THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

AQUINAS
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF
 AQUINAS

Edited by

BRIAN DAVIES
AND ELEONORE STUMP
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Oxford handbook of Aquinas / edited by Brian Davies and Eleonore
Stump.
p. cm.—(Oxford handbooks)
ISBN 978-0-19-532609-3 (alk. paper)
1. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274—Handbooks,
 manuals, etc. I. Davies, Brian, 1951–
II. Stump, Eleonore, 1947–
B765.T54O94 2011M
189′.4—dc22 2010029796

135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 CONTENTS

Abbreviations
List of Contributors

Introduction
Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump

PART I HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

1. Life and Works

Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P.

2. Aquinas and Aristotle

James Doig

3. Augustine to Aquinas (Latin-Christian Authors)

Alexander Fidora

4. Aquinas, Plato, and Neoplatonism

Wayne J. Hankey

5. Aquinas and Jewish and Islamic Authors

David B. Burrell, C.S.C.

PART II METAPHYSICS AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

6. Being
John F. Wippel

7. Matter, Form, and Individuation

Jeffrey E. Brower

8. Causation
 Michael Rota

9. The Five Ways

Timothy Pawl

PART III THE DIVINE NATURE

10. God’s Simplicity

Eleonore Stump

11. God’s Goodness

Ludger Honnefelder

12. God’s Knowledge and Will

James Brent, O.P.

13. God’s Impassibility, Immutability, and Eternality

Brian Leftow

14. God’s Omnipotence

Brian Leftow

PART IV ETHICS AND ACTION THEORY

15. Human Freedom and Agency

Thomas Williams

16. Emotions
Peter King

17. Happiness
Brian Davies

18. Law and Natural Law

Michael Baur

19. Conscience and Synderesis

 Tobias Hoffmann

20. Virtues and Vices

Jean Porter

21. Practical Reasoning

Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.

22. The Theological Virtues

Joseph Wawrykow

PART V EPISTEMOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

23. Human Knowledge

Martin Pickavé

24. The Intellectual Virtues

Tobias Hoffmann

25. The Relation of Reason to Faith

Bruno Niederbacher, S.J.

26. Philosophy of Mind and Human Nature

Robert Pasnau

PART VI THEORY OF LANGUAGE

27. Theory of Language

Gyula Klima

28. The Limits of Language and the Notion of Analogy

Brian Davies

PART VII PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY

29. Providence and the Problem of Evil

Eleonore Stump
30. The Trinity
Gilles Emery

31. Incarnation
Michael Gorman

32. The Saving Work of Christ

Rik Van Nieuwenhove

33. Sacraments
Dominic Holtz, O.P.

34. Resurrection and the Separated Soul

Eleonore Stump

35. Prayer
Brian Davies

36. The Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit

Andrew Pinsent

PART VIII AQUINAS’S INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS AND THE INFLUENCE OF HIS

THINKING

37. The Development of Aquinas’s Thought

Giorgio Pini

38. The Influence of Aquinas

Christopher Upham

Chronological List of Aquinas’s Writings

Editions and Translations
Bibliography
Index
 ABBREVIATIONS

CG Aquinas, Contra errores Graecorum

CT Aquinas, Compendium theologiae
DEE Aquinas, De ente et essentia
Diu. nom. Aquinas, Expositio super Dionysium De divinis nominibus
DPN Aquinas, De principiis naturae
DSS Aquinas, De substantiis separatis
DUI Aquinas, De unitate intellectus
In BDH Aquinas, Expositio in librum Boethii De hebdomadibus
In BDT Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate
In CA Aquinas, Expositio super librum De causis
In DA Aquinas, Sententia Libri De anima
In DC Aquinas, Sententia super librum De caelo et mundo
In DMR Aquinas, Sententia de memoria et reminiscentia
Aquinas, Expositio et Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli
In Gal
ad Galatas
In Heb Aquinas, Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos
In Meta Aquinas, Sententia super Metaphysicam
In NE Aquinas, Sententia Libri Ethicorum
In PA Aquinas, Sententia Libri Posteriorum Analyticorum
In Peri
Aquinas, Expositio Libri Peri hermeneias
herm.
In Phy Aquinas, Sententia super Physicam
In Rom Aquinas, Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos
In I Cor Aquinas, Lectura Super Primam Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad
Corinthios
Aquinas, Lectura super Secundam Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad
In II Cor
Corinthios
Met. Aristotle, Metaphysics
NE Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Pol. Aristotle, Politics
QDA Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de anima
QDC Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de caritate
QDM Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de malo
QDP Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia
QDSC Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis
QDUVI Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de unione verbi incarnati
QDV Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate
QDVCard Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus
QDVCom Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de virtutibus in communi
Quodl Aquinas, Quaestiones de quodlibet I–XII
SCG Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles
ST Aquinas, Summa theologiae
Super
Aquinas, Lectura super Ioannem
Johan
Super Sent Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum
 CONTRIBUTORS

MICHAEL BAUR is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Adjunct Professor of

Law, and Director of the Natural Law Colloquium, at Fordham University.
He is the translator of Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right (2000) and
Series Editor of “Cambridge Hegel Translations” (Cambridge University
Press).

JAMES BRENT currently teaches at the Catholic University of America in

Washington, D.C. His primary area of research is Aquinas’s account of the
relation between faith and reason. His article “Natural Theology” can be
found in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

JEFFREY BROWER is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University.

He is the author of a number of articles in medieval philosophy, metaphysics,
and philosophy of religion, and is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to
Abelard (2004).

DAVID BURRELL is Theodore Hesburgh Professor emeritus in Philosophy and

Theology at the University of Notre Dame and Professor of Ethics and
Development at Uganda Martyrs University. His efforts since 1982 in
comparative issues in philosophical theology in Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam are evidenced in Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina,
Maimonides, Aquinas (1986), Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions
(1993), Original Peace (with Elena Malits, 1998), Friendship and Ways to
Truth (2000), and two translations: Al-Ghazali on the Ninety Nine Beautiful
Names of God (1993) and Al-Ghazali on Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in
Divine Providence (2001). Most recently he has published Faith and
Freedom (2004), Learning to Trust in Freedom (2009), and a theological
commentary on Job: Deconstructing Theodicy (2008).

BRIAN DAVIES is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, New York.

His publications include An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (3rd
edition, 2004), The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (1992), Aquinas (2002), The
Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (2006), and Thomas Aquinas on God
and Evil (2011).

JAMES DOIG is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Clayton College and State

University, Morrow, GA. His publications include Aquinas on Metaphysics
(1972) and Aquinas’s Philosophical Commentary on the Ethics: A Historical
Perspective (2001).

GILLES EMERY, O.P. is Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of

Fribourg, Switzerland. He is a member of the International Theological
Commission of the Catholic Church and a member of the editorial board of
the Revue Thomiste. His publications include: La Trinité créatrice (1995),
Trinity in Aquinas (2003), Trinity, Church, and the Human Person:
Thomistic Essays (2007), The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas
(2007), and The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune
God (2011). He is co-editor, with Matthew Levering of The Oxford
Handbook of the Trinity (2011).

ALEXANDER FIDORA is ICREA Research Professor in the Department of

Ancient and Medieval Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His
recent publications include Vincent Ferrer, Quaestio de unitate universalis—
Ma’amar nikhbad ba-kolel (Latin and Hebrew texts with English translation),
ed. with M. Zonta (2010), Domingo Gundisalvo y la teoría de la ciencia
arábigo-aristotélica (2009), Raimundus Lullus: An Introduction to his Life,
Works and Thought, ed. with J. E. Rubio (2008). He is co-director of several
series, such as Herders Bibliothek der Philosophie des Mittelalters and
Bibliotheca Philosophorum Medii Aevi Cataloniae.

MICHAEL GORMAN is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic

University of America in Washington, D.C. He has authored over twenty
articles in philosophy and theology, among them “Questions Concerning the
Existences of Christ” (2011 in K. Emery, R. Friedman, and A. Speer, eds.,
Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F.
Brown), “On a Thomistic Worry about Scotus’s Doctrine of the esse Christi”
(2011 in Antonianum), and “The Essential and the Accidental” (Ratio 18
[2005]: 276–89).

WAYNE HANKEY is Carnegie Professor of Classics at King’s College and

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Chairman of Classics with the
Dalhousie Program in Religious Studies, and Editor of Dionysius. His many
publications include God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as
expounded in the Summa Theologiae (1987).

TOBIAS HOFFMANN is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic

University of America, Washington, D.C. He is the author of Creatura
intellecta: Die Ideen und Possibilien bei Duns Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz
von Mayronis, Poncius und Mastrius (2002). He is co-editor of The Problem
of Weakness of Will in Medieval Philosophy (2006), editor of Weakness of
Will from Plato to the Present (2008), and editor of A Companion to Angels
and Medieval Philosophy (2012).

DOMINIC HOLTZ O.P. is Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical University

of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He was previously Assistant Professor of
Church History and Thomistic Studies at the Aquinas Institute of Theology
in St. Louis, Missouri. His “Carnal Knowledge and Contemplation: Luxuria
and the Intellectual Virtues in St. Thomas Aquinas” appears in In Medio
Ecclesiae: Essays in Honor of Benedict M. Ashley (2007).

LUDGER HONNEFELDER is Otto Warburg Senior Research Professor of

Philosophy at the Humboldt University at Berlin and Director of the
Albertus-Magnus-Institut at Bonn. He is author of Ens inquantum ens: Der
Begriff des Seienden als solchen nach der Lehre des Johannes Duns Scotus
(1979), of Scientia transcendens: Die formale Bestimmung der Seiendheit
und Realität in der Metaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Duns Scotus
—Suárez—Wolff—Kant—Peirce) (1990), of La métaphysique comme science
transcendantale entre le Moyen Âge et les Temps modernes (2002), of
Johannes Duns Scotus (2005), and of Was sollen wir tun, wer will ich sein?
Vernunft und Verantwortung, Gewissen und Schuld (2007) and Woher
kommen wir? Ursprünge der Moderne im Denken des Mittelalters (2008). He
has written a number of articles in medieval philosophy, metaphysics, and
ethics and is the main editor of the Editio Coloniensis of the works of Albert
the Great.

PETER KING is Professor of Philosophy and of Medieval Studies at the

University of Toronto. The author of many articles on and translations of
medieval philosophy, his most recent book is Augustine: On Free Choice of
the Will, On Grace and Free Will, and Other Writings (2010). He has written
several studies of cognitive and affective psychology in the Middle Ages,
with particular attention to the role of Thomas Aquinas; most recently he has
written on the history of medieval theories of the emotions for The Oxford
Handbook of the Emotions (2010).

GYULA KLIMA is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, New York,

and author of ARS ARTIUM: Essays in Philosophical Semantics, Medieval
and Modern (1988), John Buridan: Summulae de Dialectica, an annotated
translation with a philosophical introduction (2001), and Readings in
Medieval Philosophy (2007). His most recent book is John Buridan (2009).

BRIAN LEFTOW is the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian

Religion, Oxford University. He is the author of God and Necessity (OUP
forthcoming), Aquinas on Metaphysics (OUP forthcoming), Time and
Eternity (1991), and numerous articles in medieval philosophy, metaphysics,
and the philosophy of religion.

BRUNO NIEDERBACHER, S.J. is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the

Department of Christian Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck. His main
research interests are in medieval philosophy and in metaethics. He is the
author of Glaube als Tugend bei Thomas von Aquin (2004), and the co-editor
of Theologie als Wissenschaft im Mittelalter (2006).

THOMAS M. OSBORNE, Jr. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Center

for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas (Houston). He has written
many articles on medieval and late scholastic philosophy and is the author of
Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (2005).

ROBERT PASNAU is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at

Boulder. His many publications include Theories of Cognition in the Later
Middle Ages (1997), Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (2002), and The
Philosophy of Aquinas (2003, co-authored with Christopher Shields).

TIMOTHY PAWL is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of St.

Thomas (Minnesota). His main research interests include metaphysics,
philosophy of religion, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Some of his
recent work has appeared in Faith and Philosophy and The Australasian
Journal of Philosophy.
MARTIN PICKAVÉ is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Medieval Studies
at the University of Toronto. He is currently working on a monograph on
medieval theories of the emotions, and with Russell L. Friedman (Catholic
University Leuven) he is editing a Companion to Cognitive Theory in the
Later Middle Ages. His recent publications include “Nicomachean Ethics 7.3
on Akratic Ignorance,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34 (2008) (with
Jennifer Whiting) and Heinrich von Gent über Metaphysik als erste
Wissenschaft (2007).

GIORGIO PINI is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at

Fordham University, New York. His main research interests are in the
thought of John Duns Scotus and later medieval metaphysics, philosophy of
religion, and cognitive and moral psychology. He is the author of Categories
and Logic in Duns Scotus (2002) and Scoto e l’analogia (2002). He is also
the author of a number of articles in journals such as Medieval Philosophy
and Theology, Vivarium, The History of Philosophy Quarterly, and Journal
of the History of Philosophy.

ANDREW PINSENT is Research Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science
and Religion at Oxford University, a member of the Theology Faculty there,
and a Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College. His principal
research interests are in metaphysical problems pertinent to contemporary
science and theology. He is the author of The Second-Person Perspective in
Aquinas’s Ethics: Virtues and Gifts (Routledge, 2012).

JEAN PORTER is the O’Brien Professor of Theological Ethics at the University

of Notre Dame. She previously taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is
the author of numerous articles and four books on aspects of medieval moral
thought and its contemporary significance including, most recently, Nature
as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (2005), and Ministers of
the Law: A Natural Law Theory of Legal Authority (2010).

MICHAEL ROTA is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of St.

Thomas (Minnesota). In addition to his work on Aquinas and on the
metaphysics of causation, he is the author of articles relating to the fine-
tuning argument, the cosmological argument, the problem of human freedom
and divine foreknowledge, providence and evolution, and the problem of
animal suffering. His papers have appeared in the American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, Faith and Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Quarterly, The Monist, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Religious Studies,
and other journals.

ELEONORE STUMP is the Robert J. Henle Professor Philosophy at Saint Louis

University. She has published extensively in medieval philosophy,
philosophical theology, and metaphysics. Among her books are Boethius’s
De topicis differentiis (1978; second printing, 1989), The Cambridge
Companion to Aquinas (co-edited with Norman Kretzmann, 1993), Aquinas’s
Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (with Scott
MacDonald, 1999), Aquinas (2003), and Wandering in Darkness: Narrative
and the Problem of Suffering (2010).

JEAN-PIERRE TORRELL, O.P. is a former member of the Leonine Commission

for the critical edition of the works of Aquinas. He is Professor Emeritus at
the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). His many publications (as
translated into English) include Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His
Work (1996), Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master (2003), and Aquinas’s
Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception (2005).

CHRISTOPHER UPHAM is currently a research student, pursuing a Ph.D. in

philosophy at Fordham University, New York.

RIK VAN NIEUWENHOVE is Lecturer in Theology at Mary Immaculate

College, Limerick. His main areas of research are medieval theology and
spirituality, theology of the Trinity, and soteriology. He is the author of Jan
van Ruusbroec: Mystical Theologian of the Trinity (2003), and co-editor of
The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2005). He is co-author (with Declan
Marmion) of An Introduction to the Trinity (2011).

JOSEPH WAWRYKOW is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of

Notre Dame. His publications include God’s Grace and Human Action:
“Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (1996) and The Westminster
Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (2005). He is co-editor of Christ among the
Medieval Dominicans (1998) and The Theology of Thomas Aquinas (2005).

THOMAS WILLIAMS is Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of

Philosophy at the University of South Florida. He is the co-author, with
Sandra Visser, of Anselm (2008), translator of Anselm: Basic Writings (2007)
and Augustine: On Free Choice of the Will (1993), editor of The Cambridge
Companion to Duns Scotus (2003), and co-editor, with Arthur Hyman and
James J. Walsh, of Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 3d ed. (2010). He has
contributed to the Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (2009), the
Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Action (2010), and the Cambridge
Companions to Augustine (2001), Anselm (2005), Abelard (2004), and
Medieval Philosophy (2003).

JOHN WIPPEL is the Theodore Basselin Professor of Philosophy at The

Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Metaphysical
Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines (1981), Metaphysical Themes in Thomas
Aquinas (1984), Boethius of Dacia: “On the Supreme Good,” “On the
Eternity of the World,” “On Dreams” (1987), Mediaeval Reactions to the
Encounter between Faith and Reason (1995), The Metaphysical Thought of
Thomas Aquinas (2000), Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (2007).
John Wippel is also co-author and co-editor (with Allan B. Wolter) of
Medieval Philosophy: From St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa (1969) and co-
author (with B. C. Bazán, G. Fransen, and D. Jacquart) of Les Questions
disputées et les questions quodlibétiques dans les facultés de théologie, de
droit et de medicine (1985).
THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

AQUINAS
 INTRODUCTION

BRIAN DAVIES
ELEONORE STUMP

THOMAS AQUINAS (1224/25–1274) lived an active, demanding academic and

ecclesiastical life that ended while he was only fifty (or a bit younger). He
nonetheless produced many works, varying in length from a few pages to a
few volumes. Because his writings grew out of his activities as a teacher in
the Dominican Order and as a member of the theology faculty of the
University of Paris, most are concerned with what he and his contemporaries
thought of as theology. However, much of academic theology in the Middle
Ages consisted in a rational investigation of the most fundamental aspects of
reality in general and of human nature and behavior in particular. That vast
domain obviously includes much of what is now considered to be philosophy
and is reflected in the broad subject matter of Aquinas’s theological writings.
The scope and philosophical character of medieval theology as practiced
by Aquinas can be easily seen in his two most important works, Summa
contra Gentiles (SCG) and Summa theologiae (ST). However, many of the
hundreds of topics covered in those two large works are also investigated in
more detail in the smaller works resulting from Aquinas’s numerous
academic disputations (something like a cross between formal debates and
twentieth-century graduate seminars), which he conducted in his various
academic posts. Some of those topics are taken up differently again in his
commentaries on books of the Bible and/or works by Aristotle and other
authors. Although Aquinas is generally remarkably consistent in his several
discussions of the same topic, it is often helpful to examine parallel passages
in his writings when fully assessing his views or the development of his
views on any issue.
Aquinas’s most obvious philosophical connection is with Aristotle.
Besides producing commentaries on Aristotle’s works, he often cites
Aristotle in support of a thesis he is defending, even when commenting on
Scripture. Although he dissents from Aristotle’s views in many places, most
notably those connected to ethics or metaphysics and theology, there are also
in Aquinas’s writings many implicit Aristotelian elements, which he had
thoroughly absorbed into his own thought. He also often adopts Aristotle’s
critical attitude toward theories associated with Plato, especially the account
of ordinary substantial forms as separately existing entities. Nonetheless,
although Aquinas, like other medieval scholars of western Europe, had
almost no access to Plato’s works, he was influenced by the writings of
Augustine and the pseudo-Dionysius. Through them he absorbed a good deal
of Platonism as well.
On the other hand, Aquinas is the paradigmatic Christian philosopher-
theologian, fully aware of his intellectual debt to religious doctrine. He was
convinced, however, that Christian thinkers should be ready to dispute
rationally on any topic, especially theological issues, not only among
themselves but also with non-Christians of all sorts. Since in his view Jews
accept the Old Testament and heretics the New Testament, he thought
Christians could argue some issues with both groups on the basis of
commonly accepted religious authority. However, because other non-
Christians, “for instance, Mohammedans and pagans, do not agree with us
about the authority of any scripture on the basis of which they can be
convinced … it is necessary to have recourse to natural reason, to which
everyone is compelled to assent—although where theological issues are
concerned it cannot do the whole job” (since some of the data of theology are
initially accessible only in Scripture).1 Moreover, Aquinas differed from
many of his thirteenth-century Christian colleagues in the breadth and depth
of his respect for Islamic and Jewish philosopher-theologians, especially
Avicenna and Maimonides. He saw them as valued coworkers in the vast
project of philosophical theology, clarifying and supporting religious
doctrine by philosophical analysis and argumentation. His own commitment
to that project involved him in contributing to almost all the areas of
philosophy recognized since antiquity, omitting only natural philosophy (the
precursor of natural science).
A line of thought with such strong connections to powerful antecedents
might have resulted in no more than a pious amalgam. Aquinas’s philosophy
avoids eclecticism, however, because of his own innovative approach to
organizing and reasoning about all the topics included under the overarching
medieval conception of philosophical Christian theology, and because of his
special talents for systematic synthesis and for identifying and skillfully
defending, on almost every issue he considers, the most sensible available
position.
Because Aquinas developed most of his thought within the formal
confines of thirteenth-century theology, and because this has in turn affected
his place in the history of philosophy and the assessment of his work, some
attention must be paid to the ways in which much of what we recognize as
philosophy was an essential component of what he thought of as theology.
Aquinas devotes the first three books of Summa contra Gentiles to a
systematic development of natural theology, which he saw as part of
philosophy.2 As part of philosophy, natural theology must be based entirely
on “principles known by the natural light of intellect,”3 principles of the sort
that underlie Aristotle’s metaphysics, which Aristotle himself thought of as
culminating in theology (see Aquinas’s interpretation of that thought in the
prooemium to his Sententia super Metaphysicam [Commentary on Aristotle’s
Metaphysics]). In fact, the way Aquinas works in SCG I–III strongly suggests
that he may have thought of natural theology as a science subordinate to
metaphysics, somewhat as he would have understood optics to be
subordinate to geometry.
There is something odd about that project of his that scholars have sought
to understand. By Aquinas’s day, the churchmen governing universities had
overcome most of their initial misgivings about the recently recovered works
of the pagan Aristotle and had acknowledged officially that the study of
Aristotelian physics and metaphysics was compatible with the then
universally recognized availability of revealed truths about God. Medieval
Christians had come to appreciate the ancient philosophers’ attempts to
uncover truths about God on the basis of observation and reasoning alone as
having been justified, even commendable, given their ignorance of
revelation. Although no philosopher in Aquinas’s circumstances could have
justifiably undertaken a new project of natural theology heuristically,
nonetheless, from their point of view no opprobrium would attach to natural
theology taken up expositionally. The aim of such an enterprise would be not
to develop theology from scratch but rather to show, in the spirit of Romans
1:20, the extent to which what had been supernaturally revealed could, in
theory, have been naturally discovered. Such an enterprise is what SCG I–III
seems to represent, in the view of some contemporary scholars.
What Aquinas himself says about his purpose in writing Summa contra
Gentiles suggests that what he wrote had at least its formal cause in his
consideration of the interrelation of philosophy and Christianity. He begins
by writing about the concerns of a wise person, one of those “who give
things an appropriate order and direction and govern them well.”4 Obviously,
such a person has to be concerned with goals and sources, and so the wisest
person will be “one whose attention is turned toward the universal goal,
which is also the universal source,” which Aquinas takes to be God.5
Because this natural theology is oriented as it is, “it must be called the
greatest wisdom itself, as considering the absolutely highest cause of all.”6
Therefore, the highest, most universal explanatory truth must be wisdom’s
concern.
Anyone aspiring to wisdom will attend to metaphysics, since, Aquinas
reports, Aristotle rightly identified metaphysics as “the science of truth—not
of just any truth, but of the truth that is the origin of all truth, the truth that
pertains to the first principle of being for all things.”7 And, as Aquinas says
in an observation that suits his own enterprise, “sometimes divine wisdom
proceeds from human philosophy’s starting points.”8 Nonetheless, since it is
the business of one and the same science “to pursue one of two contraries and
to repel the other … the role of the wise person is to meditate on the truth,
especially the truth regarding the first principle, and to discuss it with others,
but also to fight against the falsity that is its contrary.”9 The truth regarding
the first principle will be the truth about God, supposing natural theology can
show that God exists; and so the explanatory truth associated here with
metaphysics is the truth associated also with theology.
In this pursuit by way of reason, Aquinas must and does shun
“authoritative arguments” of any sort, but he shows good sense in not
restricting himself to “demonstrative arguments” in developing natural
theology. He does, of course, use demonstrative arguments when he thinks
that he has them, but, like almost all philosophers of any period, he
recognizes philosophy’s need for “probable arguments” as well. A
demonstrative argument takes as its premises propositions that explain the
fact in the argument’s conclusion by elucidating its causes (or, sometimes, its
effects), and so it produces, or presents, scientific understanding. A probable
argument, the sort that has always been most prevalent in philosophy, is one
based on premises of any sort that are accepted widely or by experts in the
relevant field; and so one group may be convinced by a probable argument
that another group rejects.
In addition, Aquinas also frequently engages in what has come to be
called philosophical theology, the application of reason to revelation.
Philosophical theology shares the methods of natural theology broadly
conceived—in other words, analysis and argumentation of all the sorts
accepted in philosophy—but it lifts natural theology’s restriction on
premises, accepting as assumptions revealed propositions. This includes
those that are initially inaccessible to unaided reason, such as the “mysteries”
of Christian doctrine. In his many works of philosophical theology, Aquinas
tests the coherence of doctrinal propositions (including the mysteries),
attempts explanations of them, uncovers their logical connections with other
doctrinal propositions, and so on, in order to bear out his conviction that the
doctrines themselves are eminently understandable and acceptable, and that
the apparent incoherence of some of them is only a feature of our initial,
superficial view of them.
Aquinas’s Summa theologiae is the paradigm of philosophical theology.
The very first Article of the very first Question makes it clear at once that it
is not natural theology of which Summa theologiae is a summa, since it
begins by asking whether we need any “other teaching, besides philosophical
studies,” which in Aquinas’s usage means the studies that medieval
beginners in theology would have just completed in the arts faculty. The
question arises because philosophical studies are characterized not only as
dealing with “the things that are subject to reason” but also as encompassing
“all beings, including God,” as a consequence of which there is a part of
philosophy that is theology.
Although Aquinas accepts this characterization of philosophy’s subject
matter as universal and as including a part that is properly called theology, he
offers several arguments to support his claim that revealed theology is
nonetheless not superfluous. In one of those arguments, he claims that a
thing’s “capacity for being cognized in various ways brings about a
difference between sciences.” By this he means that different sciences can
reason to some of the same conclusions on the basis of different premises or
evidence. In his example, he points out that in order to support the
proposition that the earth is round a naturalist uses empirical observations,
while a cosmologist might support that same conclusion on a strictly formal
basis. “And for that reason,” he concludes, “nothing prevents the same things
from being treated by philosophical studies insofar as they can be cognized
by the light of natural reason, and also by another science insofar as they are
cognized by the light of divine revelation. That is why the theology that
pertains to sacra doctrina [in other words, revealed theology] differs in kind
from the theology that is considered a part of philosophy.”10
In this argument, Aquinas might appear willing to concede that revealed
and natural theology differ only in this methodological respect, that they
simply constitute two radically different ways of approaching the very same
propositions about God and everything else. However, he would not actually
concede this. There are propositions that belong uniquely to revealed
theology’s subject matter, simply because the different premises with which
revealed theology begins can also lead to conclusions not available to
unaided reason. And, of course, no doctrinal proposition that is initially
available to human beings only in virtue of having been revealed by God can
be part of natural theology’s subject matter.
On the other hand, no propositions appropriate to natural theology are
excluded from ST’s subject matter. The propositions that belong to natural
theology form a proper subset of those that belong to revealed theology:

It was necessary that human beings be instructed by divine revelation even as regards
the things about God that human reason can explore. For the truth about God
investigated by a few on the basis of reason [without relying on revelation] would
emerge for people [only] after a long time and tainted with many mistakes. And yet all
human well-being, which has to do with God, depends on the cognition of that truth.
Therefore, it was necessary for human beings to be instructed about divine matters
through divine revelation so that [the nature of human] well-being might emerge for
people more conveniently and with greater certainty.11

When he sums up his examination of sacra doctrina, or revealed

theology, Aquinas says that its “main aim … is to transmit a cognition of
God, and not only as he is in himself, but also as he is the source of things
and their goal, especially of the rational creature.”12 Thus, the subject matter
of sacra doctrina, the theology presented in this summa of theology, is the
most basic truths about everything, with two provisos: first, it is about God
and about things other than God as they relate to God as their source and
goal; second, among the things other than God with which it deals, it is
especially about human beings, whose study of theology should be motivated
by the fact that their well-being depends specially on their grasp of certain
theological truths. And, Aquinas insists, universal scope is just what one
should expect in a rational investigation of the truth about God: “All things
are considered in sacra doctrina under the concept of God, either because
they are God, or because they have an ordered relationship to God as to their
source and goal. It follows from this that the subject of this science is really
God,” even though the intended explanatory scope of the science is
universal.13
In referring to sacra doctrina as a “science,” Aquinas means to
characterize it as a systematic, reasoned presentation of an organized body of
knowledge consisting of general truths about some reasonably unified subject
matter. In that broadly Aristotelian sense, it is not obviously wrong to think
of theology as a science (as it would be in the narrower, twentieth-century
sense of “science”). It is in that sense that the science of theology as Aquinas
develops it in ST would now be called philosophical theology, the enterprise
of employing the techniques and devices of philosophy in clarifying,
supporting, and extending the propositions that are supposed to have been
revealed for theology’s starting points. Thus, some of the work of
philosophical theology is an attempt to explain revealed propositions and
systematically work out their implications. Like natural theology, which is
subordinate to metaphysics, philosophical theology is a subordinate science.
However, because it begins its work on divinely revealed propositions,
Aquinas identifies the science to which it is subordinate as God’s knowledge
of himself and everything else, available to human beings directly only in the
afterlife.14 As he says earlier, “For us, the goal of faith is to arrive at an
understanding of what we believe—[which is] as if a practitioner of a
subordinate science were to acquire in addition the knowledge possessed by a
practitioner of the higher science. In that case the things that were only
believed before would come to be known, or understood.”15
Not even the doctrinal mysteries are impervious to rational investigation,
although unaided reason could never have discovered them. Regarding one
central mystery, for example, Aquinas says: “It is impossible to arrive at a
cognition of the Trinity of the divine persons by means of natural reason.”16
However, he says this in the twenty-second of a series of seventy-seven
Articles of ST devoted to analyzing and arguing about the details of Trinity,
in other words, in the midst of subjecting this mystery to philosophical
theology. As he explains in the very Article in which he rules out the
possibility of rationally discovering that there are three divine persons:
 There are two ways in which reason is employed regarding any matter … in one way to
provide sufficient proof of something fundamental … in the other way to show that
consequent effects are suited to something fundamental that has already been posited.…
It is in the first way, then, that reason can be employed to prove that God is one, and
things of that sort. But it is in the second way that reason is employed in a clarification
of Trinity. For once Trinity has been posited, reasonings of that sort are suitable,
although not so as to provide a sufficient proof of the Trinity of persons by those
reasonings.17

Aquinas is also careful to point out that it is not mere intellectual curiosity or
even a defense of the faith that is served by a rational clarification of the
doctrine of the Trinity. In his view, this application of philosophical theology
—confirming faith by reason, showing that belief in the Trinity is not after all
irrational, exposing the intricate connections between these and other
doctrinal propositions—aids one’s understanding of creation and salvation.
The present volume is intended as a guide to Aquinas’s thinking on almost
all the major topics on which he wrote. In 1993 one of us (Eleonore Stump),
together with Norman Kretzmann († 1998), edited a comparable volume,
which appeared as The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas.18 That well-
received volume, however, consisted of only ten essays, contained
comparatively little on Aquinas’s treatment of wholly theological issues, and
had almost nothing to say about Aquinas’s life and influence. The present
book is much fuller. In addition to documenting Aquinas’s life and work, it
includes contributions that explain the Greek, patristic, Jewish, and Islamic
influences on Aquinas’s thought, and it also contains entries that show the
historical reception and development of Aquinas’s views. There are many
more essays exploring the philosophical and theological topics discussed by
Aquinas.
The book begins with a part devoted to historical background. This part
includes an account of Aquinas’s life and works by Jean-Pierre Torrell,
whose Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work is the currently
most authoritative biography of Aquinas.19 It also contains a series of essays
that set Aquinas in his intellectual context. These essays focus on the sources
that are likely to have influenced his thinking, the most prominent of which
(apart from the Bible, of course) were certain Greek philosophers (chiefly
Aristotle), Latin Christian authors, such as Augustine, and Jewish and
Islamic writers, such as Maimonides and Avicenna. The subsequent parts of
the book address topics that Aquinas himself discussed. These include
metaphysics, the existence and nature of God, ethics and action theory,
providence and evil, epistemology, philosophy of mind and human nature,
the nature of language, and an array of topics in philosophical theology,
including Trinity, Incarnation, sacraments, and resurrection, among others.
These parts include more than thirty contributions on topics central to
Aquinas’s own worldview. The final parts of the volume address the
development of Aquinas’s thought and its historical influence.
Although the volume thus aims at being comprehensive, readers familiar
with Aquinas will undoubtedly find that some part of Aquinas’s thought that
strikes them as particularly important is not represented here. Sadly, it is not
possible to do everything in one volume, even a fat one. At any rate, it is
abundantly clear that some compromise is necessary between the ideal plan
of presenting all of Aquinas’s thought and any practicable plan for one book.
We have tried to pick those issues and topics that allow a reader to see
Aquinas’s whole worldview in broad outline and to appropriate in particular
some of its richest and most powerful parts.
Aquinas’s philosophy includes reflection on some basic metaphysical
topics while extending to discussions of what can be known by reason when
it comes to the existence of God.20 He has views to offer on questions such
as “What is it for something to exist?” “How should we distinguish between
things in the world?” “What is it for something to be an individual in the
world?” and “How should we understand causation?” He also has views to
offer on questions such as “Can we know that God exists?” and “Can we give
some account of God’s nature?” Parts II and III of this book try to explain
and comment on what Aquinas has to say by way of answer to such
questions.
Yet Aquinas’s intellectual interests range beyond metaphysics and natural
theology. As the list of topics given above shows, he also had a concern with
many other areas of philosophy as well. Aquinas often insists that moral
philosophy would be redundant if people lack freedom of choice. So Part IV
begins with an account of Aquinas’s views on human freedom and agency,
and it continues with consideration of Aquinas’s approach to happiness, law,
natural law, conscience, virtue and vice, and the theological virtues, among
other things. Part V deals with Aquinas’s theories of human knowledge and
the nature of mind, as well as the relation of reason to faith. Part VI traces
Aquinas’s account of the nature of language and its limits when it comes to
God.
The next part covers topics in philosophical theology. It includes an
account of Aquinas’s views on the problem of evil. Other chapters present
Aquinas’s account of the Trinity, the Incarnation, life after death, prayer, and
the work of the Holy Spirit, among other things. Part VIII focuses on the
progress of Aquinas’s thought and its influence. It includes accounts of the
ways in which Aquinas’s ideas developed over time and the different ways in
which subsequent thinkers have viewed and interpreted Aquinas’s thought.
Finally, any attempt to present the views of a philosopher in an earlier
historical period that is meant to foster reflection on that thinker’s views
needs to be both historically faithful and also philosophically engaged. So the
present book combines both exposition and evaluation insofar as it is
appropriate for any particular contributor to engage in both. It is our hope,
therefore, that this Handbook will prove useful to someone wanting to learn
about Aquinas’s philosophy and theology while also looking for help in
philosophical interaction with it.21
For invaluable assistance in preparing this volume for publication we are
much indebted to Barb Manning, Stephen Chanderbhan, Zita Toth, and
Gideon Jeffrey. We are also grateful to Peter Ohlin of Oxford University
Press for helpful advice and for his patience in waiting for a work that was
longer in the making than we originally expected it to be.

NOTES
1. Summa contra Gentiles, I.2.11; hereinafter SCG.
2. Cf. Summa theologiae, I q.1 a.1 ad 2; hereinafter ST.
3. ST I q.1 a.2.
4. SCG I.1.2.
5. SCG I.1.3.
6. SCG II.4.874.
7. SCG I.1.5.
8. SCG II.4.875.
9. SCG I.1.6.
10. ST I q.1 a.1 ad 2.
 11. ST I q.1 a.1.
12. ST I q.2, intro.
13. ST I q.1 a.7.
14. ST I q.1 a.2.
15. Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate 2.2, ad 7.
16. ST I q.32 a.1.
17. ST I q.32 a.1.
18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
19. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
20. It is often said that Aquinas thinks that he can prove the existence of
God. But he does not. For Aquinas, God’s existence is identical with his
essence, which Aquinas takes to be incomprehensible to us. He does,
however, argue that we might make a philosophical case for “God exists”
being true (on a certain understanding of “God”). For the distinction between
“the existence of God” and “God exists,” see Lubor Velecky, Aquinas’ Five
Arguments in the “Summa Theologiae” 1a 2, 3 (Kampen: Pharos, 1994).
21. Parts of this introduction are revised versions of sections in the entry
“Thomas Aquinas,” by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump,
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge Press, 1998) and a small
section of the prefatory material taken from Eleonore Stump’s Aquinas
(London and New York: Routledge, 2003).
 PART I

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
 CHAPTER 1

LIFE AND WORKS

JEAN-PIERRE TORRELL, O.P.

THE EARLY YEARS

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1224/25 in the family castle of Roccasecca in
southern Italy between Rome and Naples. Of minor nobility, his family was
related to that of the counts of Aquino, from which he would be given his
name. At the age of five or six years, being the youngest son of a large
family, he was offered as an oblate to the Benedictine abbey of Monte
Cassino. His biographers agree that his parents cherished the wish that he
would someday be the Abbot. Aside from a good formation in Latin letters,
the child acquired at the abbey a profound understanding of the Bible and a
solid initiation in the study of Augustine and Gregory, whose influence is
apparent in all of his works. He maintained above all a contemplative
orientation that remains the distinctive mark of his theology.1
Due to troubles caused by the war between Pope Gregory IX and
Frederick II, the young monk was sent to Naples in 1239 at the age of
fourteen or fifteen to begin there his studies at the studium generale founded
fifteen years earlier by Frederick II. Sicily and the south of Italy were, at that
time, the seat of an intense intellectual life that was encouraged by the
emperor. Thanks to the numerous translations of Michel Scot and his school,
Aristotelian science, Arabic astronomy, and Greek philosophy and medicine
were flourishing at Palermo, Salerno, and Naples. Little is known precisely
on these years of Aquinas’s studies at Naples except the names of two of his
professors: Master Martin and Peter of Ireland. They are known well enough
that we can deduce that Aquinas could have familiarized himself very early
with the natural philosophy of Aristotle and his metaphysics, as well as with
the work of the Arabic commentator Averroës and probably also with that of
the Jew Maimonides.2
At Naples, Aquinas made the acquaintance of the Order of Preachers
(Dominicans) who had been there since 1231; he took their habit in the
spring of 1244. This initiative on his part was met with strong family
opposition that was manifested by the kidnapping of the novice and his
imprisonment at Roccasecca for about fifteen months (spring 1244 to
summer 1245).3 Tocco reports that he turned the forced leisure to profit by
praying, reading the Bible in its entirety, and studying the Sentences of Peter
Lombard.4 Two shorts treatises that have long been attributed to this period,
De fallaciis and De propositionibus modalibus, are now known to be
inauthentic. The persistence of Aquinas in his choice succeeded in
convincing his obstinate family. This episode highlights a spiritual
characteristic of Aquinas that would mark him profoundly in his life and his
work. In his writings on religious life, his attachment to the intellectual ideal
(study, teaching, preaching) and to the mendicant poverty of his order is
evident.5
Having been released by his family, the young Dominican was sent to
Paris (1245–48), to the convent of St. James, to continue his studies under the
direction of Albert the Great, who introduced him, most notably, to the work
of Pseudo-Dionysius. He deepened his knowledge of the Ethics of Aristotle
and appropriated the methods of the masters of the arts, whose courses he
appears to have frequented. Sent with Albert to Cologne to found a new
Dominican studium, Aquinas completed his formation as an assistant to his
teacher (1248–52). At the end of that time (or shortly thereafter),6 he taught
Super Isaiam and Super Ieremiam, the first and precious witnesses of his
spiritual approach to the Bible.7

FIRST ASSIGNMENT TO PARIS (1252–1259)

Sent back to Paris by his superiors to take his masters in sacra doctrina,
Aquinas stayed there seven years (1252–59). At first as a bachelor of the
sentences under the master Eli Brunet, he spent two years (1252–54)
commenting on the Sentences of Peter Lombard but did not manage to write
his text until 1256. This “manual,” which had been used in Paris since
Alexander of Hales, groups into four books the divers opinions (sententiae)
of the Fathers of the Church and of the medieval theologians according to the
major subjects of sacred doctrine: (1) the triune God is indivisible in His
essence and in His three Persons; (2) God considered as Creator and His
works; (3) the Incarnation and the Redemption; and (4) the sacraments and
the last things. The commentary of Aquinas is shot through with his personal
views and he does not hesitate to distance himself from Lombard or to
disagree with him. Still a young theologian, he had borrowed a good deal
from his master, Albert, and from his contemporary, the Franciscan
Bonaventure. His concern for documentation, however, can already be
observed by the frequency of his quotations: Aristotle (2,000; Nicomachean
Ethics: 800; Metaphysics: 300; Physics and De Anima: approximately 250),
Augustine (1,500), Denis the Areopagite (500), Gregory the Great (280),
John Damascene (240), and so on. These numbers highlight a feature that
remains constant: Aquinas does not think in a closed box but rather maintains
a dialogue with all of the thinkers available to him. De principiis naturae and
especially De ente et essentia must be attributed to this period. They both
display a strong Avicennian influence.8
Once a master in theology (1256), Aquinas found himself engaged in the
quarrel with the secular masters at Paris (William of Saint-Amour and his
partisans), who were opposed to allowing mendicant religious into the
university.9 Aquinas refuted their arguments in Contra impugnantes Dei
cultum et religionem (1256), where he takes up the defense of his order and
reclaims for religious the rights to study and to teach. This conflict was
prolonged for a while with new adversaries (Gerard of Abbeville and Nicolas
of Lisieux) under different aspects and provoked the publication of two other
works: De perfectione spiritualis vitae (1269–70) and Contra doctrinam
retrahentium a religione (1270–71). Little known, these books uncover the
doctrine of the religious life of the author and throw some light on the
combative character of his personality.10
The primary obligation of Aquinas consisted, nevertheless, in composing
his magisterial commentaries on the Bible; legere was the first charge of the
Magister in Sacra pagina. It is not known exactly which of the books of the
Bible Aquinas commented on during this period (probably some epistles of
Paul), but he was faithful to this obligation during his life and several of his
commentaries have been conserved: aside from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Lamentations, the following courses must be mentioned: (Lecturae or
Expositiones) On Job (Orvieto: 1261–65), On Matthew (Paris: 1269–70), On
John (Paris: 1270–72), On the Psalms (Naples: 1273). It is difficult to know
exactly the dates for the commentaries on the epistles of Paul.11 Long
neglected, these thousands of pages of biblical theology have recently
become the object of growing attention for both their exegetical technique
and their bearing on speculative theology.12 Comprising an important part of
his work, these commentaries must be read and used alongside the systematic
expositions. These latter also give a decisive role to the Scriptures (25,000
biblical citations in the Summa theologiae alone) as they are not merely an
authority amongst others, but the very source and structure of theological
exposition.13 Conscious of the limits of allegorical exegesis, Aquinas
privileged the literal sense, which he judged to be the only sense suited to
theological argumentation. He did not reduce it, though, to the philosophical
sense but included in it the spiritual sense.
The second great obligation of a Master was to hold Disputed Questions
(disputare), either ordinary or public.14 The questions De ueritate belong to
the first category. Each day, after having given the morning lesson, the
master and his bachelor would rejoin their students in the afternoon to
“dispute” on a chosen theme. As the three hours allowed for this active
pedagogy were insufficient to exhaust the subject, they would proceed article
by article; eventually, certain very short articles could be regrouped into one
meeting and, inversely, a longer or more delicate subject could be broken up
into several meetings. The result (objections, replies, and magisterial
determinations) were reassembled later into one text and published together
in final form: a question with a unified answer. The elaboration of De
ueritate was thus spread out over three academic years (1256–59) at about
eighty articles per year, which correspond roughly to the number of days of
teaching. Without being able to give a detailed account of its contents, it can
at least be said that the whole is divided into two sections: (1) truth and
knowledge (q.1–20); (2) the good and the appetite for good (q.21–29). Aside
from the intrinsic interest of the subjects treated, De ueritate is particularly
interesting for following and understanding the thought of Aquinas. On
certain points (providence, Christology, grace, instrumental causality), he had
already changed his opinion from those expressed in the commentary on the
Sentences and he would change his views again in the later works.15
Unlike the ordinary daily disputations proper to the school of a determined
Master, the public quodlibetal disputations only took place twice a year
during Lent and Advent. They took place in two sessions: in the first, and as
their name indicates, the assistants, masters, students, or even curious
onlookers could raise any sort of question (de quolibet ad voluntatem
cuiuslibet). The master would normally allow his bachelor to respond and
would not intervene unless he ran into problem; he would give his
magisterial determination in the second session, which would take place the
next day or several days later.16 Aquinas left two series of such questions: the
first (Quodlibets VII–XI) date from the first period in Paris; the next set (I–
VI and XII) dates from the second period (1268–72). The subjects treated are
numerous (260, with more than 20 for each meeting); the questions of high
speculation are well represented, but the practical questions are not lacking.
The quodlibetal literature is deeply rooted in the life of the university (a
quarrel between mendicants and seculars; the unity or plurality of substantial
forms), but the subjects of private or public morality and of economics relate
also to the pastoral preoccupations of the participants. In the life of the
university, then, is reflected that of the entire era and this makes a fascinating
subject of study.17
Associated with this same era, the Super Boetium De Trinitate is one of
the few testimonies of his own writing (along with a part of the Summa
contra Gentiles and the commentary on the Sentences); it is also the only
commentary of this text of Boethius to be written in the thirteenth century.
While the subject matter of the work makes it eminently theological in
character, this work provides the most extended Thomistic explanation of the
methods of the various sciences.18 Fruit of personal reflection carried out
with pen in hand, the date of this work is uncertain: “somewhere between the
middle of De ueritate and the beginning of Contra Gentiles, either in 1257–
58 or at the beginning of 1259”.19 The same is true for the other commentary
on Boethius: Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus is probably after Super
Boetium, but it is not possible to say more exactly.20 Essentially a work on
metaphysics, the purpose of this short work is to discover whether beings are
good in their essence or by participation; this is why philosophers naturally
begin their study of Aquinas’s account of participation with this work.21

STAY IN ITALY: ORVIETO (END 1259–1265)

At the end of the preceding period (June 1259), Aquinas had to go to
Valenciennes to the General Chapter of the Dominicans to participate in a
commission charged with the task of promoting studies. It is not clear exactly
when he left for Italy, where he went first to Naples (?; 1259–61)22 and then
to Orvieto (1261–65). In this last convent, Aquinas took the role of convent
lector and helped his confreres prepare for the ministries of teaching and
confession. He also brought with him several major works.
The date of the Summa contra Gentiles (SCG) has been the object of
extended research of specialists.23 It is certain that the fifty-three first
chapters were written before he left Paris, that Book I was finished in Italy
between 1259 and 1261, Book II in Orvieto in 1261–62, Book III in 1263–
64, Book IV in 1264–65.24 The work may be characterized as having two
purposes: “to display the Catholic faith” and “to reject the contrary errors.”
The SCG has given rise to the most varied interpretations (philosophical,
missional, apologetical, ecumenical). It is a theological enterprise, as the use
of arguments from authority (Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, the
Symbols of faith) clearly show. The work proposes to study all that human
reason can discover about God:

I. What is proper to God: His existence and His perfections.

II. The procession of creatures from God; that is to say, the act of creation
and its effects.
III. The ordering of creatures to God as their end: providence and divine
governance.
IV. The truths inaccessible to reason and known only by faith: God as
Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word and redemption, sacraments and the
last things.

The order of the first three books clearly echoes the structure Aquinas had
already found in the Sentences of Lombard, and it prefigures the circular
structure that he sets out in the Summa theologiae: all things come from God
and all things return to God under His guidance. It should be said that this
structure also follows Aquinas’s own logic, as was shown by G. Emery.25
Parallel to the SCG and moving back and forth between the two works,
Aquinas wrote the first part of the Compendium theologiae (1–246: De fide).
This “handbook,” written at the request of his friend Raynald, would be taken
back up in Naples in 1272–73, but would remain unfinished.26
At the same time (1263–65), Aquinas wrote Super Iob, which offers a
lovely example of literal exegesis that is used in the service of doctrinal
reflection on the suffering of the just innocent, which suffering is reconciled
with divine goodness: “The entire intentio of the book is to show by probable
reasons that human affairs are governed by divine providence.”27 This was
also the central subject of Book III of Summa contra Gentiles, which was
written at about the same time; it can be seen that Aquinas knew how to
organize his work.
Many other works of more modest size were written at the same time to
satisfy friendly requests: De emptione et uenditione (1262) is on the morality
of lending with interest; Contra errores Graecorum (1263–64) is a study of
the contested doctrines that were given him by Pope Urban IV. To the very
end of this period in Orvieto (unless they belong to the beginning of his stay
in Rome), we can also attribute De rationibus fidei, Expositio super primam
et secundam Decretalem, and De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis,
which are brief explications of the Catholic faith written at the request of
various correspondents.28
From amid these various works, the composition of the Office of Corpus
Christi (1264), which was also requested by Pope Urban IV, must be brought
out. Once contested by the Bollandists, its authenticity is accepted today and
it must be noted that this is an important text for understanding its author’s
Eucharistic doctrine. The authenticity of the hymn Adoro Te, also suspected,
is no longer in doubt thanks to the work of R. Wielockx.29 It is, once again,
at the request of Urban IV that Aquinas undertook the Catena aurea, a
commentary on the gospels with the help of excerpts from the Fathers of the
Church (On Matthew was finished in 1264; Mark, Luke, and John were
completed in Rome from 1265 to 1268). This work reveals Aquinas’s
stunning erudition in the Patristics: he is the first in the Occident to use the
complete corpus of the first ecumenical councils.30 Well versed in the Greek
and Latin Fathers (57 Greeks and 22 Latins), he has an affinity for some
authors: Gregory the Great (2,470 uses), John Chrysostom (3,563 uses in the
scriptural commentaries), but above all Augustine whose considerable
influence (some 10,000 citations in the entire works of Aquinas), which grew
over the course of Aquinas’s work (Sentences: 1,518; ST: 2,801), is
particularly clear on the subjects of the divine ideas (a transposition of a
platonic theme), the Trinity, the fittingness of the Incarnation, the nature of
the soul, beatitude, law, grace and sin, and so on.31 Called a “turning point”
by Weisheipl, the Catena aurea served as a source of references for Aquinas
himself over the course of his career and exerted a great influence on the rest
of the history of theology.32

STAY IN ROME (1265–1268)

In 1265, Aquinas was sent to Rome by his superiors to found an
“experimental” studium at Santa Sabina for some select students of his Order
over whom he would have complete authority.33 According to Ptolemy of
Lucca, Aquinas would have once again commented on Book I of the
Sentences; Ptolemy said he had seen a copy of this work, but he also said that
the manuscript had disappeared. Over the course of the twentieth century, the
researchers of the Leonine Commission found anonymous annotations in the
margins of a commentary on Lombard in a manuscript at Oxford (Lincoln
College, lat. 95). L. Boyle was certain that these were the course notes of a
student of Aquinas that reflect the lost commentary on Book I of the
Sentences. This fragmentary text, which corresponds to Distinctions 1–18
and 23, was recently edited by John F. Boyle who has no doubt regarding its
authenticity;34 other scholars are also of this opinion.35 It is nevertheless
permissible to raise a few doubts: many of the annotations are clearly
Thomistic, but others are not. Those that are authentic, far from representing
a new work and an intermediary stage in the evolution of Aquinas’s thought
presuppose rather the prior existence of the works from which they are
borrowed. The identification of the marginalia with the lost commentary
seems, then, to remain a matter of conjecture.36
By all accounts, the three years in Rome (1265–68) were occupied with
several major projects of which the principal was the beginning of the
Summa theologiae (ST). The writing of this work seems to have been
provoked by the dissatisfaction Aquinas felt after his experience at Orvieto.
To compensate for the insufficient formation received by his young
confreres, he would have conceived a new work that would treat the entirety
of theology, dogmatic and moral, in one organic and ordered whole.
The dates of the writing of the ST were long contested by scholars; here is
what seems to be the most certain. Written in Rome between 1265 and 1268,
the Prima Pars (ST I) was circulating in Italy by the latter date. The Prima
Secundae (ST I-II) was not begun before the return to Paris (1268); according
to an old opinion, its completion was in the summer of 1270,37 but Gauthier
has shown that it was not written until 1271.38 As to the Secunda Secundae
(ST II-II), begun shortly afterwards, it was finished before December 1272. It
was thought until recently that the 20 or 25 first questions of the Tertia Pars
had been written in Paris at the end of the winter of 1271–72, but it seems
more likely that this part of the Tertia Pars (ST III) was written in Naples by
December 6, 1273, the date when Aquinas stopped writing. He had reached
the sacrament of penance.39 The rest, known under the name
“Supplementum,” was written by his disciples and based on his commentary
on the Sentences. Aquinas would have, thus, carried with him the burden of
this work during the last seven years of his life in spite of the other
occupations that he undertook at the same time.40
The structure of the ST has given rise to numerous discussions.41 Aquinas
makes use of a circular structure that leads the reader in a dynamic
movement of the “exit” (exitus) of creatures from the first Principle, Creator
of all things, and their “return” (reditus) to Him. If a Neoplatonic influence is
not to be excluded, it is not to be overestimated either, as this movement is
not a necessary emanation but rather a free creation. Aquinas more likely
found his inspiration in contemplation of God of the Bible, the Alpha and
Omega of all things. Without having exclusive claim to this circular way of
seeing things (it is to be found first in Albert and, to a lesser degree, in
Bonaventure), Aquinas uses it in several of his works where he is able to
integrate into it the contingency of the history of salvation and, above all, the
work of Christ “come from God and [going] to God” (John 13:3).
As to its content, the Thomistic synthesis begins with a sort of preface (ST
I q.1) in which the author explains the nature and the method of sacra
doctrina (a concept with more breadth than our “theology”). The Prima Pars
treats of God in himself in this way: first in the divine essence (q.2–26) and
then in the Trinity of Persons (q.27–43). Contrary to what is sometimes said,
this is not a purely philosophical treatment of De Deo uno followed by De
Deo trino of the Christians, but rather this is the one and only living God of
the Bible known through His works and through revelation that He made of
Himself (cf. Exod. 3:14 and Rom. 1:18 ff.) and at whose service Aquinas
placed all of the intellectual resources he had at his disposal (Aristotle and
his commentators, Boethius and Augustine, among others). This is followed
by a consideration of the way in which creatures proceed from God: creation
in itself (q.44–46); the distinction of creatures: in general and in particular,
according to the good and the bad (q.47–49); spiritual creatures (q.50–64);
the work of six days, which is a commentary on the biblical narrative of
creation (q.65–74); man, in his rational nature and as the image of God
(q.75–102); the government of creation, where secondary causes concur with
the work of God (q.103–19).
The study of the return of man to God begins in the Secunda Pars. This
enormous part is divided into two very unequal parts: first the ultimate end of
this return movement (ST I-II q.1–5: beatitude), then the ways by which the
human being comes to this end or, to the contrary, turns away from it. This
vast category of “ways” stretches out over two volumes. The Prima
Secundae first takes up human actions in themselves (q.6–89), which is to
say voluntary and free actions that are, thus, capable of either good or evil
(q.6–21). Then it treats the passions of the soul (q.22–48). Having come
through Cicero, Seneca, and Ambrose of Milan, the stoic heritage contributes
greatly here. Next comes the interior qualifications of human actions, the
virtues and vices generally (q.49–89), then the exterior factors that influence
human action: law (q.90–108) and grace (q.109–14).
The Secunda Secundae is a detailed reprise of these first things as an
analysis of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love (ST II-II q.1–46), the
cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (q.47–170).
With each virtue is included its proper acts and contrary vices. This is
followed by a study of the charisms and states of life in the Church. This
section is completed by the treatise on the contemplative life (q.171–89),
which corresponds, by provisional inclusion, with the definition of beatitude
at the beginning of the consideration of human action.42
The Tertia Pars is consecrated to Jesus Christ who, in his humanity, is the
way to beatitude. The first section (ST III q.1–59) is divided in two major
sections in which Aquinas studies: (1) the ontology and the psychology of
Christ in the mystery of the Incarnation in itself (q.1–26) and (2) that which
the Word did and suffered in his flesh for the salvation of humanity (q.27–
59). The second section is constituted by a study of the sacraments: in
general (q.60–65), then baptism, Eucharist, penance (q.66–90; the rest is left
unfinished). A third section would have given a detailed consideration of the
blessed life, which man enters through the resurrection of Christ, but Aquinas
died before being able to write this part (the Supplementum, which
sometimes completes certain editions of the ST, was composed by his
disciples based on his Commentary on the Sentences and thus does not reflect
his final thoughts on the matter).
As to its sources, the Thomistic synthesis owes tribute to multiple
philosophies from stoicism (through Cicero and St. Ambrose) to
Neoplatonism (through Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius), but Aristotle is
the dominant authority along with his Arabian (Avicenna and Averroës) and
Jewish (Avicebron and Maimonides) commentators. From a theological point
of view, the predominant influence is that of the Bible and the Fathers of the
Church.
These elements are, nevertheless, only materials and sometimes even
simple instruments for the unified theological project at the service of the
subject to be known: God Himself. Everything else is placed in relation to
Him. Developed above all in the Super Boetium De Trinitate and the ST (I
q.1), this theological theory is at once speculative and practical. Its
contemplative orientation (speculativa) remains within the line of the
intellectus fidei of Augustine and Anselm but, in the service of this end,
Aquinas uses two givens from Aristotle.
The notion of “science” is verified as soon as there is “discourse” in which
reasoning about two given truths puts them into relation with each other: the
first, which is better known, plays the role of the explanatory principle; the
second is dependent insofar as it is the explained conclusion. Little by little,
the whole of revealed truth is thus organized, according to its internal
relations, into a coherent synthesis that reproduces, in a human manner,
something of the intelligibility of the divine design of the world and the
history of salvation.43
The theory of subalternation, also received from Aristotle, is of utmost
importance for the status of this sui generis science: thanks to subalternation,
theology is attached by faith to the knowledge that God has of Himself. It is
situated on the trajectory that goes from faith to the beatific vision: the end of
this scientia (also called sacra doctrina) is contemplation of the first Truth.44
Equally practical, this knowledge is the director of human action, which it
must orient properly and clearly toward its final end, God Himself. ST is not
only a dogmatic reflection centered on the mystery of God; it also develops
an important part of moral theology that treats of human action in an ample
way unequaled until that time.
Not all was equally new in this vast synthesis that takes up and organizes
all that was essential of the theological heritage of the preceding centuries. In
particular, the metaphysical views that underpinned the project provoked, in
that time, lively reactions. The principal merit of the ST was and still is to
make intelligible the internal connections of that which is given by faith. If
some of its “physical” presuppositions (the celestial bodies) hold no interest
today except for historians of thought, most of its elaborations remain part of
the common good of Catholic theology. The treatise on God and especially
the Five Ways to establish His existence, the divine names and the
Trinitarian relations; Creation; the ontology of Christ and the instrumental
character of His humanity; the relations of human freedom to the all powerful
divinity in light of the theology of grace; these are the most remarkable
points of the work.
Two features of the work must be brought out more clearly than is usually
done. First, there is the moral theology in its entirety that shows itself to be
new on two points.

1. It assembles into a single organically structured work all the material

of dogmatic and moral theology. This method stands in sharp contrast
to the manuals of the time.45 Ethics is here torn away from the narrow
confines of voluntarism and passes from a morality of duty to a
morality of virtue and beatitude of profoundly evangelical inspiration.
2. The unification of the treatment of human action in the light of its
ultimate end is an intuition that continues to bear fruit.46

In strict correspondence with the contemplative nature of theological

knowledge, the moral theology of ST opens with a consideration of the
beatitude to which the Christian is called. It could not proceed in any other
way, “because the first Truth, which is the object of faith, being also the end
of all our desires and of all our actions, faith acts through charity in a manner
which, according to Aristotle, the speculative intellect becomes practical by
‘extension.’”47 Completely impregnated with the theological virtues,
theology is therefore able to grow into a spirituality whose main axes easily
stand out: the Trinitarian vocation of man, the image of God, restored to the
image of the first born son, thanks to the first gift of the all present and acting
Holy Spirit. Grace not destroying nature, it is also possible to envisage a
spirituality of creation in which the glorious liberty of the children of God
can begin to flourish.
Second, in the treatment of Christology, Aquinas integrates for the first
time in the Occident the givens from the major Christological councils. His
most original contribution is found in the questions consecrated to the
“mysteries” of the life of Christ.48 Aquinas is the first and only one of the
medievals not only to speak of the principal events that, from birth to death,
mark the human existence of the incarnate Word (the acta et passa Christi in
carne) but to treat them as a structured whole, conceived as an element in his
speculative theology.49 Each mystery is considered in the context of
soteriology along with its ontological and moral implications. Aside from
their theological interest, the pages in which Aquinas examines the role of
the humanity of Christ in the work of salvation methodically and with careful
attention to Scripture and the Fathers have an evident bearing on spiritual
theology. The effects of mysteries of the life of Christ in the one who
receives them opens up rare and fruitful vistas on the Christian life. For, not
only does grace comes to us through Christ; it is also “Christ-molding.”50
The work of Aquinas is not reducible to the ST, but it offers a good
overview of his thought. It must be noted, nevertheless, that even though the
author’s views are strong enough to be found in several of his works, he did
evolve and change on several points. ST may be read most profitably by
keeping in mind that it is the work of a searching spirit. To ignore this would
be to transform it, mistakenly, into a rigid system. For, although it is in fact a
coherent synthesis, it remains open.51
During his stay in Rome, Aquinas not only completed the writing of the
Catena aurea (1265–68), but he also disputed or wrote several Disputed
Questions. The series of ten Questions De Potentia (1265–66) brings into
view two main subjects. The first six questions are brought together around
the theme De Potentia:

1. The power of God in general

2. The generative power of God
3. The creative power
 4. The creation of matter
5. The conservation in being of created things
6. Miracles.

The last four questions pertain to Trinitarian theology:

7. The simplicity of the divine essence

8. Relation in God
9. The divine persons
10. The procession of the divine persons.

If not in its volume, at least in its metaphysical profundity, De Potentia is

comparable to De ueritate and it represents a link of the greatest importance
in the evolution of the thought of the Master. It is not possible to speak of the
Thomistic theology of creation, of divine government, or the Trinity without
having recourse to these elucidations. The twenty-one questions of De anima,
held at Santa Sabina during the school year 1266–67, appear to have been
disputed before a public comprised of more than just the students of Aquinas;
it was the time when Aquinas was writing the corresponding questions of the
ST. As to the question De spiritualibus creaturis, which was disputed or
written the following year (1267–68), it was not published until after his
return to Paris.52
Although its date has long been uncertain, De diuinis nominibus, the
commentary on the treatise on the Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius, is to
be situated sometime after March 1266 in Rome.53 Aside from its own proper
interest, this work offers the occasion of recalling the importance of the
Platonic elements present in Thomistic doctrine.54 This influence is notable
(1,702 citations, of which 899 are from the Divine Names); Dionysius is,
with Augustine, one of the means by which Neoplatonism counterbalanced
what would otherwise be the dominating influence of Aristotle. His supposed
apostolic authority is not imposed in an absolute way on Aquinas. Thus, for
the knowledge of God, although Aquinas retains his theory of the three
approaches (causality, negation, eminence), the apophatism of the Divine
Names is only a step in a much longer and more global approach in which the
positive knowledge of God is admittedly analogical, but real all the same.55
The Dionysian influence is also felt in numerous other themes such as
angelology and the category of sign in the theology of the sacraments.
Dionysius is nevertheless carefully criticized on several key points: for
Aquinas, God is not beyond being but is the Ipsum esse subsistens; being is
prior to goodness, and the axiom Bonum est diffusivum sui is interpreted in an
Aristotelian sense.56
Several responses to theological consultations (Responsiones de 108, de
43, de 6, de 30 et 36 articulis) also date from this time in Rome (1265–68),
as well as the short work De regno ad regem Cypri.57 But the activity of
commenting on Aristotle that Aquinas began around that time with Sentencia
libri De anima must be mentioned. The three books of this work were
finished and spread through Italy before September 1268, but De sensu et
sensato, which completes it, was not finished until 1269 in Paris. As with all
of the commentaries on Aristotle, these books were not taught orally but
were written in order to prepare for the ST.58

SECOND ASSIGNMENT TO PARIS (1268–1272)

Aquinas is to be found back in Paris starting in September 1268; three
reasons seem to have motivated recalling him there.
There had been a renewed outbreak in the quarrel between the mendicants
and the seculars; against the latter, Aquinas would write De perfectione
spiritualis vitae (1269–70) and Contra retrahentes (1270–71). Many
questions from the Quodlibets II–V and several sermons bear witness as well
to this agitation.59
Aquinas also had to combat the conservatives who saw in Aristotle
nothing but a threat to the Christian faith. From the outset of the propagation
of the Physics, the question of the eternity of the world was of concern to
theologians, in particular, to Bonaventure and Pecham. They declared this
thesis inconceivable and thought themselves to have demonstrated that the
world had a beginning. Aquinas held, by contrast, that only faith can show
that the world began and that it is not possible to construct a proof to the
contrary. This thesis was a constant for Aquinas, and it reappeared with force
in De aeternitate mundi (1271): not only had the beginning of the world not
been demonstrated and could not be demonstrated, but it is possible that the
world is eternally created.60 Aquinas placed himself in opposition to the
same Franciscan theologians on the subject of anthropology: in order not to
attribute spiritual activities and animal functions to the same soul, they
postulated the existence of three different souls according to the different
levels of human life: vegetative, sensitive, intellectual. For Aquinas, the very
same soul exercises the triple function of animation because the higher power
of the substantial form includes and realizes the lower power. The unity of
the living being of an intellectual nature that is man is thus more perfectly
assured. The disagreement took place also in Christology: for the
Franciscans, the existence of a forma corporeitatis was necessary for the
numerical continuity of the body of Christ during the three days of his death;
for Aquinas the permanence of the hypostatic union was sufficient to
maintain the numerical identity of the body of Christ between the moment of
his death and that of his resurrection.61
It was also necessary to oppose the monopsychism (only one soul) of the
“Averroist” masters of the faculty of arts (notably, Siger de Brabant and
Boethius of Dacia).62 De unitate intellectus contra averroistas (Nov.–Dec.
1270) is the pivotal point in the controversy. Making use of the most recent
translations of Aristotle and of his commentators, Aquinas shows his
adversaries to what extent their Averroës is opposed both to the doctrine of
Aristotle and to Christian faith and he embarrasses these philosophers by
defying them to give some account of the common experience that “this
particular man thinks” (Hic homo singularis intelligit).63
Despite these various conflicts, Aquinas continued his regular teaching.64
This is the era of Super Matthaeum (1269–1270); Super Ioannem (1270–
1272), one of the most finished scriptural commentaries; a second Lectura in
epistolas Pauli (1271–72; Romans and the beginning of I Corinthians).
Aquinas skipped from Matthew to John because he thought that the first took
the place of the two other Synoptics, whereas the fourth gospel had
something unique to offer: “The other evangelists treat principally the
mysteries of the humanity of Christ; John brings his divinity to the
forefront.”65
Aquinas also disputes and writes the first fifteen questions De malo
(1270–71) finishing Question 16 in 1272. The question De unione Verbi
incarnati is likely most properly placed at the end of this stay in Paris (Spring
1271), but this date is contested,66 as well as that of question De uirtutibus.67
Quodlibets I–VI and XII also date from this period,68 as well as the writing
of the Secunda Pars of the ST in its entirety (1271–72). To this several letters
and theological consultations written at the request of different
correspondents must be added: De mixtione elementorum, De motu cordis,
De operationibus occultis naturae, De iudiciis astrorum, Epistola ad
ducissam Brabantiae, and so on.
Two works stand out from among these, but it is not clear whether they
were written in Paris or in Naples (1272–73). Unfinished, De substantiis
separatis was called “one of the most important metaphysical works of the
Aquinian,” and its first chapter is seen as the most elaborate Platonic
synthesis of Aquinas. As to Super De Causis, which compares Elementatio
theologica of Proclus to the Dionysian corpus, Aquinas was the first to
identify its author with an anonymous Arabic philosopher who had borrowed
a great deal from Proclus.69
The commentaries on Aristotle are worth mentioning separately. The
writing of the following works can be set in Paris: Physica: 1268–70;
Peryermenias: 1270–71; Ethica: 1271–72; Politica I–III: 1272 [?];
Posteriora Analytica I 1–26: 1271–72. Begun in Paris, the other works were
continued in Naples (1272–73), but left unfinished: Posteriora Analytica I
27–II 20; Metaphysica; De caelo et mundo; De generatione et corruptione;
Super Meteora. Although Aquinas was once considered a faithful disciple of
Aristotle, contemporary researchers are more reserved with regard to the
exactness of his commentaries; Aquinas reads the Stagirite in his own way
hoping to stretch him in a Christian direction rather than to recover the
Aristotle of history. Added to the other works, these writings represent an
extraordinary amount of labor; it is likely that Aquinas was aided by several
secretaries.70

RETURN TO NAPLES AND THE LAST YEARS

(1272–1274)
In the spring or at the beginning of the summer of 1272, Aquinas was sent
back to Italy to found a new Dominican studium in Naples. In addition to the
commentaries on Aristotle, he continued working on the Tertia Pars of the
ST (ST III q.1–90) and probably taught a class on the epistle to the Hebrews
and on the Psalms (1–54).71 He recommenced work on the Compendium
theologiae but wrote only a few chapters (II 1–9: De spe). He preached also
to the faithful on the Ten Commandments, the Credo, and on the Pater
(1273).
Thanks to the depositions at the process of canonization in Naples (1319)
and at Fossanova (1321), which are precious to the historian, we know this
last period of Aquinas’s life in greater detail than the rest of his life. His
confreres at the convent describe his life and his person: he became more
peaceful and receptive; his manner of preaching was simple and concrete. He
renewed relations with his family and was designated by his brother-in-law
Roger of Aquila as executor of his will. Due to repeated mystical experiences
and massive physical and nervous fatigue, Aquinas ceased writing and
teaching around December 6, 1273. Called by Gregory X to the council of
Lyon and victim of an accident along the way, he fell ill and died on March
7, 1274, at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova. Canonized by John XXII in
1323, Aquinas would be proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pius V on April
15, 1567.72

NOTES
1. This brief biography presupposes the others done elsewhere, aside from
William of Tocco. Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco
(1323), ed. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1996); see also Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas
Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 2005); Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint
Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 2003); Simon Tugwell, O.P., Albert and
Thomas: Selected Writings (New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press,
1988); and James A. Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life,
Thought and Works (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974; 2d ed. with
Corrigenda and Addenda, 1983) for the necessary justifications.
2. Aquinas, Opera omnia, iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita (Roma:
Commissio Leonina, 1882–), I* 1 (1989), 67*–68*; hereinafter cited as
Leonina.
3. Despite the divergent sources and their apologetical embellishments,
the historical reality of this episode cannot be doubted; cf. A. Tilatti, “La
cattura di Tommaso d’Aquino da parte dei parenti,” in M. C. De Matteis, ed.,
Ovidio Capitani: Quaranta anni per la storia medioevale (Bologna: Patron
Editore, 2003), 345–57.
4. Tocco, Ystoria 10:110–11.
5. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:1–17.
6. According to A. Oliva, Les Débuts de l’enseignement de Thomas
d’Aquin et sa conception de la sacra doctrina. Avec l’édition du prologue de
son commentaire des Sentences. (Paris: Vrin, 2006), 207–24, the first biblical
commentaries must be situated in Paris instead of Cologne.
7. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:18–35; Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., and
D. Bouthillier, “Quand saint Thomas méditait sur le prophète Isaïe,” Revue
Thomiste 90 (1990): 5–47.
8. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:36–53; cf. Alain de Libera and Cyrille
Michon, ed. and trans., Thomas Aquinas–Dietrich de Freiberg, L’Etre et
l’essence, Le vocabulaire médiéval de l’ontologie; commentary by Alain de
Libera and Cyrille Michon, “Point: Essais” (Paris: Seuil, 1996).
9. M.-M. Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint-Amour et la polémique universitaire
parisienne, 1250–1259 (Paris: Picard, 1972).
10. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:75–95.
11. Cf. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:54–59, 120–21, 198–201, 250–61.
12. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap., D. A. Keating, and J. P. Yocum,
eds., Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to the Biblical Commentaries
(London and New York: T. & T. Clark International, 2005); Gilles Emery,
O.P., “Biblical Exegesis and the Speculative Doctrine of the Trinity in St.
Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on St. John,” in Gilles Emery, O.P., Trinity
in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, Mich. and Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2003; 2d ed.,
2006), 271–319; M. Aillet, Lire la Bible avec S. Thomas: Le Passage de la
littera à la res dans la Somme théologique, Studia friburgensia 80 (Fribourg:
Éditions universitaires, 1993).
13. W. G. B. M. Valkenberg, Words of the Living God: Place and Function
of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leuven: Peeters,
2000), 211–27.
14. B. C. Bazán, “Les Questions disputées, principalement dans les facultés
de théologie,” in B. C. Bazán, G. Fransen, J. F. Wippel, D. Jacquart, Les
Questions disputées et les questions quodlibétiques dans les facultés de
théologie, de droit et de médecine, Typologie des sources du moyen âge
occidental 44–45 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 12–149.
15. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:59–69; S.-T. Bonino, Thomas
d’Aquin: De la vérité Question 2 (La science en Dieu), Introduction,
traduction, et commentaire, Vestigia 17 (Paris: Cerf; Fribourg: Éditions
universitaires, 1996).
16. J. F. Wippel, “Quodlibetal Questions Chiefly in Theology Faculties,” in
Bazán et al., Les Questions disputées, 151–222; J. Hamesse, “Theological
Quaestiones quodlibetales,” in C. Schabel, ed., Theological Quodlibeta in the
Middle Ages: The Thirteenth Century, Brill’s Companion to the Christian
Tradition, I (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2006), 17–48.
17. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:207–12; cf. Leonard E. Boyle, “The
Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” in Leonard E. Boyle, Facing
History: A Different Thomas Aquinas (Louvain-La-Neuve: Federation
Internationale des Instituts d’Etudes Medievales, 2000), 13–35 (also The
Thomist 38 [1974]: 232–56); Kevin White, “The Quodlibeta of Thomas
Aquinas in the Context of His Work,” in C. Schabel, ed., Theological
Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages: The Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2006),
49–133.
18. Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Philosophie et théologie d’après le
Prologue de Thomas d’Aquin au Super Boetium de Trinitate. Essai d’une
lecture théologique,” Documenti e Studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale
10 (1999): 299–353.
19. Leonina 50, 6.
20. Leonina 50, 263–64.
21. Cf. Louis Bertrand Geiger, La Participation dans la philosophie de S.
Thomas d’Aquin, 2d ed., Bibliothèque thomiste 23 (Paris: Vrin, 1953);
Cornelio Fabro, La Nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo S.
Tommaso d’Aquino (Turin: Società editrice internazionale, 2d rev. ed. 1950;
3d ed. 1963); G. Casey, “An Explication of the de Hebdomadibus of
Boethius in the Light of St. Thomas’s Commentary,” The Thomist 51 (1987):
419–34.
22. This is the hypothesis of Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, 165–66. Tugwell,
Albert and Thomas, 221, is in agreement on this point.
23. Cf. R.-A. Gauthier, “Introduction” à Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Somme
contre les Gentils (Paris: Editions universitaires, 1993); this book brings to
light and sensibly modifies the first “Introduction historique” by the same
author and that was published in a translation of Contra Gentiles, by R.
Bernier and M. Corvez (Paris: Lethielleux, 1959), 7–123.
24. Leonina 25/2, 486–88.
25. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:101–16, 415; Gilles Emery, O.P.,
“The Treatise of St. Thomas,” in Trinity in Aquinas, 71–120; there are
excellent introductions and commentaries in the French edition: Thomas
Aquinas, Somme contre les Gentils.
26. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Thomas d’Aquin: Abrégé de théologie
(Compendium theologiae), Introduction, Texte latin, trad. Française, et
annotations (Paris: Cerf, 2007), 7–34.
27. Cf. Denis Chardonnens, L’Homme sous le regard de la Providence.
Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon l’Exposition littérale sur le
Livre de Job de Thomas d’Aquin, Bibliothèque thomiste 50 (Paris: Vrin,
1997).
28. Cf. Gilles Emery, O.P., ed. and trans., Thomas d’Aquin, Traités. Les
Raisons de la foi. Les Articles de la foi et les sacrements de l’Église,
Introduction, traduction, et annotation (Paris: Cerf, 1999).
29. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:129–36; R. Wielockx, “Poetry and
Theology in the Adoro Te deuote: Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist and
Christ’s Uniqueness,” in Kent Emery and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., Christ
among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and
Images of the Order of Preachers (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1998), 157–74.
30. Cf. M. Morard, “Thomas d’Aquin lecteur des Conciles,” Archivum
Franciscanum Historicum 98 (2005): 213–365.
31. P.-Y. Maillard, La Vision de Dieu chez Thomas d’Aquin: Une lecture
de l’In Ioannem à la lumière de ses sources augustiniennes, Bibliothèque
thomiste 53 (Paris: Vrin, 2001); M. Dauphinais, B. David, and M. Levering,
eds., Aquinas the Augustinian (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 2007).
32. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:126–38; Weisheipl, Friar Thomas,
163–76.
33. Leonard E. Boyle, The Setting of the Summa theologiae of Saint
Thomas, Etienne Gilson Series 5 (Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1982).
34. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Lectura romana, 1–57.
 35. M. M. Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study.…” Dominican
Education before 1350, Studies and Texts 132 (Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1998),
278–306.
36. Cf. A. Oliva, “La Questione dell’alia lectura di Tommaso d’Aquino,”
Quaestio 6 (2006): 516–21; Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Lire saint Thomas
autrement,” in Boyle, Facing History, xxi–xxiv; Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, 1:45–47 and 413.
37. P. Glorieux, “Pour la chronologie de la Somme,” Mélanges de science
religieuse 2 (1945): 59–98; I. T. Eschmann, “A Catalogue of St. Thomas’
Works,” in E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas,
trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1956), 386–88; Weisheipl,
Friar Thomas, 221–22.
38. Gauthier, Introduction, 80; cf. 65–67; cf. R. A. Gauthier, ed., L’Ethique
à Nicomaque, II, Introduction (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 2d ed., 1970), 128–29,
n. 135. The reason for this date is that the ST I-II relies heavily on the
Rhetoric of Aristotle (more than 100 times) according to the translation of
Moerbeke, which Aquinas did not have in hand until the end of 1270.
Gauthier is in agreement with O. Lottin on this, who placed the Prima
Secundae after q.6 of QDM (end 1270).
39. ST III q.90 a.4.
40. With more or less hesitation, many think that Raynald of Piperno could
be the author of the Supplement but others are more reserved (Leonina 12, p.
xvi ff.); Eschmann, A Catalogue, 388.
41. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:50–156; Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, 2:101–5.
42. For more details on the Secunda Pars, see Stephen J. Pope, ed., The
Ethics of Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002).
43. Cf. Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., Introduction à l’étude de Saint
Thomas d’Aquin, 2d ed. (Montréal and Paris: Institut d’Études Médiévales
and Vrin, 1954), 255–76; Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., La Théologie
comme science au XIIIe siècle, 3d ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1957).
44. Super Sent I, Prol., q.1, a.3, sol.1; Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 2:1–
18.
45. Cf. Leonard E. Boyle, “Notes on the Education of the Fratres
communes in the Dominican Order in the Thirteenth Century,” in R. Creytens
and P. Künzle, eds., Xenia medii aevi historiam illustrantia oblata Th.
Käppeli O.P, t. 1, Storia e Letteratura, Raccolta di Studi e Testi 141 (Edizioni
di storia e letteratura, Rome, 1978), 249–67 (reprinted in Leonard E. Boyle,
Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200–1400 [London:
Variorum Reprints, 1981], Etude VI); Boyle, The Setting.
46. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).
47. ST I–II q.3 a.2 ad 3.
48. ST IIIa q.27–59.
49. L. Scheffczyk, “Die Stellung des Thomas von Aquin in der
Entwicklung der Lehre von den Mysteria Vitae Christi,” in M. Gerwing and
G. Ruppert, eds., Renovatio et Reformatio, (Münster: Aschendorff, 1986),
44–70.
50. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 2:125–52. Cf. also Jean-Pierre Torrell,
O.P., Le Christ en ses mystères: La Vie et l’œuvre de Jésus selon saint
Thomas d’Aquin, Jésus et Jésus-Christ 78–79 (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 1:13–
27.
51. For more on the ST, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Aquinas’s Summa:
Background, Structure, & Reception, trans. Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B.
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005); the ST
continues to inspire numerous studies: D. Berger, Thomas von Aquins
“Summa Theologiae” (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, 2004);
Andreas Speer, ed., Thomas von Aquin, Die Summa theologiae:
Werkinterpretationen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); Rik Van
Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas
Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).
52. Leonina 24/1 and 2; Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:161–64, 427–28.
53. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:127–29, 434.
54. Amid the numerous works in this area must be recalled at least these
few: Vivian Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Sources and Synthesis, Brill Studies in the History of Christian Thought 69
(Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1996); C. D’Ancona Costa, “La Notion de
l’un dans Thomas d’Aquin: Une confrontation des commentaires sur les
Noms divins et sur la Métaphysique,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie
médiévales 64 (1997): 315–51.
55. Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht, O.P., Théologie négative et noms
divins chez saint Thomas d’Aquin, Bibliothèque thomiste 57 (Paris: Vrin,
2005).
56. J. Turbessi, “S. Thomas d’Aquin” in “Denys l’Aréopagite,”
Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, ed. Marcel Viller (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1954), 3:349–56; G. O’Daly, “Dionysius Areopagita,”
Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Müller (Berlin and New York:
Walter de Gruyter, 1981), 8:772–80; Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and
the Metaphysics of Aquinas, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des
Mittelalters 32 (Leiden: Brill, 1991).
57. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:167–71.
58. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:171–78.
59. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:182–84; M. M. Dufeil, “Évolution ou
fixité des institutions ecclésiales: Une controverse universitaire. L’édition
critique de trois oeuvres polémiques de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue des
sciences philosophiques et théologiques 55 (1971): 464–79.
60. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:184–87; Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, 2:227–31. Cf. L. Bianchi, L’Errore di Aristotele: La Polemica
contro l’eternità del mondo nel XIII secolo (Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1984);
T. B. Noone, “The Originality of St. Thomas’s Position on the Philosophers
and Creation,” The Thomist 60 (1996): 275–300; Cyrille Michon, ed.,
Thomas d’Aquin et la controverse sur L’éternité du monde, Traités sur
l’éternité du monde de Bonaventure, Thomas d’Aquin, Peckam, Boèce de
Dacie, Henri de Gand et Guillaume d’Ockam, GF Flammarion 1199 (Paris:
Flammarion, 2004).
61. Cf. SCG II.58; ST I q.76 a.3–4; Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:187–
90; Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 2:252–59.
62. R.-A. Gauthier, “Notes sur les débuts (1225–1240) du premier
“averroïsme,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 66 (1982):
327–74; Leonina 45/1, 218*–35*.
63. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:191–96; Alain de Libera, ed., Thomas
d’Aquin, L’Unité de l’intellect contre les averroïstes, suivi des Textes contre
Averroès antérieurs à 1270, Texte latin. Traduction, introduction,
bibliographie, chronologie, notes et index, GF 713 (Paris: Flammarion,
1994); C. Luna, “Quelques précisions chronologiques à propos de la
controverse sur l’unité de l’intellect,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et
théologiques 83 (1999): 649–84.
64. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:197–223.
 65. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:197–201. Cf. M. Dauphinais and M.
Levering, eds., Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 2005).
66. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “L’Unité d’être du Christ: Etat de la
question,” in Thomas Aquinas, Le Verbe incarné, t. III: Summa theologiae
IIIa Questions 7–15, New edition with translation and annotations (Paris:
Cerf, 2002), 391–402; Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study,” 315–18;
M. H. Deloffre, ed. and trans., Thomas d’Aquin, Question disputée: L’Union
du Verbe incarné (De unione Verbi incarnati) (Paris: Vrin, 2000), 13–27.
67. See also our discussion, in Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:429–30,
on the debated authenticity of two other Disputed Questions, which some
have tried to attribute to Thomas (Utrum anima coniuncta cognoscat seipsam
per essentiam; De immortalitate animae).
68. Table of dates: Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:211.
69. C. D’Ancona Costa, “Saint Thomas lecteur du Liber de Causis: Bilan
des recherches contemporaines concernant le De Causis et analyse de
l’interprétation thomiste,” in C. D’Ancona Costa, Recherches sur le Liber De
Causis, Études de philosophie médiévale 72 (Paris: Vrin, 1995), 229–58.
70. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:224–46.
71. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:250–66.
72. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:267–95.
 CHAPTER 2

AQUINAS AND ARISTOTLE

JAMES DOIG

INTRODUCTION
Aquinas’s relation to Aristotle was that of a theologian to a source of
philosophical doctrines and concepts with whose aid he formulated his
theological synthesis of Christian revelation. The value for theology that
Aquinas saw in Aristotelian thought led him to undertake the composition of
“expositions” and sententiae respecting individual works of Aristotle.
Through these compositions, Aquinas offered his readers the possibility of
greater understanding, as well as recognition of the value of that thought for
theology.
Aquinas chose Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and On Interpretation as the
subjects of what medieval Masters termed “expositions,” that is, studies
proceeding through an explanation focusing on the words of the text being
examined; however, only the exposition on the Posterior Analytics was
completed. As concerns what can be considered the principal works of the
Aristotelian corpus—the Metaphysics, the Physics, the De anima (“On the
Soul”), and the Nicomachean Ethics—Aquinas completed sententiae
(singular: sententia), that is, presentations in summary fashion of the
doctrines he understood Aristotle to propose in each work. While he began
five other sententiae on works of Aristotle, only one was completed, that
treating in succession the two works, “On Sense and the Sensed” and “On
Memory and Remembering.”1
As was true generally of thirteenth-century Masters, Aquinas knew no
Greek but read Aristotle in a variety of Latin translations. While some of
these were made directly from Greek manuscripts, others were based on
Arabic translations several removes from any Greek text. Since the sixth
century, Latin Europe had known Aristotle’s Categories and On
Interpretation in Boethius’s translation, but the remaining parts of the
Organon became available in Latin only by the middle of the twelfth century.
Then too, only in the middle of that same century did Aristotle’s strictly
philosophical works begin to appear in Latin, and even these were at times
only in a partial translation. Moreover, during Aquinas’s lifetime one could
not have found consensus on the exact number or identity of the works of
Aristotle. Nor did Aquinas and his contemporaries have adequate historical
information respecting the relation of Plato and Aristotle, not to speak of
Neoplatonism and its effects on the numerous philosophical works that were
being introduced into the Latin world in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.2
Yet Aquinas’s mastery of the Aristotelian corpus available to him is
evidenced by the “divisions of text” everywhere proposed in his expositions
and sententiae on individual works. By these divisions, he not only proposed
the unity he saw as constituted by the books that together make up a given
Aristotelian work, but he also explained both the flow from chapter to
chapter within each book and the fashion in which Aristotle proceeded from
point to point within each chapter. In his expositions and sententiae on
Aristotle, we encounter Aquinas the teacher intent on explaining both the
doctrine he understood Aristotle to offer and the procedure by which it was
offered. In what follows, it is Aquinas’s interest in the four principle works
of Aristotle’s philosophy and the use of that philosophy in Aquinas’s
theology that is of concern.

