,” etc. Most philosophical inquiries center around milking every possible truth out of the Bible and Aristotlean thought as possible. If you want a taste, open to any page of the Summa Theologica, wherein Thomas Aquinas explained the entire Catholic faith from the ground up. One of his chief inquiries concerned the nature of God. What of this omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent God made him certain of his belief? How could he begin to fathom it? But lo, Thomas tried and tried, poured over every treatise, scoured Jerome’s Bible manuscripts and all his labor came to one conclusion -- esse essentia. God’s essence is his existence.  And herein lies the irony—you probably still don’t know what on Earth he is saying. Nor did I, when I first saw it. But the heart of his message is best conveyed in Exodus. Moses asks how he should describe God to the Israelites. The response? “I am that I am.” And thus we reach Aquinas’ conclusion. God simply is; he is being itself. Nothing more complex than that; unaffected by time, physicality, evil, death, space, anything. Simply the fullness of being itself. Why then, Aquinas asks, do we identify all of these qualities with God? If God simply is, as he has now decided through the most complex line of reasoning imaginable, how can we describe him as all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present? And the reality here was even more startling: we use all of those terms because we really cannot grasp pure being, or simplicity itself. So, really, we are asked to imagine a prism. God is simply the white light shining through, but on the other end, we see many colours—perhaps termed love, presence, power, goodness, knowledge, etc.  And what a shocking realisation that must have been for the greatest minds of the Middle Ages—all of his attempts to analyze God’s components or break down his actions failed, because God was just too simple for humans to understand. The fullness of being itself, and with it, the fullness of perfection, had no complexity to it at all. But therein, Aquinas saw something tremendously beautiful, so beautiful that he devoted the rest of his life to writing about it.  So, why exactly have I spent half of this article talking to you about medieval philosophy? Well, simply put, it was the only way I could surmise to explain what is really a quite simple point—humans, Exonians in particular, tend to overcomplicate things. Like, a whole lot. Like, so much that they would spend half an article writing about the philosophy of God to say why we need to see the beauty in the simple.  And frankly, I see it all over the place on campus. I think we are in some ways trained to over-complicate and to find the mathematically shortest path through which Alex the Geologist can cross the desert, perhaps at the expense of him stopping to enjoy the desert flora and fauna. It is probably also reflected in the way we approach our entire lives at Exeter, telling ourselves that if we just do this one more extracurricular, spend this one more hour studying for the SATs, write the perfect essay, train six months for interviews and plaster smiles on our faces, we will get into our dream college and be happy for life. The reality is much simpler, and it’s staring us right in the face, just like Aquinas’ God was staring right at him through every theory Thomas could devise. And all you have to do to find it is stop and appreciate the Exeter River on a walk. Spend some time in the evenings watching the sun set over the Academy Building, maybe from the comfort of the library. Talk with friends about something while heading down for Stillwell’s in the evening. The point being—stop overcomplicating life. Enough with the labels, and enough with the constant need to do. More than a musician, artist, or writer, you simply are. It would be a shame if you forgot that while surrounded by these majestic views and spending time with these frankly majestic people here at Exeter. So, new students. Soon, you will be visiting club night booths, cramming at 3 a.m. tests you are absolutely unprepared for and trying to stack your college applications from your first day of prep year. And who could blame you, frankly? That’s what Exeter is, or so you will be told. But through it all, perhaps pause for a moment to tell yourself—more than anything, I simply am.