THE SENTENTIA ON THE DE ANIMA AND THE

SUMMA THEOLOGIAE
In 1268, Aquinas composed the first of his sententiae, that concerning the De
anima (hereinafter, In DA). Aristotle’s study of the soul is seen to focus on
the substantial form or first intrinsic formal cause that explains both the
possession of life and, remotely, the motions and activities typical of various
types of living beings. The soul is defined as “the first act of a physical,
organic body having life in potency,” and each type of soul, vegetative,
sensitive, and intellective, is examined in terms of the potencies proper to
each. The intellective soul, as “first act,” is the substantial form whose union
with a body proportionate to that soul’s vegetative and sensitive powers
results in the existence of a human being. While some of its powers are
exercised through the organs found in the human body, its intellective power
acts in a manner intrinsically independent of anything material and so is
“separated.”3 As the first act of a human body, the intellective soul is
understood as entailing the individualization in each human being of the
intellective power, just as it insures the individualized vegetative and
sensitive powers.4 Sketched thus in broad terms is the philosophy Aquinas
found in the De anima.
Aquinas’s understanding of Aristotle’s conception of the intellective soul
as the substantial form of a living being differed from what was proposed by
authors enjoying some influence at the time. Masters in Arts and in Theology
commonly considered the intellective soul as a subsistent spiritual form,
complete in itself, that is, a particular reality.5 Many asserted that this soul
was composed of spiritual matter and form.6 For some, each human being
was constituted by several substantial forms, only one of which was the
intellective soul.7 Also proposed was the soul’s presence to itself, a presence
so immediate that the soul could understand itself independently of any
reflection on its activities.8 For some, the soul’s grasp of its nature was
indicated by Avicenna’s Flying Man image: by imagining oneself as created,
suspended in air in such a way that no bodily part experienced sensation of
any kind, one realizes that one exists as a reality totally distinct from
anything material.9 For these Masters, when Aristotle considered the
intellective soul as “first act” of an organic body, he could only have
intended the soul’s role as governing the body much as a sailor governs his
ship.10
Contrary to such interpretations, Aquinas’s In DA proposes that
governance of the body is essential to the intellective soul’s nature, for this
soul is the form imparting to the human body whatever life it has,11 a form
that will always be incomplete if divided from the body that is its own.12
According to Aquinas, the soul’s “separation” from the body is nonetheless
safeguarded; its separation or ability to act with intrinsic independence of
anything material13 accords with Aristotle’s doctrine that an intellective soul,
although incomplete in itself, has a nature not completely exhausted by its
reality as the animating principle of a body.14 Moreover, precisely because
this soul comes into being as the first act of a body, its intellective potency is
limited to knowledge whose source is found in sensation; the soul is not in
any manner present to itself in such a way that it understands itself
independently of reflection on its activity.15
These differences between Aquinas’s understanding of the intellective
soul and other proposals current in the 1260s suggest the goal of the In DA.16
This goal may also be implicated in features characteristic of both Prima
Pars of the Summa theologiae and the In DA, each of which was composed
in 1268. Both works aim at a complete explication of their subject; both
avoid unnecessary detail; both strive for clarity, never offering lengthy
digressions arguing against views contrary to their proposals. As Aquinas
made explicit, the Summa’s simplicity, directness, and completeness were
intentional, for he was offering to “beginners” in the study of Christian
religion all they needed to know on the subject.17 Perhaps the In DA was
intended as a companion piece to the questions of the Summa being
composed at the time, that is, questions respecting the human being, his
intellective soul, the relation of the soul to the human body, and the soul’s
powers.18

THE SENTENTIA ON THE PHYSICS

When in 1268–69 Aquinas offered his sententia on the Physics (hereinafter,
the In Phy), he appears to have been particularly interested in correcting
interpretations proposed by Averroës.19 The In Phy finds in Aristotle a
general study of natural science focusing on mobile being as its subject. The
conception of “mobile being” entails that of “nature,” or intrinsic principle of
motion.20 After Aristotle defines motion as the act of what exists in potency
to a terminus precisely insofar as it is in potency to that terminus,21 he notes
that, while motion depends on the intrinsic material cause of the existence of
mobile being (its prime matter), it is especially the intrinsic formal cause (its
substantial form) that is at the root of motion.22 Place and its opposite, the
vacuum, are investigated, for they concern the most basic type of motion.
Time too is examined in some detail as the measure of motion.23 To avoid
the impossible consequences of an infinite regress in causality, Aristotle
proposes the necessity of including the conception of a first motion that is
caused by a first immobile mover.24 To this point in the Physics, Aquinas
sees Aristotle discussing communia, that is, as showing what is entailed in a
coherent view of the conceptions of motion and of mobile being, given their
definitions.25 But now Aquinas notes that Aristotle turns from communia to
reality in proposing the existence of a first immobile being as the final cause
or goal of the eternal circular motion of the first heaven. The latter, in its
capacity as the first agent cause, is the first intermediary between the first
immobile mover and the temporal motion of the realities of our material
world.26 Such in general is the Aristotle that Aquinas proposes in his In Phy.
In addition to criticizing Averroës, the In Phy contains a critique of
Aristotle’s notions of the first final and agent causes. The proof of eternal
motion is said to lack efficacy insofar as Aristotle’s arguments assume what
they conclude, namely, that every mobile being that begins to undergo
motion has itself been produced through a previous motion, and that every
moment of time marking the beginning of a motion is preceded by a previous
moment. Aquinas insists that Aristotle was misled by his imagination; every
moment of time, every beginning of motion, was imagined as preceded by,
respectively, a previous moment of time and a prior motion. Aquinas notes
too that Aristotle’s proposal in the Metaphysics of a first cause of being as
such, when added to Aristotle’s distinction between an agent acting by will
and an agent acting by nature, should have led the latter to recognize as
possible that the eternal immobile first mover could simultaneously be the
first agent that, acting by will, brings into being the first motion and so, the
first moment of time.27
Aquinas offered these criticisms while carefully explaining Aristotle’s
text. It is as if Aquinas wished to present a completely detailed and brief
interpretation of the Physics, while simultaneously reducing the danger that
some might feel on encountering Aristotle’s doctrines of the immobile first
mover.

THE SENTENTIA ON THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

AND THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE
In 1271–72, Aquinas composed both Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae
and the sententia on the Nicomachean Ethics (hereinafter, the In NE), both
treatises on morality. In this sententia, Aquinas explains that Aristotle
presents the first part of moral science insofar as he discusses only the life of
the individual human being as an agent voluntarily acting for an end through
the performance of virtuous activity.28 That ultimate end, termed
“happiness,” consists in the pleasurable activity of man’s supreme power,
namely, his contemplative intellect,29 yet activity exercised within a society
governed by the appropriate laws.30 Moreover, this pleasure must be
complete and self-sufficient if it is to satisfy the human person’s natural
appetite for happiness.31 Yet as Aristotle remarks, complete happiness
sufficient of itself to satisfy human nature’s longing is finally unattainable.
Hence, Aristotle concludes by asserting that only imperfect happiness is
attainable in this life. That is, human beings can only be “blessed as men.”32
This conclusion, while a necessary element of the moral science Aquinas
saw in the Nicomachean Ethics, is also an element of Aquinas’s theological
view where it is incorporated with the Christian notion of an afterlife in
which perfect happiness is had through union with God. Yet in the In NE,
Aquinas leaves unstated any reference to this Christian belief. This silence
accords with what appears to be the goal of the work. In this regard, a
parallel can be noted between, on the one hand, the relation of Aquinas’s In
NE to Secunda Pars of the Summa theologiae and, on the other, the relation
of his In DA to Prima Pars of that work. Both sententiae present the
Aristotelian concepts and doctrines that function fundamentally in the
respective sections of the Summa. Just as in the Summa’s Prima Pars, the De
anima provides the philosophical material so fundamental to Aquinas’s
theological exposition of the human person, so in Secunda Pars, the
Nicomachean Ethics provides the philosophical foundation of his analysis of
the human virtuous activity that, elevated by grace, orients the human person
toward the ultimate happiness envisioned in Christian revelation. Just as the
In DA reveals Aquinas standing almost alone in his understanding of
Aristotle’s vision of the intellective soul, so the In NE presents a view of
Aristotle’s intent at odds with the other two principal interpretations current
at the time. Those interpretations, by Averroës and Albert the Great,
considered Aristotle’s discussion of virtuous activity as depicting a morality
oriented to happiness within human society, rather than morality directed
toward the ultimate happiness to which human nature is oriented.33 Similar to
what was noted above regarding Aquinas’s presentation of his reading of the
De anima, one suspects his In NE was intended as a companion piece to
Secunda Pars of the Summa, a “handbook,” so to speak, justifying his
understanding of the Aristotelian concepts and doctrines employed in such a
basic manner in the latter.

THE SENTENTIA ON THE METAPHYSICS

The sententia on the Metaphysics (hereinafter, the In Meta) was
chronologically the last on a work of Aristotle fundamental to Aquinas’s
theological synthesis.34 Aristotle is shown to develop “wisdom” or the
“cognition of truth” had through knowledge of the first causes and principles
of reality.35 Wisdom clarifies the concepts common to all types of cognition,
“substance,” say, or “principle,” although its subject matter is being as
such.36 In this context, wisdom establishes the existence and the essence of
the subjects of all subordinate sciences, while leaving to the latter the study
of their subjects on the basis of information gathered through the senses.37
Substance, the principal type of being,38 is understood to have as its intrinsic
principles prime matter and substantial form.39 The first agent and final
causes of being as such are investigated when the science turns to eternal
sensible substances. The doctrines of the latter causes are similar to those
proposed in the Physics,40 although Aristotle adds that the first mover is an
intellect identical to the intellection of itself, knowing nothing except itself.41
In addition to the above, Aquinas announces in the In Meta his own
doctrine of esse (to-be, or being) as the intrinsic principle, which, united to
essence, constitutes a substantial being as real.42 Additionally, Aristotle is
said to propose a first cause of being, as well as a first cause of motion.43
Finally, Aristotle’s doctrines of the ultimate final and agent causes are
criticized just as they were earlier in the In Phy, although much more
briefly.44
In regard to the doctrine of esse, given its role in Aquinas’s theological
writings, one supposes that the reader of the In Meta is being invited to adopt
as philosophically valid a transformed Aristotelian position on being. For
instance, Aristotle speaks of the intellective soul as giving being to matter,
resulting in the existence of a human being.45 Aquinas would be inviting his
readers to consider the human soul as only the formal cause of the specific
type of reality had in a human being; only through a principle of esse,
proportionate to the human soul, would there exist an individual human
being.46
Aquinas’s claim that Aristotle asserts a first cause of being, and not only
of motion, points to the importance of consulting both the Latin translations
of Aristotle known to Aquinas and his very careful reading of them. In the
present case, each of four translations of the Metaphysics used by Aquinas
appears to justify his interpretation. For instance, one translation reads: “Nor
is something the cause whereby they [i.e., the truest and the greatest of
beings] exist, but they are the causes whereby others (exist).”47
Aristotle’s argument that the first mover can know only itself supposed
that knowing something other than itself would be an imperfection. Aquinas
responded that in knowing himself, God would know all reality as the effect
of his causality; however, as long as God does not rest enjoyably in
knowledge of creatures, no imperfection is had.48
In both the In Meta and the In Phy, Aquinas presents Aristotle’s
distinction between prime matter and substantial form. In the Physics,
Aristotle is said to examine the universal notion of the coming-to-be of
material substances. In contrast, in the Metaphysics an examination of “the
way of predication” is noted as Aristotle’s procedure in comparing the
diverse contents of knowledge expressed through predicates used
“denominatively,” that is, when they “name” a subject. In the example
offered, “This material thing is a man,” the predicate “man” expresses or
“names” the totality of the intelligibility proper to an individual such as
Socrates. Other possible predicates, such as “white” or “large” express
something much less intelligible. Accordingly, Aristotle concludes that a
being is constituted by the union of a meaningless subject or matter—
signified by “this material thing”—and the human essence signified by
“man.” As is true of every essence, its intelligibility is traced to its form.49
The same “way of predication” is central to Aquinas’s understanding of
the clarification of “common” concepts that constitutes Metaphysics V.
Whether the concept is “being” or “principle,” “habitus” or “act,” or any
other of the more than thirty terms studied, Aquinas clarifies its meaning by
noting the ways in which it is used to name something.
Also clearly evident in Aquinas’s In Meta is his intent to oppose
interpretations basic to the commentaries on the Metaphysics by Averroës
and Albert the Great, as well as doctrines found in Avicenna’s First
Philosophy.50 Given this situation, as well as the evident use throughout
Aquinas’s theology of the common concepts clarified in the Metaphysics,
one supposes that Aquinas intended the In Meta as a presentation of the
science of wisdom that he found so useful in synthesizing Christian
revelation.

ARISTOTLE AND THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE

The principal instance of Aquinas’s theological synthesis, his Summa
theologiae, presents in easily recognizable form multiple examples of the
presence of Aristotelian doctrines and concepts similar to those just
mentioned in regard to the In Meta. Then too, this theological synthesis is
conceived in accord with what Aquinas saw the Metaphysics propose
concerning a subordinate science, that is, a study whose legitimacy and
principles are established by a superior science, in this case, by divine
knowledge and the revelation of the divine intention for humankind.51 In its
second question, the licit character of the proofs of God’s existence is
guaranteed by their adherence to the requirements of Aristotle’s
“demonstration of the fact.”52 In the fourth proof for the existence of God,
Aristotle’s authority is explicitly cited respecting the crucial basis of the
argument.53 One might continue working through the Summa in this way.
Yet alongside the straightforward use of Aristotelian concepts and doctrines,
the Summa employs the methodology Aquinas recognized in the Metaphysics
when Aristotle studied not only the matter–form distinction but, more
important, the common concepts.54
Are human terms appropriately used in speaking of God? The Summa’s
response reveals the metaphysician investigating “the way of predication.”
Human intellectual knowledge, Aquinas explains, is built on terms used to
signify things in one of two ways. Some terms signify concretely for they
signify complete, subsisting realities, for example, “man” as predicated of an
individual human being to signify the specific nature embodied in him. Other
terms, however, signify abstractly, since their signification is of a simple
form, not as a subsisting reality, but rather as “that by which something is.”
For example, “whiteness” signifies the form by which some reality is white
in color. With this knowledge at hand, Aquinas turns to his question of
whether human terms can appropriately be applied to God. Because God is
simple and subsistent, abstract terms or names can be attributed to him, thus
signifying his subsistent simplicity. As well, since God is complete or perfect
in all ways, concrete terms can be predicated of him to signify his subsistent
completeness. Accordingly, terms attributable to God are at hand, even
though their ultimate origin in human contact with the material world insures
that they fall far short of signifying God as he is.55
The metaphysician is also evident when the Summa asks whether a
relation in God is identical to the divine essence. Aquinas notes that the
predication of terms falling under the genera of accidents signifies a reality
having being in a subject. However, of the terms signifying accidents, only a
term of relation refers the subject to something other than itself. Thus, the
term “paternity” will signify the divine essence itself as begetting the divine
Son. (Although the human mind conceives of the Son as distinct from the
divine essence insofar as the Son is the term of the relation signified by
“paternity,” we recognize in that distinction only one of reason.)56
In discussing the possibility of the presence in a human being of a
plurality of substantial forms, Aquinas remarks, “This appears impossible
from the way of predication.” If “animal” signified one form, and “man”
another, then they could be predicated of one another in one of the following
two ways. First, as a per accidens predication, the terms in “Man is an
animal” would have no order to one another, in this paralleling the terms in
“The white thing is sweet.” Second, if the proposition were in the second
mode of per se predication, then the subject is the basis for the predicate,
after the fashion of “The object’s surface is colored”; if this were so, then
“man” would fall within the definition of “animal.” But because “animal” is
part of the definition of “man,” the proposition is a strict per se predication;
that is, it indicates that the meaning of “animal” is part of what is signified by
“man.” “Therefore it must be that it is the same form through which some
reality is an animal and through which it is a man.”57
These are but three examples. Yet one finds everywhere in the Summa the
influence of the way of predication. Whether or not Aquinas makes that use
explicit, his conceptualization of Christian revelation includes the constant
application of the meanings given concepts as a result of their use in naming
things.
 CONCLUSION: AQUINAS AND ARISTOTLE
The dependence of Aquinas’s theology on the philosophy of Aristotle
appears then in two forms. One is the evident application of Aristotle’s
doctrines or concepts; the other, not as noticeable, is the application of the
method Aquinas found proper to Aristotle’s metaphysician. The presence in
Aquinas’s theology of such dependence on Aristotle, when set alongside the
sententiae composed on individual works of Aristotle, point to the former’s
high regard for the latter. This regard in which Aristotle was held should not
be surprising. One of Aquinas’s strongest convictions concerned the
impossibility that error can arise from the correct use of the human cognitive
abilities given by God. That the human mind is made for the world is surely
everywhere evident in Aquinas’s works. And because he held this basic truth,
might he not have wondered what better tool to use in developing a
systematic understanding of Christian revelation than the philosophy he saw
in Aristotle? For in that philosophy, Aquinas found first, the metaphysician
who investigated by “the way of predication” the common human concepts
properly used in knowing the world; and second, the knowledge developed
through the application in the subordinate sciences of the common concepts
and principles whose value is guaranteed by the work of the metaphysician.
Truly, for Aquinas, Aristotle was the Philosopher.

NOTES
1. The unfinished sententiae concerned Meteorology, Politics, Heaven
(known to Aquinas as “On Heaven and on the World”), and Generation and
Corruption. Aquinas’s writings on Aristotle are discussed in: Jean-Pierre
Torrell, O.P., Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre
(Fribourg, Suisse/Paris: Éditions universitaire/Cerf, 1993), 498–503. For the
notions of medieval “expositions” and sententiae, see R. A. Gauthier,
“Praefatio,” Sententia libri Ethicorum, in Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera
Omnia, 47/1 (Rome: Sancta Sabina, 1969), 244*–45*; R. A. Gauthier, “Le
Cours sur l’Ethica nova d’un maitres es arts de Paris (1235–1240),” Archives
d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 43 (1975): 76–77.
2. On the influx of translations of Greek, Jewish, and Arabic works into
Latin during the twelfth–thirteenth centuries, see Frederick Copleston, A
History of Philosophy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 3:205–11;
Marie-Therese D’Alverny, La Transmission des textes philosophiques et
scientifiques au Moyen Age, ed. C. Burnett (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), chs.
2–3. For the Latin translations of Aristotle’s works, see the various volumes
of Aristoteles Latinus, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (Paris: Brouwer, 1965–1995).
3. Aquinas, Sententia Libri De Anima, Leonina, vol. 45-I (Roma:
Commissio Leonina, 1984), 72–73, l. 366–92; 88–89, l. 70–131; 207, l. 358–
83. Hereinafter cited as In DA.
4. In DA, 88–89, l. 43–131.
5. The remote source of this view is: Pseudo-Augustinus, De spiritu et
anima, in Patrologia Latina (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1857), 40: col. 781
(hereinafter cited as PL). Influential was the assertion that the intellective
soul is more properly “perfection” of the body, rather than its form:
Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sixtus de naturalibus, in S. Van Riet, ed., G.
Verbeke, intro., Avicenna Latinus, 2 vols. (Vol. I, Louvain/Leiden:
Peeters/Brill, 1968; Vol. 2, Louvain/Leiden: Éditions Orientalistes/Brill,
1972), 1:16, l. 87–21, l. 48. Later proponents of the soul as subsistent
spiritual form included: Alexander of Hales, Glossa in quatuor libros
Sententiarum Petri Lombardi (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventura, 1952),
2:145, l. 16–146, l. 3; Jean de La Rochelle, Summa de anima, ed. J. S.
Bougerol (Paris: J. Vrin, 1995), 80, l. 1–2; William of Auvergne, Tractatus
de anima, in Guilielmi Alverni Opera Omnia, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1674); reprinted:
Frankfurt am Main: Minerva GMBH, 1963), fol. 67, col. A; Bonaventure,
Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, in Opera omnia (Quaracchi:
Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1885), 1–4: responsio, 414b–415a; ad 5, 415b;
Peter of Spain, Scientia libri De anima, ed. M. A. Alonso, 2d ed. (Barcelona:
Flors, 1961), 17, l. 18–31; 20, l. 10–16; 304, l. 17–18. A witness to the ideas
current at the time Aquinas left Paris (1259) dates from ca. 1260, although
probably not known to him: Anonymous, Questiones in tres libros De anima,
in Ein anonymer Aristoteleskommentar des XIII. Jarhunderts, ed. J.
Vennebusch (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1963), 116, l. 22–117, l. 33.
6. Dominicus Gundisalvus, “The Treatise De anima of Dominicus
Gundissalinus,” ed. J. T. Muchkle, intro. E. Gilson, Mediaeval Studies 2
(1940): 58, l. 28–31. Johannes Blund, Tractatus de anima, ed. D. A. Callus
and R. W. Hunt (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 90, l. 28–91, l. 5.
Alexander of Hales, Summa theologiae (Quaracchi: Collegium S.
Bonaventurae, 1928), solutio, 399a–b. Pseudo-Peter of Spain, Expositio libri
De anima, published as: Pedro Hispano. Obras Filosóficas, Vol. 3, ed. M.
Alonso (Madrid: Instituto Luis Vives, 1954), 328, l. 32–329, l. 6. Jean de La
Rochelle, Summa de anima, 67, l. 75–82; 70, l. 67–69 and 75–77.
Bonaventure, Opera omnia, responsio 414b–15a; ad 6, 415b–16a.
Anonymous, Questiones, 455, l. 262–456, l. 276.
7. The source of this doctrine appears to be had in Avicebron, Fons vitae,
ed. C. Baeumker, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des
Mittelalters, Bd. 1, H. 2–4 (Münster, 1892), 211–27. Proponents included the
following: Alexander of Hales, Summa theologiae, ad 1–7, 422b; Peter of
Spain, Commentarium in De anima, ed. M. A. Alonso, in Obras Filosóficas,
n. 2 (Madrid, 1944), 656, l. 9–30; Anonymous, Magister Artium, Lectura in
librum De anima a quodam discipulo reportata (Ms. Roma Naz. V. E. 828),
ed. R. A. Gauthier (Grottoferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1985), 155, l.
212–256, l. 233; 214, l. 311–315, l. 326; 219, l. 442–44. Somewhat similar to
the doctrine of a plurality of forms is the notion of the intellect as a separated
substance whose union with the sensitive soul results in a composed form
that as such is the act of the human body: Anonymous, Questiones, 142, l.
70–76; 176, l. 118–28.
8. Bonaventure, Opera omnia, responsio, 86a; ad 1, 90a. Bonaventure,
Opera omnia, obj. 3, 122a.
9. Avicenna, Liber de anima, 36, l. 49–37, l. 68. Gundisalvus, “The
Treatise De anima,” 37, l. 17–32. Jean de La Rochelle, Summa de anima, 51,
l. 27–41. William of Auvergne, Tractatus de anima, fol. 82, col. B – fol. 83,
col. A. Peter of Spain, Commentarium in De anima, 650, l. 3–24.
10. Gundisalvus, “The Treatise De anima,” 42, l. 11–15. Blund, Tractatus
de anima, 5, l. 23–26, l. 3; 7, l. 1–13. Alexander of Hales, Summa theologiae,
385–86. Jean de La Rochelle, Summa de anima, 385b–386a. Anonymous,
Questiones, 163, l. 51–59; 176, l. 131–32, dated ca. 1260, the year following
Aquinas’s departure from Paris, illustrates the currency of this view of
Aristotle’s definition of the soul.
11. In DA, 79, l. 106–21; 85, l. 155–74.
12. This is implied in these texts: In DA, 74, l. 36–75, l. 44; 76, l. 141–50;
86, l. 239–57.
13. In DA, 222–23, l. 202–20.
14. In DA, 207, l. 372–83.
 15. In DA, 216, l. 65–86.
16. Although Aquinas devotes a few paragraphs to the rejection of the
interpretation of the agent and possible intellects attributed to Averroës, both
the failure to mention the latter’s name and the brevity of the discussion also
indicate that Aquinas’s goal is to present Aristotle’s views in as
straightforward a way as possible. See In DA, 220, l. 89–221, l. 166.
17. ST I, prologus.
18. ST I q.75–88.
19. The twenty-some “corrections” range from the mild: In octo libros
Physicorum Aristotelis expositio, ed. M. Maggiolo, (Turin: Marietti, 1954),
no. 8: “His [i.e., Averroës’s] exposition is inappropriate because as a whole it
does not have one goal and because the Philosopher does not intend to show”
to the harsh: In Phy, no. 966: “The argument Averroes has proposed is
completely frivolous,” and in no. 1083: “What the Commentator says is
evidently false.” Hereinafter cited as In Phy.
20. In Phy, no. 145.
21. In Phy, no. 285.
22. In Phy, nos. 150 and 152–53.
23. Place and the vacuum: In Phy, 201–70, lect. 1–14; time: 273–312, lect.
15–23.
24. In Phy, nos. 885–86 and 891–94.
25. In Phy, nos. 972 and 1083.
26. In Phy, nos. 1004–5, 1081–84, and 1168.
27. In Phy, nos. 974–90.
28. Sententia Libri Ethicorum, Leonina, vol. 47 (Roma: Commissio
Leonina, 1969), 4–5, l. 50–54, and 99–109. Hereinafter cited as In NE. For
moral virtue in general, see: In NE, Bk. II, cc. 1–11; for the principles of
virtuous activity, such as voluntary action and choice, see: Bk. III, cc. 1–13;
for individual moral virtues, see: Bk. IV, c. 14–V, c. 17; for intellectual
virtues, see: Bk. VI, cc. 1–11.
29. In NE, 582–83, l. 1–15; and 583, l. 71–78.
30. In NE, 597, l. 1–29.
31. In NE, 14, l. 1–6; 31–32, l. 60–76; and 32–33, l. 136–217.
32. In NE, 60, l. 215–22; and 595, l. 141–44.
33. Averroës, Commentarium in Ethicorum, in Moralem totam
philosophiam complectentes cum Averrois Cordubensis in Moralia
Nicomachia expositione, Vol. 3 of Aristotelis Stagiritae Libri (Venice:
Juncta, 1562–1574; reprint Frankfurt am Main: Minerva G.m.b.H., 1962),
fol. 8vH-I and fol. 9vG-H. Albertus Magnus, Super Ethica commentum et
quaestiones, ed. W. Kübel, in Opera omnia, T. XIV, P. I–II (Cologne:
Aschendorff, 1968–72 and 1987), 75, l. 72–76, l. 4; 714, l. 27–31; 746, l. 5–
16. For a more complete statement of interpretations of the Nicomachean
Ethics current at this time, see James C. Doig, Aquinas’s Philosophical
Commentary on the Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 8–24.
34. A detailed study showing the In Meta to be Aquinas’s proposal of the
structure Aristotle intended for the Metaphysics is had in: Gabriele Galluzzo,
“Aquinas on the Structure of Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” Documenti e studi
sulla tradizione medievale 15 (2004): 353–86.
35. In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, ed. M. R.
Cathala & M. Spiazzi, (Turin: Marietti, 1950), nos. 1, 35, and 51. Hereinafter
cited as In Meta.
36. In Meta, no. 534.
37. In Meta, nos. 1147–51.
38. In Meta, nos. 1245–47.
39. In Meta, nos. 1276–79.
40. In Meta, Bk. XII, lect. 5–9.
41. In Meta, nos. 2611–14.
42. In Meta, nos. 556–58.
43. In Meta, nos. 295 and 1164.
44. In Meta, nos. 2496–99.
45. De anima, II, 1, 412a8–9. The Latin translation used by Aquinas is
found in: In DA, 67. Aquinas’s interpretation is had in: In DA, nos. 100–17.
46. e.g., see: ST I q.76 a.1 ad 5; a.2 ad 2; QDP, q.6 a.6 ad 8.
47. The passage in question is Meta., II, 1, 993b26–30. The translations are
found in Aristoteles latinus 1970–95: (Vol. 25/1–1a, 37, l. 7–11 Vetustissima
trans.; 120, l. 3–7 Vetus trans.); (Vol. 25/2, 37, l. 6–10 Media trans.); (Vol.
3/2, 44, l. 29–34 Moerbecana trans.). The Latin text of Aristotle given in In
Meta, 84, while not a critical edition, is very close to the Moerbecana, which
makes Aquinas’s point more clearly than the other three.
48. In Meta, nos. 2614–16. The difference between Aquinas’s approach to
Aristotle’s position in the In Meta and the QDP illustrates the care with
which Aquinas interprets Aristotle when that interpretation is his goal; see
QDP, q.3 a.16, obj. 23 and ad 23.
49. In Meta, nos. 1287–89. That the metaphysical proof is more
demonstrative, see In Phy, no. 107. A related discussion adding detail is had
in QDP, q.9 a.1, resp.
50. James C. Doig, Aquinas on Metaphysics: A historico-doctrinal Study of
the Commentary on the Metaphysics (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972), chs. 4–5.
51. ST I q.1 a.2. See In Meta, nos. 391–92, 1147–51, and 2249–51.
52. ST I q.2 a.2. See In libros Posteriorum analyticorum, in In Aristotelis
libros Peri Hermeneias et Posteriorum analyticorum expositio, ed. R. M.
Spiazzi, (Turin: Marietti, 1955), nos. 195–97. Hereinafter cited as In PA.
53. ST I q.2 a.3, where Aquinas cites Metaphysics II as asserting first, that
the most true beings are the greatest beings and then, that the greatest reality
included within a genus is the cause of all others within that genus. For his
interpretation of the passage at issue, see In Meta, nos. 292–98. An additional
indication that Aquinas saw the fourth proof as Aristotelian and not Platonic
is had in ST I, q.6 a.4.—Two or three years prior to ST I, Aquinas offered
what is essentially the fourth proof; see QDP, q.3 a.5, cor.
54. Note, e.g., the investigation of predication in In Meta, Bk. V, lect. 1–
22.
55. ST I q.13 a.1 ad 2.
56. ST I q.28 a.2.
57. ST I q.76 a.3 ad 2.
 CHAPTER 3

AUGUSTINE TO AQUINAS (LATIN-CHRISTIAN

AUTHORS)

ALEXANDER FIDORA

ONE of the most outstanding features of Thomas Aquinas’s thought is the

way in which he integrated the newly translated philosophical sources, that is
Greek, Arabic, and Jewish authors, into a unique synthesis with his own
Christian tradition. An adequate appraisal of Aquinas’s merits both as a
philosopher and as a theologian therefore has to emphasize his interpretation
and transformation of these “new” texts and their rich doctrines, which cover
a wide range of topics, from ethics to epistemology, from logic to
metaphysics, and so on. Yet it is often forgotten that the originality of any
synthesis of “new” and “old” material does not only lie in the way in which
the former is dealt with:1 it is equally important to take into account the use
and interpretation of what is frequently regarded as the mere historical
background against which such innovative developments are displayed.
In the case of Aquinas, this means we need to view him not only as a
sharp and original interpreter of Aristotle and the Graeco-Arabic Neoplatonic
tradition (e.g., the anonymous Liber de causis)2 but also to acknowledge his
role as a lucid commentator and subtle critic of his own Latin-Christian
tradition. As a matter of fact, during his years as a student in the artes
liberales in Naples, and also while working with Albert the Great (ca. 1200–
1280) in Cologne or while studying at Paris, Aquinas would not only have
become acquainted with ancient and Arabic sources, but his academic
training would have consisted above all in a thorough reading of Latin-
Christian texts. Thus, the first systematic work he wrote,3 while teaching at
the University of Paris during the years 1253–56, was a commentary on Peter
Lombard’s Sentences, by then the standard textbook for theology. It is no
exaggeration to say, therefore, that the authors in this Latin-Christian
tradition are at the very basis of Aquinas’s intellectual evolution.

AQUINAS AND ARISTOTLE VERSUS

AUGUSTINE?
The most prominent, and certainly one of the most influential, among
Aquinas’s Latin-Christian authors of reference is Augustine of Hippo (354–
430).
The influence of the North African bishop on intellectual discussion at the
end of the twelfth and during the thirteenth centuries cannot be overstressed:
his books constituted the primary stock of any academic library of that time.
Both Franciscans and Dominicans, such as Aquinas’s contemporaries
Bonaventure (1221–1274), on the one hand, and Robert Kilwardby (ca.
1215–1279), on the other, embraced Augustine’s authority in theology and
philosophy.
In this respect, Thomas Aquinas’s relation to the venerated Church Father
reveals rather peculiar traits, since his attitude toward Augustine differs quite
significantly from that of his contemporaries. For while there can be no doubt
that Aquinas acknowledged the authority of Augustine in theological matters,
he introduced extremely important differentiations with regard to some of the
bishop’s philosophical tenets. Aquinas follows Augustine in theological
matters such as Trinitarian theology, and the questions of divine providence
and grace. In philosophy, however, he is more reluctant: while accepting
Augustine’s doctrines on causality and exemplarism, he clearly rejects some
of his metaphysical teachings, as well as a series of claims concerning theory
of knowledge and psychology, namely the role of the “seminal reasons” and
of divine illumination.4
I shall dwell for a moment on the latter, not only because of the systematic
relevance it has in the context of Aquinas’s thought but also with regard to
the important methodological and historiographical discussions to which it
gave rise during the last century. For Aquinas, the human intellect has a
natural light that suffices to attain certain truths; therefore, man does not need
any special illumination to reach true knowledge, as Augustine held.
According to Aquinas, true knowledge comes from experience, which we
acquire through our senses rather than from “above”; sensory cognition, in
turn, is subject to a process of abstraction, and it is by means of this process
that we attain intellectual knowledge of reality. As can easily be seen, this
discussion, which is central to Aquinas’s theory of knowledge, reprises one
of the most controversial questions in the philosophical tradition concerning
human knowledge—one that is most often associated with the names of Plato
and Aristotle. Indeed, in the passages of his Summa theologiae, which
discuss the role of divine illumination for human understanding, Aquinas
places the issue in the larger setting of different philosophical options, such
as Augustine vs. Aristotle, Arabic philosophy vs. the “genuine” peripatetic
tradition, and Platonism vs. Aristotelianism.5
Now this very setting has led some scholars to present Aquinas’s
approach toward Augustine as a clear opposition between Thomistic
Aristotelianism, on the one hand, and Platonic Neo-Augustinianism, on the
other. Thus, in a highly influential study from 1926, Étienne Gilson answered
the question of “why St Thomas criticized St Augustine” precisely with
reference to the latter’s conception of divine illumination and its
incompatibility with an adequate interpretation of Aristotle’s claims about
knowledge as laid out in the latter’s De anima and elsewhere.6 In short,
Aquinas would have criticized and rejected Augustine—and also Avicenna—
because in his own theory of knowledge he wanted to be a pure Aristotelian.
In Gilson’s eyes, this supposedly irreconcilable alternative was also to have
important consequences for the general path philosophy should take over the
next decades, becoming the crucial issue for the division into Thomistic
Aristotelianism, aiming at an adequate interpretation of the Greek
philosopher’s doctrine, and Platonic Neo-Augustinianism.
These strong claims and their far-reaching implications for our
understanding of the history of medieval philosophy did not remain
uncontested. In 1931 Maurice De Wulf took up the question under the label
of “augustinisme avicennisant,”7 an expression coined by Gilson to
summarize the psychological positions that Aquinas was confronted with and
the school to which these supposedly gave rise. For De Wulf, Gilson’s
account and its division into two opposing camps was an undue
simplification not only of Aquinas’s admirable synthesis but also of the
conceptual wealth of medieval thought: thought that could hardly be reduced
to having a single philosophical tenet as its watershed. Such a simplification,
in addition, could easily lead to the misinterpretation of Aquinas as the
representative of Aristotelian thought par excellence, overshadowing all of
his Neoplatonic legacy and, on the other hand, to eclipsing the important
tradition of Aristotelizing Augustinianism.8
While this is not the place to discuss this controversy in depth, I shall
draw from it at least two observations: on the one hand, both accounts agree
on the fact that Aquinas’s approach toward Augustine was not simply a
dialogue with the philosophical tradition but also a debate with his
contemporaries who followed other options, regardless of whether it has to
be classified as a polemical issue between different schools or not. On the
other hand, the controversy shows how important a correct appraisal of
Aquinas’s Latin-Christian sources is for our interpretation of his overall
thought, and especially for his reception and interpretation of Aristotle, since
the different accounts leave us with very different pictures of Thomistic
thought.
Putting this controversy to one side, one has to say that at all events
Augustine’s influence on Aquinas with regard to both theology and
philosophy extends much further than the question of divine illumination.
For, as I noted above, it also shapes such central subjects of Thomistic
metaphysics as causality and the connections between the Creator and
creatures in general. Although their relation was a complex one, as we have
seen, it is therefore no exaggeration to conclude with Marie-Dominique
Chenu’s words “that it is impossible to think of Thomas Aquinas without
Augustine.”9

AQUINAS, A BELATED READER OF BOETHIUS?

No less important is the case of Boethius’s (ca. 480–524) influence on
Aquinas. Concerning Augustine I have stressed that, in general terms,
Aquinas’s attitude differs from the thirteenth-century mainstream in that he
assumes a more critical position with regard to some of the bishop’s
philosophical teachings. As far as his interest in Boethius goes, there is, too,
a remarkable “anomaly” or, rather, an anachronism that needs to be pointed
out: writing commentaries on Boethius’s Opuscula Sacra (or Theological
Treatises) is a marked exception among thirteenth-century authors. In fact,
with his two commentaries, that is on De Trinitate and on De hebdomadibus,
Aquinas takes up a practice that was extremely popular during the twelfth
century, but no longer in the thirteenth. Thus, twelfth-century commentaries
on the Opuscula Sacra abound, most of them associated with the School of
Chartres (namely, those of Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres, and
Clarembald of Arras), while there is no strong evidence for the continuity of
this genre in Aquinas’s time. The fact that he wrote such commentaries,
which were completely out of fashion, must be taken as an expression of the
enormous systematic interest he found in Boethius.10
The first of these two commentaries, on Boethius’s tract De Trinitate,
dates from 1256–59 and was written in Paris. The text, which is incomplete,
is preserved in an autograph manuscript. As for its literary form, Thomas
chose a combination of literal commentary and question form, namely, he
divided his text into three parts, each of which starts with a literary
commentary on a passage from Boethius, followed by two questions on the
text, which are in turn each subdivided into four articles. In the First
Question he addresses the possibility and limits of rational knowledge about
God. The Second Question asks whether God can be the subject of a science.
The Third Question is concerned with the different meanings of “faith.” The
Fourth Question deals with the word “plurality” as found in Boethius. The
Fifth Question discusses the twofold nature of theology as philosophical
theology, on the one hand, and revealed theology, on the other. Finally, the
Sixth Question examines the different methods of the theoretical sciences,
that is, natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics.11
From a systematic point of view, it is Questions 5 and 6 that deserve our
particular attention, since here Aquinas develops fundamental epistemic
categories that allow for highly differentiated concepts of both philosophy
and theology. The starting point for this discussion in Question 5 is
Boethius’s important distinction between the respective objects and methods
of natural science, mathematics, and theology/metaphysics. Thus, according
to Boethius, natural philosophy deals with motion and is not abstract
(inabstracta), mathematics does not deal with motion and is not abstract
(inabstracta), and theology/metaphysics does not deal with motion and is
abstract (abstracta). To this, Boethius adds that, with regard to their methods,
natural philosophy proceeds according to the mode of reasoning
(rationabiliter), mathematics to the mode of learning (disciplinaliter), and
theology/metaphysics to the mode of intellection (intellectualiter). While this
division seems very clear and lucid at first glance, it involves, in fact, a series
of difficulties for its interpretation, such as the qualification of mathematics
as dealing with what is not abstract or the precise meaning of the three modes
used to describe the respective methods of the sciences.
While in his literary commentary on these passages, which precedes
Question 5, Aquinas engages with some of these difficulties, his merit does
not lie so much in an explication de texte, but rather in his systematic and
extremely original reflections which he offers in the following articles. In
fact he reinterprets Boethius’s text with the help of Aristotelian and
Avicennian material (from the Second Analytics, the Metaphysics, and
sections of the Kitab as-Shifa or Book of Healing) so as to arrive at a
comprehensive epistemological account. This account establishes both the
different steps in human cognition, that is, the role of the senses, of the
phantasmata, the intellect, the process of abstraction, as well as the
autonomy of the different sciences, assigning to each of them their proper
object and method.12
With regard to this latter point, Aquinas adds an important precision to
Boethius’s account in introducing a differentiation into the vague concept of
theology/metaphysics as used in De Trinitate. Thus, Aquinas distinguishes
Christian theology and metaphysics as a philosophical discipline, each in
their own right, explaining their specific methods and objects. He argues that
even though the two seem to have the same object (or subject matter), that is
divine beings, because they both formulate assertions on these, nevertheless
this object is not viewed under one and the same respect in both. For, while
in theology divine beings are dealt with as principles that are themselves
complete natures, in metaphysics they come into the scope of the
investigation not insofar as they are complete natures in themselves, but
insofar as they are the principles of (other) complete natures. In this way,
Aquinas is able to explain that both Christian theology and metaphysics have
something to say about God; yet, while the former deals with Him as its
proper object, the latter speaks about Him only with a view to his being the
principle of its proper object, which is being as being.13
Aquinas’s second commentary (Paris 1259?)14 is dedicated to the short
tract De hebdomadibus, in which Boethius set out to analyze the goodness of
substances. In this text, Boethius coined some very influential ontological
key notions, in particular the distinction between id quod est and esse.
Aquinas pays a good deal of attention to this distinction, interpreting
Boethius’s id quod est as ens, that is that which participates in the act of
being (actus essendi), whereas being itself (ipsum esse) is defined as that
which does not participate in anything else. While scholars still argue about
whether Aquinas’s account is simply a faithful reading of Boethius’s words
or rather the outcome of a highly innovative personal interpretation of the
text,15 there can be no doubt that these reflections are at the very heart of
Aquinas’s own ontological doctrines, not only because they help to develop
important elements of his real distinction between esse and essentia but also
with regard to his notion of participation.
In general, both commentaries clearly show that Aquinas was a very
subtle commentator on Boethius, whose influence would be fundamental for
the development of some of the central tenets of Thomistic epistemology and
ontology.16 Or, to put it as Ralph McInerny did: “Perhaps it is only with the
help of Thomas’s commentaries that Boethius can speak to us today. But it is
equally true that Thomas can only be understood by seeing what he learned
from Boethius.… It is time we stopped trying to imagine a Thomism
unindebted to its sources.”17
I pointed above to the fact that Aquinas’s interest in Boethius could seem
somewhat anachronistic, and one may, of course, wonder what reasons urged
him to write such commentaries. An answer to this question is certainly not
easy to provide, and it is quite possible that there is not just one single reason
that explains his choice. Nevertheless, turning back to the discussion from
the previous section on Aquinas’s criticism of Augustine’s theory of
knowledge, it seems plausible to suggest that, in Boethius, Aquinas found an
account of human cognition and of scientific knowledge that was much more
in line with his own philosophical convictions and his reading of Aristotle. In
this context it has to be emphasized that, also in a broader perspective,
Boethius—and above all his Opuscula Sacra—played a major part in the
reception of Aristotelian epistemology, especially during the twelfth century,
even though Boethius’s role within this process has not been sufficiently
appreciated thus far.18
Seen in the light of Aquinas’s criticism of Augustine’s account of human
knowledge, on the one hand, and Boethius’s role for the reception of
Aristotelian theory of knowledge and science, on the other, Aquinas’s
outstanding interest in the Roman philosopher seems to be anything but
incidental.
 AQUINAS AND THE SCHOLASTIC TRADITION:
THEOLOGY AS A SCIENCE
A comprehensive study of Aquinas’s Latin-Christian sources—which is still
to be written—will have to do justice to a very long list of prominent
thinkers, especially those from the pre-scholastic and scholastic periods, such
as Anselm of Canterbury,19 St. Bernard,20 Richard of St.-Victor,21 John of La
Rochelle,22 William of Auvergne,23 and many others.
Among all the influences on Aquinas from the (pre-)scholastic tradition of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, I wish to highlight one in particular in
this brief survey, namely the concern of Latin-Christian thinkers for building
a systematic theology, that is the transformation of the theological corpus
into a science. Aquinas shared this same concern, and the intention and
relevance of his thought can only be described adequately by placing it in the
context of the previous attempts at a systematization of Christian theology.
The earliest of these attempts go back to Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and
Hugh of St.-Victor (1096–1141). Abelard’s works can be read as the first
important step toward a systematic presentation of a theologia christiana,
structuring the contents of theology according to the pattern fides-caritas-
sacramentum. Hugh of St.-Victor, in turn, chose another ordo disciplinae for
his De sacramentis christianae fidei—the first veritable summa—namely,
history of salvation.24 Yet the most important expression of this striving for
the systematization of theology is the Four Books of Sentences (around 1150)
by Peter Lombard, which I mentioned earlier. It was this text that Aquinas
commented on in Paris during the 1250s. Since all bachelors in theology had
to offer such a commentary to take their master’s degree, this, unlike the
commentaries on Boethius, was a quite conventional genre at the time. But
even so, the lectures of the young sententiarius show that already in this early
work, Aquinas did not simply follow the paths of tradition, but explained the
text in a very productive manner, combining Lombard’s exposition with
arguments from his teacher Albert the Great and the Franciscan
Bonaventure.25
One of Aquinas’s most important and far-reaching innovations in this
respect precisely concerns the ordo disciplinae, which I mentioned above.
For, in his commentary Aquinas does not follow the (Augustinian) division
proposed by Peter Lombard into things (res) and signs (signa). Instead, he
suggests a different scheme for the systematic presentation and discussion of
the contents of theology. Developing ideas from the Summa aurea (1215–29)
by William of Auxerre, as well as from the Summa Halensis (before 1245) by
Alexander of Hales (continued by John of Rupella and Bonaventure),
Aquinas explains in his Commentary on the Book of Sentences that the
subjects of theology should be organized according to the procession of all
things from God as their source and their return to God as their end. In
accordance with this Neoplatonic exitus-reditus scheme he lays out the
contents from Trinity, to creation and to the nature of creation, on the one
hand, and from salvation to atonement, on the other.26
This reorganization of the subjects of theology, which depends strongly
on Aquinas’s use of William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, and other
authors, would become extremely important for his overall thought,
determining the very structure of his major work, the Summa theologiae,
written more than ten years after his commentary on Peter Lombard. Thus, in
this work we again find the basic scheme of procession/God the source
(Prima Pars), return/God the end (Secunda Pars), and the Christian
“conditions” of this return (Tertia Pars).
It would, of course, be unjust to seek to reduce the influence of scholastic
thinkers on Aquinas so far, but the peculiar methodological awareness, as
well as the idea of a complex system of Christian theology, which together
account for its status as a science, are beyond any doubt among the most
decisive influences that Aquinas gathers from twelfth- and thirteenth-century
Christian authors: decisive, because without these elements, which establish
theology as a science, Aquinas’s admirable synthesis of Christian doctrine
and Greek and Arabic learning would hardly be imaginable.

FINAL REMARKS
Introductory surveys of Aquinas’s thought, if they ever deal with what he
inherited from the Latin-Christian tradition, tend to point out that research on
this topic is still at its very beginning and that in the near future important
results are expected.27 Curiously enough, even though time has passed by,
they keep reiterating this.
 In fact the problem one is facing with regard to Aquinas’s Latin-Christian
sources is not an isolated one, but has very much to do with the general
approach to twelfth- and thirteenth-century philosophy. Historiography has
characterized this period as an intellectual revolution brought about by the
introduction of “new” texts and doctrines, from both Greek and Arabic
philosophy, and it is therefore no surprise that these new materials feature
large in the accounts of twelfth- and thirteenth-century philosophy. There can
be no question that the reception of ancient Greek as well as Arabic
philosophy is a distinctive hallmark of this epoch of Latin-Christian thought.
Yet, as I have said, it is precisely in order to obtain an adequate interpretation
of this phenomenon that one has to draw attention to the way in which the
tradition of Latin-Christian philosophy and theology itself is received and
transformed during these years, taking, as it does, an active part—and not
just being a passive background—in some of the most salient intellectual
developments of the time.
Far from being played off against a traditional—and supposedly
conservative—background, the via Thomae is part of a much broader trend in
Latin-Christian thought that has been described as the process of occidental
rationalization. As I have tried to show, it is from this tradition that Aquinas
takes many of his fundamental philosophical and theological motives and
intuitions, which were to assume a leading role in his reception of Greek and
Arabic philosophy, and which concern the theories of human knowledge and
science, together with some of the key concepts of ontology and
metaphysics, as well as the idea of theology as a science.

NOTES
1. Many introductions and presentations of Aquinas, when coming to
discuss his sources, start off directly with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic texts.
And even more well-balanced accounts tend to put his Latin-Christian bases
in second place. Cf., for instance, Tommaso d’Aquino nella storia del
pensiero I: Le fonti del pensiero di S. Tommaso (Atti del congresso
internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo centenario) (Naples:
Edizioni Domenicane Italiane, 1975), where the chapters on Aquinas’s Latin-
Christian sources are placed right at the end of the volume.
2. For which, see the chapters “Aquinas and Aristotle” by James Doig,
“Aquinas, Plato, and Neoplatonism” by Wayne Hankey, and “Aquinas and
Jewish and Islamic Authors” by David Burrell in this volume.
3. Before this, as a baccalaureus biblicus at Paris, Aquinas had already
written a series of Bible commentaries, i.e., on Isaiah (1251/2), Jeremiah
(1251/2), Lamentations (1251/2), and the Psalms (1252/3 or later). These
biblical commentaries, interesting as they are, still await a thorough
appraisal. Recently Eleonore Stump has drawn attention to the
(philosophical) significance of some of them: Eleonore Stump, Aquinas
(New York: Routledge, 2003), especially 455–78 (Chapter 16: “Providence
and Suffering”). Cf. also Thomas G. Weinandy et al., Aquinas on Scripture:
An Introduction to the Biblical Commentaries (London and New York: T. &
T. Clark International, 2005).
4. See, among others, the accurate account in Marie-Dominique Chenu,
Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 2d ed. (Montréal/Paris:
Institut d’Études Médiévales/Vrin, 1954), 44–51.
5. For Aquinas’s gnoseological position and his criticism directed at
Augustine, cf. ST I-II q.109 a.1. In ST I q.79 a.4, the question seems to
address both Augustine and Avicenna.
6. See the classical study by Étienne Gilson, “Pourquoi Saint Thomas a
critiqué Saint Augustin,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du
Moyen Âge 1 (1926): 1–127.
7. See Maurice De Wulf, “L’Augustinisme ‘avicennisant’,” Revue
néoscolastique de philosophie 33 (1931): 11–39.
8. Steven Marrone, The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and
Knowledge of God in the Thirteenth Century, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2001),
here 1:2.
9. Chenu, Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 47.
10. For Aquinas’s place with regard to this twelfth-century tradition, see
Gillian R. Evans, “The Discussions of the Scientific Status of Theology in
the Second Half of the Twelfth Century,” in Matthias Lutz-Bachmann,
Alexander Fidora, and Andreas Niederberger, eds., Metaphysics in the
Twelfth Century: On the Relationship among Philosophy, Science and
Theology (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 161–83.
11. The work is available in an excellent English translation: Thomas
Aquinas, Faith, Reason and Theology, trans. by Armand Maurer (Toronto:
Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987) (= In BDT, q.1–4) and
Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, 4th rev. ed.,
trans. by Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1986) (= In BDT, q.5–6).
12. Cf., for instance, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, “Die Einteilung der
Wissenschaften des Thomas von Aquin. Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion der
Epistemologie in Quaestio 5, Artikel 1 des Kommentars von Thomas zum
Trinitätstraktat des Boethius,” in Rainer Berndt and Matthias Lutz-
Bachmann, eds., “Scientia” und “Disciplina”: Wissenstheorie und
Wissenschaftspraxis im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
2002), 235–47.
13. Cf. In BDT, q.5, a.4, resp. On this topic, cf. Pasquale Porro’s essay
“Metafisica e teologia nella divisione delle scienze speculative del Super
Boetium De Trinitate” in his edition of Thomas Aquinas, Commenti a
Boezio, ed. and Italian trans. by Pasquale Porro (Milan: Bompiani, 2007),
467–526. See also the introduction to the Latin-German edition of Thomas
Aquinas, Kommentar zum Trinitätstraktat des Boethius II, ed. and German
trans. by Peter Hoffmann (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 2007), 7–42.
14. 1259 is the traditional dating of the work, insofar as it is seen as a
follow-up to the commentary on De Trinitate. Yet, on the grounds of some
formal coincidences with Aquinas’s later commentaries on pseudo-Dionysius
and Aristotle, the editors of the Leonina suggest dating its redaction to a later
period. On the other hand, some scholars have claimed that the work, like the
commentary on De Trinitate, remained a fragment; but there is hardly any
evidence for such a hypothesis.
15. See, for instance, Ralph McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), p. xiv: “Boethius taught
what Thomas said he taught.” Against this categorical claim, see Andreas
Speer, “The Hidden Heritage: Boethian Metaphysics and its Medieval
Tradition,” in Pasquale Porro, ed., Metaphysica—sapientia—scientia divina
(= Quaestio 5) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 161–79, here 166f.: “This
completely a-historical construction … overlooks the fact that Thomas, in
discovering the underlying idea of the Boethian metaphysics, dismissed it
fundamentally.”
16. It is worth noting that Aquinas was also indebted to Boethius on other
subjects, such as divine eternity and knowledge as well as the concept of
persona.
17. McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas, 253.
 18. On Boethius and his relevance for the reception of Aristotle in the
twelfth century, see Alexander Fidora, Die Wissenschaftstheorie des
Dominicus Gundissalinus: Voraussetzungen und Konsequenzen des zweiten
Anfangs der aristotelischen Philosophie im 12. Jahrhundert (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 2004), esp. 89–95.
19. See, among others, Matthew R. Cosgrove, “Thomas Aquinas on
Anselm’s Argument,” The Review of Metaphysics 27 (1974): 513–30.
20. Cf. Clemens Vansteenkiste, “S. Bernardo nell’opera di San Tommaso,”
Rassegna di letteratura tomistica 10 (1978): 35–47.
21. See Ralph J. Masiello, “Reason and Faith in Richard of St. Victor and
St. Thomas,” The New Scholasticism 48 (1974): 233–42.
22. Cf. Beryl Smalley, “William of Auvergne, John of La Rochelle and St.
Thomas Aquinas on the Old Law,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274–1974:
Commemorative Studies, foreword by Étienne Gilson, 2 vols. (Toronto:
Pontificial Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 2:11–71.
23. See the study by Amato Masnovo, Da Guglielmo d’Auvergne a S.
Tommaso d’Aquino, 3 vols. (Milan: Società Editrice Vita e Pensiero, 1930–
45).
24. Both can be considered important prefigurations of some of Aquinas’s
concerns with regard to theology. See, respectively, Rudolf Thomas, “Die
Präfiguration thomistischen Denkens bei Petrus Abaelardus,” in Tommaso
d’Aquino nella storia del pensiero I: Le fonti del pensiero di S. Tommaso
(Atti del congresso internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo
centenario) (Naples: Edizioni Domenicane Italiane, 1975), 392–98, and
Rainer Berndt, “La Théologie comme système du monde: Sur l’évolution des
sommes théologiques de Hugues de Saint-Victor à Saint Thomas d’Aquin,”
Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 78/4 (1994): 555–72.
25. See Ludwig Jeßberger, Das Abhängigkeitsverhältnis des hl. Thomas
von Aquin von Albertus Magnus und Bonaventura im dritten Buche des
“Sentenzenkommentars” (Würzburg: Ph.D. thesis, 1936).
26. Cf. Super Sent I.1, d.2, q.1, pr. On this innovative rearrangement and its
consequences, see Chenu, Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin,
226–37 and 258–65. In addition, see Elisabeth Reinhardt and Josep-Ignasi
Saranyana, “La configuración de la ciencia teológica: De Hugo de San Víctor
a Tomás de Aquino,” Veritas 43/3 (1998): 549–62.
27. Cf., for instance, Fernand Van Steenberghen, La Philosophie au XIIIe
siècle (Louvain/Paris: Publ. Univ. Louvain/Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1966),
335.
 CHAPTER 4

AQUINAS, PLATO, AND NEOPLATONISM

WAYNE J. HANKEY

WHAT AQUINAS KNEW AND HOW HE KNEW IT

The influences of Plato, and of the wide variety of ancient, Arabic, and
medieval Platonisms, on Aquinas must be distinguished from what he knows
about them. The first are pervasive, persistent, and ever increasing. The
second change markedly as he reads more of the commentaries and treatises
of the Hellenic Neoplatonists and Peripatetics during the last decade of his
work.1 Exemplary of these is William of Moerbeke’s translation of Proclus’s
Elements of Theology finished in 1268. It enabled Aquinas to discern that the
Liber de causis was not—as had been supposed by medieval Latin
Peripatetics, including himself—the cap of the Aristotelian system,
describing the emanations from the First Principle. Rather, he learned, it was
composed of excerpts from the Elements—and, unknown to Aquinas, from
Plotinus—modified to conform to the needs of Islamic monotheism, just as
the Dionysian Corpus had modified its Neoplatonic sources in Christian
directions. The Corpus, with its quasi-Apostolic origin for Aquinas, was his
most authoritative and influential source of Neoplatonism—a character
intensified when conveyed in Paris interlarded with unattributed glosses from
Eriugena.2 The Elements confirmed what Aquinas discerned to be
Dionysius’s Platonic style and way of thinking, when he had explicated The
Divine Names (1265–68); his earliest view had been that the Areopagite
“mostly followed Aristotle.”3 Expositing the Liber in 1272 involved
comparing the Elements, the Dionysian Corpus, and the Liber and reinforced
his conviction that the latter agreed on fundamental matters—a similarity
partly explained by knowledge of the Corpus in the Arabic circles where the
Liber was confected.4 In the Arab Peripatetic tradition, where Aquinas’s
understanding of Aristotle was formed, the philosopher had absorbed
Plotinus and Proclus.5 In judging Aquinas’s Platonism, we must remember
how Neoplatonic his Aristotle was because Aquinas inherited the
reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle at which the Neoplatonists and Arabic
Peripatetics aimed. Even what are taken to be his most characteristically
Aristotelian positions, for example, intellection by way of abstraction from
the sensible, are given their character in that concordance.6
Besides the Dionysian Corpus and the Liber, his most influential early
sources of Platonism were Aristotle and Augustine; he probably read almost
nothing by Plato except what was quoted by others, for example, fragments
of the Timaeus in the commentary by the Platonist Calcidius. For Aquinas,
Augustine, as well as Dionysius, “followed Plato as far as Catholic faith
allowed.”7 Augustine, who shares with Avicenna—as seen by Aquinas8—a
doctrine of human knowledge through illumination by intelligible forms, and
Dionysius, for whom humans know by turning to the sensible—this is
probably why Aquinas initially thought that he was an Aristotelian—are
Neoplatonists in markedly different ways. Aquinas, however, treated
philosophical schools as if they were syllogistic arguments in which the
“way” of thinking, or “reason,” determined the premises, and thus the
conclusions. This framework kept him from reflecting on some of the
fundamental differences within the two big groupings—Platonic and
Aristotelian—between which he divides most philosophers and their
Christian followers. Although, as his many and careful commentaries show,
he is a diligent and determined—if sometimes polemical—student of the
history of philosophy, this structure is probably the cause of his shifting and
somewhat inconsistent categorizations, as well as of his judgments about
philosophical thinkers that are often insensitive to important differences.
Aquinas greatly prized the Neoplatonic, as well as the Peripatetic,
commentaries and paraphrases he gradually acquired, because they enabled
getting to the Hellenic sources. This retrieval assisted in establishing a
Neoplatonized Aristotle, in such matters as the individualization of the Agent
Intellect, against the Averroism Thomas polemically ascribed to members of
the Faculty of Arts in Paris.9 Thus, for example, his last expositions of
Aristotle have great portions lifted from the two commentaries of Simplicius
he possessed in Moerbeke’s translations.10 His later works contain structures
and conceptions derived from these, and, in his final accounts of the history
of philosophy, he looked at Aristotle, as well as Plato, from the inclusive
standpoint of this last great pagan Neoplatonic commentator.11 The
Neoplatonic commentaries of Macrobius and Boethius, among the Latins,
and Ammonius, among the Greeks, are also important sources and
influences.

PLACING PLATONISM IN THE HISTORY OF

PHILOSOPHY
A great part of Aquinas’s last writing was devoted to explicating Aristotle’s
works—including the Liber de causis attributed to him. Aquinas wishes to
understand the philosophical schools: their characters, the differences
between and within them, their memberships, influences, histories, and the
extent to which they are complementary and may be brought into concord.
For him Platonism belongs within a providentially ordered progressive
development of philosophy, enabling it to serve Christian sacred doctrine.
Although he distinguishes between the positions of Plato and “other
Platonists” within the progress, still what the Platonists teach has been
reduced to a fixed way of thinking like that of other philosophical schools
and “no text … points to a difference in the via.”12 From the first, he
criticizes it from within Aristotle’s polemical accounts, although, under the
influence of Simplicius, he came to think that at least some of Aristotle’s
opposition was based on misunderstanding Plato’s poetic and storytelling
style, a misconstrual that was particularly marked among the Peripatetics.13
Some of the criticisms are, however, confirmed for him by later
Neoplatonists, like Simplicius, who shared with Proclus, Dionysius, and the
Liber an account of the human soul so completely descended into the realm
of becoming that it is forced to turn toward the sensible. Aquinas’s most
knowledgeable and extensive treatments of Platonism are found in his late
On Spiritual Creatures, On Separate Substances, and his exposition of the
Liber. All show that he has read the commentary of Simplicius on the
Categories (translation finished in 1266).
What Aquinas reproduced from that commentary enabled him to establish
a complementary characterization of Platonism and Aristotelianism, set up in
terms of simple oppositions occurring within the schematized progress of
reason:

The difference between these two positions stems from this, that some, in order to seek
the truth about the nature of things, proceeded from intelligible reasons, and this was the
particular characteristic of the Platonists. Some, however, proceeded from sensible
things, and this was the particular characteristic of the philosophy of Aristotle, as
Simplicius says in his commentary Upon the Categories.14

The procedure “from intelligible reasons” thinks in terms of the inherent

independence of the separate substances. Despite its problems, this approach
to reality was not only a necessary step on the way to Aristotle but also
corrects deficient tendencies in the “Aristotelian way” with its procedure
“from sensible things.”
In On Separate Substances Aquinas gives an extended treatment of the
history of philosophy, including lists of differences and agreements between
Plato and Aristotle, beginning with “the opinions of the ancients and of
Plato.” Because of the continuous flux of bodies and the deception of the
senses, the early Physicists had thought it impossible for humans “to know
the certain truth of things.”15 Plato, agreeing with them “that sensible things
are always in flux” and “that the sensitive power does not have certain
judgment about reality,”16 solved the problem of knowledge by positing
natures in which the truth would be fixed. These were separated from what
fluctuates; by adhering to them our soul knows the truth. “According to this
reasoning, because the intellect when knowing the truth apprehends
something beyond the matter of sensible things, Plato thought some things
existed separately from sensible realities.”17

IN WHAT PLATO ERRED, WHAT HE GOT RIGHT,

AND WHERE HE CORRECTS ARISTOTLE
Philosophy begins, thus, with two errors that must be overcome. One is the
denial that humans can know with certainty. The second is that nothing exists
separate from bodies. Theology requires that both errors be overcome
because our understanding that God is a separate substance depends upon
demonstrating His existence.18 In fact, “we discover that God exists, by
unbreakable reasons proved by the philosophers.”19 Plato solved the two
errors together. However, the connection between knowledge of the truth and
the existence of separate substances is not what Plato took it to be. In order to
save knowledge, Plato simply reversed the Physicists, projecting what
belongs to our thinking onto an external reality. In common with the
Physicists, Plato held that like was known by like. The Physicists, supposing
that only bodies existed, determined the knower from the known: “they
thought that the form of the object known should be in the knower in the
same way that it is in the thing known.” On the contrary: “Plato, having
perceived that the intellectual soul is immaterial and knows immaterially,
held that the forms of things known exist immaterially.”20
The Platonic reversal of the Physicists is correct because: “the nature of
knowledge is opposite to the nature of materiality.”21 However, by simply
changing the direction of the likeness, so that the structure of knowledge is
transferred to reality, Plato remained too close to his adversaries. From a
Neoplatonist, Thomas had learned very early that cognition should be
considered according to a twofold way: “namely, the mode of the thing
known and the mode of the knower, the mode of the thing known is not the
mode of the knower, as Boethius says.”22
When much later he compared the Liber with the Elements, while looking
at the Divine Names of Dionysius, Aquinas examined Platonism through a
work of Proclus and two of its derivatives. He arrived at a very full picture of
the many levels of intellectual objects and modes of intellection in the
Platonic spiritual cosmos. On Separate Substances represents Plato as
positing two genera of entities separate from sensible things in accord with
two modes of intellectual abstraction, “mathematicals and universals which
he called forms or ideas.”
For Aquinas, Platonic hierarchy placed mathematicals between the forms
and sensibles.23 At the highest level were entities like the good itself,
intellect itself, and life itself—realities like, but, crucially, not identical with
those Aquinas rightly regarded as posited in the Divine Names. These
Dionysian conceptual names are what made Aquinas think of Dionysius as a
Platonist, despite his acknowledgement that we know higher things by way
of their sensible veils, which made Dionysius seem Aristotelian. Aquinas
judged that the Platonic error here involved a false separation of the object
from the subject of intellection. The intelligibles were separated from the
intellects when the “gods, which is what Plato called the separate intelligible
forms,” were separated from knowing.24 The “order of gods, that is of ideal
forms, has an internal order corresponding to the order of the universality of
forms.”25 This philosophical error has religious consequences. Thus, in this
aspect of his teaching on the kinds of separate substances, Aristotle’s
parsimony is “more consonant with the Christian faith.” Aristotle does not
need separate forms to explain how we know, and Aquinas agreed with him
in not positing forms intermediate between God and knowing beings.26
According to Aquinas, on this, as well as when he refuses to make the first
principle unknowable because it is the one-not-being, Dionysius agrees with
Aristotle, the Liber, and Christian faith against the Platonists as understood
through the Elements. The Areopagite abolishes the independent subsistence
of the good itself, intellect itself, and life itself “for all these things are
essentially the very first cause of all things … and thus we posit not many
gods but one.”27 Doubtfully, Aquinas places Dionysius, whom he never
contradicts, within the same Neoplatonic tradition where we locate Aquinas,
that is within the ontology of pure being, probably originating in Porphyry,
rather than within the henological stream, where we put Proclus. Certainly
Aquinas’s language here is Platonic: the one God “is itself the infinite to be”
in which finite beings participate.28 However, Aquinas is not yet finished
with Platonism in his history; crucially, the Platonic tendency to multiply
entities also benefits the truth.
When Aquinas treats Aristotle in On Separate Substances, he does not
leave his Neoplatonic framework behind. Echoing a statement he found in
Simplicius Upon the Categories, he matches what he wrote of the first of the
five ways in the Summa theologiae. He judges that Aristotle’s way of
reasoning, by way of motion, to the existence of separate substances is “more
evident and more certain.”29 Simplicius, adhering to the Neoplatonic
tradition originating in Iamblichus, to which Proclus and Dionysius also
belonged, had judged the Aristotelian way to have a more persuasive
necessity in virtue of its relation to sense.30 It is essential to this “way of
motion” that its beginning belongs to the kind of knowing proper to the
human place in the hierarchy of cognition. Staying “with what does not
depart much from what is evident to sense” gives a greater certainty to our
rational knowledge of the existence of separate substances. It shows its
limits, however, when determining their kinds and numbers. On this,
Aristotle’s position seems “less sufficient than the position of Plato.”31
Aristotle wanted only “a dual order of separate substances” and tied their
numbers to what is required to move the heavens.32
As against these opinions, Thomas asserts that the phenomena associated
with demon possession and magic “can in no way be reduced to a corporeal
cause.” These phenomena require the kind of explanation “through some
intellectual substances,” which Thomas associates with the Platonists.33 He is
against a reduction of the phenomena to “the power of the heavenly bodies
and of other natural things.” Against “the Peripatetic followers of
Aristotle,”34 Aquinas makes common cause with Augustine, with Plotinus,
and the Platonists generally (as represented by Augustine and many others),
in asserting the existence of demons that lie outside Aristotle’s two kinds of
separate substance. Nonetheless, even here, the Platonists are not entirely
right.
Despite the beginning from intelligible reasons, which they supposed
themselves to have made, ultimately the Platonists could not escape
determining the numbers of the separated intelligible forms from sensible
things. For Aquinas, in the tradition of the same post-Plotinian Neoplatonic
understanding of the place and orientation of the human individual soul in
which Simplicius and Dionysius also stand, human reasoning in fact begins
with the sensible. In consequence, the Platonists cannot avoid reproducing
the sensible world in the intelligible realm: “For, since they are not able to
arrive at knowledge of such substances except from sensible things, they
supposed the former to be of the same species as the latter, indeed, better, to
be their species.”35 The kinds of sensible things, in fact, determined for them
the numbers of the separated universals. That the lower should dictate the
kinds or numbers of the higher is always repugnant to Aquinas, whether the
culprits are Aristotelians or Platonists. Provided that they do not make the
false separation of intellection and its objects, and commit the errors which
follow, Plato and his followers are right as against Aristotle. This is because,
in principle, the Platonists correctly considered the nature of separated
substances and the whole order of intellectual beings according to its own
proper reality,36 and in relation to the First Principle, rather than from below,
and thus arrived at more kinds of separate substances, an expansion that
served some of the needs of sacred doctrine.
There is much more in On Separate Substances concerning their numbers,
including an elaborate reasoning that saves verbally opposed positions of
both Proclus and Dionysius. Without following this, we can conclude that
Thomas writes the history of philosophy by drawing the Platonists and the
Aristotelians into a single argument in which they complement and correct
each other. The principle of this correction is the Christian faith, which
philosophy ultimately serves.

SOME FUNDAMENTAL NEOPLATONIC ASPECTS

OF AQUINAS’S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE
Aquinas began the final book of the Summa contra Gentiles with this
thoroughly Neoplatonic assertion:

Because the most perfect unity is found in the highest summit of things, God, and
because with each reality so much the more it is one, so much the greater is its power
and dignity, it follows that, to the extent that things be further away from the First
Principle, so much greater is the diversity and variety found in them. Therefore it is
necessary that the process of emanation from God be united within this Principle itself,
and be multiplied according to the lowliness of things, where it comes to its end.37

According to his own account, in the Summa theologiae Aquinas was finally
able to give sacred teaching the order in which its proper structure would be
intelligible. Thus, in order to get a glimpse at how pervasive Neoplatonism is
in Aquinas, we may suitably conclude with some remarks on how, not only
the Summa theologiae as a whole, but also particular treatises within it,
describe the Neoplatonic structure of remaining, going out, and return by
which all things except the One revert upon their principle.38
The first circle within the Prima Pars (ST I q.3–11) is constructed when,
beginning with simplicity, we arrive back at unity, by way of the going out of
the existence of God into all things. The circles succeeding it return to the
principle by way of more and more differentiated processions. We have a
unification of the Platonic dialectic of the one and the many with Aristotle’s
logic of activity as entelecheia in a Neoplatonic hierarchy.39 Moreover, the
Neoplatonic figures determine content, as well as form.
For example, a Proclean conception, that incorporeal substances have
complete return upon themselves, enables the Summa’s progress from the
circle described by simple being returning to itself as unity to the questions
on the divine activities of knowing, loving, and power. Creation for Aquinas
requires three emanations of two kinds. First, there are the internal
emanations or processions within the divine essence, which produce real
distinctions and relations within the Principle. The two emanations of the
eternal Word and Holy Spirit are necessary and natural. Thomas invokes
Avicenna on behalf of this necessity in God and has in mind a principle,
frequent among the Neoplatonized Arabic Peripatetics, “from a simple one
nothing except a unity can come.”40 Equality as a characteristic is especially
appropriated to the Word as the first emanation from the Father who is the
principle of the Trinitarian processions. Thus, Aquinas writes, once more in a
Neoplatonic mode:

The first thing which proceeds from unity is equality and then multiplicity proceeds.
Therefore, from the Father, to whom, according to Augustine, unity is proper, the Son
processes, to whom equality is appropriate, and then the creature comes forth to which
inequality belongs.41

The multiplication of equals is the origin of the other kind of emanation, that
of “all being from the universal being.”42 Throughout his writing, the
emanations of divine Persons are the cause and reason of all subsequent
emanations.43 The characteristics of the procession of creatures are contrary
to those within the divine essence, but determined by them. This procession
is voluntary because the divine being is necessarily willing. A figure, by
which the Neoplatonists reconciled Plato and Aristotle, the idea of
motionless motion as characterizing the activity of the perfect, enables
Aquinas to call God “living.” A structure, taken from Proclus via Dionysius
and the Liber, provides the framework for the consideration of all spiritual
substances from the soul to the divine; they have essence, power, and act.44
God is unknown to us in this present life, but not, as with Proclus, in
principle. However, reason understands its own ignorance. By a combination
of two Neoplatonic structures: (1) the relation between the grade of a
substance in the hierarchy and its way of knowing, with (2) the systematic
analogy between the ways of knowing and the grades of being, Aquinas
develops his doctrine of analogy to prevent all our judgments about God
being false. The correction of the mode of our knowing of God, by
comparing it to the mode of his being, requires that we are simultaneously
looking at reality in a human way, and regarding our place in the cosmos
from the divine perspective. This capacity to look at ourselves from beyond
ourselves is consequent on our participation in the higher knowing of
separate substances, a characteristically Neoplatonic reworking of a
reconciled Aristotle and Plato.45 This participation is as much a fact about the
psychological and ontological structure of the cosmos—and thus about the
constitution of our nature and how it functions within its hierarchically
situated place—as it is something vouchsafed by revelation. In fact, the top-
down movement of knowing, which Aquinas reserves for revelation in
contradistinction from the upward movement of philosophy, belongs to the
Neoplatonic correction of Aristotle.46

NOTES
1. See Wayne John Hankey, “Aquinas and the Platonists,” in Stephen
Gersh and Martin Hoenen, eds., The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages:
A Doxographic Approach (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2002), 279–
324.
2. Wayne John Hankey, “Participatio divini luminis, Aquinas’ Doctrine of
the Agent Intellect: Our Capacity for Contemplation,” Dionysius 22 (2004):
165 and Larry Michael Harrington, ed., A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of
Mystical Theology at the University of Paris (Paris, Leuven, and Dudley:
Peeters, 2004).
3. Super Sent I.2, d.14, q.1, a.2 and Diu. nom., proemium. Translations are
mine.
4. See on Arabic and earlier translations of the Corpus, Alexander Treiger,
“The Arabic Version of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical
Theology, Chapter 1: Introduction, Critical Edition, and Translation,” Le
Muséon 120: 3–4 (2007): 365–93.
5. Alain de Libera, La Querelle des universaux: De Platon à la fin du
Moyen Age (Paris: Des travaux, 1996), 117.
6. See Houston Smit, “Aquinas’s Abstractionism,” Medieval Philosophy
and Theology 10 (2001): 85–118 and Hankey, “Participatio divini luminis.”
7. QDSC 10, ad 8.
8. SCG 2, 74; ST I q.84 a.4; see Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s De
Anima in the Latin West: The Formation of a Peripatetic Philosophy of the
Soul, 1160–1300 (London/Turin: The Warburg Institute/Nino Aragno, 2000),
72.
9. QDSC 10, ad 8; QDV 16, 3; ST I q.79 a.5; see “Simplicius,” On Aristotle
on the Soul 3.1–5, trans. Henry Blumenthal (London: Duckworth, 2000), vii,
8, 220, and Wayne John Hankey, “Why Philosophy Abides for Aquinas,”
The Heythrop Journal 42:3 (2001): 338.
10. e.g. In DC 3, 2.
11. See Wayne John Hankey, “Thomas’ Neoplatonic Histories: His
Following of Simplicius,” Dionysius 20 (2002): 153–78.
12. Robert John Henle, Saint Thomas and Platonism: A Study of the Plato
and Platonici Texts in the Writings of Saint Thomas (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1956), 447.
13. In DC 1, 22; In DA 8, 38; In Meta 3, 11; In Phy 1, 15.
14. QDSC 3.
15. DSS 1.
16. QDSC 10, ad 8.
17. DSS 1.
18. ST I q.2 a.2 s.c.
19. QDV 10, 12; see QDV 14, 9 and ad 9.
20. ST I q.84 a.2.
21. Ibid.
22. Super Sent I.1, d.38, q.1, a.2; see In BDT, Expositio Capituli Secundi
and Wayne John Hankey, “Aquinas, Pseudo-Denys, Proclus and Isaiah
VI.6,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 64 (1997):
87–90.
23. DSS 1.
24. DSS 4.
25. In CA, prop. 19.
26. In CA, prop. 10 and prop. 13.
27. In CA, prop. 3; on the ambiguity of Dionysius, see Diu. nom. 5, 1.
28. In CA, prop. 6; see Wayne John Hankey, “Self and Cosmos in
Becoming Deiform: Neoplatonic Paradigms for Reform by Self-Knowledge
from Augustine to Aquinas” in Christopher Bellitto and Louis Hamilton,
eds., Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and
Approaches (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 49–50 and Jean-Marc Narbonne,
Hénologie, ontologie et Ereignis (Plotin-Proclus-Heidegger) (Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 2001), 41–70, 222–44.
29. DSS 2.
30. Simplicius, Commentaire sur les Catégories d’Aristote, Traduction de
Guillaume de Moerbeke, ed. Adrien Pattin, vol. 1 (Louvain: Publications
universitaires de Louvain, 1971), prologus, 8.
31. DSS 2.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. QDM 16, 1.
35. SCG 2, 92.
36. DSS 4.
37. SCG 4, 1, prooemium.
38. See ST I q.2, prologue and Wayne John Hankey, God in Himself:
Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987), passim.
39. Wayne John Hankey, “Theoria versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and
Trinitarian Difference in Aquinas,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 397–408.
40. QDP 2, 4 and ST I q.41 a.2; see Wayne John Hankey, “Ab uno simplici
non est nisi unum: The Place of Natural and Necessary Emanation in
Aquinas’ Doctrine of Creation,” in Michael Treschow, Willemien Otten, and
Walter Hannam, eds., Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval, and Early
Modern Thought (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 328–31.
41. ST I q.47 a.2 ad 2.
42. ST I q.45 a.4 ad 1.
43. Gilles Emery, La Trinité Créatrice: Trinité et création dans les
commentaires aux Sentences de Thomas d’Aquin et de ses précurseurs Albert
le Grand et Bonaventure (Paris: Vrin, 1995), 280.
44. ST I q.75 prologus.
45. DSS 4, see Hankey, God in Himself, 165.
46. Proclus, Elements of Theology, 2d ed., ed. Eric Robertson Dodds
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 198–99.
 CHAPTER 5

AQUINAS AND JEWISH AND ISLAMIC AUTHORS

DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C.

IF we wish to gain perspective on the medieval world of reflection, we must

replace our Eurocentric image with that of a Mediterranean basin, with the
commerce across this interior lake involving warfare and hostilities, yet with
scholars profiting from the consequent exchange. We must also remind
ourselves that if that basin was partitioned into Muslim and Christian sectors,
Christian communities continued to function (and sometimes even thrive)
within the Islamic world, while Jews were tolerated in both, often serving as
intermediaries. So while the spirit of this basin could hardly be described as
“ecumenical” in current terms, for religious differences seemed always to
trump commonalities, the convictions they shared become evident to readers
today reading the debates which those differences engendered. For Jews,
Christians, and Muslims avow the free creation of the universe—that is, all-
that-is—by the one God whose action in doing so epitomizes graciousness.
That is a startling avowal at any time, yet these traditions had to make it in
the early medieval period in the face of a picture of the universe and its
origins that was seamless and intellectually satisfying. So the story of Islamic
contributions to medieval philosophical theology will recount the ways in
which a common Hellenic heritage was challenged to accommodate so
startling a faith assertion as that of free creation. The sharp debates within the
Muslim context were hardly known to their Christian interlocutors, but the
initial recasting of al-Farabi and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) certainly were—as the
“Theology of Aristotle” and the “Liber de causis,” so the ways in which
Christian thinkers adapted those schemes make a fascinating tale.

INITIAL ISLAMIC FORAYS INTO

 PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY: “THE
PHILOSOPHERS”
When Islam entered the sophisticated world of the Byzantine empire, the
works of Plato and of Aristotle were made available to them by virtue of
Syriac translators from Greek into Arabic.1 Of the works of Plato, it was the
Republic that offered a model for the role of reason in the formation of a new
society, and al-Farabi (875–950) articulated that model in his ground-
breaking essay on the “ideas of the inhabitants of the virtuous city.”2 In that
distinctly Neoplatonic work, the One is deemed to emanate all-that-is
according to a perfect order, to be emulated by those responsible for ordering
the perfect society. A distinctively Islamic note was struck by insisting that
those responsible be prophets, as well as philosophers, since the earthly
imitation of divine ordering needs to be communicated to each person in
society, few of whom can follow the pattern of deductive reasoning that
comprises the original emanation. It is the Qur’an, after all, which offers the
paradigm of a text divinely revealed and hence impeccably wise, yet cast in a
language accessible to all, replete with images and examples. None but
prophets are able to order metaphor and image so as to communicate the
results of philosophical reasoning, so Muhammad offers the paradigm for a
responsible and wise ruler.
It was Aristotle’s Metaphysics, however, which offered the paradigm for
doing philosophy to al-Farabi’s successor, Avicenna (980–1037). His al-
Shifa adapted the cosmological scheme of al-Farabi, whereby the planetary
spheres transmit the primary causal influence of the One successively to the
earth.3 So this One provides far more than Aristotle’s prime mover, for in the
spirit of Plotinus and of Proclus, the movement from unity to multiplicity is
at once one of logic and of vitality: what is communicated is a participation
in what the One possesses by nature, existence and all that flows from it.
What Avicenna added to al-Farabi was an all-important distinction between
this ordering and the activity that suffused it. Things are what they are by
virtue of their inherent natures; their actual existence they owe directly to the
One as the source of all activity. This distinction between what something is
and the fact that it is had been suggested in Aristotle but never exploited by
the Greeks. Its presence in a thinker as preoccupied with essences as
Avicenna leads one to ask why he deemed it central to his effort to articulate
the movement from the One to the many. The most plausible response is to
see it as a philosophical residue of the Qur’anic teaching that the universe
was freely created by the one God. It is little more than a residue, however,
since the entire process of emanation flows ineluctably from the One; yet the
metaphor stands nonetheless and will be exploited by Thomas Aquinas as the
keystone in his attempt to articulate “the distinction” of the creator from
creation.

THE DISTINCTION OF ESSENCE FROM EXISTING

God alone, as both al-Farabi and Avicenna had averred, is understood to be
One whose very nature is to exist; everything else must have existence
bestowed upon it by the One to whom everything that is traces its origination.
In this way the distinction of essence from existence offered Avicenna a
handy way of articulating what he had already recognized to be the
fundamental division in being: between that One, which exists of itself, and
everything else, which may or may not exist. Aristotle had defined
contingency in terms of some things being able to be other than they are;
Avicenna found a yet deeper understanding: everything other than the One
source of all might never have been at all! By focusing in this fashion on
existing as something that “comes to” an essence, he was able in one formula
to distinguish necessary from contingent beings, as well as to limit necessary
being to the One, so offering a philosophical analogue to the Qur’an’s
insistence that all-that-is derives from a single creator. Furthermore, the
formula that God is that very one whose essence is to exist provides a
formulation of “necessary being,” which corresponds to the deeper
understanding of contingency just noted. It is this formulation that Aquinas
will exploit to offer a way of uniquely characterizing God, as well as
signaling “the distinction” of creatures from the creator.4 So we may signal
the distinction that Avicenna identified as the primary contribution of Islamic
thought to medieval philosophical theology. His unfortunate articulation of
existing as an “accident,” following the etymology of the Arabic (and Latin)
expression of its “coming to the essence,” however, left him vulnerable to the
trenchant critique of Averroës, in his Tahafut al-Falasifa [Incoherence of the
Philosophers]. It also revealed his own predilection for essences, a tendency
which Aquinas sought to correct in his early opusculum, On Being and
Essence.5 So the distinction of essence from existing, as it came to be known,
offers an intellectual reflection of the act of creating by one God, an act
which (in Aquinas’s terms makes the existence of creatures to be an
“existence to” [esse ad] the creator6), thereby transforming Aristotle’s notion
of substance as simply “that which is” tout court. Creatures can only exist by
divine action, so creating and conserving are the same action, though
considered from different viewpoints.
So one can fairly say that the distinguishing mark of medieval philosophy,
by contrast with its traditional Hellenic parentage, lies in its need to
articulate, in properly philosophical terms, the free creation avowed in Jewish
and Muslim revelational texts. Here is where the Mediterranean exchange
figures prominently. We have noted how Aquinas registered his debt to
Avicenna in one of his earliest writings, apparently responding to a request
from his Dominican brothers to clarify the confusing terminology muddling
their attempts to understand Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and the study of being
qua being. Yet in the process, in a characteristically creative move, he
radically modified the way Avicenna had expressed the essence/existing
distinction. Instead of portraying existing as something that “comes to” the
essence, as an accident comes to a substance, Aquinas reached for the most
profound level of composition that Aristotle had proposed: that of
potency/act. So as form is said to bring matter into act, so existing could be
said to bring essence into act. This would mean that form, which had been
one of Aristotle’s key candidates for substance—the very touchstone of
being-as-being for Aristotle—would now be “reduced” to something in
potency. Put otherwise, Aristotle’s prime example of act had to be said to be
in potency to existing. This re-iteration of the potency/act principle would
never have occurred to Aristotle, who simply presumed that things—indeed
the universe itself—exist. So it appears that the essence/existing distinction,
as introduced by Avicenna and recast by Aquinas, is conceptually derivative
from the revelation of a creator—an originating activity that Aristotle would
have found unnecessary.

MOSES MAIMONIDES
Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) lived all of his life in the Islamicate, that is
the linguistic and cultural world of Islam, coming eventually to serve as court
physician for Saladin in Foster, the modern Cairo. He composed works of
philosophy in Judaeo-Arabic (that is, Arabic with Hebrew orthography), the
most significant of which is the Guide of the Perplexed, addressed to his
student, Joseph. It was quickly translated into Hebrew, coming to Aquinas’s
attention in Latin translation. Aquinas’s citations of this work show that he
sensed an affinity with “Rabbi Moses,” engaging his work in a spirit of
shared inquiry, notably around the issue of free creation and that of “naming
God,” another place where revelation and reason intersect. As for creation,
medieval discussions tended to focus on the eternity of the world versus its
beginning in time, reflecting a religious concern that divided Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim thinkers sharply from their pagan predecessors.
Aristotle had maintained the eternity of the world because he had no way of
conceiving it as a whole but could only presume it as a given—as the context
for whatever else might be said or thought. When Plotinus would take the
next step to insist on origination, the presumption of everlasting origination
held. Indeed, the contrary assertion—that it had been created in the moment
when time thus began—would require access to a perspective beyond the
world. Affirming creation required faith in a revelation, and revelation
presupposed one revealing. As Maimonides put it: “as for us, the matter is
clear …: that all things exist in virtue of a purpose and not of necessity, and
that He who purposed them may change them.”7 Necessary emanation from
the One (as Maimonides understood Plotinus, refracted through al-Farabi)
does not count as creation, for on that picture the First is not clearly distinct
from the ensuing series, so the Oneness of God is jeopardized. Aquinas will
accept Maimonides’ contention that we cannot demonstrate from such a
purposeful dependence clearly “in favor of the world’s having been produced
in time,”8 yet the presumption in favor of an eternal world had also been
shown to be undemonstrable, leaving Torah believers free to accept creation
de novo, as well as ex nihilo.
The philosophical discussion, however, has only begun. Avicenna had
tried to reconcile Qur’anic assertions about creation with a pre-existent (and
eternal) matter because he could see no other place to locate the possibility
that what came to be would come to be. (Aquinas distinguished real
possibility from merely conceptual non-repugnance, located within the mind
of the maker.) Yet a clear conception of creatio ex nihilo would similarly
founder on identifying the proper effect of the creator, since analogies with
human making inevitably demanded something be presupposed. Maimonides
did not even attempt this articulation, though his endorsing practical knowing
as a useful way of intimating to ourselves the divine knowing that utterly
escapes us9 offers Aquinas a leading analogy of artisan to artifact. Similarly,
Avicenna’s distinguishing existence from the essence of created things will
allow Aquinas to identify “esse as the proper effect of the first cause,”10 once
he had painstakingly refined Avicenna’s distinction, as we have seen, as well
as carefully distinguished practical from speculative knowing. As
Maimonides notes, “a great disparity exists between the knowledge an
artificer has of the thing he has made and the knowledge someone else has of
the artifact in question.”11 The latter form of knowledge corresponds to our
way of knowing “the things from which we acquire the knowledge [we have]
of them,” whereas “the things in question follow upon [God’s] knowledge,”
as the artifact an artisan. The analogy is hardly a novel one; creating is
usually proposed as a making or modeling. Besides Genesis 2, we are also
reminded of Jeremiah: “as clay is in the potter’s hand, so you are in mine,
House of Israel” (Jer. 18:6). What makes it a bold comparison, however, is to
think of God so related to all there is as artisan to artifact. For the knowledge
involved is too inarticulate to satisfy the philosopher in us, while the
relationship of clay to potter is too passive and mute to meet the demands for
independent agency that we associate with freedom.
So Aquinas will need to specify what it is that can properly be said to
come forth from God, as the shape of the pot does from the potter’s hands.
Maimonides’ context evoked a parallel concern: “to explain to you … that
what exists indicates to us of necessity that it does exist in virtue of the
purpose of One who purposed it,”12 yet how can one safeguard the integrity
of created natures while acknowledging the creator’s sovereignty? Aquinas
refines the distinction introduced by Avicenna at the heart of all created
being to identify the effect proper to God’s creative action: the very existence
of things. Avicenna’s distinction of essence from existence was well known
to Maimonides; he in fact invokes it to characterize God as the One whose
“existence is identical with His essence and His true reality”—unlike
everything else where “existence is an accident attaching to what exists.”13
But as his literal adherence to the language of Avicenna suggests,
Maimonides had not yet seen how one might characterize this “accident” as a
constitutive principle of created being.
That was to be Aquinas’s signal achievement, elaborated early on and
used, as we have seen, to characterize the uniqueness of God (in a passage
reminiscent of Maimonides), as well as in his treatment of creation. So for
Aquinas, “everything … is potential when compared to existence,” so much
so that we must acknowledge that “existence is more intimately and
profoundly interior to things than anything else.”14 Indeed, that is how the
creator is present to each created thing “according to the manner in which it
has its existence”15 because “esse (existence) is the proper effect of the first
and most universal cause.”16 Since the fact that something exists is not a
feature of a thing—not an accident, as Avicenna’s unfortunate choice of
words suggested—we need not fear to identify it as an effect proper to
divinity, for there will be no way for us to pick it out as we can find traces of
ordinary causes. The situation is paradoxical, not unlike a Zen koan: that
which is most actual in each thing—what makes it exist—escapes our notice
because it cannot be isolated as a feature of the thing. In that sense, then, we
cannot talk about it, for what we call features of things are precisely those
things we can say about them. On reflection, however, that should not
surprise us, since the fact that something exists is not customarily listed
among its characteristics. It must, then, be a special sort of fact, which is
exactly Aquinas’s point in singling out esse as “the actuality of every form or
nature” that exists.
By recasting Avicenna’s distinction as he has, Aquinas is able to offer a
coherent characterization of the act of creation without pretending to have
described it. That is appropriate, moreover, since the relation of the One who
is source of all to all that originates from it will not be susceptible of
description, since it is not a relation within the world. Existence [esse],
understood as actuality, becomes the vehicle for articulating God’s
transcendence, as well as what links created things with their creator. It
should now be clear how central a role this account of creation plays in the
development of Aquinas’s thought. We have seen how it offered him a
philosophical basis for confidently asserting a transcendent referent for
analogous terms: “whatever is said both of God and creatures is said in virtue
of the order that creatures have to God as their source and cause.”17 Although
such terms will “signify what God is … imperfectly,”18 that is to be
expected, since they are not being used to signify an object in the world but
the source of all. What is remarkable, then, is not that we cannot speak
adequately of divinity, but that we can use our language to speak truthfully of
God at all.19
So Maimonides’ concern that the demands of philosophical discourse
does not undermine the uniqueness and transcendence of God is Aquinas’s as
well; he has simply discovered a way of enriching that discourse to the point
where philosophy can serve our confession of faith in the One while
exploiting hidden resources in our ordinary human language to highlight his
distinctive way of characterizing that divine activity. For his part,
Maimonides was clearly working without a developed notion of analogical
discourse, which led to his celebrated “agnosticism” regarding our
knowledge of God. Against the background of a Muslim controversy
regarding how we might responsibly apply ninety-nine names to the one
God, Maimonides had to insist that nothing could be said accidentally of the
One without compromising the primary confession of the community’s faith:
“the Lord, our God, is One.”
Aquinas develops his own position in explicit opposition to
Maimonides,20 suggesting some disparity in the thought world each
inhabited. For a century or more of preoccupation in the West with the
diverse uses of language in the Scriptures had prepared the ground for the
fruitful ways in which Aquinas would develop Aristotle’s rather cryptic
remarks on “analogy,” whereas the Islamic philosophers with whom
Maimonides (and his friend Joseph) were conversant had been engaged on a
more architectonic enterprise, while the rabbis in Moses’ own tradition had
been content to remind themselves how frequently “the Torah speaks in the
language of men.” Yet a systematic grappling with religious language
demands greater sophistication for the semantics structuring our use of terms
attributing perfections to God.
Aquinas called upon and expanded key distinctions already articulated in
the “speculative grammar” developed during the century preceding him.
Recent studies on analogy in Aquinas have made us attend to the way his
treatment follows the contours of our linguistic capacities. So, by way of
offering a constructive alternative to Maimonides’ radical agnosticism,
Aquinas insists:

Words are used of God and creatures in an analogical way, that is in accordance with a
certain order between them.… In this way some words are used neither univocally nor
purely equivocally of God and creatures, but analogically, for we cannot speak of God at
all except in the language we use of creatures, and so whatever is said both of God and
creatures is said in virtue of the order that creatures have to God as their source and
 cause in which all perfections of things pre-exist transcendently.21

So “this way of using words [that] lies somewhere between pure

equivocation and simple univocity”22 will require neither an intermediary
between God and the world nor a predication of God that is accidental.
Instead, Aquinas focuses on the ordering that relates creature with creator,
noting how certain words are especially useful to articulate that order—
namely, those that express the perfections accruing to creatures from their
source while also orienting rational creatures to that same source as their
goal. It is all here, compressed in Aquinas’s lapidary prose: the elasticity
which ordinary usage demands of certain terms, as well as the way those
same terms can invoke spiritual creatures’ intentional orientation to the
creator as their final end. So the “fact” of creation is presumed as a premise
in the argument, allowing us to recognize how normative terms require us to
distinguish the “mode of signifying” from the “thing signified”—our
characteristic mode of expression from its intended object, thereby pointing
to a transcendent dimension in our ordinary usage. For we could never aspire
to a more just society, if “just” merely described arrangements we were
familiar with. That certain terms possess this transcendent dimension in their
ordinary usage manifests a constitutive feature of intentional creatures in
their struggle to “go on,” so revealing a feature of creation itself.
Aquinas can then insist that such terms can “signify what God is although
they do so imperfectly” and show as well how their distinct meanings do not
imply a plurality of features in God. Attention to language, coupled with
explicit reliance on the order following upon creation, enables him to clarify
issues that so vexed Islamic thinkers: “since we know God from creatures,
we understand him through concepts appropriate to the perfections creatures
receive from him.”23 The language of perfections must outstrip itself, as we
have seen, so we are entitled to project it responsibly to its transcendent
source while renouncing any claim to thoroughly understanding that use:
“such terms signify what God is … imperfectly.” One reason we cannot
attain an adequate grasp of the transcendent application of these terms is that
such perfections must “pre-exist in God in a simple and unified way,” since
asserting that God is just is not so much to discover that God is characterized
by justice, or even to celebrate God as the source of justice, but to encourage
us to reflect on how such a source itself might exist, even when its mode of
existence will escape our characterization.
 Moreover, the other side of that reminder is to return to where we began to
note how “what pre-exists in God in a simple and unified way is divided
among creatures as many and varied perfections.”24 So it is not the mere
“fact” of creation that is presupposed to this argument, but the dynamic
orientation of intentional creatures to their source. Normally associated with
the fifth-century philosophical theologian, pseudo-Dionysius, who showed
Aquinas how to incorporate the power of Neoplatonism without adopting its
luxuriant hierarchical schemes, this ordering from and to a creator not only
accounts for the very structure of the Summa theologiae but also provides the
key for Aquinas’s remarkable articulation of dependent beings as
independent agents. Yet we can see how, in doing just that, he remained
beholden to his Jewish and Muslim predecessors, who had helped him
articulate conceptual innovations in the Greek philosophy they had all
inherited, to articulate the key relational datum of free creation.

NOTES
1. Richard Walzer, Greek into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1962).
2. Richard Walzer, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1985).
3. Avicenna, The Metaphysics of Healing, trans. Michael Marmura
(Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005); Robert Wisnovsky,
Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context (London: Duckworth, 2003).
4. ST I q.3 a.4: “God is God’s own existing.”
5. David Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides,
Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986).
6. ST I q.45 a.3: “creation is in creatures as a relation.”
7. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 2.19.
8. Ibid. 2.21.
9. Ibid. 3.21.
10. ST I q.45 a.5.
11. Guide, 3.21.
12. Guide, 2.19.
13. Guide, 1.57.
14. ST I q.8 a.1.
15. ST I q.8 a.1.
16. ST I q.45 a.5.
17. ST I q.13 a.5.
18. ST I q.13 a.4.
19. ST I q.13 a.12.
20. ST I q.13 a.2.
21. ST I q.13 a.5.
22. Ibid.
23. ST I q.13 a.4.
24. Ibid.
 PART II

METAPHYSICS AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

 CHAPTER 6

BEING

JOHN F. WIPPEL

ACCORDING to Aquinas the word “being” (ens) signifies “that which is” or
“that which exists.”1 This complexity within the notion of being implies that
one does not grasp it by the process of abstraction alone—the intellect’s first
operation whereby it understands what something is without affirming or
denying anything of it. While he acknowledges that this intellectual operation
suffices for one to grasp the quidditative aspect of being (“that which”),
Aquinas appeals to the intellect’s second operation (whereby one affirms or
denies by composing or dividing), often referred to as judgment, to account
for one’s grasp of the existential aspect of being and thus to complete one’s
understanding of being as that which is. As he explains, while the intellect’s
first operation is directed to the nature (essence) of a thing, its second
operation is directed to a thing’s existence (esse).2

THE SUBJECT OF METAPHYSICS

Aquinas holds that the subject of metaphysics is being as being, or as he
sometimes expresses this, being in general, rather than any restricted part of
being such as mobile being (studied by physics) or quantified being (studied
by mathematics). Hence, the subject of metaphysics—being as being—does
not depend upon sensible matter and motion to exist and to be understood (as
does the subject of physics), nor does it depend upon sensible matter to exist
although not to be understood (as does the subject of mathematics).3 But he
also distinguishes two ways in which something studied by a theoretical
science may not depend upon matter and motion to exist or to be understood,
first, in the sense that it can never be found in matter, as is true of God and
angels, or second, in the sense that it need not be found in matter and motion
although it sometimes is, as is true of substance, quality, being, potency, act,
the one and the many, and things like this. It is this second kind of freedom
from dependence upon matter and motion that Aquinas assigns to the subject
of metaphysics—being as being.4
In order to account for one’s discovery of being as being, Aquinas appeals
to another kind of judgment, a negative judgment, as distinguished from the
positive judgment of existence described above, and which in his
Commentary on the De Trinitate he calls “separation.” Through this
judgment one recognizes a distinction between that by reason of which
something enjoys being as such and that by reason of which it enjoys a given
kind of being, and one denies that being as such must be restricted to any
particular kind of being. One thereby discovers being taken universally, that
is, being as being, the subject of metaphysics, and what one may call a
metaphysical notion of being.5
In defending being as being as the subject of metaphysics, Aquinas is
following Aristotle’s thinking as set forth in Book IV, cc. 1–2 of his
Metaphysics, and in the opening lines of Book VI, c. 1. But because of an
approach introduced in the latter part of Book VI, c. 1 (1026a 10–32),
according to which first philosophy or divine science studies separate
substances, two different lines of interpretation had developed within the
Aristotelian tradition. One tradition, well represented by Avicenna, denies
that God is the subject of metaphysics and insists that its subject is rather
being as being.6 Another, represented by Averroës, is heavily influenced by
Aristotle’s text in Metaphysics, Book VI, c. 1, and concludes that the subject
of this science is separate entity or divine being.7
Aquinas offers an interesting solution to this issue. A theoretical science
must have a distinctive subject. But it also belongs to a theoretical science as
its end or goal to arrive at knowledge of the cause or principle of its subject.
Aquinas agrees with Avicenna (and with most of his thirteenth-century
contemporaries) that the subject of metaphysics is not God or divine being,
but being as being; he holds that it pertains to metaphysics to arrive at
knowledge of God as its end or goal and that, because of this, it can also be
called divine science. Thus, there is in fact no distinction between
metaphysics, the science of being as being, and a philosophical divine
science. Even so, Aquinas also maintains not only that God is not the subject
of metaphysics, but that he is not included under the notion of being as being
that serves as its subject. God is considered by metaphysics only indirectly,
as the cause and principle of its subject—being as being.8

DIVISION AND MULTIPLICATION OF BEING

Given the universal character of the subject of metaphysics—being as being
—, Aquinas must account for the multiplication of being itself and therefore,
because multiplication presupposes division, for some kind of division within
being. He recognizes with Parmenides that being cannot be divided by
something completely outside being itself in the way a genus is divided into
species by differences; for outside being there is only nonbeing and, as he
also holds, being is not a genus.9
Against Parmenides, however, Aquinas reasons that being can be divided
by certain modes that are realized within being itself. These may be either
certain general modes that follow upon every being, or more particularized
modes that correspond to diverse modes of existing. The general modes of
being (often referred to as transcendentals) are found wherever being itself is
realized so that every being is also “one” (undivided from itself), a “thing,”
“something” (distinct from other things), “good,” and “true.”10
Corresponding to the more particularized modes are the ten predicaments,
each of which corresponds to a particular mode of existing (modus
essendi).11 Going beyond Aristotle, on at least two occasions Aquinas offers
a detailed justification of ten predicaments, each time ending up with
substance, quantity, quality, relation, condition (habitus), time when
(quando), place where (ubi), position (situs), action, and passion. While
Aquinas recognizes their importance as logical categories, by ultimately
grounding them in distinctive modes of existing, he shows that they also fall
under the consideration of metaphysics.12
Most important for Aquinas, as for Aristotle, is the first of the
predicaments—substance, especially when taken as the individual subject
(suppositum), which he often refers to as a “particular something” (hoc
aliquid). Aquinas denies that a proper definition can be given for substance
or for the other predicaments because each of them is a supreme genus and
again because being itself cannot be regarded as a genus. As regards
substance, one might attempt to define it as “being which exists in itself (per
se).” While Aquinas does at times refer to it this way, he rejects this as a
proper definition of substance, but offers a description or “quasi-definition”
of it as “a thing to whose quiddity it belongs to exist not in something (else).”
Likewise, he rejects the definition of accident as “that which exists in
something else” and accepts as a correct description of it “a thing to whose
nature it belongs to exist in something else.”13

ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE

Aquinas argues for a fundamental composition and distinction within every
finite substance of two distinct ontological principles of being: an essence
that accounts for the fact that it is a being of a given kind and a distinct act of
existing (esse) that accounts for the fact that it actually exists. Since he often
uses the Latin term esse to describe this second principle, the reader should
be aware that he also frequently enough uses the same Latin word esse, or
one of its derivative forms, simply to signify the fact that a given thing exists.
For Aquinas, if a substance actually exists, this can only be because an
intrinsic act of existing is present within it, which actualizes its essence.
These two usages of esse must not be identified or confused with one
another.14
Aquinas regards this act of existing as the most fundamental ontological
principle within any existing substance and refers to it as the “actuality of all
acts and the perfection of all perfections.”15 It is always realized in a finite
substance only to a finite degree. Given Aquinas’s view that act is not self-
limiting, it follows that within any finite being its act of existing is received
and limited by its corresponding essence. Indeed, this is one way in which he
argues for the presence of these as two distinct principles within finite
entities.16 He also argues formally for the presence of this distinction and
composition in such entities in a number of other ways. Perhaps best known
is the long and complex argument presented in his youthful De ente et
essentia, c. 4. There he is rejecting a theory he attributes to Avicebron,
according to which all beings with the exception of God are composed of
form and matter—a spiritual matter in the case of created separate substances
and human souls. Many of Aquinas’s contemporaries maintained that such
matter–form composition is necessary in order to avoid attributing the perfect
simplicity of God to created spiritual entities. Against this, Aquinas argues
that while purely spiritual beings cannot be composed of matter and form,
they are nonetheless not perfectly simple; for they are composed of a form (=
essence) and a distinct act of existing, which are correlated as potency and
act.17
To support this, Aquinas reasons in a first stage of his argument that
whatever is not included within the understanding of an essence or quiddity
comes to it from without and enters into composition with it. This is because
no essence or quiddity can be understood without an understanding of its
parts. But every essence or quiddity can be understood without anything
being understood of its existence (esse); for I can understand what a human
being is or what a phoenix is, and not know whether it exists in reality.
Therefore, its existence (esse) is other than its quiddity or essence.18 If one
were to end this argument here and remove it from its context, it would be
open to two serious criticisms. First, while it suffices to show that it is
different for us to understand what something is and to understand that it is,
this of itself would not justify our concluding immediately to the presence of
two distinct ontological principles—essence and an act of existing, within
finite beings themselves. Second, in appealing to one’s ability to know what
something is without knowing that it exists, one is taking the term esse as
signifying the fact that something exists; but to succeed the argument must
conclude to the presence of esse taken as an act of existing distinct from the
essence of any finite being.
Aquinas, however, does not stop at this point but goes on to consider the
possibility that there might be some being that is identical with its act of
existing. If there is, perhaps, such a being, he reasons, it can only be unique
and first, since it could be multiplied in only one of three ways: (1) by the
addition of a difference in the way that a generic nature is multiplied in its
species, or (2) in the way a form is received in different instances of matter
when a specific nature is multiplied in different individuals, or (3) because in
one instance it is absolute and unreceived, and in all other cases it is received
in something else. But if there were a being that is nothing but its act of
existing (subsisting esse), it could not be multiplied in the first way; for then
it would be its act of existing plus a differentiating form. Nor could it be
multiplied in the second way by being received in different instances of
matter, for then it would no longer be pure esse, but esse plus the particular
matter that receives and multiplies it. By process of elimination, therefore,
Aquinas concludes that there can at most be one being that is its very act of
existing, since, under the third hypothesis which he accepts, in all other
entities with only one possible exception, a thing’s act of existing is received
in a distinct subject, that is, its essence. Given this, he concludes that in all
other beings including separate substances, there must be a distinction
between a thing’s quiddity or nature or form and its act of existing.19
In the third stage of this argument, Aquinas uses the distinction he has just
established between an essence and an act of existing in all beings, with only
one possible exception, to show that such beings depend upon something else
for their existence and are therefore efficiently caused. Then, by reasoning
from their efficiently caused existence, he concludes to the existence of an
uncaused cause of their existence, which is identical with its act of existing,
and which is God. In other words, he now proves that the one possible
instance of a being that is identical with its act of existing exists in actuality.
And since in every other being its essence principle receives its act of
existing, in such entities essence is related to existence as potentiality to
actuality.20
In other contexts Aquinas argues for this same distinction and
composition in other ways, frequently in his more mature writings by
developing the reasoning he had proposed in stage two of the argument from
the De ente. In order to account for the division and multiplication of beings
and their distinction from God, he reasons that one must posit a composition
and distinction of essence and act of existing within them. For instance, in
SCG II, c. 52, he offers three different versions of this type of argument, each
of which maintains that there can be only one instance of self-subsisting
existence (esse) and hence that in all other beings essence and the act of
existing must differ. In this context, since he has already established God’s
existence in Book I, c. 13, he assumes in these arguments that God actually
exists, unlike his approach in De ente, c. 4. But the inner logic of these
arguments does not require this assumption.21 He also sometimes reasons
from the participated character of finite beings to a distinction and
composition within them of a participated act of existing and an essence that
receives and participates in the act of existing.22
 PARTICIPATION
The last mentioned approach may be used to introduce another important part
of Aquinas’s metaphysics, his theory of participation.23 As Aquinas explains
in his Commentary on the De Hebdomadibus, “To participate is, as it were,
to take a part [of something]. And, therefore, when something receives in
particular fashion that which belongs to another in universal (or total)
fashion, the former is said to participate in the latter.”24 In other words,
participation is a way of accounting for the fact that the same kind of
perfection can be shared by many different subjects, or of addressing the
problem of the One and the Many.
Here Aquinas distinguishes different types of participation. First, human
being may be said to participate in animal because it does not possess the
nature of animal according to its full universality; and in like fashion an
individual such as Socrates may be said to participate in the species human
being. In each of these cases, a less universal concept (whether of a species
or an individual) shares in but does not exhaust the intelligible content of a
more universal concept (whether of a genus or of a species), and hence these
are examples of what we may call logical participation. In addition, a subject
may be said to participate in an accident, and matter may be said to
participate in form because either the accidental form or the substantial form,
each of which in itself is common, is restricted to this or that subject. These
are examples of real or ontological participation. But Aquinas then lists a
third kind of participation, which is also an example of real or ontological
participation, whereby an effect may be said to participate in its cause, and
especially when it is not equal to the power of its cause.25
One may ask where the participation of beings in the act of existing (esse)
fits into Aquinas’s division, since this is of greatest interest to the
metaphysician. He argues that the act of existing cannot participate in
something else in either of the first two ways he has just distinguished. But
he often refers to being, or essence, or nature as participating in the act of
existing. For instance, here he writes that because being (ens) is expressed
concretely, [a] being can be said to participate in existence as something
taken concretely participates in something taken abstractly.26 He also notes
that if something is to be the subject of an accident, it must participate in the
act of existing, that is to say, it must exist. And so, he continues, if the act of
existing and “that which is” differ only intentionally in perfectly simple
beings, they differ really in composite entities. But because there is only one
perfectly simple being (God), there is only one being which does not
participate in the act of existing and which is subsisting existence itself.27
Moreover, he distinguishes different ways in which the term existence
(esse) can be understood when one speaks of a being or nature as
participating in it, namely, (1) as participating in self-subsisting esse (God),
or (2) as participating in the act of existing viewed universally (esse
commune), or (3) as participating in its own act of existing.28 A finite or
created nature or being participates in self-subsisting esse or God by likeness
as in its unparticipated source and as in its first efficient cause (and exemplar
cause, as Aquinas sometimes adds), and so this kind of participation clearly
fits under the third main type distinguished above. By extension, therefore, it
seems appropriate to locate the other two ways of participating in esse under
that same division.

NOTES
1. See ST I-II q.26 a.4: “being (ens) in the absolute sense is that which has
existence (esse).” Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia (Rome: Leon. ed.,
1882), v. 6, p. 190 = Leon. 6.190; Expositio libri Boetii De hebdomadibus [In
BDH], lec. 2: “so we can say that being (ens), or that which is, is insofar as it
participates in the act of existing” (Leon. 50.271:57–59); line 97: “But that
which is, or being.…” (translations of Aquinas throughout are mine).
2. See In BDT, q.5, a.3 (Leon. 50.147:89–105). Also see Super Sent I,
d.19, q.5, a.1, ad 7 (Mandonnet ed., vol. 1, 489); d.38, q.1, a.3, 903. Étienne
Gilson has emphasized Aquinas’s appeal to judgment to account for the
intellect’s grasp of being as existing, especially in his Being and Some
Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952), c.6.
For my interpretation of this and for references to some who reject this
reading of Aquinas, see John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 2000), 24–30.
3. In BDT, q.5, a.1 (Leon. 50.138:141–55).
4. Ibid., lines 155–60. Also see q.5, a.4 (Leon. 50.154:186–99), and lines
160–61 on the subject of metaphysics as being insofar as it is being. For
reference to this as being in general (ens commune), see In Meta, Prooemium
(Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1950), 2.
5. In BDT, q.5, a.3 (Leon. 50.148:161–69; 149:156–258, 270–74, 276–
79). A correct understanding of Aquinas’s teaching on “séparation” finally
became possible when a correct text of the key passages was finally
published, beginning with a fundamental article by Louis-B. Geiger,
“Abstraction et séparation d’après s. Thomas In De Trinitate q.5, a.3,” Revue
des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 31 (1947): 3–40, followed by an
excellent critical edition by Bruno Decker, (1955, 2d ed., 1959), and finally
the Leonine ed. (1992). On “separation,” see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought
of Thomas Aquinas, 45–51 and 51–62, on the dispute among Thomistic
scholars concerning whether it presupposes prior knowledge of the existence
of some separate substance.
6. Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I–IV, ed. S. Van Riet
(Louvain/Leiden: Peeters/Brill, 1977), I, c.1, 4–6; c.2, 9–13.
7. In Phy I, com. 83, in his Opera omnia (Venice: 1562–74), v. 4, fol.
47rb-vb; In Meta VI, com. 2–3, v. 8, fols. 146rb–147ra. For this in Avicenna,
Averroës, and many medieval thinkers, see Albert Zimmermann, Ontologie
oder Metaphysik? Die Diskussion über den Gegenstand der Metaphysik im
13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Leuven: Peeters, 1998).
8. See In BDT, q.5, a.4 (Leon. 50.153:80–87, 154:157–201). Also see In
Meta, Prooemium, 1–2, on ens commune as the subject. For his exclusion of
God from esse commune (which is coextensive with ens commune), see Div.
nom. V, lec. 2, ed. C. Pera (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1950), 245, n. 660.
See Zimmermann, Ontologie oder Metaphysik, 216–23.
9. See QDV, q.1, a.1 (Leon. 22.1.5:106–111); In Meta I, lec. 9, 41, n. 138,
and n. 139, where he accuses Parmenides of having viewed being as if it
were univocal, like the nature of a genus.
10. QDV, q.1, a.1 (Leon. 22.1.5:124–61). On all of these, see Jan A.
Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas
Aquinas (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: Brill Academic Publishers, 1996).
11. QDV, q.1, a.1 (Leon. 22.1.5:114–23).
12. See In Meta V, lec. 9, 238, n. 890: “Wherefore it is necessary that being
be restricted to diverse genera in accord with diverse modes of predicating,
which modes follow upon diverse modes of existing.” See pp. 238–39, nn.
891–92 for his derivation of the ten predicaments. For a slightly different
derivation, see In Phy III, ed. P. M. Maggiòlo (Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1953), lec. 5, 158–59, nn. 322–23. On these derivations, see Wippel,
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 210–28.
13. For references to substance as existing per se, see In Meta IV, lec. 1,
152, n. 539; In Meta V, lec. 10, 903; QDP, q.9, a.1, ed. M. Pession (Turin
and Rome: Marietti, 1953), 226; QDV q.1, a.1 (Leon. 22.1.5:119–23). For
Aquinas’s rejection of being per se as the definition of substance and defense
of his alternative, see Super Sent IV, d.12, q.1, a.1, ql.1, ad 2 (Moos ed.), v.
4, 499; SCG I, c.25 (Ed. Leonina manualis, Rome, 1934), 27; QDP, q.9, a.1,
ad 4 (194); ST I q.3 a.5, ad 1 (Leon. 4.44). On accidents, see Super Sent IV
(ibid.); Quodl 9, q.3, a.1, ad 2 (Leon. 25.1.99:78–90). For discussion, see
Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 228–37.
14. On this distinction, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, 31–35.
15. QDP, q.7, a.2, ad 9, 192; ST I q.3 a.4 (Leon. 4.42).
16. See Super Sent I, d.8, q.5, a.1 (Mandonnet ed.), v. 1, 226. For
discussion and other texts, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, 170–76.
17. DEE, c.4 (Leon. 43.375:1–376:93, esp. lines 90–93).
18. Ibid., lines 94–103.
19. Leon. 43.376:103–377:126.
20. Ibid., 377:127–53. The proper interpretation of Aquinas’s
argumentation in De ente, c.4, has been much disputed by various scholars.
For the reading offered here, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, 137–50. For other interpretations, see there nn. 11 (with references
to a series of discussions between Joseph Owens and myself), 13, 14 (esp. the
references to Cornelio Fabro and Scott MacDonald), 15. Also now see David
Twetten, “Really Distinguishing Essence from Existence,” in Peter A.
Kwasniewski, ed., Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of
Lawrence Dewan, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2007), 40–84.
21. Ed. Leon. man., p. 145, the first three arguments. On these and other
arguments of this type, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, 151–57.
22. See ibid. 161–70 for texts and discussion.
 23. Much credit for the rediscovery of this long neglected doctrine in
Aquinas must be given to Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di
partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino, 2d rev. ed. (Turin: Società
editrice internazionale, 1950); L.-B. Geiger, La Participation dans la
philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin, 2d ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1953). Also see
more recently Rudi te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas
Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of
Thomas Aquinas, 94–131.
24. Leon. 50.271.70–73.
25. Leon. 50.271:77–85.
26. Ibid., lines 85–102.
27. Leon. 50.272:180–85; 272:204–73:205; 273:249–58.
28. See Quodl 12, q.4, a.1 (Leon. 25.2.404:16–25), on participating by
likeness in the First Act, which is subsisting existence (esse); In BDH, lec. 2
(Leon. 50:273:240–43), on participating in existence in general (esse
commune); Super Sent I, d.29, q.5, a.2 (Mandonnet ed., v. 1, 491), on a
creature’s participating in its own created esse.
 CHAPTER 7

MATTER, FORM, AND INDIVIDUATION

JEFFREY E. BROWER

FEW notions are more central to Aquinas’s thought than those of matter and
form. Although he invokes these notions in a number of different contexts,
and puts them to a number of different uses, he always assumes that in their
primary or basic sense they are correlative both with each other and with the
notion of a “hylomorphic compound”—that is, a compound of matter (hyle)
and form (morphe). Thus, matter is an entity that can have form, form is an
entity that can be had by matter, and a hylomorphic compound is an entity
that exists when the potentiality of some matter to have form is actualized.1
What is more, Aquinas assumes that the matter of a hylomorphic compound
explains certain of its general characteristics, whereas its form explains
certain of its more specific characteristics. Thus, the matter of a bronze statue
explains the fact that it is bronze, whereas its form explains the fact that it is
a statue. Again, the matter of a human being explains the fact that it is a
material object, whereas its form explains the specific type of material object
it is (namely, human).
My aim in this chapter is to provide a systematic introduction to
Aquinas’s primary or basic notions of matter and form. To accomplish this
aim, I focus on the two main theoretical contexts in which he deploys them—
namely, his theory of change and his theory of individuation. In both
contexts, as we shall see, Aquinas appeals to matter and form to account for
relations of sameness and difference holding between distinct individuals.

MATTER, FORM, AND CHANGE

Since change is the context in which Aquinas first introduces the notions of
matter and form, we can do no better than to begin our discussion with it.
And here it will be useful to proceed, as Aquinas himself does, by focusing
on particular examples.2
Consider, therefore, one of Aquinas’s favorite examples of change—
namely, one by which a statue is made from a lump of bronze. To fill out this
example, let us suppose our lump starts off being spherical but is later melted
down and recast as a statue. In that case, we will have a situation that, for the
sake of future reference, we can represent as follows (using a circle to stand
for our sphere, a square to stand for our statue, and a dotted arrow to
represent the direction of time):

As this diagram is intended to make clear, our example involves a process

that begins with an entity that can be characterized in one way (namely, as a
sphere) and ends with an entity that can be characterized in another way
(namely, as a statue). In this respect, Aquinas thinks, our example is perfectly
representative of all change. We might put the point by saying that, for him,
change essentially involves the temporal succession of distinct entities—or,
in terminology closer to his own, the “coming-to-be” of one thing and the
“passing-away” of another.3
Although coming-to-be and passing-away is an essential part of change,
Aquinas insists that change always involves more than this. After all, God
could have caused our statue to come-to-be out of nothing; likewise, he could
have caused our sphere to pass-away into nothing. But in that case, Aquinas
thinks, we would have an example of creation and annihilation rather than
change. And this is because, in keeping with common sense, he thinks of
change as requiring the existence of some thing that is changed—that is, a
subject that literally endures the change or remains numerically the same
over time.4 Thus, if we want to represent our statue example, as Aquinas
himself is thinking of it, we cannot merely appeal to the temporal succession
of distinct entities. On the contrary, we must introduce some complexity into
such entities, so as to indicate that they not only (a) involve distinct elements
(and hence are distinct) but also (b) share a common constituent (and hence
overlap). Since Aquinas himself describes the change in terms of the same
bronze having different shapes at different times, we can represent his
understanding more accurately as follows:

As this diagram helps to illustrate, Aquinas thinks of change not merely in

terms of distinct entities coming-to-be and passing-away, but rather in terms
of their coming-to-be from and passing-away into one another. In order to
distinguish this special type of coming-to-be and passing-away from other
types (such as creation and annihilation), Aquinas speaks of it in terms of
“generation” and “corruption”—where, as we can now see, these notions are
to be understood in terms of the temporal succession of distinct individuals
that overlap with respect to a common constituent that literally endures the
change itself.5
As it turns out, it is a very short step from this general account of change
to Aquinas’s hylomorphism. For in this context, Aquinas just introduces the
term “matter” (materia) to stand for that which remains the same throughout
a given change—that is, for the enduring subject of change. He introduces
the term “form” (forma) to stand for that with respect to which the matter or
enduring subject is changed—that is, for the elements of change that do not
endure or remain the same. Finally, he introduces the term “compound of
matter and form” (ex materia et forma compositum) to stand for that which
exists in virtue of some matter possessing a form, and hence for the type of
entity that can be generated or corrupted. As Aquinas also makes clear, the
notions of matter, form, and compound are closely connected to the notions
of potentiality and actuality. Indeed, in the context of change he identifies
matter with that which is in potentiality to receiving form (ens in potentia);
he identifies form with that which can actualize the potentiality of matter—
namely, actuality (actus); and he identifies the compound with that which is
actual in some respect (ens actu).6
As all of this suggests, change for Aquinas just consists in the generation
and corruption of hylomorphic compounds (or compounds of potentiality and
actuality). For the sake of clarity, we can represent this general account of
change as follows:

Change in General
A change C occurs if and only if

(i) there is some matter, M, which exists from some time t1 to some
later time t2;
(ii) there exist some distinct forms, F-ness and G-ness;
 (iii) M has F-ness at t1 (thereby composing a hylomorphic compound,
which is F) and M has G-ness at t2 (thereby composing a distinct
hylomorphic compound, which is G).

Substantial Change
A substantial change Cs occurs if and only if

(i) there is some (prime) matter, M, which exists from some time t1 to
some later time t2;
(ii) there exist some distinct (substantial) forms, F-ness and G-ness;
(iii) M has F-ness at t1 (thereby composing a substance, which is F)
and M has G-ness at t2 (thereby composing a distinct substance,
which is G);
(iv) M itself does not go from being F to being G at these times.

Accidental Change
An accidental change Ca occurs if and only if

(i) there is some matter (or substance), M, which exists from some
time t1 to some later time t2;
(ii) there exist some distinct (accidental) forms, F-ness and G-ness;
(iii) M has F-ness at t1 (thereby composing an accidental compound,
which is F) and M has G-ness at t2 (thereby composing a distinct
accidental compound, which is G);
(iv*) M itself does go from being F to being G at these times.

Although this general account of change does not tell us everything we

might like to know about matter and form, it does go some distance toward
clarifying Aquinas’s understanding of them. Two things in particular are
worth noting. First, this account entails a sort of realism about matter and
form—and compounds. Entities of all three kinds are required, Aquinas
thinks, in order to account for any given change. And yet, for obvious
reasons, they cannot be identified with one another. Since the matter of any
given change can exist without the forms with respect to which it changes, it
cannot be identified with form; and since both matter and form are required
for the existence of compounds, the latter cannot be identified with either
matter or form.
It will be important to keep in mind the sort of realism implicit in this
account of change as we go. Commentators sometimes suggest that Aquinas
should be understood as an antirealist about the matter involved in at least
certain changes (namely, substantial changes).7 But if the above account is
perfectly general, and hence applies to all change, this cannot be correct.
The second thing worth noting about Aquinas’s general account of change
is that the notions of matter, form, and compound it employs are (at least in
the first instance) purely functional in nature. To be matter, on this account,
is just to be an entity playing a certain function or role—that of accounting
for the sameness involved in change (namely, sameness of subject over
time). Likewise, to be form, on this account, is to be an entity playing a
distinct function or role—that of accounting for the difference involved in
change (namely, difference of characterization over time). Finally, to be a
hylomorphic compound, on this account, is just to be an entity that possesses
such functional matter and form, and hence one capable of being
characterized by the special type of coming-to-be and passing-away
associated with change (namely, generation and corruption).
It will also be important to keep in mind the functional nature of
Aquinas’s hylomorphism as we go. Aquinas often speaks of matter and form
as if they were entities belonging to specific ontological types or categories
—namely, concrete individuals and properties. Thus, he identifies the matter
of our statue example with a lump of bronze, which he regards as a concrete
individual (indeed, a concrete individual substance); and he identifies the
forms of this same example with different shapes, which he regards as
contingent properties or accidents. Even so, there are contexts (as we shall
see shortly) in which Aquinas denies that matter and form can be identified
with entities of either type. Given his functional understanding of matter and
form, this is perfectly intelligible.
 Aquinas’s functional understanding of matter and form also explains
something else that might otherwise seem puzzling—namely, his willingness
to speak of “matter” in connection with immaterial objects. Consider an
angel who comes to have a new thought or volition. In such a case, Aquinas
thinks, we have a change in which an immaterial (or spiritual) substance
acquires a new contingent property or accident. Like all changes, this one
will involve the generation and corruption of hylomorphic compounds, and
hence entities composed of both matter and form. Unlike other changes,
however, the “matter” of this change (namely, the angel) will itself be
immaterial. Again, this is perfectly intelligible if we keep in mind that the
matter here is purely functional. As Aquinas himself says at one point:

If the term “matter” is used in its proper and common sense, it is impossible for there to
be matter in spiritual substances…. But if the terms “matter” and “form” are used for
any two things which are related as potentiality to actuality, then there can be no
objection (unless it is a mere verbal dispute) to saying that spiritual substances have both
matter and form.8

As this passage makes clear, Aquinas does have a substantive or

metaphysical notion of matter, but to see what it is, and how it is related to
his purely functional notion, we must look at his distinction between different
types of change.

TYPES OF MATTER, FORM, AND CHANGE

Aquinas thinks that all of the changes we have been focusing on so far
belong to a single type—namely, ones involving a substance (which plays the
role of matter) changing with respect to one of its contingent properties or
accidents (which plays the role of form). For obvious reasons, he calls
changes of this type “accidental change,” and he calls the compounds thereby
generated or corrupted “accidental compounds (or unities).”9
Although Aquinas regards many familiar examples of change as
accidental, he denies that all of them are. On the contrary, he thinks there are
also familiar examples of substantial change—that is, changes by which
substances themselves are generated or corrupted. Aquinas’s favorite
example here is the change by which a human being (such as Socrates) is
generated from sperm and menstrual blood (or as we now know better, sperm
and ova). In order to highlight the connection between Aquinas’s
understanding of substantial change and his account of change in general, let
us pretend for the moment that he thinks of human beings as being generated
not from two things (namely, sperm and menstrual blood or ova), but rather
from a single thing (namely, a fertilized egg or zygote).10 In that case, we can
represent Aquinas’s example of substantial change as follows:

As this diagram is intended to show, substantial change, like change in

general, involves the generation and corruption of hylomorphic compounds.
Because the compounds generated and corrupted here are substances,
however, this type of change is possible only for composite substances—that
is, substances which are themselves composed of matter and form. As
Aquinas sees it, only material substances have the relevant sort of
composition; hence only they can be generated or corrupted. (Immaterial
substances such as angels, by contrast, lack such composition and hence can
only be created or annihilated.) What is more, since the type of matter
possessed by material substances is precisely what distinguishes them as
material, he refers to it as “matter in the primary sense” or “prime matter”
(materia prima); again, since the type of form it combines with makes a
substance, he refers to it as “substantial form” (forma substantialis).
Aquinas’s account of substantial change raises a host of difficulties that
we cannot fully enter into here. Even so, we must at least touch on some of
them—two in particular—if we are to appreciate how this type of change
affects his views about matter and form generally.
First, what is prime matter? This is perhaps the most familiar difficulty,
and clearly concerns the nature of the entity playing the role of matter in
substantial change. What sort of entity could it be? Like other medieval
philosophers, Aquinas denies that it can be a full-fledged substance: for no
substance can be composed of other substances, whereas all material
substances are composed of prime matter. But if prime matter is not a
substance, what is it? An individual of some other type—say, bare
particular? Or something else altogether?11
I shall return to this difficulty shortly. But first I need to highlight a
second difficulty, this one having to with the precise role that prime matter
plays in substantial change. For as will emerge, if we want to understand the
type of entity that can play the role of prime matter, we must first be clear
about the role itself.
To see what is distinctive about the way prime matter functions, recall
what we know about the role of matter in change in general. First, the entity
playing this role is always something that goes from having one form or
property, F-ness, to having another form or property, G-ness. Second, when
this role is played, the result is the generation and corruption of compounds
that are characterized by the same forms or properties—that is to say,
compounds that are themselves either F or G. (For sake of clarity, let us say
that a subject a is characterized by a form or property F-ness only if a is F.)
Thus, in our statue example what plays the role of matter is a lump that goes
from possessing sphericity to statuehood, which in turn results in the
generation of a statue and the corruption of a sphere. Likewise, in our human
example what plays the role of matter is some prime matter that goes from
possessing zygotehood to humanity, which in turn results in the generation of
a human and corruption of a zygote.12
So far so good, but here is a crucial difference between the two cases. In
the statue example, as in all accidental changes, it is not only the compounds
serving as the termini of change, but also their matter that can be said to be
characterized by the forms or properties successively possessed. Strictly
speaking, our lump goes not only (a) from possessing sphericity to
possessing statuehood but also (b) from being a sphere to being a statue.
That is to say, we can truly describe it as a sphere at one time and a statue at
another. Note, however, that the same cannot be said about substantial
changes, such as that involved in our human example. For a human to be
generated from a zygote, there must be something—namely, some prime
matter—that goes from possessing zygotehood to possessing humanity. Even
so, such prime matter cannot itself be said to go from being a zygote to being
a human. That is to say, we cannot truly describe it as a zygote at one time
and a human at another. And the reason has to do at least partly with the
nature of the substantial forms or properties themselves. Unlike sphericity or
statuehood, humanity is not the sort of form or property that can characterize
its possessor accidentally. On the contrary, it is a form or property that
characterizes its possessor essentially: if something is human at any time it
exists, it must be human at all (possible) times it exists. For the same reason,
Aquinas thinks, it makes no sense to speak of something coming-to-be
human—and likewise for zygotehood or any of the other forms involved in
substantial change.13
What all of this shows is that the role played by matter in substantial
change is very different from that played by matter in accidental change.
Both types of change will involve something that functions generally as an
enduring subject, and hence something that goes from having one form or
property to having another. This follows straightforwardly from the account
of change in general. But whether this same subject can be characterized by
the forms or properties it successively takes on is a further issue and will in
fact determine the specific type of change (as well as the specific type of
matter, form, and compound) involved. Indeed, we can just define the
difference between substantial and accidental change in terms of whether the
enduring subject of change can be so characterized. More precisely:
As should be clear from this more precise statement, substantial and
accidental change differ only with regard to their fourth condition.
There is something deeply puzzling about the role that Aquinas assigns to
matter in substantial change. Admittedly, if we accept his account of change
in general, as well as the reality of substantial change, we will have no choice
but to allow that something can have forms or properties without being
characterized by them. Still, we would like to know how such a thing is
possible. Intuitively, forms or properties are essentially characterizing (e.g.,
F-ness and G-ness are essentially such as to make their possessors F or G).
This is what makes plausible Aquinas’s claim that forms always characterize
their compounds and, at least in the case of accidental change, also
characterize their matter. But if forms always characterize their compounds,
and sometimes also characterize their matter, why don’t they always
characterize both?
It is at this point that we must return to our initial difficulty about the
nature of prime matter. For as it turns out, it is precisely the special nature of
prime matter that prevents it from being characterized by the forms or
properties it possesses. If prime matter were an individual of any sort—even
a bare particular—it would be impossible to deny that it is characterized by
its forms or properties. Indeed, Aquinas thinks, if prime matter were an
individual, we would have no choice but to regard it as a full-fledged
substance and all of its forms as contingent or accidental properties.14 For the
same reason, he insists that prime matter is not an individual. This, I take it,
is the point of his saying that, unlike all other existing things, prime matter
“lacks actuality of itself” and hence is “pure potentiality.”15 But if prime
matter is not an individual, what is it? It is, I suggest, a sui generis type of
entity best conceived along the lines of what contemporary philosophers
sometimes refer to as “stuff”—that is, a type of entity that, though not itself
individual, combines with (substantial) forms or properties to make
individuals.16
If this interpretation is right, we have a straightforward explanation of
why prime matter cannot be characterized by the forms or properties it
possesses: it is of the wrong ontological type or category. Only an individual
can be characterized as a zygote or human. But if prime matter is stuff, it is
nonindividual. Hence, even if it possesses zygotehood at one time and
humanity at another, it cannot be a zygote at one time and a human at
another. And likewise for all other substantial forms.17
Any interpretation of Aquinas’s account of prime matter is bound to be
controversial, and mine is no exception.18 Even so, it is worth noting that, in
addition to resolving our two difficulties, the prime-matter-as-stuff
interpretation has a number of other things going for it, some of which are
more or less implicit in what we have already said. I will briefly highlight
four.
First, the prime-matter-as-stuff interpretation fits well with what Aquinas
says about the special ontological status of prime matter. Here I am thinking
not only of the descriptions of prime matter already mentioned (e.g., “pure
potentiality”) but also of Aquinas’s agreement with Aristotle that prime
matter is itself “neither a what—that is, a substance—nor a quality, nor any
of the other categories by which being is divided or determined.”19
Second, this interpretation makes good sense of why Aquinas famously
maintains, against most of his contemporaries, that prime matter cannot exist
by itself, even by the absolute power of God.20 For nonindividual stuff, at
least as it is ordinarily conceived, can occur only as part of a larger object.
Presumably, therefore, not even God could create it all by itself.
Third, this interpretation helps to explain Aquinas’s unwavering
commitment to the so-called “unicity of substantial forms” doctrine—that is,
the view that no substance can have more than one substantial form. For once
some prime matter or stuff combines with a form or property, it is natural to
think of the result as an individual substance each of whose further forms are
accidental.21
Finally, the prime-matter-as-stuff interpretation fits well with a further
role that Aquinas assigns to prime matter. According to Aquinas, what is
distinctive about objects possessing prime matter is their capacity to “fill a
place” (locum replere) or “possess extension in three dimensions” (trinam
dimensionem habere).22 We will have to return to this role in connection with
Aquinas’s theory of individuation. But for now let us simply note that the
assignment of this role makes good sense on the assumption that prime
matter is stuff. For stuff, it is natural to suppose, is just that which accounts
for an object’s extension or capacity to fill a certain region.
One final clarification before we leave Aquinas’s account of change. So
far I have been speaking as if all changes, whether substantial or accidental,
involve the generation of a single thing (say, a statue or a human being) from
the corruption of another single thing (say, a lump of bronze or a zygote).
This is, in fact, an oversimplification. In addition to such one-one changes,
Aquinas also allows for the possibility of more complicated changes. As
already noted, he in fact regards the generation of a human being as a type of
many-one change—since it involves the corruption of both sperm and
menstrual blood—and he explicitly allows for various types of one-many
changes as well.23 There is no space to explore these more complicated
changes further, but it is important to note that they will still involve the
endurance of matter (whether prime matter or substance), as well as the
replacement of distinct forms over time (whether substantial or accidental).
What makes them more complicated is simply that their enduring matter is
combined with (or divided from) other matter, with the result that the number
of distinct forms involved varies over time.

MATTER, FORM, AND INDIVIDUATION

By now it should be clear that, in the context of change, Aquinas invokes
matter and form as principles to explain certain types of sameness and
difference. Thus, he invokes matter (such as a lump of bronze or some prime
matter) to explain the type of sameness involved in change—namely,
sameness of subject over time. And he invokes forms (such as sphericity and
statuehood, or zygotehood and humanity) to explain the type of difference
involved in change—namely, difference of characterization over time.
These are not, however, the only types of sameness and difference to
which Aquinas’s account of change calls our attention. This is especially
clear if we consider some of the more complicated changes. Suppose,
therefore, our statue had been generated not from a single sphere, but from
several smaller spheres. Or again, suppose the corruption of our zygote
resulted in the generation not of a single human being, but of twins—say,
Romulus and Remus. In either case, note that on the “many” side of the
change we have multiple objects belonging to the same kind, and hence
relations of sameness and difference holding between distinct individuals.
These relations, however, obtain at a time rather than over time, and hence
could obtain even in the absence of change. Moreover, instead of involving
sameness of subject and difference of characterization, these relations
involve difference of subject and sameness of characterization.
Given the connection between matter and subject, on the one hand, and
form and characterization, on the other, it should come as no surprise that
here, as in the context of change proper, Aquinas appeals to matter and form
to explain the relevant relations of sameness and difference—though, of
course, this time it is form that explains the sameness and matter that
explains the difference.24 For the sake of clarity, we can contrast the different
roles Aquinas assigns to matter and form in different contexts using the
following chart:

Principle of Principle of
Context
Sameness Difference
Over Time Matter Form
(Difference of
(In Change) (Sameness of Subject)
Characterization)
At a Time Form Matter
(Outside of (Sameness of
(Difference of Subject)
Change) Characterization)

In the remainder of this chapter, I want to take a closer look at the roles
that Aquinas assigns to matter and form outside the context of change, since
these are essentially connected with his theory of individuation.25 Once again
my strategy will be to proceed by way of example.
Let us return, therefore, to Romulus and Remus and consider them at
some time at which they both exist.26 Like all material objects, Aquinas
thinks of these twins as ultimately composed of prime matter and substantial
form. Insofar as they belong to the same kind, they are material objects
sharing a common nature or form; and insofar as they are distinct members
of this kind, they differ with respect to their prime matter.
So far I have been speaking as if relations of sameness and difference
could always be understood in terms of strict identity. This is useful
heuristically because it makes intuitive Aquinas’s suggestion that matter
must be a principle of individuation in some sense. If Romulus and Remus
literally share one and the same substantial form, then they must differ with
respect to their prime matter, since Aquinas thinks this is the only other type
of entity of which they are ultimately composed. Despite the heuristic value
of this way of speaking, we will eventually see that it too involves an
oversimplification.
 Although Aquinas thinks that prime matter plays an essential role in
individuation, he is often at pains to emphasize that it not prime matter as
such that plays this role. Nor is it hard to see why. Since Romulus and Remus
are alike not only in their possession of a common substantial form (namely,
humanity) but also in their possession of prime matter, it cannot be prime
matter as such that individuates them.27 On the contrary, it must be that each
possesses his own distinct prime matter—and likewise for any distinct
material objects belonging to the same natural kind. Aquinas himself often
puts the point by saying that the principle of individuation must be
understood as designated (rather than undesignated) matter. And for reasons
I will now try to explain, he identifies designated matter with matter under
determinate dimensions.28
Recall that prime matter is that which explains a material object’s capacity
to “fill its place” or “have extension in three dimensions”—a type of
nonindividual stuff, on my interpretation, which cannot exist apart from some
larger compound or other. Even so, Aquinas thinks, if we want to explain the
precise dimensions of a material object such as Romulus, or the exact size of
the place he fills, we cannot appeal to his prime matter alone. On the
contrary, we must also appeal to certain of his accidents or quantities. To put
the point another way: although Romulus will fill some region or other solely
in virtue of having prime matter, and his distinct prime matter may well put
some restrictions on the size of this region, his precise extension cannot be
determined apart from certain of his accidental or quantitative properties—
what Aquinas calls his “determinate dimensions” (dimensiones determinatae
vel terminatae) or “dimensive quantities” (quantitates dimensivae). And,
obviously, since Romulus himself cannot exist without some dimensions or
other, the same will be true of his prime matter.29
Now if we add to all this that the determinate dimensions of a substance
are the only means by which its prime matter can be picked out or
designated, we can see why Aquinas would say that the matter associated
with a particular substance—that is, its designated matter—is to be
understood in terms of matter under determinate dimensions. For the sake of
clarity, let us illustrate this as follows for the particular case of Romulus (this
time setting matter and form side-by-side, and using a solid line to indicate
their relation to one other and a dotted line to indicate their relation to the
larger compounds of which they are a part):
 As this diagram is intended to show, in the particular case of Romulus we
have some distinct prime matter (namely, prime matter1) combining with a
substantial form (namely, humanity) to make Romulus, and then Romulus
himself combining with another form (namely, the determinate dimensions
by which his prime matter can be designated, which we can abbreviate “D1”)
to make what I have called (for lack of a better term) “D1-Romulus”—that is,
an accidental compound consisting of Romulus having a particular extension.
In light of the foregoing, we can see why Aquinas describes prime matter
as the primary principle of individuation, even though he reserves a role for a
certain type of accident to play here as well. For prime matter, he thinks, is
what ultimately explains there being distinct material objects belonging to the
same kind. Still, prime matter cannot exist without some determinate
dimensions or other, and hence the latter are required for prime matter to play
its role, even they do not themselves account for the distinction in question.
 QUANTITY, INDIVIDUALITY, AND THE
INDIVIDUATION OF FORMS
If individuation, for Aquinas, involved nothing more than explaining the
distinction of material objects, we could perhaps leave our discussion here.
But, in fact, this is not the case. To see why, consider Romulus and Remus
again and note that they are not merely distinct entities, but distinct
individuals. The qualification is important because, as we have seen, there
are entities (e.g., Romulus’s and Remus’s respective prime matter) which are
distinct but nonindividual. But, then, how are we to account for the
individuality (as opposed to distinction) of Romulus and Remus? Obviously,
we cannot account for it in terms of their prime matter, since as we have just
noted, it is nonindividual. But neither can we account for it in terms of their
substantial form, since this is something they share in common. But if we
cannot account for Romulus’s and Remus’s individuality either in terms of
their (nonindividual) prime matter or in terms of their (common) substantial
form, how can we account for it?
This question highlights a further aspect of Aquinas’s views about
individuation in which determinate dimensions have a more direct role to
play. What accounts for the distinction of material objects, Aquinas thinks, is
their prime matter, which can only exist under some determinate dimensions
or other. But what accounts for the individuality of material objects is the
particular determinate dimensions under which their prime matter exists. For
unlike prime matter, Aquinas says, such dimensions are not only individual,
but individual in and of themselves.30
Now as the discussion of determinate dimensions makes clear, at least
some of the forms of material objects are individual. But what about their
other forms? As it turns out, Aquinas thinks that all the forms of all material
objects, whether substantial or accidental, are individual.31 Unlike
determinate dimensions, however, he thinks these other forms must be
individuated. That is to say, instead of being individual in and of themselves,
they must get their individuality from their relation to something else. And
here, as in the case of material objects themselves, we can distinguish two
aspects of their individuation. Thus, compare the substantial form of
Romulus with that of Remus. These are, Aquinas thinks, distinct individuals
of the same type, humanity. What accounts for their distinction is the distinct
prime matter with which they are associated, whereas what accounts for their
individuality is the determinate dimensions with which they are associated.
And likewise for each of Romulus’s and Remus’s other forms, as well as
those of material objects generally.
We can now see why I said earlier that, despite the fact that Romulus and
Remus “share a common form,” this cannot be understood in terms of strict
identity. Romulus’s humanity is a distinct individual from Remus’s
humanity. Even so, we can also see why Aquinas wants to insist that
Romulus and Remus nonetheless share something in common. For although
Romulus’s humanity is distinct from Remus’s, it is not intrinsically distinct
from it (or for that matter, from anyone else’s humanity). Nor is it
intrinsically individual or unique to Romulus. To make the point vivid,
suppose we had a metaphysical microscope that allowed us to see all and
only what is intrinsic to a given entity; and suppose that we used this device
to inspect Romulus’s and Remus’s humanities.32 We would not be able to tell
the difference between them. In each case it would be clear that we have a
form or property of humanity before us. But if we wanted to see whose it
was, or its distinction from others, we would have to “zoom out” in such a
way as to include its associated prime matter and determinate dimensions. As
this makes clear, when Aquinas speaks of forms as “common” to many, he is
calling attention not to their numerical sameness but rather to their intrinsic
sameness.33
From what we’ve seen so far, it might appear that although all the forms
of material objects are individual, only certain of them are individuated by
other things—namely, all those besides determinate dimensions. For
determinate dimensions, as we’ve seen, have a kind of individuation in
themselves, which just appears to mean that their individuality, and hence
their distinction both among themselves and from other things, is intrinsic to
them. Even so, Aquinas insists, the forms of material objects are always
individuated by their subjects: their substantial forms are individuated by
their prime matter, and their accidents are individuated by their substances.
Nor does he allow any exceptions for determinate dimensions.34
We can, I think, make sense of Aquinas’s views here, as well as fill out
his account of individuation generally, by noting that there is a further
question we can ask about distinct individuals belonging to the same kind—
namely, what accounts for their identity?35 For even though determinate
dimensions are intrinsically individual, and hence intrinsically distinct from
other things, they cannot exist apart from the particular substances in which
they inhere. That is to say, despite their intrinsic individuality and
distinctness, there is still a sense in which they must be individuated, since
their identity is bound up with other things—namely, the substances of which
they are the accidents.
We can illustrate this further type of individuation, as well as contrast it
with the other types we have already seen, if we return one last time to our
example of Romulus and focus on his relationship to his prime matter and
determinate dimensions:

As this diagram makes clear, Romulus depends for his distinction (from
other material objects) on his prime matter, whereas he depends for his
individuality on his determinate dimensions. But Romulus also depends for
his identity on his prime matter, which is just to say he cannot exist apart
from it.36 In the same way, Romulus’s determinate dimensions depend on
him: since they cannot exist apart from Romulus in particular, their identity
is bound up with him.37 Indeed, given the dependence of Romulus on his
prime matter, there is a sense in which the identity of his determinate
dimensions is ultimately bound up with his prime matter as well.
In short, we can see that there are really three different aspects of
Aquinas’s views about individuation, corresponding to three different
questions we can ask about individuals belonging to the same kind:

1. What accounts for their distinction?

2. What accounts for their individuality?
3. What accounts for their identity?

In order to answer the first and third questions, Aquinas thinks, we must
appeal to prime matter. But in order to answer the second question, we must
appeal to one of the things that prime matter cannot exist without: namely,
determinate dimensions. In light of Aquinas’s answers to these questions, we
can see why in certain contexts he speaks of matter as the primary principle
of individuation and dimensive quantity as a secondary principle.38

CONCLUSION
This completes our examination of the two main contexts in which Aquinas
develops his notions of matter and form—his theory of change and his theory
of individuation. In each case, as we have seen, Aquinas invokes matter and
form to account for certain relations of sameness and difference holding
between distinct individuals. In each case, moreover, he is able to do so
because he thinks of matter and form as distinct entities that both serve as
constituents of larger wholes (namely, hylomorphic compounds) and explain
certain of their general and specific characteristics.
There is much more that could be said about Aquinas’s understanding of
matter and form, especially in other contexts such as theology or logic. But
we have already seen enough, I think, to appreciate the essential aspects of
these notions in their primary or basic sense, and hence to have a basis for
understanding the further uses to which Aquinas puts them.39
 NOTES
1. I use the term “entity” throughout to refer to beings in the broadest
possible sense—that is, to anything that exists or has being in any sense.
2. Unless otherwise indicated, the discussion below is based primarily on
Aquinas’s discussion in the first two chapters of DPN, though in most cases
parallel passages can be found in In Phy, his other main discussion of
change. All translations are mine.
3. Strictly speaking, these remarks apply only to Aquinas’s account of
intrinsic changes in things. Ultimately, I think Aquinas wants to explain all
change in terms of these, but in what follows I shall ignore complications
arising from extrinsic (or mere Cambridge) changes.
4. Cf., e.g., ST I q.45 a.2 ad 2: “It is part of the nature of change (de
ratione mutationis) that it involves the same thing (idem) being different now
from the way it was before…. By contrast, in the case of creation, where the
entire substance of things is produced [ex nihilo], it cannot be said that we
have the same thing being different now from the way it was before—except
according to a certain way of thinking.”
5. When Aquinas wants to speak of change in the broadest possible sense
(motus, mutatio), he always does so in terms of generation (generatio) and
corruption (corruptio). Following Aristotle, however, he also uses these latter
notions in a narrower sense to apply only to substantial change, and thus to
contrast with accidental change (more on the distinction between substantial
and accidental change below). But even here, he sees a close connection
between the different senses of the terms. As he says in DPN, c.1: “In an
unqualified sense, generation and corruption are found only in the category
of substance. But in the other categories they are found in a qualified sense.”
For Aquinas’s discussion of how these different senses of generation and
corruption connect with Aristotle’s texts, cf. In Phy, bk.3, lec.2 and In Meta,
bk.1, lec.12.
6. Cf. In DA, bk.2, c.1, n.5, for an especially clear example of this
identification outside of DPN.
7. Cf. Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 131–40.
8. QDSC, a.1.
9. Cf. the references in note 5.
 10. Given the controversy surrounding Aquinas’s embryology, it should
perhaps be emphasized that this pretense is adopted solely for the sake of
simplicity and is not intended to reflect a stance on any substantive
metaphysical or interpretive issues. For introduction to the relevant issues
and controversy, cf. the exchange between Robert Pasnau and John Haldane
and Patrick Lee in Philosophy 78 (2003): 255–78, 521–31, 532–40.
11. For the sake of precision, let us call any individual that is not a property
a “particular.” It is often taken for granted nowadays that all particulars,
whether bare or otherwise, are substances. But during the medieval period,
the precise relationship between particularity and substantiality was a
disputed question.
12. In what follows, I shall use the term “humanity” to refer to the
substantial form of a human being, both because it serves to highlight the
parallel between our human and statue examples and because Aquinas says
that this is the form that locates human beings within their natural kind (cf.
DEE, c.4). It should be noted, however, that Aquinas himself often reserves
the term “humanity” (humanitas) for the natural kind or essence itself (cf.
DEE, cc.2–3), which as we will see below includes not only substantial form
but also prime matter.
13. In the case of humanity, Aquinas puts the point this way: “When a
human comes to be, we can truly say not only that it was previously not
human, but also that it previously was not (full stop)” (In Phy, bk.1, lec.12,
n.10).
14. Cf., e.g., DEE, c.5.
15. In addition to DPN, cc.1–2, cf. ST I q.7 a.2 ad 3; QDV, q.8, a.6; and
SCG I, c.17. Cf. also Super Sent 4, d.12, q.1, a.1, sol. 3, ad 3, where Aquinas
insists that part of what it is to be an individual is to be a being in actuality.
16. Cf., e.g., Ned Markosian, “Simples, Stuff, and Simple People,” Monist
87 (2004): 405–28.
17. This is not to say that prime matter or stuff cannot be characterized at
all. Obviously it can be—it is, after all, prime matter or stuff, nonindividual,
existent, identical-to-itself, etc. The point is just that not all characterization
is to be explained in terms of forms or properties. On the contrary, Aquinas
thinks that in many cases the fact that an entity can be characterized in a
certain way is to be explained by the entity itself (rather than by some distinct
property the entity possesses). Cf., e.g., the discussion of divine simplicity in
ST I q.3.
18. For a taxonomy of different possible interpretations of Aquinas’s
account, as well as references to the literature, see John D. Kronen, Sandra
Mennsen, and Thomas D. Sullivan, “The Problem of the Continuant:
Aquinas and Suarez on Prime Matter and Substantial Generation,” The
Review of Metaphysics 53 (2000): 863–85. (If I understand these authors
correctly, my interpretation is version of the position they label “Gamma.”)
Cf. also the reference to Pasnau in note 7 for an example of an antirealist
interpretation of Aquinas’s prime matter.
19. Cf. In Meta, bk.7, lec.2.
20. Cf. esp. Quodl 3, q.1, a.1. For further passages and discussion of the
historical context, cf. John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 2000), esp. 312–27.
21. Indeed, as the prime-matter-as-stuff interpretation helps us to see,
Aquinas’s distinction between substance and accidental compound is really
distinction between two different types of particulars. Substances are primary
or basic particulars (insofar as they do not include within themselves any
other particulars playing the role of matter), whereas accidental compounds
are secondary or derived particulars (insofar as they do include within
themselves particulars playing the role of matter).
22. Cf. ST I q.3 a.1 obj.1; q.52, a.1–2; and In BDT, q.4, a.3.
23. Cf., e.g., In Meta, bk.7, lec.16, where he mentions simple living things
(such as certain worms) that can be cut in half to form two new living things.
24. The problem of “explaining sameness of characterization” is, of course,
just the traditional problem of universals. Aquinas’s appeal to form,
therefore, is part of his solution to this problem. More on this below.
25. Indeed, it is because of matter’s role here that he speaks of it as “the
principle of individuation” (principium individuationis) and it is because of
form’s role here that he speaks of it as belonging to a thing’s “essence”
(essentia) or “common nature” (natura communis). Cf., e.g., ST I q.3 a.2;
q.75 a.4; q.76 a.2.
26. For reasons that will emerge, Aquinas thinks of prime matter (or stuff)
as the primary principle of individuation. In what follows, therefore, I will
focus on the example involving the twin human beings rather than that
involving the multiple spheres.
 27. As this consideration makes clear, the nature or essence of human
beings includes not only substantial form but also prime matter. It is because
Aquinas is willing to extend the term “form” to the whole essence of a thing
that he famously distinguishes “the form of the whole” (forma totius), which
is the essence, from the “the form of the part” (forma partis), which is the
substantial form. Cf. DEE, c.2 and In Meta, bk.7, lec.9.
28. Aquinas’s views about individuation seem to have changed over time.
In his earliest writings, he identifies the principle of individuation with matter
under determinate dimensions (cf. Super Sent 1, d.23, q.1, a.1 and DEE, c.2).
Later, he suggests that it should be identified with matter under indeterminate
(rather than determinate) dimensions (cf. Super Sent 4, d.12, q.1, a.1–2 and
In BDT, q.4, a.2). By the end of his career, however, he appears to have
returned once again to the determinate-dimensions view (cf. esp. QDA, q.9
and In DA 2, c.12). There is considerable controversy over whether these
different ways of talking correspond to different stages of development.
Since I cannot enter into such controversies here, in what follows I shall
simply focus on what I take to be Aquinas’s most plausible views. For a
helpful introduction to the relevant texts and controversies, cf. Wippel,
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 351–75.
29. It is important to emphasize that the type of dependence involved here
is a sort of generic existential dependence. For despite the fact that both
Romulus and his prime matter depend for their existence on some
determinate dimensions or other, there are no particular dimensions on which
each either depends for its existence. We might put the point by saying that,
although each depends for its existence on determinate dimensions, neither
depends for its “identity” on them (since for any such dimensions, they can
exist without them).
30. In accordance with this aspect of individuation Aquinas says:
“dimensive quantity has in itself a kind of individuation” (ST III q.77 a.2).
Cf. also In BDT, q.4, a.3; Quodl 7, q.4, a.3; and SCG 4, c.65.
31. Cf., e.g., DEE, c.3. With respect to the problem of universals, therefore,
Aquinas is what would nowadays be called a “trope theorist.”
32. My talk here of inspecting forms “under a metaphysical microscope” is
intended to be the contemporary analogue of Aquinas’s talk of the “absolute
consideration” of forms. Cf. DEE, c.3.
33. For further discussion, along with relevant texts, cf. Jeffrey E. Brower
and Susan Brower-Toland, “Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts
and Intentionality,” Philosophical Review 117 (2008): 193–243, esp. section
2.1.
34. Cf. In BDT, q.4, a.2; ST I q.29 a.1 and II-II q.24 a.5 ad 1.
35. Cf. note 29 above.
36. Actually, it would be better to speak of the dependence here in terms of
origins. Strictly speaking, Aquinas thinks, Romulus depends on his prime
matter only for his origin or initial existence (since the prime matter of which
Romulus is composed of can and does change over time). Cf. In BDT, q.4,
a.2.
37. Here again it would be better to speak of Romulus’s determinate
dimensions as dependent on Romulus only for their origin or initial existence
(since Aquinas thinks that, on analogy with the Eucharist, God can preserve
Romulus’s determinate dimensions without Romulus, once they have come
into existence). Cf. Quodl 7, q.4, a.3.
38. Cf. Super Sent 4, d.12, q.1, a.1, sol.3, ad 3.
39. An earlier version of this text was presented at the 2008 Cornell
Summer Colloquium in Medieval Philosophy. I am grateful to the audience
on that occasion, as well as to Michael Bergmann, Susan Brower-Toland,
Timothy Pawl, Michael Rea, Michael Rota, Thomas Sullivan, and the editors
of this volume, for helpful discussion, comments, and criticism. I am also
grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for a grant, which
supported the initial research for this text.
 CHAPTER 8

CAUSATION

MICHAEL ROTA

THE sense of Aquinas’s term “causa” is broader than the English “cause.”
Following Aristotle, Aquinas distinguished four types of causes: “Now the
genus of ‘cause’ is fourfold, namely, final, formal, efficient, and material.
…”1 As a general rule, a material cause is that which something is made up
of (its matter), and a formal cause of a thing is a form of that thing. This
chapter will focus on efficient causation, with some discussion of final
causation as well.
Apart from his brief, early work On the Principles of Nature and some
relatively short sections of his commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and
Metaphysics, Aquinas wrote nothing that could be considered a systematic
treatise on causation. His understanding of causation must therefore be
gleaned from comments scattered throughout his works. When those
scattered comments are brought together and analyzed, we find a complex
and multifaceted theory. A good place to begin is with a paradigm instance of
ordinary efficient causation: the production of a statue.
On Aquinas’s Aristotelian account of change, any change involves (i)
something that persists throughout the change (the subject of the change), (ii)
something that accounts for the fact that the subject is actually configured or
characterized as it in fact is at the end of the change (the form), and (iii) the
lack of that form at the beginning of the change (the privation). Any subject
of a change can be referred to as “matter,” for Aquinas, so we can also refer
to the subject of change as the matter of the change.
When, for instance, an irregularly shaped lump of bronze is formed into a
statue, the bronze is the matter of the change, the distinctive shape of the
finished statue is the form of the change, and the lack of that shape at the
beginning is the privation.2 Now, while distinguishing these three factors can
help us specify the nature of this change, they cannot by themselves explain
why the change has occurred. As experience tells us, bronze does not make
itself into a statue. It is in this context, the explanation of change, that
Aquinas introduces the notion of an efficient cause in On the Principles of
Nature:

But these [three factors] are not sufficient for generation.3 For what is in potency is not
able to reduce itself to actuality; just as bronze, which is potentially a statue, does not
make itself [into] a statue. But there needs to be something operating, which draws forth
the form of a statue from potency to actuality.… Therefore, it must be that, besides
matter and form, there is some principle which acts, and this is said to be the maker
[efficiens], or the mover, or the agent, or that from which the beginning of motion
comes.4

Upon reading this passage, one would be inclined to think that, for Aquinas,
the efficient cause of the statue in our example is the sculptor, end of story.
Aquinas would indeed say that the sculptor is an efficient cause of the
statue,5 but he also holds that the art of the sculptor is an efficient cause of
the statue.6 As it turns out, the notion of an efficient cause is used
analogically, in Aquinas, and the term “efficient cause” has a broad, manifold
application. To get a full picture of Aquinas’s views here, we need to turn to
his account of transitive action, which is, roughly, action on something. This
will involve a discussion of the following concepts: agent, patient, power,
inclination (or tendency), end, action, and passion.

AGENTS AND PATIENTS

When Aquinas uses the term “agent,” he is almost always referring to a
created substance or to God. Occasionally Aquinas likens a power to an
agent,7 but in the proper sense of the term, an agent is a substance that acts,8
for example, an angel, a human being, a cat, or even an inanimate substance
like fire.
Two points of explanation are in order here, since the contemporary
reader might find it strange that fire is an “agent” according to Aquinas, and
that two things as disparate as a human being and fire both count as
substances. First, Aquinas is comfortable saying that fire can act and that fire
is an agent (agens, literally “an acting thing”) because he does not restrict the
application of the predicate “act” to subjects that are conscious agents. We
sometimes use this predicate in the same broad sense, as in “the pancreatic
juice acts on all classes of food.”9
Second, according to Aquinas’s concept of substance, substances are set
apart from accidents by the fact that substances are subsistent things, in this
sense: they do not exist in another being as in a subject (whereas accidents
do). An accident, like the color of Socrates’ hair, is the sort of thing that
exists in something (Socrates’ hair), while Socrates himself does not exist in
any subject. He exists in his own right, so to speak. Aquinas thinks that each
substance belongs to a particular species and has a complete nature common
to any other members of that species that there may be. And corresponding to
each specific nature is a distinctive set of causal powers. So Aquinas counts
both a particular human being and a particular fire as individual substances
capable of action because he thinks that each is a subsistent thing with a
complete specific nature and a distinctive set of causal powers.10
Correlative to the agent (agens, “the thing acting”) is the patient (patiens,
“the thing undergoing”). The patient is the substance, or aggregate of
substances, upon which the agent acts (e.g., the bronze in our sculpture
example).
Aquinas calls the change (or motion) produced by the agent the
“passion.”11 More precisely, the passion is the change, recognized as being
something that occurs in the patient. That is, “passion” refers to the change
and connotes the fact that the change takes place in the patient. Thus,
Aquinas can say, “passion is the effect of the agent in the patient.”12

POWERS
Given the view that the agent produces a change in the patient, we can next
ask how the agent produces that change. While a sculptor has many
properties or features, only some of them are called into play when the
sculptor makes a statue. The sculptor’s power to move his hands is clearly
salient here in a way that his ability to sing middle C is not. He performs the
action of sculpting through the use of his power to move his hands (among
other powers), but not through the use of his power to sing. Aquinas
generalizes this way of thinking, and holds that any action of any agent
occurs through the use of some particular power: “In any action there are two
things to consider, namely the suppositum acting, and the power by which it
acts, just as fire heats by heat.”13 Why posit the existence of powers? Perhaps
the idea is just this: if a thing performs some sort of action, then it is
reasonable, at least in many cases,14 to think that there must be some real,
positive feature of the thing that enables it to perform that sort of action. If a
species of bird appears to use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate, for
example, then it is reasonable to think that members of that species have
some sort of faculty for detecting magnetic fields. An active power is a
feature of some thing that we posit to account for the fact that that thing is
able to perform some action.15 Aquinas thinks of active powers as real
(though not necessarily physical) components of a thing that enable it to act
in certain ways. A passive power is something we posit to account for the
fact that a thing is capable of being acted upon in a certain way, that is, to
account for the fact that a thing is capable of undergoing a certain sort of
passion.16
As is indicated by the last quotation above, Aquinas thinks of heat as a
power. Other examples are the powers of nutrition and growth (in all living
things), the powers of sensation and movement (in animals), and the powers
of intellect and will (in human beings). Aquinas also thinks of productive arts
like the art of building and the art of medicine as powers.17 Aquinas holds
that an art—the art of building, say—is a feature of a person’s mind.18 To say
that a person possesses the art of building is to say that that person has a
certain cognitive feature. And because the possession of that feature enables
him or her to perform a certain sort of action (building), that feature counts as
a power.

ENDS AND INCLINATIONS

On Aquinas’s views, the sculptor’s powers play an important role in the
analysis of the example of efficient causation we are considering—the
making of a statue. But while various powers of the sculptor explain his
ability to sculpt, they do not by themselves explain why he gets up in the
morning, goes to his studio, and sets to work. To explain these things, we
need to make reference to the sculptor’s desires and choices, to acts of will.19
A choice to make a statue today, for instance, explains why the sculptor goes
to his studio and begins to sculpt. The existence of active powers in a thing
grounds facts about the actions that thing can perform, but explaining how it
is that an agent can perform an action is somewhat different than explaining
why it is that it does perform an action in a given situation. It is for this
reason that Aquinas’s discussions of action make reference to inclinationes
(inclinations or tendencies), as well as powers.
We can grasp what Aquinas means by an “inclination” by examining
something he says about ends, that is, final causes. In several places Aquinas
claims that every agent (living and nonliving) acts by intending some end.20
Because of the connotations of the English “intend,” and because we
sometimes identify ends with the purposes of rational agents, this claim of
Aquinas’s can sound wildly implausible. In fact, Aquinas did not think that
inanimate objects do things out of an awareness of some goal.21 Although a
purpose or goal of a rational agent is one sort of end, the general definition of
an end is much broader: for Aquinas, an end is merely that to which an agent
tends, that is, that to which an agent has an inclination, whether cognized or
not.22
At Summa theologiae, I-II q.1 a.2, Aquinas gives an argument for the
claim that every agent acts out of an intention (i.e., an inclination) for an end.
A close look at a single line in this argument will shed light on what Aquinas
takes inclinations to be, and why he includes them in his ontology. The line
in question reads: “For if an agent were not oriented to some effect, it would
not do this more than that.”23 Consider that electrons regularly repel other
negatively charged particles when in close proximity to them. To state the
matter in terms of actions, an electron regularly performs one sort of action
(repelling negatively charged particles) and not another (attracting negatively
charged particles). That is, an electron does this more than that. Faced with
this fact about the behavior of electrons, it is natural to seek an explanation. It
would be absurd to think that the consistent behavior of electrons is merely a
coincidence. So it is reasonable to think that the regular behavior in question
(that electrons regularly repel other negatively charged particles) has an
explanation. A quite natural explanation is provided by positing a feature
about the electron itself, by supposing that it itself possesses some feature
that leads it to repel negatively charged particles. Call that feature an
inclination. The inclination in question here would be the electron’s negative
charge, conceived of as a property of the electron that makes it regularly
repel negatively charged particles.
If we asked Aquinas to justify the inclusion of inclinations in his
ontology, his answer, I believe, would focus on the explanatory role they
play, and most especially the role they play in explaining the regular
behavior of nonrational agents and the purposeful behavior of rational agents.
On Aquinas’s way of thinking, the best available explanation of the regular
behavior of agents involves the positing of inclinations, where an inclination
is conceived of as an intrinsic feature of an agent that leads it (inclines it,
disposes it) to engage in some action.
Where I have used an electron as the agent in my example, Aquinas would
have used an agent familiar to him, like fire, but his reasoning would have
been just the same. Fire regularly performs one sort of action (heating) and
not another (cooling). This regularity of behavior is not a coincidence; it
must have some explanation. The best explanation is that fire has some
feature that inclines it to heat things in close proximity. Calling this feature
an inclination, Aquinas now has a reason to posit the existence of inclinations
(given that the argument was perfectly generalizable to agents other than
fire).
Aquinas distinguishes two types of inclinations: natural and voluntary.
Examples of natural inclinations are fire’s inclination to heat and a stone’s
inclination to fall.24 A voluntary inclination is just any act of the will.25 In
both cases, an inclination is the sort of thing whose presence can explain the
initiation and occurrence of action or change.26

ACTION AND PASSION

Aquinas accepts Aristotle’s position that an action (like this fire’s heating
that water) and a passion (the water’s being heated) are not two different
motions, but are one and the same motion. Consider the phrases “the road
from Thebes to Athens” and “the road from Athens to Thebes.”27 In reality,
there is just one road. But people can travel on that road in either of two
directions. When we are thinking of the road as having Thebes as its starting
point, or when we want to advert to the fact that people sometimes start from
Thebes and go to Athens, then we speak of the road from Thebes to Athens.
When we are instead thinking of the road as having Athens as its starting
point, we speak of the road from Athens to Thebes. Similarly, if fire heats
water, we can talk about the action (heating) and the passion (being heated).
In reality, there is just one motion or change, but when we want to advert to
the fact that the motion is caused by the agent, we speak of the action. When,
instead, we are calling to mind the fact that the motion occurs in the patient,
we speak of the passion.
In explaining this position Aquinas discusses an example of Aristotle’s
concerning teaching and learning.28 The initially puzzling view held by both
Aristotle and Aquinas is that teaching and learning are not two different
motions but are one and the same motion. In the course of explicating this
view, Aquinas asserts that the action of teaching and the passion of learning
are the same “in subject,” but differ “secundum rationem,” that is, they differ
conceptually or in definition.29 I think we can best understand Aquinas’s
position here by saying that, for Aquinas, the action of teaching and the
passion of learning are the same in reference (they refer to one and the same
change, which occurs in the learner), but different in sense (“action”
expresses the fact that the change is caused by the teacher, and “passion”
expresses the fact that the change occurs in the learner).30

TRANSMUTATION
To return to our example: the sculptor (the agent), on account of his
inclinations and through the use of various powers, brings about a change in
the bronze (the patient), so as to give it a new accidental form (its distinctive
shape). This is an example of what Aquinas calls “transmutation.” In any
case of transmutation, an agent,31 on account of its powers and inclinations,
produces a change in some already existing patient. This change might
terminate in the patient’s possession of a new accidental form, or it might
terminate in the existence of a new substance.

CAUSAL RELATA
Because contemporary philosophers almost always use the word “causation”
to refer to a relation,32 it is natural to ask what the terms of the relation of
efficient causation are, according to Aquinas. In our example, what exactly is
the efficient cause and what is the effect? As briefly indicated above,
Aquinas uses the concepts of efficient cause and effect quite broadly,
applying both notions to items from many different ontological categories.
Aquinas applies the notion of an efficient cause to substances,33 to powers,34
to acts of will (and thus to inclinations),35 and to processes or activities.36
When Aquinas says that “passion is the effect of the agent in the patient,”37
he is applying the notion of an effect to a change, which is an event.
(Likewise when he speaks of an action as something that is “produced” by
the agent.38) And because the change that an agent produces terminates in a
new accident (in cases of accidental change) or a new substance (in cases of
substantial change), Aquinas sometimes speaks of accidents39 and
substances40 as the effects of transmuting causes. Further, in cases of
transmutation, for a new accident to be produced is just for some substance
(or substances) to be given a new accidental form, and for a new substance to
be produced is just for some prime matter to be given a new substantial form.
Accordingly, Aquinas can speak of forms (whether accidental or substantial)
as the effects of transmuting causes.41 Thus, rather than thinking that, for
Aquinas, the relation of efficient causation in our example is a relation
existing between the sculptor and the bronze, we should keep in mind
Aquinas’s fuller story: the sculptor brings about a change in the bronze, via
his powers and inclinations (and various tools too, no doubt), and by so doing
produces a statue and a new accidental form.

THE THREE KINDS OF EFFICIENT CAUSATION

AND WHAT THEY HAVE IN COMMON
In addition to transmutation, Aquinas recognizes two other fundamental
kinds of efficient causation: God’s creation of a thing out of nothing and the
conservation of existing things in existence.42 What all three have in
common is their relation to action.43 To transmute something is to bring
about a change in it. To create something is to produce it, but not out of any
pre-existing material. To conserve something is to maintain it in existence.
Each involves the action of one thing on or with respect to something. To
create, to conserve, to transmute—these are all what Aquinas would have
called transitive actions. It is therefore not surprising that Aquinas
distinguishes efficient causation from material, formal, and final causation by
means of the notion of action or operation: “For an efficient cause is a cause
insofar as it acts.”44 For Aquinas, then, something counts as an efficient
cause precisely because of its connection to some transitive action.45 What
all three types of efficient causation have in common is this: a metaphysically
complete description of any case of efficient causation will be a description
of the transitive action of one or more agents.

THE GENERIC NOTION OF CAUSATION

We can get a clearer understanding of the connection between efficient
causation and action by examining something Aquinas says about causation
in general. A principle (principium) is a source or starting point of some
kind, or simply something that is first in some sequence, and a cause is a
certain sort of principle, namely, a source of being: “Every cause is related as
a principle to the being of its effect.”46 This statement is meant to apply to all
four causes, as is the similar claim: “The name ‘cause’ implies some
influence with regard to the being of the thing caused.”47 Each of the four
causes has an influence on the being of that of which it is a cause, but the
kind of influence is different for the different kinds of causes. The matter and
form of a thing have an influence on the being of that thing by being
constituents of it (more specifically: matter has its influence by being the
subject of form, and form has its influence by being that which accounts for
the thing’s actually being whatever (or however) it is). Efficient and final
causes influence their effects too, but in quite different ways: “Just as
influencing for an efficient cause is acting, so for a final cause influencing is
being sought and being desired.”48 We might express Aquinas’s view by
saying that the way in which an efficient cause influences the being of its
effect is by acting. But care must be taken to understand this in the correct
sense. Aquinas’s point is not that an efficient cause does one thing
(influencing) by doing something else first (acting). Rather, his idea is that
acting is influencing—acting consists in either (1) bringing about a change in
something, (2) creating something out of nothing, or (3) conserving
something in being, and any of these count as a kind of influencing.49 The
sense in which an efficient cause influences the being of its effect is that an
efficient cause produces or conserves something (in a word, an efficient
cause acts).
Given the prevalence of reductive analyses of causation in the
contemporary literature on causation, it is worth noting that when Aquinas
makes reference to the notion of transitive action in order to distinguish the
efficient cause from the other genera of causes, he is not attempting to
reductively define or analyze efficient causation in terms of some noncausal
concept. On the contrary, action, in the sense at issue here, is already a causal
concept.

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF CAUSATION

An adequate treatment of Aquinas’s views on causation would require
discussion of several other topics, including especially the distinctions
between per se and per accidens causation50 and between primary and
secondary causation. But in the very short space remaining, I want to focus
instead on ways in which Aquinas’s views relate to recent philosophical
reflection on causation. Despite a few passages that might mislead an unwary
reader, Aquinas clearly rejects a transference theory of causation.51 And
while he does recognize a close relationship between counterfactuals and
causation, he never attempts to reductively analyze causation in terms of
counterfactuals. Or in terms of anything else, for that matter—Aquinas seems
happy to accept at least some causal concepts and some causal facts as basic.
For this reason, and because of his focus on powers and inclinations,
Aquinas’s understanding of causation has most in common with
contemporary dispositionalist accounts of causation, which take causal
powers as irreducible aspects of reality.52

NOTES
1. ST II-II q.27 a.3. For the Latin texts of Aquinas I have used S. Thomae
de Aquino, Opera omnia, ed. Enrique Alarcon,
<http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.xhtml>. Translations are my
own.
2. A word about prime matter: Aquinas recognizes several different uses
of the term “matter” (materia). (See DPN, chs. 1–2, and ST I-II q.55 a.4.) For
my purposes here it is only necessary to distinguish two such uses,
corresponding to the two types of change, accidental and substantial. In an
accidental change, the matter of the change is a substance (or an aggregate of
substances) and the form acquired in the course of the change is an accident.
When Socrates loses his tan and becomes pale, Socrates (a substance)
acquires paleness (an accident). The example of a lump of bronze being
formed into a statue is also an example of an accidental change, since bronze
is a substance in its own right that persists through the change, receiving in
the process only a new shape (which is an accident).
In case of substantial change, by contrast, the matter of the change is not
an independently existing substance (or an aggregate of such substances), but
is rather what Aquinas calls materia prima (“prime matter” or “primary
matter”). Matter such as bronze is a subject of form (e.g., this bronze is the
subject of a particular shape), but bronze is itself something that has a
matter–form structure. Aquinas holds that any material substance is
composed of two metaphysical parts or constituents: substantial form and
prime matter. As a first approximation: the substantial form of a material
substance S is that constituent of S that accounts for the fact that S is the kind
of substance it is, and not a substance of some other kind made out of the
same prime matter, while the prime matter of S is that constituent of S that
persists, and begins to be the matter of some new substance, when S passes
away. Prime matter is matter that is not itself composed of form and matter.
According to Aquinas, prime matter can be separated from form in
thought, but it can never be so separated in reality, because prime matter can
never exist on its own, without having some form or another. For more on
prime matter, see DPN 2; In Phy I.13.118; In Meta VII.2.1285–1296, and
VIII.1.1689.
3. Here by “generation” Aquinas intends to include both generation
simpliciter (substantial change) and generation secundum quid (accidental
change). See DPN 1.4, and In Meta I.12.199.
4. DPN 3.15.
5. In Meta V.2.773.
 6. In Phy II.5.182.
7. ST I q.82 a.4.
8. ST II-II q.58 a.2.
9. A sentence from the entry on “act” in Webster’s New Collegiate
Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1956).
10. For more on Aquinas’s theory of substance, see Brown 2005, ch. 3, and
the chapter on Being in this volume.
11. See In Phy III.5.
12. ST I-II q.26 a.2.
13. ST I q.36 a.3 ad 1. Here, the term “suppositum” refers to the substance
that acts.
14. I say “at least in many cases” because there may be cases where a thing
performs an action of a certain sort, such that it would not necessarily be
reasonable to infer the existence of a single positive feature that enables the
thing to perform actions of that sort. Human beings occasionally hiccup;
should we infer that humans possess a power of hiccupping? Not necessarily,
because a hiccup might just be the accidental result of several distinct powers
functioning (or misfunctioning) together. Be that as it may, what is crucial to
Aquinas’s view is only the claim that, at least in many cases, it is reasonable
to infer the existence of powers.
15. See ST I q.25 a.1; QDP 7.9c; and SCG IV. 77.
16. On the ontology of passive powers, see In Meta V.14.963.
17. In Meta IX.3.1796 and In Meta V.14.955.
18. See In Meta VII.6.1407.
19. By “act of will” I mean to translate Aquinas’s “actus voluntatis,” which
is a generic term that covers at least six different acts of which the will is the
subject: enjoyment (fruitio), intention (intentio), volition (voluntas), choice
(electio), consent (consensus), and use (usus). See ST I-II, q.11–16.
20. ST I-II q.1 a.2; DPN 3.16; SCG III.2; In Phy II.13–14.
21. DPN 3.16 and QDV, q.22, a.1, ad 2.
22. See DPN 3.16; SCG III.16 [3]; and In Phy II.10.240.
23. ST I-II q.1 a.2.
24. Fire always heats, but a stone does not always fall (e.g., if it is held up
by something). Does this mean that a stone sometimes has an inclination to
fall, and sometimes lacks such an inclination? No. Aquinas’s theory seems to
be this: A stone that is located anywhere but at the center of the Earth always
has an inclination to fall. (Indeed, maybe it would be best to characterize the
stone’s inclination as an inclination to move to and rest in its proper place,
which is the center of the Earth.) Now, a stone falls only in certain
circumstances not because it sometimes has the inclination to fall and
sometimes does not have that inclination, but rather because its always-
present inclination to fall is sometimes impeded, and sometimes not. If
something is in the way of the stone and the center of the Earth, then the
stone’s inclination to fall may not be able to issue forth in actual movement.
25. ST I q.87 a.4: “An act of the will is nothing other than a certain
inclination following upon an understood form, just as a natural appetite is an
inclination following upon a natural form.” See also ST I-II q.6 a.4; ST I-II
q.15 a.1; QDV, q.22, a.12c; and QDC, q.1c.
26. Aquinas customarily speaks as if power and inclination are distinct
(see, e.g., ST I q.106 a.2 and ST I q.80 a.1 ad 3). It is easy enough to see why
we should think there is such a distinction in the case of voluntary
inclinations, but in cases of natural inclination it is less clear. Why think that
the substance fire has two ontologically distinct features, one of which is its
active power to heat and one of which is its inclination to heat? Some of
Aquinas’s comments (e.g. at ST II-II q.27 a.4) suggest that he thinks of an
inclination as the actualization of an active power. If so, then there is always
at least a conceptual distinction between a thing’s powers and its inclinations.
Perhaps Aquinas could hold, however, that in cases where an active power is
always actualized (as with fire, which is always inclined to heat anything in
its proximity), there exists just one actual feature, which grounds the truth of
both the claims that “this agent has power P” and “this agent has inclination
I.”
27. In Phy III.5.318.
28. In Phy III.5.
29. In Phy III.5.318.
30. The reader might be puzzled by the fact that, for Aquinas, “the action
of teaching” refers to a change in the learner, and not to a change or process
in the teacher. To motivate Aquinas’s use of language here, imagine that a
teacher is writing at a blackboard and verbally explaining some argument.
Now suppose that there is in fact no one else present in the room. There is a
sense in which we would deny that the teacher is engaged in the action of
teaching. The action of teaching (in this sense) actually occurs only when
some learner is undergoing a certain type of cognitive change. This is the
sense of “action of teaching” that Aquinas is using when he holds that the
action of teaching and the passion of learning are one motion taking place in
the learner.
31. Or, a number of agents working together.
32. The word may also be used to refer to an action, as in “The production
of one thing by another is one type of causation.”
33. In Meta V.3.780.
34. ST I q.82 a.4; In Meta VII.6; DPN 5.26.
35. QDV, q.28, a.8, ad 7: “Consent is the efficient cause of marriage.”
36. See In Meta V.2.771, where Aquinas asserts that the (ancient medical)
processes of reducing and purging can be called causes from which motion
comes, i.e., efficient causes.
37. ST I-II q.26 a.2.
38. SCG III.70 [5].
39. See ST I-II q.75 a.4 (evil dispositions and habits, which are accidents,
are efficiently caused by acts of sin).
40. e.g., at In Meta V.2.765 Aquinas takes up Aristotle’s characterization
of the father as “the cause of the child,” in which case the child (a substance)
is being thought of as an effect.
41. QDM, q.5, a.5, ad 16: “the form itself is an effect of the agent.” See
also De aeternitate mundi.
42. Diu. nom. 4.5: “For these three things seem to belong to the notion of
an efficient cause: to give being, to move, and to conserve.” On creation, see
ST I q.45. On conservation, see ST I q.104, a.1–2.
43. The sense of “action” at issue here is that of transitive action, as
opposed to immanent action. A transitive action is, roughly, an action on
something. This is to be contrasted with an action in the sense of the
actualization of a potency of the agent, which actualization remains within
the agent. When Feynman understands the fundamental theorem of calculus,
for instance, Feynman is the subject of an action of understanding, which is
an action remaining within him. Aquinas discusses the distinction between
actions passing over into exterior things and actions remaining within the
agent in several texts, including SCG II.1; ST I q.18 a.3 ad 1; ST I q.23 a.2 ad
1; ST I q.54 a.1 ad 3; ST I q.85 a.2; and In Meta IX.8.1862–1865. This
distinction has been referred to by later thinkers as the distinction between (i)
transitive (or transient or transeunt) action and (ii) immanent action.
 44. In Meta V.2.775. See also QDV, q.28, a.8c.
45. Thus, Aquinas uses agens causa (acting cause) and efficiens causa
(efficient cause) as synonyms (compare ST II-II q.27 a.3 and SCG III.10 [5]).
46. Super Sent 1.29.1.1c. See also Super Sent 3.11.1.1, ad 5.
47. In Meta V.1.751.
48. QDV, q.22, a.2c. The meaning of the second clause in this sentence is
that a final cause has the influence it has by being the object of some
inclination.
49. In this way, the statement that an efficient cause influences by acting is
not like the statement that one gets a promotion by doing good work, but is
like the statement that a cyclist exercises by cycling. It is not as if the cyclist
does one thing (cycle), which in turn allows him to do a second thing
(exercise). Rather, his cycling is his exercising.
50. See ST I-II q.85 a.5; QDM, q.1, a.3c; In Meta V.3.789.
51. SCG III.69 [28].
52. See, e.g., Cartwright 1989, Ellis 2001, Ellis 2002, and Molnar 2003. I
am grateful to Jeffrey Brower, Brian Davies, Colleen McCluskey, Kent
Staley, and Eleonore Stump for their helpful comments on what I have
written here.
 CHAPTER 9

THE FIVE WAYS

TIMOTHY PAWL

INTRODUCTION
The Five Ways are five proofs or demonstrations that Aquinas offers near the
beginning of his Summa theologiae to establish the existence of God.1
Although the Five Ways compose only a miniscule portion of Aquinas’s
Summa—less than 775 words, or nearly one word for every fourth page in a
standard edition of the work—one would be hard-pressed to find another part
of Aquinas’s corpus that has been commented on as much as the Five Ways.
Yet despite their minute size and the gigantic secondary literature on them
throughout the centuries, whether Aquinas succeeds—and even what it is that
Aquinas is attempting to do or how he intends to do it—is still debated.
Some scholars think that Aquinas’s Five Ways are meant to demonstrate
the existence of the particularly Christian God. But if one considers that
Aquinas follows the article containing the Five Ways with an article
questioning whether God has a body2 and then later with articles questioning
whether God is perfect, good, infinite, immutable, eternal, and even whether
there is just one God, one sees that Aquinas does not take himself to have
already shown that the God of the Christian creeds exists.3 Others treat
Aquinas’s Five Ways as attempts to demonstrate the existence of something
omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good.4 The text does not bear this
interpretation. In fact, Aquinas explicitly argues that God has each of these
attributes at different points later in the Treatise on God (in the case of God’s
power, over twenty questions later).5 Aquinas is attempting to demonstrate
something much weaker here as a first step in arguing for a being with the
traditional divine attributes; namely, that there is something or other that
moves things but is unmoved, and that there is something or other that causes
but is uncaused, and so on.6
One also finds authors treating the Five Ways as if they are the summit of
Aquinas’s careful thought about demonstrations for the existence of God and
intended by Aquinas as the last word when it comes to what can be said
when arguing that God exists.7 But this was not his intent.8 He had
previously written something considerably longer and more detailed on the
argument from motion in the Summa contra Gentiles, and he had already
discussed the other ways, or arguments very similar to them, elsewhere.9 Had
his intent been to produce carefully crafted, full-fledged arguments with the
aim of convincing agnostics or atheists of the existence of God, he would
have used the arguments he had already worked out in careful detail. Since
the Five Ways are not his most in-depth, carefully crafted arguments for
God’s existence, finding them wanting, if one does find them wanting, does
not entail that Aquinas never successfully argued for the existence of God.
To judge on that topic, one must look to the SCG and elsewhere, as careful
commentators, both sympathetic to Aquinas and not, have done.10 The
Summa was written as a theological textbook for students just beginning their
theological training. In fact, there is a case to be made that it was written for
the formation of priests who were not going on into academia, “young and
run-of-the-mill Dominicans.”11 If one of our contemporaries had produced a
detailed and careful defense of a particular position, we would not judge the
merit of her arguments for that position based on what she says about it in an
introductory text she has also authored. Rather, we go to the more detailed
work. Our policy should be the same when it comes to Aquinas.
Nevertheless, the focus of this chapter is exclusively the Five Ways,
which are without a doubt Aquinas’s most well-known arguments for the
existence of God.12 Here I will analyze the Five Ways and discuss what I
take to be the most important points raised in the secondary literature.13

THE FIRST WAY: THE WAY FROM MOTION

Aquinas calls his First Way the most manifest of the Five Ways.14 He
argues:15
 (1) There exist some things that are moved.
(2) For anything that is moved, it is moved by something not identical
with it.
(3) A series of movers does not regress infinitely.
(4) Therefore there must be a first unmoved mover.
(5) This first unmoved mover all people understand to be God.16

There are multiple debates concerning the exact meaning of “motion” in the
First Way. One debate is over whether Aquinas uses “is moved” (movetur) in
a passive or intransitive sense. Does he mean in (2), for instance, that
anything that is in motion (intransitive) is moved by another, or that anything
that is moved by something (passive) is moved by another?17 Following
Scott MacDonald and John Wippel, I read the verb in the passive sense.18
Another question concerns the scope of motion discussed in the First Way.
Aquinas is not discussing solely metaphysical motion because he is talking
about changes that are “plain to the senses,” such as wood heating up (or of
the movement of heavenly bodies, which is his example in SCG I.13 where
he discusses this argument).19 Such changes are prime exemplars of physical
change.20 Considering physical motion, Aquinas is not discussing only local
motion, since one of his own examples of motion in this text is that of fire
heating up wood, and that sort of motion is not local motion.21 It seems most
reasonable then to think that he means the three accidental types of
Aristotelian change: local motion, qualitative change, and quantitative
change.
Allowing for the scope of “motion” to extend beyond local motion
provides an easy response to an objection that the First Way has faced. Some
argue that the First Way is unsound due to its dependence on an obsolete
Aristotelian physics. For instance, I. M. Bochenski writes, “Since ‘movetur’
is to be understood as ‘is in spatial motion’, the claims made in the proof rest
substantially on Aristotelian physics. But since such views are no longer
defensible, the prima via is not valid.”22 If the scope of “motion” in the First
Way extends beyond local motion, this objection, if apt, would only show
that the scope of “motion” would need to be reined in so as not to include
local motion; it would not show that the First Way fails.23
Concerning justification for the premises of the First Way, Aquinas takes
(1) to be “certain, and plain to the senses.” Some things are moved locally,
qualitatively, or quantitatively: people move about, tan and sunburn, bulk up
and thin out.
Aquinas offers arguments for premises (2) and (3). He argues as follows
for (2):

(2.1) To move something is to bring it from being potentially some way to

being actually that way, say, potentially F to actually F.
(2.2) Nothing is moved to being actually F unless it is first potentially F.
(2.3) Nothing brings another thing from being potentially F to being
actually F unless it is in an appropriate state of actuality.24
(2.4) It is not possible that something be both potentially F and in the
appropriate state of actuality to bring something to be actually F.
(2.5) Thus, it is not possible that something move itself.
(2) Therefore, for anything such that it is moved, it is moved by
something not identical with it.25

One thing to note about this argument is that it does not address the epistemic
possibility—that is, possibility for all we know—of something going from
being potentially F to being actually F without the aid of any mover
whatsoever.26
Premise (2.4) needs justification. If the appropriate state of actuality were
simply being actually F, then it would be easy to see why one would think
that something could not be both potentially F and actually in an appropriate
state of actuality to make something else actually F. But the appropriate state
of actuality need not be being F, since God brings things to states of being
without sharing those states of being—God makes material things without
being material, or hot things without being hot.27 Here commentators point to
being actually F or virtually F as the appropriate state of actuality, where
something is virtually F when that thing is not F, but is such that it can cause
things to be F.28 But now one wonders why it is that something cannot be
virtually F and potentially F, as (2.4) implies. Perhaps Aquinas would
maintain that the only way something can be virtually F is if it cannot be
potentially F. But now we need an argument for that claim.29
Aquinas’s argument for (3) is as follows:
 (3.1) Secondary movers move things in virtue of their being moved by a
first mover.
(3.2) Thus, if there is no first mover, then there are no secondary movers.
(3.3) If it is the case that a series of movers regresses infinitely, then there
is no first mover.
(3.4) But there are secondary movers.
(3) Thus, it is not the case that a series of movers regresses infinitely.30

Premises (3.2) and (3.4) seem to prove, by themselves, the conclusion of the
First Way, namely, that there is a first mover. They also seem to prove the
existence of an unmoved mover, since, if the mover were to be moved, it
would not be first. It seems as if Aquinas could simply give (3.2) and (3.4) as
an argument for a first mover rather than giving the whole First Way.
To elucidate (3.1), Aquinas provides an example of a stick causing
something to move in virtue of the stick being moved by a hand. This leads
one to think that Aquinas is discussing something more than just a mere
series of movers. Instead it seems that the series must be ordered such that
the members all move at the same time and the later members in the series
move in virtue of the motion of the earlier members. I will take up the issue
of such ordered series in the discussion of the Second Way.
One thing to note about the main deduction from (1)–(3) to (4) is that,
while Aquinas intends the argument to conclude that there is something
wholly unmoved, it seems that at most the argument can conclude that there
must be some mover at the beginning of any particular series of movers.31 It
could be that each series has a first mover, but each of those movers is an
intermediate member of some other series of movers. If that is possible, then
one can affirm (1)–(3) and deny (4), that there is anything wholly unmoved
—unmoved in all ways whatsoever.32
Peter Geach provides an interpretation of the First Way (and all Five
Ways) in which, rather than focusing his argument on individual causal
chains, Aquinas is “treating the whole world as a great big object” and then
asking what accounts for the motion of this great big object.33 If Geach were
right, pointing out that the first mover of any particular series might also be
an intermediate mover of another series, as I have done in the previous
paragraph, is irrelevant to the First Way, since Aquinas would be trying to
show that all motion, taken together, needs a first, unmoved mover, and not
that one can trace a chain of a certain type of motion back to a first, unmoved
mover. Thus, if this lumping together interpretation is correct, one could not
affirm (1)–(3) and deny (4) in the way I have presented in the preceding
paragraph. This strategy is not without costs, however. One major problem
with Geach’s interpretation of the First Way is that the text does not seem to
bear it out. There is no evidence in the First Way that Aquinas meant to lump
together the entire world as, for instance, the thing that is moved in (2), or as
a secondary mover, as the sub proof for (3) discusses.

THE SECOND WAY: THE WAY FROM EFFICIENT

CAUSATION
Aquinas’s Second Way is similar to the First Way, but rather than focusing
on motion, it focuses on efficient causation.34 Aquinas argues as follows:35

(6) There is an ordered series of efficient causes among sensible things.

(7) It is impossible that a thing be the efficient cause of itself.
(8) It is not possible for an ordered series of efficient causes to continue
infinitely.36
(9) Therefore, there is a first efficient cause.
(10) This first efficient cause all people call “God.”37

An order of efficient causes is more than just a particular series of efficient

causes. We know this, in part, because Aquinas claims that there is no
conceptual problem with a series of efficient causes continuing infinitely. He
says, for instance, that there is nothing impossible about a series of male
ancestors having no first member.38 For a series of efficient causes to count
as ordered, and hence for it to be the sort of series whose infinite
continuation is ruled impossible in premise (8), a chain of efficient causes
must be one in which its members exist and perform their causal work
simultaneously, and the members downstream in the causal series exercise
their causal action in virtue of the causal action of their predecessors in the
series.39 Such a series (also referred to as a per se series) is one where the
causal work of the later members in the series depends on the causal work of
the earlier members of the series, and not merely that the existence of earlier
members in the series at some time or other is a necessary condition for the
causal work of the later members of the series. So we see that in a chain of
male ancestors the conditions for being ordered are not fulfilled.
Aquinas takes (6) to be clear from the perceptible world. One should note
that, given the definition of an “order” of efficient causes, the sort of efficient
causation that is ordered and clear from sensible things is not generation and
corruption. This is because we are not familiar with any entities that are such
that they generate other beings, which generate still other beings in virtue of
the simultaneously employed causal power of the previous beings in the
series. That is, we do not know of any series of efficient generators that fulfill
the requirements of an ordered series of efficient causes.40 Similarly, we do
not find an ordered series of conserving efficient causes among sensible
things.41
For (7), Aquinas argues as follows:

(7.1) If x is an efficient cause of y, then x is prior to y.

(7.2) But it is impossible that a thing be prior to itself.
(7) Thus, it is impossible that a thing be the efficient cause of itself.

It is important to notice that Aquinas is talking about explanatory or logical

priority here, and not temporal. Aquinas thought that God is the efficient
cause of all temporal things and, since eternal, not temporally prior to any of
them.42
The other premise in the argument for the Second Way that Aquinas
defends is premise (8). He argues:

(8.1) In any case of ordered efficient causes, the first is the cause of the
intermediate cause or causes, and the intermediate is the cause of the
ultimate effect.
(8.2) If a cause is removed, then its effects are removed.
(8.3) Thus, if there were not a first cause with regard to efficient causes,
there would be no intermediate causes or ultimate effects.
(8.4) But if efficient causes were to proceed infinitely, then there would
not be a first cause with respect to efficient causes.
(8.5) Thus, there would not be any intermediate causes or ultimate effects.
(8.6) But there are intermediate causes and ultimate effects.
 (8) Therefore, it is not possible for an ordered series of efficient causes to
continue infinitely.

One worry about this argument is that premise (8.2) refers to “removing”
(remota; removetur) a cause. It seems as if the removing in mind is the
taking away of what is already there. So if it were the case that you removed
what was there, counterfactually plucking away something upstream in the
causal ordering, then you would not have what followed from it. But (8.3)
and (8.4) make no mention of removing. It may well be that if one were to
remove the first cause in an order of efficient causes, then the effects would
not follow, but it is less clear that if there just is not a first cause at all, as
(8.3) has it, not even one to be removed, then there cannot be any
intermediate causes or ultimate effects. The series of causes could be infinite,
and such a series would have no first cause. Of course, Aquinas denies the
possibility of an infinitely regressing ordered series—that is precisely what
he is arguing for here: (8). But he cannot use (8) to support (8.2), a premise
in the argument for (8).
As with the First Way, the inference from (6)–(9) to (10) does not seem to
yield a particularly impressive being. It is difficult to find among sensible
things an order of generative causes or an order of conserving causes. The
only pertinent sort of efficient causation remaining is that of the moving
cause. But then the Second Way seems to collapse into the First Way, though
perhaps as an argument that starts from movers moving things rather than
things being moved.

THE THIRD WAY: THE WAY FROM POSSIBILITY

AND NECESSITY
Aquinas says that his Third Way is from possibility and necessity (ex
possibili et necessario), but we must be careful how we understand
“necessity” or “possibility,” as we shall see. He argues:43

(11) Some things are such that they are able to be or not to be.
(12) It is not possible that everything be such that it is able to be or not to
be.
 (13) Therefore, there must exist something that is necessary.
(14) For anything that is necessary, it either has its necessity from
something else or it does not.
(15) It is impossible for the objects that have their necessity from
something else to proceed infinitely.
(16) Therefore, one must posit something that has its necessity from itself,
which is the cause of the necessity of other things.
(17) This everyone calls God.44

Aquinas provides justification in the text for premises (11), (12), and (15).
In defense of (11) he points out that some things are able to be generated
or corrupted. This is indicative of his understanding of possible being and
necessary being in this argument. Necessary things, at least in this argument,
are things that cannot cease to exist by corruption (e.g., decomposition).
Non-necessary things are those that can cease to be through corruption.
Likewise, necessary beings cannot be generated by composition, while non-
necessary beings can be generated through composition.45 On this
understanding of necessity, human souls, since they are incorruptible, are
necessary beings.46 But they are not necessary in the sense that they cannot
not be, as the term “necessary” is often used today and as Aquinas himself
sometimes used the term.47
The proof for premise (12) is where the majority of the secondary
literature on the Third Way focuses. In defense of (12), Aquinas argues:

(12.1) Suppose that it is possible that everything be such that it is able to

be or not to be.
(12.2) Anything that is able not to be at some time is not.
(12.3) Therefore, if all things are able not to be, then at some time nothing
existed in reality.
(12.4) Anything that begins to be, begins only through something that is.
(12.5) Thus, if nothing had existed at some time, then it would be
impossible for anything to have begun to be.
(12.6) And thus nothing would exist now.
(12.7) But something does exist now.
(12) Thus, it is not possible that everything be such that it is able to be or
 not to be.

Premises (12.2), (12.3), and (12.4) each seem doubtable.

Consider (12.2). Could it not be that some thing or things preserve an
object that is able not to be throughout the long—perhaps infinite—history of
the world? Such an object would still be able to be, since it is, and would also
be able not to be, since it could—but does not—cease to be through
corruption. Or could it not be that something or other created a temporal
world for only five minutes, and that there were some corruptible things that
existed for the full five minutes?48 Why think it is true that if something can
not be then it must not be at some time or other?49
Premise (12.3) has received the most press in contemporary literature on
the Third Way. It seems to be derived by a quantifier shift fallacy, in which
Aquinas concludes from (12.2), that for everything that is such that it is able
not to be, there is some time when that thing is not, to the claim that there is
some time such that nothing exists. But that is an invalid inference.50
Commentators have defended this step in multiple ways, though almost all
defenses have the same form: while the step envisioned from (12.2) to (12.3)
is rightly considered invalid as is, Aquinas had in mind another, tacit
premise, which, when combined with (12.2), provides for a licit inference.
David Conway, for instance, critically discusses one such commonly held
tacit premise: that Aquinas is supposing for argument that the world has an
infinite past and that, given an infinite amount of time, all possibilities will
have been actualized.51 Martin De Nys can be understood as saying that the
tacit premise is something like the following: if each part of a whole is
contingent, then the whole itself must be contingent.52 This, along with the
supposition that all things are contingent, entails that the whole universe is
contingent. That, along with (12.2), yields that the whole—the universe—at
some time is not.53
Premise (12.4) is a modest causal principle: nothing comes from nothing.
But even if it is modest, there are still some who doubt it.54 There are some
who may think that it is at least epistemically possible that there are some
things which, having no efficient cause, come into existence. And if things
can come into existence without a cause, then (12.4) is false (and, I should
note, the Second Way would fail as well). There are, however, grave
philosophical and scientific difficulties with denying (12.4).55
 In defense of premise (15), Aquinas claims that “it is not possible for the
objects that have their necessity from something else to proceed into infinity,
just as it is not possible to have an infinite chain of efficient causes, as was
proven.” I refer the reader back to the discussion of the Second Way here; in
particular, (8), (8.1) to (8.6), and the discussion following. The argument in
the Second Way required the notion of an ordered series of efficient causes.
If that previous argument from the Second Way is to be of use here, the
series of causes of necessary existence must be an ordered series as well. But
why think that any series in which A causes B to exist necessarily and B
causes C to exist necessarily must be an ordered series? Could not A cause B
to exist necessarily, and then B, by itself and at some later time, cause C to
exist necessarily? One needs a reason to think that any series of causes of
necessity is an ordered series in order for Aquinas’s reference to the previous
way to support (15). One place to look for such a reason may be an analysis
of ungenerated being and the necessary conditions for its coming to be.

THE FOURTH WAY: THE WAY FROM

GRADATION
The Fourth Way, and following Fifth Way, go more quickly than the others.
In the previous three ways, Aquinas has provided some attempts to justify the
controversial premises he employs. But here, and in the next way, we see
very few attempts to justify difficult premises. Given the aim of the Summa
and its intended audience, we should not be too hard on Aquinas for these
omissions. Nevertheless, these omissions do make it more difficult to gauge
the soundness of the arguments.
Aquinas’s Fourth Way is taken from the gradation that we find in the
world:56

(18) There are things that are more or less good, more or less true, more or
less noble, and so on.
(19) But things are called more or less F insofar as they are closer or
further from that which is maximally F.
(20) Thus, there is something maximally good, maximally true, and
maximally noble.
 (21) That which is maximally true is maximally being (or most fully
being).
(22) Therefore, there is something which is maximally being (or most fully
being).
(23) Anything that is maximally F is the cause of all things that are F.
(24) Thus, there is something that is the cause of all beings, their goodness,
and each and every of their perfections.
(25) This we call God.

By “maximally F,” Aquinas means that there is something as F as anything

could be, something at the very pinnacle of the F-ness scale, and not the
weaker and obvious claim that if two or more things are related as more or
less F, then there must be one of those things that is more F than the others
(or a tie). Premise (23) would make no sense on the weaker reading.
An interpretive difficulty with the Fourth Way has to do with the sort of
causation in question in (23) and (24). Some interpreters have argued that it
is formal causation, others efficient, still others final, and at least one
commentator argues that it is all three of them.57 As Linwood Urban has
shown, it is not decisive to point to the fact that Aquinas writes of fire
causing the hotness of hot things, since Aquinas sees fire as not only an
efficient cause but also a formal, material, and final cause.58 The argument
seems most intuitive when understood as formal causation, but then it seems
to incur the difficulty of showing that, if sound, it demonstrates more than the
existence of the Platonic forms.
Aquinas takes (18) to be clear from observation. Premises (19), (21), and
(23) are each susceptible to difficulties and to modern ears may sound
incredible. While we do not get arguments in support of these premises, we
do get two appeals to authority and two examples.
Consider (19) and its scope. Aquinas would not have affirmed it to be true
for all predicates. For instance, we call things more or less evil, but Aquinas
would not have affirmed that there is a maximally evil entity.59 The mention
of “perfections” (perfectionis) in (24) leads the reader to think that one could
limit the range of (19) to perfections. This would be a fortunate scope
restriction, since it would not require Aquinas to posit a stickiest thing, a
smelliest thing, or a sleepiest thing, or, at the other end of the spectrum, the
most amucilaginous, most aromatic, and most aware things.60 But this
restriction runs into exegetical problems, since Aquinas’s example for (19) is
that the hotter something is, the closer it is to what is maximally hot. Being
hot, though, is not a perfection.61 So while there must be some limitation to
the scope of (19) to rule out maximally evil or sleepy things, what exactly
that limitation would be, for Aquinas, is difficult to know.
Even aside from questions about (19)’s scope, it still seems highly
doubtful. Provide whatever narrow scope you want for (19), why think that it
is true? As John Wippel rightly points out, “It is unnecessary for us to
assume that something enjoys a maximum degree of heat in order to be
aware that one kettle is hotter than another.”62 Surely, there is one kettle that
is hotter than the others (or a tie for hottest), but that is a far cry from saying
that there is something maximally hot, in the strong sense of “maximal” spelt
out earlier.
Aquinas points to the authority of Aristotle as justification for premises
(21) and (23), in particular, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book II. Aquinas is not
talking about the truth that accrues to a thought, sentence, or proposition in
virtue of its conforming with reality. He is not saying that the thought (or …)
maximally in conformity with reality is maximally existent or that it is the
cause of all other things. Rather, he is talking about “ontological truth”—a
property that every being has in virtue of its being conformable to
intellects.63 Though an account of Aquinas’s theory of transcendentals and
levels of being is beyond the scope of this section, an understanding of them
is required in order to see why Aquinas would maintain that the most true
thing is the most fully in being.
In addition to the appeal to Aristotle, Aquinas provides an example for
premise (23)—fire, which is maximally hot, is the cause of all hot things.
Aquinas here means that fire is the cause of the being hot of hot things, and
not the cause of the actually hot things—this premise does not require fire to
be the cause of the kettles themselves; it just needs to be the cause of the tea
kettles being a certain way; namely, being hot.

THE FIFTH WAY: THE WAY FROM

GOVERNANCE

The Fifth Way, and final way, is from the governance of things:64
 (26) There are some things that lack cognition yet act for ends.
(27) Anything that lacks cognition does not act for an end unless it is
directed by something that is cognizant and intelligent.65
(28) Thus, there is something intelligent by which all natural things are
ordered to their ends.
(29) This thing we call God.66

Aquinas offers an argument and example to support (26) and offers an

example for (27). Some corporeal things do not cognize but sometimes act
for ends. Tomato plants lack cognition but very frequently act to bring about
tomatoes. The argument for (26) is as follows:

(26.1) Some things that lack cognition always or frequently act in the same
way to bring about that which is best.67
(26.2) If some things that lack cognition always or frequently act in the
same way to bring about that which is best, then they act for an end,
and this not by chance but by design.
(26) Thus, there are some things that lack cognition yet act for ends.

The example for (27) is that of an archer shooting an arrow. Just as the archer
directs the flight of an arrow, so the designer directs the actions of the
noncognizant beings that act for an end.
There is one main problem facing both (27) and (26.2). Darwinism
provides an account of how it could be that something acts for an end, and
does so always or for the most part, but does not act for an end as a result of
the design of an intelligent agent. Darwinism grows (evolves?) another horn
onto the head of the old dilemma: design or chance. It could be that
nonintelligent things act for ends as a result of selective evolution (though
that is not to say that there is something, evolution, which selects for the sake
of evolving things, as if it were acting for an end).
This may just push the argument back, though. Rather than focusing on
things that we see around us, like tomato plants, a proponent of this argument
could focus his or her argument on things that did not evolve yet still act
always or for the most part for an end. For instance, electrons act always or
for the most part to attract positively charged particles. This action, however,
was not selected for by means of an evolutionary process. So the objection
from Darwinism, while narrowing the scope of the examples Aquinas could
give, does not vitiate the argument.
But (27) and (26.2) still stand in need of a positive defense. Even if
electrons do not attract positively charged particles because of an
evolutionary process, why could it not be that they do so without design and
not by chance? It seems epistemically possible that it just be a brute fact that
electrons attract positively charged particles. They do so by nature, and that
nature was not designed by a designer. If that were the case, then the Fifth
Way would be unsound.

CONCLUSION
In this paper I have presented the Five Ways and discussed some of the most
common criticisms of them in the secondary literature. I have provided
citations in the notes for readers looking for additional reading on these
issues.

NOTES
I thank Gary Atkison, Brian Davies, Matthews Grant, Robert Gressis,
Mathew Lu, Rachel Lu, Faith Glavey Pawl, Michael Rota, Jon Stoltz,
Eleonore Stump, and Chris Toner for helpful comments on this chapter.

1. ST I q.2 a.3.
2. ST I q.3 a.1.
3. Aquinas writes that believers ought not try to prove the tenets of
Christian belief that are beyond the scope of reason, an example of which is
that God is triune, since such proofs will fall short and lead unbelievers to
scoff at believers (see SCG I 9, para 2). Aquinas writes this shortly before
going on to provide a detailed argument that is quite similar to the First Way.
It would be absurd for Aquinas to claim that one ought not try to prove the
existence of a triune God—the God of the Christian creeds—in one stroke
and go on, in the next, to attempt such a proof.
4. See Elliott Sober, Core Questions in Philosophy (New York:
Macmillan Library Reference, 1991), Lectures 4 and 5, pp. 36–56. To see
similar treatment at a popular and polemical level, see Richard Dawkins, The
God Delusion (New York: Bantam Press, 2006), 77–79. John Wilcox thinks
something similar. Wilcox seems to think that each of Aquinas’s Five Ways
is an attempt to prove the existence of a simple, infinite entity. See John
Wilcox, “The Five Ways and the Oneness of God,” The Thomist 62 (1998):
245–68.
5. Aquinas argues that God is supremely and essentially good in ST I q.6,
that God is omniscient in ST I q.14, and that God is omnipotent in ST I q.25.
6. Bochenski writes, for instance, “he is using the word ‘deus’ in a very
general and vague sense; it designates Pagan gods as well as the one God of
the great religions and of philosophers. Hence ‘deus’ ought to be interpreted
as a general term rather than a description” (Joseph M. Bochenski, “The Five
Ways,” in Adolfo García de la Sienra, ed., The Rationality of Theism
[Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 2000], 61–92; 67). See also Herman Reith, The
Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce, 1958), 177–
78; Timothy McDermott, Summa Theologiae, vol. 2, Existence and Nature of
God:1a. 2–11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Appendix 4:
The Meaning of the Word “God”; David Twetten, “Clearing a ‘Way’ for
Aquinas: How the Proof from Motion Concludes to God,” Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 70 (1997): 259–78, 264–67;
Richard Cartwright, “The Second Way,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology
5 (1996): 189–204; 190–91 for a discussion of Aquinas’s intended
conclusion to the Second Way; Brian Davies, “Aquinas’s Third Way,” New
Blackfriars 82 (2001): 450–66; 463 for a discussion of Aquinas’s
demonstrative aim in the Third Way; John Wippel, The Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2000), 461.
7. Again, see Dawkins, God Delusion, 77–79 and Sober, Core Questions,
36–56.
8. See Fergus Kerr, “Theology in Philosophy: Revisiting the Five Ways,”
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 50 (2001): 115–30; 128 and
Bochenski, “The Five Ways,” 68.
9. For an excellent discussion of Aquinas’s arguments for God’s
existence, see Jules Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs of the Existence
of God Presented in Their Chronological Order,” in John K. Ryan, ed.,
Philosophical Studies in Honor of the Very Reverend Ignatius Smith, O.P.
(Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1952), 29–64.
10. See, for instance, Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: Saint Thomas
Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1969);
Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural
Theology in Summa contra Gentiles I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), ch. 2;
Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Part III.
11. See Leonard Boyle, “The Setting of the Summa Theologiae,” in Brian
Davies, ed., Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays (Lanham, Md.:
Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 1–25; the quotation is from page 12.
12. There are many general points about the Five Ways that deserve
attention but would push this chapter well beyond its size constraints. So, for
instance, questions often asked about why five ways, why these ways, and
why this ordering of the ways, are left aside. A reader interested in these
questions should consult Bochenski, “The Five Ways,” 67–68; Leo Elders,
The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1990), 86–89; Kenny, The Five Ways, 36–39; Reith, Metaphysics of St.
Thomas Aquinas, 176–78; William Young, “From Describing to Naming
God: Correlating the Five Ways with Aquinas’ Doctrine of the Trinity,” New
Blackfriars 85 (2004): 527–41; John Zeis, “The Epistemic Passage of the
Five Ways,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association 68 (1994): 73–84.
13. Considering secondary literature on the whole of the Five Ways, any
serious student of the arguments should look to Kenny, The Five Ways and
Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas. Two other useful
discussions of the whole of the Five Ways are: Elders, Philosophical
Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, and C. F. J. Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God
and Explanations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), the latter
being not only helpful but also quite humorous. For an in-depth analysis of
the logic of the Five Ways, one could do no better than Bochenski, “The Five
Ways.” For a thorough list of parallel passages and some discussion, see
Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs.”
14. All translations are my own. I have been aided in my translations by
consulting Alfred Freddoso’s unpublished translation of the Summa,
available at <http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm>.
15. Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs,” 62–64, provides the
following parallel passages to the First Way, noting that it is the second most
common argument for the existence of God found in Aquinas’s corpus: SCG
I, 13; CT, c.3; In Phy VII, l.2; In Phy VIII, l.1–3, 7–13, 21–23; In Meta XII,
l.5–10. Baisnee also cites Super Johan Prologue, though I do not find the
argument from motion in that text.
16. For a discussion of the logic of the First Way, see Jan Salamucha, “The
Proof ‘Ex Motu’ for the Existence of God: Logical Analysis of St. Thomas’
Arguments,” New Scholasticism 32 (1958): 334–72, as well as Bochenski,
“The Five Ways.”
17. Some thinkers, like Kenny, accuse Aquinas of moving illicitly from the
intransitive use of “move” to the transitive usage. See Kenny, The Five Ways,
8–9; 18–19; 24, for the charge, and for a response to the charge, see Scott
MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” Medieval
Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 119–55, 121–24, especially footnote 6.
See also Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 414–15.
18. See MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” 121–
24, and Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 414–15. One
should note here that a common objection against the passive reading of
movetur is misguided. The common objection is that if Aquinas meant
movetur in the passive sense, then his claim that whatever is moved is moved
by something is trivially true. However, this is not Aquinas’s claim in the
First Way. He does not claim that whatever is moved is moved by something,
he claims that whatever is moved is moved by something else. The exclusion
of self-motion removes the triviality from Aquinas’s claim, as MacDonald
and Wippel both note.
19. Kenny raises this point as well, Kenny, The Five Ways, 9–11. For a
defense of a metaphysical interpretation of the argument and discussion of
the existential and physical readings of the First Way, see Twetten, “Clearing
a ‘Way’ for Aquinas,” 260–64; 267–71, and John F. X. Knasas, “Ad Mentem
Thomae: Does Natural Philosophy Prove God?” Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 61 (1987): 209–19.
20. See Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 446–47. It
seems reasonable to hold, along with Wippel, that while Aquinas’s examples
clearly show that he has physical motion in mind in the argument, the
principles he appeals to and arguments he provides for those principles
would justify an extension to more than just mere physical motion or change.
21. Contra Bochenski, “The Five Ways,” 74.
22. Ibid. See also Kenny, The Five Ways, 15–17; 28–31.
 23. To see a defense of the compatibility of Aristotelian physics with
Newtonian mechanics, see William Wallace, “Newtonian Antinomies
Against the ‘Prima Via’.” Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 19
(1956): 151–92. This reining in is also suggested by MacDonald, “Aquinas’s
Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” 136–38.
24. The language of being “in an appropriate state of” actuality is not in the
ST. Rather, there it merely says that the mover must be in actuality, then
gives an example of fire, which is actually hot, bringing wood from being
potentially hot to being actually hot. But being in actuality alone is not
enough to bring a being from potentially F to being actually F. The mover
must be in an appropriate state of actuality to do such a thing; hence the
addition to the premise.
25. Aquinas provides two additional proofs for (2) in the discussion of
arguments from motion in the SCG I, 13. For helpful discussions of these
arguments, see Kenny, The Five Ways, 11–23; Etienne Gilson, The Christian
Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1994), 60–61, and Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, 415–21. Macdonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological
Argument,” 129–30, formalizes this argument.
26. MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” 130–33,
points out that Aquinas does not address this possibility and suggests that he
tacitly assumes a modest principle of sufficient reason.
27. Aquinas calls God an analogical cause. See ST I q.13 a.5 ad 1; SCG I,
33; QDV I, q.4, a.6, resp; QDV II, q.11, a.3, ad 4. For more on God and
analogical causation, see Timothy McDermott, Summa Theologiae, vol. 3,
Knowing and Naming God:1a. 12–13 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), Appendix 2: Causes.
28. Sometimes one finds being virtually F referred to as being “eminently”
F. This sort of causation is sometimes referred to as “equivocal causation.”
29. To see discussions of what it is to be virtually F, see MacDonald,
“Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” 133–35, and Linwood Urban,
“Understanding St. Thomas’s Fourth Way,” History of Philosophy Quarterly
1:3 (1984): 281–95; esp. 285–87.
30. As with (2), Aquinas provides two additional proofs for (3) in the SCG
I, 13. Again, see Kenny, The Five Ways, 23–27; Gilson, Christian
Philosophy, 61–63; and Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas,
421–25.
31. It might be, as Kenny says, that there is an unmoved mover with
respect to qualitative change, and another with respect to local motion. In
fact, it could be that the first qualitative changer heats up the first local
mover, and the first local mover moves the qualitative changer around. In
that case, there is no unqualifiedly unmoved mover, but each series of
movers has a mover that is not moved in that series. See Kenny, The Five
Ways, 23.
32. Cf. Kenny, The Five Ways, 33, who provides a poignant quotation from
Suarez to the same effect; MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological
Argument,” 148–49.
33. G. E. M. Anscombe, and Peter Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1961), 112. This interpretation is well known in the
discussion of the Five Ways.
34. For a helpful discussion of Aquinas on efficient causation, see Michael
Rota’s contribution to this volume. See also Rosemary Lauer, “The Notion of
Efficient Cause in the Secunda Via,” The Thomist 38 (1974): 754–67.
35. Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs,” 62–64, provides only one
parallel passage to the Second Way: SCG I, 13.
36. I have inserted the “an ordered series of” into this premise, though the
original text does not include the restriction. I include it because, as the first
step in the forthcoming proof for (8) makes clear, as does (6), Aquinas is
discussing an ordered series of efficient causes.
37. For a discussion of the logical form of the Second Way, see Bochenski,
“The Five Ways,” 75–77, and Cartwright, “The Second Way,” 92–94. Here
and in the following three ways I number the conclusions differently, since
the “this” in each conclusion points to the thing named in the proceeding step
of the argument in question. For instance, the “this” in the Second Way refers
to the first efficient cause and not the first mover of the First Way. Also, it is
an open question whether the first mover must be the first efficient cause, the
cause of necessity in things, the maximally good thing, and the orderer of the
universe.
38. As Aquinas says in this oft-quoted passage ST I q.46 a.2 obj. 7 and ad
7. Also see the parallel passage in the SCG II, ch. 38, para. 13, and
McQueen’s discussion of that passage, Donald McQueen, “What is Aquinas’
Second Way?” History of Philosophy Quarterly 11:1 (1994): 23–35; 28–29.
 39. For helpful discussions of Aquinas on ordered series, see Cartwright,
“The Second Way,” 196–200; Elders, Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas
Aquinas, 93; and Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 461.
For a seminal work on God and simultaneity, see Eleonore Stump and
Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal of Philosophy 78 (1981): 429–58.
For a recent discussion of God and simultaneity, see Eleonore Stump,
Aquinas (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), ch. 4, “God’s Eternity.”
The reader may substitute “perform their causal work at no temporal distance
from one another” for “perform their causal work simultaneously” if she
finds atemporal simultaneity problematic.
40. Compare this claim with the thought of Gilson, Owens, and Rowe, who
think that the Second Way concludes to a bestower of existence. See Gilson,
Christian Philosophy, 67; Joseph Owens, “Aquinas and the Five Ways,” The
Monist 58 (1974): 16–35, reprinted in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence
of God: Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, ed. John Catan (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1980), 132–42, 135, and William Rowe, The
Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993),
17.
41. Such a series would require A to stand in the conserving relation to B,
and B to conserve C in virtue of the causal power of A. Compare this with
Cartwright, who claims that the Second Way concludes to a conserver of
existence. See Cartwright, “The Second Way,” 202. Conservation seems to
have only two relata for each series: God and the thing being conserved. But
an ordered series, as understood by Aquinas (and Cartwright) requires at least
three relata. See also Lauer, “The Notion of Efficient Cause.”
42. ST I q.44 a.1; ST I q.10 a.4. Cf. Kenny, The Five Ways, 40.
43. Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs,” 62–64, provides the
following parallel passages to the Third Way: SCG I, 15–16 and SCG II, 15.
Baisnee also cites Diu. nom. V, l.1 as a parallel text, but I do not find the
argument from possibility and necessity in that text.
44. For a discussion of the logic of the Third Way, see Bochenski, “The
Five Ways,” 77–81; Mauricio Beuchot, “Saint Thomas’ Third Way:
Possibility and Necessity, Essence and Existence” in Adolfo García de la
Sienra, ed., The Rationality of Theism (Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 2000), 93–108;
Martin De Nys, “If Everything Can Not-Be There Would Be Nothing:
Another Look at the Third Way,” The Review of Metaphysics 56 (2002): 99–
122; 101.
 45. One should note that non-necessary things, at least for Aquinas, can
begin existing without being generated and cease existing without being
corrupted, if God creates them ex nihilo or ceases to uphold them in
existence.
46. ST I q.75 a.6.
47. Aquinas did use the term “necessary” in this way as well. And, in fact,
he used the term “possible,” in some cases, such that anything that is
necessary is also possible. See, for instance, SCG 3b, ch. 86. For discussions
of Aquinas’s different understandings of “necessity,” see: Patterson Brown,
“St. Thomas’ Doctrine of Necessary Being,” in Anthony Kenny, ed.,
Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1976), 157–74; S. Knuuttila, “The ‘Statistical’
Interpretation of Modality in Averroes and Thomas Aquinas,” Ajatus 37
(1978): 79–98; S. Knuuttila, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy (New York:
Routledge, 1993); J. J. MacIntosh, “Aquinas on Necessity,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 371–404; Timothy Pawl, “A
Thomistic Account of Truthmakers for Modal Truths” (Ph.D. thesis, Saint
Louis University, 2008), ch. 4.
48. Cf. Michael Augros, “Aquinas’s Tertia Via,” Angelicum 83 (2006):
767–92; 773.
49. For further discussion, including attempts to answer this question, see
Augros, “Aquinas’s Tertia Via,” 775–79; Beuchot, “Saint Thomas’ Third
Way,” 101–102; Davies, “Aquinas’s Third Way,” 456–58.
50. Others have called this dubious step a fallacy of composition, since it
appears that Aquinas is arguing that since each thing does not exist at some
time, the whole composed of all those things also must not exist at some
time. See De Nys, “If Everything Can Not-Be,” for a helpful discussion of
the considerations here. For one influential presentation of the charge, see
Kenny, The Five Ways, 56.
51. See David Conway, “Possibility and Infinite Time: A Logical Paradox
in St. Thomas’ Third Way,” International Philosophical Quarterly 14:2
(1974): 201–209.
52. The reader should note that De Nys is not making the (false) claim that
if each part of a proposition has its truth-value contingently, then the whole
proposition does as well. Consider any contingently true proposition, P. Both
P and ~P have their truth-values contingently. Their disjunction, however,
does not have its truth-value contingently. See De Nys, “If Everything Can
Not-Be,” 114–18.
53. See De Nys, “If Everything Can Not-Be,” Section III. Section II of the
same article provides a helpful, critical discussion of the responses of Gilson,
Edwards, and Owens to the quantifier shift charge. See also Beuchot, “Saint
Thomas’ Third Way,” 102–4; Davies, “Aquinas’s Third Way,” 458, and
notes 11 and 20; Elders, Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 104;
and Anscombe and Geach, Three Philosophers, 115.
54. Rowe understands this step as an appeal to a principle of sufficient
reason, not a causal principle. Nevertheless, he claims that the principle
required for this step of the argument might be false. See Rowe, The
Philosophy of Religion, 26–28.
55. See G. E. M. Anscombe, “‘Whatever Has a Beginning of Existence
Must Have a Cause’: Hume’s Argument Exposed,” Analysis 34:5 (1974):
145–51 and the excellent debate on this issue between Quentin Smith and
Thomas Sullivan: Quentin Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the
Universe,” Philosophy of Science 55:1 (1988): 39–57; Thomas D. Sullivan,
“Coming to Be Without a Cause,” Philosophy 65 (1990): 261–70; Quentin
Smith, “Can Everything Come to Be Without a Cause?” Dialogue: Canadian
Philosophical Review 33:2 (1994): 313–23; Thomas D. Sullivan, “On the
Alleged Causeless Beginning of the Universe: A Reply to Quentin Smith,”
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 33:2 (1994): 325–36.
56. Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs,” 62–64, provides the
following parallel passages to the Fourth Way: Super Sent D.III Divisio
primae partis textus; Super Sent D.I, q.1, a.1–2; SCG I, 13; QDP, q.3, a.5.
57. See Urban, “Understanding St. Thomas’s Fourth Way,” for a helpful
discussion of causation in the Fourth Way. Urban is the commentator who
believes that all three types of causation mentioned are at play in the Fourth
Way.
58. See Urban, “Understanding St. Thomas’s Fourth Way,” 283–84, where
he points to DPN IV 27 and other texts.
59. This is an example of Urban, “Understanding St. Thomas’s Fourth
Way,” 292. Aquinas considered evil a privation and not a thing.
60. The example of a smelliest thing is from Dawkins, God Delusion, 79.
Some commentators, for instance, Wippel, go further and restrict the
argument to transcendental perfections. Wippel writes, “I shall restrict the
argument to transcendental perfections such as goodness and truth”
(Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 472). See also Elders,
Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 111.
61. One might think that the convertibility of being and goodness allows
Aquinas to claim that being hot is a perfection after all. But then limiting the
scope of (19) to perfections would not be useful in removing difficult
examples from the range of (19), since the convertibility move would also be
applicable to being aromatic, for instance. At least one commentator claims
that Aquinas did not intend being hot as an instance of (19). Instead, the
heating claim “is only a comparison and not an instance” (Elders,
Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 111). But, if that were true,
and it might be, it surely is a poor example to offer for (19).
62. Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 472. For a
discussion of different ways of understanding the beginning moves of the
argument, (18) to (20), especially (19), see Joseph Bobik, “Aquinas’s Fourth
Way and the Approximating Relation,” Thomist 51 (1987): 17–36.
63. See Wippel’s helpful two part article: John Wippel, “Truth in Thomas
Aquinas,” Review of Metaphysics 43:2 (1989): 295–326; John Wippel,
“Truth in Thomas Aquinas,” Review of Metaphysics 43:3 (1990): 543–67.
64. Baisnee, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Proofs,” 62–64, provides the
following parallel passages to the Fifth Way, noting that it is the most
common argument for the existence of God found in Aquinas’s corpus:
Super Sent, d.I, q.1, a.1; QDV, q.5, a.2; SCG I, 13; SCG I, 44; QDP, q.3, a.6;
In Meta XII, l.12; Super Johan, Prologue; Super Symbolum Apostolorum, a.1.
Baisnee also lists SCG II, 43 as a parallel text, but I do not find the argument
from the governance of things in that text.
65. Elders, Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 123, discusses a
potential justification for this premise.
66. For a discussion of the logic of the Fifth Way, see Bochenski, “The
Five Ways,” 84–85.
67. For a discussion of this premise, see Elders, Philosophical Theology of
St. Thomas Aquinas, 121–22.
 PART III

THE DIVINE NATURE

 CHAPTER 10

GOD’S SIMPLICITY

ELEONORE STUMP

INTRODUCTION
The doctrine of divine simplicity is perhaps the most difficult and
controversial piece of medieval philosophical theology but also one of the
most important.1 It derives from the conviction that God is a being whose
existence is an absolutely perfect being, self-explanatory, completely actual.2
Aquinas was among the most influential expositors and defenders of this
doctrine, and the doctrine is central to his philosophy and theology. It is not
possible to do justice to this doctrine in short space; here I will only sketch its
basic outlines.3
The doctrine of simplicity, as Aquinas understands it, can be summarized
in three claims. The first distinguishes God from material objects:4

(1) It is impossible that God have any spatial or temporal parts that could
be distinguished from one another as here rather than there or as now
rather than then.

The second claims that the standard distinction between an entity’s essential
and intrinsic accidental properties cannot apply to God:5

(2) It is impossible that God have any intrinsic accidental properties.

And the third rules out the possibility of components of any kind in the
essence that is the divine nature. Even when it has been recognized that all
God’s intrinsic properties must be essential to him, it must be acknowledged
as well that

(3) whatever can be intrinsically attributed to God must in reality just be

the unity that is his essence.

For this reason, God is his own essence or nature.6 For all things other than
God, there is a difference between what they are and that they are, between
their essence and their existence; but on the doctrine of simplicity the essence
that is God is not different from God’s existence. Therefore, unlike all other
entities, God is his own being.
There is a large literature attempting to explain and evaluate these claims,
and it is not possible in this brief essay to explore the controversies at issue in
this literature. Here I will just outline the heart of the doctrine by focusing on
Aquinas’s connection between God’s simplicity and the quid est or essence
of God.

AGNOSTICISM ABOUT GOD’S NATURE

It is helpful to begin by setting aside one interpretation of Aquinas’s position.
Aquinas places a discussion of God’s simplicity at the beginning of his
treatment of the nature of God in the Summa theologiae,7 and he begins that
discussion with a short prologue. In the prologue, he says,

When we know with regard to something that it is, we still need to ask about its mode of
being (quomodo sit), in order to know with regard to it what it is (quid sit). But because
we are not able to know with regard to God what he is, but [rather] what he is not, we
cannot consider with regard to God what the mode of being is but rather what the mode
of being is not.… it can be shown with regard to God what the mode of being is not by
removing from him those things not appropriate to him, such as composition and motion
and other things of this sort.

This passage and others like it have sometimes been cited as evidence for an
interpretation of Aquinas as committed to the via negativa in a radical way.
So, for example, in presenting Aquinas’s position on human knowledge of
God, David Burrell says,

That God’s nature, otherwise utterly unknown, must be affirmed simply to be, gives a
 warrant of sorts for taking to-be as an act.8

And Leo Elders says,

The comprehension of God’s essence is altogether excluded. This conclusion is

presupposed in the Prologue to the Third Question.… Even if we say that God is perfect,
good or eternal, we must realize that we do not know what these terms mean when
predicated of God.9

Claims such as this can give the impression that, for Aquinas, because of
God’s simplicity, it is not possible for human beings to have any positive
knowledge of God. On this interpretation of Aquinas’s views, Aquinas
maintains that because God is simple, human beings can know what God is
not, but they cannot know anything of what God is.10
But caution is warranted here. It is true that Aquinas explains divine
simplicity in terms of what God is not—not a body, not composed of matter
and form, and so on. On the other hand, however, in the course of showing
what God is not, Aquinas relies heavily on positive claims about God. So, for
example, he argues that God is not a body on the basis of these claims among
others: God is the first mover; God is pure actuality; God is the first being;
God is the most noble of beings. In arguing that God is not composed of
matter and form, Aquinas in fact makes a huge, substantial, positive
metaphysical claim about the nature of God. He says,

a form which is not able to be received in matter but is subsistent by itself (per se
subsistens) is individuated in virtue of the fact that it cannot be received in something
else. And God is a form of this sort.11

In ST I q.13, the question about the names of God, Aquinas explicitly

repudiates the sort of agnosticism some scholars attribute to him; Aquinas
himself associates such a position with Moses Maimonides and attacks it
vigorously. In still other texts, Aquinas bluntly rejects the view that human
beings can have no positive knowledge of God. In QDV, q.7, a.5, for
example, he says,

the understanding of a negation is always based on some affirmation. And this is clear
from the fact that every negation is proved by an affirmation. For this reason, unless the
human intellect knew something affirmatively about God, it would be unable to deny
anything of God.
For all these reasons, it is a mistake to read the prologue to ST I q.3 as
implying a radical agnosticism with regard to knowledge of God.
The problem in interpreting Aquinas’s remarks in the prologue correctly
has to do with the expression “quid est” in the claim that we do not know of
God what he is (quid est).12 The expression quid est is a technical term of
medieval logic. For example, Peter of Spain, the author of a standard
scholastic logic text, gives the traditional medieval formula for a genus as
“that which is predicated of many things differing in species in respect of
what they are (in eo quod quid est).” The same phrase in a slightly different
definition captures the notion of species. The quid est of something therefore
has to do with the genus or species of that thing, or more generally, with the
kind of thing it is. So if one cannot know something’s quid est, one cannot
know what kind of thing it is.
It is helpful to see in this connection that one can know a great deal about
something even if one does not know (or cannot know) what kind of thing it
is. According to quantum physics, we do not know what kind of thing light
is. The best we can do is sometimes to think of light as a wave and
sometimes to think of it as a particle, although we certainly understand that
nothing can be at the same time both a wave and a particle. And yet we have
a great deal of positive knowledge about light, notwithstanding our inability
to know what kind of thing light is.

ESSE AND ID QUOD EST

On the doctrine of simplicity, God is his own quid est or essence, and his
essence is being or esse. It seems to follow from these claims that God is
esse. (Given the difficulties of the doctrine, in what follows I will use the
Latin terms for the concepts crucial to the interpretation defended here.)
In his commentary on Boethius’s treatise De hebdomadibus, Aquinas
makes a careful distinction between esse and an entity or id quod est
(literally, that which is).13 Among the many differences between esse and id
quod est that Aquinas introduces, he calls attention to the fact that “id quod
est” signifies something concrete whereas “esse” does not.14 He also
highlights the fact that id quod est is particular,15 whereas esse is not.16 In
these and other ways, Aquinas argues for the metaphysical difference
between esse and id quod est. Since, on the doctrine of simplicity, God is
esse, and esse is distinct from id quod est in these ways, some scholars
conclude that for Aquinas God is not an entity at all.17 For such scholars, this
is a strength of Aquinas’s position, because it emphasizes the transcendence
of God, who is not to be numbered as one entity among others.18
It is another advantage of this interpretation that it helps to explain the
three basic claims of the doctrine of simplicity formulated above. Nothing
that is not an id quod est has temporal or spatial parts. And nothing that is not
an id quod est has intrinsic accidents either. For example, animality and
whiteness have no intrinsic accidents. They are the wrong sort of thing, we
might say, to have intrinsic accidents. If we think of intrinsic accidents as
belonging somewhere in the nine Aristotelian categories other than
substance, then it is easy to see why nothing that is not an id quod est should
be thought to have intrinsic accidents. Whiteness does not have a certain size
or quantity, for example; it does not engage in action or receive the action of
anything else—and so on. Whiteness is what it is—whiteness—and nothing
else at all.
Furthermore, in the case of esse, if it is not an id quod est, then even
existence cannot be attributed to it in any way. If it is not an id quod est, then
it would be true that there is esse; but its being esse would be all there is to it.
We could not separate esse into itself and its existence. If we did, esse would
become something concrete, an id quod est rather than only esse.
So thinking in these ways of God as only esse helps to make sense of the
three claims of simplicity presented at the outset.
The problem is that, so understood, the concept of God as nothing more
than esse seems religiously pernicious. Alvin Plantinga puts the problem in
terms of God’s being a property, but his objections remain the same if we
transpose his “property” into “esse” (where esse is taken as something that is
not an id quod est). Plantinga says,

This view [that God is identical to esse] is subject to a difficulty both obvious and
overwhelming. No property could have created the world; no property could be
omniscient, or, indeed, know anything at all.19

And Plantinga summarizes the problem in a way that is especially apt for my
purposes here. He says,
 If God is a property, then he isn’t a person …20

We do not need to worry whether a triune God can be thought of as a person

in order to see the power of Plantinga’s complaint. Even on the doctrine of
the Trinity, which takes God to consist in three persons (where “person” has
a technical, theological sense), God is characterized by mind and will.
Anything with mind and will, however, is an id quod est. For this reason,
Plantinga is right to say that if God is a property—or only esse—then God is
not a person, in our sense of the word “person.” Nothing that is not an id
quod est could be a person or enter into personal relationship with human
persons. As far as that goes, nothing that is not an id quod est can act at all.
Consequently, if the doctrine of simplicity implies that God is esse alone,
then it seems that many of the standard divine attributes discussed and
accepted by Aquinas cannot be applied to God. Those attributes apply only to
something that is an id quod est. Moreover, many of the biblical stories about
God’s interactions with human persons, which Aquinas himself takes
seriously and literally,21 cannot be understood as Aquinas understands them
if God is only esse and not id quod est.
So, here is where matters stand. As Aquinas himself is at pains to show in
his commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus, there is all the difference
in the world between something that is esse and something that is id quod est.
If the doctrine of simplicity is correctly understood as some defenders of the
doctrine, and some detractors of it such as Plantinga, suppose, to mean that
God is only esse, then it is hard to know how to ward off the dramatic
infelicities that Plantinga laments.

QUANTUM METAPHYSICS
It is worth noticing, however, that on this interpretation, represented by both
defenders and detractors of the doctrine, we do in fact know the quid est of
God, at least to some limited extent. That is because, on this interpretation,
we know that God is esse; and we know something about the quid est of esse,
as Aquinas’s own discussion of it in his commentary on Boethius’s De
hebdomadibus shows, where he gives a detailed characterization of the
nature of esse. So, if the doctrine of simplicity has to be interpreted as
claiming that God is only esse and nothing more, then, on Aquinas’s own
views, we would actually know a reasonable amount about the quid est of
God. But, as we saw, Aquinas is insistent that we are unable to know the quid
est of God because of God’s simplicity. And so the implication that we do
know a reasonable amount about the quid est of God should be a warning
sign about this interpretation.
In my view, the problem with this interpretation is not that it identifies
God with esse. The problem is that it rejects the notion of God as id quod est.
This rejection looks sensible, especially given Aquinas’s care to distinguish
esse from id quod est; but, in fact, it is not true to Aquinas’s position.
In his commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus, Aquinas begins his
discussion of esse and id quod est by saying,

We signify one thing by “esse” and another thing by “‘id quod est,’” just as we signify
one thing by “running” (“currere”) and another thing by “a runner” (“currens”). For
“running” and “esse” signify in the abstract, just as “whiteness” also does; but “id quod
est,” that is, “an entity,” and “a runner,” signify in the concrete, just as “a white thing”
also does.22

And he concludes that discussion this way:

it is evident on the basis of what has been presented that in composite things esse and id
quod est differ as regards the things themselves (realiter).23 … And so [Boethius] says
that in every composite thing, esse is one thing, and the composite thing itself [the thing
as id quod est] is another.24

But, having worked so hard to distinguish between esse and id quod est in
this way, Aquinas then goes on immediately to say something that is on the
face of it quite surprising. He says,

In simple things, [however,] esse itself and id quod est must be one and the same as
regards the things themselves (realiter).25

And, after giving an argument that there cannot be more than one thing that
is both esse and also id quod est, Aquinas sums up his position by saying,

This one sublime simple is God himself.26

On Aquinas’s view, then, the distinction he has been arguing for between
esse and id quod est does not hold in God’s case. It is true that God is esse, as
the doctrine of simplicity makes clear. But this esse is also—somehow—an
id quod est.
We could suppose that in making this claim about God Aquinas is willing
to violate the laws of logic as regards God, since he himself has just shown
that the characteristics of esse and those of id quod est are incompatible. But
this would be a rash conclusion, since in many other places Aquinas
manifestly supposes that even God cannot do what is logically
contradictory.27 But if we remember Aquinas’s insistence that we cannot
know the quid est for God, then another interpretation suggests itself.
Another way to think about the doctrine of simplicity, as Aquinas
understands it, is as the expression of a kind of quantum metaphysics.
What kind of thing is it that has to be understood both as a wave and as a
particle? We do not know. That is, we do not know the quid est of light. At
the ultimate foundation of all reality, things get weird, we might say. The
ultimate foundation of physical reality includes light, and our best attempt at
understanding the kind of thing light is requires alternately attributing to it
incompatible characteristics. Analogously, we can ask: What kind of thing is
it that can be both esse and id quod est? We do not know. The idea of
simplicity is that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality is
something that has to be understood as esse—but also as id quod est. We do
not know what kind of thing this is either. And this conclusion is precisely
what we should expect from Aquinas’s insistence that we do not know the
quid est of God.
As Aquinas sees it, however, we can have considerable positive
knowledge about God, even so, just as we can have a significant body of
knowledge about light, even according to quantum physics. We can begin by
recognizing that God’s nature is such that there is something false about
conceiving of it either as esse alone or as id quod est alone. That is why
Aquinas says of God,

With regard to what God himself is (secundum rem), God himself is neither universal
nor particular.28

For this reason, we have to exercise care in the way we frame our claims
about God. It is acceptable to say that God is esse, provided that we
understand that this claim does not rule out the equally true claim that God is
id quod est, an entity, a concrete particular.
Aquinas puts the point this way:

Those material creatures that are whole and subsistent are composite. But the form in
them is not some complete subsisting thing. Rather, the form is that by means of which
some thing is. For this reason, all the names imposed by us to signify some complete
subsisting thing signify in the concrete, as is appropriate for composite things. But those
names that are imposed to signify simple forms signify something not as subsisting but
rather as that by means of which something is, as for example “whiteness” signifies that
by means of which something is white. Therefore because God is both simple and
subsistent, we attribute to God both abstract names—to signify God’s simplicity—and
concrete names—to signify God’s completeness and concreteness. Nonetheless, each
kind of name falls short of God’s mode [of being], just as our intellect does not know
God as he is, in this life.29

We can gain insight into Aquinas’s position here by considering that there
are scriptural texts claiming that God is loving and scriptural texts claiming
that God is love.30 It seems, however, that these claims cannot be true
together. If they were, it would have to be true that love is loving. But love is
abstract and universal. And, as Plantinga objects, an abstract universal is not
a person; it is not the sort of thing that can be loving. So it seems just a
category mistake to attribute loving to love. On Aquinas’s understanding of
the doctrine of simplicity, however, we can make sense of both these
scriptural claims. Because God is simple and we do not comprehend his quid
est, the best we can do is to adopt quantum metaphysics. Sometimes we have
to characterize God with abstract terms—and so we say that God is love—
and sometimes we have to characterize him with concrete terms—and so we
say that God is loving.
Consequently, it turns out that, in one sense, Plantinga is after all in
agreement with Aquinas. Each of them thinks that God must be characterized
as an id quod est, a concrete entity. The difference between them lies
precisely in the quantum metaphysics mandated by the doctrine of simplicity.
For Aquinas, it is right to describe God as an id quod est, capable of creating,
loving, and acting—but only with the proviso that it is also right to think of
God as being esse.

CONCLUSION
On the doctrine of eternity, God is outside time.31 Some scholars have taken
that doctrine to imply that God cannot act, since (on their view) all action
presupposes temporal duration or temporal location; or they have supposed
that God’s mode of existence is that of a frozen point, as it were, without
duration of any kind, since (on their view) all duration is persistence through
time. In effect, such an interpretation takes the doctrine of eternity to imply a
metaphysical smallness about an eternal God by comparison with temporal
creatures. But, on Aquinas’s view, an eternal God is able to act at any and
every point in time, and his mode of existence is broad enough to encompass
all of time within it.32 From Aquinas’s point of view, the doctrine of eternity
implies a metaphysical greatness about God, above the status of any creatures
in time.
There is an analogous conceptual move to be made as regards
interpretations of the doctrine of simplicity. On the doctrine of simplicity,
God is without parts of any kind whatsoever; there is no composition in God.
Some scholars have taken the doctrine to imply that God is identical only to
esse,33 giving rise to the complaint voiced by Plantinga that a simple God
cannot act as persons do, or to the equally worrisome objection that
everything about God is absolutely necessary, since there are no accidents in
God. In effect, such an interpretation takes the doctrine of simplicity to make
God metaphysically more limited than concrete things such as composite
human beings, who can act and who can do otherwise than they do.
But this is to get the doctrine upside down. The doctrine of simplicity
implies that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of all reality there is
esse. But it also implies that this esse, without losing any of its characteristics
as esse, is something subsistent and concrete, with more ability to act and
with more freedom in its acts than any concrete composite entity has. Trying
to summarize this idea, Aquinas says,

although God is esse only [and not something composite, as material creatures are], …
nonetheless God has all the perfections which are in all the genera [of created things].…
And this is because all these perfections come together in him in accordance with his
simple esse. By way of analogy, if someone could bring about the functioning of all
qualities by means of one quality, he would have [in effect] all the qualities in that one
quality. In just this way, God has all the perfections in his esse.34

The difficulty of thinking one’s way up the ladder of being can leave one
with the impression that the immutable, impassible, eternal, simple God of
Thomistic philosophical theology is frozen, static, inert, unresponsive, and
incapable of action. But Aquinas’s notion of God is exactly the opposite. If it
were not so subject to misinterpretation, one might well say that for Aquinas
God is maximally dynamic, and not static at all. On Aquinas’s views, there is
more ability to act—one might say, more action—on the part of a God with
the classical divine attributes than there could be on the part of a composite
entity acting in time.35 That is why Aquinas can say that in the esse that is
God there are all the perfections of all the genera of created things—
including responsiveness and action, which are perfections of any id quod est
with mind and will.36
On this way of understanding divine simplicity, when the esse that is God
acts, its action is not an accident in it. This is not because esse is an inert
universal that is the same in all possible worlds. Rather, it is because this esse
is more metaphysically one than any composite thing could be. When it acts,
it acts just as esse, and its acting remains within its character as esse. That is,
the acts engaged in by the esse that is also an id quod est are not added on to
esse as something additional to esse. In acting, the esse that is God remains
esse; it does not become esse plus the property of acting. The esse that is the
ultimate foundation of reality can do more than created, composite things
without ceasing to be esse only. That is why, in the power and the richness
that is esse, God can also do otherwise than he does without ceasing thereby
to be esse.
In our sense of the term, then, there is contingency in God. As Aquinas
himself is at pains to point out, Christians are committed to the claim that
God can do otherwise than he does. Creation is a free and not a necessitated
act on God’s part.37 But it is still not the case that there are accidents in God.
For composite things, contingency (in our sense of the term) comes with
composition of subject and accident; but not for God.
For this reason, it is also the case that a simple God can be responsive to
things in time. A simple God cannot do anything after something happens in
time, but a simple God can certainly act because of something that happens
in time. That is because, if something in time had been otherwise, a simple
God might have acted otherwise than he did. To say this is clearly not to say
that God decides what to do after something happens in time or that God can
change in time. To say this is only to claim that God can do otherwise than
he does, as Aquinas explicitly claims.38 As long as a simple God can do what
he does because of what happens in time, God can be responsive to things in
time.
To try to explain the doctrine of simplicity in this way is not to provide an
argument for the truth or even the compatibility of its claims. It is just to try
to contribute to insight into this most challenging part of Thomistic
philosophical theology. If, contra Aquinas, we could grasp the quid est of
something that is both esse and id quod est, we might understand exactly how
to explain what kind of thing can be described in all these ways. But, as it is,
on Aquinas’s views, we do not comprehend God’s quid est; and so we are
limited to the kind of quantum metaphysics sketched here.39

NOTES
1. This doctrine has also been the subject of a voluminous literature. The
most sustained and sophisticated attack on Aquinas’s position can be found
in Christopher Hughes, A Complex Theory of a Simple God (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1989). Hughes’s attack, however, seems to me
based on misunderstandings of crucial elements of Aquinas’s metaphysics, as
reviewers have pointed out (see, e.g., David B. Burrell, “Review of
Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God,” Journal of
Religion, 72:1 [Jan 1992]: 120–21), and so I will not consider it here.
2. The derivation of divine simplicity from such considerations is apparent
in Aquinas’s QDP 7.1, as Mark D. Jordan has pointed out in his article “The
Names of God and the Being of Names” in Alfred J. Freddoso, ed., The
Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1983), 161–90; see esp. 176–79.
3. For more extended discussion, see the chapter on simplicity in my
Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003). For sympathetic treatments published
since then, see, e.g., Jeffrey Brower, “Making Sense of Divine Simplicity,”
Faith and Philosophy 25 (2008): 3–30: Brian Leftow, “Divine Simplicity,”
Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006): 365–80; and Brian Davies, “Simplicity,” in
Chad Meister and Charles Taliaferro, eds., The Cambridge Companion to
Christian Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009). For recent book-length treatment, see Peter Weigel, Aquinas on
Simplicity: An Investigation into the Foundations of His Philosophical
Theology (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008).
4. ST I q.3 a.1–2; cf. also ST I q.9 a.1 and q. 10 a.1.
5. ST I q.3 a.6.
6. ST I q.3 a.3.
7. ST I q.3.
8. David Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, Ind.: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 139. See also 60–61. “We cannot speak of God
at all … [on Aquinas’s theory of divine simplicity] unless it be under the
rubric of ‘the first cause of all.’ Yet such a cause leaves no proper traces
since its modus operandi cannot conform to the ordinary patterns whereby
effect resembles cause.… In the measure, then, that our language embodies a
subject/predicate, genus/species grammar … no description can succeed in
identifying a trace of divinity.”
9. Leo Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1990), 143.
10. For discussion of this position in the secondary literature, see the
chapter on simplicity in my Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003).
11. ST I q.3 a.3 ad 3.
12. See, in this connection, particularly SCG I.14.
13. In this connection, cf. also De ente et essentia, c.3. Cf. also the chapter
on being by John Wippel in this volume.
14. In BDH. II.22.
15. In BDH. II.24.
16. There is a complication in this regard that I can only touch on in this
brief essay. The esse at issue here must be distinguished from esse that is
common to all things in existence. (In this respect, see especially De ente et
essentia, c.5.) This common esse is a mental abstraction and so is a universal
in the sense of the term usual for Aquinas, who takes universals to exist only
in the mind. What distinguishes the esse that is God from the common esse is
that the divine esse precludes combination with anything else, whereas the
common esse is open to combination with form and matter. Even with this
distinction between common and divine esse, however, divine esse
considered just as esse is not concrete or particular. It does not follow that
God is a universal for Aquinas, or that for Aquinas there is one universal that
exists outside the mind, namely, God. As the rest of this essay makes clear,
the heart of Aquinas’s position is that we cannot know the quid est of God.
The best we can do is to alternate between language that identifies God with
what is universal—“God is love”—and language that identifies God with a
concrete particular—“God is loving.”
17. Cf., e.g., Leo Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas
Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 22; “For St. Thomas God is never ‘an
object,’ for God is far above our understanding.”
18. Cf., e.g., David Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); and, more recently, “Act of
Creation with Its Theological Consequences,” in Thomas Weinandy, Daniel
Keating, and John Yocum, eds., Aquinas on Doctrine (London and New
York: T & T Clark, 2004).
19. Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee, Wis.:
Marquette University Press, 1980), 47.
20. Ibid.
21. As he does, e.g., with regard to God’s interactions with Job; see his
prologue to his Expositio super Job.
22. In BDH., 22.
23. The qualifier “realiter” is needed here because in the preceding
discussion Aquinas has examined the distinction between esse and id quod
est considered as concepts. Once that conceptual distinction has been
established, he moves next to show that the conceptual distinction is
exemplified by all composite things, but that it does not apply to the one
thing which is entirely simple, namely, God.
24. In BDH., 32.
25. In BDH., 33. Cf. also, e.g., SCG I, c.38.
26. In BDH., 35.
27. For an excellent discussion of Aquinas’s theory of modality and its
connection to God’s nature, see Timothy Pawl, “A Thomistic Account of
Truthmakers for Modal Truths” (Ph.D. thesis, Saint Louis University, 2008).
28. ST I q.13 a.9 ad 2.
29. ST I q.13 a.1 ad 2. Cf. also SCG I, c.30.
30. For an example of the first, see 1 John 4:10; and for an example of the
second, see 1 John 4:8.
31. For defense of this claim, see the chapter on eternity in my Aquinas; for
a contrasting view, see the chapter on eternity by Brian Leftow in this
volume.
 32. For explanation and defense of these claims, see the chapter on eternity
in my Aquinas.
33. That is, not to common esse but to the esse that is God; for the
distinction see note 16.
34. De ente et essentia, c.6.
35. God’s actuality or act of being is an important implication of the
doctrine of divine simplicity, but a detailed exploration of this issue has to be
left to one side in this brief essay.
36. In this connection, it is hard to resist calling attention to the case of
light again. When Newton first discovered that white light contained within it
all the richness of the other colors of light, there was considerable opposition
to his finding. The opposition supposed that the simplicity of white light
excluded the other colors, whose richness was thought to be somehow
tarnishing of the pure whiteness of white light. Goethe, who was among the
opposition, summed up this sort of attitude by saying that white light is “the
simplest most undivided most homogenous being that we know.” I am
indebted to Andrew Pinsent for the point and the historical information.
37. For a discussion of this point and the relevant Thomistic texts, see the
chapter on simplicity in my Aquinas.
38. For a more detailed discussion of this point, see the chapter on
simplicity in my Aquinas.
39. I owe a debt of gratitude to Theodore Vitali, C.P., whose relentless
questioning of my previous presentation of the doctrine of simplicity led me
to want to examine the topic again. And I have learned a great deal from the
seminar presentations on divine simplicity given by John Foley, S.J. His
seminar presentations led me to rethink the doctrine in the way I have
outlined it here. I am also grateful to him for trenchant criticism of an earlier
draft, which caused me to rework one central part of this essay. I am grateful
as well to David Burrell, Tim Pawl, Andrew Pinsent, and especially Brian
Davies for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
 CHAPTER 11

GOD’S GOODNESS

LUDGER HONNEFELDER

INTRODUCTION
That “good,” “goodness,” or “being good” has to be predicated of God has
been clear in philosophy and theology at least since Dionysius Pseudo-
Areopagita’s De divinis nominibus.1 It became a traditional part of medieval
philosophical theology because it was demanded in the Jewish and Christian
context by several biblical texts. But the mode of this predication is not self-
evident: Is God—as the Platonists say2—primarily “good” or “goodness
itself” and therefore the cause of the “goodness” of all other things? Or can
God only be called “good” because “good” is—as Aristotle seems to say3—a
common predicate that must be predicated of God, as well as of everything
else that exists? What does “good” even mean? Is it interchangeable with
“being,” so that something is “good” insofar as it has “being”? How is
“good” related to “being,” and what does “good” add to “being”?
Since Philip the Chancellor inaugurated the debate, the medieval doctrine
of the transcendentals4 (i.e., the transcategorical predicates) had developed as
a wide-ranging discussion. The following questions, in particular, were hotly
disputed: Which predicate deserves epistemological and/or ontological
priority? In what sense can “goodness” be predicated of God? And how
should the relation of God’s goodness to the goodness of all other beings be
understood?
The locus classicus that requires Aquinas to deal with these questions is
the first part of his Summa theologiae. Given that “sacred doctrine,” as he
establishes in ST I q.1, must be the science whose subject is God, it must deal
first with God’s nature. This task can be accomplished only by determining
which predicates characterize God: existence/being, simplicity, perfection,
goodness, and so on.
The order Aquinas follows in ST I q.2–6 is not arbitrary. Because God is
not the natural object of any of our cognitive powers, neither God’s existence
nor essence can be presupposed as naturally known, but must instead be
demonstrated. “In this life,” as he explains in ST I q.13 a.1, “we cannot see
God in his essence, but rather we cognize him through creatures under the
aspect of a cause, abstracting from creatures the mode of excellence.”5
If in general God is not naturally known in his essence, God’s “goodness”
in particular is not self-evident, but must be demonstrated on the basis of a
number of premises. Demonstrating God’s goodness is possible only if we
grant that God is a being (as shown in ST I q.2), whose nature is simple and
perfect (as shown in q.3 and q.4), and that the predicate “good” is common
(as shown in q.5).6 On this background, it can be argued in ST I q.6 that God
need not be the precise adequate subject of goodness (a.1), but that God must
be the “highest good” (a.2), and this must be in virtue of God’s nature (a.3).
Thus, no other being can be considered as “good” except by participation in
divine goodness (a.4).
The ST is not the only and not the first place where Aquinas treats God’s
goodness. Already in QDV, q.21 he deals with God’s goodness as the “first
goodness” on which goodness in general depends. The approach in QDV,
q.21 is different than that in ST and has as its background the commentaries
that Aquinas devoted to Boethius’s De hebdomadibus and to Dionysius’s De
divinis nominibus. In SCG it is the treatment of God’s nature in the first book
that requires Aquinas to consider God’s goodness (ch. 37 –41). Since the
doctrine of God’s goodness in ST is the last and the decisive treatment, we
should start with a short explanation of this version of Aquinas’s position,
adding occasional observations on the earlier parallel texts.

IS “BEING GOOD” APPROPRIATE FOR GOD? (ST

I Q.6 A.1)
The first article of q.6 of ST I (in which Aquinas intends to demonstrate that
“goodness” must be attributed to God) begins with Aristotle’s definition:
something is “good” insofar as it is “desirable” (appetibile). In a first step,
Aquinas concludes (1) that every being desires its perfection, (2) that this
perfection or form is a similitude of the agent that causes perfection by
actualizing a thing’s form, and (3) that therefore the agent cause itself must
be something desirable and therefore good as stated in the previous
definition. The second premise follows from the axiom that any agent acts or
produces something similar to itself. If God is the first efficient cause of all
things (as demonstrated in ST I q.2), then the final conclusion follows: God is
something desirable, that is, “good.” As Aquinas remarks, Dionysius
Areopagita demonstrates God’s goodness in the same way in his De divinis
nominibus, ch. 4 on the basis of God’s universal causality.
But by contrast with the Neoplatonic position—as represented by
Dionysius—Aquinas takes the position that the predicate “good” is not prior
to that of “being.” From an Aristotelian perspective the “appetite” (appetitus)
does not constitute the appetibile, but rather the appetite presupposes that
there already is something (actually or potentially) that can function as an
object of desire. As Aquinas remarks in QDV, q.12, a.6, “the ratio of good
implies a relation (sc. to an appetite), not because the name ‘good’ signifies
only a relation, but because it signifies something to which the relation is
directed by its relatedness.”7
Though Aristotle introduced his definition of “good” in NE I, 1 as the
“desirable” (appetibile) only as regards active human desiring agents,
Aquinas extends it beyond active agents, claiming that all beings have a
fundamental desire, namely to reach their perfection.8 In his answer to the
second counterargument of ST I q.6 a.1—namely, that the Aristotelian
definition of good is too restricted, because only those things can be desired
that are known, and not all things can know God—Aquinas argues that even
non-rational creatures desire God insofar as God has given them a natural
inclination to their ends. Thus, Aquinas presupposes a general ontological
teleology. But how does he understand and justify this assumption?
Aquinas provides the answer implicitly in his treatment of the previous
question. In ST I q.4 a.1, he introduces and defines the predicate of perfection
in order to demonstrate that God is “perfect” (perfectus). Something is
perfect when it does not lack what belongs to its mode of perfection. To
explain what is missing, Aquinas refers to the Aristotelian doctrine of act and
potency.9 Something such as matter, he argues, cannot be considered perfect
because it is only something in potency; it lacks something. This supports the
general assumption “that something is perfect only insofar as it is actual
[aliquid esse perfectum secundum quod est in actu].” Since God as the first
active principle is the most actual, he therefore has to be considered as
something “that is maximally perfect [maxime esse perfectum].”
In QDV, q.21, a.1, Aquinas distinguishes a twofold way in which
something can be perfected with regard to the two predicates “true” (verum)
and “good” (bonum). The intellect is perfected by its object according to its
kind (species), the will according to its being (esse). In the first way of
perfection a thing can be called “true” in that it is perfected by its object, and
in the second way, a thing can be called “good” by virtue of its perfective
object. In the case of the predicate “good,” “the being that perfects another
thing [ens perfectivum alterius]” is called “good” primarily and in principle,
while the being that is perfected so “that it achieves its own end [ductivum in
finem] in virtue of a perfective being is called ‘good’ in a secondary sense.”10
In the following a.2 of QDV, q.21, Aquinas emphasizes that all things
have a tendency to being (esse) in virtue of a natural appetite; even matter
(materia)—according to Aristotle—seeks form. This allows Aquinas to
conclude that all beings have the tendency to preserve their being. Thus, he
claims that “esse itself has the ratio of ‘good’. For, since it is impossible that
something exists without being [esse], it is necessary that every thing is
‘good’, because it has esse.”11

IS GOD THE HIGHEST GOOD? (ST I Q6 A2)

The approach Aquinas uses in ST I q.6 a.1 is quite different than that of
QDV, q.21. In both texts he defines “good” as something desirable, but the
order of explanation is reversed. In QDV, q.21 he starts from the primary
meaning of “good” (from which a secondary meaning is derived) and
explains the general meaning of “good” in relation to the “bonum
perfectivum.” In ST I q.6, he starts from the general meaning of “good” (as
demonstrated in q.5) and explains it with reference to the perfection that
something possesses insofar as it is actual, that is, its esse. In the earlier text
(QDV) the meaning of “good” as the appetibile is derived from the ens
perfectivum, in the later text (ST) from the ens perfectum. And even the order
of causality is different: In QDV Aquinas starts with final causality and
proceeds to efficient and formal causality, but in ST I q.6 and q.4 he follows
the inverse order.12
The earlier text (QDV) implies the problem of how we can presuppose
that “good” is the ens perfectivum. By contrast, the later text (ST) raises a
corresponding difficulty: how can God be called “good” in the same manner
as other beings without an infringement on his transcendence?13 Or to put it
another way: if goodness is coextensive with perfection, and perfection is
related to the specific or generic mode of that which is called perfect, how
can God be called “perfect” or “good” without subsuming God under a
proper genus?
The answer is given in ST I q.6 a.2, where Aquinas explains the way God
is the “highest good” (summum bonum). The reference to q.5 (where it is
explained why “good” has to be understood not in a generic, but in a
transcendental sense) does not suffice, because it would not solve the
problem. Aquinas starts from what has been said in a.1 about God as the first
active cause of the perfections in all other beings. For the efflux (effluxus) of
these perfections from God, he explains, is not a univocal causation. In cases
of univocal causation, the cause “agrees” (convenit) with the caused insofar
as both share a common generic or specific nature. Consequently, a univocal
cause can only cause something of its own genus or nature. Or as Aristotle
often remarks, “A human being generates a human being (and nothing
else).”14 Therefore, in cases of univocal causation, the similarity between a
cause and what it causes is (as already noted in ST I q.4 a.3) complete and
uniform (uniformiter). By contrast, the causality of the first active agent
producing perfections in all caused things, Aquinas continues, has to be
compared to the causality of the sun, which is not univocal but equivocal
insofar as the heat in the sun is not of the same generic or specific nature as
the heat in fire. Nonetheless, the sun is the cause of the heat in fire, because
the sun contains the heat in a “higher mode” (excellentius).
Since according to this order of excellence, God as first active cause of all
good things contains goodness in its “highest mode” (excellentissimo modo),
he can be called a “highest good” (summum bonum). Since God is not a
univocal cause, his excellent goodness does not imply that God belongs to a
genus or species of goodness. And since God is “outside of a genus” (extra
genus), Aquinas can answer the third objection, which claims that
comparison presupposes a common genus. It is quite possible to compare
God and other beings under the aspect of “goodness” (as is done in the
phrase “highest good”) without conceding that God and other beings must
share a common genus with regard to “goodness.”

IS BEING GOOD ESSENTIALLY A PROPERTY OF

GOD? (ST I Q6 A3)
But this result is not a completely satisfying answer to the aforementioned
objection. Although the reference to God’s causality (as made in ST I q.6 a.2)
can safeguard God’s transcendent “goodness” and justify calling him the
“highest good,” it does not explain in what sense God can be called the
“highest good” without violating his transcendence: Is he only accidentally
“good,” or finally, or by his essence?
The answer to this objection is contained in ST I q.6 a.3, where Aquinas
returns again to God’s perfection (as demonstrated in q.4) to show that being
good by essence is an exclusive property of God. Perfection, Aquinas
explains, can be understood in a threefold way: (1) with regard to what
constitutes something as a being, (2) with regard to those qualities that are
required as necessary conditions of its perfect operation and (3) with regard
to what is necessary for something to reach its end. In this view fire is only
perfect when it (1) exists by its substantial form, (2) possesses qualities like
heat, lightness, dryness, and so on, and (3) is able to remain in its place.
Taken this way, only God possesses perfection “according to his essence”
(secundum essentiam suam). Because (1) only God’s being (esse) is his
essence (essentia), as shown in q.3 a.4, (2) only God possesses through his
essence such properties as omnipotence, wisdom, and so forth that are added
to other beings only accidentally, and (3) only God is in his essence the end
to which all other beings are ordered (and only God has no end other than his
own essence). If God therefore possesses perfection through his essence in all
three senses of perfection, we can conclude that only God is good through his
essence.

ARE ALL OTHER THINGS GOOD THROUGH THE

DIVINE GOODNESS? (ST I Q.6 A.4)
As Aquinas already remarks in his answer to the first objection of ST I q.6
a.3, there remains the question of how creatures can be called “good” at all if
they are not good through their essence. If every being is one through its
essence, why are they not good in the same way?
The answer is contained in ST I q.6 a.4, where Aquinas discusses the
question of whether all beings are good through the divine goodness. His
point of departure is the distinction between predicating something by
extrinsic denomination and predicating something “in an absolute way”
(absolute). And here Aquinas’s example of extrinsic predication is location; a
thing’s location (locatus) is predicated of it by extrinsic denomination from
its place (locus). When Plato argues that Socrates is denominated as a human
being by the idea of human being and understands this idea as something
separately existing (calling it the “per se homo”), he is wrong because he
assumes the separate existence of the idea of homo. But, by contrast, he is
right when he claims that concepts like homo or ens or unum can be
predicated either per se or per participationem. Since God has to be called a
“per se ens,” Aquinas argues, insofar as his essence (as shown in q.3 a.4) is
nothing other than his being (esse), he can also be called a “per se bonum.”
All other beings, which are created beings, must be called “good by
participation” (bona per modum participationis).
“Participation” means in this use of language, as Aquinas explains, that A
shares B insofar as it is similar to A, that is, it is a restricted similitude of A.
Because God is not only the efficient cause but also at the same time the
exemplary and final cause of all other beings, these beings can be called
“good through the divine goodness” (bona bonitate divina).
This “participation par similitude” (as L.-B. Geiger has called it15) allows
Aquinas to say that something is formally good because its goodness, as a
similitude of the divine goodness, is formally inherent in it. And at the same
time, Aquinas can say that calling it “good” is a denomination derived from
the divine goodness as its exemplary cause.

AQUINAS’S DOCTRINE OF GOD’S GOODNESS: A

COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF TWO DIFFERENT
APPROACHES OR ELEMENTS
To evaluate Aquinas’s doctrine of God’s goodness in ST I q.6, it is helpful to
look at the structure of his argument. A brief comparison with his approach
in QDV shows that even in his doctrine of goodness (as well as in his
metaphysics in general) Aquinas wants to connect central elements of
different traditions to achieve a comprehensive view of goodness. With
Aristotle he keeps in mind that we do not have a God’s Eye View (not even
by inborn concepts); our epistemological approach is restricted. Nonetheless,
with regard to God, it is not completely negative. We can follow the via
causalitatis; on the basis of transcendental concepts attained by an analysis
of our conceptual knowledge, we gain insight into a certain metaphysical
structure. With Plato Aquinas holds that reality as a nondualistic whole must
be understood as “good” and that “goodness” has to be traced back to the
first final cause.16
To explain “goodness” Aquinas identifies two central approaches in the
tradition. The first defines the concept of “goodness” as the concept of an end
and understands the end as a perfection that is reached when the potentialities
of a thing are completely actualized according to that thing’s nature. The
second defines “goodness” as something caused by a first cause that is
“goodness itself.” The first can be called (with reference to Aristotle) the
“nature approach”; the second (with reference to Boethius’s De
hebdomadibus), the “participation approach.”17
In his comprehensive view in ST I q.6, Aquinas starts with the “nature
approach,” instead of the “participation approach” he had employed in QDV,
q.21, a.1 Nonetheless, he integrates a revised form of the “participation
approach” in a second step of the ST argument. His point of departure is the
Aristotelian analysis of the nature of those things we cognize in empirically
based natural knowledge. But while Aristotle analyzes perfection only as the
actualization of a form in its corresponding matter, Aquinas extends this
analysis to a deeper metaphysical level. In his view, matter-form composition
has to be conceived of as only a special case of more general composition.
The most general form of metaphysical composition is that of essentia and
esse, a form of composition that can be found not only in material beings but
also in immaterial beings.
It is this general metaphysical structure that allows Aquinas to connect the
Aristotelian act-potency structure to the Platonic idea of participation in the
second step of his ST argument.18 The Aristotelian priority of the act
(mediated through the form) can be conceived of as the priority of the “act of
being” (actus essendi).19 For it is the “act of being” (actus essendi) that
constitutes a “being” (ens), insofar as the actus essendi is the actualizing
principle of the essentia, conceived of as the receiving potency.
As the act that constitutes any being (as being) and actualizes all the
inherent perfections of a being, esse can be understood as the act of all other
acts and perfections. “As such, esse is the most perfect of all things, as the act
of all things to which it can be compared. For nothing has actuality except
insofar as it is. Hence esse is the actuality of all things, even of their
forms.”20 And in QDP, q.7, a.2, ad 9, Aquinas writes, “being is the actuality
of all acts, and on that account it is the perfection of all perfections [esse est
actualitas omnium actuum, et propter hoc est perfectio omnium
perfectionum].”
As that which can be predicated as something common to all beings
“esse” (commune) is a general concept; as the act that actualizes the form or
essence of a particular being it is a principium quo. But in prolongation of the
Aristotelian axiom that “whatever is the maximum in a genus is the cause of
all other members of that genus,”21 the first efficient cause of all beings must
be conceived of as that whose essence comprehends esse as the perfection of
all other perfections. It can, therefore, be called a “subsisting act of being”
(esse subsistens).22 Aquinas’s explication of the statement that “God is good”
in the sense that “he is goodness itself” follows from this explication of the
concept of God as the first cause, as that which cannot be conceived of
except as that whose essence is unrestricted esse.

THE ORDER OF ELEMENTS OR LEVELS

Comparing the two approaches in QDV and ST, we can conclude that what is
the initial step in Aquinas’s explication of goodness in QDV is the last step in
his explication in ST. Only if goodness can be explained as perfection
through the ST’s analysis of being as a composition of esse and essentia can
“goodness” be interpreted in both ways: as the divine goodness, which is the
goodness of the esse subsistens, and as the goodness of all other beings, since
their perfection is identical with their esse.
The reference to the “participation approach” gives Aquinas the
opportunity to solve a problem that is connected to the application of the
distinction between predication per se and per accidens. Since it is only God
of whom “good” can be predicated per se, because God alone is substantially
good, all other beings can only be called “good” accidentally or by extrinsic
denomination. But that being the case, the “goodness” of creatures remains
something extrinsic, which is not very convincing as compared with the
“nature approach.”23 Therefore, in the case of “being” and “good” Aquinas
prefers to use the distinction between predication per essentiam and
predication per participationem. But this distinction as introduced by
Boethius in his De hebdomadibus must be transformed. What is shared by
created beings, according to Aquinas, is divine goodness insofar as the
inherent perfection of these beings is a similitude of God’s goodness. This
“participation par similitude” is in created beings a result of their
“participation par composition” and therefore not extrinsic.
This explains why “good” and “being” are predicated of created beings in
different ways: something is “‘being’ absolutely” (ens simpliciter) insofar as
it exists, but its additional properties, its accidents and operations, are
“‘being’ in a certain respect” (ens secundum quid). When something exists, it
is “good in a certain respect” (bonum secundum quid), that is with respect to
the perfection of “being,” but it is “absolutely good” (bonum simpliciter)
only when it has reached its final perfection.24 Following an approach that
can already be found in Albert the Great,25 Aquinas teaches that “being” and
“good” are identical in that “being” and “good” are attributed to a thing in
virtue of the same state of reality. But “being” and “good” differ
“conceptually” (secundum rationem), insofar as “good” connotes a relation to
the perfective object26 or a “relation to the final cause” (habitudo causae
finalis).27 This relatedness is not extrinsic because it consists in the similitude
of a being to the first efficient and final cause of that being. The priority of
“good” in relation to “being” can be reduced to priority “in a causal relation”
(in causando).28
Because God is not composed of esse and essentia, but absolutely simple,
what can be predicated of him is predicated of him in a different way than it
can be predicated of created beings. Thus, esse can be predicated of God
essentially, though in creatures it is only a principium quo. “Because God is
simple and subsisting, even abstract nouns signify his simplicity.”29 While
Aquinas criticizes the Platonic doctrine of separated forms with respect to
created beings, in the case of God he agrees (as does Aristotle) that
“goodness” subsists as “being” (esse).30 In the first cause of the perfections
of all other beings, all perfections must pre-exist “in a more excellent
manner” (secundum eminentiorem modum).31 Distinguishing between
essential predication and predication by participation at Quodl II, q.2, a.2,
Aquinas notes that “God is called good essentially, because he is goodness
itself, but creatures are called good by participation, because they have
goodness.”32 It is this ontological model of participation that allows us to call
“good” both what desires goodness and what confers goodness, the ens
perfectum and the ens perfectivum, good as quod omnia appetunt and good as
diffusivum sui.33 And it is this model that makes it possible to substitute the
concept of causality with regard to creation for the emanation of the
Neoplatonic tradition.

PERFECTION AND GOODNESS: A CIRCLE?

But even the doctrine of God’s goodness in ST I q.6 is open to question. It
supposes that the actus essendi (act of being) as the perfectio omnium
perfectionum (perfection of all perfections) constitutes goodness—in created
things per participationem (by participation) and in God per essentiam (by
essence). But, the solution seems circular, since it is goodness as the
perfection of the actus essendi that causes goodness in God and creatures.
And we can also ask how we know that the actus essendi is the ultimate
perfection.
Aquinas would not only concede but emphasize that there is a circle
insofar as “being” and “good” are really identical because both refer to the
same reality. But this circle is not vicious, since “good,” as Albert the Great
emphasizes,34 is different than being on account of its relation to the appetite
of the will, which is not included in the meaning of perfection.
But even if “being” is conceptually distinct from “good,” Aquinas’s
solution is open to objection, since it presupposes an analysis of “being”
(esse) as perfection that precedes the analysis of “being” (ens) as good. Isn’t
this the hidden priority of value to being that characterizes the Platonists and
that Aquinas wants to avoid?
Indeed, Aquinas’s understanding of “being” (esse) is not neutral. But he
would argue that the positive evaluation of “being” (esse) is not arbitrary,
since unless we affirm “being” (esse), we cannot cognize anything. Being is
the first thing we can know, and its affirmation has priority over its negation
because being is presupposed even when we deny the “being” (esse) of
something. As Aristotle emphasizes, the ontological reason for this is that act
precedes potency, and even potency is not “real” except in relation to act.

NOTES
1. Cf. Dionysius Pseudo-Areopagita, De divinis nominibus, c.4. My
thanks to Rega Wood (Stanford) for her help with the above; thanks, too, to
Jennifer Ottman for her assistance with matters of English style.
2. Cf. ibid.; Boethius, De hebdomadibus.
3. Cf. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea l.1, c.4 (1096 a 19 –29).
4. Cf. Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono.
5. ST I q.13 a.1; cf. Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003),
93 ff.
6. Cf. Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The
Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996);
id., “Good as Transcendental and the Transcendence of the Good,” in Scott
MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in
Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell
University Press, 1991), 56 –73; Rudi te Velde, “The Concept of the Good
according to Thomas Aquinas,” in Wouter Goris, ed., Die Metaphysik und
das Gute: Aufsätze zu ihrem Verhältnis in Antike und Mittelalter (Leuven:
Peeters, 1999), 81–103; Scott MacDonald, “The Metaphysics of Goodness
and the Doctrine of the Transcendentals,” in Scott MacDonald, ed., Being
and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical
Theology (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 31–55
7. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals, 300; te Velde,
“The Concept of the Good.”
8. Cf. In NE I l.1; see Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the
Transcendentals, 299 f.
9. Cf. ST I q.5 a.5.
10. QDV q.21, a.1.
 11. Ibid.
12. Cf. te Velde, “The Concept of the Good.”
13. Cf. Aertsen, “Good as Transcendental.”
14. Aristotle, Physics l.2, c.7 (193 a 26 f.), l.2 (193 b 8 ff.).
15. Cf. Louis-Bertrand Geiger, La participation dans la philosophie de S.
Thomas d’Aquin, 2d ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 63–73
16. MacDonald, “The Metaphysics of Goodness,” 37, calls it the Agency
Account.
17. Scott MacDonald, “The Relation between Being and Goodness,” in
Scott MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in
Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell
University Press, 1991).
18. Cf. Wolfgang Kluxen, “Thomas von Aquin: Das Seiende und seine
Prinzipien,” in Josef Speck, ed., Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 1972), 174–214
19. See the contribution of John F. Wippel in this volume.
20. ST I q.4 a.1–2; cf. Leo J. Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St.
Thomas Aquinas (Leiden, New York, København, and Köln: E. J. Brill,
1990), 163
21. SCG l.1, c.41, referring to Aristotle, Met. l.2, c.1
22. Cf., e.g., ST I q.44 a.1: ipsum esse per se subsistens.
23. Cf. Ralph McInerny, “Saint Thomas on De hebdomadibus,” in Scott
MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in
Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell
University Press, 1991), 74–97
24. Therefore, Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals,
317, states that according to Aquinas “good” is both in the category of
substantial being and in the category of accidental being. Cf. Aertsen, “Good
as Transcendental.”
25. Cf. Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, tr.6, q.28, sol. (ed. Siedler,
Ed. Colon. t.34, 1 p.214); MacDonald, “The Metaphysics of Goodness.”
26. QDV q.21 a.1 ad 1.
27. ST I q.5 a.2 ad 1.
28. ST I q.5 a.2 ad 1.
29. ST I q.13 a.1 ad 2.
 30. Cf. ST I q.6 a.4; In NE l.1, c.6.
31. ST I q.4 a.3.
32. Cf. Aertsen, “Good as Transcendental.”
33. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals, 302, speaks of
the “attractive and the productive side of goodness”; te Velde, “The Concept
of the Good,” distinguishes between “good in itself” and “good for itself.”
34. See note 25
 CHAPTER 12

GOD’S KNOWLEDGE AND WILL

JAMES BRENT, O.P.

AQUINAS divides perfections into two types: entitative and operative. An

entitative perfection is something that a thing is, an operative perfection is
something that a thing does. The terms “knowledge” and “will” both signify
operative perfections. The terms possess different senses in our own thinking,
but when applied to God both terms refer to the absolutely simple divine
esse. In keeping with our way of thinking, Aquinas has one account of God’s
knowledge and another account of God’s will. In two parts, this article treats
both of Aquinas’s accounts.

GOD’S KNOWLEDGE
Aquinas presents God’s knowledge (1) as a divine perfection and (2) as
divine ideas. In addition, there is the special question of (3) God’s knowledge
of future contingent events such as creaturely free choices. Each topic
deserves its own consideration.

God’s Knowledge as a Divine Perfection

For Aquinas, all creatures imitate God to some degree, but to an extent and in
a way far removed from what God is. All creaturely perfections are thus
inadequate imitations of God. Given Aquinas’s account of the divine
perfections and divine names, terms referring to creaturely perfections such
as “life,” “goodness,” and “power” refer to something very different in God
than what they refer to in creatures. Knowledge is a case in point.
Let us say that Socrates knows things or has knowledge. The terms
“know” or “knowledge” refer to (Aquinas would say “signify”) some reality
in Socrates. Now, precisely by knowing things or having knowledge,
Socrates inadequately imitates God. Because Socrates, as someone who
knows things, does indeed imitate God to some extent, we can also say that
God knows things or God has knowledge. On the basis of how Socrates’
knowledge imitates God, the term “knows” or “knowledge” refers to some
reality or perfection in God. But because of how inadequately Socrates’
knowledge imitates God, we must also say that the term “knows” or
“knowledge” refers to some reality or perfection in God quite different from
and more eminent than what the same term refers to in Socrates.1 So for God
to know things or to have knowledge is something different from and more
eminent than what it is for Socrates to know things. Now, what is it to say
that God’s knowledge is “more eminent” than Socrates?
To say that God’s knowledge is more eminent than what we find in
Socrates’ knowledge is to say something best understood through a series of
increasingly stronger claims. First, God’s knowledge is not the same kind of
knowledge that we find in Socrates or in any creature whatsoever. Second,
God’s knowledge does not belong to any genus or species at all. Third, God’s
knowledge is not for these two reasons inferior to the sort of knowledge that
we find in Socrates or in other creatures. Rather, God’s knowledge is
superior to the knowledge that we find in Socrates or in any creature or in
any genus or species whatsoever. For, fourth, God’s knowledge, together
with God’s will, is somehow the source or author of all genera, all species,
and all perfections of all individuals. Since God’s “knowledge” is so very
different from any sort of knowledge that we find in creatures, one hesitates
to call this reality in God “knowledge” except that knowledge of the kind
found in Socrates and other creatures imitates God to some extent.
So what is knowledge as it is in God? What is knowledge as a divine
perfection? For Aquinas, no one in this life can see what God’s knowledge is
either by the light of reason or by the light of grace. By the light of reason,
one cannot perceive its genus and differentia (for God’s knowledge belongs
to no genus).2 And so no definition of God’s knowledge is possible by the
light of reason. By the light of grace given to people in this life, one also
cannot see what God’s knowledge is. For the light of grace given to people in
this life does not raise anyone to the vision of God’s essence, and to see what
God’s knowledge is amounts to the same as seeing what God is (for reasons
given below).3 These limits to our knowledge of God’s knowledge, limits of
which Aquinas is aware, constitute limits to the account of God’s knowledge
that one can reasonably expect to give or possess in this life. Within these
limits, one can still make some truthful statements about God’s knowledge.
And that is the task Aquinas takes up in ST I q.14 and elsewhere.4
Following the account in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas argues first that
there is knowledge in God (a.1). Aquinas arrives at this view from his
frequently repeated principle that being cognitive comes from being
immaterial. Since God is immaterial, it must also be that God is cognitive.
Now, what does God know? Rather than immediately saying “everything,”
Aquinas first says that God knows or understands (intelligit) himself (a.2).5
The order in which Aquinas talks about God’s knowledge is important to
note. First, Aquinas speaks of God’s knowing himself. Subsequently,
Aquinas speaks about God’s knowing creatures. And it is God’s knowledge
of himself that illuminates for us God’s knowledge of creatures. This order of
proceeding will be repeated when speaking of God’s will.
So, first there is God’s knowledge of himself. What does God know about
himself? God knows or understands everything about himself (a.3). More
specifically, God understands everything that could possibly be understood
about himself. Aquinas calls the complete understanding of a thing
“comprehension.” So Aquinas says God comprehends himself. If God did not
comprehend himself, then what God understood himself to be would be less
than what God is. But Aquinas considers that impossible, since divine
simplicity requires that there be no difference between what God is and what
God understands himself to be. For Aquinas argues from the divine
simplicity that God, his intellect, its activity, and its object, like all divine
perfections, are all the one simple esse that is God (a.4). That is why to see
what God’s knowledge is is simply to see what God is.
One difference between creaturely knowledge and God’s knowledge is
that Socrates knows what he does by performing an act of cognition distinct
from his substance, whereas God knows what he does not by such a distinct
cognitive act but just by being himself. To be God is to be gazing.6 Does God
also know things other than himself? Aquinas thinks so (a.5). And Aquinas’s
reason for saying that God knows things other than himself is that God
comprehends himself. Since God knows everything about himself, he knows
what he does or can cause. But what God does or can cause are things other
than himself. So, God knows things other than himself. In other words, God
knows creatures. But he knows creatures by knowing himself, that is, by
knowing his own creating causality and its actual and possible extent. In
other words, for God to know himself is for God to know the extent to which
he, as the cause of creatures, can and will cause them. And there is nothing
more to creatures than what God can and will cause them to be. So God
knows them. And since God knows the cause of creatures completely (i.e.,
since God knows himself completely), he knows creatures completely (a.6).
He knows all their genera, their species, and their particularities (a.6, a.8,
a.12). Furthermore, he knows what they themselves do or can cause.
Consequently, God knows all things both by knowing himself as their
ultimate cause and by knowing one creature as the proximate cause of
another. Two potential confusions now need clarification.
First, when a perfection that is found in creatures exists in God, it is in
him as one who is wholly knowing. As an imperfect illustration of the way in
which creaturely perfections exist in God, Aquinas’s preferred analogy is the
artist. Just as the artwork is in the artist’s mind beforehand, so creaturely
perfections are in God. Like an artist contemplating the artwork in his own
mind, God knows things not as they are in themselves, but as they are in
him.7 What Aquinas means is that God does not know his artwork by turning
his glance away from himself and toward his artwork, but by eternally
glancing at himself he beholds his artwork there, that is, for what he eternally
comprehends it to be. The artist–artwork analogy is potentially confusing,
since it may give the impression that God has a mind populated with multiple
concepts or ideas of things. This confusion will be addressed below when
discussing the divine ideas.
Second, another potential confusion is that when Aquinas says God knows
his creatures by knowing himself as their cause, one may think that God has
inferential knowledge. Or one may think at least that Aquinas is committed
to saying that God has inferential knowledge. If right now one knows that
three miles away there is a flagpole standing in the afternoon sunshine, one
knows also that there is a shadow on the ground next to it. One knows there
is a shadow there not by seeing the shadow (since it is three miles away), but
by inferring so from the premises that whatever stands in the afternoon
sunshine casts a shadow and the flagpole is standing in the afternoon
sunshine. Aquinas would call this knowing the shadow “through its cause.”
When one reads in Aquinas that God knows creatures by knowing himself as
their cause, one may think Aquinas is saying that God knows creatures
through their cause, that is, by inference. But Aquinas says otherwise.8 God
does not know things through their cause or by inference because God’s
knowledge is not discursive (a.7). God’s knowledge is not discursive, since
God is immutable in every respect. He does not move from one topic of
thought to another and he does not perform inferences. Neither does God
possess knowledge in unchanging argumentative form. For God does not
form propositions or possess them in his mind, since God would then not be
simple (a.14). God’s knowledge thus does not consist of a “set of
propositions.” Rather than knowing creatures through their cause, God
knows creatures in himself, as the artist knows the artwork in himself or in
his own mind. But what precisely is it for God to know things in himself this
way?
Here we reach a limit of our knowledge of God’s knowledge. We cannot
see what it is for God to gaze upon himself so completely that he also
comprehends absolutely every thing other than himself. To gaze upon oneself
in such a manner is to be God.
God’s knowledge is a simple unchanging vision of things – a glance at
everything as it is in himself (a.9). Not only does God gaze upon himself so
completely that he comprehends absolutely every other thing, but he gazes
upon himself so completely that he at once comprehends every other thing.
He “sees all things together and not successively” (a.7). “The present glance
of God extends over all time, and to all things which exist in any time, as to
objects present to him.”9 God is thus like “one who sees the whole road from
a height” and “sees at once all those traveling on it.”10 God sees everything
down the road of time from us (the past and future), but sees it all as present
before his vision now (a.14). Some implications of this for creaturely
freedom are addressed below.

God’s Knowledge as Divine Ideas of Created Things

On Aquinas’s account of divine names, perfection terms such as “life,”
“good,” and “power” refer to distinct perfections when predicated of
creatures, but co-refer to one and the same simple esse when predicated of
God. Since these perfections are distinct in creatures, and since we get our
sense for terms such as “life” and “good” from our experience of creatures,
the senses of the terms remain distinct in our thought even when predicated
of God. For Aquinas, we know enough about the simple divine esse to be
able to say that it is life, that it is good, that it is power, and so on. But we do
not know enough to be able to see the reality in God or simple esse to which
each of these terms refer. What it is to be divine life, divine goodness, and
divine power, all in one simple divine esse, is hidden from us.
But none of this is hidden from God. Since God comprehends himself, he
“knows all the ways in which His own perfection is able to be participated in
by others.”11 He knows the various ways in which creatures can possess and
imitate, in their limited degrees and diverse forms, what only he himself is
essentially and simply. He knows himself as imitable in one way by dogs,
another way by cats, another way by zebras (and by individuals of these
species). To provide an analogy not found in Aquinas, we can think of a man
who is modeling the human form for a studio full of painters. The model
stands in the middle of a circle, the painters stand in fixed positions on the
perimeter of the circle around him. Each painter portrays what the model is
and appears to be given the painter’s location on the perimeter. If the model
knew everything about himself, he would know himself as portrayable in one
way by a painter at this position, as portrayable in another way by a painter at
that position, etc. And if the model could know everything about himself in
one unchanging glance, he would know all at once all the ways he is
portrayable. Aquinas himself uses similar language in his question on divine
ideas. God “knows his essence as so imitable by such a creature, and knows
it as the particular model and idea of that creature.”12 The divine ideas are
God seeing his own simple esse as susceptible to participation or imitation in
various ways by various creatures. The plurality is in the many creatures that
imitate, and in the various ways they imitate, not in the one whom they
imitate.
Aquinas also sometimes says that the divine ideas are causes, but he
qualifies this by saying that the divine ideas together with God’s will are
causes.13 The divine ideas are a special sort of cause that has no causality
apart from God’s willing. The divine ideas are exemplar causes.14 The issue
of God’s knowledge as causal has received significant attention and debate in
recent literature.15

God’s Knowledge of Future Contingent Events

It can seem that the extensiveness of God’s knowledge precludes the
possibility of there being contingent events. For “everything known by God
must necessarily be … and no future contingent thing must necessarily be.
Therefore, no contingent future thing is known by God.”16 In such reasoning,
Aquinas finds an equivocation with the term “necessarily be.” The
equivocation amounts to a shift between necessity de dicto and necessity de
re.17 The first statement could mean:

(1) For any event x, if God knows that x will occur in the future, then
necessarily (God knows that x will occur).
(2) For any event x, if God knows x will occur in the future, then God
knows (x will necessarily occur).

Statement (1), Aquinas thinks, is true. Statement (2), Aquinas thinks, is false.
Statement (1), however, is not enough to arrive at the conclusion that for any
event x, God knows (x will necessarily be). So much can be understood as a
matter of logic alone. But grasping Aquinas’s answer to the question of
future contingents is more than a matter of seeing through formal fallacies.
A good deal turns on the order in which Aquinas goes about speaking of
God’s knowledge. First, God knows himself. Second, God knows creatures.
But within the second moment, when speaking of God’s knowledge of
creatures, Aquinas seems to be sensitive to a certain complexity. Creatures
are both one and many, but in different respects. Creatures are one whole (the
whole of creation), and many individuals (this or that singular creature).
When speaking of God’s knowledge of creatures, Aquinas first thinks of God
as seeing creatures as a whole and secondarily thinks of God as seeing
creatures as one part or another, one individual or another. All at once, in the
eternal glance at himself, God sees the whole of creation.
When God sees in himself the whole of creation, he comprehends it. He
knows everything that could be known about it. He sees all the parts and so
all the properties of all the parts. So when God comprehends the whole of
creation, God sees the actuality, modality, causality, and morality (if
applicable) of any and every entity or event within the whole. For example,
God sees that Mt. Vesuvius erupts at t, that Mt. Vesuvius might not have
erupted at t, that a certain set of factors caused the eruption, and so on.
Similarly, God also sees at once all the free choices rational creatures make
and all the properties of those choices. In his comprehension of the whole,
God sees concerning any free choice that the person will choose something,
what the person will choose, why the person chooses it (i.e., sees the person’s
liberum arbitrium produce the action), whether the individual could choose
otherwise, and whether that ability or inability to choose otherwise is morally
relevant in the circumstances. In other words, in one glance at himself God
comprehends the whole panoply of individual creaturely free choices and
comprehends each choice as an essentially free contingent act. Such
comprehension of our choices, although it is prior to our choices, does not
predetermine our choices. Rather, God’s prior comprehension of them is a
comprehension of them as essentially free contingent acts. God’s
comprehension of those acts entails no necessity in them except the necessity
of being what God comprehends them to be, that is, essentially free
contingent acts.18
In recent years, there has been new and intense debate amongst
philosophers about what views of time, modality, eternity, knowledge, and
free will Aquinas is committed to given his views on God’s knowledge.19

GOD’S WILL
Aquinas’s account of God’s will touches upon four related topics: (1) God’s
will as a divine perfection, (2) God’s willing of creatures, (3) God’s love and
joy, and (4) God’s justice and mercy. Each topic deserves its own treatment.

God’s Will as a Divine Perfection

Like knowledge, will is a perfection found in creatures. And similar to the
term “knowledge,” the term “will” refers to a reality in God that is different
from and much more than what the same term refers to in creatures. But in
the case of will, matters are slightly more complicated than the case of
knowledge. For the term “will” refers to several distinct things in creatures.
On the one hand, “will” can refer to the power of appetite. On the other hand,
it can refer to the act of that appetite. But in God, given the divine simplicity,
there is no real distinction between the power of appetite and its act. God’s
will is his willing. Furthermore, when referring to creatures, “to will” (i.e.,
the act of willing) can refer to three different acts.
 (1) To will is to want something that one perceives as good but which one
lacks—as when one wants some water to drink.
(2) To will is to possess or rest in something that one perceives as good—
as when one has or enjoys the water that one drinks.
(3) To will is to give a good to another—as when parents will their wealth
to their children.

And so in our own minds we have three different senses of the term “to will.”
Because of the three senses of “to will,” the issue of God’s will is really
several questions of whether God wills, what God wills, and in what senses
God wills which things. In response to these questions, Aquinas makes three
main points. First, in God there is no will in the sense that God lacks
something and wants it. Second, in God there is will in the sense of
possessing or resting in something good, namely, God possessing and resting
in himself as highest good. Finally, in God there is will in the sense of giving
something, namely, God gives being to creatures. Each of these points
deserves individual attention.
(1) God does not will things in the sense of hungering for a perceived
good that he does not have. For having such a hunger would consist of being
in a state of (passive) potentiality with respect to the perceived good, and in
God there is no (passive) potentiality. It would also amount, on Aquinas’s
physics, of needing to be moved by another, and God is not moved by
another.20 So in God there is no will as lacking something. There could only
be will as possessing and will as giving.
(2) In God there is will as possessing something that one perceives as
good. In God there is will as “loving and delighting in what he possesses.”21
In this sense, God wills himself. Sometimes Aquinas says that God loves and
delights in himself, and sometimes Aquinas says God possesses and rests in
himself. Stated whichever way, Aquinas has in mind his account of God’s
goodness and self-knowledge.
On Aquinas’s account of God’s goodness, God is good, the highest good,
essentially good, completely good, pre-containing every actual and possible
creaturely perfection, and so lacking in no good whatsoever. Indeed, God is
goodness itself.22 Further, on Aquinas’s account of God’s knowledge, God
knows himself completely and so knows himself as goodness. But for
Aquinas, to know goodness as goodness is already to love it.23 So God loves
what he is and is what he loves. He rests and delights in being himself. To be
God is what God loves to be or to do as a pure end in itself. Furthermore,
God cannot be or do otherwise. It is absolutely necessary for him to love
himself and delight in himself just for being God.24 In that sense, God “wills
himself to be”25 and “necessarily wills himself to be.”26 Furthermore, given
the divine simplicity, God’s willing of himself is God.27 Just as when treating
God’s knowledge, Aquinas begins with the claim that God knows himself,
and on that basis accounts for God’s knowledge of other things, so when
treating of God’s will Aquinas begins with the claim that God wills himself
and on that basis accounts for God’s willing other things. So, after treating of
God’s willing himself, Aquinas turns to God’s willing of creatures.
(3) In God there is will as giving. God wills things other than himself in
the sense that he communicates “as far as possible to the others the good
possessed.”28 God gives to other things a share in his own goodness, which is
being (esse). As parents will a share in their wealth to their children, so God
wills a share in his wealth (esse) to his creatures.29 To be clear, the share of
wealth that children receive from their parents differs in many ways from the
share in esse that creatures receive from God. But the analogy affords some
understanding of the sense in which one can say that God wills created
things. God wills them in the sense that God gives them being.
Aquinas often repeats that God wills creatures as a means to an end. What
Aquinas means is that God gives esse to creatures as his way of being God or
as his way of loving and delighting in being himself. For “the things that we
love for their own sake we want to be multiplied as much as possible. And
God wills and loves his essence for its own sake.”30 Therefore, God wills the
multiplication of esse, that is, God gives a share in esse to other things. And
to give a share in esse to other things is God’s way of being God.
Furthermore, God need not have willed (given being to) things other than
himself as his way of being God. He could have and would have been God,
been goodness itself, known goodness itself, loved goodness itself, possessed
goodness itself, and enjoyed goodness itself, and lacked nothing, simply by
being himself—even if he had never given being to anything other than
himself. So it is not absolutely necessary that God will (give being to) other
things.31 But God in fact wills to be himself in this way: by giving a share in
his esse to creatures. What is the modal status of that fact? From the point of
view of merely logical possibility, that God wills creatures is contingent. But
from the point of view of “conditional necessity,” that God wills creatures is
necessary. For God is immutable in every respect. Therefore, his will toward
creatures could not have come into being in God and could not cease to be in
God. Rather, God’s act of willing creatures simply is God.32 Given that God
in fact wills creatures, God cannot do or be otherwise. In that sense, God’s
willing of creatures is necessary.

God’s Willing of Creatures

Several vexatious questions surround God’s will with respect to creatures.
Does God’s willing creatures preclude creaturely free choice? Does a change
in a creature willed by God entail a change in God’s will? Does God will
evil? Does petitionary prayer change the divine will, and if not what is the
point of such prayer? The point of this section is to look at Aquinas’s big
picture of God’s will toward creatures and to consider three special
questions.
Aquinas’s big picture of God’s will toward creatures is as follows. God
gives being to a plurality of things. The plurality is a whole (creation as a
whole) and so has parts. The parts are all individual entities and their
perfections. Furthermore, for Aquinas, God gives being to the whole of
creation as an end and gives being to the parts (individual entities and their
perfections) as a way of giving being to the whole. In addition, God gives
being to an ordered whole. The order of creation as a whole requires there to
be certain kinds of parts and the same order fittingly contains other kinds of
parts. Given with the whole of creation, as a way of giving being to the
whole, God gives being to every required and fitting part, that is, to all
created entities and their perfections. God wills (gives being to) some things
that are actual and does not will other things to be actual. God wills (gives
being to) some things that change, and some things that do not change. God
wills some things that are necessary and other things that are contingent. God
wills some things that result from other things, and some things that provide
for other things. God wills some entities that are persons, and others that are
not. For Aquinas, God exists prior to the whole matrix of creatures, gives
being to the whole, and in doing so gives being to each particular creature
and its perfections. In giving being to the whole, God gives being to physical
beings and their perfections, and so to time (an accident of physical beings),
to the various causal activities amongst the various physical beings, to the
various modes of their being and modes of causal connections, and also gives
being to persons, some invisible and angelic, others bodily and human, and
so gives being to free agency.
Viewed this way, God’s will does not exclude the possibility of contingent
entities and processes such as free choices, but actually produces them as part
of the whole creation. This point is a vexatious one, since talk of free choices
being “produced” or “caused” in any way seems to mitigate against the very
idea of freedom. God’s will, on Aquinas’s account, can seem omni-
determining in a way that calls into question not only the freedom of created
persons, but the innocence of God, given that many choices made by created
persons are in fact morally evil. In his various treatments on God’s will,
Aquinas says little to address such concerns except to say that God’s will
does not impose necessity but rather produces contingent beings and causes.
Rather than finding the answer to such concerns in Aquinas’s treatments of
God’s will, the answers seem rather to be scattered throughout Aquinas’s
account of God’s work of creation and Aquinas’s account of human freedom
(liberum arbitrium). To venture a summary, when God wills (gives being to)
created persons God continuously gives them all the principles necessary for
them to be free agents and to make free choices. But those same God-given
principles do not always exclude the possibility of the created persons’
making morally evil free choices.
Turning now to some special questions concerning God’s will toward
creatures, there are three.
(1) Do changes in creatures entail a change in God? Aquinas says it is one
thing to change the will and another to will a change.33 One can
continuously, without changing one’s will, will certain things to change, for
example, all throughout a rainy day one wills the sky to change from rainy to
sunny. No change in a creature causes a change in God’s will. Rather, God—
without changing his will—wills some things to change.
(2) Does God will the salvation of all? Aquinas distinguishes between
antecedent and consequent will.34 To will a good antecedently is to will it
prior to considering all particular circumstances. To will a good consequently
is to will it given the consideration of all particular circumstances. Aquinas’s
example is a judge in court. Prior to considering what crimes a certain human
being has committed, a judge wills all human beings to live. The judge
antecedently wills all human being to live. But given the consideration that a
certain human being has committed a certain crime, say murder, the judge
consequently wills him or her to die as punishment. Similarly, God
antecedently wills all human beings to be saved. But God does not
consequently will the salvation of this or that particular human being.
Aquinas is careful to say that “this distinction must not be taken as applying
to the divine will itself,” as though God’s will could change from one
moment to the next or as though his knowledge of circumstances could
change as his attention turns from one thing to another. Rather than being a
distinction between two acts of will in God, Aquinas says, it is a distinction
in “the things willed.”35 How precisely to understand Aquinas on this point is
a matter of long-standing discussion among Aquinas’s interpreters.
(3) Does God will evil? Aquinas answers from within a set of views about
the nature of good, evil, being, perfections, and so on. For Aquinas, all being
is good. Evil is essentially a privation, that is, the lack of a perfection that a
thing should have given its nature. All privation is found in a being.
Therefore, all privation is found in something that is good. And so all evil is
found in something that is good. So, any being that is evil in one respect is
also good in at least one other respect—good at least insofar as it has being.
Nothing is completely evil, for then it would not exist at all. It would be
wholly privation and lack every perfection—including being. Because any
being that is evil in one respect is also good in at least one other respect, the
expression “to will evil” is ambiguous. It could mean to will what is evil
because it is evil, and it could mean to will what is good but which happens
also to be evil in some respect. God does not will what is evil because it is
evil. No one does. But God does will some things that are good in one
respect even though evil in another respect. In short, God wills good things
that also have some bad features or some bad side effects. For example, God
wills (gives being to) plants as food even though a bad side effect of their
being food is that they will undergo destruction. To say that God wills the
destruction of plants is to say something true per accidens.
Morally evil choices, however, present a further complication. In the case
of morally evil choices, there is something that is good in one respect and
evil in another respect. The created free agent is good as a being, as living, as
having the power of free choice, and so on. But he or she is evil in the sense
of intending and choosing to lack the rectitude required by the moral order.
The agent is good in one respect but evil in another respect that he or she
intends (due to the mere appearance of goodness). And God in no way shares
that intention. God in no ways wills such creaturely intended and creaturely
produced privations in created free agents.36 It cannot truly be said even per
accidens that God wills persons to make evil choices. It should be said rather
that God permits persons to make them.37

God’s Love and Joy

Aquinas claims that there is love and joy in God.38 The claim is difficult
since in human beings love and joy are passions, and Aquinas wants to say
that there are no passions in God.39 For passions, on Aquinas’s view, are
essentially changes in the physical organs of animals who are responding to
what is perceived through the senses. And no such thing can occur in God
who is immutable and immaterial. But Aquinas distinguishes the passions of
love and joy from the “simple operations” of love and joy, and here he finds
a way to say there is love and joy in God.40 The simple operations of love
and joy are acts of intellect and will as spiritual powers. This spiritual love
and spiritual joy are found in God, but like all other divine perfections this
spiritual love and joy exist in God in a higher and more eminent way than in
creatures.
In creatures, to love something is to respond to some preceding goodness
found in it. The goodness already present in things, being apprehended,
moves our wills to love them. But God’s will is not moved in any respect. So
God’s love is not his response to the preceding goodness found in things.
Rather, God’s love is the cause of whatever goodness there is to be found in
them. This counts as love because “to love anything is nothing else than to
will good to that thing”41 and God wills the good of being (esse) to things.42
In that sense, God loves everything. For God, to will creatures is to give them
being, and to give them being is to give them something good, and to give
them something good is to love them.
Does God love himself? Aquinas says God wills himself to himself and
for himself.43 For he is goodness itself. And being what he wills to himself
and for himself, he is joyful. For joy is a “certain resting of the will in its
object.”44 And “God is at rest in himself, as containing all abundance in
himself.”45
God also rejoices in his creatures. For “each thing takes joy in its like as in
something agreeable,” and creatures are like God in being and in goodness
(albeit as inadequate imitations).46

God’s Justice and Mercy

Aquinas holds that in God there is both justice and mercy, but the justice and
mercy of God are different from and much more than the justice and mercy
found in human beings.47 Among human beings, there is commutative and
distributive justice. Commutative justice is the disposition or virtue by which
one human being renders to another what is his or her due in exchanges
between them. Distributive justice is the disposition or virtue by which rulers
render what is due to their subjects. Aquinas says that in God there is nothing
corresponding to commutative justice in humans, for God has no equal with
whom he makes exchanges. But in God there is something corresponding to
distributive justice. For God is like a ruler, and creatures are like his subjects,
and in a sense God renders to his creatures what is their due. In what sense
does God render to his creatures what is their due?
The question is difficult because God does not owe it, either to himself or
to creation, to give being to creation as a whole. Creation is always first
gratuitous. In that sense, “God is no one’s debtor.”48 On account of the
gratuitousness of the initial act of giving being to things, any claim that
creatures have to good things from God is always a claim qualified by a prior
gratuity that has been shown to them—the prior gratuity being that they even
exist at all and have a certain nature and purpose under God’s plan. On
account of this prior gratuity, Aquinas holds two things.
First, God does not owe any good thing to creatures in the strict sense of
“owe”—as though a creature could have self-sufficient standing and
unqualified rights before God. Any talk of God owing it to himself or to his
creatures to give them some good thing is always a qualified talk of owing.
To say that God “owes” something to a creature is to say that it is fitting or
becoming for God to give it in light of his prior and gratuitous act of willing
them (giving being to them) to exist with a certain nature and purpose under
his plan. God owes nothing more or less to his creatures than what coheres
with or figures in well with his perfectly wise plan for them.
Second, on account of the prior gratuity of creation Aquinas thinks that
God’s justice always presupposes God’s mercy. Mercy, in human beings, is
the disposition by which one is “moved with sorrow at the misery of another
as though it were one’s own.”49 As such, mercy is a passion. Today it might
be called “compassion.” The effect of mercy or compassion is to dispel the
misery of the other or to expel the defects of the other. Mercy cannot be in
God as a passion, since God has no passions. But mercy can be predicated of
God on the basis that the effects of mercy come forth from God. To say that
God is merciful is not to say that the misery of creatures moves God to
sorrow for them, but it is to say that God expels the defects of his creatures in
accord with his wise plan. Now, if being is a good, and Aquinas thinks it is,
then nonbeing is a defect. To expel nonbeing from creatures (that is, to give
them being) is thus an act of mercy. So, for creatures to have any being at all,
and to have a certain nature and purpose under his plan, and to have on
account of that nature certain claims on good things from God, is first of all a
mercy God has shown to his creatures.
But since God has in fact shown such mercy to creatures as to give being
to creation as a whole according to a plan or order, and given that God has
shown such mercy as to give beings, natures, purposes, and perfections to
things as part of his plan for creation, God has mercifully bestowed upon
creatures various sorts of dueness.50 Since God has given to his creation
these various sorts of dueness, it is only fitting that God should render to
creatures what is due to them under His plan. God owes it to himself, not
strictly speaking but in the sense that it befits his goodness and wisdom, to
render to creatures according to the dueness they have from God under his
plan. By so rendering to creatures what is their due, God manifests a
perfection like, but much more than, distributive justice. It is like distributive
justice insofar as God as superior renders to his subjects what is their due. It
is much more than distributive justice, since the subjects have no claim on
God giving them anything except whatever claim God has mercifully given
them to begin with.

NOTES
1. ST I q.13. a.2. and a.16 both speak about perfections being “more
eminent” in God than in creatures.
2. ST I q.12 a.4..
3. ST I q.12 a.13 ad 1.
 4. Aquinas treats of God’s knowledge elsewhere than the Summa
theologiae, but I am focusing on the ST treatment, since it is the most mature
thought of Aquinas.
5. I use “know” and “understand” synonymously throughout this article,
for knowledge in God corresponds most to what understanding in Aquinas’s
sense of the term denotes.
6. But to be God is to be gazing in a higher and more eminent sense of
“gazing” than what we find in creaturely gazing.
7. ST I q.14 a.5 and a.7 ad 2.
8. ST I q.14 a.7 ad 2.
9. ST I q.14 a.9..
10. ST I q.14 a.13.
11. ST I q.14 a.6.
12. ST I q.15 a.2.
13. ST I q.14 a.8 resp. and ad 1; q.19 a.11 ad 1.
14. Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press of America, 2008); Vivian
Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas (New York: E. J.
Brill, 1996); John Wippel, Thomas Aquinas on the Divine Ideas, The Etienne
Gilson Series, no.16 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1993); John Lee Farthing, “The Problem of Divine Exemplarity in St.
Thomas,” The Thomist 49 (1985): 183–222.
15. James Ross, “Aquinas’ Exemplarism; Aquinas’ Voluntarism,”
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990): 171–98; Armand A.
Maurer, “James Ross on the Divine Ideas: A Reply,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 65 (1991): 213–20; Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas,
James Ross, and Exemplarism: A Reply,” American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 65 (1991): 221–34; James Ross, “Response to Maurer and
Dewan,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 65 (1991): 235–43;
Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “God’s Knowledge and Its Causal
Effects,” in Thomas Senor, ed., The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of
Faith (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 94–124; Brian Shanley,
“Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 99–122.
16. ST I q.14 a.13 obj.3.
17. For a study of necessity de dicto and de re, and also a discussion of
how the distinction applies to God’s knowledge of creaturely properties, see
Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 9
ff.
18. ST I q.14 a.13.
19. A. Kenny, “Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom,” in A.
Kenny, ed., Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: MacMillan,
1969), 255–70; Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” Journal
of Philosophy 78 (1981): 429–51; William Lane Craig, The Problem of
Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), 99–126; William Lane Craig, “Aquinas on God’s
Knowledge of Future Contingents,” The Thomist 54:1 (January 1990): 33–
79; Brian Shanley, “Eternal Knowledge of the Temporal in Aquinas,”
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71:2 (Spring 1997): 197–224;
“Eternity and God’s Knowledge: A Reply to Shanley,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 72:3 (Summer 1998): 439–45; Theodore J.
Kondoleon, “God’s Knowledge of Future Contingent Singulars: A Reply,”
The Thomist 56:1 (January 1992): 117–39; David Burrell, “God’s Knowledge
of Future Contingents: A Reply to William Lane Craig,” The Thomist 58:2
(April 1994): 317–22; “Eternity, Awareness, and Action” Faith and
Philosophy 9 (1992): 463–82; Eleonore Stump, “God’s Knowledge,” in
Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 159–87; Harm Goris, “Divine
Foreknowledge, Providence, Predestination, and Human Freedom,” in Rik
van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas
Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 99–122;
Harm Goris, Free Creatures of An Eternal God (Nijmegen: Stichting
Thomasfonds, 1996).
20. ST I q.19 a.1 ad 2 and 3.
21. ST I q.19 a.1 ad 2.
22. SCG I, c.38.
23. SCG I, c.72, n.2: “Since the understood good is the proper object of the
will, the understood good is as such willed.”
24. ST I q.19 a.3; SCG I, c.80.
25. SCG I, c.75, n.2.
26. SCG I, c.80, n.3.
27. ST I q.19 a.1.
28. ST I q.19 a.2.
 29. This analogy is not found in Aquinas.
30. SCG I, c.75, n.3.
31. For contemporary discussion of this point, see Norman Kretzmann, The
Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 217–25; John
Wippel, “Norman Kretzmann on Aquinas’s Attribution of Will and of
Freedom to Create to God,” Religious Studies 39 (2003): 287–98; John
Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas on God’s Freedom to Create or Not,” in
Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University Press of America, 2007), 218–39.
32. ST I q.19 a.1 ad 1.
33. ST I q.19 a.7.
34. ST I q.19 a.6 ad 1.
35. ST I q.19 a.6 ad 1.
36. ST I q.19 a.9.
37. ST I q.19 a.10 ad 3.
38. On God’s love and joy, see Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism,
226 ff; Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992), 149 ff.
39. SCG I, c.89.
40. SCG I, c.90, n.2.
41. ST I q.20 a.2.
42. ST I q.5 a.1.
43. ST I q.20 a.1 ad 3.
44. SCG I, c.90, n.3.
45. SCG I, c.90, n.3.
46. SCG I, c.90, n.6.
47. On God’s justice and mercy, see Davies, The Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, 152–57.
48. ST I q.21 a.1 ad 3.
49. ST I q.21 a.3.
50. SCG II, c.29.
 CHAPTER 13

GOD’S IMPASSIBILITY, IMMUTABILITY, AND

ETERNALITY

BRIAN LEFTOW

THE claim that God is impassible can assert that God has no passions, no
negative emotions or no emotions, or that God is not causally passive—not
caused to have any attribute. I discuss these claims in this order, then turn to
immutability.
For Aquinas, God has no passions.1 Having passions, he holds, requires
having a body, senses, and more generally “passive potency” (of which more
anon); God has none of these.2 Leaving “passive potency” aside, we might
jib at this: if I were a disembodied soul, I might well care passionately about
philosophy. But the truth is that “passion” in this context is for Aquinas a
technical term, so defined as to apply only to mental states appropriately
involved with physical states.3 We use “passionate” in a loose sense allied to
“intense.” That God has no passions, in Aquinas’s sense, would not rule out
his being intellectually passionate in our sense.
God’s perfection, Aquinas thinks, rules out his having negative emotions,
such as sorrow, fear, envy, or anger.4 Aquinas’s arguments on these scores
are likely to leave us unsatisfied. Sorrow, he tells us, is about evil we have;
since evil cannot befall God, God cannot sorrow.5 But what of sorrow over
evil befalling creatures God loves? And if we love another sufficiently, evil
befalling that other is or entails evil befalling us: it is a tragedy for a husband
if his beloved wife is crippled, and not necessarily for self-regarding reasons.
Again, surely evil befell God the Son in the Crucifixion, and he seemed in
the Garden to sorrow over it in advance, and even to fear it. It is not clear that
a Christology should even want to deny this, nor that orthodox Christology
can. The fear is a mental state generated in Christ’s human nature, but that
does not stop the state from belonging to the Son, else there are two mental
subjects, two persons, in the incarnate Christ, which is the heresy of
Nestorianism.
Again, Aquinas takes it from Aristotle that anger supposes sorrow over
injury done and entails an appetite for another’s evil for the sake of revenge.6
On this account, he thinks, God cannot be angry both because he cannot
sorrow and because he cannot be injured. But Christ was God and was angry
at times, and again, the anger had to belong to the Son. Further, anger can
issue in a desire for just punishment. Just punishment is not a form of
revenge; further, one who imposes just punishment imposes evil but only
because he/she intends a good, for the community and even for the one
punished. Again, one can be angry over injuries others suffer. Finally,
Aquinas classes envy as a passion in his technical sense, and so ruled out
merely by lack of a body, yet he grants that the Devil was envious.7
Turning now to emotions more generally, Aquinas is willing to say that
God loves.8 But he so parses this that it is not altogether clear that it counts
as what we would call an emotion. As it exists in God, love involves only
intellect and will. It is not a passion, or caused by its object, for reasons we
see shortly; while love in us involves a response to valued qualities we find
in others, God’s love causes those valued qualities ex nihilo.9 Aquinas’s
account of love is entirely in functional terms: it is the first act of the will,
wills the good for the beloved and moves the lover toward union with the
beloved.10 One could be pardoned the thought that on Aquinas’s account,
love is something God does, not something God feels. But surely an emotion,
whatever else it involves, is something one feels. Norman Kretzmann
suggests that the best term for what Aquinas has in mind here is “attitude,”
and having an attitude is not a matter of feeling at all.11 Yet “attitude” is not
quite right either because attitudes are dispositions. Aquinas’s God has none,
and he repeatedly calls joy, delight, and love “operations,” things the divine
will does.12 If anything like feeling comes into Aquinas’s account of God’s
emotional states, it is when he ascribes joy and delight to God.13 But here the
arguments again leave one worried. Aquinas writes, for instance, that since
our understanding is delightful when perfect, God’s, which is perfect, will be
all the more delightful.14 Well, maybe. Why should we think that God will
resemble us in this way? Nothing else in Aquinas’s story about God
encourages us to ascribe any particular affective tone to his inner life.
 CAUSAL IMPASSIVITY
The emotional side of impassibility is for Aquinas a minor detail in the
doctrine of God. On the other hand, God’s causal impassivity is a
consequence of a fundamental, far-reaching claim that Aquinas makes about
God: he has no “passive potency.”15 Passive potencies are best thought of as
potentials to acquire attributes. A passive potency is an ability to “move”
(change), or rather be moved,16 with respect to having an attribute. For
Aquinas, “motion” is as such the actualization of a (passive) potency.17 And
any item that passes from potency to act has the potency (i.e., potentially has
the attribute) temporally before it has the actuality (i.e., actually has the
attribute).18 This being so, passive potencies are potentials to become,19 to
come to have some attribute. So lack of passive potencies is the root of God’s
intrinsic immutability. We see below that Aquinas thinks that this entails
divine timelessness. Aquinas’s commitment to immutability and timelessness
conditions a great deal else he says about God. So then does his denial of
divine passive potencies.
Again, whatever passes from passive potency to actuality is for Aquinas
caused to do so.20 So Thomist passive potencies are also liabilities to be
caused. And so something with no passive potencies is causally impassive:
nothing can cause it to have any attribute. The claim that God is causally
impassive plays a large role in Aquinas’s accounts of God’s knowledge (God
cannot be caused to know anything, and so his knowledge cannot literally be
observational) and providence (while God responds to us, we do not cause
Him to do so). Our first question, then, must be why Aquinas thinks God
lacks passive potency. I then pass to immutability and atemporality.

WHY NO PASSIVE POTENCIES?

Aquinas’s most straightforward argument that God has no passive potencies
comes in his Compendium Theologiae. One way Aquinas seeks to prove
God’s existence is with an argument, the “First Way,” that there is an
unmoved mover of all moving things.21 Aquinas’s belief in God’s pure
actuality has roots in this argument, for he writes in CT that “In the first
mover, if it is in all ways incapable of motion, it is impossible for potency to
be with act. For whatever is in potency is for this reason able to move.”22
The key to Aquinas’s move is a feature of the First Way that passes
almost without notice: it depends on a metaphysical account of motion that
applies not just to actual kinds of motion but to all possible kinds, since it
explicates the very nature of motion. So while the First Way begins only
from actual, observed sorts of motion, if it is sound, it could equally begin
from any possible case of motion. Let’s grant Aquinas that the First Way is
sound—that all its premises are true. Then any possible case of motion traces
back ultimately to the same single unmoved mover, God. Then in any
possible world, at any time at which there is motion, God does not move.
But, of course, in any world at any time at which there is no motion, God
does not move. Thus, at no time in any possible world does God move; God
is incapable of moving. But “whatever is in potency is for this reason able to
move”: as we have observed, potencies for Aquinas just are liabilities to
move, to become such-and-such. The conclusion then does follow: God has
no passive potencies (and can have none).
That the First Way really is sound is (to put it mildly) controversial. But
while Aquinas has many other arguments against divine passive potencies,23
they all make metaphysical commitments at least as substantial as and in
most cases harder to motivate than the First Way’s. It is no great surprise if it
is hard to find a strong argument for the no passive potency claim in
Aquinas. For the conclusion has consequences that should give us pause, and
if it is not in fact true, there are no sound arguments for it. As already noted,
if God has no passive potencies, then on Aquinas’s terms, he cannot literally
observe us. So he cannot learn what we freely do by watching us do it. For if
God observes us, our actions cause Him to have certain cognitive states, and
so God has a passive potentiality to have those states, which our actions
actualize. But then just how does God learn what we freely do? We think we
are free in a sense that implies that we can originate some of our own actions.
If we are not, the problem of evil becomes very hard (and perhaps
impossible) to handle, for then even our worst actions ultimately originate in
God. But if our actions originate in us, either God knows what they are by
observing, or he has predetermined in some way that they shall originate with
us, and knows what we freely do by knowing what he has predetermined us
to do. If this is so, we are the actions’ source, but we do not have the ability
to do otherwise than we do. Say this, though, and the problem of evil again
becomes much harder to handle, for even if God is not literally our actions’
origin, he has made them inescapable for us and so bears responsibility for
them. The problems of evil and our beliefs about our freedom, then, are
strong reason to want to ascribe observational knowledge to God. But for
Aquinas, at any rate, at this point in his theology the die is cast.

AQUINAS ON IMMUTABILITY
If God has no passive potencies, again, there is nothing he can become. So
God cannot change intrinsically.24 Intrinsic changes are changes like
reddening, growing, or forgetting, which (roughly) occur entirely within the
changing item. For Aristotelians there is also genuine change from place to
place, but this is not intrinsic and (Aquinas thinks) gets ruled out not because
God is immutable but because he is omnipresent: wherever God might be
said to move to, he is already.25
Changes are extrinsic just if they are not intrinsic. Very roughly, for
Aquinas, A changes extrinsically just when a new predicate becomes
applicable to A owing entirely to an intrinsic change in something wholly
distinct from A, as when I become shorter than Joe only because Joe grows.
Aquinas is explicit that God can change extrinsically.26 When Moses comes
to exist, God becomes the Lord of Moses. Moses’ coming to exist and God’s
thus becoming his Lord does not involve any intrinsic change in God; all that
happens here is that a new title comes to apply to God. Further, even if this
did rest on acquiring a new real relational property, this would not realize a
potency of God, Aquinas thinks. For the realizing of a potency involves
“motion,” and Aquinas accepts from Aristotle that there is no “motion” in the
category of relation.27 Rather, new relations arise without having been in
process of change, due to motion in another category.28
For Aquinas as for most other medieval Aristotelians, intrinsic properties
fall into three categories: substance, quality, and quantity.29 Aristotelians see
change with respect to substance—the kind a thing belongs to—as
impossible; Aristotelians see kinds as essential properties. Thus, for Aquinas,
the doctrine of divine immutability (DDI) rules out only change in quality
(e.g., color, intelligence) or quantity (size, shape). For Aquinas, some things
acquire real inhering relational properties by being changed in these
categories: when I grow, I acquire a real relational property of being equal in
height to others of my new height. But because God cannot be changed in
these categories, he cannot acquire a new inhering relational property. God
can only be spoken of in new ways by relational predicates.
We can distinguish a weak and a strong DDI:

WEAK. In no continuation actual history has or could have had does

God change intrinsically.
In no possible history does God change intrinsically. There
STRONG. could not have been a past that could have led to a future in
which He did so.
God’s actually having no passive potencies entails only (WEAK). But for
reasons we have seen, the First Way, if sound, would back (STRONG).
Aquinas also thinks that (WEAK) entails (STRONG). For general
metaphysical reasons, Aquinas thinks that the past, once it has become past,
is absolutely necessary.30 There could have been a different past: before t,
Socrates was able both to drink the hemlock and to refrain. But now that
Socrates has in fact drunk it, there cannot have been a different past: it is no
longer so much as possible that he not have drunk it. So for Aquinas, every
world that still is genuinely possible includes the actual past, in which God
never changed. And so (WEAK) guarantees that in no future that remains
possible—that is, no future that continues on from the only past there now
can have been—does God change. Given Aquinas’s modal metaphysics,
then, in every world that remains possible, God does not change intrinsically,
and so (STRONG) is true.
Immutability and divine emotional impassibility are logically
independent. DDI does not entail emotional impassibility. An immutable
God could be unchangeably sad about something, if he lacked certain other
properties that Aquinas thinks he has. Nor does emotional impassibility entail
DDI. A God who cannot have negative affects could grow happier as time
passes (again, if he lacked the full panoply of Thomist properties). DDI does
not directly rule out beginning and ceasing to exist. Something changes only
if it goes from being not-F to being F, for some F. Nothing can be F unless it
exists to be F. So a changing thing exists at both the beginning and the end of
the change in question. But something which begins to exist was not there
before this event, and something which ceases to be is not there at its end.
That something begins or ceases to exist is a change in the world, but not in
the strict sense a change in that thing. Aquinas argues that DDI indirectly
rules out beginning or ceasing: whatever begins or ceases to be, he suggests,
does so through change, and so what cannot change, cannot begin or cease.31
But Aquinas himself undercuts this argument. He is explicit that creation ex
nihilo is a non-change that caused the world to begin to exist.32 Aquinas also
thinks that God could simply annihilate something, making it cease entirely
to exist, leaving no remnant.33 But then surely just as God could cause the
world to begin at an instant, he could cause it to cease in an instant, at a last
point in time, without changing it intrinsically in any way beforehand.
Aquinas thinks that DDI entails that God is eternal. Let us now examine
his case.

ETERNALITY
Aquinas adopts Boethius’s definition of eternity, “the all-at-once and perfect
possession of interminable life.”34 In his Sentence commentary,35 Aquinas
says that the definition’s basic thought is that to be eternal is to have being
without limits.

i. A thing’s whole duration (Aquinas passes from talking about limits of

“being” to limits of duration with no suggestion that he is changing
topic36) is limited by a beginning and end. “Interminable life”—life
without termini, or endpoints—rules out this sort of limit. This
explanation might make it seem that Aquinas thinks of God’s
eternality as somehow limitlessly enduring or extended. Aquinas adds
that Boethius used “possession” rather than “duration” because
“duration” by its very meaning entails a kind of “distension” and so
“inquietude,” which should not be understood of God’s being.37 This
rules out passage in the divine being, but would not rule out having a
duration, a timelike extension, that did not “pass” as time does.38
“Atemporal duration” is not in Aquinas’s view a contradiction: he also
speaks of aeviternity, angels’ distinctive mode of duration, as non-
temporal.39 So if Aquinas does think of God’s eternality as involving
duration, it does not follow that he thinks of it as everlasting existence
in time. He might instead think of it as a timelike analogue to a true
 spatial atom: perhaps as a true spatial atom has an extension but has no
really distinct parts filling it, an eternal duration might have an
extension but have no really distinct event-parts filling it.
ii. Parts of a duration are limited by the parts that precede and follow
them. That an eternal thing’s existence is “all at once” rules out its
containing temporal parts, since these occur one before another, and so
rules out eternity’s having this sort of (internal) limitation. (ST rules
out temporal parts by ruling out eternity’s containing beginnings and
endings, e.g., the beginning and ending of an hour, a day, etc.40) If
having parts preceding and following constitutes a limit, this also rules
it out that God’s existence is just for an instant of time. ST rules this
out by saying that eternity involves permanence.41
iii. A thing’s being is also limited in a third way if it is received by a
“supposit” distinct from the being received. Aquinas suggests, with a
bit of strain, that “perfect” rules this out, because only something that
does not receive its being in a “supposit” has perfect being. ST makes
no less a stretch when it takes “perfect” to rule out the “imperfect”
temporal now.42

As Aquinas explains it, God’s life does not stretch through all time. This
is ruled out by its containing no temporal parts—any life lived through time
is lived through one hour, then another, and so has one hour-long part, then
another. Nor does God’s life occupy part of time: this is ruled out by its
having no beginning or end. Nor does it last just an instant. So Aquinas must
see God’s existence as atemporal.43 One might object to this that Aquinas
also says eternity “includes all times”44 and that God “always”45 exists.46
The first, though, brings to mind Anselm’s thesis that an atemporal God has
present to Him in eternity, in an atemporal way, all times insofar as they are
present, which Aquinas appears to endorse in ST I q.14 a.13.47 To image the
relation of eternity to time, Aquinas adopts from Boethius the simile of an
eternal being as a point in the center of a circle, co-existent with every point
on the circumference though not located on it.48 This simile is naturally
cashed out in terms of Anselm’s picture. “Includes all times” does not, then,
have to be read as suggesting existence at all times, and the circle simile in
fact points another way, since center-points do not exist at every point on
their circumferences. The use of “always exists,” moreover, is at best
ambiguous: it could mean no more than that if God is atemporal, at every
time, it is true that he timelessly exists, just as at every point on a
circumference, it is true that the center exists—across from it.
Rory Fox suggests that Aquinas does not hold either that God is timeless
or that he is everlasting.49 Fox points out that Aquinas is willing in the case
of angels, which are not temporal, to say that when they have effects in time,
their actions are in time,50 adding “and so they could be said to be existing, in
effect, in time.”51 Fox thinks Aquinas should say the same of God, who also
has temporal effects.52 Fox adds that Aquinas is happy to say that God exists
in place in virtue of sustaining all things in all places and suggests that
Aquinas should concede in parallel that God exists in time (in some way) in
virtue of sustaining all things in all times.53 But Fox’s point about the angels
takes a step too far. It is a standard part of Aristotelian theories of causation
that the action of a cause takes place in its effect: the action of the fire occurs
in the water, when the fire causes the water to heat up. It does not follow that
the fire exists where the water is; in fact this would be impossible, to an
Aristotelian. To say that an angel’s action exists in time is to say no more
than what we would mean by saying that its effect is in time. Thus, there is
for Aquinas just no move to be made from an angel’s action occurring in our
time to the angel’s literally existing in our time. In fact, in discussing angelic
motion, Aquinas holds that moving angels exist in their own kind of time,
one discrete rather than continuous, rather than claiming that they exist in our
time, even though they move through places we share with them.54 This is in
part because their motion just consists in their actions’ being at different
places at different times.55
Fox’s other argument, about presence in space and time, should resonate
particularly for those who believe we live in a four-dimensional universe, one
not of space in time but of spacetime, a single entity of which “space” and
“time” denote abstracted aspects. For if this is true, then in any sense in
which God is in space, he is also in time. But Aquinas did not think he lived
in such a universe. And the sense in which Aquinas says God exists in place
is too weak to support a claim that God is in any sense intrinsically other than
a-spatial, or literally located in space. For all Aquinas means by this is that all
things are subject to God’s power and that God directly knows all things and
causes all things to be.56 His knowing them hardly places him literally where
they are. His causing effects in them, again, places his action but not God
himself in space. Thus, there is no basis here for any jibbing about whether
Aquinas’s God is atemporal.

ARGUMENTS FOR TIMELESSNESS

Aquinas has more than one route to the claim that God is eternal. One begins
from the claim that God exists necessarily. This is the Third Way’s
conclusion, and something like the Third Way occurs in SCG in an argument
for God’s eternity.57 CT suggests that since God cannot have been caused to
exist, he must exist by his own nature, per se, and therefore necessarily.58
This warrants a stronger form of necessity than the Third Way does; that God
exists by his very nature entails (so Aquinas thinks) that “God exists” is a
truth per se notum in se, an analytic truth, one broadly logically necessary.
Given divine necessity, God always exists; there can be no time at which a
logically necessary truth is false.59 But if God always exists and is
immutable, Aquinas thinks, it follows that he is eternal in Boethius’s sense.
Since he never changes from being not-F to being F, there never are two
phases of his life distinguished as the phase in which he is not-F and that in
which he is F, and so, Aquinas suggests, there are no phases at all; instead
God’s life is “all at once.”60
This last move seems too quick. Having no phases that differ by a change
of divine quality does not rule out earlier and later phases in which God is
qualitatively identical. One might suggest that if God lasts through time, he
changes in quantity—the quantity of life he has had. If that is true, then God
cannot be quantitatively changeless if he exists in time. But Aquinas is clear,
following Aristotle, that time does not measure a quantity of things in time61
—a thing’s lifespan is a quantity of its existence, not the thing. Passage of
time brings with it relational change. Even if I did not change in quantity or
quality, in 1999 I co-existed with the earth’s 1999th trip round the sun since a
particular time, in 2000 with its 2000th. So if change in relation counted as
incompatible with divine immutability, immutability would rule out being
temporal. But Aquinas accepts that change in extrinsic relational property is
compatible with DDI.62 So he cannot move from immutability to
timelessness in this way.
Aquinas’s ST argument for God’s eternality is this:
 The concept (ratio) of eternity is a consequence of immutability. Whence because God
is maximally immutable, He is maximally eternal … the “standing now” makes eternity
according to our apprehension. Just as our apprehending the flow of the now causes us
to apprehend time, so inasmuch as we apprehend the standing now, this causes in us the
apprehension of eternity.63

Aquinas takes it without argument that even a God he thinks atemporal has a
now. Perhaps this is because God is conscious, and a “now of experience”
seems conceptually inseparable from having experience at all. Aquinas says
that we apprehend God’s “standing now.” We do so, I think, by
apprehending that God is immutable; it is because immutability leads us to
see that God’s now “stands” rather than “flows” that it leads us to conclude
that God is atemporal. The connection between these things runs via
Aquinas’s account of time.
Aquinas believes that the temporal now “flows”—that time really,
objectively passes.64 One question we can ask believers in a flowing now is
why it flows: what “powers” the passage of time. Some see time’s passage as
a process unto itself, primitive, not further explained.65 Aquinas disagrees.
For Aquinas, our time is the time of material things, whose time is the
number of local motion, change of place.66 (I explain “the number of”
shortly.) For Aquinas, angels have their own sort of time, which is the
number of succession—change—in their mental operations.67 Our time for
Aquinas is an accident of the “first motion,” the revolution of the outer
Aristotelian heavenly sphere.68 Now for Aquinas, their subjects make
accidents exist.69 So Aquinas’s claim is that the motion of the outermost
sphere makes our time exist. He is so firm on this, in fact, that he holds that if
there were many Aristotelian universes, each with its own outermost sphere,
each would therefore have its own time: there would be many distinct
temporal series.70 Since for time to exist is for it to “flow”71—time for
Aquinas is generated by the flow of the now72—for Aquinas, the outermost
sphere’s motion makes time pass: what makes our time “flow” is the first
motion.
To see what’s behind this, note that Aquinas accepts Aristotle’s definition
of time as “the number of motion.”73 As Aquinas understands this, it means
that time is the countable or measurable aspect of motion. Aquinas thinks of
the day as a natural first unit of time.74 A day, which is a stretch of time, just
is the time taken by one revolution of the sun around the earth (as Aquinas
thought): a particular motion occurs in its very definition, as that in which the
property of being a day long inheres per se. If the day is the first unit, we do
not measure it: there is no other, prior unit available to measure it with.
Instead we just count days, by counting the times the sun reappears at the
same point in the sky, having completed one revolution. Given this standard
unit, we can measure other lengths of time, and so other time-units are
definable as parts or multiples of this one. The first motion provides the day,
a natural unit by which all other time-stretches, and so all other motions, are
to be measured: it provides the “standard meter” of motion.75
Now there are two ways to parse Aquinas’s view:

(a) a day is the length of a movement, one revolution of the sun;

(b) a day just is one revolution of the sun—it is that movement, taken as a
unit for measuring the length of other motions.

On (b) the motion of the outermost sphere makes time pass—in fact is
time’s passing. For on (b), for time to pass is for (say) a new day to begin,
and for a day to begin just is for a new cycle of the motion whose duration is
a day to begin. Time in a strong sense reduces to motion, and as we see
shortly, the Aristotelian first motion is causally as well as chronologically
basic. On (a), we might wonder whether the sphere’s motion really makes
time pass. For we might wonder whether, if the sun stopped revolving but
other motions continued, time would not after all continue to pass,
“powered” by other motion, which might eventually add up to the duration of
a day even without the sun. But in the cosmology Aquinas adopted from
Aristotle, the outermost sphere’s motion is what causes all else to move. If it
stopped moving, all else would, and Aquinas is explicit that in this case the
time of material things would cease.76 (There might still be angelic time.) So
given Aquinas’s Aristotelian cosmology, even on (a), the outermost sphere
powers time’s passage.
Still, Aquinas is careful to make a distinction. To Aquinas, time is of its
nature the number of the first motion, whatever that motion be. Aquinas
thinks that time is only accidentally, contingently the number of the motion
of the outermost heaven. Aquinas has biblical reasons to take seriously the
hypothesis that the outermost heaven did not begin to move at the instant of
creation. He notes that if this is so, there was time between Creation and its
beginning to move. But he adds that this time would have been the number of
whatever “first motion” then existed: “if there were another first motion, that
motion would be the measure of time, because everything is measured by the
first in its genus.”77 Thus Aquinas’s view is in fact detachable from
Aristotle’s natural science. His basic thoughts are that for nature to contain
our sort of time, there must be in the material world a clock-process to
provide a natural first unit, and that time’s passage depends on and perhaps
reduces to some physical process that powers its passage.
Still, in Aquinas’s eyes, de facto, Aristotle’s natural clock-process also
causes all else to move. For Aquinas, time is in other motions in material
nature insofar as they are all ultimately caused by the first motion of which
time is an accident:78 there is quite generally a way causes exist “in” their
effects. Moreover, Aquinas is willing to say that time is in things at rest79
insofar as they are subject to the causation of the outermost sphere, but just
happen then not to be moving. When we see that God cannot move, then, we
see that a moving now is not in Him. The outermost sphere cannot cause God
to move. Further, there is nothing else to “power” a “flow” of the now in
God’s case, unlike the angels’—and so we see that his now must stand still.
Aquinas’s thought, then, is this. A thing is in time only if it can take part
in the flow of a now. Only things that can change can take part in the flow.
For things that can change either “power” a time-flow by their changes or get
caught up in one in virtue of being able to change. God cannot change. So
when we “apprehend” this, we see that God must be atemporal. But
Aquinas’s condition for taking part in a time-flow is debatable. Why not say
instead that just given that time flows, God’s life is timed by it—that its
passage measures the length of his life even if he cannot change?
This brings us to Aquinas’s main SCG argument that God is eternal:

Only things that are moved are measured by time, for time is “the number of motion.”
But God is wholly without motion … so He is not measured by time. So … He does not
have being after non-being, nor … non-being after being, nor can any succession be
found in His being, because these cannot be understood without time. Therefore He
lacks beginning and end, having His being all at once: in which consists the nature of
eternity.80

Aquinas’s “are moved” must be read with care. Aquinas accepts that things
at rest but able to move count as temporal.81 He adds that what cannot move
is therefore not in time.82 So it is a safe bet that his argument is really

1. If anything is “measured by time,” it can “move.”

2. God cannot “move.” So
3. God is not “measured by time.” So
4. God is not temporal.

That the argument moves by way of being measured by time suggests that
it might address our lingering worry with the ST argument. Part of statement
(2) is God’s inability to move spatially, for Aquinas holds that (our sort of)
time follows upon change of place, so much so that only things in some way
in place are “measured” by (our sort of) time.83 (Aquinas considers our time
the number of local motion.84) Statement (2) also asserts Aquinas’s DDI: for
Aquinas, if God had a succession of mental operations, this would place Him
in the angels’ sort of time. But we may wonder why time so construed
measures only motions (and rest periods of movable things). Aquinas takes it
from Aristotle85 (and not implausibly) that standards for measurement must
share a kind with the items they measure.86 To measure, we establish
congruence between all or part of the item to be measured and a standard
unit. Thus, the standard must be of a sort to be congruent with the item to be
measured—it must be of its kind, so that we can lay the standard unit
alongside the measured item (literally in the case of some lengths, in other
cases figuratively). Thus, lengths can only be measured by lengths, not by
hues or pitches. If the standard for measuring time is or necessarily inheres in
a motion, Aquinas seems to think, we can only “lay that standard alongside
of” another motion: other things are measured by time only insofar as they
have motion, or can have it.87
This argument rests on sound general points—that measurement depends
on standard units and that standard units must be of the right sort to measure
what they measure. But things fall into not just kinds, but superkinds. So we
might ask why a standard unit, which is a motion, must share with what it
measures its most specific kind, motion. Why not instead a more general
kind, like change (thus bringing angels into ordinary time), event, or state?
The last, and perhaps even the next to last, might bring an immutable or even
a Boethian-eternal being into time. I suggest, then, that Aquinas has more
work to do if he is to produce a convincing argument for divine timelessness.
 NOTES
1. SCG I, 89.
2. Ibid.
3. ST I-II q.23, passim.
4. SCG I, 89.
5. ST I q.20 a.1 ad 2.
6. Ibid. and SCG I, 89.
7. ST I q.63 a.2.
8. SCG I, 90–91.
9. ST I q.20 a.2.
10. SCG I, 91; ST I q.20 a.1.
11. Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 231.
12. Loci cit.
13. SCG I, 90.
14. Ibid.
15. So, e.g., QDP 1, 1.
16. CT I, 9.
17. SCG I, 16.
18. ST I q.3 a.1; CT I, 9.
19. Thus given an independent argument for immutability, one can also
argue from immutability to lack of passive potency, as Aquinas does in SCG
I, 16.
20. ST I q.2 a.3.
21. E.g. ST I q.2 a.3.
22. CT I, 9.
23. See, e.g., SCG I, 16; QDP 7, 1; ST I q.3 a.1.
24. ST I q.9 a.1.
25. ST I q.9 a.2; q.51 a.3 ad 3.
26. See, e.g., ST I q.13 a.7.
27. Aristotle, Physics V 2, 225b11, and Aquinas, In Phy, V, nos. 666–67.
28. Aquinas, loc. cit.
29. Many medievals classed relational properties as intrinsic too, but they
meant by this only that they involved real inhering “forms.” They did not
mean to call relations intrinsic in the sense this term bears in contemporary
discussion.
30. ST q.25 a.4. For a full discussion of this, see my “Aquinas, Divine
Simplicity and Divine Freedom,” in Kevin Timpe, ed., Metaphysics and God
(London: Routledge, forthcoming).
31. SCG I, 15; CT I, 5.
32. ST I q.45 a.2 ad 2 and q.46 a.3.
33. ST I q.104 a.3.
34. ST I q.10 a.1; CT I, 8.
35. Super Sent, I, d.8, q.2, a.1, corpus.
36. Rory Fox would explain this by saying that Aquinas and other
thirteenth-century thinkers deployed concepts of “non-extensional, non-
temporal types of duratio” (Rory Fox, Time and Eternity in Mid-Thirteenth
Century Thought [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006], 37) and
sometimes used “duratio” simply to express actual existence (ibid. 36). That
they thought in terms of non-temporal duration is clear from their treatments
of angelic aeviternity, but that they thought in terms of non-extended duration
is at least in Aquinas’s case rather less clear. Fox offers as his main proof-
text for this in Aquinas’s case Super Sent 19, 2, 1, which I translate from the
text he provides (37 n. 36) as “duration attends everything according as it is
in act; a thing is said to endure for as long as it is in act, and not when it is in
potency.” The “as long as” (tamdiu … quamdiu) undermines the claim that
there is nothing extensional here.
37. Super Sent, I, d.8, q.2, a.1, ad 6.
38. Even such apparently anti-extensional texts as In Phy, VIII, l. 2, no.
990 can be read thus.
39. E.g., ST I q.10 a.5.
40. ST I q.10 a.4.
41. ST I q.10 a.1 ad 6.
42. ST I q.10 a.1 ad 5.
43. We see below that Aquinas actually has more than one kind of time in
play in his thinking, but this does not affect the present conclusion.
44. ST I q.10 a.2 ad 4.
45. e.g., CT I, 7.
46. For which reasons Brian Davies holds that Aquinas’s God is temporal
(The Thought of Thomas Aquinas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992],
108).
47. Obviously much would have to be said to make sense of this. For one
account, see my Time and Eternity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1991), 183–245.
48. SCG I, 66.
49. Fox, Time and Eternity, 328.
50. SCG III, 61.
51. Fox, Time and Eternity, 320.
52. Ibid. 324.
53. Ibid.
54. ST I q.63 a.7 ad 4.
55. ST I q.53 a.1.
56. ST I q.8 a.3.
57. SCG I, 15.
58. CT I, 7.
59. Ibid.
60. CT I, 8. This bit of the reasoning recurs in SCG I, 15.
61. In Phy, IV, l. 20, no. 609.
62. ST I q.13 a.7.
63. ST I q.10 a.2, resp. and ad 2.
64. He is also a presentist: he believes that in time, only the present exists
(ST I q.47 a.1 ad 3; In Phy, IV, l. 32, no. 629).
65. So, prominently, Richard Taylor on “absolute becoming” (see, e.g., his
Metaphysics, 4th ed. [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992], 82–83).
66. In Phy, IV, l. 18, no. 587.
67. For texts and discussion, see J. MacIntosh, “St. Thomas on Angelic
Time and Motion,” The Thomist 59 (1995): 547–75.
68. ST I q.10 a.6; Super Sent II, d.2, q.1, a.2.
69. So, e.g., De ente et essentia, c.6.
70. Super Sent, I, d.37, q.4, a.3.
71. SCG III, 61.
72. In Phy, IV, l. 18, nos. 585–86; Super Sent, I, d.37, q.4, a.3.
73. e.g., SCG I, 15.
74. In Phy, IV, l. 23, no. 634.
 75. Super Sent, II, d.2, q.1, a.2, ad 1.
76. QDP 5, 5, ad 11.
77. ST I q.66 a.4 ad 3.
78. In Phy, IV, l. 17, no. 574.
79. QDP 5, 5, ad 10; In Phy, IV, l. 20, no. 608.
80. S. Thomae Aquinatis Summa Contra Gentiles (Turin: Marietti, 1909),
1:15, p. 15, my translation. SCG is a bit puzzling; along with this occur two
arguments that seem to conclude that God is everlasting and two whose
conclusions seem indifferent between being everlasting and being atemporal.
81. QDP 5, 5, ad 10. For Aristotle, see Physics IV, 11, 221b7–14.
82. QDP 5, 5, ad 10.
83. SCG II, 96.
84. In Phy, IV, l. 18, no. 587.
85. Metaphysics, bk. 10, 1053a24 ff.
86. In Phy, IV, l. 20, no. 601. This implies that items of different genus
must have different measures, a point Aquinas applies in a related context in
Super Sent, II, d. 2, q. 2, a. 1c.
87. QDP 5, 5, ad 10; In Phy, IV, l. 20, no. 602. I am unsure that Aquinas
and Aristotle are really entitled to the claim that time measures the duration
of rest, but I cannot pursue this here.
 CHAPTER 14

GOD’S OMNIPOTENCE

BRIAN LEFTOW

THE doctrine that God is omnipotent takes its rise from scriptural texts:

Lord … nothing is too hard for you. (Jer. 32:17)

Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him. (Pss. 115:3, 135:6)
the Lord … can do all things. (Job 42:2)
nothing is impossible with God. (Luke 1:37)
with God all things are possible. (Matt. 19:26)

These texts concern two linked topics. One is how much power God has to
put behind actions: enough that nothing is too hard, enough to do whatever
he pleases. Let us call this “how strong God is.” The other is the range of
action in which he can use this power, that is, how much God can do: “all
things.” Christian accounts of omnipotence prior to Aquinas focused mainly
on how much power God has.1 In contemporaries like Bonaventure, talk of
range became a bit more prominent but was still only one note among many.
Aquinas offers a pure range definition of omnipotence, in which the strength
notion is absent. Scotus and Ockham followed Aquinas. So has almost every
account of omnipotence since. The move can fairly be called one of
Aquinas’s most enduring contributions to philosophical theology.

AQUINAS ON GOD’S STRENGTH

As Aquinas saw it, God’s power is infinite (unlimited) because

a. God needs no help from anything else to produce his effects—it is not
limited by dependence on another;
 b. nor does what might receive his effects limit his power, as no recipient
is necessary;
c. nor does any intrinsic limitation in his being limit his effects;
d. the number of his effects is unlimited—no matter how many he has had,
there can always be more; and
e. its intensity is unlimited—no matter how intense his action, it can
always be more intense.2

Statement (a) implies a strength point, since one way something can need
help is by being not strong enough to produce what it tries to. Statement (b)
implies the same one, since one way something can help in producing an
effect is by being what receives an agent’s power. Aquinas’s thought about
(c) seems to be this: as I have the being of a man, I can produce only a man’s
effects. God has no such limitation because his being is not received into a
particular nature distinct from itself, but is instead identical with his nature
and himself. Statement (d) involves range, but also strength, since we
measure strength by what it can effect. Statement (e) is clearly a strength
notion.
The infinity of God’s strength, Aquinas suggests, is the cause, not the very
nature, of his omnipotence.3 Since Aquinas’s doctrine of divine simplicity
rules out taking him to mean that infinite strength is one attribute and
omnipotence is a second distinct attribute that supervenes on it, his point is
that we can explain the range of God’s power by its infinity. His ST
explanation focuses on (c):

To every active power corresponds a possible being as its proper object, according to the
nature of that act in which the active power is founded, as the power to heat is referred
to the being able to be heated as its proper object. The divine being, on which the nature
of the divine power is founded, is unlimited being, not limited to some genus of being …
whence whatever can be is contained under those possible beings in respect of which
God is called omnipotent.4

Hot things, qua hot, can heat heatable things; by analogy unreceived,
unlimited being, being-itself, can cause to be be-able things—absolutely
possible things.
More than an argument by analogy can be had by way of (d). Strength
could be limited in its effect by needing help, a receiver, and so on, or by
lack of knowledge and other intrinsic restrictions. If none of these apply,
whatever one is strong enough to bring about, one can bring about, given
only suitable opportunity. How much is God strong enough to bring about?
Consider the field of all that is in any way possible. No matter what of this
we begin by saying God is strong enough to bring about, if there is more left
of it, then per (d), God is able to bring about still more, given opportunity.
The infinity of (d) thus pushes the range of God’s power outward till it
finally coincides with the range of the possible.

TO A DEFINITION
That this is God’s range of effects hardly implies that being omnipotent
consists solely of having this range of effects. But neither Scripture nor
Creed define omnipotence, and so Aquinas, like all others, is free to offer
what account he will. Aquinas gives his account this way:

whatever things … do not imply a contradiction are contained among those possible
things with respect to which God is called omnipotent … God is called omnipotent
because He can do all absolutely possible things.5

For Aquinas, God is “all-powerful,” but “power is said in reference to

possible things”—that I can do x implies that x can be done, which implies
that the result of doing x can be produced, and so can be. Because this is true,
any doctrine of God’s power could at most say that he can do anything
possible, in some sense of “possible.” The only way to argue that Aquinas
has not pushed God’s power far enough would be to say, against Aquinas,
that at least some contradictions are possibly true—as some think Descartes
believed. As Aquinas does not want to say this—we see why below—the
only remaining question for him is how to explicate “possible.” Aquinas says
there are just two options: (1) that being possible = being producible by the
relevant power (“whatever is subject to human power is said to be possible to
man”) or (2) that the possibility in question is absolute, that is, without
reference to anything’s power. If the relevant power is God’s, the first would
yield just that omnipotence is just the power to do whatever God can do, so
that “God is omnipotent” would make the vacuous claim that God can do
whatever God can do. If the relevant power is any other being’s, the first
would entail that God’s being omnipotent is just his being able to do what is
possible to some/all other powers. Thus, God’s omnipotence would limit him
to producing what created things can produce. Aquinas rejects this because
God can do miracles. So he opts for absolute possibility.6

WHAT IS THE DEFINITION?

Aquinas’s definition can easily be misread. Given the last line of the quoted
text (“God is called omnipotent because He can do all absolutely possible
things”), it can seem that Aquinas holds that

1. God is omnipotent = df. God can do all absolutely possible things.7

But this is not right. SCG II, 25 lists many things we can do but God cannot
—alter his own being, move, change, fail, tire, forget, be defeated, repent, be
angry, sorrow. God cannot do these because God by his nature cannot have
“passive potencies,” abilities to be changed. For Aquinas, God necessarily
wills himself to be, be good, be happy, and so cannot produce the contrary
volitions, though we can. Again, God cannot will evil.8 So the “can do”
formulation, in terms of tasks or powers, is not perspicuous for what Aquinas
has in mind. Perhaps Aquinas would say that for God to do these things
would be to bring about a contradiction, that a being with no passive
potencies acts in ways that entail having passive potencies, or a necessarily
good being does evil, or a necessarily happy being is not happy.
The first part of the quoted text (“God is omnipotent”) might suggest that
for Aquinas,

2. God is omnipotent = df. God can bring about all states of affairs not
involving contradictions.

But this is not quite right either. SCG II, 25 adds that God cannot act contrary
to the nature of being or of made being: his power is to make beings, and any
power can produce only what its nature encodes—the power to heat produces
heat, and the power to produce beings produces made beings. So what cannot
be a made being, or a being, cannot be produced, and so God cannot produce
it. Contrary to being made are making God (who is uncreated), making
something equal to God (since it is better to be underived than derived), or
making a thing God did not make and preserve. The “being made” addition
suggests that Aquinas’s definition of omnipotence is really:

3. God is omnipotent = df. God can bring about all states of affairs
producible without a contradiction following.

His examples also suggest that Aquinas is really concerned with what we
would call broad metaphysical impossibility, which he takes to be
coextensive with that whose contradictory implies a contradiction. The
twentieth century has made this claim of coextension controversial.
Statement (3) does not say by whom these states of affairs are producible; it
commits Aquinas to God’s being able to produce anything anyone else can
produce. This creates at least one obvious worry: I can produce my free
actions, but how can God? What is necessarily so is possibly so. And it is not
obvious that the necessary cannot be produced without a contradiction
following. So it might seem that Aquinas’s definition implies that God can
produce necessary states of affairs, that is, that 2 + 2 = 4. But Aquinas does
not mean this. “Possible” was sometimes used for “contingent” in Aquinas’s
day, and he undoubtedly means to restrict omnipotence to range over the
contingent: for him, God himself is the truthmaker for all necessary truths,
and so God could produce the necessary just if he could produce himself.9
Thus, for Aquinas, the necessary falls under the nonproducible. Aquinas does
not need a separate clause to rule it out.
Still, even (3) does not quite capture Aquinas’s intent. Surprisingly,
though he thinks God is outside time, Aquinas wants to relativize
omnipotence to times, and hold that what an omnipotent being can bring
about varies with what time it is. There are things God is too late to bring
about, for example, that the Germans won World War II. It is absolutely
possible that they have done so. But for Aquinas, it is now impossible that
anyone, even God, bring it about. Aquinas thinks that what is producible
without a contradiction following changes as time passes, as I will explain
shortly. This does not imply that God’s power changes intrinsically. Rather,
at some times certain things are absolutely possible, and later they are not
because their contradictories are past.10 With this in view, Aquinas’s real
account of omnipotence is that

4. God is omnipotent at t = df. God can bring about all states of affairs
producible at t without a contradiction following.

WHY NONCONTRADICTION?
Statement (4) prompts us to ask why Aquinas “limits” omnipotence to what
does not entail a contradiction. Descartes, after all, is at least reputed to have
seen this as not power enough for God. One argument in Aquinas takes its
rise from the claim that contradictory states of affairs are literally
inconceivable, even by God.11 If God cannot conceive them, God cannot will
to make them obtain: what cannot be grasped by the intellect cannot be
willed, since the will is of the understood good.12 And what God cannot will,
he cannot produce, since he can do nothing save by willing it.
Let us ask, then, why Aquinas thinks contradictions cannot be conceived
to be true. Aquinas writes in his Sentence commentary that “what is being
and not-being, neither is being nor not-being.”13 He expands the thought a bit
in de Potentia: a contradiction not only cannot have the nature of being, but
cannot even have the nature of nonbeing, because “being removes non-being
and non-being removes being.”14 If this is true, it is impossible to picture
what would be so were a contradiction true. Picturing that P or that ¬P is the
case does not picture both being true at once. Superimposing a mental picture
of a P-world on one of a ¬P-world would not give one a grip on a P and ¬P
world either, as Aquinas sees it. For in his eyes, a P and ¬P world could not
be even determinately both. We now distinguish negation and denial.
Negation is a feature of the content of a proposition—the feature which
makes the difference between P and ¬P. Denial is something we do with or
to propositions, removing what they say from our picture of the world.
Aquinas seems to run the two together. He seems to think of someone who
says “not P” not as asserting that ¬P but as denying that P, expressing a
mental operation of removal. So in Aquinas’s eyes, to conceive a
contradiction, one would have not to superimpose a mental picture of a P-
world on one of a ¬P-world, but simultaneously to add P to and subtract P
from one’s world picture. What it is to add and subtract makes it the case that
there is no such thing as the product of such an intellectual operation. So we
can see why Aquinas writes in ST that a contradiction does not count as a
“word”—a possible product of intellectual conception.15 As he sees it, a
contradictory sentence just does not express anything definite for an intellect
to grasp.
But this leads to a deeper line of thought. For if this is so, a contradictory
sentence does not really express any state of affairs, even a contradictory one.
To Aquinas, this is not because of some limitation of language or mind. It is
because to construct a contradictory state of affairs, one would have to at
once posit and remove the same state of affairs. There is no state of affairs
that is the being posited and removed of some state of affairs. And so a
contradiction cannot be true because there is no state of affairs whose being
actual would make it true. A contradictory state of affairs cannot be possible
because there is no state of affairs there to bear the modality of possibility.
Of course, given this line of reasoning, Aquinas could as easily say that a
contradictory state of affairs cannot be impossible: that too is a modality. But
what is straightforwardly impossible is that a contradictory sentence
standardly interpreted express something true, there being nothing there for it
to express when so interpreted, or something the mind can grasp.16
On this line of thought, God cannot will that a contradiction be true, in the
end, because contradictory sentences are just a sort of nonsense: they express
no proposition to will to be true. But the suggestion that this somehow limits
God is worth resisting. If there just is not such a thing as a contradictory state
of affairs, a God who cannot bring about contradictory states of affairs may
nonetheless literally be able to bring about every state of affairs there is. This
will be so if every absolute impossibility involves a contradiction. Aquinas
asserts this in QDP 1, 3: they all “imply affirmation and negation to be at
once.”17 If this is right, then for Aquinas, again, there is nothing beyond
God’s power, to be the place it cannot go.
Aquinas’s line of thought generates a subordinate metaphysical account of
why God can produce only noncontradictory states of affairs. It is a fact
about causation, Aquinas thinks, that every agent produces effects that are
somehow like itself.18 God’s nature is his existence, and existence itself: God
is esse-ipsum. Thus, all of God’s possible effects must resemble him at least
in being beings. Contradictory states of affairs cannot be beings, for reasons
we have seen. So they cannot be like God in even this way. So they cannot be
divine products.19 This account depends on the fact about causation and
Aquinas’s distinctive understanding of negation. I do not recall a text in
which Aquinas explains either further. The fact about causation could have
its roots in God’s own nature. Perhaps it is a primitive fact about God’s
nature that he can produce only his like. And perhaps it is another that
nothing other than himself can exist unless he produces it. Perhaps this
determines what other agents can be. For God can only produce his like, and
while this is obviously compatible with producing things unlike him in many
ways, perhaps this is one way in which his effects must be very like him:
perhaps it is a primitive fact about God’s power that he can produce only
things that (like him) can produce only their like. So as there cannot be
anything God has not produced, there cannot be an agent not thus
constrained, and so what “began” as a fact about God’s nature ends up a
general theorem about the nature of causality.

CHANGING THE PAST

Whether an omnipotent being can alter the past was a standard topic in
medieval theology, inherited ultimately from Augustine. Aquinas’s argument
on the subject is this. Suppose Socrates sat. Then for God to bring it about
that he did not sit would entail that Socrates sat and did not sit—a
contradiction. So for God to alter the past would entail his bringing about a
contradiction.20 Now this argument can seem to beg the question. Granted, if
God does not remove Socrates’ sitting from the past, we get a contradiction.
But why couldn’t God remove this? That is, why could he not make it the
case simply that Socrates never sat—that it has never been the case that
Socrates did anything other than not sit? Aquinas does not say in ST.
In SCG II, 25, Aquinas may say why he thinks God cannot just remove
the past. He states that the past, once past, is necessary, that is, that it is no
longer possible that it have been other than it is. If the necessity involved is
strong enough, it then follows that what can be produced without a
contradiction following changes as more past is “laid down.” But which
modality “necessary” imports is unclear. If Aquinas is claiming only that the
past has “necessity of inevitability”—that is, is something one cannot now do
anything about—this would be equivalent to the claim that the past is fixed.
But the past is fixed just if God cannot alter it, and so to invoke this here
would beg the question. Suppose, on the other hand, that Aquinas’s claim is
that the past, once past, is absolutely necessary per accidens (i.e.,
contingently). One question that would then arise is whether Aquinas thinks
this is a consequence of his contradiction argument. If he does, he cannot
appeal to this necessity to explain God’s inability to just remove the past. But
without some such support, the claim is too strong to be plausible: the most
we might grant is that the past is fixed. For it just does seem possible, and
still possible today, that I have had eggs instead of cereal for breakfast
yesterday. Further, if the past is only contingently necessary, why would not
a God able to effect all that is contingent retain his power to have something
else have been necessary?

OMNIPOTENCE AND IMPECCABILITY

As we have seen, Aquinas thinks that God cannot do evil. It is not
immediately clear that someone could be both impeccable and omnipotent. If
God can bring about only morally permissible states of affairs, then it seems
that there could be a being able to effect every permissible state of affairs that
God can bring about, plus the evil ones he cannot. But nothing can be more
powerful than someone omnipotent; if such a being is possible, it is
impossible to be both omnipotent and impeccable.
Aquinas makes just two moves on this problem. One claims that “God can
do evil if he will” is a true conditional whose antecedent and consequent are
impossible.21 This seems to contain a slip: surely what Aquinas means is that
if God wills to do evil, he does evil, not that if God wills to do it, he acquires
the power to do it. With this revision, Aquinas’s claim is overall that if God
willed to do evil, he would succeed—that is, he has the power to—but
impossible that he will to do evil, so impossible that he do evil. The intent is
clearly to suggest that the conditional is true due to God’s underlying
possession of power enough, rather as it is true of a glass never actually
scratched that were a diamond to scratch across it, it would leave a mark. But
Aquinas’s move does not clearly entail that God in any real sense actually
has the power to do evil. It might be equally true that if a rock willed to do
evil (and it were not impeded), it would do it; we do not infer that the rock is
able to do evil.
 Aquinas’s other move runs this way: to sin is to fall short of a perfect
action. So to be able to sin is to be able to fall short. So God cannot sin
precisely because he is omnipotent.22 This argument is hard to evaluate
because what “perfect” means is not explained. If it expresses moral
perfection, the argument begs the question, or at any rate leaves us none the
wiser as to why omnipotence generates the supposed inability. What other
sense might be meant is not obvious. Perhaps the most favorable gloss is this:
to fall short of a complete action is to fail to attain the end for which one acts.
Rational agents all act ultimately to be happy (a standard Aristotelian thesis).
Every evil action falls short of attaining that, given the universe we live in
(with Hell), or suitably strong natural-law assumptions and claims about
rational nature. But God cannot fail to attain the end for which he acts: God
cannot fail to be happy, or to possess himself (which makes him happy). He
cannot because he is perfectly knowledgeable (and so knows what will make
him happy), perfectly rational (and so wills it), and omnipotent (and so must
obtain what he wills). So God’s omnipotence is part of the reason he cannot
sin. This does not entail that Aquinas is restricting the range of omnipotence
to less than all that is possible, for as we have seen, Aquinas thinks that
God’s doing evil is metaphysically impossible.23 However, if this is
Aquinas’s intent, it does seem a rather strained route to the goal. The real
reason God cannot sin is surely simply that he possesses himself, hence could
not have a motivation to do so and is powerful and knowledgeable enough to
avoid less-than-fully voluntary sin. Omnipotence does not really seem
involved in the explanation.

NOTES
1. For a survey, see my “Omnipotence,” in Thomas Flint and Michael
Rea, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, forthcoming).
2. QDP 1, 2.
3. QDP 1, 7.
4. ST I q.25 a.3, 174a21–34.
5. ST I q.25 a.3, 174a12–20, 42–45. Cf. QDP 1, 7.
6. ST I q.25 a.3.
 7. Among others, Daniel Hill so reads him (Daniel Hill, Divinity and
Maximal Greatness [London: Routledge, 2005], 131).
8. SCG I, 95.
9. For an account of this, see my “Aquinas on God and Modal Truth,”
Modern Schoolman 82:3 (2005): 171–200.
10. ST I q.25 a.4 ad 2. Geach suggests that the account of q.25 a.3 is
inconsistent with allowing that God’s power varies over time (Peter Geach,
Providence and Evil [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], 19). In
Aquinas’s eyes, at least, it is not, because what is producible changes with
time.
11. QDP 1, 3, ad 1 opp.; ST I q.25 a.3; Quodl V, q.2, a.3.
12. SCG I, 84.
13. Super Sent I, d.42, q.2, a.2, p. 991.
14. QDP 1, 3, p. 9. So also SCG II, 25. Yet he also says in SCG II, 22 that
things which imply a contradiction include nonbeing in their ratio. Perhaps
Aquinas has one account of things that are contradictions and another of
things that are not themselves self-contradictory but imply contradictions.
15. ST I q.25 a.3.
16. The qualification “standardly interpreted” allows for this sort of silly
counterexample: if I decided to use the sentence “P and not P” to express the
claim that I am a philosopher, it would express something true.
17. QDP 1, 3, p. 9.
18. Ibid.
19. QDP 1, 3; SCG I, 84.
20. QDP 1, 3, ad 9; ST I q.25 a.4.
21. QDP 1, 6, ad 1 and ST I q.25 a.3 ad 2.
22. ST I q.25 a.3 ad 2.
23. Contra Eric Funkhouser, “On Privileging God’s Moral Goodness,”
Faith and Philosophy 23 (2006): 412.
 PART IV

ETHICS AND ACTION THEORY

 CHAPTER 15

HUMAN FREEDOM AND AGENCY

THOMAS WILLIAMS

THE END OF HUMAN ACTION

Aquinas opens the second part of the ST by arguing, in a series of careful
steps, that there is one and only one ultimate end for all human actions. The
placement of this argument is no accident, since the notion of an end is of
fundamental importance not only in Aquinas’s theory of human action but in
his accounts of practical reasoning, law, and the virtues. Yet the
interpretation of Aquinas’s argument in ST I-II q.1, is a matter of
considerable controversy. I shall first follow the argument through its
successive steps and then briefly consider three possible ways of
understanding Aquinas’s claim that all human actions have exactly one
ultimate end.
Aquinas first argues that every human action is for the sake of some end.
That is, every human action is purposive in some way; it is done for the sake
of attaining some goal or realizing some desired state of affairs. To the
obvious objection that we do things all the time without any purpose at all,
Aquinas replies by distinguishing between a human action (actus humanus)
and an action of a human being (actio hominis). Human actions, properly so
called, are those that proceed from human beings in virtue of their
distinguishing power, which is to be in control of their own actions (dominus
suorum actuum) through reason and will. Anything else that a human being
does can be called the action of a human being, but not (in the proper sense)
a human action. Human actions, then, are those that are willed on the basis of
rational deliberation. And since “the object of the will is an end and a good, it
follows that all human actions are for the sake of an end.”1
What, precisely, is meant by the “end” of a human action? Aquinas tells
us in a.2 that an end is something cognized as good. It must be something
cognized because otherwise we just have “natural appetite,” the sort of built-
in directedness by which heavy objects are moved toward the center of the
earth. And an end must be cognized as good because the will is moved only
by what is good. As Eleonore Stump emphasizes, the will is not a neutral
steering wheel; it is “an inclination for what is good, where the phrase ‘what
is good’ is used attributively and not referentially.”2 And because only beings
with the capacity for abstract thought can cognize what is good qua good (as
opposed to merely cognizing something that is in fact good), only they can
have will, the appetite that follows upon intellectual cognition of something
as good. “The object of the will,” Aquinas says, “is the end and good
universally.” But the end of any particular action will not be good-in-general,
but some particular thing cognized as good. This end is what gives each
particular action its species (a.3), what makes the action the kind of action it
is.
In a.4 Aquinas argues further that every human action has an ultimate end:
that is, an end that, with respect to that particular action, is not itself for the
sake of some further end. It is impossible for there to be an infinite series of
ends, each of which moves the appetite only instrumentally, as a means to
some more ultimate end. There has to be some mover that moves the appetite
on its own account. This non-instrumental mover of the appetite is the
ultimate end for the sake of which a particular action is performed.
And it is not merely that every action must have at least one ultimate end.
Aquinas argues further that, at any given time, a human being can have only
one such ultimate end. The most persuasive of his three arguments for this
claim runs as follows:

Since every thing desires (appetat) its own perfection, what someone desires as an
ultimate end is what he desires qua perfecting and completing him.… For that reason, an
ultimate end must so fulfill a person’s whole desire that nothing more is left for him to
desire; and that cannot be so if something additional is required for him to be perfect.
And that is why desire cannot aim at two [distinct] things as if each were its perfect
good.3

This single ultimate end can be an aggregate of goods that the agent regards
as collectively constituting his perfection; the arguments of a.5 do not
commit Aquinas to understanding the ultimate end as a unitary good.
This ultimate end, whether unitary or aggregate, must be (Aquinas argues)
the ultimate explanation for all of a given person’s actions. For whatever the
agent desires, she desires sub ratione boni: under the notion or aspect of the
good. Now if something is not desired as the complete, all-inclusive good
(that is, the ultimate good), it must be desired as aiming at or leading to the
complete, all-inclusive good. The “as” does not mean that an agent will
always be thinking of the ultimate end in every action she performs, any
more than someone on a journey must be consciously thinking about her
destination in order to be truly said to be aiming at that destination. But the
desire for the ultimate end is what explains every other desire. The ultimate
end is the first mover of desire, and secondary movers—that is, any desirable
objects other than the ultimate end—move desire only in virtue of their
relation to the ultimate end, whether the agent is thinking explicitly about
that relation or not. As Aquinas puts it, “the power of the first intention,
which is of the ultimate end, remains in any desire of any object whatever,
even if one is not actually thinking of the ultimate end.”4
Finally, Aquinas argues that this ultimate explanation for all actions is the
same for every human being. All human beings have the same ultimate end,
for all human beings desire their own perfection, though different people will
have different ideas about what perfection consists in. So Aquinas says that
all human beings have the same ultimate end as far as the intelligible formula
for the ultimate end goes (secundum rationem ultimi finis), but not in terms
of the object that people think is aptly described by that formula (secundum
id in quo finis ultimi ratio invenitur).
To summarize: Aquinas argues in the first question of ST I-II that (a) all
human actions are performed for the sake of an end; (b) any given human
action has one and only one ultimate end; (c) this one ultimate end is the
same for all of a given human being’s actions; and indeed (d) all human
beings have the same ultimate end. Interpreters of Aquinas have disagreed
about how to construe each of these claims, but the most widely divergent
readings concern (b) and (c). The most obvious way of taking (b) and (c) is
as descriptive claims about the psychology of human actions. But when taken
as descriptive claims, (b) and (c) strike many interpreters as flatly
indefensible. We may take Jean Porter’s objection as representative:

Not many of us have the self-possession, or the fanaticism, to shape our whole lives
around devotion to some one object, cause, or ideal. And even those few of us who do
cannot be said literally to direct all our actions toward one end. Even the most dedicated
individuals indulge in an ice-cream cone or a joke once in a while.… Let me say at once
 that if Aquinas does indeed claim that each person always directs all her actions and
activities toward some one goal or idea, then I do not see how that claim could be
defended.5

In light of such reservations about (b) and (c) taken as descriptive claims,
some interpreters argue that what Aquinas sets forth in the opening question
of I-II is normative rather than descriptive: his claims “state criteria of fully
rational action, and the arguments for them draw attention to what is required
by the concept of rational action,”6 as Scott MacDonald puts it. On this
interpretation Aquinas is not denying that human beings sometimes act
without having a single ultimate end in view, but instead saying that such
actions are not fully rational and therefore not fully human. As Porter,
another defender of the normative reading, says, this analysis “leaves room to
admit that some behaviors which do not meet this ideal can still be said to be
rational, and hence truly human actions, albeit in a derivative sense.”7
A third interpretation is possible, according to which Aquinas’s claims in
the opening question of I-II are neither descriptive nor normative, but
explanatory. That is, Aquinas is analyzing the metaphysical preconditions for
human action. His arguments for a single ultimate end are akin to his
arguments for a single unmoved mover or uncaused cause; they are at bottom
neither psychological descriptions nor conceptual analysis, but quia
arguments intended to trace the phenomena of human action to their ultimate
explanation in a good that awakens desire, and thereby initiates action, in its
own right and not in the power of any other good. The natural desire for
perfection explains why we desire anything at all. Since every human being
has this desire, every human action is ultimately to be explained with
reference to one and the same ultimate end—though, owing to the
variabilities of human reason, different people will seek their fulfillment in
different objects or states.

THE STRUCTURE OF HUMAN ACTION

A human action, as we have seen, is one over which the agent has control in
virtue of possessing reason and will. Since the object of will is an end—
something cognized as good—every human action will begin with cognition:
an intellectual apprehension of some object or state of affairs as good in the
agent’s circumstances. (The cognition of the circumstances is also the work
of the intellect, which means that even before there is any act of will, there
are two ways in which human agents can go astray: by taking something to
be good that is not in fact good, and by misconstruing their circumstances.)
As a consequence of this intellectual apprehension, there is an act of will
called simply voluntas (will) in which the agent desires the end as such.8 In
order for action to result, however, there must be a further act of the will in
which one desires the end not merely as a good in itself but as a good that
can be attained by means of action. This act, called intentio, presupposes an
intellectual apprehension of the end as attainable. It also sets in motion the
work of the intellect in consilium or deliberation. Consilium is an
investigation of the means by which the intended end may be attained or
realized. As the intellect turns up various means, the will can endorse them as
desirable, or at least tolerable, means to the desired end; this endorsement is
called consensus or consent. Consilium terminates with an act of iudicium,
the intellect’s judgment that one of the means that have received the will’s
consent is the best, all things considered. The will then selects the means that
the intellect has judged best; this act of will is called electio, commonly (if
somewhat misleadingly) translated “choice.”9 After electio, the intellect
orders that the elected means be carried out in action, and the will carries out
the intellect’s command (imperium) by making use (usus) of the external
bodily powers in the way that the intellect has prescribed, until the intellect
apprehends that the end has been attained; only then is the will at rest in the
enjoyment (fruitio) of that end.10
The previous paragraph lays out the basic structure of a fully articulated
and complete human action.11 In practice, as Aquinas recognizes, human
actions may not involve all of these steps. For example, if consilium turns up
only one acceptable means, consensus will collapse into electio.12 If the
means to the desired end is perfectly obvious, there will be no need for
consilium to begin with, and the agent can proceed directly from intentio to
iudicium.13 And the intellect’s failure to stick to its command—a
manifestation of what Aquinas calls inconstancy—can interrupt usus before
it comes to completion in the external act by which the agent means to
accomplish her end, thereby forestalling fruitio.14 Moreover, the individual
acts of will and intellect that go into making up a complete human action
need not be separated by any perceptible time. Nor should we think that all
these acts will be apparent to the agent’s consciousness: as Alan Donagan
observes, “the components of simple human acts are ascertained, not by
introspecting what happens when we perform them, but by examining cases
in which an act is begun but not completed.”15

INTELLECTUALISM AND VOLUNTARISM

Note that in Aquinas’s account of the structure of human acts, every act of
will is preceded by an act of intellect. This is exactly what we would expect,
given Aquinas’s understanding of will as intellectual appetite. To recur to
Eleonore Stump’s point, the will is not, on Aquinas’s view, a neutral steering
wheel; it is “an inclination for what is good, where the phrase ‘what is good’
is used attributively and not referentially.”16 Hence, the content of any act of
will—what is willed—has to depend on some intellectual apprehension of
something as good in some way and under some description. Aquinas
expresses this claim by saying that the intellect is the formal cause of the
will’s acts.
So stated, Aquinas’s view appears straightforwardly intellectualist: the
ultimate explanation for every human act rests in the intellect, for the will has
no independent capacity to shape the exercise of human agency. Yet Aquinas
also speaks of ways in which the will controls the intellect: by directing it to
consider alternatives, to stop deliberating, to attend to different features of a
possible object of will. In doing these things, the will moves the intellect as
an efficient cause. Many interpreters of Aquinas have appealed to the will’s
efficient-causal control over the intellect as evidence that Aquinas is not a
thoroughgoing intellectualist after all: the ultimate explanation for at least
some human acts, they argue, will rest in the will’s direction of the intellect
in shaping the exercise of human agency.17
The fundamental dispute between intellectualist and voluntarist
interpretations of Aquinas’s action theory is whether the will’s efficient-
causal control over the will must always be preceded by an act of intellect in
which the agent judges that exercising such efficient-causal control is all-
things-considered best in the circumstances. For example, Aquinas notes that
the will can direct the intellect to consider a proposed course of action under
different descriptions. I may be leaning toward spending the day at the beach
because it would be pleasant and relaxing, but my will can command my
intellect to think of it instead as a shameful retreat from pressing obligations.
Must such an act of will itself be preceded by an intellectual judgment that
the good thing to do, all things considered, is to attend to the ways in which a
day at the beach is not good? Or can the will of its own power direct the
intellect to reconsider?
Space does not permit a careful examination of all the relevant texts, so I
will simply express my own judgment that Aquinas is an intellectualist. As
Jeff Hause explains,

On Aquinas’s view, the will cannot, by any innate capacity, direct the intellect’s
attention, keep the intellect from issuing judgments about what one ought to do, or keep
itself from willing what the intellect has determined one ought to will. Nor can it select
one from among a variety of alternatives unless the intellect has first settled on that one
as the alternative to be pursued. Which, if any, of a set of objects the will wills, and
whether it wills anything at all, depends not on any voluntaristic capacity of the will, but
on how the intellect judges the object in question.18

In the process that leads to action, the intellect is not in the business of
making judgments of the form “Here’s an ice-cream cone: take it or leave it
—or look around for something else” and then leaving it up to the will to
make the choice. The intellect offers a verdict: a iudicium or sententia. And
the will, being nothing more than the appetitive arm of the intellectual soul,
elects in accordance with the intellect’s judgment. As in a one-party
totalitarian state, by the time there’s an election, there’s only one name on the
ballot.

NECESSITATION, CAUSATION, AND FREEDOM

One reason that many scholars have resisted interpreting Aquinas’s account
as intellectualist is that they believe an intellectualist account must be
deterministic.19 And since (the argument continues) Aquinas holds that
causal determinism is incompatible with freedom and moral responsibility,
he must reject intellectualism. This argument fails for at least two reasons.
First, an intellectualist account need not be deterministic; if the intellect itself
operates indeterministically, Aquinas’s theory as a whole will be
indeterministic even if it is also intellectualist.20 Second, and more important,
it is not at all clear that Aquinas affirms the incompatibility of freedom and
causal determinism. There is, to be sure, a trivial sense in which it is obvious
that Aquinas never affirms the incompatibility of freedom and determinism:
for determinism in its contemporary acceptation is “the thesis that only one
continuation of the state of things at a given moment is consistent with the
laws of nature,”21 and Aquinas does not speak in terms of laws of nature.
Aquinas speaks instead of the active and passive causal powers of created
things. This point is certainly worth making, because interpreters have been
much too quick to speak of determinism as though Aquinas’s metaphysics of
causation and necessitation can be mapped unproblematically on our own.
But the claim that Aquinas never affirms the incompatibility of freedom and
determinism is not terribly interesting if we mean it only in this trivial sense,
so from here on out I shall use “determinism” as the name of an analogous
thesis: that only one continuation of the state of things at a given moment is
consistent with the ordinary, non-miraculous working of the active and
passive causal powers of created things.
Equipped with a more suitable understanding of determinism, we can now
ask what Aquinas has to say about the compatibility or incompatibility of
freedom and determinism. And the answer, surprisingly, is nothing. What
Aquinas addresses instead is the compatibility or incompatibility of freedom
and necessitation. Aquinas identifies several distinct senses in which an act
might be described as necessary. Not all of them are inconsistent with
freedom, and none of them (or so I shall argue) is equivalent or even roughly
analogous to determinism. Consider first Aquinas’s arguments in QDM 6,
where the question is whether human beings have free choice (libera electio)
of their acts or instead choose from necessity. Aquinas says that human
beings are never necessitated with respect to exercise (that is, with respect to
whether we will or do not will), and that we are necessitated with respect to
specification (that is, with respect to willing this or that particular object)
only in the case of happiness itself. But everything Aquinas says in reaching
these conclusions is perfectly compatible with determinism. For example, he
argues that the will is not necessitated with respect to specification by
anything other than happiness on the grounds that one can think of any such
thing either under a description under which it is suitable or under a
description under which it is not. This can come about, he says, (1) because
one description outweighs the other, (2) because some interior or exterior
prompting causes one to attend to the object under one description rather than
under the other, or (3) because one is in a state of mind that makes the object
salient under one description rather than another. If the will’s not being
necessitated with respect to specification is explained entirely in terms of
these three possibilities, as the text strongly suggests, then non-necessitation
is perfectly compatible with determinism. What Aquinas denies is that the
intellect, the will, and their objects are such that in the abstract only one
choice is possible; he does not deny, and indeed seems to lack the
metaphysical resources necessary to deny, the nature of the intellect and the
will and their objects are such that in every particular, concrete instance only
one choice is possible.22
Nor does Aquinas’s denial that the will can be subject to necessity of
coercion have any tendency to show that Aquinas rejects the compatibility of
freedom and determinism, despite the fact that many interpreters appeal to
that denial to establish precisely that conclusion. Aquinas argues in QDV 22,
a.5 and ST I q.82 a.1 that the will cannot be subject to necessity of coercion
(necessitas coactionis), the kind of necessity that would obtain if the will
were compelled by some external agent in such a way that it could not act
otherwise. But (contrary to what some interpreters suggest) Aquinas does not
argue in these passages that necessity of coercion is incompatible with
freedom. Instead, he argues that it is conceptually impossible for the will to
be subject to necessity of coercion, because something that is coerced is
moved in a way that is entirely against its natural inclination; since the will is
itself an inclination, it is impossible for it to will something unless there is in
the will some inclination to that very thing. Moreover, it is quite clear that
necessity of coercion is not coextensive with determinism. Although every
instance of necessity of coercion is a case in which determinism holds true,
the converse does not hold: there can be cases of determinism in which there
is no necessity of coercion. Necessity of coercion obtains only when a thing
is moved in a way that is contrary to its natural inclination. If I open my
hands to allow the baseball I am holding to fall toward the earth, the ball falls
in accordance with its natural inclination, not by necessity of coercion; yet
clearly its downward path is also in accordance with determinism. So
Aquinas’s denial that the will can be subject to necessity of coercion is not
equivalent to, and does not entail, the claim that freedom is incompatible
with determinism.
Now it might be objected here that I have stolen a base against libertarian
readings of Aquinas (that is, readings according to which Aquinas affirms
both that human beings sometimes act freely and that freedom is
incompatible with determinism). By defining determinism in the way I have
done, I have, it appears, committed libertarians to accepting the Principle of
Alternative Possibilities (PAP): S does A freely at t only if it is possible that S
not do A at t. Some libertarians deny PAP, and one might argue that Aquinas
is just that sort of libertarian.23 But a PAP-denying libertarian who might
wish to enlist Aquinas as an ally would first have to show that Aquinas
denies the compatibility of freedom and determinism, or something
sufficiently like determinism, in order to count as a libertarian at all. And
since (as I have argued) the usual arguments for Aquinas’s incompatibilism
fail, there is no good reason to think that Aquinas is a libertarian of any kind.
Moreover, the PAP-denying libertarian will typically say that on Aquinas’s
view, it is sufficient for an act’s being free that the act proceeds from the
agent’s own intellect and will, whether the agent has alternative possibilities
or not. If that is the case, however, it is perfectly possible for there to be free
acts of will even if, given the nature of the will, the intellect, and the external
world, no intellectual agent ever has alternative possibilities. I cannot myself
see how such a view can be accounted a version of libertarianism, but I will
not quibble over words.
The passages I have considered, and others like them, do not of course
show that Aquinas affirms that freedom and determinism are compatible, just
that he fails to give us any reason to think they are incompatible. In the
present state of scholarship, it is difficult to say anything more definitive on
this subject; Aquinas’s modal theory and his theory of causation remain
woefully understudied.
One might worry that even if Aquinas can secure for human acts a
sufficient independence from other creaturely causes for them to count as
free in some meaningful sense, he cannot defend their independence from
God as First Cause. For Aquinas holds a strong doctrine of the pervasiveness
of God’s causal activity. It is not merely that God providentially superintends
the whole of creation, but that God is immediately active in every creaturely
action, whether the creature acts by nature or by will.24 Since no creature can
thwart God’s activity—on the contrary, creatures can act only “in the power
of” the First Cause—and God’s will cannot be inefficacious, it would seem
that God causally necessitates every human action, leaving no room for
human freedom.
 Aquinas, however, insists that no such conclusion follows. In fact, the
supremacy of God’s causal activity is precisely what guarantees genuine
contingency:

for those effects that he willed to be necessary, he provided necessary causes; and for
those effects that he willed to be contingent, he ordained causes that act contingently,
which is to say, causes that can fall short [of producing an effect]. It is in accordance
with this characteristic of their causes that effects are called either necessary or
contingent, even though they are all dependent on the divine will as their first cause.…
God’s will cannot fail, but nevertheless not all its effects are necessary; some are
contingent.25

God’s activity as first cause does not override the characteristic manner of
acting that belongs to the natures he created. He moves natural causes in such
a way that their effects are natural, and he moves voluntary causes in such a
way that their effects are voluntary: “He acts in each thing in accordance
with its distinctive character.”26

NOTES
1. ST I-II q.1 a.1. All translations are my own.
2. Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London and New York: Routledge, 2003),
278.
3. ST I-II q.1 a.5. One might well think that the argument as a whole is
question-begging, since the claim that “what one desires as an ultimate end is
what he desires qua perfecting and completing him” follows from the claim
that “every thing desires its own perfection” only if we interpret the latter as
meaning something like “every thing desires only its own perfection”—but
on that interpretation, the argument already presupposes the very unity of
desire that it purports to establish. For further analysis of Aquinas’s
arguments in the opening questions of ST I-II, see Peter F. Ryan, “Must the
Acting Person Have a Single Ultimate End?” Gregorianum 82 (2001): 325–
56.
4. ST I-II q.1 a.6 ad 3.
5. Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue: The Relevance of Aquinas for
Christian Ethics (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 72–73.
6. Scott MacDonald, “Ultimate Ends in Practical Reasoning: Aquinas’s
Aristotelian Moral Psychology and Anscombe’s Fallacy,” Philosophical
Review 100 (1991): 31–66, at 40. Peter F. Ryan, “A Single Ultimate End
Only for ‘Fully Rational’ Agents? A Critique of Scott MacDonald’s
Interpretation of Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75
(2001): 433–38, argues that Aquinas is neither making empirical claims nor
analyzing the concept of fully rational action, but “trying to articulate a
necessary condition for human action as such, a condition that he thinks
follows from just what a human act is” (438). Ryan emphasizes, however,
that Aquinas’s view is empirically falsified if there are any cases of human
action that do not meet the necessary condition, and he argues in “Must the
Acting Person Have a Single Ultimate End?” that there are such cases.
7. Porter, Recovery of Virtue, 73.
8. Aquinas denies that voluntas is in general a necessary consequence of
the intellectual apprehension of something as an end. I take up the issue of
necessity and contingency in human action in the last section.
9. For an incisive explanation of the problems with translating electio as
“choice,” see Stump, Aquinas, 288–89.
10. This is what Aquinas calls “perfect fruitio,” as opposed to the
“imperfect fruitio” that one can have regarding an end that is “possessed only
in intention.” See ST I-II q.11 a.4.
11. Or rather, it sets out one possible, and fairly mainstream, reading of the
Treatise on Human Acts. For a sampling of the variety of interpretations in
recent scholarship, see Thomas Gilby, trans. and ed., Summa theologiae, vol.
17 (Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1970), Appendix 1; Alan Donagan, “Thomas
Aquinas on Human Action,” in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and
Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 642–54; Ralph McInerny,
Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1992), ch. 3; Daniel Westberg, Right
Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994), Part III; Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct:
Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998);
Stump, Aquinas, 287–94.
12. ST I-II q.15 a.3 ad 3.
13. ST I-II q.14 a.4, especially ad 1.
14. ST II-II q.156 a.1.
 15. Donagan, “Thomas Aquinas on Human Action,” 654.
16. Stump, Aquinas, 278.
17. For interpretations that find some degree of voluntarism in Aquinas,
see, e.g., David Gallagher, “Free Choice and Free Judgment in Thomas
Aquinas,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 76 (1994): 247–77;
Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Absolute Simplicity,” Faith and
Philosophy 2 (1985): 353–82; John Finnis, “Object and Intention in Moral
Judgments according to Aquinas,” The Thomist 55 (1991): 1–27; Bonnie
Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth
Century (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1995).
18. Jeffrey Hause, “Thomas Aquinas and the Voluntarists,” Medieval
Philosophy and Theology 6 (1997): 167–82, at 168. See also Scott
MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,” Revue
Internationale de Philosophie 2 (1998): 309–28.
19. See Gallagher, “Free Choice and Free Judgment in Thomas Aquinas,”
for an argument of this kind, and Hause, “Thomas Aquinas and the
Voluntarists,” for a rebuttal.
20. Scott MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Libertarian Account of Free Choice,”
Revue Internationale de Philosophie 2 (1998): 309–28 defends this sort of
reading of Aquinas.
21. Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 2002), 203.
22. Note that in QDM 6, ad 10, Aquinas says that the will’s not being
necessitated with respect to specification by any incomplete good is just like
the intellect’s not being necessitated with respect to specification by any
contingent truth. No one takes it that Aquinas is denying determinism with
respect to any particular intellectual act in which someone affirms a
contingent truth. Why then should any take it that Aquinas is denying
determinism with respect to any particular volitional act in which someone
elects a partial good?
23. Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas’s Account of Freedom: Intellect and Will,”
The Monist 80 (1997): 591–94 and Aquinas, 299–306, argues for this
understanding of Aquinas’s views.
24. QDP, q.3, a.7. Cf. SCG 3, c.66–67, 70.
25. In Peri herm. 1, lec. 14.
26. ST I q.83 a.1 ad 3.
 CHAPTER 16

EMOTIONS

PETER KING

AQUINAS’S theory of the emotions (passiones animae) is cognitivist, somatic,

and taxonomical: cognitivist because he holds that cognition is essential to
emotion; somatic because he holds that their physiological manifestations are
partially constitutive of emotions; taxonomical because he holds that
emotions fall into distinct natural kinds that are hierarchically ordered.
Aquinas supports these claims with a wealth of argument, presented in his
three extended treatments of emotion: Super Sent 3 d.15 q.2, d.26 q.1 and
d.27 q.1, dating from ca. 1252–56; QDV q.25–26, dating from ca. 1256–59,
and his masterly ST I-II q.22–48 (the “treatise on the emotions”), dating from
1271.1 His presentation and defense proved so effective that later medieval
thinkers took Aquinas’s theory as their starting point, whether they agreed
with it or not, and it remained a contender in affective psychology up to the
end of scholasticism.
Aquinas identifies eleven essentially distinct types of emotion, which he
sorts into two kinds, and which for the most part occur in conjugate pairs of
contraries: the six concupiscible emotions of love and hate, desire and
aversion, delight and distress; the five irascible emotions of hope and despair,
confidence and fear, and anger (which has no contrary).2 The concupiscible
emotions are directed at objects insofar as they appear to be good or evil,
whereas the irascible emotions are directed at objects insofar as they present
something good or evil that might be hard to achieve or to avoid. But these
are not perspicuous or evident claims; we need to begin with more
fundamental issues about emotion in general to appreciate Aquinas’s theory.
I will begin with Aquinas’s account of the nature of emotion as a
psychological phenomenon, as a feature of what he calls “sensitive appetite,”
after which I will turn to how emotion is related to other psychological
faculties, namely cognition and volition. After situating the emotions in
Aquinas’s psychological system, I will then look at his analysis of their
internal structure, which provides a taxonomy of emotional experience. I will
conclude with some brief reflections on Aquinas’s theory vis-à-vis
contemporary theories of emotion.

THE NATURE OF EMOTION

Emotion, according to Aquinas, is an objectual nonvolitional affective
psychological state. Or, in medieval terms, emotion is an actualization of the
sensitive appetite, which is a semiautonomous faculty of the soul. To see
what these definitions mean and why they are equivalent, more than a little
unpacking is needed.
Psychology, in the Aristotelian tradition, is a subordinate branch of natural
philosophy. It studies the activity of living beings qua living, and on this
score identifies three kinds of clustered activities that living beings
exemplify, stemming from three distinct principles, that is, from three types
of soul: (a) nutrition, growth, and reproduction, typical of plants and trees,
whose principle is the vegetative soul; (b) self-movement and perception of
the world, typical of animals, whose principle is the sensitive soul; (c)
thought and reasoning, typical of human beings, whose principle is the
intellective soul. These kinds of soul are arranged in a hierarchy such that the
latter include the former: anything capable of (b) is capable of (a), anything
capable of (c) is capable of (b) and (a). Aquinas famously held that these
clusters of principles were not really distinct when combined in the same
subject—his controversial stand on the unicity, as opposed to the plurality, of
substantial form—but this metaphysical disagreement can be set aside in
psychology, since all parties to the dispute agree that human beings, for
instance, have intellective and sensitive capacities, whether they stem from a
single unique principle or a pair of related principles; horses and cats do not
have the same cognitive powers as humans, however these powers be related
when found together. One question to ask, then, is whether the emotions are
features of the sensitive soul (and so common to all animals) or of the
intellective soul (and so particular to human beings).
Yet there is another question that is equally pressing. The cluster of
powers associated with the sensitive and the intellective souls are not limited
to cognition. Animals and human beings do not merely acquire and process
information about the world; they engage the world directly, being drawn to
some things and driven away by others. Therefore, side-by-side with
cognitive powers to acquire and assimilate information, there are appetitive
powers to move the subject. Another question to ask, then, is whether the
emotions are cognitive (and so dealing with information about things) or
appetitive (and so dealing with the things themselves).
Aquinas starts his answer to both questions by considering the nature of
emotion.3 For an emotion is a passio animae, literally something that the soul
“undergoes” or “experiences”—a capacity for being in a given psychological
state—rather than something the soul “does” (the way it reasons, for
instance). In medieval philosophical jargon, an emotion is a potency whose
principle of actualization is external to its subject; in contemporary terms, an
emotion is a reaction.
First, if an emotion is a reaction, it is therefore passive as regards
whatever brings it about, that is, whatever prompts the reaction. Yet the
passivity of an emotion in itself does not entail that the subject is thereby
passive with respect to that emotion. Sight is likewise a passive potency—we
can see only what is there to be seen—but we can exercise a measure of
control over what we see nonetheless: we may close our eyes, avert our gaze,
turn our head, and so on. So too we have some degree of control over the
emotions. (More will be said about this point below.) Moreover, an emotion
is a reaction that may well have causal efficacy: fear of the wolf moves the
sheep to flee, a perceived insult causes the proud man to lash out in anger,
the hope of winning motivates the runner to put on a final burst of speed at
the end of the race. Reactions can cause or motivate subjects to act; their
doing so depends on how they are related to other elements in the subject’s
psychology. That is, being in a given state can be the cause of further events,
regardless of how the subject comes to be in that state. Hence, the intrinsic
passivity of emotion is of no real importance.
Second, while emotions may be reactions, they are more fundamentally
types of motion.4 The subject of an emotion is moved by it—drawn toward
the object, as in the case of desire; or driven from it, as in the case of hatred.
This is more than mere metaphor; in the Aristotelian tradition, “movement”
includes more than just change of place. For in living animals the soul plays
two roles: on the one hand, it is the substantial form of the body, which
vivifies the body and unifies the composite; on the other hand, it exercises its
operations through the body, which it informs, causing it to change (“move”)
from one state to another. Emotions, Aquinas maintains, are psychophysical
phenomena: the apprehension of an insult leads to (a) the desire for revenge,
which is the formal aspect of anger, and (b) the boiling of blood around the
heart—or as we should say the increase in heart rate, blood circulation, the
flow of adrenaline, and so on—which is the material aspect of anger.5 The
desire (a) is the formal cause of the physiological changes described in (b),
set in motion by the soul.6 By the same token, the physiological changes in
(b) are what make the associated psychological state an emotion: a desire is
only a desire if its motivational force is felt in the proper way, and mutatis
mutandis for the other emotions.7
These considerations about the nature of emotion suggest a single reply to
the two questions posed above, namely that the emotions properly belong to
the sensitive appetite. Aquinas puts this reply concisely in QDV, q.26, a.3:

Since the body is altered due to an operation of the soul in the case of emotion, it must
be the sort of power that is joined to a bodily organ and whose function it is to alter the
body. Hence emotion is not in the intellective part [of the soul], which does not pertain
to the actualization of some bodily organ. Nor again is it in sensitive apprehension, since
from sense-apprehension there follows movement in the body only through the
mediation of the appetitive power, which is the immediate moving cause.8

Emotions are sensitive rather than intellective because they essentially

involve physiological changes, unlike the operations of the intellective
faculties of intellect and will;9 they are appetitive rather than cognitive
because they “move” the body, that is, because they engender changes in the
subject’s bodily states—even the psychological movement involved in
emotion is typical of the appetitive rather than the cognitive powers, since the
appetitive powers engage the subject directly with things in the world.10
More generally, Aquinas argues that emotions motivate action, as they
unquestionably do, only if representations of their objects occur in a context
in which they move the agent (as in the appetite) rather than one in which
such representations are merely assessed for the information they convey (as
in cognition). Thus, the emotions must belong to the appetitive part of the
soul.
Hence, there are four distinct types of psychological activity: (1) sensitive
cognition also known as perception, the domain of the external and internal
senses; (2) sensitive appetite, the domain of the emotions; (3) intellective
cognition, the domain of thought and reasoning; (4) intellective appetite, the
domain of free will. The first pair is common to all animals and their exercise
is bound up with the body; the latter pair is specific to human beings and
their exercise is carried out independently of the body. In particular, as
features of the sensitive soul, the emotions are common to animals and to
human beings. Aquinas’s account of emotion must therefore be general
enough to apply to nonhuman animals, as well as to human beings.
A final point before turning to examine how the emotions are related to
the other types of psychological activity listed above. For Aquinas, emotion
has both a formal (psychological) and a material (somatic) component, as we
have seen; hence, an emotion is primarily a state of the entire unified soul–
body composite.11 It is the bereft mother who grieves for her lost son, not
merely or primarily her soul that grieves, or for that matter her body. Grief is
not a mere mental phenomenon, though it of course does involve mental
states. As we would put Aquinas’s point today, emotions are states of
persons.

COGNITION, VOLITION, AND EMOTION

The preceding section glossed over the details of how Aquinas takes emotion
to be related to other psychological faculties, in particular to cognition (both
sensitive and intellective), and volition. With regard to cognition, there are
two topics to be considered: whether cognition is an essential part of an
emotion, and the extent to which cognition can influence or control emotion.
The issue whether cognition might be essential to emotion arises from
reflecting on Aquinas’s conclusion that an emotion is a power of the sensitive
appetite, and hence categorically distinct from any cognitive act—a
consideration that might seem to warrant the inference that Aquinas is a
“feeling-theorist” about the emotions, holding the position that emotions are
essentially (pure) feelings that are known entirely through their
phenomenological and qualitative properties.12
Now this inference might be warranted if Aquinas were to hold that the
intentional aspect of emotion could be separated (at least by divine power)
from the actualization of the sensitive appetite, which would thereby lack any
cognitive element. This is not his position, however. Aquinas holds that the
sensitive appetite “inherits” its intentional character from cognition, which
must therefore figure in the account of emotion. Consider, for example, the
case of fear—the emotion consequent upon the perception of some thing as a
(sensible) imminent evil that is hard to avoid, which is associated with
heightened respiration and heart rate, the sudden flow of adrenaline, and the
like, where fright is the cause of flight. This is not specifically human; a
sheep experiences fear when confronted with a wolf, in the well-worn
example. Analyzing the stages of the process sketched here will make
Aquinas’s position clear.
First, the sheep has a cognitive act, more specifically an act of sensitive
cognition: it sees the approaching wolf. This act, properly speaking, is an
actualization of the sheep’s passive power of vision. As such, like the
actualization of any passive power, it takes place due to an external principle,
in this instance the wolf. The wolf, as the external principle of the sheep’s
cognitive act, thereby becomes its object; the sheep has a seeing-of-a-wolf,
after all. The point holds generally: the external principles that reduce passive
potencies to acts are their objects.
Sensitive cognition is the paradigm case, but Aquinas does note that the
same analysis can be applied when the object is derived not from occurrent
sensing but rather from memory via the imagination. The cognitive act alone,
however, whether derived from sense or from memory, is not sufficient for
an emotion; a camera linked to image-analysis software could just as well
register the (sudden) presence of a wolf without feeling a thing. In addition to
the simple cognitive act of seeing a wolf, an act of another type takes place,
one that links the cognitive to the appetitive faculties. Aquinas describes it as
follows:

An animal must seek out or avoid some things not merely because they are suitable or
unsuitable to the senses, but according to certain other uses and advantages or
disadvantages. For example, a sheep seeing an approaching wolf runs away—not due to
its unsightly colour or shape, but as if it were a natural enemy. Likewise, a bird collects
straw not because it is pleasing to sense but because it is useful for building a nest. Thus
it is necessary for an animal to perceive intentiones of this sort, which the exterior senses
do not perceive. There must be some distinct principle … the proper sense and the
common sense are appointed for the reception of sensible forms, but the estimative
power (uis aestimatiua) is appointed for apprehending intentiones, which are not
received through sensing.13
The object of the animal’s cognitive act, be it the wolf for the sheep or the
straw for the bird, is also perceived under some intentio or other: the sheep
perceives the wolf as a natural enemy, the bird perceives the straw as useful
in the construction of a nest.14 These are not perceptible properties. The
wolf’s dangerousness is not perceived the way its “unsightly color” is. Yet
the emphasis Aquinas puts on intentiones not being perceptible properties—
to the extent of postulating a distinct psychological faculty to perceive them
at all—is misleading. After all, no dispositional property is strictly speaking
perceptible: rationality, ferociousness, fragility, and the like are not apparent
to the exterior senses alone. (Neither is the wolfhood of the wolf, or in
general the substance of anything.) No wonder that friendliness or hatred are
not perceptible.15 Yet far more important for Aquinas’s purposes is his
recognition that intentiones are what we should call today evaluative
response-dependent concepts. The sheep regards the wolf as a threat, and the
bird regards straw as useful, because of the kind of thing each is. The sheep
does not regard straw as useful, since it does not build nests of straw; the bird
does not regard the wolf as a threat (or as much of one), since it can easily fly
away. At bottom this is a built-in capacity: “animals perceive these sorts of
intentiones only through a kind of natural instinct,”16 though it may be
modified through conditioning and habituation, as when the family watchdog
learns that strangers are the only proper targets of its anger, or, in the case of
human beings, through the exercise of higher faculties (as we shall see
shortly). For now let us take the point that such evaluative response-
dependent concepts occur after acts of simple cognition.
Aquinas offers a few examples of intentiones: the sheep perceives the
wolf as inimical, the bird perceives the straw as useful, or vaguely
“advantages and disadvantages.” Now it might be thought that these are a
motley collection as varied as the nature of evaluation itself (“evaluation”
being the root meaning of aestimatio). But there is a general way to describe
intentiones as such, that is, a way to characterize anything that is to count as
an intentio at all, much the way that for anything to count as visible it must
have color.17 It is sensible good or evil, where “sensible” refers to the
subject’s perception of its object as good or as evil.18 Hence, an intentio must
present some thing to its subject as a good or as an evil in some fashion.
When the sheep perceives the approaching wolf, it may evaluate the wolf as a
danger—that is, as an imminent evil—which is hard to avoid.19 The initial
simple cognition of the wolf is augmented with this evaluative response-
dependent cognition, each cognition arguably caused by the wolf, or more
exactly by the wolf given the natures of the wolf and the sheep.
So much for the cognitive side of things. At this point there is a hand-off
to the sensitive appetite: “the lower appetitive power does not naturally tend
to anything until after that thing has been presented to it under the aspect of
its proper object,”20 since in the case of animals “the sensitive appetite is apt
to be moved by the estimative power, as when a sheep esteems a wolf as
inimical and is then afraid.”21 The sensitive appetite, as a passive power, is
reduced from potency to act when it “inherits” objectual content from the
evaluative response-dependent concept (which is the actualization of the
estimative power). That is to say, the sheep has an act of the sensitive
appetite directed at the wolf, which is presented to the sensitive appetite as a
hard-to-avoid imminent evil. This “proper object” therefore has a double
causal role. On the one hand, it reduces the sensitive appetite from potency to
act and is thereby an efficient cause of the resulting act. On the other hand, it
makes the resulting act be the kind of act it is and is thereby its formal cause.
For the resulting act of the sensitive appetite is the emotion of fear when it is
caused by the formal object the wolf as a hard-to-avoid imminent evil, with
the appropriate associated somatic responses. If an object were presented as a
hard-to-attain imminent good, say, the way the sheep might appear to the
wolf, the act of the wolf’s sensitive appetite would be hope.
Emotions are therefore objectual, since the sensitive appetite is the passive
recipient of the causal and formal agency of the external principle, the wolf
in the case of the fearful sheep.
Aquinas is therefore a cognitivist about emotion, since cognitive acts are
not only causal preconditions of emotion, but contribute their formal causes
as well. The emotion is not the feeling alone: it literally would not be the
emotion it is without the formal object it has, and there would be no emotion
at all in the absence of a formal object. This is not to say that there cannot be
“objectless” states of the sort that are so important to contemporary
philosophy, such as angst, dread, or boredom, but that they are not to be
understood as emotions: they are rather akin to moods, somatic states that
influence psychological states.22 Despite being a cognitivist, however,
Aquinas is also an externalist. For the pair of cognitive acts do not in
themselves have motivational force: they act as efficient and final causes of
the acts of the sensitive appetite, which do motivate the agent, but even the
evaluative judgment implicit in the response-dependent conception of
something as a good or an evil does not cause responsive action directly.
The point is important, because the causal link between cognition and
appetite is more complicated in the case of human beings. Even in the case of
animals such as sheep, the “natural tendency” or “instinct” to respond
emotionally in a certain way can be tempered and perhaps even changed by
conditioning and habituation. The extent to which this is possible depends on
the type of animal, and perhaps even on the particular animal. Kittens and
puppies raised together often remain quite friendly with one another as cats
and dogs, though they respond in more traditional ways to unknown dogs and
cats; sheep, on the other hand, might never learn to be tolerant of wolves, no
matter how tame. The strength of the causal linkage in each animal, and its
susceptibility to conditioning and to habituation, make all the difference, and
these are matters for empirical investigation.
Human beings have higher cognitive faculties, and, in consequence, a
more complex and sophisticated emotional life. For one thing, instead of an
estimative power, humans have a general “cogitative power,” which is
sometimes called “particular reason” on the grounds that it combines
individual or particular intentiones.23 Aquinas says little about human
cogitative power, and nothing about what it is to “combine” intentiones. Nor
do the details really matter. What does matter to Aquinas is that thinking and
reasoning affect the evaluative response-dependent concepts that trigger the
sensitive appetite, and that human “cogitative power” is involved in the
process.
We can now turn to the second of the two questions posed at the start of
this section, namely the extent to which cognition can influence and control
emotions.24 We have already seen that some nonhuman animals are
susceptible to conditioning. And, like other animals, humans have some
instinctual emotional responses (fear of falling) and some habituated
responses (pleasure at the sight of a loved one). But human beings, unlike
animals, have an extensive and rich set of conceptual resources that can be
deployed even at the level of mere conditioning: the botanist’s instant delight
at recognizing an unknown species; the anger that follows upon a perceived
slight in a complex but thoroughly assimilated code of honor; and so on.25
Nor is it merely a matter of human beings having a larger conceptual
apparatus; human beings are much less tied to their present circumstances,
being better able to imagine things in other places and at other times, and in
addition are able to conceptualize the world in a universal, rather than merely
a particular, way. They can hope for a happier afterlife, become angry at the
memory of a rebuke, love wisdom, hate spiders, be saddened at the loss of
the sculptures of Phidias—all beyond the capacity of animals.
Aquinas mentions two ways in which human emotion is “cognitively
penetrable,” that is, capable of being consciously affected by changes in
belief or thought after the quasi-instinctual initial response of the sensitive
appetite.26 For although an emotional response “is not completely in our
power since it precedes the judgment of reason, it is in our power to some
extent.”27 First, we can imaginatively present one and the same thing in
different lights, via the imagination, and thereby trigger different emotional
responses.28 The divorced spouse can think of the former partner with love or
hatred, depending on which past situations and events are recalled or
imagined. Likewise, the imagination can provoke emotional responses by the
force of what it imagines. Aquinas offers the example of a believer who
reflects on punishment in the afterlife: “imagining the fire burning and the
worm gnawing and the like, there follows the emotion of fear in his sensitive
appetite.”29 Since deliberate imagination of this sort is in the agent’s
conscious control, it is clear that some emotions are indirectly subject to the
control of reason—though it is a bit like controlling digestion by being able
to pick and choose what one eats.
Second, Aquinas notes that the intellect can influence emotion: “anyone
can experience for himself that by applying some universal considerations,
anger or fear or the like can then be mitigated or even stirred up.”30
Reminding oneself of general truths can affect the understanding of a
particular situation. Grief over the death of a friend can be mitigated by
thinking of the general truth that we all die; confidence can increase by the
thought that only the brave deserve the fair; and so on. Here Aquinas is
somewhat hamstrung by his view that the intellect is the realm of the
universal, whereas sense is the realm of the particular; if we allow him to
relax his strict insistence on this dividing principle, then there are all sorts of
ways in which intellectual cognition can (attempt to) influence one’s
emotions: thinking about the stringent air-safety regulations in place in order
to curb one’s fear of flying, for example, or thinking about how even lesser
lights have been awarded the Nobel Prize in order to boost one’s hopes. The
factor in common in all these cases is that the emotional responses seem to
follow (when they follow at all) merely upon having the thoughts.
Such techniques do not always lead to success. For the emotions do not
always submit to the dictates of reason or imagination; they are unruly and
may resist their commands.31 Yet strictly speaking, it is not the role of reason
to “command” at all. That is the province not of cognition, but of the
intellective appetite, that is, the will.
Aquinas argues that emotion is the province of the sensitive rather than
the intellective appetite on the grounds that the latter, like the intellect itself,
has a purely nonphysical operation.32 Yet just as in the case of cognition, the
presence of higher intellective faculties allows human beings to influence
their emotions in ways that are not open to animals, though not to dictate
them; we cannot simply choose not to have an emotional response, though
we can have some effect on what that response might be. Aquinas describes
three ways in which this can happen.
First, the sensitive appetite is subordinate to the will, and this
subordination affects the kinds of emotions that accompany volition:

In the case of powers that are connected and ordered to one another, it happens that an
intense movement in one of them (and especially in the higher one) overflows into the
other. Accordingly, when the movement of the will is directed to something through
choice, even the [emotions] follow this movement of the will.33

If someone makes a choice that wholeheartedly commits him to a course of

action, say, he may thereupon feel delight and hope in its pursuit. Such an
“overflow” from the will is an emotion whose inception is in the very choice
of the will. In general, the process of habituating emotional responses to
choice is part of acquiring practical wisdom, which includes satisfaction with
the choices one has made.34
Second, the will is not only the principle of choice; it also governs
consent. We may consent to our emotions, or withhold consent from them,
thereby strengthening or weakening the emotional response. (The latter is
usually described as “resisting” the emotion.) In the ordinary course of events
an emotion follows upon sensitive cognition, as described above, and so
“precedes the judgment of reason” in such a way that there is no issue of
consent, whether explicit or implicit.35 Once the emotional response occurs,
the will may then endorse or reject it.
Third, the will can directly affect what Aquinas calls the “motive” or
“executive” power, so as to prevent or facilitate the emotion from being
causally efficacious.36 When a human being perceives the sudden approach
of a wolf, he experiences fear as a natural reaction, but unlike the sheep he
may exercise his free will and choose to stand his ground in the face of his
fear, blocking his natural impulse to flee. He would have no success in the
face of his more immediate somatic responses; however, he may tremble,
grow pale, break into a sweat; his teeth may chatter, his knees knock, his
heart race (the physiological expressions of fear that Aquinas catalogues in
ST I-II q.44).

THE TAXONOMY OF EMOTION

Aquinas adopts the traditional distinction of emotions into two fundamental
types, namely concupiscible and irascible, and sets out to establish the
distinction on a firm philosophical basis.37 He sketches three arguments that
the concupiscible emotions and the irascible emotions genuinely differ and
“are not reducible to a single principle”:

• The Interference Argument. The two types of emotions must be different

in kind because they are able to interfere with one another: stirring up
anger can lessen desire, and conversely stirring up desire can lessen
anger.
• The Submission Argument. Sometimes the soul “submits” to distress,
against the inclination of desire, so that it may fight against things
opposed to it.
• The Champion Argument. The irascible emotions arise from the
concupiscible emotions, to help them succeed, whereupon they
terminate in them. Anger, for example, may be born from distress and,
in taking revenge, thereby relieve the distress and end in delight.

A few comments about each are in order.

The Interference Argument, which is ultimately derived from Plato’s
Republic, turns on the fact that the distinct kinds of emotions can be directed
at one and the same real thing while nevertheless differing in their formal
(intensional) objects. One and the same person can be simultaneously
alluring and annoying, for example; these contrary characterizations of the
same person conflict with one another. Hence, the emotions must be different
in kind, not merely in degree. For while it is true that we speak of the relative
strength of the concupiscible and the irascible emotions, as when we say that
anger finally won out over desire, this is not to be understood literally. It is
quite different, Aquinas maintains, from the case in which two emotions of
the same sort compete with one another when I am presented with a choice
between chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream, for instance, where I
have only to consult the relative strength of each desire to make the choice.
But when the emotions are of different kinds, their strength does not
accurately predict the agent’s behavior. Even a tempting bone will not deflect
a dog, once angered, from attacking someone.
The Submission Argument takes a different tack. Sometimes the sensible
good that is hard to attain is such that the difficulty is an intrinsic feature of
the good in question: we want to win the race, become fluent in Icelandic,
learn quantum physics. But sometimes the difficulty is in the surrounding
circumstances, not inherent in the object itself. It is no challenge to make tea,
unless one is stranded on a desert island with tea but no kettle. In cases such
as the latter, Aquinas declares, the end can be unproblematically desired,
independent of the difficulties associated with it; drinking tea is not an
intrinsically difficult or challenging enterprise, even if it is so in certain
circumstances. In such cases, though, where the difficulties are not intrinsic
to the good sought, one must “submit” to them to reach the desired goal. The
implications of the Submission Argument should be clear. Aquinas holds that
we cannot understand all behavior in terms of simple “push/pull” desires, in
particular instances of submission to present pain, which involve not merely
weighing the relative strength of the desires but at least rudimentary means–
ends calculation.
The Champion Argument turns on the fact that the concupiscible emotions
are comprehensible in their own terms, whereas the irascible emotions make
sense only against the background of the concupiscible emotions. Aquinas
presents this as partly a logical claim and partly a causal claim. Overcoming
the difficulties means attaining the sensible good, which prompts the
emotional response of delight; so much is simple logic. But other connections
among the emotions, such as distress, anger, and revenge, are causal rather
than logical in nature. Aquinas’s point is that in such causal connections, the
irascible emotions “come to the aid” of the concupiscible emotions, the
former being “champions” of the latter. They can do so in virtue of being a
different kind of emotion, for otherwise they would be a constitutive part of
the initial (concupiscible) emotional response to the object, not something
further.
Having established by these three arguments that there are two basic kinds
of emotions, Aquinas then turns to isolating and specifying the distinct
varieties of each. Before we turn to the details of his account, however, it is
worth remarking on his method. Although Aquinas will be offering a
taxonomic theory of emotion, identifying distinct kinds of emotions and their
interrelations, his procedure is quite unlike the standard sorts of taxonomies
found in ordinary genus/species accounts, or even the less rigid taxonomies
found in botany and biology. The fundamental divide between the
concupiscible and the irascible emotions is not due to a differentiating
feature, but to a distinction of their formal objects: sensible good/evil taken
absolutely and sensible good/evil that is difficult. (If anything, the latter looks
like a candidate for a species of the former.) Once we accept this distinction,
however, we might think that we could identify the subordinate kinds of each
type by proper differentiae—presumably differentiating the formal objects of
each, the irascible emotions distinguished by different kinds of difficulty, for
instance. But this is not how Aquinas proceeds. Instead, he uses some
technical apparatus from Aristotle’s natural philosophy to generate a set of
principles so as to arrange the six concupiscible and the five irascible
emotions into rational groups of coordinate pairs,38 on the grounds that
emotions are, literally, “motions” of the sensitive appetite.
In brief, his account is as follows. Physics teaches us that there are two
types of motion: (a) movement either toward or away from a given terminus,
in which case it is the “direction” of the movements that are contrarily
opposed; (b) movement between two contrary opposed termini.
Concupiscible emotions are directed at their object solely as (sensible) good
or evil. If the terminus in question is the good, then, Aquinas maintains that
the sensitive appetite cannot fail to move toward it; if evil, it cannot fail to
move away from it. Hence (a) does not apply. The concupiscible emotions
are therefore properly understood as types of movement between contrary
termini, that is, of type (b), between the contrary opposites of good and evil:
love, desire, and delight toward the good; hatred, aversion, and distress
toward evil. The grouping of concupiscible emotions into three conjugate
pairs has to do with the flavor of the movement each exemplifies: love and
hate are simple tendencies of the sensitive appetite with respect to their
objects; they are “emotional attitudes” toward the object, pure and simple—
an affective stance to it. The second conjugate pair, desire and aversion,
involve moving toward or away from their objects, being drawn to or driven
from it. The third conjugate pair, delight and distress, has to do with the
affective stance one is in when attaining the object.
Irascible emotions, on the other hand, are directed at (sensible) good and
evil not in themselves but qua difficult, and so are capable of both directions
of movement implicit in (a), as well as movement between contrary termini
as in (b). They are properly categorized according to (a), however. Aquinas
insists that the irascible emotions do not characterize approach and
withdrawal in terms of good or evil but in terms of the surmountability or
insurmountability of the difficulties associated with the (good or evil) object.
Hope is the irascible emotion that sees its object as a surmountable
(attainable) difficult good, so that the difficult good “approaches” the agent’s
possession; despair, with which hope is paired, sees its object as an
insurmountable (unattainable) difficult good, so that the difficult good
“withdraws” from the agent’s possession. Likewise, confidence is the
irascible emotion that regards its object as a surmountable (avoidable)
difficult evil, and fear, with which confidence is paired, regards its object as
an insurmountable (unavoidable) difficult evil. Finally, there is the irascible
emotion par excellence, anger, which is unique in not having a contrary; here
the sensitive appetite has achieved the evil that was difficult to avoid and
“rests” in it, taking in the full measure of its difficulty. Each conjugate pair
represents a flavor of motion, as with the corresponding concupiscible
emotion: the simple tendency with respect to the object, surmountable
obstacle to something good (hope) or insurmountable escape from something
evil (despair); movement with respect to the possession of the object, either
toward an attainable good (confidence) or away from an unavoidable evil
(fear); and finally anger, which dwells on a present evil in its possession that
is hard to overcome, and so is a form of “rest.”
As noted, irascible emotions also involve movement of type (b), namely
between contrary opposites, although in a more complicated way than the
concupiscible emotions. Moreover, the irascible emotions are grouped
somewhat differently in respect of (b). Hope and fear are paired together in
that they each regard their (difficult) objects as likely to be possessed by the
agent, hope directed at something good and fear directed at something evil.
The same reasoning presumably applies to confidence and despair, each
regarding its (difficult) object as likely to not be possessed by the agent,
confidence at the prospect of being without something evil and despair at the
prospect of being without something good. Anger, as before, obeys a slightly
different logic, since it has for its object a present evil that is already
possessed and difficult to overcome; there is no contrary irascible emotion of
overcoming directed at the possession of a present good; indeed the only
proper response to the possession of a present good is delight, a
concupiscible emotion.39
Aquinas thus takes the overall taxonomic structure of the eleven kinds of
emotion to be as follows:

Concupiscible Irascible
Passions Passions
[simple Hope-
Love-Hate
tendency] Despair
Desire- Confidence-
[movement]
Aversion Fear
Joy-Sorrow [repose] Anger

Given the complexity of the underlying division (not all of which is

represented here), it is not clear how to extend the taxonomy to bring into its
scope further species of each kind of emotion. In the event, Aquinas does not
do this, preferring instead to discuss each emotion one-by-one and to
describe the subtypes and varieties of each, as required.
Two examples will give the flavor of Aquinas’s discussion of the
subspecies of emotions, each the paradigm of its type: love for the
concupiscible emotions, anger for the irascible emotions.
In ST I-II q.26 a.4, Aquinas puts forward his basic division of love into
friendly (amor amicitiae) and covetous (amor concupiscentiae). This
division follows upon his observation that love, strictly speaking, has two
targets: the item, seen as a good thing, and the subject who receives the item.
Covetous love is love that gives precedence to the good thing, which is
typically wanted for oneself; friendly love is love that gives precedence to the
recipient, typically someone other than oneself, for whom the good thing is
wanted. The two kinds of love are not entirely on a par. The object of
friendly love is loved simply and per se, whereas the object of covetous love
is not loved for itself but for something else. Friendly love is also known as
“benevolence” (in q.27 a.3) because of this concern for the other for its own
sake, which gives it priority over covetous love. Friendly love is even found
among animals, the best instance being the friendly love a mother has for her
offspring. The two kinds of love, then, seem quite close to being species of
the genus love in the traditional sense.
In ST I-II q.46 a.8, Aquinas turns to the types of anger (given traditional
expression by John of Damascus): wrath, ill-will, and rancor. He proposes
that each increases anger: wrath, which might better be termed irascibility (as
Aquinas remarks in ad 2), denotes the facility of the movement to anger; ill-
will the rehearsal of what caused the anger; and rancor the vindictiveness or
unquenchable impulse for revenge. But none of these is in any clear sense a
“division” of the formal object of anger, namely the desire to overcome a
difficult present evil that poses an obstacle. Aquinas seems to recognize the
justice of this point, since in his answer to the first objection, which charged
that Damascene’s enumeration was an accidental division, he declares that
“those things that help to complete anger in some fashion are not altogether
accidental to it; as a result, nothing prevents them from providing it with a
specific differentia” (ad 1). Perhaps not, but that is hardly the same as saying
that they do provide specific differentiae, which Aquinas carefully does not
say. Nor is there any discussion of what we might think of as better
candidates for species of anger: annoyance, irritation, rage, and the like.
Aquinas seems interested only in finding some way to accommodate
tradition, rather than exploring the question in its own right. Later
commentators such as Cajetan took note of Aquinas’s understated
conclusion; in his commentary ad loc., Cajetan concluded that wrath, ill-will,
and rancor are not genuine species of anger for Aquinas.
The upshot is that Aquinas leaves us with a careful taxonomy of the
emotions at the generic level, along with a variety of observations about
some of their species, with no attempt to systematize them. His work on this
score remains incomplete. Yet there is good reason to think that this is not
what he meant to do. In the remainder of his “treatise on the emotions,”40
Aquinas takes up each of the eleven kinds of emotions in detail. His analysis
of each conforms to a rough pattern: he discusses the causes of the emotion,
its nature and formal object, and its effects. Sometimes issues specific to a
given emotion are taken up, for example, whether it is possible to hate
oneself, given the nature of hatred;41 sometimes causal connections are
explored, for example, whether sympathy from friends can help to alleviate
distress.42 Identifying distinct species of emotion does not seem to be one of
his main concerns. In many ways, that is just as well, since taxonomic
theories have lost the luster they once possessed, but Aquinas’s particular
discussions of individual emotions are still psychologically acute and
philosophically rewarding.43

CONCLUSION
The last section might well lead one to wonder about Aquinas’s theoretical
aims, if he is neither giving us quite an empirical theory founded on
observation nor a taxonomic genera-species classificatory scheme. There is
much to say about the sense in which Aquinas offers us a theory of emotion,
but perhaps the best way to approach the issue is to see how his theory is
related to contemporary theories of emotion.
We have already seen that Aquinas is a cognitivist (of sorts) about
emotion, a finding that puts him with the majority of philosophical treatments
of emotion in the last fifty years. But the discussion in the first section gives
us an even closer comparison. Given the role played in the psychological
economy by sensitive cognition, on the one side, and by sensitive appetite, on
the other side, it is clear that Aquinas’s account of the emotions is in many
ways like contemporary “perception theories” of emotion.44 Such perception-
theories diverge from standard cognitivist accounts in taking the evaluative
element crucial to emotion to be not a judgment, with all the cognitive
apparatus judgments draw in their train, but rather a perception, or something
very like a perception. From the safety of the sidewalk, I might perceive the
onrushing traffic as a threat even though I know that I am quite safe where I
am; if the evaluative judgment that I am in danger were a requisite part of the
emotion of fear, then it seems hard to explain my fear in the face of my
knowledge of my safety. Perceptions, however, need not be reasoned, though
perhaps permeable to reason; they can be had by nonintellectual subjects,
such as babies and dogs, who we want to say experience genuine if primitive
emotions; and they can deploy concepts without requiring their articulation—
the sheep may regard the wolf as dangerous without having the concept of
danger at all.
Aquinas’s account of the emotions is in many ways close to such
perception theories. Indeed, Aquinas exploits the structural parallel between
perception and emotion frequently, and, as with perceptions, he holds that the
most fundamental way to understand emotions is to see them as modes of
engagement with the world. Again, Aquinas holds that the cognitive
penetrability of emotion derives from the susceptibility of perception to being
affected by changes in beliefs and thoughts. The rich array of psychological
faculties that Aquinas sketches, with the complex interplay among cognitive
and affective components, offers a congenial background for the
contemporary cognitive scientist accustomed to working with mental
modules and their transference of information via representations. If Aquinas
draws a sharper line between perceptual and intellectual cognition than most
theorists are comfortable with today, that is a small drawback for being
centuries ahead of his time. The taxonomic structure he proposes might then
be taken as a first attempt to isolate the natural kinds of emotion as an
affective phenomenon. In short, we could preserve his insights and his
general approach to the emotions, and perhaps even the general taxonomy,
but leave behind some of its more medieval features, such as the appeal to
the Aristotelian theory of motion, or the necessarily immaterial character of
intellectual functions. But a remarkable amount of Aquinas’s analysis bears
worthwhile comparison to contemporary theories, as well as being a stunning
intellectual accomplishment in its own right.

NOTES
1. I adopt the dating of these works given in Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., ed.
and trans., Thomas Aquinas, Le Verbe incarné, vol. 3, Summa theologiae IIIa
Questions 7–15 (Paris: Cerf, 2002).
2. Respectively, amor and odium, desiderium and fuga, gaudium and
tristitia; spes and desperatio, audacia and timor, and ira. Aquinas adopts this
list and much of the structure that supports it from Jean de la Rochelle
(Summa de anima), by way of his mentor Albert the Great: see Simo
Knuutila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004) and Peter King, “Emotions in Medieval Thought,” in
Peter Goldie, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), 167–87.
3. QDV, q.26, a.2 and ST I-II q.22 a.1.
4. See Peter King, “Aquinas on the Passions,” in Scott MacDonald and
Eleonore Stump, eds., Aquinas’s Moral Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1998), 101–132; Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the
Passions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), ch. 2.3, and the
discussion in §4.
5. See ST I-II q.44 a.1: “In the case of the emotions, the formal aspect is
the motion of the appetitive potency and the material element is a
physiological change, where the one is proportionate to the other.”
6. Aquinas takes this direction of influence from the soul to the body as a
mark of emotion, which he calls by the name of “animal emotion” (passio
animalis) in QDV, q.26, a.2.
7. A corollary of Aquinas’s insistence that physiological changes are
essential to emotion is that nonphysical beings, such as angels and God,
strictly speaking do not have emotions. See Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the
Passions, ch. 2.2 and the references therein, as well as Peter King,
“Dispassionate Passions,” in Martin Pickave and Lisa Shapiro, eds., Reason
and Emotion in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
8. All translations are my own. Latin texts are cited from their respective
editions, with the punctuation as given (not always respected in the
translations).
9. ST I-II q.22 a.3. Aquinas offers two further arguments for the view that
emotions do not belong to the will: the will is a free active power whereas
emotions are not, and the will tends to a universal object whereas the
emotions tend to a particular object (QDV, q.25, a.1).
10. ST I-II q.22 a.2. This is Aquinas’s preferred proof when he has to give a
brief account of why the emotions are appetitive: see, e.g., Diu. nom. 2.4
§191 or In NE, 2.5 §291.
11. See Diana Cates, Aquinas on the Emotions: A Religious-Ethical Inquiry
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009), ch. 4.
12. See Shawn Floyd, “Aquinas on Emotion: A Response to Some Recent
Interpretations,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 15 (1998): 161–75; Patrick
Gorevan, “Aquinas and Emotional Theory Today: Mind–Body, Cognitivism,
and Connaturality,” Acta Philosophica 9 (2000): 141–51; and Thomas Ryan,
“Revisiting Affective Knowledge and Connaturality in Aquinas,”
Theological Studies 66 (2005): 49–68.
13. ST I q.78 a.4. See also Super Sent 3 d.26, q.1, a.2, §25, where much the
same account is given. Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, ch. 3.3,
discusses the estimative and memorative powers in Aquinas with regard to
the emotions.
14. It is unclear whether this cognitive act is distinct from the initial
perception of the wolf—perhaps the sheep’s “concept” of a wolf has
dangerousness built into it—but it is enough for our purposes that it is
logically distinct.
15. These are the examples that Aquinas mentions in Super Sent 3, d.26,
q.1, a.2, §25.
16. Ibid. The “natural instinct” may be nothing more complicated than the
way the animal is wetwired: whenever a wolf-form occurs in sensitive
cognition, the adrenal glands begin pumping, heart rate increases, and so on.
17. This is the medieval notion of the “proper object” or the “primary
object”—the terminology was fluid—of a cognitive potency, in this case of
the estimative power.
18. The terminology is not perspicuous, since the intentio, which must be a
form of sensible good or evil, is, as Aquinas has remarked, not a perceptible
feature of the object. The key point to keep in mind is that “sensible” here
refers to the particular that is grasped in its presentation as a good or an evil.
19. As we shall see in more detail in §3, the formal object of the irascible
emotions is sensible good or evil that is difficult.
20. QDV, q.25, a.4, ad 4.
21. ST I q.81 a.3.
22. Moods were often thought to be completely explained in purely
physiological terms, having to do with the relative balance among the four
bodily humors. Acts of the vegetative soul in the higher animals, such as
sexual arousal or hunger, were also thought to be objectless and hence not
emotions—a view in keeping with their contemporary classification as drives
or urges. Aquinas points out that male impotence effectively demonstrates
the difference between mere bodily arousal and sexual desire, a form of the
emotion of desire (concupiscentia) and an altogether different thing.
23. ST I q.78 a.4 and q.81 a.3.
24. See Claudia Murphy, “Aquinas on Our Responsibility for Our
Emotions,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999): 163–205; and
Elisabeth Uffenheimer-Lippens, “Rationalized Passions and Passionate
Rationality: Thomas Aquinas on the Relation between Reason and the
Passions,” Review of Metaphysics 56 (2003): 525–58.
25. Aquinas notes that the irascible emotions, in virtue of having a more
complex formal object, are thereby “closer to reason” and more susceptible
to its influence. He takes this point from Aristotle, In NE 7.6 (1149a25–b3):
see for instance Super Sent 3, d.26, q.1, a.2, §28 and QDV, q.25, a.6.
26. Of course, humans can condition themselves over time through a
variety of techniques: training, education, brainwashing, self-hypnosis,
repetitive practice, and so on. But here we are concerned with Aquinas’s
focus on the ways in which someone can attempt to affect his or her
emotional responses directly.
27. QDV, q.25, a.5.
28. QDV, q.25, a.4.
29. QDV, q.26, a.3, ad 13. See Umberto Galeazzi, “Le passioni secondo
Tommaso d’Aquino: De veritate q. 26,” Aquinas 47 (2004): 547–70.
30. ST I q.81 a.3.
31. ST I-II q.17 a.7. See also ST I q.81 a.3 ad 2. The allusion is to Aristotle,
Pol. 1.2 (1254b2–5), in which the rational part of the soul is said to control
the irrational part “with a political and royal rule” rather than a tyrannical
rule.
32. QDV, q.26, a.3 and ST I-II q.22 a.3.
33. QDV, q.25, a.4. See also ST I-II q.24 a.4 ad 1.
34. Aquinas takes this point from Aristotle, In NE 2.5 (1105b25–29).
35. QDV, q.25, a.5, ad 5.
36. QDV, q.25, a.4.
37. The following discussion is derived from Super Sent 3, d.26, q.1, a.2;
QDV, q.25, a.2; and ST I-II q.81 a.2.
38. There seems to have been some development in Aquinas’s conception
of how the emotions are structured and organized. The account given here
mostly follows the mature analysis given in ST I-II q.23 a.2–4. This is
Aquinas’s major advance over Jean de la Rochelle, who had organized
emotions into their conjugate pairs, but who did not offer any principles
underlying their organization.
39. This last point illustrates a logical and causal truth for Aquinas, namely
that the irascible emotions begin from and finally terminate in the
concupiscible emotions (ST I-II q.25 a.1–2).
40. ST I-II q.26–48.
41. ST I-II q.29 a.4.
42. ST I-II q.38 a.3.
43. There have recently been several studies of Aquinas’s views about
particular emotions: Marcos Manzanedo, “El deseo y la aversión según Santo
Tomás,” Studium 27 (1987): 189–233; Marcos Manzanedo, “Efectos y
propriedades de la delectación,” Studium 29 (1989): 107–39; Marcos
Manzanedo, “El dolor y sus causas,” Studium 31 (1991): 63–97; Marcos
Manzanedo, “La audacia según Santo Tomás,” Studium 34 (1994): 437–53;
Mark Drost, “In the Realm of the Senses: St. Thomas Aquinas on Sensory
Love, Desire, and Delight,” The Thomist 59 (1995): 47–58; Stephen
Loughlin, “Tristitia et dolor: Does Aquinas Have a Robust Understanding of
Depression?” Nova et Vetera 3 (2005): 761–83; Keith Green, “Aquinas on
Attachment, Envy, and Hatred in the Summa theologiae,” Journal of
Religious Ethics 35 (2007): 403–28; the need for such careful studies of
particular emotions is the central theme of Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the
Passions.
44. See, e.g., Robert C. Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral
Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
 CHAPTER 17

HAPPINESS

BRIAN DAVIES

THE word “happiness” means different things to different people. Nobody

with a modicum of education disagrees when it comes to answering
questions like “What is a caterpillar?” Yet plenty of people have varying
answers to give to the question “What is happiness?” Thus, for example,
some will say that happiness is what people have achieved as soon as they
have obtained what very much appeals to them at a material level, such as an
expensive house or a new car. Others, however, will declare that happiness
lasts over time and need not necessarily have anything to do with
possessions, even the possession of health. Some have even concluded that
happiness is compatible with (or even sometimes dependent on) what we
might normally think of as its opposite (pain or struggle, for instance).1
Does happiness depend on being morally good? Here again we find
different responses. For some people the morally good life is a happy life and
happiness depends on being morally good. For others, though, even the most
wicked of people (some of them, anyway) can be thought of as happy.
“Happiness,” we might say, is a weasel word, like “liberal” or
“conservative.” No uncontroversial definition of it seems to be forthcoming.
And even those who think that they have a pretty good idea of what
happiness amounts to raise many different questions about it. Is it a state? Is
it an activity? Is it episodic, or is it prolonged? Is it something single, or does
it come in a variety of species? Does it admit of quantity or degrees? Does
everyone seek happiness, or are some unconcerned with it? Is happiness
purely subjective and infallibly known as had by those who claim to be
happy, or can we be wrong when thinking that we are happy? Is happiness a
matter of self-interest, or is there more to it than that? Is it confined to life
before death? Can it be fully achieved before death? Can it be had by
nonhuman animals, as well as by ourselves? Can it be ascribed to God? Can
people be happy if there is no God? All of these are familiar questions raised
by thinkers (especially moral philosophers) who have turned their minds to
the topic of happiness. Not surprisingly, therefore, there is a large amount of
literature that offers hugely different perspectives.2
An interesting feature of Aquinas’s treatment of happiness is that much of
it consists in trying to explain what happiness is not. He certainly has a
definite and positive view about happiness, and we shall presently be seeing
what this positive view amounts to. But we shall not understand it, or his
reasons for saying what happiness is not, unless we are first of all prepared to
try to understand him when he is talking about issues that might not initially
strike one as directly bearing on happiness in its own right. As has often been
noted (and as readers of the present volume will quickly discover), Aquinas
is a systematic thinker whose views on one subject frequently depend on
what he has to say on other matters. His explicit discussions of happiness
illustrate this point very well. In order to present what Aquinas says about
happiness, therefore, I shall have to begin with a brief account of his theory
of human action and desire.
In the first place, it helps to note that Aquinas distinguishes between what
he calls actus hominis (an act of a human being) and actus humanus (a
human action).3 Actions are often bodily processes through which people go,
but some of them occur without us thinking about them at all while others
involve reflection.4 Deeply engrossed in a conversation with you, I might
inadvertently scratch my chin or stroke my hair. Ask me why I did so and I
might not even remember that I had done so. Bits of basically unthinking
behavior like these are things we indulge in constantly, and here we have
Aquinas’s notion of an act of a human being (actus hominis). Suppose,
however, that I end my conversation with you by giving you a birthday
present, and assume that I am here acting freely and not under the influence
of hypnosis or whatever. Now, thinks Aquinas, we are dealing with a human
action (actus humanus), not merely an act of a human being.
For Aquinas, human action in what we might call its highest form is
something thought out. It is deliberative and goal-directed. And it typically
results from a process of what Aquinas calls “practical reasoning,” a working
out (though not necessarily a long-winded one) of how best to get that for
which we are aiming. Suppose that I want to travel to Paris from New York
in less than ten hours. Unless I am a complete idiot, I shall consult plane
schedules and, all things being equal, plan a trip accordingly.5 In terms of
this account, human action is intentional, purposive, and desire-driven. We
identify what we are attracted to, and we consciously take steps to obtain it.
In fact, thinks Aquinas, this is always the case with human action. In his
view, we do not aim for what we do not want, and when aiming for what we
want we make use of our reason. He is, of course, perfectly aware that we
sometimes willingly act while our minds are on other matters (as when I
cook a stew while planning my summer holiday). He is also aware that we
sometimes act in ways that conflict with what normally entices us: that, for
example, we pay visits to the dentist or read books that bore or bemuse us.
But he does not take any of this as refuting his claim that we act (as in actus
humanus) so as to get what we think that we want. He would say, for
example, that we go to the dentist in order to get rid of a toothache, or that
we might read something that displeases us because we are anxious to pass a
literature exam, and so on.6
For Aquinas, then, human action is essentially directed to what people
take to be good, attractive, satisfying, and fulfilling. He thinks of it as always
happiness-oriented. Just as cats delight in chasing mice, so, Aquinas thinks,
people naturally (indeed, inevitably) seek to be happy.7 They can, he
frequently notes, be completely wrong when it comes to what will actually
make them happy (so he does not think of happiness as a sensation like
having a pain in the neck; he does not think of it as something about which
one cannot be mistaken). But (dentists, unlovable books, and even
martyrdom notwithstanding) he finds it inconceivable that we should ever act
without aiming for what we think will somehow make for our happiness, a
matter of what we want. By parity of reasoning, he also concludes that
people do not act so as to make misery for themselves the end for which they
are aiming in what they do. The desire for happiness, we might say, is central
to Aquinas’s theory of human action. To think otherwise would be a bit like
supposing that Wall Street could continue to function without any interest in
money.
But does Aquinas have anything that might be thought of as a definition
of “happiness”? And how does he think that we can achieve happiness? Like
almost every human being who has ever existed, he certainly believes that
happiness is possible and that its occurrence is as real as any actual thing you
might care to mention.8 But what does he take it to be? And how does he
suppose us to obtain it? To answer these questions we need to be aware of
even more of his thinking on human beings in general. And the point to stress
at this stage is that he takes them to be first and foremost thinking animals.
Some philosophers have believed that people are essentially nonmaterial
objects (minds, souls, selves, or egos), which are somehow attached to bodies
but are really distinct from them. For Plato, Descartes, and many other
authors the real me (what I call “I”) is an incorporeal substance, and for at
least some of these thinkers this implies that happiness is rather beyond what
the body has to offer. It is “inward” or “mental” or “intellectual” or
“spiritual.” On the other hand, of course, there have been (and still are)
philosophers who take people to be nothing but bodies in motion. So, though
without necessarily doubting that there may be more happiness to be gained
from reading Shakespeare than playing golf, these thinkers naturally gravitate
toward talking of happiness in which material, physical, or even emotional
notions feature very prominently. So as prime and typical examples of
happiness, which they often call “pleasure,” they will cite dining well, having
a night on the town, being in excellent health, having a marvelous sex life,
owning lots of money, and so on.
Now Aquinas’s view of people and his corresponding approaches to
happiness fall somewhere between the two positions that I have just very
summarily sketched.
Unlike authors such as Descartes and Plato, he certainly does not think
that we are “ghosts in machines.”9 His view (sometimes referred to as
hylomorphic) is that we are essentially physical objects. As bodies, he holds,
we are a biological species, just like dogs or camels. And, so he thinks, it is
only because we are bodily that we manage to learn about or get a grasp on
the world. We learn what things are, where they are, and what they can do
because we engage with them at a physical level. Rather in line with the legal
expression “offences against the person,” Aquinas takes (human) persons to
be spatio-temporal individuals. He would, for example, never try to defend a
rapist by saying that the offender was not raping a person but rather that he
was doing something to a bit of anatomy mysteriously connected to
something essentially distinct from what is bodily (a mind, soul, ego, or
whatever).
On the other hand, however (and it is important also to remember this
when trying to understand him on happiness), Aquinas believes that when
people know or understand it is not just a physical process that is at work. He
is, to be sure, happy to admit that physical processes can indicate what we
think, know, or understand. And he is equally happy to agree that physical
processes can strongly affect our ability to think, know, or understand. He is
well aware that my behavior can tell you much about my state of mind. He is
also aware that my chances of following and getting a grasp of Newton’s
thoughts on motion are likely to be much impaired by my first drinking ten
glasses of whiskey or suffering from brain damage. But thinking, knowing,
and understanding (when they occur) are not, for Aquinas, physical processes
in me (albeit that they can be truly ascribed to me). Sensations, of course, are
just that. When I burn my hand, I feel pain in my hand. When I blush, I feel
warm in my face. But Aquinas holds that thinking, knowing, and
understanding are categorically different from sensations.10 For him,
sensations are private property (the pain in my hand or the warmth in my
cheeks). He does not deny that you and I can have similar sensations. But he
takes them to be private in something like the sense that your bank balance is
private to you even though you may have exactly the same amount of money
in it as I have in mine. Yet this kind of privacy is not, Aquinas thinks,
involved when it comes to thinking, knowing, and understanding (albeit that
he does not, of course, deny that my act of understanding such and such can
be truly attributed to me and not to you). For example, in his view, when you
and I think that Rome is the capital of Italy, we can have (indeed, must have)
exactly the same thought, knowledge, or understanding (albeit
nonnumerically). Very much as Ludwig Wittgenstein did, Aquinas thinks of
meaning (and, therefore, thought and understanding) as public, not as an
event in someone’s body (let alone something felt as one feels a toothache or
an itch). So he takes thinking, knowing, and understanding to be immaterial.
Or as Herbert McCabe succinctly puts it: “Both Wittgenstein and Aquinas
would agree that I can say, ‘This is what it feels like for me’; and both would
agree that you cannot say, ‘This is what the word ‘hallucinatory’ means for
me’. A word has its meaning not in any material individual but in the
language which transcends individuality and thus transcends matter.”11
But, yet again, Aquinas is not someone who wants to downplay bodily
factors when it comes to human happiness. Anyone who reads him seriously
will continue to find him noting how we may often find happiness in what
even some of the most hedonistic of thinkers have extolled: food, sex,
money, leisure, fine weather, and so on. These are all things that Aquinas can
take to be good and, therefore, as sources of human happiness. He is anything
but puritanical when it comes to what we might think of as “earthly goods.”
In fact, and again with a debt to Aristotle, he encourages us to pursue almost
all of them, albeit with moderation and on the understanding both that one
can have too much of (be damaged by) a good thing and that it matters from
where one obtains one’s good things. Casting matters in contemporary terms,
Aquinas would certainly applaud my enjoying a glass of wine and a good
movie after a hard day at work (assuming that I have not stolen these items).
And without even trying to put his clerical hat on, he would advise against
my drinking two bottles of gin at a sitting (his reasons here being more or
less those that my doctor would give me). He is also, we might note,
generally against the principle that too little is intrinsically good. He thinks,
for example, that there is a place for self-denial when it comes to material
things and so favors fasting on certain occasions.12 But he cannot be
remotely grouped with those who think that the more physical damage we do
to ourselves the better we are. He would not, for example, say that (except,
perhaps, in exceptional circumstances) people ought to be trying to starve
themselves to death, work until they drop, and so on. Or, to put the matter
even more simply, Aquinas (who actually thinks that all created things are
good) is keen on “earthly goods” and the happiness we might gain from
them. His whole approach to philosophical ethics, we might add, is written
with an eye on earthly happiness.13 Aquinas (again following Aristotle) takes
a good and happy human life to be a life exhibiting virtues. What does
Aquinas take a human virtue to be? At its best, he takes it to be a permanent,
acquired habit, which is a certain readiness to act in certain ways that are
perfective and fulfilling of people qua people—something that makes for
happiness, therefore. He is, indeed, fully aware that we can be stymied by
circumstances and that virtuous people may end up in a sorry state (think of
the many who have suffered at the hands of those to whom they have been
trying to bring education and health care). At the same time, though, he
relentlessly insists that people (considered as people and not just as people
finding themselves stuck in unfortunate contexts) need certain virtues in
order to be happy. Notwithstanding the ills that can afflict the virtuous, a
book on Aquinas on human virtue could quite properly be titled “How to be
Happy.”14
Again, though, does Aquinas have a general or defining notion of
happiness? As I noted above, the answer is that he does. He takes happiness
to be the perfection of the totality of a well-lived human life. But we shall not
understand quite what he means by this until we are clear on what he thinks
happiness not to be. So we need now to follow him down what we might call
his “negative” route. Even before doing that, however, I need to flag a crucial
linguistic point concerning Aquinas on happiness, one of which readers of
Aquinas on happiness need to be constantly aware.
The English word “happiness” can be used to translate at least two
different Latin terms: felicitas and beatitudo. Aquinas makes copious use of
both of these words, and there are times when he writes as though they are
equivalent or synonymous. Primarily, however, he speaks of felicitas when
he means happiness enjoyed by people before death (earthly happiness, so we
might say): the delights that food can provide, the pleasure of looking at a
beautiful painting, the enjoyment of good health, freedom from pain and
worry, and so on. For Aquinas, felicitas, we might say, is what your average
television commercial is trying to sell us. Yet such is not the case when it
comes to his notion of beatitudo (which is the kind of happiness in which he
seems to be most interested). This, for him, is complete fulfillment to which
nothing can be added by way of improvement or variation.15 Nor can it ever
be lost. And that is because he takes it to be the ultimate good for people:
union with God after death (something he calls the “beatific vision”). For
Aquinas, therefore, felicitas, good though it may often be, is happiness in an
imperfect or restricted sense while beatitudo is not (rather as a pleasant
acquaintance with someone is nice but dramatically different from what was
supposed to be going on between Romeo and Juliet).
To cut a long story short, here is the gist of Aquinas’s take on happiness
as beatitudo:

1. People by nature desire to be happy.

2. So in day-to-day life they aim, all things being equal, for what attracts
them.
3. But they differ from nonhuman animals (who, thinks Aquinas, also
strive to be happy or content) in that they are intellectual agents whose
happiness, therefore, crucially or intrinsically includes an intellectual
dimension (i.e., the ability to understand and not just be “turned on” by
or to be physically affected by things). A purring cat may be thought of
 as a happy individual. But, thinks Aquinas, it is disadvantaged in its
range of happiness by comparison with a properly functioning human
being. Cats and the like (the lucky ones anyway) are content at a
sensory level, but their behavior is instinctual, and they do not know or
understand as we do. They have no scientific abilities. They cannot
arrange a college education for themselves. They cannot work with or
grasp concepts (like “cat,” “purr,” “sensation,” or “veterinary
surgeon”).16 Following Aristotle, however, Aquinas believes that
people can form concepts and display (or play out) their nature as
people as they come to know what things are, were, or might be, and as
they plan, aim, and act with such concepts in mind.
4. Pursuing this line of thought, Aquinas holds that understanding is
essential to and perfective of human beings (rather like breathing,
eating, or sleeping). As it happens, he thinks that human understanding
is a low grade kind of thing when compared with the understanding of
some individuals (here he has angels and God in mind). But he still
rates it highly as something that belongs to us by nature and, therefore,
as utterly necessary when it comes to us being happy. “Since
happiness,” he observes, “is the proper good of an intellectual nature,
happiness must pertain to an intellectual nature by reason of what is
proper to that nature.”17 For Aquinas, happiness for people (whatever
forms it may take) lies in what critically distinguishes them from other
things in the world: knowing or understanding.
5. Yet, in what might our ultimate happiness consist? Unlike many who
have written about happiness (and here I think of authors like David
Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and
Jean-Paul Sartre), Aquinas is adamant that it can consist only in a post-
mortem knowledge and understanding of God, whom he takes to be the
source of everything creaturely that makes for human happiness in this
life (in this sense, beatitudo, for Aquinas, goes way beyond felicitas).
According to Aquinas, God, the beginning and end of all things,
contains in himself the goodness and perfection of all creatures, not to
mention the goodness and perfections proper to him alone. Knowing
himself to be what he is, God, for Aquinas, is completely happy (he
enjoys beatitudo without qualification). And, following the lead of the
New Testament, Aquinas holds that people (holy people, those who
persevere in loving God in word and deed) will share in the happiness
 that is God’s. In 1 John 3:2 we find the lines: “Beloved, we are God’s
children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do
know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see
him as he is.”18 Then again, 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of us escaping from “the
corruption that is in the world” so as to “become partakers in the divine
nature.” Strongly influenced by texts such as these, Aquinas’s
conclusion is that our final and complete happiness (something in a
much higher league than felicitas) lies in union with God in the life to
come (the “beatific vision,” should we achieve it).19 In this sense we
may say that Aquinas on ultimate happiness is decidedly theocentric.20
We may also note that Aquinas is perfectly willing to allow that pursuit
of beatitudo might rightly involve us in an avoidance of felicitas (as, for
example, when we dedicate ourselves to union with God in a way that
prevents us from aiming at certain worldly goods: for example, refusing
to deny the reality of God when offered money or sexual gratification to
do so).

So happiness in the fullest sense turns out, for Aquinas, to be a theological

notion (indeed, a Christian theological notion) with an eschatological focus
(as is not the case with, for example, Aristotle, whose views on happiness
still, as I have said, have very much in common with those of Aquinas). But
this, of course, brings us back to ways in which Aquinas travels down his
negative route, the one in which he tries to explain why he thinks what
beatitudo (ultimate or complete happiness) cannot amount to. A good place
to see him doing so is ST I-II q.2.21 This consists of six articles (all in the
form of questions). For a quick sense of Aquinas’s thinking in this text, I
shall simply list some of its questions in order and paraphrase each of his
answers to them together with some points he makes when elaborating on
these answers.22 Thus:

1. Does Ultimate Happiness lie in riches? Riches can be natural in that

they can satisfy our natural or basic needs (food, drink, and shelter
would be “natural riches”). Riches can also be artificial (as, for
example, is money). Ultimate happiness lies in neither kind of riches,
since both are merely means to ends. We seek food and the like because
we aim at keeping ourselves alive. We desire money and the like, since
they help us to obtain what we need to live. Also, riches can be had by
 both good and bad people while perfect happiness is incompatible with
evil of any sort.
2. Does Ultimate Happiness lie in honors? No, because honors, even if
they make us happy, go to those who have achieved something and
therefore cannot be the cause or aim of these achievements (i.e., we
cannot think of ultimate happiness as consisting in present
achievements for which we are already honored). And, like riches,
honors can be had by people who are bad.
3. Does Ultimate Happiness lie in fame or glory? No, since fame and
glory can be illusory.
4. Does Ultimate Happiness lie in power? No, since power is what enables
activity while ultimate happiness is an achievement. Also, power can be
used well or badly while ultimate happiness involves no possible
badness. Furthermore, power (like riches, honors, fame, and glory) can
all be had by people who lack other sources of happiness, which is not
the case with those who enjoy ultimate happiness. Note also that riches,
honors, fame, glory, and power can all sometimes lead to the harm of
those who have them. Also note that riches, honors, fame, glory, and
power come from sources outside ourselves (and do so often by luck or
chance), whereas ultimate happiness lies within us and fulfills what is
intrinsic to us.
5. Does Ultimate Happiness lie in bodily well-being? Human bodily
qualities cannot make for people’s ultimate happiness for such qualities
are often found to a greater degree in nonhuman animals (for example,
elephants live longer than we do, and lions are stronger than we are).
Also, since we are essentially intellectual beings, our ultimate happiness
cannot lie in physical (or sensory) well-being alone (nice though that
can often be).
6. Does Ultimate Happiness lie in bodily (sensory) pleasures? No, for
these are not the only sources of enjoyment. They are also temporary
and individual physical states while ultimate human happiness depends
on our sustained intellectual grasp of what goes well beyond these.

In short, Aquinas finds it hard to believe that ultimate happiness (beatitudo)

can lie in anything creaturely. Or, in his own words:

For man to rest content with any created good is not possible, for he can be happy only
 with complete good which satisfies his desire altogether: he would not have reached his
ultimate end were there something still remaining to be desired. The object of the will,
that is the human appetite, is the Good without reserve, just as the object of the mind is
the True without reserve. Clearly, then, nothing can satisfy man’s will except such
goodness, which is found, not in anything created, but in God alone. Everything created
is a derivative good.23

This conclusion obviously raises a number of questions. Does God exist? Do

people act for ends? Do people naturally seek to be happy? Can sense be
made of a beatific vision? If so, how is it that the beatific vision satisfies the
human desire for happiness? No doubt, a full justification of Aquinas’s
account of happiness will depend on answers to these and other questions,
which I cannot try to deal with here.24

NOTES
1. We all know the athlete’s slogan “No pain, no gain.” But think also of
people who would speak of themselves as finding happiness in living lives
that many would find distasteful in the extreme (members of certain rather
austere religious orders: Carthusians or Cistercians, for example).
2. For a useful introduction to theories of happiness, see Steven M. Cahn
and Christine Vitrano, eds., Happiness: Classic and Contemporary Readings
in Philosophy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). See
also Elizabeth Telfer, Happiness (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press,
1980).
3. Cf. ST I-II q.1 a.1.
4. I say “not always” in this sentence since, I presume, we can talk about
mental activity (such as following an argument or envying someone) without
thinking of overtly physical processes (like going for a walk or mending a
washing machine). Aquinas in various places distinguishes between
“immanent” and “transient” action. Here he is (surely rightly) thinking that
there is a big difference between, for example, my admiring you and my
trying to kiss you.
5. I say “all things being equal” since, of course, practical reasoning,
unlike theoretical reasoning, can be affected by the addition of extra
premises. A formally valid argument is not vitiated by the addition of extra
premises. But a piece of practical reason might be. Thus, for example, the
reasonableness of my getting on a certain plane from Paris to New York
might be deeply affected by learning that this particular plane has certain
critical parts missing from it. Cf. Anthony Kenny, Will, Freedom, and Power
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), ch. 5.
6. My impression is that Aquinas thinks that we could be aiming for
happiness even should it be the case that what appeals to us is masochism.
7. I have heard it said that Aquinas denies that nonhuman animals enjoy
happiness. In fact, though, he often ascribes pleasure to nonhuman animals.
Cf. ST I-II q.31 a.1 or I-II q.4 a.2. He knows very well that animals can be
thought of as happy in some sense. What he denies is that their happiness,
when they have it, is something gained by them as an intellectual goal
pursued and understood by them as such. And he thinks that this is so
because he takes nonhuman animals not to have what he means by
“intellect”.
8. It might be said that Arthur Schopenhauer was someone who
disbelieved in the existence of happiness. In The World as Will and
Representation (1818), he pessimistically seems to claim that, given the
nature of our will or desire, it is impossible for anyone to be genuinely
happy.
9. The phrase “ghost in a machine” is, perhaps, best known from Gilbert
Ryle’s use of it in his highly influential anti-Cartesian book The Concept of
Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949).
10. In “Analytical Philosophy and the Spirituality of Man,” Elizabeth
Anscombe interestingly observes how Descartes (a “ghost in the machine”
thinker when it comes to people) internalizes sensations so as to make them
nonbodily occurrences on the dubious ground that he can doubt that he has a
body but not that he hears, sees, and so on. See Elizabeth Anscombe, Human
Life, Action and Ethics (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2005), 5. By contrast,
Aquinas (surely with more sense on his side than Descartes) takes hearing,
seeing, and so on (understood, of course, in nonmetaphorical senses) as
inextricably bodily. The “darkness” of the Middle Ages did not seem to
prevent Aquinas from recognizing that, speaking literally, you need ears to
hear, eyes to see, and a nose to smell. I presume that he would think along
the same lines today were he to know of rare nonhuman animals (of the kind
who amaze us as we view the numerous television programs about them)
whose engagement with the world does not depend on them having human
organs or anything that look remotely like them.
 11. Herbert McCabe, On Aquinas (London and New York: Continuum,
2008). One might rightly accuse me (and McCabe) of here presenting a
conclusion of Aquinas in somewhat anachronistic terms (ones which take
Aquinas to be thinking of understanding chiefly on the model of talking). But
I think that this is actually a helpful way of getting his main point about
understanding across to contemporary readers especially since both Aquinas
and Wittgenstein are concerned that we should not misread linguistic life by
assimilating it to sensations or to events in the brain. For an example of
Aquinas precisely speaking in his own voice and terminology, see ST I q.75
a.2. Here his argument for human understanding being immaterial runs: “It is
obvious that man’s understanding enables him to know the nature of all
bodily things. But what can in this way take in things must have nothing of
their natures of their own, for the form that was in it by nature would obstruct
the knowledge of anything else.… Accordingly, if the intellectual principle
had in it the physical nature of any bodily thing, it would be unable to know
all bodies. Each of them has its own determinate nature. Impossible,
therefore, that the principle of understanding be something bodily.” I quote
from vol. 11 of the Blackfriars edition of ST (London and New York: Eyre
and Spottiswoode, 1970).
12. Cf. ST II-II q.146 a.1.
13. I should note that, speaking purely as a philosopher, Aquinas
concentrates on the classical cardinal virtues, the possession of which he
takes (as did Aristotle) to be vital when it comes to human happiness in this
life. But, speaking more theologically, Aquinas believes in what he calls
“theological virtues,” which he believes to be critically important when it
comes to ultimate human happiness. More on this matter (as on other issues
on which I touch above) can be found in some other contributions to the
present volume.
14. With this thought in mind, readers might be interested in consulting
Herbert McCabe, The Good Life: Ethics and the Pursuit of Happiness
(London and New York: Continuum, 2005).
15. Aquinas thinks that everyone naturally desires beatitude whether they
realize it or not. That is because he holds that whatever enjoyment I might
achieve by X, Y, or Z, such enjoyment is but a getting hold of something
good, not of being in a state in which nothing is left for me to want. As long
as there remains something we lack but can add to our happiness then, thinks
Aquinas (reasonably as it seems to me, though not, perhaps, to some non-
theistic millionaires), we have not achieved perfect happiness (beatitudo) and
are always looking for more.
16. See note 5 above.
17. SCG III, 26.
18. I quote from the New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.
19. Aquinas’s account of the beatific vision is a complicated one and I do
not think that this is the place to try to explain what it amounts to in detail.
Perhaps, though, I ought at least to note (a) that he obviously does not equate
it with looking at God as one might look at a physical object, and (b) that he
basically thinks that it involves us sharing, at least to a limited degree, in the
life and being of God. For a general study of the concept of the vision of
God, see Kenneth Kirk, The Vision of God: The Christian Doctrine of the
Summum Bonum (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966). For a discussion of
Aquinas on the beatific vision written with an eye on what St Albert the
Great says on the topic, see Jeffrey Hergan, St. Albert the Great’s Theory of
the Beatific Vision (New York: Peter Lang, 2002). Kirk deals with Aquinas
on pp. 379–94 of his volume. Hergan does so in his ch. 5.
20. I should note that ultimate human happiness (however much they might
desire it) is not, for Aquinas, something that people can achieve by their
natural human abilities or powers. For him, beatitude (the “beatific vision”)
is a gift of God. Cf. ST I-II q.5 a.5. But then, of course, one also has to
remember that, for Aquinas, everything created is a gift of God.
21. See also SCG III, chapters 26–33.
22. I should note that in his discussion of what happiness does not consist
in Aquinas’s questions and answers very much resemble what we find in bk
3 of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. Aquinas’s discussion of
happiness is surely heavily indebted to that of Boethius.
23. ST I-II q.2 a.8. I quote from vol. 16 of the Blackfriars edition of the ST
(London and New York: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1969).
24. For two recent, detailed, and interesting books on Aquinas and
happiness, see (1) Denis Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good:
Reason and Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1997), and (2) Stephen Wang, Aquinas
and Sartre on Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009). See also
the entry on “Happiness” by Georg Wielad in Stephen Pope, ed., The Ethics
of Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002). I should
add that for critical comments on earlier versions of this contribution to the
present volume I am much indebted to Christopher Arroyo, Michael Baur,
Gyula Klima, Turner Nevitt, and Giorgio Pini.
 CHAPTER 18

LAW AND NATURAL LAW

MICHAEL BAUR

IN his often-quoted definition, Aquinas tells us that law is “nothing other than
an ordering of reason for the common good from one who has care of the
community, and promulgated.”1 For Aquinas, law is essentially an ordering
of reason, and not of will, since law is a rule and measure of acts; the first
principle of action is the end; and it belongs to reason to direct things to an
end.2 Aquinas acknowledges that law would have no motive force, and thus
no power to cause or prohibit action, if it were not for the will.3 But without
the ordering of reason, the will’s motive force would be without aim or
direction. For “to command is essentially an act of reason”4 and “to order is
the proper act of reason.”5 Aquinas’s account of law as an ordering of reason
for the common good of a community depends on his mereology (i.e., his
theory of parthood relations, including the relations of parts to parts and parts
to wholes), and so a fuller exploration of his account of law might well begin
with an examination of parts, wholes, and the common good in his thought.

PARTS, WHOLES, AND THE COMMON GOOD

Aquinas tells us that “all who are included in a community stand in relation
to that community as parts to a whole,”6 and “every individual person is
compared to the whole community as part to whole.”7 Now for Aquinas, it is
possible for things to constitute a plurality of separate, unified wholes in one
respect, while being parts of another unified whole in some other respect.
Thus, individual human beings are separate, unified wholes insofar as they
are individuated living substances capable of performing their own biological
and psychological functions and undertaking action on their own behalf; but
they may also be parts of some other unified whole insofar as they belong to
a community such as a political order. Aquinas notes that any multitude
whatsoever can be regarded as a unified whole in some respect. But he goes
on to observe that only substances (such as living organisms) can be regarded
as unified wholes absolutely speaking, or without qualification; by contrast,
things that are a plurality of substances absolutely speaking, but unified
wholes in a certain respect, are not said to be unified through any substantial
unity but rather through a “unity of composition or order.”8
Significantly, Aquinas holds that the perfection of wholes through the
proper ordering of their parts does not entail the elimination of diversity, but
in many cases requires diversity. Thus, “the order and perfection of a whole”
is not possible if there is not a “disparity among its parts.”9 In a whole where
each part is essentially the same as every other part (such as in a
homogeneous body of water), the parts are interchangeable and the whole
can remain what it is, no matter how the parts might be rearranged. This is
clearly not the case in a more perfect whole (such as in the body of a living
organism), where the whole could not remain what it is if the parts (like eyes
and legs) could be switched around indiscriminately. For Aquinas, it is
precisely the presence of diverse parts within a whole that accounts for a
whole’s greater degree of excellence and perfection. Thus, even if a
particular part within some whole were to become more excellent by
becoming more like some other, nobler part (e.g., if the foot were to become
more like the eye), the whole itself would have less perfection and dignity as
the whole that it is.10 Also, Aquinas asserts that the existence of a genuine
ordering among diverse parts does not render the parts merely passive or
acquiescent, but in fact requires that the parts be capable of action in their
own right: “If we take away the actions of things we take away the order of
things to one another, for there is no tying together of things that are diverse
according to their natures into the unity of order except by the fact that some
are active and some are passive.”11 For Aquinas, a community of merely
passive, noninteracting beings would not be a genuinely ordered community,
but a mere aggregation of things that had nothing to do with one another and
that could not be ordered with respect to one another.12
For Aquinas, there are two ways in which we can talk about the ordering
of parts within a whole: first, insofar as the parts are ordered with respect to
one another; and secondly, insofar as the parts are ordered toward an end.13
Corresponding to this twofold ordering of parts within a whole, we can also
talk about a twofold good of any whole. First, there is the intrinsic good; this
is the form of the whole, which arises through the unity and ordering of the
parts within the whole and is the end of generation or alteration. Second,
there is the extrinsic good; this is an end that is external to the whole as such
and for the sake of which the whole as a whole exists.14 Aquinas illustrates
this twofold good by talking about the form of an army (its intrinsic good),
which is the ordering of its parts to one another, and that for the sake of
which the army and its internal ordering exists (its extrinsic good), which is
military victory.15 Aquinas also notes that “whenever we find a multitude
whose members are ordered to each other, that multitude must necessarily be
ordered to some external principle.”16 Thus, the ordering of a whole’s parts
to one another (the whole’s formal cause or intrinsic good) is always for the
sake of the ordering of the whole to its extrinsic end (its final cause). As
Aquinas says (following Aristotle), the final cause and not the formal cause
is properly called “the cause of causes.”17
On Aquinas’s account, the good toward which the law directs a
community is called the “common good” of that community. Now that which
is said to be “common” can be understood in two different ways: on the one
hand, something that is “common after the manner of an effect or
predication” is found in many things according to one intelligible character,
as the intelligible character of “animal” is common to all human beings; on
the other hand, something that is “common after the manner of a cause”
remains numerically one but extends to many effects.18 It is in this latter
sense that the “common good” toward which law orders a community is said
to be “common.” In fact, Aquinas says that what is common by way of
predication—such as “the unity or community of human nature”—is nothing
in reality, but only in the consideration of the mind.19 While the law directs
individuals in their actions, and actions are always particular, it remains the
case that law is not directed to the particular good of any individual but rather
to the common good of a community. The particular actions of individuals
are referable to the common good of a community, not as to a common genus
or species, but as to a common final cause or end.20 It is in this sense that
Aquinas can use the term, “common good,” to refer to: God (as the common
end of all creatures21), victory in battle (as the common end of an army’s
soldiers22), justice (as the common end of citizens23), and children (as the
common end of two parents24).
Notice that, for Aquinas, the common good or common end toward which
members of a community are ordered can be the sort of end that the agents
bring into existence through their own actions (e.g., justice within a
community), or the sort of end (like God) that can exist apart from the
actions of the agents whose end it is.25 Furthermore, the common good or
end toward which a community is ordered can be an extrinsic common good
(e.g., God, victory in battle, or children) or an intrinsic common good (e.g.,
justice or order within a particular community). In any case, since the final
cause (and not the formal cause) is the “cause of all causes,” the primary
sense in which the law orders a community to a common good is in the sense
of an extrinsic and not intrinsic good; this is because a community can be
ordered to an intrinsic common good only on account of its being ordered to
an extrinsic common good.26 What remains “common” (i.e., “common by
way of predication”) to any common good is that the common good is the
common or shared end or goal (or, in the case of rational creatures, the object
of a common or shared willing) at which the community’s members aim
precisely insofar as they are members of that community.
On Aquinas’s account, the common good of a community is not reducible
to the particular goods of any of its parts. Furthermore, what is fundamentally
good about the common good of a community is not that the common good
serves as a means for securing the particular goods, or for coordinating the
particular ends, of its various parts. Just as a community has its own kind of
being that is distinct from the being of any of its parts, so too the common
good of a community is a distinctive kind of good, not ultimately explainable
in terms of the goods of its parts. What is fundamentally good about the
common good of a community is that the common good is perfective of the
community as a whole, precisely in connection with the kind of unity and
being that the community has. For Aquinas, to speak of a whole is to speak
“of those things in which something one and perfect emerges from all the
parts taken together, and this perfection pertains to none of the parts, as in a
house or an animal.”27 Just as we can talk about actions that are attributable
to a group taken as a whole but not attributable to any of the individual parts
(e.g., “the team won,” “the company issued stock,” “the nation declared
war”), so too we can talk about goods that are goods of the whole as such,
but not of any of the parts: “For the good that results from the composition of
parts, through which the whole is good, is not in any of the parts. Hence the
parts are not good by that goodness which is proper to the whole.”28
In virtue of being common (“by way of causation”), a common good on
Aquinas’s account remains numerically one and undivided while
simultaneously being desired by and perfective of many different parts,
precisely insofar as they are parts. In other words, a good that is common by
way of causation is essentially a shareable good. When one member of a
community enjoys the goodness of a common good, this enjoyment by one
part does not in itself entail subtraction from or detriment to the similar
enjoyment of the same common good by another part or parts. When Lily
and Grace discuss philosophy over a bottle of wine, the particular sips of
wine that they imbibe and enjoy while conversing are particular goods. The
very same sip of wine (the numerically one and undivided portion of wine)
that Lily imbibes and enjoys simply cannot be imbibed and enjoyed by
Grace, so when Lily imbibes and enjoys more of the wine, there is less of the
wine to be imbibed and enjoyed by Grace. By contrast, the philosophical
conversation that Lily and Grace are having (while imbibing the wine) is a
common good; it can remain numerically one and undivided while both are
enjoying the conversation. In itself, Lily’s enjoyment of the conversation
does not entail any subtraction from or detriment to Grace’s enjoyment of the
conversation. When Lily enjoys the conversation more, it does not follow
that Grace has to enjoy the conversation less. The important point here is that
the common good enjoyed by members of a group or community is formally
different, and not just quantitatively different, from the particular goods
enjoyed by those members: “The common good of the realm and the
particular good of the individual differ not only in respect of the many and
the few, but also under a formal aspect.”29 It is on account of this formal
difference that a good that is common by way of causation can be enjoyed by
many without division or subtraction, while a particular good cannot.
Aquinas also holds that, strictly speaking, the end of some given whole
(the common end or good that is a common good for its parts) does not stand
in opposition to or in conflict with the end or ends of its particular parts as
such; for “the part is not divided in opposition to the whole, but in opposition
to another part.”30 But it is certainly possible for there to be opposition or
conflict between the end or ends of the whole and the end or ends that a part
may have insofar as the part is regarded as the part of some other whole or as
a distinct whole in its own right. To explain this further, we need to recall, as
Aquinas observes, that reason may consider a single thing under many
different aspects:

therefore, if a man’s will wills a thing to be, according as it appears to be good, his will
is good: and the will of another man, who wills that thing not to be, according as it
appears evil, is also good. Thus a judge has a good will, in willing a thief to be put to
death, because this is just: while the will of another—e.g., the thief’s wife or son, who
wishes him not to be put to death, inasmuch as killing is a natural evil—is also good.31

Now insofar as a judge is authorized to act on behalf of an entire community,

anything that he or she wills as a judge will be willed under the aspect of the
common or universal good (under the aspect of what is a proper end for the
community as a whole); and what a wife wills regarding her husband or a son
wills regarding his father is something willed under the aspect of its being
some particular good, suited to the kind of relationships that exist between
wives and husbands, and sons and fathers. Now the very same thing may
happen to be good under a universal aspect, and yet not good under a
particular aspect. Thus, the will of the judge (in favor of killing the man) and
the wills of the wife and son (opposed to the killing of the man) can both be
good, even though they seem to will opposite things. For as Aquinas points
out, they will opposite things only accidentally, and not under the same
formal aspect. It is not the case that the wife and son will that justice be
violated; nor is it the case that the judge wills the death of a man precisely as
a death. Rather, the judge wills that justice be done, and the wife and son will
that the husband and father should live. There is no conflict between these
ends as such; the conflict is incidental to what the parties will, formally and
properly understood. Or to make the same general point in a different way,
when regarded as parts of the whole political community, the wife and son
are able to will (along with the judge) that justice be done. It is only when
they are regarded as parts of some other whole (e.g., a family) or as distinct
wholes in their own right (e.g., as individuals in some respect) that the wife
and son can be seen as having ends that stand opposed to the community’s
end of seeing that justice be done.
Aquinas observes that the wife and son may act in accordance with their
proper inclinations as parts of the political whole (that is, they can will that
justice be done) while simultaneously acting in accordance with their proper
inclinations as wife and son (that is, they can also will that the life of their
loved one be spared) if they will the common good (justice) formally and the
particular good (the preservation of a man’s life) materially. Here, to will a
common good formally is to be attracted to a single final cause or goal
precisely under its aspect of having many effects, though these many effects
remain unspecified or unenumerated; and to will a particular good materially
is to be attracted to a single final cause or goal precisely under its aspect of
having some particular effect on some specific individual or individuals. For
Aquinas, the wife and son ought to will formally the common good (that
justice be done) and will materially the particular good (that a particular
man’s life be preserved), all the while subordinating their material willing of
the particular good to their formal willing of the common good. Notice that
this does not require the wife and son to engage in any self-contradictory
willing; that is, they are not required to will both in favor of some particular
action and against the same action in the same respect. However, it does
require that they subordinate their material willing of the particular good to
their formal willing of the common good, and thus that they be willing to risk
losing some particular good that they cherish (e.g., the life of a loved one,
their wealth and possessions, or even their own lives) for the sake of the
common good, in the event that it becomes impossible in some particular
situation for both the common good and the particular good to be preserved.
For Aquinas, a good citizen is one who is willing to subordinate his or her
willing of particular goods to his or her willing of the political community’s
common good. Indeed, Aquinas holds that it is a natural tendency of every
part, as such, to subordinate the love that it has for its own particular good to
the greater love that it has for the common good of the whole:

each part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than it loves its own
particular good. This is evidenced by its operation, since the principle inclination of each
part is towards common action conducive to the good of the whole. It may also be seen
in civic virtues whereby sometimes the citizens suffer damage even to their own
property and persons for the sake of the common good.32

On Aquinas’s account, citizens are generally willing to bear their fair share
of a political community’s tax burden, since for the most part they recognize
that their shared shouldering of the tax burden is essential for the
achievement of a common good or goods that could not otherwise be
attained.
Of course, it might be objected that: (a) individual citizens would not pay
their taxes if they were not reasonably confident that others would do so as
well; (b) individual citizens are confident that others will pay their taxes,
since the law has established certain mechanisms to punish those who do not
pay their taxes; and therefore (c) individual citizens are induced to pay their
taxes only because of a generalized threat of punishment and not because
they love the common good more than they love their own particular goods.
Aquinas would be able to acknowledge that (a) and (b) may both be true,
while nevertheless denying that (c) follows. Indeed, on Aquinas’s account,
the attempt to argue from (a) and (b) to (c) commits the error of mistaking
the effect (the establishment of some mechanism for punishment) for the
cause (lawfulness). That is to say, (a) and (b) can be taken to support not (c),
but rather the conclusion that (d) individual citizens generally recognize that
as citizens they share a common end whose importance is sufficiently
weighty to justify the establishment of certain mechanisms for coercing those
who do not willingly contribute their fair share toward the attainment of this
common end. If individual citizens did not willingly and for the most part
shoulder their fair share of the overall tax burden, then the very notion of
lawfulness would cease to apply. For if tax monies essential to sustaining the
common good had to be coercively wrested from a majority of the citizens,
then the community would have to expend large sums of its wealth simply in
order to enforce the tax code. But there is a point at which the costs of
enforcing the tax code would exceed the gains to be had through such
enforcement, in which case the very effort at enforcement would cannibalize
itself. Just as an excessive amount of cancer will eventually destroy the body
(and thus destroy the cancer itself), and an excessive amount of counterfeit
will eventually destroy a currency (and thus destroy the counterfeit itself), so
too excessive costs in enforcement will eventually destroy the common good
for which such enforcement exists, and thus undermine the whole point of
enforcement itself. On Aquinas’s account, lawfulness is compatible with the
need to compel compliance in some instances, but incompatible with the
need to compel compliance in most instances.33

LAW ESTABLISHES A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

THAT IS INTERNAL TO THE BEINGS THAT ARE
SUBJECT TO THE LAW
The preceding considerations point us toward an aspect of Aquinas’s account
of law that is frequently overlooked, even by his most sympathetic
commentators. For Aquinas, the term “law” does not denote an externally
imposed command or ordinance, but rather a rule or ordering whose effective
force in directing individuals to act for the sake of the common good is
present within the individual beings thus directed. Of course, law does
involve the direction of one thing by another, for—strictly speaking—one
does not make law for oneself, but only for another. But in making law for
another, the lawmaker establishes a principle or rule of action that is internal
to the beings subject to the law.34 It is for this reason, Aquinas asserts, that
human beings—notwithstanding their ability to exercise control over
nonrational creatures—are unable to make law for nonrational creatures. For
when human beings exercise control over nonrational creatures (e.g., when a
farmer plows a field by controlling the actions of oxen), the actions taking
place are not the actions of the nonrational creatures, but rather the actions of
the human beings who are using the nonrational beings as instruments (e.g.,
thus it is the farmer who plows the field by using the oxen as instruments,
and not the oxen who plow the field). The reason why we cannot make law
for nonrational creatures is that the principles by means of which we control
nonrational creatures are the principles of our actions alone, and not the
(internalized) principles of the actions of the nonrational creatures under our
control.35
For Aquinas, to be subject to law in its broadest sense is to be a member
of a community, and to be a member of a community is to be attracted to the
common good of the community in such a way that in acting in accordance
with one’s own nature and inclinations (and not merely as an externally
controlled instrument of another), the individual also acts for the benefit of
the common good. Thus, actions of an individual that might otherwise seem
puzzling may become intelligible, when regarded as the actions of an
individual that is also a member of a community. Consider the African wild
dog (Lycaon pictus) whose behavior is typical of many canids. After a
successful hunt, the mother dog is greeted in the den by her pups, whose
licking of her face elicits from her an instinctive regurgitation reaction: the
mother dog instinctively disgorges portions of the flesh that she had just
devoured.36 If one regards the mother dog simply as an isolated individual,
one might think that this spontaneous regurgitation reaction is a sign of some
illness or disease. But if one regards her as a member of a community, such
behavior becomes perfectly intelligible: the regurgitated bolus provides
partially digested flesh for the pups to eat, and thus contributes to the care of
the young and the survival of the species. This natural behavior of the mother
dog illustrates what, for Aquinas, is meant by law: law is in the mother dog
in the sense that her own actions, emerging from her own natural instincts
and inclinations, are directed toward the common good of the community (in
this case, toward the survival of the species). As Aquinas observes, even
sensuous inclinations in animals have the character of law, insofar as they are
ordained to the common good, which consists in “the preservation of nature
in the species or the individual.”37
On Aquinas’s account, there are different ways in which law may be said
to be in individual beings. If the community under consideration is a
biological species, then the source of law is the species as a whole, and—as
we have seen—the individual organism is directed to the common good of
the species by means of the instinctual makeup that the individual has, thanks
to its species membership. If the community under consideration is the entire
community of created beings, then the lawgiver is God as creator of the
whole universe, and law is in every created being in the sense that every
inclination and every action of every created being is an effect of God’s
creative and legislative action, and is thereby directed to the common good of
the whole universe. For Aquinas, there is nothing in the created universe
(whether contingent or necessary) that falls outside the scope of “eternal
law,” which is the name that Aquinas gives to God’s creative act of
legislation for all things.38 Nothing that pertains to God’s essence, however,
is subject to eternal law, since God’s essence is not different from the eternal
law itself,39 and to be subject to law, strictly speaking, is to be subject to the
governance of another.40 Along with eternal law, says Aquinas, we can also
talk about “divine law,” but divine law is nothing other than eternal law
itself, only apprehended under the aspect of its being made known by God to
human beings through revelation, primarily through the Old and the New
Testaments.41
Eternal law is present in, and directive of, every created being, even when
one created being is harmed as a result of the activity of some other created
being (e.g., when the zebra is preyed upon by the African wild dog); for,
according to Aquinas, although it is not something good for the zebra when it
is preyed upon by the African wild dog, nevertheless, it is good for the
perfection of the universe as a whole that there should exist many different
kinds of beings, some of which might thrive and perfect themselves at the
expense of others.42 On Aquinas’s account, eternal law is the cause of all
created beings and all their acts, and it is by virtue of such creative,
legislative causality (not by virtue of any legislative act that supervenes upon
already existent beings or acts) that eternal law directs all things to the
common good of the universe.43 For Aquinas, this common good of the
universe is an extrinsic good, God himself,44 insofar as every created being is
attracted to God and manifests its desire for God in its very act of seeking its
own perfection, for in attaining its own perfection, each created being—in its
own way—attains some likeness to God’s perfection.45 But in seeking God,
each created being also seeks—again, in its own way—the perfection of the
created universe as a whole. This perfection consists in the ordered coming
together of the many diverse beings in the created universe which—by being
thus ordered to one another and to God—constitute an imperfect likeness of
the perfect, fully nondiverse, and undivided goodness of God.46 Thus, in
being attracted to the extrinsic common good of the universe (God himself),
all created beings are also attracted to the intrinsic common good of the
universe (the order and perfection of the created universe as a whole47).
For Aquinas, there are two ways in which we can talk about the presence
of eternal law in a created being: in one way, eternal law is said to be in a
created being as in that which is ruled and measured; in a second way, eternal
law is said to be in a created being as in that which rules and measures.48
Now eternal law is in all created beings in the first way, since all created
beings are directed to the common good of the universe and are thus ruled
and measured in accordance with such direction. But in addition to this first
way, there is also a second way in which eternal law is in some (but not all)
created beings: it is in us rational beings as in that which rules or measures.
The presence in us of eternal law, in this unique, twofold way, is what
Aquinas calls “natural law.” It is important to note that, for Aquinas, natural
law is not something separate from eternal law.49 Rather, for Aquinas, the
natural law is the eternal law itself, but regarded under the aspect of its being
in us (rational beings) in this unique, twofold way: it is in us as in created
beings that are ruled, measured, and directed by means of it, but also in us as
in created (rational) beings that rule, measure, and direct (both ourselves and
other things) by means of it.50
 Aquinas identifies yet another way in which we can talk about law, which
he calls “human law.” Recall that for Aquinas, “natural law” denotes the
unique way in which we, as rational beings, are subject to eternal law in a
twofold way: as both directed and directive, as both ordered and ordering. As
Aquinas notes, it is by virtue of the natural law that we are providential both
for ourselves and other beings,51 which is to say that we rationally direct both
ourselves and others to the ends that we apprehend as ends. But when we
thus direct both ourselves and others to the ends that we apprehend as ends, it
is not necessarily the case that the principles operative in our directive,
ordering acts should become the internal principles of the actions of those
things that are subject to our acts of ordering and direction. Thus, we can
exercise control over nonrational beings and direct them to the ends that we
apprehend as ends, but we do not prescribe for them any principles that
become the internal principles of their own actions; as we have seen, we do
not make law for nonrational beings. But for Aquinas, there may be instances
in which our acts of giving order and direction do include the establishment
of principles of action that are the internal principles of the actions of those
beings that are subject to our acts of ordering and direction. When, for the
sake of some common good, we prescribe principles of action that become
the internal principles of action of the beings subject to our direction, we are
engaged in acts of lawmaking. While we cannot make law for nonrational
beings, we can make law for other human beings. This is because human
beings, by virtue of their ability to communicate rationally with one another
and persuade one another by means of rational discourse, are able to
“imprint” on the minds of others a rule or principle that becomes in these
others an internal principle of action.52
For Aquinas, just as natural law is not something separate from eternal
law, so too human law is not something separate from natural law. Rather,
human law is the special way in which natural law is in us when we not only
provide rational direction for ourselves and other beings subject to our
control, but do so in such a way that the principles of our directive, ordering
activity become the internal principles of action in those other (human)
beings that are directed by us for the sake of some common good. It is
against this backdrop that one must understand Aquinas’s famous statement
to the effect that “unjust law is no law at all.”53 The point of Aquinas’s
statement is not that individuals have license to disobey legal directives that
are unjust or morally defective in some respect, on the grounds that such
directives are not really laws at all. The point, rather, is that legal directives
have the character of law—properly speaking—only insofar as they are the
sort of directives which, for the most part, serve as the internalized principles
of the actions of the (rational) human beings subject to them. If legal
directives are not, for the most part, internalized, then they must as a rule be
externally imposed on individuals, which is to say that they are “violent” and
not internally motivating (they are “not binding in conscience”). For
Aquinas, legal directives that have to be externally imposed in this way,
simply fail to satisfy what it means to be law. But even if certain legal
directives are, for the most part, externally imposed on individuals and thus
lack the character of lawfulness, it may still be the case, so Aquinas argues,
that individuals may nevertheless be morally obligated to obey such
directives; for individual acts of disobedience may ultimately be more
harmful than beneficial to the common good (which, after all, is that for the
sake of which law exists).

ETERNAL LAW, NATURAL LAW, AND HUMAN

FREEDOM
To say that natural law is in us, is to say that eternal law is in us (and thus
that we are attracted and directed to God and the perfection of the created
universe) in a twofold way: eternal law is in us as in beings that are ruled,
measured, and ordered, and it is in us as in beings that are also capable of
ruling, measuring, and ordering. Now it is tempting to think that the two
ways in which eternal law is in us correspond to two different kinds of
inclinations in us: (a) inclinations in us by virtue of our “pre-rational” nature,
which are inclinations that we share with nonrational beings (including our
inclinations toward self-preservation, self-reproduction, the rearing of the
young, etc.54) and which correspond to the way that eternal law is in us as in
beings that are ruled, measured, and ordered; and (b) inclinations in us by
virtue of our “rational” nature, which are inclinations that are absent in
nonrational beings (such as the inclination to know the truth about God55)
and which correspond to the way that eternal law is in us as in beings that are
capable of ruling, measuring, and ordering. But Aquinas himself would reject
any theory that entailed this sort of twofold correspondence. For Aquinas, all
of our inclinations are in us as a result of the eternal law in us, which is to say
that all of our inclinations are in us as in beings that are ruled, measured, and
ordered by the eternal law. Indeed, for Aquinas, there cannot be any single
inclination or action in us at all, except insofar as it is brought into being
through the creative, legislative causality of the eternal law (which is nothing
other than God’s own essence). For Aquinas, none of our acts can be acts of
ruling, measuring, ordering, and causing, without at the same time also being
acts that are ruled, measured, ordered, and caused by God through eternal
law. Indeed, on Aquinas’s account, all of our acts (whether freely chosen by
us or not, whether sinful or not) are caused and directed by God, insofar as
they are acts at all. Yet according to Aquinas, we remain solely responsible
for our sins, for sin denotes a being or action that is lacking in some due
actuality or goodness. While God is the cause of our sinful acts insofar as
they are acts, he is not the cause of the privation or lack of due goodness that
makes these acts sinful.56
For Aquinas, those acts of ours that are identifiable as acts of ruling,
measuring, ordering, and causing by us, do not belong to a set of beings and
acts that is separate from the set of beings and acts that is ruled, measured,
ordered, and caused by the eternal law. Rather, our acts of ruling, measuring,
ordering, and causing represent a unique way of being ruled, measured,
ordered, and caused by the eternal law. Our acts, which are always acts of
being ruled, measured, ordered, and caused by the eternal law, can in some
cases take on the character of being acts of ruling, measuring, ordering, and
causing as well, insofar as they are accompanied by—or perhaps better, they
are defined by—a kind of rational knowing that makes them the special kind
of acts that they are. This rational knowing does not allow us to evade the all-
encompassing, inescapable causality and direction of the eternal law, but
rather allows us to continue being caused and directed by the eternal law in
such a way that we can at the same time apprehend the appetible objects
toward which we are inclined (by the eternal law) under their intelligible or
universal aspects.
For Aquinas, when we apprehend a particular appetible object under some
intelligible or universal aspect, we are able to apprehend multiple
possibilities regarding that object and thus able to make free choices with
respect to it. When Daniel imagines a house that he might build, any image
that he entertains will be of some particular house, with some particular
shape (for imagination, according to Aquinas, is a sensuous faculty). But the
particular image that Daniel entertains need not attract him and move him
ineluctably to build the house as imagined. For if Daniel understands what he
is imagining and thus (for example) apprehends the image under its formal or
intelligible aspect of being an image of a “house,” he thereby apprehends
something universal, which remains open to many different possible
instantiations (e.g., many different possible shapes). Since the proper object
of Daniel’s rational appetite (or will) is not just some particular appetible
object, but rather an appetible object as understood,57 Daniel may be
attracted to and moved by the appetible object as understood by him, and yet
nevertheless remain free to build a house that is circular, square, or
rectangular. For Aquinas, our actions always have to do with particulars;
however, what attracts us about particular objects—to the extent that we have
an understanding of what we are doing—is not the particular object that we
imagine or experience, but rather some intelligible or universal aspect of the
object as understood.58 On Aquinas’s account, no particular object as merely
imagined or experienced can by itself attract or move our will, any more than
a particular object as imagined or experienced can by itself cause the act of
understanding in us.59
In addition, Aquinas holds that it is within our power as rational beings to
think or refrain from thinking about the various intelligible aspects under
which we comprehend objects; and so it is within our power to think of the
objects that we imagine and experience under one intelligible aspect or
another. For example, Daniel can think of the house that he might build
under the aspect of its being a possible dwelling for himself, or a marketable
piece of property that he can sell, or something that obstructs his neighbor’s
view and thus might draw him into a civil lawsuit. For Aquinas, then, the
very same object might be apprehended by us as attractive and good in one
respect, and yet unattractive and not good in some other respect. Now the
human will by nature seeks universal and perfect goodness, and cannot
ultimately be lulled by anything other than that which is universally,
infinitely, and perfectly good, namely God himself. Every created being is
good only by participation, and thus falls short of universal, infinite, and
perfect goodness. Thus, every finite appetible object or action, no matter how
attractive and good in certain respects, can always be regarded by us as not
attractive and not good in some other respect.60 Because of this, our will can
never be moved of necessity to pursue any finite appetible object or action.
Even when being attracted by this or that intelligible aspect of some finite
object or action that we are contemplating, it remains within our power as
rational beings to consider whether the object or action is unattractive and
thus not good in some other respect; and thus it remains within our power to
refrain from acting, or to pursue alternative courses of action. Our will can be
made to act out of necessity, only if it is “offered an object which is good
universally and from every point of view,” and such an object is none other
than God himself.61 For Aquinas, then, our freedom consists in the ability to
pursue alternative courses of action with respect to the finite goods that we
find attractive, but not with respect to the infinite and perfect good, God, who
—if seen by us, as in the Beatific Vision—will move us toward him of
necessity. If, however, our will is thus moved by God, its being moved will
not be coercive or violent, since God’s action in moving us is not the
transitive action of one being in relation to another, but rather the creative
action of God who gives us being in the first place and thus who can never
act upon us externally or violently.62
From the foregoing, it follows that none of the finite goods at which we
aim on account of the natural law in us—including even the good of self-
preservation—is good in every respect. Correspondingly, none of our natural,
God-given inclinations—insofar as they direct us toward finite goods—
dictates straightforwardly what we ought to do in any particular situation. Of
course, Aquinas does hold that every inclination that is in us by virtue of the
natural law is an inclination toward what is good and perfective of us as
human beings.63 More broadly, he holds that every natural inclination or
tendency in creatures (whether accompanied by knowledge or not) is an
inclination toward what is good and perfective for the kind of creatures that
have such inclinations.64 Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think that, on
Aquinas’s account, the naturalness of certain inclinations in us can by itself
dictate which actions are choiceworthy for us.65 After all, the securing of one
finite good, which is the proper object of a natural inclination in us, may well
impede or prevent the securing of some other good. Thus, while I have a
natural inclination to pursue the good of self-preservation,66 there may be
circumstances under which it would be wrong for me to act with the intention
of preserving my own life, for example: if I had a duty to risk my life for the
sake of defending the commonwealth,67 or if I have been justly condemned
to death.68 For Aquinas, “reason was given to man that he might ensue those
things to which his nature inclines, not in all cases, but in accordance with
the order of reason.”69
On Aquinas’s account, the rightness or wrongness of our actions is
ultimately determined not by the naturalness of the inclinations that incline
us toward certain goods, but rather by the rational ordering of the goods
toward which we are inclined. For what is natural to us as human beings,
above all, is that we act in accordance with reason, and what is proper to
reason is to make comparisons of things70 and to put things into their right
order.71 But what is the right order? Recall Aquinas’s remark that “whenever
we find a multitude whose members are ordered to each other, that multitude
must necessarily be ordered to some external principle.”72 What this implies,
in the present context, is that it is not possible to determine the relative
choiceworthiness of two or more goods toward which we are inclined, except
by reference to some larger context or whole that allows us to prioritize
different and potentially competing goods. While all of our desires and
inclinations are aimed at some good, there may be evil in our desires and
inclinations to the extent that there is lack of due order or proportionality
among them. Thus, human beings perform evil actions, not because they
directly intend what is evil, but rather because their actions involve the
sacrificing of some greater good for the sake of some lesser good (for “it is
impossible that any evil, as such, should be sought for by the appetite, either
natural, or animal, or by the intellectual appetite which is will”73). On
Aquinas’s account, this “greater” and “lesser” can be measured only by
reference to some larger context or whole, such as a whole life or a whole
community. Consider the fact that human beings naturally desire to have
friends and to know the truth. Each of these desires, in itself, is aimed at what
is perfectly good and choiceworthy; but if considered in isolation and not
within the context of some larger whole, it is not possible to determine which
of these goods is to be preferred, if the securing of one impedes or prevents
the securing of the other. On the face of it, the good of having friends and the
good of knowing the truth seem to be altogether “basic” and
incommensurable with one another. But as Aquinas notes, it is possible to
show that the good of having friends ought to be sacrificed to the good of
knowing and honoring the truth, if it is not possible to secure both goods at
the same time, since both goods ought to be understood within the context of
our overarching vocation as human beings, which is to live a life of virtue. If
someone were to prefer the having of friends to the knowing and honoring of
the truth, then he or she would also be willing to “make false judgment and
bear false witness in their defense,” and that would be contrary to a life of
virtue.74
For Aquinas, just as the naturalness of certain inclinations does not
automatically dictate the choiceworthiness of particular actions, so too the
choiceworthiness of certain actions does not automatically dictate the
desirability of particular acts of legislation. One can think of a large number
of possible actions that would be evil and thus not choiceworthy; but it does
not follow from this that the law always ought to prohibit such actions. The
reason for this is that, for Aquinas, law exists for the sake of the common
good of a community, and not for the sake of the individual goods of the
community’s members.75 While the legal prohibition of certain evil actions
might be a good thing for some individuals, such prohibitions might cause
greater harm to the common good than the evil actions themselves would.
Thus, Aquinas approvingly cites Augustine to the effect that it would be a
mistake to pass laws prohibiting prostitution; for if prostitution were made
illegal, then the behaviors to which people would resort in order to satisfy
their inordinate sexual desires would cause even greater harm to the common
good.76 It is worth emphasizing here that Aquinas’s (and Augustine’s)
argument against the legal prohibition of prostitution does not depend on any
doubts about whether or not prostitution is really evil; and it does not depend
on the notion that the law ought to be “value neutral” regarding certain
activities. For Aquinas (as for Augustine), prostitution is doubtlessly an evil,
and the law is never “value neutral.” But it remains the case that legal
commands and prohibitions ought to be contemplated with a view to the
common good and not just individual goods. Aquinas further observes that
human law, by refraining from prohibiting certain evils and vices, emulates
the eternal law of God himself. For as Aquinas notes, God allows certain
evils to take place in the universe, since his preventing of them would require
the forfeiture of greater goods or the admission of greater evils. Whether one
is talking about a political community, or the community of the created
universe as a whole, the perfection of a whole community, so Aquinas holds,
requires that particular goods are sometimes lost and particular evils
sometimes not prevented.77

NOTES
 1. ST I–II q.90 a.4.
2. ST I–II q.90 a.1.
3. ST I–II q.17 a.1.
4. Ibid.
5. ST I–II q.17 a.2; see also SCG III, 78; In NE I, lec.1.
6. ST II–II q.58 a.5.
7. ST II–II q.64 a.2.
8. ST I–II q.17 a.4.
9. SCG III, 94; SCG II, 39; QDP, q.3, a.16, ad 1; In Meta XII, lec.12,
n.2637.
10. SCG III, 94; see also SCG II, 44–45; and Super Sent, bk.1, d.44, q.1,
a.2, ad 6.
11. SCG III, 69.
12. See also QDV, q.11, a.1; QDV, q.5, a.8, ad 12; Super Sent, bk.2, d.1,
q.1, a.5.
13. In NE I, lec.1, n.1.
14. In Meta XII, lec.12, n.2627.
15. Ibid.
16. QDV, q.5, a.3; see also In Meta XII, lec.12, n.2630.
17. In Meta V, lec.3, n.782; ST I q.5, a.2, ad 1.
18. QDV, q.7, a.6, ad 7.
19. ST I q.39 a.4 ad 3; also In Meta VII, lect.13, n.6; QDP, q.7, a.4, ad 1.
20. ST I–II q.90 a.2 ad 2.
21. ST I–II q.19 a.10; ST I–II q.109 a.3; ST II–II q.26 a.3; SCG III, 17.
22. In Meta XII, lec.12, n.1303.
23. In NE IX, lec.6, n.1839.
24. In NE VIII, lec.12, n.1724.
25. SCG III, 18.
26. QDV, q.5, a.3.
27. In Meta V, lec.21, n.1108.
28. QDP, q.7, a.1.
29. ST II–II q.58 a.7 ad 2.
30. ST I q.93 a.2 ad 3.
31. ST I–II q.19 a.10.
 32. ST II–II q.26 a.3; see also ST I q.60 a.5.
33. I am indebted to the work of Herbert McCabe for this insight, and for
the examples used in illustrating it. See Herbert McCabe, Faith Within
Reason, ed. Brian Davies (New York: Continuum, 2007), 52–53; and Herbert
McCabe, God and Evil in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Brian
Davies (New York: Continuum, 2010), 36–39. See also Aristotle, Physics, II,
199a34–b33; and Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, II, lec.12–14.
34. This dimension of Aquinas’s account should make clear that his
understanding of law does not stand in tension with, but is in fact closely
allied with, a deep appreciation of the role of the virtues in human action.
35. ST I–II q.93 a.5; see also ST I q.103 a.1 ad 3.
36. See Michael Bright, Intelligence in Animals (New York: Reader’s
Digest Association, Ltd., 1997), 74–75.
37. ST I–II q.91 a.6.
38. ST I–II q.91 a.1; see also ST I–II q.93 a.3; ST I–II q.93 a.4–6.
39. ST I–II q.93 a.4.
40. ST I–II q.93 a.5.
41. ST I–II q.91 a.4–5.
42. ST I q.22 a.2 ad 2; ST I q.48 a.2; ST I q.49 a.1–2; SCG III, 71.
43. Thus for Aquinas, not only is it the case that eternal law (like every
other instance of law) is incompatible with the existence of coerced
compliance in most instances. Eternal law is incompatible with any kind of
coerced compliance whatsoever; for apart from the creative, legislative
causality of God (which is the same as his eternal law), there simply is no
created being or created act that is there to be coerced (ST I q.103 a.1 ad 3;
ST I q.105 a.4; ST I q.105 a.4).
44. ST I q.103 a.1.
45. ST I q.44 a.4.
46. ST I q.47 a.1.
47. See also In Meta XII, lec.12, n.2627–2629.
48. ST I–II q.90 a.1 ad 1; ST I–II q.91 a.2; see also ST I–II q.93 a.6; and ST
I q.103 a.1 ad 1.
49. ST I–II q.91 a.2 ad 1.
50. ST I–II q.91 a.2.
51. Ibid.
 52. ST I–II q.93 a.5; see also SCG III, 114.
53. ST I–II q.96 a.4; see also Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, I, 5. Literally
translated, the statement reads: “What will not have been just, does not
appear to be law” (“Non videtur esse lex, quae justa non fuerit”).
54. See ST I–II q.94 a.2.
55. Ibid.
56. ST I–II q.79 a.2.
57. ST I q.82 a.4.
58. See QDM, q.6.
59. See ST I q.79 a.3; ST I q.86 a.1.
60. ST I–II q.2 a.8; ST I–II q.17 a.1 ad 2; ST I q.105 a.4; SCG III, 10.
61. ST I–II q.10 a.2.
62. Along these lines, Aquinas observes that it belongs to the perfection of
the liberty of the will to be able to choose between opposite things while
keeping the order of the end in view; but it is a defect of the liberty of the
will for it to choose anything while turning away from the order of the end.
Thus, speaking of the beatified angels, Aquinas tells us: “there is greater
liberty of will in the angels who cannot sin, than there is in ourselves who
can sin.” (ST I q.62 a.8 ad 3.)
63. See ST I–II q.94 a.2.
64. See ST I q.59 a.1; ST I q.63 a.4; QDV, q.21, a.1–2 and q.22, a.1.
65. Holding that the naturalness of certain inclinations dictates the
choiceworthiness of certain actions is, as Josiah Royce suggests, similar to
holding that our being subject to the law of gravitation dictates “that we all
ought to sit down.” See Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy: A
Critique of the Basis of Conduct and of Faith (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin,
and Co., 1885), 80.
66. ST I–II q.94 a.2.
67. ST I q.60 a.5.
68. ST II–II q.69 a.4.
69. ST II–II q.69 a.4 ad 1; see also ST I–II q.94 a.2 ad 2.
70. ST II–II q.110 a.1.
71. ST I–II q.17 a.2.
72. QDV, q.5, a.3; see also QDV, q.5, a.1, ad 9; ST I q.11 a.3; In Meta XII,
lec.12, n.2630.
 73. ST I q.19 a.9; see also QDM, q.1, a.3.
74. In NE I, lec.6, n.76.
75. ST I–II q.90 a.2.
76. ST II–II q.10 a.11; see Augustine’s De Ordine, II, 4.
77. See ST I q.22 a.2 ad 2; ST I q.48 a.2; ST I q.49 a.1–2; SCG III, 71. In a
similar vein, Aquinas holds that a judge may sometimes be obligated to
pronounce a sentence that he personally knows to be an unjust one. The
reason for this is that the judge, insofar as he exercises public authority, is
obligated to render judgments on behalf of the community and for the sake of
the community’s common good; accordingly, the judge may legitimately
render judgments based only on knowledge acquired by him as a public
authority, and not based on knowledge acquired by him as a private
individual (i.e., outside the scope of an appropriate public, judicial process).
If the judge in a capital case privately knows that a defendant is innocent, but
is unable to remove himself from the case and is unable to bring his privately
acquired knowledge to light through some appropriate judicial proceeding,
then the judge does no wrong in sentencing the innocent defendant to death
(see ST II–II q.64 a.6 ad 3; ST II–II q.67 a.2; ST II–II q.96 a.6).
 CHAPTER 19

CONSCIENCE AND SYNDERESIS

TOBIAS HOFFMANN

AQUINAS played a major role in clarifying the concept of conscience and

theoretical problems connected with it. Like earlier scholastics, he discussed
conscience in connection with synderesis (a notion received from the
Patristic tradition), inquiring how they should be defined and whether they
are fallible. His most innovative contribution is his discussion of moral
obligation in the case of an erring conscience.1

AN INFALLIBLE MORAL AWARENESS:

SYNDERESIS
Medieval discussions of synderesis and conscience have as their canonical
point of reference a passage from Jerome’s commentary on Ezekiel. The text
is important for two reasons. First, there Jerome introduces the term
synderesis (presumably a corruption of the Greek word for conscience,
syneidēsis) to medieval theologians. Second, the scholastics treated some of
the observations in the text regarding synderesis and conscience as having
axiomatic value, on account of Jerome’s authority. Ironically, he is only
reporting someone else’s view—probably Origen’s—a view from which
Jerome is distancing himself.2 Despite this misunderstanding, the passage
inspired philosophically fruitful debates about the nature and function of
synderesis and of conscience. The problems raised by Jerome’s text, as
formulated by scholastic thinkers, are the following: Is synderesis a faculty or
a habit? Is it cognitive or affective? Is it infallible? What is its relation to
conscience?
In Aquinas’s early writings, his discussion of synderesis and conscience is
still organized according to questions similar to these. Yet although he takes
the authority of Jerome seriously, his main concern is not exegetical but
philosophical. Unlike Bonaventure, who understands synderesis as the
fundamental desire for the moral good, but in agreement with his teacher
Albert the Great, Aquinas assigns to synderesis principally a cognitive role.3
He argues that human beings have a fundamental grasp of right and wrong,
which is infallible. According to Aquinas, this fundamental moral awareness
is what Jerome and the theologians after him called synderesis. In essence,
Aquinas argues teleologically; nature endowed human beings with infallible
synderesis in order to allow for the certitude of all ethical considerations:

There could not be any stability and certainty in the things that depend on principles, if
the principles were not firmly established.… Accordingly, so that rectitude in human
actions may be possible, there must be a permanent principle that has an unchanging
rectitude, and by which criterion all human deeds are examined. This permanent
principle must resist all evil and assent to every good. And this is synderesis, the task of
which is to rebuke evil, and to incline to the good. Therefore we concede that there
cannot be any sin in it.4

The role of first practical principles is analogous to that of first theoretical

principles, such as the principle of noncontradiction. Both theoretical reason
and practical reason rely as a foundation for all reasoning on first principles
that are known through themselves (per se nota). If the terms of first
principles are properly grasped, the principles are understood and error about
them is not possible. Among Aquinas’s examples of such principles of
synderesis are these: “evil is to be avoided,” “nothing illicit is to be done,”
“God is to be obeyed,” “one must live according to reason.”5 Synderesis is
the “natural habit” of reason containing these first practical principles, which
means that by nature each human being has a fundamental awareness of these
principles and that they can be used promptly when needed.6 By positing first
practical principles as the foundation for all moral thinking, Aquinas does not
suggest that they are explicitly used as the starting points of all moral
reasonings. They are rather tacitly presupposed and made explicit only upon
reflection.
Aquinas connects synderesis to natural law, identifying the first practical
principles, of which synderesis is the habit, with the general principles of
natural law.7 In the Summa theologiae, he occasionally replaces the word
synderesis by the term understanding (intellectus), the intellectual virtue of
grasping the first principles of reason.8
Aquinas’s optimism about the infallibility of the principles of synderesis
or of natural law may give rise to doubt. If synderesis is infallible, then all
human beings—good or bad, Western and Eastern, modern and ancient—
must share the same fundamental moral awareness. In this regard, we must
consider two features of Aquinas’s account of synderesis. First, he holds that
the ethical principles of synderesis operate at an extremely general level.
Albert the Great had given them some specific content: “one must not
fornicate,” “one must not kill,” “one must be compassionate with those who
suffer.”9 But unlike his teacher, Aquinas understands the directives of
synderesis as formal principles, not as concrete moral norms. As such, they
are merely the condition of possibility for particular directives. A statement
like “one must live according to reason” does not endorse any particular
ethical theory, but means only that one should conceive of one’s actions in
ethical terms. Aquinas acknowledges that when we are dealing with more
particular directives of the natural law, it is not the case that all people
agree.10
Second, Aquinas conceives of synderesis as habitual knowledge. This
means that although we have it, it is not always in our actual consideration.
In concrete situations we may be governed by fear or desire, and thus we
may fail to apply a principle of synderesis to the particular case.11

CONSCIENCE AND ITS FALLIBILITY

Aquinas seeks a definition of conscience that is congruent to the etymology
of the word and that accounts for the activities commonly attributed to it. He
follows Albert the Great in understanding conscience as the act of applying
ethical knowledge to a specific case. In other words, conscience is the
consideration of a specific case in light of one’s moral knowledge. Moral
knowledge comprises the first principles of synderesis, as well as more
particular moral directives. Conceiving conscience as an act, Aquinas denies
that it is a special habit or a power, against the claims of the Summa Halensis
and Bonaventure.12
Within conscience, one can distinguish three kinds of consideration. One
type of consideration lacks moral assessment; conscience is merely said to
witness (testificari) concerning the action, as when I say that I am not
conscious of having done a certain deed. Another consideration of
conscience consists in evaluating an action that I am about to perform. My
moral knowledge guides me in finding the appropriate dictate of conscience,
and conscience is said to provoke, urge, or bind me to act (instigare,
inducere, ligare). A third is the judgment of an action I have done. For this,
my moral knowledge gives the criteria of examining the action after it is
done. Conscience may accuse me or cause me to have remorse (accusare,
remordere), or it may defend or excuse me (defendere, excusare), depending
on whether the action under examination is seen to be in disagreement or in
accord with my moral knowledge.13 Of all these, Aquinas only discusses
conscience’s activity of “binding” in any detail, presumably because it
governs the other acts as well. Notice that Aquinas’s examples of acts of
conscience are all in the first person. Conscience is not a consideration of
someone else’s obligations, but of what I should do or should have done.
While synderesis is infallible, conscience can be mistaken.14 As we have
seen, conscience is the application of moral knowledge to a specific situation.
This application has a syllogistic structure. The major of the practical
syllogism is obtained from synderesis, the minor is administered by practical
reason, and the conclusion is the dictate of conscience. Aquinas’s most
frequently used example for dictates of conscience is about sexual
intercourse, such as “I should abstain from intercourse with this woman,” or
its opposite, “I should have intercourse with this woman.” The practical
reasoning that leads to these dictates of conscience may be described as
follows:

(1) Nothing prohibited by God’s law is to be done.

Intercourse with this woman is against God’s law.
..........................................
I should abstain from intercourse with this woman.15
(2) The good is to be done.
It is my marital duty to have intercourse with this woman.
..........................................
I should have intercourse with this woman.16
(3) God’s law must not be disdained.
To abstain from fornication (sex out of wedlock) with this woman is to
 disdain God’s law.
..........................................
I should fornicate with this woman.17

These examples characteristically differ with respect to their minor premise.

In the first and third case, it is obtained through “superior reason,” and in the
second case through “inferior reason.” Aquinas and his contemporaries
frequently use this vocabulary in their discussions of conscience, although
for Aquinas this distinction is relatively unimportant from the theoretical
point of view. Practical deliberations that incorporate considerations
concerning God (whether obtained by faith or from natural reason) are
attributed to superior reason, whereas deliberations from a merely “secular”
point of view (whether from considerations of natural reason or from positive
law) are attributed to inferior reason.18 The dictates of conscience in the first
two practical syllogisms may be right or wrong, mainly depending on
whether or not “this woman” under consideration is my wife. For Aquinas,
the third conclusion is definitely a case of erring conscience, because in his
view the minor premise is essentially incorrect. Notice that in practice, the
major premise of our moral reasoning is typically not made explicit. The
reasoning of the first example would normally be like this: “I should not have
intercourse with this woman because it is against God’s law.”
For correct judgments of conscience, the main difficulty consists in
assessing the particular situation and in understanding which premises one
should use in order to judge the case at hand. The virtue that is most relevant
for conscience is prudence, which is the virtue of applying right reason to a
specific action.19 Yet in Aquinas’s account, prudence encompasses more than
conscience. Whereas considerations of conscience may well remain at a
merely theoretical level, the prudent person takes them to heart and acts
accordingly. In contrast, it is quite possible to have a correct conscience and
to act against it, as in the case of incontinence. Then the mistake lies in the
choice, but not in conscience.20 In the prudent, conversely, the affection is
ordered thanks to the support of the moral virtues (such as temperance,
fortitude, justice, and related virtues). Thanks to the affective support of the
virtues, the prudent have internalized their practical judgments to the point
that they do not abandon them.21
 MORAL OBLIGATION AND ERRING
CONSCIENCE
The most intriguing problem concerns moral obligation in the case of erring
conscience. Throughout his discussions of the problem, Aquinas aims at
integrating objective and subjective criteria that constitute the morality of
human actions. In the Summa theologiae, he adds considerations about
ignorance in order to resolve the tension between objective and subjective
factors.
In his discussions of erring conscience, Aquinas discusses the position of
an anonymous author who focuses unilaterally on objective criteria for moral
goodness. Accounts similar to this anonymous view are found among
Franciscan authors of the time.22 According to Thomas, this author holds that
erring conscience binds only in certain situations, depending on what type of
action it is concerned with. In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas presents this
writer as distinguishing three kinds of action: generically good (e.g.,
believing in Christ), indifferent (e.g., pulling up a blade of grass), and
generically evil (e.g., fornicating). According to this view, erring conscience
binds only in the case of indifferent acts, as when I think it is forbidden to
pull up some grass. But it does not bind when I think that believing in Christ
is prohibited, or when I think that fornication is commanded. In these cases,
diverging from erring conscience is not evil.23 Table 1 illustrates the view as
Aquinas presents it.
Repeatedly, it has been assumed that that Aquinas’s anonymous author
was Bonaventure. But Bonaventure sets up the problem somewhat
differently. More importantly, he comes to a different conclusion, as seen in
table 2.
Like the other view, Bonaventure admits that there are situations in which
conscience does not bind one to act or not to act on what it decrees. But
unlike that view, he thinks that acting against erring conscience is necessarily
a sin, for by doing so, I would be doing some deed that I think is contrary to
God’s law, and thus I would hold God’s law in contempt. Hence erring
conscience binds one to revise it.24
There is some plausibility to the anonymous author’s view that I am not
bound by my conscience if it tells me to do something that is in fact contrary
to God’s law. Augustine defines sin precisely as what is done, said, or
desired contrary to God’s law.25 Yet if I act against erring conscience, then I
do what in fact accords with God’s law and I avoid sin. Versions of this
argument are frequently used in arguments pro or con (depending on the
writer’s own view) that introduce questions about binding conscience.26

Table 1 Erring conscience according to the view expounded in ST I–II,

q.19, a.5

Table 2 Erring conscience according to Bonaventure (Super Sent 2,

d.39, a.1, q.3)

Aquinas rejects the view of the anonymous author, and he would in part
contradict Bonaventure as well. For Aquinas, the distinction of generally
good, evil, and indifferent acts does not have any bearing on when erring
conscience binds and when it does not. Regardless of whether my action is
objectively good, evil, or indifferent, conscience binds, for it is by means of
conscience that an action is proposed to me as good, bad, or indifferent.
Aquinas gives two examples: if on account of erring conscience I consider it
evil to abstain from fornication, and I want to abstain from it, then I want
something evil, although in truth it is not evil, but only misapprehended as
evil. Likewise, if because of erring conscience I think that believing in Christ
is evil, then choosing to believe in Christ, I choose it as something evil,
although for Aquinas, believing in Christ is really something good. Since
conscience presents the action to me as good or bad, Aquinas considers it
immoral to act contrary to erring conscience.27 Conscience should in fact not
be seen as a rival to God’s law, but rather as the herald of God’s law. It binds
not on its own account, but on account of the divine precept. Aquinas
provides an apt illustration of this point:

Suppose that a ruling by a king would reach the people only through some inferior
leader, and suppose that he says that this ruling comes from the king, although this is not
true. What this leader says would then be obligatory qua ruling by the king, and those
who disrespect it would deserve punishment.28

For Aquinas, the binding character of conscience, whether erring or not,

means that acting against conscience is always evil. It does not mean,
however, that acting according to conscience is always good. Those who
killed the apostles, thinking to please God, are not necessarily excused.
Everything depends on whether I am responsible for the fact that my
conscience is erring. I may have been negligent in forming my conscience, or
I may even have wanted to be ignorant about right and wrong. Ignorance of
basic moral rules, such as that adultery is evil, is no excuse. A man who
thinks he is bound to commit adultery could have known better; he errs by
vincible ignorance. Yet someone might be ignorant of a particular
circumstance without fault. Aquinas gives the example of someone who has
intercourse with a woman who, unbeknownst to him, is not his wife.29
Aquinas’s view of one’s obligation to follow one’s conscience can be
summarized as shown in table 3.
In sum, Aquinas would not say that one must always follow one’s
conscience. It is true that one must never act against it, but following it might
likewise be sinful. This seems paradoxical, for in such situations sin appears
unavoidable. Such a dilemma does not occur for the anonymous author’s
view that Aquinas describes in the Summa theologiae, but it constitutes a real
problem for both Bonaventure and Aquinas. Like Bonaventure, Aquinas
holds that to resolve the dilemma, I must revise (deponere) my erring
conscience.30
The advice to revise my erring conscience is puzzling. Typically, I am
unaware of a mistake of conscience, otherwise it would not be completely
erring, as Aquinas admits. Understandably, Aquinas argues that a doubtful
conscience must be reevaluated. But does it make sense to require the
revision of erring conscience?31 It should be noted, however, that as
discussed above, for Aquinas the dilemma occurs only in case of voluntary
ignorance, for it is no sin to act in accord with conscience that errs from
involuntary ignorance. In Aquinas’s eyes, apart from the situation of
madness, all instances of ignorance of the moral law (ignorantia iuris) are
due to voluntary ignorance.32 It is thus implicit in Aquinas’s account that
being unaware that my conscience is erring, in other words, failing to notice
the conflict between my conscience and the moral law, results from
negligence: I could have avoided such obtusion by taking greater care in
forming my conscience. But at any time it is possible to stop being negligent,
and to raise doubts about my conscience. And once my erring conscience has
become a doubtful conscience, I am in a position to revise it. Yet more
important than conscience formation is moral education in the practice of the
virtues, especially prudence, for the prudent not only make correct moral
judgments more easily but also act willingly according to the dictates of right
reason.

Table 3 Erring conscience according to Aquinas (ST I–II, q.19, a.5–6)

 Conscience, for Aquinas, has a decidedly cognitive dimension. It is an act
of practical reason, not an affection of the will or a feeling. Metaphorically,
one might call it the voice of reason, but Aquinas does not view it as an
“inner voice” in the sense of a God-given instinctive impulse toward the right
decision. Instead, Aquinas’s emphasis on reason points in the direction of
secular accounts, such as Immanuel Kant’s conception of conscience as an
“inner judge” that applies the “moral law” to specific circumstances.33

NOTES
I wish to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for supporting me
during my work on this text.

1. Aquinas’s discussions of synderesis and conscience are found in Super

Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.3–4; Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3; QDV, q.16–17; ST I, q.79,
a.12–13; ST I-II, q.19, a.5–6; ST I-II, q.96, a.4; Quodl 8, q.6, a.3; Quodl 9, q.7,
a.2; Quodl 3, q.12; In Rom 2, lec.3; In Rom 14, lec.3. His most detailed
treatment is that of QDV, q.16–17. There is a certain evolution of Aquinas’s
thought leading up to the view he holds in the Summa theologiae, but the
developments concern refinements or shifts in emphasis, not doctrinal
revisions.
The most useful studies of Aquinas’s account of synderesis and
conscience in their historical contexts are by Odon Lottin, “Syndérèse et
conscience aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et
XIIIe siècles, vol. 2/1 (Leuven: Abbaye du Mont César; Gembloux: J.
Duculot, 1948), 103–349; “Problèmes moraux relatifs à la conscience,” ibid.,
353–417. Some of the texts discussed by Lottin are translated in Timothy C.
Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980).
2. Jerome, In Hiezechielem I, i, 6–8, CCL 75:10–12. For an English
translation, see Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy, 79–80. For a
discussion of this passage in its own right, see Douglas Kries, “Origen, Plato,
and Conscience (Synderesis) in Jerome’s Ezekiel Commentary,” Traditio 57
(2002): 67–83. The text-critical question of reading syneidēsis (conscience)
or syntērēsis (conservation) in Jerome’s original text is not yet settled. For a
recent discussion, see Alain Le Boulluec, “Recherches sur les origines du
thème de la syndérèse dans la tradition patristique,” in Christian Trottmann,
ed., Vers la contemplation: Études sur la syndérèse et les modalités de la
contemplation de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Paris: Librairie Honoré
Champion, 2007), 61–77.
3. Bonaventure, Super Sent 2, d.39, a.2, q.1. Albert the Great, De homine,
De viribus animae motivis 4: De synderesi, q.1, Editio Coloniensis 27/2
(Münster: Aschendorff, 1951ff.), 527–31; Quaestio de synderesi a.1, Editio
Coloniensis 25/2:232–35.
4. QDV, q.16, a.2 (all translations are my own). Teleological
considerations about synderesis are also found in Super Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.3
and QDV, q.16 a.1; an echo of such teleological reasoning is still perceivable
in ST I q.79 a.12.
5. e.g., Super Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.3–4; Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.2; QDV,
q.16, a.1, ad 9.
6. Super Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.3; Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.1–2; QDV, q.16,
a.1–2; more briefly in ST I q.79 a.12. Aquinas’s discussion of the first
practical principles as propositions that are known through themselves tends
to be sketchy. The most detailed discussion is found in his treatment of
natural law, ST I-II q.94 a.2. For the philosophical and biblical background of
the principle “the good is to be done, and evil is to be avoided,” see Vernon
J. Bourke, “The Background of Aquinas’ Synderesis Principle,” in Lloyd P.
Gerson, ed., Graceful Reason (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1983), 345–60.
 7. Super Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.4; QDV, q.16, a.1; ST I-II q.94 a.1 ad 2.
8. In ST I-II q.58 a.4, which is in a specifically Aristotelian context,
Aquinas uses the term understanding (intellectus) to express the same
concept that in II-II q.47 a.6 ad 1 and ad 3 he refers to as synderesis.
9. Albert the Great, De homine, De viribus animae motivis 4: De
synderesi, q.1, Editio Coloniensis 27/2:530.
10. ST I-II q.94 a.4.
11. QDV, q.16, a.3; cf. Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.1, ad 4.
12. Super Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.4; QDV, q.17, a.1; ST I q.79 a.13. Cf. Summa
Halensis I-II n.421, Editio Quaracchi (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S.
Bonaventurae, 1924–48), 3:496; Bonaventure, Super Sent 2, d.39, a.1, q.1;
Albert the Great, De homine, De viribus animae motivis 5: De conscientia,
q.1, Editio Coloniensis 27/2:535–36.
13. QDV, q.17, a.1, summarized in ST I q.79 a.13.
14. For Aquinas’s discussions of the fallibility of conscience, see Super
Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.1–2; QDV, q.16, a.2; QDV, q.17, a.2; Quodl 3, q.12, a.1.
15. Cf. Super Sent 2, d.24, q.2, a.4; QDV, q.17, a.2.
16. Cf. ST I-II q.19 a.5.
17. Cf. Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.3, arg.5; ST I-II q.19 a.5–6.
18. QDV, q.15, a.3. For Aquinas, superior and inferior reason are not
distinct in essence, but only incidentally, depending on whether the object
under consideration concerns “higher natures” (God or angels) or “lower
things” (earthly matters); see QDV, q.15, a.2. For conscience as bound by
positive law, see ST I-II q.96 a.4.
19. ST II-II q.47 a.8; ST I-II q.57 a.6. For an insightful account of the
relationship between prudence and conscience, see Thomas Deman,
“Appendice II: Renseignements techniques,” in Thomas d’Aquin, La
prudence: 2a–2ae, Questions 47–56, 3d ed. (Paris: Cerf, 2006), 496–523.
20. QDV, q.17, a.1, ad 4.
21. ST I-II q.58 a.5; see also ST I-II q.57 a.4.
22. E.G., Alexander of Hales, John de la Rochelle, and the Summa
Halensis, see Lottin, “Problèmes moraux relatifs à la conscience,” 354–74.
23. ST I-II q.19 a.5. Lottin, “Problèmes moraux relatifs à la conscience,”
388, surmises that Aquinas’s discussion of the anonymous opinion is based
upon the text of Vat. lat. 781, ff. 4va–7rb. For a transcription of the text, see
ibid. 368–72.
 24. Bonaventure, Super Sent 2, d.39, a.1, q.3. The rival view that Aquinas
expounds in the Sentences commentary agrees with Bonaventure that acting
against one’s conscience is sinful because of contempt for God, see Super
Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.3.
25. Contra Faustum Manicheum 22.27, CSEL 25/1:621.
26. E.G., Summa Halensis I-II n.421, arg.3 in opp., Editio Quaracchi 3:388;
Bonaventure, Super Sent 2, d.39, a.1, q.3, arg.3 in opp.; Aquinas, Super Sent
2, d.39, q.3, a.3, arg.1; QDV, q.17, a.4, arg.1.
27. ST I-II q.19 a.5.
28. Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.3, ad 3; see also QDV, q.17, a.3; and QDV,
q.17, a.5.
29. ST I-II q.19 a.6; see also QDV, q.17, a.3. Though this example seems
rather unlikely, Aquinas might have in mind an individual who does not
realize that his marriage is invalid. For Aquinas on voluntary ignorance, see
ST I-II q.6 a.8 and ST I-II q.76 a.3.
30. Super Sent 2, d.39, q.3, a.3, ad 5; QDV, q.17, a.4, ad 8; Quodl 3, q.12,
a.2, ad 2; ST I-II q.19 a.6 ad 3. Cf. Bonaventure, Super Sent 2, d.39, a.1, q.3,
ad quaestiones connexas. See also Richard Schenk, “Perplexus supposito
quodam: Notizen zu einem vergessenen Schlüsselbegriff thomasischer
Gewissenslehre,” Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 57 (1990):
62–95.
31. QDV, q.17, a.4; ST I-II q.19 a.5 ad 2. For the revision of doubtful
conscience, see QDV, q.17, a.4, ad 4.
32. Quodl 3, q.12, a.2, ad 2.
33. For a useful overview of modern and contemporary conceptions of
conscience, see Thomas E. Hill, Jr., “Four Conceptions of Conscience,” in
Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams, eds., Integrity and Conscience (New York
and London: New York University Press, 1998), 13–52.
 CHAPTER 20

VIRTUES AND VICES

JEAN PORTER

THE concept of virtue plays a central role in Aquinas’s thought. Indeed, it

plays more than one such role, as is most clearly apparent in his final
theological synthesis, the Summa theologiae. Recall that this Summa is
divided into three parts, the second of which is devoted to a analysis of
human action, considered as the means through which we attain (or deviate
from) our final end of happiness through union with God.1 The secunda pars
is further divided into two sections, the first proposing an analysis of the
human act as such, its normative structure and its constitutive principles, and
the second, analyzing the specific normative ideals governing human life
generally, as well as those which pertain to particular roles and states of life
(secunda secundae prologue). In each of these subparts, the concept of virtue
serves as a central organizing principle. In the prima secundae, virtue
considered as a kind of habitus is identified as one of the intrinsic principles
of human acts, that is to say, one of the constitutive principles of a properly
human kind of causality.2 As such, it is considered in tandem with the
rational and affective faculties, which it disposes toward certain kinds of
actions, and contrasted (but not opposed to) the extrinsic principles of human
acts, namely Satan and God, the former of whom tempts us toward sin, and
the latter who “instructs us through law and aids us through grace.”3 In the
secunda secundae, Aquinas organizes his material by reference to the virtues
considered as normative ideals, in terms of which diverse elements of
Christian moral reflection can be perspicuously analyzed and brought
together in a coherent way (secunda secundae prologue).
Thus, Aquinas’s moral theology incorporates both a general theory of
virtue, and extensive consideration of the ideals and precepts proper to
particular virtues. In what follows, I will consider each of these, although the
scope of this chapter will not permit more than a brief look at the specifics of
Aquinas’s normative analysis. Nonetheless, I hope to say enough to indicate
the way in which concepts of virtue and the virtues function as organizing
principles for him.

VIRTUE AS A PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

A number of scholars approach Aquinas’s theory of the virtues as if it were
essentially an appropriation of Aristotle’s theory that places it in a
theological context but adds nothing of substance to it.4 But when we place
Aquinas’s theory of virtue within its immediate context, that is to say,
scholastic debates over virtue during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is
apparent that he takes much of substance, and even more, key questions,
from these debates.5 Going back as far as Abelard, the general contours of an
Aristotelian theory of virtue, including the claim that a virtue is a stable
disposition of the soul and the identification of the ideal of virtue with a
mean, were familiar and widely accepted among scholastic theologians.6 At
the same time, however, some theologians, including most importantly Peter
Lombard, preferred an alternative, more Augustinian construal according to
which the virtues are dependent on (or equivalent to) the direct bestowal of
divine aid through grace; from this perspective, Aristotelian theories
appeared inadequate or wrongheaded.
It is noteworthy that Aquinas’s preferred definition of a virtue, around
which he structures his own systematic analysis, is taken from Peter
Lombard’s definition, drawn from elements of Augustine’s writings: “Virtue
is a good quality of the mind, by which we live righteously, of which no one
can make bad use, which God brings about in us, without us.”7 However, he
immediately qualifies this definition in one critical respect, adding that the
last clause applies only to the infused virtues, which God bestows on us
without action on our part, in contrast to the acquired virtues, which as the
name suggests can be attained through human effort without grace—in
contrast to Lombard, who denies the possibility of attaining virtue without
grace. What is more, Aquinas interprets this definition in decidedly
Aristotelian terms, grounded in analysis of virtue as a habitus, that is to say, a
stable disposition of the intellect, will, or passions inclining the person to act
in one kind of way rather than another.8 Such dispositions are necessary if we
are to be capable of action at all; for example, the child’s innate capacities for
speech must be developed through the habitus of a particular language before
the child can actually talk.9 So understood, the virtues include intellectual
capabilities such as knowledge. These are, of course, morally neutral,
although they are good in the sense of perfecting the agent in some respect.10
However, those virtues that shape the passions and the will, and the intellect
insofar as it is oriented to action, are necessarily morally significant because
they incline toward actions of a kind that is good without qualification.11
So far, it might seem that Aquinas has, so to speak, split the difference
between the two dominant scholastic approaches to the theory of virtue. The
distinctiveness of his theory lies in the way in which he synthesizes these
approaches by means of a systematic development of the claim that the
virtues are perfections—singly, perfections of the faculties of the soul that
comprise the subject of the particular virtues, and taken together, a perfection
of the human agent.12 At the same time, he integrates his analysis of virtue,
and by implication his overall account of human agency and the acts
expressing it, into his overarching metaphysical and theological system.
Within that structure, the idea of perfection serves to integrate the accounts
of intelligibility, goodness, and causality in a perspicuous way.13 According
to Aquinas, actuality is the fundamental characteristic of any kind of
existence—every actually existing thing is in act and can be said to be perfect
insofar as it is fully in act. Perfection is understood, correlatively, as the
fullest possible development and expression of the creature’s dispositions
and capacities, in accordance with the ensemble of intelligible causal powers
and inclinations, that is to say, the proper form of the specific kind of thing
that it is. To the extent that a creature approximates this ideal, it can be said
to be good without qualification. Thus, Aquinas interprets the claim that
every creature tends toward, or seeks the good to mean that every creature is
naturally disposed toward the attainment of its specific form through the
operations proper to that form. For living creatures, including ourselves,
perfection consists in operations through which the creature sustains in itself,
and generates in others, an orderly way of life in accordance with the ordered
capacities constituting its form. The complexity of the human creature
implies that we, unlike other animals, can attain perfection in diverse ways
and at disparate levels, including some which go beyond our natural
capacities. But no matter how perfection is understood, it will necessarily
involve some modality of proper development and exercise of the capacities
distinctive to us as creatures of a specific kind.
Aquinas acknowledges that we can legitimately regard the traditional
cardinal virtues as general qualities of every praiseworthy action, but he
prefers a second construal, according to which these are distinct virtues,
corresponding to the distinct faculties of the soul.14 Thus understood, the
virtues are perfections, which is to say, the full and appropriate development
of the faculties that they inform, actualized in distinctive kinds of good
actions. Because the faculties of the intellect, the will, and the desiring and
irascible passions are all distinct, each has its proper virtue, identified with
one of the four traditional cardinal virtues: prudence or practical wisdom,
strictly speaking an intellectual virtue, enables the agent to choose in
accordance with rightly ordered desires for one’s final end, as these are
expressed in particular actions; justice orients the will toward the good of
others or the common good, as discerned by reason; and temperance and
fortitude shape the passions in such a way that the agent desires what is truly
in accordance with reason and is prepared to resist obstacles to attaining it.15
Aquinas interprets the kinds of actions traditionally associated with
particular virtues in such a way as to display these as perfections of specific
faculties, as well as exemplifications of general ideals of praiseworthy
behavior. The passions, which are naturally oriented toward what is
perceived as desirable and away from what is perceived as noxious through
the senses, are shaped through reason in such a way as to aim towards the
overall good of the person through virtues of temperance and fortitude.16
Shaped, but not suppressed—otherwise, the virtues of the sensitive part of
the soul would render their subject otiose, rather than perfecting it.17 Thus,
the kinds of actions characterizing temperance and fortitude are irreducibly
identified with the passions and the external behaviors typically expressing
these, for example, the characteristic exterior acts of chastity always take the
form of some kind of sexual behavior or abstinence, reflecting a rational and
appropriate disposition of the faculty for sexual desire itself. Similarly, the
will, which is intrinsically oriented toward self-love, is shaped by the virtues
of justice and ultimately charity to move beyond natural self-love to wider
loves, toward the community, one’s neighbors, and ultimately toward God
himself.18 At the same time, again, the proper disposition of the will toward a
wider range of loves does not do away with, or much less destroy, a properly
informed self-love—otherwise, as Aquinas remarks, charity would represent
the corruption, rather than the perfection of human (or angelic) nature.19
Because the particular virtues represent dispositions of distinctive
faculties, Aquinas does not endorse the classical and Augustinian thesis of
the unity of the virtues, according to which diverse virtues, properly
understood, are all expressions of some one virtue or ideal of goodness,
rationality, or charity.20 Rather, particular virtues represent perfections of the
distinct faculties of the soul, as these are informed by rational reflection and
judgment and (in the case of the infused virtues) coordinated and directed by
charity to one’s true final end. Yet the acts of the virtues will always be good
without qualification, and for that reason, they must be coordinated—through
the rational judgments of prudence, (perhaps) directed by charity—toward
action in accordance with the agent’s overall good and with right relations
with others and God.21 Thus, Aquinas affirms the connection, rather than the
unity of the virtues—the thesis that the operations of the virtues are
necessarily interconnected, in such a way that it is necessary to possess all
the central virtues in order genuinely to have any particular virtue.22 It should
be noted, however, that this does not imply that the virtues are only possible
through charity. While only the infused virtues can be described as such
without qualification, the acquired virtues, fully formed through rational
reflection and connected through prudence, are also genuine virtues seen in
relation to the connatural end of the human person.23
This brings us to a further point. Not only do the virtues consist in
perfections of the constitutive faculties of the human soul, they operate in
tandem to direct the individual toward his or her overall perfection as a
rational creature, that is to say, toward beatitude or happiness. At the same
time, happiness can be understood in a twofold way. There is a kind of
happiness proportioned to our natural capacities, to which the virtues that we
acquire by our own efforts are oriented. Indeed, Aquinas frequently identifies
this kind of happiness with the practice of the cardinal virtues themselves,
regarded as jointly constituting the full development of the principles of
action characteristic of the rational creature.24 But in addition, we have been
called to a higher form of happiness, namely, direct personal union with God
in the Beatific Vision. This form of fulfillment completely exceeds the
natural capabilities, not only of the human soul, but of any creature; thus, it
must receive new principles of action in order to attain such an end.25
Correlatively, these new principles of action are only brought about through
God’s immediate action on the soul.26 This transformation is brought about
by grace, and the operative dispositions through which grace is rendered
active are the infused virtues, including infused versions of the cardinal
virtues, as well as the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the
gifts of the Holy Spirit.27
Aquinas’s analysis of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, traditionally identified
as wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear,
takes its starting points from the complex interpretative tradition generated
by the relevant scriptural texts, especially Isa. 11:2–3 and 1 Cor. 12:8–13.
This tradition posed a challenge for scholastic theories of virtue, Aquinas’s
included, because it is not immediately apparent how the gifts are to be
distinguished from the virtues. After all, the gifts are dispositions perfecting
the human agent in such a way as to lead to good actions, as are the virtues;
and while they are bestowed directly by God rather than being acquired
through human efforts, the same is true of the infused virtues.28 Yet the
suggested conclusion, that the gifts simply are virtues, implies what Aquinas
describes as “no small difficulties,” since the accepted lists of the virtues and
the gifts do not match, that is to say, not all the gifts are included among the
accepted list of cardinal and theological virtues, nor are all these virtues
included among the seven gifts.29 The challenge, therefore, is to find a way
to integrate the gifts into the overall theory of virtue, in such a way as to
preserve the distinction between the two categories, while also explaining
how they operate in tandem to produce good human actions.
After surveying what he regards as inadequate attempts to address this
challenge, Aquinas remarks that if we are to arrive at an adequate account of
the gifts, we should be guided by the way in which Scripture itself speaks of
them, observing that they are described not only as gifts, but more as spirits,
for example, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding.”30 A spirit, in this
context, implies a divine inspiration, prompting the agent to a particular
course of action. (As Aquinas goes on to explain, these inspirations are
typically expressed in and through the operations of the agent’s intellectual
and appetitive faculties, prompting appropriate judgments and desires in such
a way as to guide the agent’s concrete choices.31) Because these divinely
infused inclinations come from outside the agent, they fall under the broad
category of external principles of human action, but for that very reason, the
agent stands in need of a distinctive kind of habitus in order to receive and
respond to them in an appropriate way. These habitus are the gifts properly
so called, that is to say, dispositions of the intellect and will which render the
agent responsive to the “spirits” to which Scripture refers. As such, they
represent a further development of the agent’s habitual dispositions toward
action, and Aquinas explicitly describes them as “perfections,” and indeed, as
a necessary further level of perfection which goes beyond the infused
cardinal virtues, although not beyond the theological virtues.32 In this way,
he integrates the gifts firmly into his overall analysis of the virtues as
perfections of the active powers of the human person, which work in tandem
in such a way as to promote the overall perfection of the individual as a
rational agent.33
But why are the gifts necessary at all? The corresponding acquired
cardinal virtues stand in need of no such further dispositions, in order to yield
actions appropriate to their constitutive norm of right reason. The fact that
the gifts are necessary to salvation—as Aquinas insists34—implies that the
infused cardinal virtues are in some way less complete, less fully perfections,
than their acquired counterparts. As he goes on to explain in this article, there
is indeed a sense in which this is the case. Certainly, the infused virtues
represent a higher level of perfection than do their acquired counterparts,
insofar as they stem from a supernaturally bestowed principle of action,
through which the agent is directed toward a kind of perfection altogether
outside the scope of its connatural powers. And yet, precisely because the
acquired virtues represent perfections of the agent’s connatural powers, they
can be attained more fully and completely—more perfectly—than the infused
virtues. Thus, there is indeed a sense in which the infused virtues are less
perfect, seen in comparison to the acquired virtues—not in themselves, of
course, but considered as dispositions of the agent, who attains and exercises
them in a less perfect way. That is why the infused cardinal virtues, unlike
their acquired counterparts, stand in need of distinctive habitus, over and
above the dispositions bestowed by the virtues themselves, if they are to
operate appropriately and effectively. Thus, not only are the gifts perfections,
but Aquinas accounts for them in terms of the twofold criterion of connatural
and supernatural perfection that informs his overall theory of the virtues.
We need to consider one further distinction between the infused and
acquired virtues. That is, the infused cardinal virtues are specifically different
from their acquired counterparts because they are directed toward a different
end, and therefore observe a different mean.35 Acquired temperance takes its
standards from the overall well-being and health of the body and leads to an
appropriate moderation in food and drink. Infused temperance, in contrast,
takes its ultimate criterion from the person’s desire for salvation and
incorporates forms of restraint and discipline, fasting, for example, which
will promote the individual’s spiritual, as well as her physical health. Note,
however, that ascetical exercises that damage one’s bodily well-being are
vicious, rather than virtuous.36 The ends of the acquired virtues, namely, the
overall well-being of the organism and the community, is thus transformed
by the infused virtue, rather than being obviated or undermined by it;37 again,
grace perfects, rather than destroys nature, as we are frequently reminded.38
At this point, we come to one of the most interesting and original aspects
of Aquinas’s analysis of the virtues. Up until Aquinas’s time, scholastic
accounts of the virtues were organized around a straightforward dichotomy
between political and theological virtues. The political virtues are said to
serve as a preparation for the theological virtues, and they provide a medium
through which the theological virtues are expressed in external acts.
Nonetheless, the theological and the political virtues remain in an external
relation, with the former directing the latter—there is no need, within this
schema, to postulate infused political or cardinal virtues. Aquinas is clearly
familiar with this approach,39 but in the ST he replaces it with a more
complex set of distinctions between the theological and the cardinal virtues,
on the one hand, and between infused and acquired virtues on the other. At
first glance, this would seem to introduce unnecessary complications. Why
should he have done so?
At least part of the answer to this question lies in the specifics of
Aquinas’s concept of grace, as developed in terms of his overall analysis of
the virtues as perfections of the agent. Recall that for Aquinas, the infused
virtues are the operative principles through which grace can be expressed
through one’s acts.40 Correlatively, in order for an action to be meritorious, it
must stem from grace in some way.41 What this implies is that the earlier
view, according to which the theological virtues direct the political or
cardinal virtues, is inadequate. In order for grace to be fully operative and
efficacious in every dimension of human life, it must transform all the
faculties of the human soul involved in the processes of deliberation and
action.42 Thus, it is not enough that the theological virtues should command
the acts of the other virtues; rather, grace must be expressed directly through
virtues appropriate to every faculty of the soul, which is to say, through
infused versions of all the cardinal virtues.
This still does not explain why Aquinas prefers to speak of the cardinal,
rather than the (infused) political virtues. The reason for this shift only
becomes apparent when we turn to the detailed moral analyses of the secunda
secundae. We find that the division between virtues oriented toward
beatitude, and those oriented toward social life, is too simple for Aquinas’s
purposes. Only one of the cardinal virtues, justice, has a direct and defining
relation to the good of the community as a whole; indeed, strictly speaking
this is the case only for legal justice.43 Both fortitude and temperance are
primarily oriented toward maintaining the individual’s equilibrium between
passions and reasoned judgments about the overall good, and in that sense,
they both have the good of the individual as their primary focus.44 Similarly,
particular justice, which is further divided into commutative and distributive
justice, is concerned with right relations toward individuals.45 Prudence
ranges over both sets of considerations and integrates them, and for that very
reason Aquinas distinguishes between individual and political prudence.46
Where do the vices fit into this analysis? It would seem that the moral
virtues, in contrast to some intellectual virtues, are not strictly necessary to
the agent’s functioning, although arguably, without them the agent cannot
function well over an extended period of time. The affective faculties must
be disposed through habitus in one way or another, if the agent is to be
capable of rational action, but they need not be well-disposed—otherwise,
there could be no such thing as vices, that is to say, disordered dispositions of
the faculties corresponding to the virtues.47 More specifically, the vices are
dispositions to act in ways contrary to nature—human nature in all its
dimensions,48 or more specifically against reason, considered as the defining
characteristic of human nature.49 At the same time, vice does not necessitate
the agent to sin, any more than the virtues render their acts necessary.50

THE VIRTUES AS NORMATIVE IDEALS

Aquinas analyzes the specific ideals of cardinal virtue in terms of the
Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, according to which the virtues are
expressed through passions and actions in accordance with a mean as
determined by reason.51 The rational criterion, that is to say, the mean of the
virtues of the passions is determined by the overall good of the organism,
which places sensual goods in their correct relation to that overall good;
hence, these virtues are said to observe a rational mean only.52 The mean of
justice, in contrast, is set by the good of the neighbor or the community as a
whole (depending on which form of justice is in question), in such a way as
to reflect objective criteria of equity and fairness. For this reason, the mean
of justice is said to be a real, as well as a rational, mean.53 As already noted,
the infused cardinal virtues observe a different mean than do the acquired
virtues, and the theological virtues are not defined by reference to a mean at
all (because there can be no question of moderation with respect to believing,
hoping in, and loving God54).
Over the past several years, a number of scholars have attempted to
appropriate Aquinas’s account of the virtues as a basis for a contemporary
virtue ethic, which would provide an alternative to a more legalistic ethic
based on concepts of law or rules.55 It should be noted, however, that
Aquinas consistently holds the ideas of virtue and law together in his moral
thought. In his general analysis of habitus, Aquinas argues that these receive
their species from their objects, which are further distinguished in accordance
with a distinction between good and bad.56 This language, reminiscent of
Aquinas’s general analysis of human actions, implies that the virtues are
conceptually linked to the kinds of actions that instantiate them.57 At the
same time, these concepts of kinds of actions, which comprise what Aquinas
calls the object or the moral species of particular actions, are also correlated
with moral rules. This, in turn, implies that the virtues can be correlated with
precepts of the natural or divine law, and when we turn to the secunda
secundae, we find that each of the seven major virtues that Aquinas discusses
is indeed correlated with one or more precepts.58 By the same token, Aquinas
argues in the De malo that every sin represents a deviation from the mean,
thus expanding a concept proper to virtue theory into a general analysis of
moral norms.59
This is why Aquinas uses the traditional schema of the cardinal and
theological virtues as the organizing principle for the detailed discussion of
normative ideals and precepts in the secunda pars. The diverse elements of
the Christian moral tradition—not only normative ideals and precepts of law,
but the traditional schema of the beatitudes and the gifts of the Holy Spirit—
can all be related to the virtues in some way: as the object of a given virtue,
as a precept enjoining the realization of this object or the avoidance of
contrary vicious acts, as an expression of what it means to enjoy the exercise
of the virtues, or as a disposition through which the human spirit is made
responsive to the Holy Spirit in the application of the virtues to specific acts.
None of this implies that the precepts of law, or much less the beatitudes and
the gifts, are inessential to the Christian moral life—quite the contrary! But
this approach does reflect Aquinas’s overall approach, signaled at the
beginning of the prima secundae, of analyzing human activity in terms of its
internal principles of operation, and the external principles shaping and
expressing those principles—themselves ultimately expressions of God, the
supreme external principle of human acts.

NOTES
1. ST I-II q.6 intro.
2. ST I-II q.49 intro. The translation of habitus as “habit,” while common,
is misleading, because the English word implies mindless or stereotypical
behavior, whereas for Aquinas a true virtue is precisely not mindless. On the
contrary, it is a disposition formed through, and continually informed by,
rational reflection. Nor would it be quite accurate to translate the term as
“disposition,” since a habitus is only one example of such. I have therefore
simply left the term untranslated throughout.
3. ST I-II q.90 a.1. This and all subsequent translations are my own.
4. Most notably, see Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral
Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1982/1997).
5. The best account of the development of virtue ethics in the medieval
period remains the essays collected in Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale
aux XII et XIII siecles, vol. 3, parts 1 and 2 (Paris: Louvain, 1949). On
Abelard and Peter Lombard, see Lottin, Psychologie et morale, 3/1:100–104;
for a more detailed account of Abelard’s theory of virtue, see John
Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 282–87.
6. As Cary Nederman points out, key ideas from Aristotelian ethics were
in general circulation for at least 150 years before the full text of the
Nicomachean Ethics became available in Latin; see “Aristotelianism and the
Origins of ‘Political Science’ in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of the History
of Ideas 52 (1991): 179–94, 180–81. This does not mean, however, that
scholastic theories of virtue were identical to Aristotle’s own theory. They
were not—the scholastics, including Aquinas himself, do not follow the
outline of Aristotle’s account of the virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics (as
Andrew Pinsent rightly points out in his chapter in this volume), and by the
same token, they press beyond what Aristotle himself explicitly says about
the metaphysical underpinnings of virtue theory. We may fairly regard
Aquinas’s theory of the virtues as Aristotelian, therefore, without claiming
that it simply repeats Aristotle’s own view, or denying that it incorporates
many other classical and theological voices, as well as Aristotle’s own.
7. ST I-II q.55 a.4, quoting Super Sent II 27.5.
8. ST I-II q.55 a.1.
9. ST I-II q.49 a.4.
10. ST I-II q.56 a.3; I-II q.57 a.1; I-II q.58 a.3.
11. ST I-II q.58 a.1.
12. On virtues as perfections of faculties, see, e.g., ST I-II q.55 a.3 and I-II
q.56 a.1; on virtue as a perfection of the agent, see ST I-II q.4 a.7 in tandem
with I-II q.3 a.2. I argue for this interpretation in more detail in Nature as
Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2005), 163–203.
13. For further details, including further textual references, see Robert
Pasnau’s illuminating discussion of the metaphysics of actuality in Thomas
Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa theologiae Ia
75–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 143–51; in addition,
see Porter, Nature as Reason, 158–63.
14. ST I-II q.61 a.4.
15. ST I-II q.59 a.2; I-II q.60 a.3–5; cf. De virtutibus in communi, a.12,
which sets forth the relation of the virtues to the different faculties of the soul
in more detail.
16. ST I-II q.58 a.2.
17. ST I-II q.59 a.5.
 18. ST I-II q.56 a.6; I-II q.60 a.2; II-II q.24 a.1; II-II q.58 a.4.
19. ST I q.60 a.5; cf. ST I-II q.109 a.3.
20. ST I-II q.60 a.1.
21. ST I-II q.65 a.1.
22. ST I-II q.65 a.1.
23. ST I-II q.65 a.2.
24. ST I-II q.4 a.7 and I-II q.5 a.5; cf. QDVCom a.10.
25. ST I-II q.62 a.1 and I-II q.110 a.3.
26. ST I-II q.62 a.1.
27. ST I-II q.110 a.3; with reference to the gifts in particular, I-II q.68 a.1,
2.
28. ST I-II q.68 a.1.
29. ST I-II q.68 a.1.
30. Isa. 11:2–3; in this paragraph, I follow ST I-II q.68 a.1 except where
otherwise noted.
31. See ST I-II q.68 a.4
32. ST I-II q.68 a.8.
33. For this reason, I would not say (as Andrew Pinsent suggests in his
chapter) that Aquinas’s account of the gifts of the Holy Spirit reflects a
fundamental break with the Aristotelian orientation of his overall theory of
virtue, that is to say, with his analysis of the virtues as perfections directed
toward the ultimate flourishing of the rational creature. It should also be
noted that in this question, Aquinas once again affirms that the acquired
virtues are adequate to attain the connatural end of the human person, and
that at least some individuals throughout history have in fact fully attained
and practiced the (acquired) cardinal virtues without the aid of supernatural
grace (ST I-II q.68 a.2). At the same time, I would agree with Pinsent that
Aquinas’s incorporation of the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit takes him
well beyond the parameters of Aristotle’s own outline and extends the scope
of an Aristotelian construal of the virtues as perfections beyond anything that
Aristotle’s classical followers would have been likely to envision.
34. ST I-II q.68 a.2.
35. ST I-II q.63 a.3, 4.
36. ST II-II q.147 a.1 ad 2.
37. ST II-II q.104 a.6; II-II q.141 a.6 ad 1.
 38. e.g., see ST I q.60 a.5.
39. QDVCom a.9; ST I-II q.61 a.5.
40. ST I-II q.110 a.3.
41. ST I-II q.114 a.2.
42. ST I-II q.63 a.3, especially ad 2; I-II q.65 a.3.
43. ST II-II q.58 a.7, 8.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.; II-II q.61 a.1.
46. ST II-II q.47 a.11.
47. ST I-II q.71 a.1, 3.
48. ST I-II q.71 a.1.
49. ST I-II q.71 a.3.
50. ST I-II q.71 a.4.
51. ST I-II q.64 a.1.
52. ST I-II q.64 a.2.
53. Ibid.; also see ST I-II q.56 a.6; II-II q.58 a.10.
54. ST I-II q.64 a.4
55. See, for e.g., Daniel Mark Nelson, The Priority of Prudence: Virtue
and Natural Law in Aquinas and Its Implications for Modern Ethics
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), and more
recently, John Bowlin, Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’ Ethics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 97–137.
56. ST I-II q.54 a.2, 3.
57. See, e.g., ST II-II q.27 a.1.
58. The relevant texts are ST II-II q.16, 22, 44, 56, 122, 140, and 170; cf.
ST II-II q.108 a.2.
59. De malo, q.2, a.1; sins are said specifically to be opposed to one or
more virtues at q.2, a.6.
 CHAPTER 21

PRACTICAL REASONING

THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

AQUINAS thinks that practical reason is distinct but not entirely insulated from
speculative reason. Although his description of practical reasoning applies to
a variety of human activities, his greatest focus is on the practical reasoning
that is involved in human action. Although practical reasoning resembles the
speculative in its use of a kind of syllogism, its connection with particular
affairs precisely as contingent gives it a special character.

PRACTICAL AND SPECULATIVE REASON

Practical reason is distinct from speculative reason because it is ordered to
some work or end. These two kinds of reason can also be called kinds of
“intellect.”1 Reason denominates investigation whereas “intellect” does not.
At least in his later work, Aquinas is clear that practical and speculative
intellects are not distinct powers.
Since powers are distinguished by their objects or what they are about,
and the practical and speculative intellects have different objects, it might
seem that they are distinct powers. But Aquinas argues that the distinction of
objects is only accidental and consequently does not indicate distinct
powers.2 The intellect has truth as its object. The difference between the
practical and speculative intellects is that the speculative is concerned only
with the truth, whereas the practical apprehends the truth for the sake of some
further end. In this context Aquinas and his contemporaries attribute to
Aristotle’s De anima the following dictum: “The speculative intellect
through extension becomes practical.”3
Absolutely considered, the thing (res) is the measure of the intellect. The
rectitude of the speculative intellect consists solely in conformity to things.
Although the practical intellect too must conform to the world, its rectitude
consists further in an end or operation.4 It is not only measured by the world
but also itself measures the world. Elizabeth Anscombe used the example of
a shopping list to illustrate this difference.5 A man who goes to the store with
a shopping list might be followed by a detective. We can assume that the
man has been ordered by a legitimate authority to buy everything on the list
and nothing else. If the list includes butter but the man buys margarine, then
the man makes a mistake. His behavior is judged by the list. The mistake is
not in the list but in the man’s end or operation. In contrast, if the detective
puts down that the man has bought margarine when he has in fact bought
butter, the mistake is in the detective’s list. Speculative reason is measured
only by the thing, whereas practical reason is also measured by the end. This
connection to a goal or action implies that practical reason takes its goal from
desire or appetite.
The conjunction of practical reason with the appetite makes it possible for
practical reason to be causal. Aquinas states, “Now practical and speculative
reason differ in this, that speculative reason is only apprehensive of things,
but practical reason is not only apprehensive, but also causative.”6 Reason
without appetite cannot cause action. For instance, a physician may now
know to heal himself and yet not have the desire to be so healed. His
knowledge would not heal him even though it could if he were to have the
appropriate appetite. Similarly, someone who knows that fornication is
wrong may still fornicate if he does not have a well-ordered appetite.
Although both kinds of reason involve both universals and particulars,
practical reason considers the contingent and particular precisely as
contingent and particular.7 Whereas, a naturalist’s speculative reason might
be concerned about what whales are, a whale hunter’s practical reason is
concerned with how to capture particular whales. The naturalist and the
whale hunter both need to understand some universal truths about whales and
have knowledge of particular whales. The difference is in the way that the
particulars and contingents are considered.8 The naturalist considers the
individual whale insofar as it instantiates universal and unchanging
properties of whales. But the whale hunter considers the whale as this whale
that can be pursued and even destroyed.
 DEGREES AND KINDS OF PRACTICAL
KNOWLEDGE
There are different degrees and kinds of practical knowledge. For instance,
the knowledge of a builder is more practical in degree than that of the
architecture student. Moreover, the practical knowledge of a just builder as a
just person is different from his practical knowledge of building. This latter
difference follows the distinction between prudence and art or skill.
Aquinas distinguishes differently between the degrees of practical
knowledge throughout his career.9 The basic problem is that practical
knowledge is about something that can be done (operabile), but not everyone
knows such a work with the purpose of doing it. His consistent point is that
there is a kind of practical knowledge that is not fully practical. Perhaps the
latest complete division is in the Prima pars (1269), q.14, a.16, in which a
discussion of God’s speculative knowledge leads to a discussion of the
degrees of speculative knowledge in general. The degrees among the kinds of
speculative knowledge correspond to degrees of practical knowledge.10
Aquinas uses the work of building a house to illustrate his point that
knowledge can be divided according to the thing known, the way it is known,
and the end for which it is known. Knowledge of a house would seem to be
practical, since houses are made by human beings. In contrast, the knowledge
of mathematical truths is clearly speculative, since it is about something that
cannot be changed by human action. But knowledge of a house’s structure
and parts without any practical consideration is also speculative knowledge,
since such knowledge consists in an analysis of its principles. In this case the
speculative knowledge is about something that can be made but not as
something that can be made. However, in contrast to the knowledge of
unchangeable objects, such knowledge remains practical in some respect
(secundum quid).
Speculative knowledge can also be made practical through the manner of
knowing or the end. For instance, an architectural student might also have
speculative knowledge of a house as something that can be built. In such a
case the knowledge is practical in one respect and speculative in another
(secundum quid speculative et secundum quid practica). It is possible to
know how to build but without the desire or plan to build. There is practical
knowledge simply speaking only when the knower orders this knowledge to
the end of building. For such completely practical knowledge, there must be
a direct connection with action.
The degrees of practical knowledge can be applied to the two kinds of
practical knowledge, namely art and prudence.11 Aquinas takes this division
from Aristotle.12 While knowledge of an art or technical skill is about that
which can be made, it is not about the good life as a whole. For instance, the
good carpenter knows how to make a table. Prudence is the knowledge of
human action, which is evaluated according to the good life as a whole. The
carpenter who is a good person has the knowledge of how to work in an
orderly fashion and charge a just price for his labor. Whereas art is concerned
with the perfection of the product, prudence is concerned with the agent’s
perfection.
Unlike art, perfectly developed prudence requires the presence of the
major moral virtues.13 A good carpenter may be a bad human being.
Moreover, a skillful carpenter may voluntarily make a bad product such as a
fragile chair for a heavy person whom he dislikes.14 Art is subordinated to
the agent’s further ends. In contrast, an act which ignores the commands of
prudence is a sin. Prudence requires that the agent have rectitude toward his
ultimate end, which is human flourishing. Such rectitude is impossible
without the moral virtues. The prudent person does not need in each case to
think explicitly about his ultimate end, but with prudence he performs actions
that lead to or are constitutive of this end.15
The distinction between the degrees of practical knowledge applies to
moral truths. Prudence orders action and therefore is completely practical, in
contrast to art and moral philosophy, which can be to some extent
speculative.16 Nevertheless, moral science can be some help to prudence.17
But virtue is learned more by laws and action than by teaching.18
What is the order between art and prudence? Properly speaking, art is
subordinated to prudence.19 Art is concerned with merely particular goods,
whereas prudence is concerned with the good life as the whole. For instance,
someone who is a good carpenter but unjust may have practical knowledge
about making tables but he lacks it with respect to the purpose of his making
tables, which is living a good human life. Nevertheless, Aquinas does accept
that “art” can be used in a wider sense as right reason: “Augustine commonly
takes ‘art’ to be any sort of right reason. And thus under art even prudence is
included, which thus is right reason about what actions can be done, just as
art is right reason about what can be made.”20 But in the strictest sense, the
term “art” is about making and consequently is not only distinct from
prudence but also directed to the ends of prudence.

PRINCIPLES, PRECEPTS, AND THE STRUCTURE

OF PRACTICAL REASONING
Aquinas’s most detailed discussions of practical reasoning’s role in the act’s
structure are in his Secunda secundae and his Commentary on Aristotle’s
Ethics. Although the outline is broadly Aristotelian, his terminology also
comes from Stoic sources and the Church Fathers, especially John
Damascene.21 In the Secunda secundae, he follows the role of reasoning in
the structure of an act in conjunction with the role of the will. Although the
discussion is divided according to the will’s stages, his intent is to indicate
the different ways in which the intellect and will are involved in one and the
same act.
The intellect’s role in the production of the act involves: (1) the
apprehension of and judgment about an end, (2) the deliberation (consilium)
about the means to the end, (3) a judgment that corresponds to the choice
about the end, and (4) a command (imperium).22 In order to act or will the
intellect must first recognize some end, which is a good. This end does not
need to be a real good, but it must appear to the agent as such. For instance,
theft is bad, but it seems good to the thief. The agent’s apprehension or
misapprehension of the good to large extent depends on his character.23
There has been some recent controversy over whether for Aquinas the will
has some sort of precognitive movement toward the good.24 But Aquinas
frequently reiterates Augustine’s statement that “nothing is loved unless it is
known.”25 At this stage knowledge precedes volition.
After the willing and recognition of the good, the agent sometimes must
deliberate about the means. For instance, if I wish to steal a car I might
deliberate about whether to steal the keys or attempt to start the car without
the keys. Deliberation occurs when there are multiple means to an end.26 If I
do not know how to start a car without keys and the keys are right in front of
me, there is no need to deliberate. Nevertheless, every act requires a
judgment of choice about the means. After choosing to steal the car, my
intellect then commands the will to carry out the activity. This general
account is not meant to describe a temporal sequence among distinct acts but
rather to show the stages at which an act can fail.27 For instance, if I were a
just person, then I would not apprehend stealing as good. Or, if I were unjust,
perhaps I might want to steal but be unable to discover any means to do so.
The act would end in deliberation.
Command is the intellect’s counterpart to the will’s use of the other
faculties in the execution of an action.28 Aquinas thinks that command is
what the intellect does once the agent has chosen to act. For instance, after
choosing to steal a car, I should be able to know where the keys are, how to
put them in the ignition, and how to evade detection. Daniel Westberg states
that for Aquinas “the intellect has command in the sense of ‘oversight’ or
‘seeing something through.’”29
What role do principles play in this process of practical reasoning?
Aquinas does not think that practical reasoning consists in the demonstrative
application of universal principles to particular events, and his ethical
thought at times seems remote from the modern concern with recognizably
moral principles.30 Nevertheless, he does think that principles and precepts
are necessary for practical reasoning, and he discusses them at some length in
the relatively brief discussion of natural law in the Prima secundae. The first
principle of speculative reason is that of noncontradiction, since we first
recognize being and nonbeing.31 Since practical reason is concerned with the
good, the first principle is “Do good and avoid evil.” Neither the practical nor
the speculative principle need to be explicitly recognized in order to be used.
These principles are presupposed in all speculative and practical reasonings,
respectively.
Some contemporary scholars suggest that Aquinas’s first principle of
practical reason is not a moral principle, since it is used in every action,
including acts that are sins and those which are simply the exercise of a
skill.32 This reading neglects central features of his theory.33 The case of sin
is relatively straightforward, since for Aquinas sin involves a voluntary
mistake in reasoning or the use of incorrect premises.34 The sinner uses the
first practical principle but misapprehends what is good or is negligent in the
application of his knowledge. The case with art is more complicated. Some
acts such as building a table are not intrinsically good or evil, but as
individual human acts they are morally good or bad. As we have seen, art is
subordinated to prudence. Building a table considered as such is an exercise
of art, but considered as a human action it involves a relation to the human
good. The practical reasoning about making particular things involves a
wider recognition of what it is good to make. This wider view is moral.
The precepts of practical reason follow an order that exists in nature.
Aquinas makes wide use of Aristotle’s statement that “art imitates nature.”35
He thinks that this imitation occurs not only in the case of art in its proper
sense, as when a builder imitates a tree’s roots by making a foundation, but
also in the case of practical reasoning in the moral context, as when someone
chooses to love God more than himself.36 The precepts of the natural law are
based on human nature.
How are principles involved in human practical reasoning? Some
principles or precepts, such as the first practical principle, are implicitly used.
Synderesis is the ability to recognize the primary ends of deliberation.37
Some precepts may play an explicit role in deliberation.38 It is impossible to
give some one account of moral principles as there are different kinds of
moral precepts, namely affirmative and negative, primary and secondary.39
Affirmative precepts may always bind but usually require action only in a
particular situation.40 For example, the command to love God explicitly must
be fulfilled at some point, but at times the agent may be involved in other
activities. But the command binds always because at any time it can be
violated. For instance, when an agent at any time sins mortally he violates the
command to love God. Negative precepts can similarly bind at all times even
though they need not play an explicit role in practical reasoning. For
instance, the precept “Do not commit adultery” binds all the time but comes
into play only when adultery is an option. Primary precepts such as those
listed in the Decalogue are seemingly known through their terms.41 Some
precepts are secondary in that they are not easily known or in that they are
good rules of thumb but have exceptions.42 For instance, the precept “return
borrowed goods” usually holds. But I may know that my neighbor asks me to
return his gun so that he can harm my country or rob a store. In such a case, it
would be imprudent for me to return the gun.43
Although principles can be used in deliberation, they do not completely
determine what to do in a particular situation. Many affirmative precepts are
too general to indicate what to do under particular circumstances. Negative
precepts indicate only what one should not do. Secondary precepts have
exceptions. The prudent agent knows which precepts to apply in particular
situations. Moreover, the application of the precepts is fully practical only if
it concludes in the judgment of choice. The judgment of conscience is about
particular actions but is only cognitive and does not by itself lead to action.44

THE PRACTICAL SYLLOGISM AND ERROR

Both practical and speculative reason proceed from principles to
conclusions.45 The basic model for this procedure is the syllogism.
Speculative reason tries to proceed from the form or “that which is.”
According to Aquinas’s metaphysics, these forms are necessary and
unchanging. For instance, the following premises are necessary and
unchanging: “All mammals have lungs” and “All humans are mammals.” In
a speculative syllogism, this conclusion necessarily follows: “All humans
have lungs.” In contrast, practical reason does not always assent to necessary
premises. For instance, everyone wants happiness, but not everyone wants a
particular means to happiness, such as building a house. Moreover, the
conclusion or operation does not necessarily follow from the same principles.
Someone who wills a house may choose different kinds of wood. There can
be an indefinite number of reasons for choosing some wood rather than
another, such as cost and availability.
Aquinas to some extent follows Aristotle on the practical syllogism.46
Practical reasoning resembles the speculative syllogism in that there is a
universal major, but it differs in the particularity of the minor premise and the
connection between its conclusion and action. Aquinas seems to use the
practical syllogism in the context of both deliberation and choice.47 This
practical syllogism is only quasi-syllogistic (quasi sillogistica).48 Its
conclusion is a “judgment, or [seu] choice or [vel] operation.”49 In his later
treatments, he emphasizes the connection to action and carefully
distinguishes the practical syllogism from the syllogisms that are employed
in moral science.50
In his discussion of the vices that are opposed to prudence, Aquinas lists
many ways in which practical reasoning can fail.51 All of these failures either
involve a mistake in the reasoning itself, a mistake in the premises of a
practical syllogism, or in the act’s execution. The mistaken premises are most
important for understanding erroneous practical syllogisms. An error about
the major premise is most clearly seen in the difference between the
syllogisms employed by the virtuous and the vicious.52 For example, the
temperate and intemperate both use syllogisms with two premises and a
conclusion. The temperate agent reasons as follows: “No fornication should
be committed; this act is fornication; this act should not be done.” The
intemperate agent employs an alternative syllogism: “Every pleasurable thing
should be enjoyed; this act [of fornication] is pleasurable; therefore this act
should be done.” The vicious person on account of his vice is blinded to the
virtuous agent’s major premise, which states that no fornication should be
committed. His own major premise is false and in this case it leads to the
vicious action.
But error is possible even for someone who knows the correct universal
premise.53 For example, both the continent and the incontinent know that “no
fornication should be committed,” but their disordered appetites lead them to
consider that “every pleasurable thing should be enjoyed.” The difference
between the two is in which universal premise they use in conjunction with a
minor premise. The continent agent reasons by combining the first universal
premise with the minor premise that “this act is fornication.” The continent
agent is drawn by his passion to think that fornication is pleasurable, but he
focuses on the fact that fornication is a sin. He is aware of both universal
principles but uses only that which is used by the virtuous. In contrast, the
incontinent reasons by joining the second universal premise to the minor
premise that “this act is pleasurable.” Although the incontinent is aware of
both universal principles, he only employs that universal premise that is used
by the vicious.
Both the incontinent and the vicious err, but they seem to employ valid
syllogisms. The error of the incontinent is that out of weakness he shifts to
the bad syllogism. He knows but does not use the correct universal premise.
The error of the vicious is that he has only a false universal premise. Aquinas
regards both errors as culpable. Neither the incontinent nor the vicious have
the fully developed intellectual virtue of prudence or the other moral virtues.
The incontinent may in general be able to recognize the wrongness of an act,
but they are not commanded to the act by prudence. The vicious do not
recognize the act’s very badness.
The prudent person knows how to reason practically about those goods
that concern human life as a whole. The preceding practical syllogisms were
fairly straightforward because the virtuous agent’s major syllogism has an
exceptionless precept as its universal premise. Unlike demonstrative
syllogisms, practical syllogisms that are normally sound can sometimes lead
to bad conclusions.54 For instance, even though usually the premise
“borrowed items should be returned” leads to a correct conclusion, in
exceptional circumstances it does not. Most often the following syllogism
would be correct: “Borrowed items ought to be returned; this gun is a
borrowed item; this gun ought to be returned.” But if a killer asks for the
gun’s return, the practical syllogism can yield a false conclusion.
Prudence is important not only for reasoning about particular acts by
themselves and for commanding acts but also because it considers the good
life as a whole. Although prudence is an intellectual virtue, it is not limited to
one kind of matter in the way that sciences and arts are.55 Its concern is with
the moral life as a whole. Someone might be more or less prudent with
respect to justice but imprudent with respect to temperance. Intemperance
often leads to unjust acts. The matter of the different virtues is connected in
such a way that fully developed prudence with respect to one of the major
virtues requires a fully developed prudence with respect to the others.
In his discussion of infused virtue and the gift of counsel, Aquinas
emphasizes the limits of merely acquired prudence for moral reasoning.
Since humans are called to a supernatural end that exceeds natural powers,
fully developed practical reasoning about life as a whole requires the infused
virtue of prudence, which is given by God.56 Aquinas also emphasizes that
not even infused prudence can completely take into account all the
particulars. He writes, “human reason is not able to understand the singular
and contingent things which are able to happen.… And therefore man needs
in the inquiry of deliberation [consilium] to be directed by God, who
understands everything.”57 Ultimately, correct practical reasoning about
human action requires counsel, which is one of the seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit. This gift perfects and helps prudence in its judgments.58 Like
Aristotle, Aquinas emphasizes the contingency of human affairs and its
importance for practical reasoning. But in what for many might seem to be an
unexpected move, Aquinas argues that the uncertainty of human affairs
shows that practical reasoning about the good life requires not only the
infused virtue of prudence but also a special gift of God.
 NOTES
1. ST II-II q.49 a.5 ad 3; In DA, lib.3, cap.8; QDVCom a.7. John Naus, The
Nature of the Practical Intellect (Rome: Libreria Editrice dell’ Universita
Gregoriana, 1959), 28. For possible development and many texts, see 17–34.
2. ST I q.79 a.11.
3. “intellectus speculativus per extensionem fit practicus.” Super Sent,
lib.3, d.23, q.2, a.3, qc.2; ST I q.70 a.11 s.c.; ST II-II q.4 a.2 ad 3. For the
widespread usage and source of this adage, see Naus, Nature of the Practical
Intellect, 23–26. For its use in contemporary controversies, see Ralph
McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 184–92.
4. Super Sent, lib.3, d.33, q.1, a.1, sol.2; ST I-II q.64 a.3; In NE, lib.6,
lect.2.
5. G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2000), 56. For a contrast of her approach with that of Aquinas, see Steven L.
Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), 161–71.
6. “Ratio autem speculativa et practica in hoc differunt quod ration
speculativa est apprehensiva solum rerum; ratio vero practica est non solum
apprehensiva, sed etiam causativa.” ST II-II q.83 a.1. See also In DA, lib.3,
cap.8. For reasons and explanations, see Scott MacDonald, “Practical
Reasoning and Reasons-Explanations: Aquinas’s Account of Reason’s Role
in Action,” in Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump, eds., Aquinas’s Moral
Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1998), 133–60.
7. ST I-II q.57 a.6 ad 3; In NE, lib.6, lect.3.
8. Super Sent, lib.2, q.2, a.4, ad 6; Super Sent, lib.4, d.50, q.1, a.3, ad 3;
QDV, q.14, a.12, ad 1; ST I q.86 a.3; In PA, lib.1, cap.8, lect.16; In NE, lib.6,
lect.1.
9. QDV, q.2, a.8, resp.; QDV, q.3, a.3; In BDT, q.5, a.1, ad 4; ST I q.14
a.16. See Naus, Nature of the Practical Intellect, 151–69.
10. Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 38–40.
11. ST I-II q.57 a.4; ST II-II q.47 a.4 ad 2; QDVCom a.12.
12. In NE, lib.6, lect.4.
 13. QDV, q.5, a.1; ST II-II q.47 a.13; In NE, lib.6, lect.10; De virtutibus
cardinalibus, q. un., a.2. See Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., “Perfect and Imperfect
Virtues in Aquinas,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 57–62; Daniel Westberg, Right
Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1994), 216–21; Naus, Nature of the Practical Intellect, 113–17.
14. In NE, lib.6, lect.4.
15. Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., “The Threefold Referral of Acts to the
Ultimate End in Thomas Aquinas and His Commentators,” Angelicum 85
(2008): 715–36.
16. ST II-II q.47 a.1 ad 3; ST II-II q.47 a.2 ad 2, ad 3. See Kevin L.
Flannery, Acts amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas
Aquinas’s Moral Theory (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2001), 3–24; Naus, Nature of the Practical Intellect, 60–68; M-Michel
Labourdette, “Connaissance practique et savoir moral,” Revue Thomiste 48
(1948): 142–79. For the general historical context, see Georg Wieland,
Ethica—Scientia Practica: Die Anfänge der philosophischen Ethik im 13.
Jahrhundert (Münster: Ashendorff, 1981).
17. In NE, lib.2, lect.2; ST I q.1 a.6 ad 3.
18. In NE, lib.10, lect.14.
19. ST I-II q.21 a.2 ad 2. See Guiseppe Butera, “The Moral Status of the
First Principle of Practical Reason in Thomas’s Natural Law Theory,” The
Thomist 71 (2007): 622–23.
20. “Augustinus communiter accipit artem, pro qualibet recta ratione. Et sic
sub arte includitur etiam prudentia, quae ita est recta ratio agibilium, sicut ars
est recta ratio factibilium.” ST I-II q.58 a.2 ad 1. See, for instance, In NE,
lib.3, lect.7. Naus, Nature of the Practical Intellect, 62–63.
21. Terence Irwin, “Will, Responsibility and Ignorance: Aristotelian
Accounts of Incontinence,” in Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller, and Matthias
Perkams, eds., The Problem of Weakness of Will in Medieval Philosophy
(Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 40–58; Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 126–35;
Vernon Bourke, St. Thomas and the Greek Moralists (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1947).
22. ST I-II q.9–17. For different schema, see Michael S. Sherwin, By
Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of
St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2005), 84–94; Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge,
2003), 287–94; John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory
(Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1998), 62–71; Westberg, Right Practical
Reason, 130–35; McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 51–74.
23. ST I-II q.9 a.2; ST I-II q.58 a.5.
24. Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love; James F. Keenan, Goodness and
Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1992).
25. Super Sent, lib.3, d.23, q.2, a.5, sc 1; QDV, q.2, a.3, sc 7; QDV, q.8,
a.11, sc 2; QDV, q.10, a.9, sc 5; In BDT, q.1, a.2, sc 3; ST Ia, q.60, a.1, sc; ST
I-II q.3. a.4 ad 4; De caritate, q. un., a.10, sc 2.
26. ST I-II q.14 a. 4.
27. ST I-II q.8 a.3.
28. Brock, Action and Conduct, 175–83; Westberg, Right Practical
Reason.
29. Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 181.
30. Daniel Mark Nelson, The Priority of Prudence: Virtue and Natural
Law in Thomas Aquinas and the Implications for Modern Ethics (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992).
31. ST I-II q.94 a.2.
32. John Finnis and Germain Grisez, “The Basic Principles of Natural Law:
A Reply to Ralph McInerny,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 26 (1981):
21–31; Germain Grisez, “The Structures of Practical Reason: Some
Comments and Clarifications,” The Thomist 52 (1988): 269–91; Finnis,
Aquinas: Moral, Political and Legal Theory, 123–29.
33. Ralph McInerny, “The Principles of Natural Law,” American Journal
of Jurisprudence 25 (1980): 1–15; Russell Hittinger, A Critique of the New
Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1987), 10–92; Flannery, Acts amid Precepts, 25–49; Butera, “The Moral
Status of the First Principle.”
34. ST I-II q.94 a.6; ST I-II q.99 a.2 ad 2.
35. In Phy, lib.2, c.8, lect.13, n.4. See Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., The Love of
Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 100–101; McInerny, Aquinas on
Human Action, 193–206. For a contrary view, see Martin Rhonheimer,
Natural Law and Practical Reason, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2000), 3–57; Georg Wieland, “Secundum
naturam vivere: Über den Wandel des Verhältnisses von Natur und
Sittlichkeit,” in Bernhard Fraling, ed., Natur im ethischen Argument (Herder:
Freiburg, 1990), 20–26. For the difference between Rhonheimer and
Wieland, see Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason, 562–70.
36. ST I q.60 a.5.
37. ST I q.79 a.12; QDV, q.16, a.1–3.
38. ST I-II q.14 a.3 ad 2. Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 239–40.
39. McInerny, Ethica Thomistica, 40–59; Westberg, Right Practical
Reason, 172–74; Flannery, Acts amid Precepts, 50–83.
40. ST I-II q.71 a.5 ad 3; ST II-II q.3 a.2; ST II-II q.140 a.2 ad 2.
41. ST I-II q.100 a.1; ST II-II q.170 a.2 ad 1.
42. ST I-II q.94 a.4–5.
43. ST II-II q.51 a.4.
44. QDV, q.17, a.1, ad 4; ST I-II q.13 a.3. McInerny, Aquinas on Human
Action, 220–39; Leo Elders, “La Doctrine de la conscience de Saint Thomas
d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 83 (1983): 533–57.
45. SCG, lib.3, cap.97.
46. Flannery, Acts amid Precepts, 8–15.
47. Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 149–64, 200–213, makes an unusual
distinction between the practical syllogism of deliberation and the “operative
syllogism” that results in choice.
48. QDM, q.3, a.9, ad 7.
49. “iudicium seu electio vel operatio.” ST I-II q.76 a.1.
50. Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 153–55.
51. ST II-II q.53–55.
52. This discussion follows QDM, q.3, a.9, ad 7. But see also ST I-II q.77
a.2; In NE, lib.7, lect.3. See Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 204–13.
53. In addition to the texts cited in the previous note, see also Irwin, “Will,
Responsibility and Ignorance”; Tobias Hoffmann, “Aquinas on the Moral
Progress of the Weak Willed,” in Hoffmann, Müller, and Perkams, eds.,
Problem of Weakness of Will, 230–36.
54. Flannery, Acts amid Precepts, 195–223.
55. ST I-II q.65 a.1 ad 3, ad 4; Cf. De virtutibus cardinalibus, q. un., a.2, ad
4.
56. ST II-II q.23 a.7; De virtutibus cardinalibus, q. un., a.2, resp.
 57. “humana ratio non potest comprehendere singularia et contingentia
quae ratio comprehendere potest.… Et ideo indiget homo in inquisitione
consilii dirigi a Deo, qui omnia comprehendit.” ST II-II q.52 a.1 ad 1.
58. ST II-II q.52 a.2. In ST II-II q.8 a.3; ST II-II q.45 a.3, Aquinas argues
that the gifts of understanding and wisdom are to some extent practical.
 CHAPTER 22

THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

JOSEPH WAWRYKOW

AQUINAS locates the theological virtues in the account of the movement of

human beings to the transcendent end set for them by God, knowing and
loving God directly in the next life.1 These virtues orient their possessor to
God as the beatifying end of human beings, as made by and for God as their
end. In assessing these virtues, Aquinas shows their conformity to the basic
pattern of divine–human saving interaction, in which divine initiative and
causing take the precedence, but not to the exclusion of genuine human
causing. In God’s causal love, God ordains eternal life, in God’s immediate
presence, as the end of human existence; in love, God provides human beings
with what they need to reach this end. This includes the theological virtues,
which are infused in a person along with habitual grace in conversion, by
which a person is moved by God from sin and toward God as end. These
virtues, testimony to God’s causal love, are something created in the soul,2
elevating the person to the supernatural order and making possible acts that
are pleasing to God and conducive to eternal life. It is by the acts made
possible by habitual grace and the theological virtues that a person is readied
for eternal life, which is rendered as the reward for these acts. In his analysis
of the theological virtues—faith, hope, charity—Aquinas invokes the moral
and intellectual virtues to display the theological virtues in their
distinctiveness.

WHY “THEOLOGICAL” VIRTUES?

The designation of certain virtues as “theological” suggests their threefold
connection to God: the theological virtues are infused by God; they direct a
person to God as beatifying end; they become known by God’s revelation in
Scripture.3 That God infuses the theological virtues marks a principal
difference from the moral and intellectual virtues. Those virtues are acquired
through acts of a kind. Acts of a kind lead to a habit of that kind, an
inclination to act in that way, which disposes a person endowed with that
good habit to further acts of that kind. The theological virtues are not
acquired; since they are supernatural, above the natural capacities of the
person, one cannot prepare for them or develop them through one’s prior
acts. Rather, they are, simply, the gift of God, given by God to those who are
called to eternal life. Once received, they can be increased, as can the
acquired virtues, through acts. By acts of charity, with God’s aid, one
becomes more rooted in charity, and so more inclined to love God and
neighbor.4 But the reception of the theological virtues is not dependent on
human acting, and people can do nothing to occasion their giving. God
simply gives them, in accordance with God’s will for the elect. God calls
these humans to life with God in heaven. In beatitude they will attain a
fulfillment that transcends the natural capacities of humans qua human. God
seeks to bring human beings to that transcendent end through characteristic
human operations, of knowing and willing. But, the natural capacities of the
human are not proportioned to God as beatifying end.
The theological virtues, then, enhance human capacity, elevating the
person to the supernatural order and making their possessor capable of the
acts (of faith, hope, and charity) that bring that person to the end to which
grace and these virtues direct him. Each of these virtues in its particular
manner relates the person to the God who beatifies. By faith, one believes, on
the basis of God revealing, what is needed for salvation: what the end of
human existence, in God, is, and the way to that end, as arranged by God. By
hope, one aspires to the God who beatifies, trusting in God’s aid. And, by
charity, one has a friendship with God, made possible by God’s outpouring
of love for humans; and by willing in charity one comes into union with God,
imperfectly in this life, but perfectly in the next. All of this lies beyond the
natural principles of the human person, even as perfected by the acquired
virtues. Such have to do only with an end that is proportioned to human
nature, not with God as beatifying.
It is through Scripture, the locus of the revelation of God’s saving will for
people and provision for them, that the theological virtues come to be known.
Again this marks a difference between these and the acquired virtues. It is not
that the acquired virtues are left completely out of the scriptural account. But
there are other sources by which they are also known, and known in their full
extent. Apart from divine revelation, however, humans would be unaware of
that faith that grasps God’s saving teaching, or of that hope that expresses the
desire for the God who saves and is confident on the basis of the aid of that
God in reaching God as end, or of that charity that is marked by true
friendship between God and those whom God loves in a special way. In the
Summa theologiae, Aquinas considers the theological virtues in the order of
generation;5 thus, on the basis of faith, one can come to have hope, which in
turn engenders charity, love for the one about whom there is faith and hope.
But, that is also, and more fundamentally, the order suggested by Scripture,
as shown by a fundamental verse, I Corinthians 13:13, to which Aquinas has
frequent recourse.6 Thus, in the Secunda Secundae, Aquinas treats faith first
(q.1–16), then hope (q.17–22), and then brings the consideration of the
theological virtues to term by looking at charity (q.23–46). And those
treatments have repeated recourse to the scriptural witness in presenting
faith, hope, charity, as well as to the precepts for each.7

FAITH
In discussing each of the theological virtues, Aquinas will consider the act or
acts made possible by the virtue, the gift or gifts that perfect the possessor of
that virtue and so make her more open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit to
act out of that virtue and so in a way pleasing to God, the vices opposed to
the virtue, and the pertinent precepts.8 In what follows on each of the
theological virtues, I concentrate on the virtue with its act(s), with some
attention to the opposing vices.
Believing, the internal act of faith, is to think with assent.9 It is an act of
the intellect, commanded by the will. By faith, one is related to God as First
Truth. The First Truth is both the formal object and, in an extended sense, the
material object of faith. God reveals the truths held by theological faith, and
it is on God’s authority that one assents to these truths. And, these truths
involve beatitude: God reveals that God is the beatifying end of human
beings, and what God has done, in Christ, to make possible reaching that end.
With the tradition, in defining the virtue of faith, Aquinas is content with the
words of Hebrews 11:1: “faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the
certainty of things that appear not.”10 One does not see God in this life and so
the object of faith does not of itself bring a person to affirm it; faith, not
knowledge, is characteristic of the journey, in this life. But, on God’s
authority, one can believe that God is the beatifying end of the person and
that the way to this end is through Jesus Christ; and since God does not lie,
there is a certainty to faith (the “assurance” of things that appear not). The
word “substance” in the definition is taken in a distinctive sense, to indicate
that, by faith, there is an anticipation of heaven. There is, to be sure, a
distance between now and what lies in the future. But, by faith, there is a first
taste of heaven and an ordering to heaven, a thinking appropriate to life in
this world by which the “substance” of heaven is possessed and which
promotes the attaining of heaven. To reach an end, one must be aware of the
end and the means to it; and this is provided in faith.
With the tradition, Aquinas thinks there are three aspects of the internal
act of faith.11 He adopts a formulation that nuances the relation of the person
to God by faith: credere Deo; credere Deum; credere in Deum. By the first
part of the formula is indicated God as the formal object of the act of faith.
By the second is indicated the material object of faith. On the basis of God
revealing and the authority of God (credere Deo), one affirms basic truths
involved in salvation, that God is the beatifying end of the human journey,
that God is triune, and the like (credere Deum). The first two parts of the
formula deal with the intellect, which is perfected by the habit of faith. The
final part of the formula turns to will, which commands the act of the
intellect. In the faith that justifies, that puts one right before God, credere in
Deum bespeaks the virtue of charity, which directs human acts to God as the
ultimate end. Charity quickens the act of faith, and makes it worthy before
God.
In his fullest depiction of the act of faith, Aquinas will also note the place
of grace. The object of faith lies beyond reason, and the object is not known
directly. Since it is unseen, the object of faith is not sufficient to move the
intellect to affirm it. The act of the intellect must be commanded by the will,
and the will need not command the act of faith. That the will commands this
act is due to grace, to God moving the will to command the act of faith.12
Faith, then, has a twofold dependence on God’s gracious will: for the
infusion of the virtue in the first place, and for the act of the virtue.13
 WHAT FAITH AFFIRMS
What is the content of the faith? Have all believers, whenever they have
lived, been bound to hold, explicitly, the same truths? Aquinas’s position, in
brief, is that in essence the truth of the faith has always been the same, but
that it has come to finer expression over time. What was virtually contained
in the faith, objectively taken, has been made explicit, been more finely
articulated.14 Aquinas here is invoking his notion of the articles of faith (the
truths necessary for salvation, which are revealed by God, cannot be
demonstrated by human reason and are to be held by faith),15 as well as his
basic epistemology. The act of faith terminates in a reality;16 by faith one is
related to God as First Truth. This is confirmed by the wording of the creed,
which contains the articles (“I believe in God almighty,” for example, not “I
believe that God is almighty,” etc.).17 But, what is known is in the knower
according to the mode of the knower;18 and so although God is simple, since
humans know by analysis and synthesis, certain propositions are formed
about the God affirmed in faith, as well as about things in relation to God as
these are ordered to human salvation. An article corresponds to the way in
which God is unseen; and an article can cover much. There is one sort of
difficulty posed by the dying of God. Another sort of difficulty is posed by
the resurrection of the dead Word incarnate. And so these fall under different
articles of the faith. But, that the Word incarnate suffered and was buried
evinces the same difficulty as his dying; and so they are summarized under
that same article.19
The articles have increased over time; the faith of believers, in terms of
the content, has become nuanced, although virtually identical with that held
by their predecessors. Aquinas finds in Scripture an apt statement of the faith
that all believers have held, whenever they have lived. As Hebrews 11:6
states, “He that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He rewards
those that seek God.”20 By the first part is meant all that pertains to the God
who is the beatifying end of human existence; by the second, addressing
God’s providence, is indicated that God saves and does so in keeping with
human constitution and need. Over time, as God reveals more about God and
the way to God, what was virtual has become explicit; and at present all
believers are required to hold, explicitly, a series of truths about God and
about Christ, the way to God as end.
 These beliefs, now in their fully articulated form, are stated in the creed,
which falls into articles of two sorts: those that have to do with the mystery
of the triune God who is end, and those that have to do with the mystery of
Christ, with what God has dispensed in time to make the attainment of God
as end possible.21 There are seven articles, by Aquinas’s counting, under
each of these main categories. With regards to the majesty of God, three
things are proposed for belief: the unity of the Godhead, the trinity of
persons, and the works proper to the Godhead. There are three articles on the
trinity of persons, one for each of the persons. There are three articles too for
the works of God, one dealing with the order of nature (God as creator),
another on the order of grace, affirming the sanctification of people, the third
on the order of glory, affirming the resurrection of the dead and life
everlasting. As for Christ’s human nature, its seven articles treat of his
conception, his virginal birth, his passion, death and burial, his descent into
hell, his resurrection, his ascension, and his coming to judge.22
Again, revelation has been progressive, as has articulation. Earlier
believers had a less articulated faith. In describing earlier faith, Aquinas
makes use of a fundamental division of the history of the race, theologically
construed.23 Thus, prior to the Fall, humans did affirm God as beatifying end,
and affirmed Christ; but, lacking a foreknowledge of their own sin, they did
not believe that the Christ to come would have to meet the problem of sin,
through his suffering and dying and being raised. They believed only with a
view to the coming of beatitude, and so believed in Incarnation, as tailored to
making available the elevating grace needed to attain God as end. After the
Fall, the need for the suffering, dying, and raising of the incarnate Word
came to expression, and so believers affirmed not only Incarnation, but the
Passion and Resurrection as well. With the coming of Christ, and the
performance of his saving work, what was believed as future has occurred
and is held, now, in faith as accomplished. Faith holds that, in Jesus Christ,
God has taken decisive action to overcome sin and make possible the
attainment of eternal life as intended by God.
Aquinas nuances this “historical” account of the making explicit of the
content of faith by working in some reflections on degrees of explicitness,
especially in terms of the believers who lived under the Old Law, rendered in
the Old Testament. Aquinas distinguishes between the learned and the rest of
the people of God.24 The faith of the leaders was more explicit: they
explicitly believed in the Christ to come, who would suffer and die for sins.
They knew that their ritual and sacrificial actions, while valuable in
themselves for expressing right relation to God, also foretold Christ, and so
would find their completion in Christ. The simple, however, lacked this
further understanding of ritual and practice. And so their faith in the Christ to
come was more implicit, expressed under the figure of these rituals and
practices. As for the present time—that is, after Christ—Aquinas too knows
of a kind of distinction between explicit and implicit faith among believers,
although this plays out differently now. All, whatever their state, are held to
explicit faith about God and Christ as expressed in the creed, which
summarizes the articles of faith. But, the faith of the leaders must be more
advanced, more nuanced, more acquainted with the surrounding details; the
faith of the people in the articles as stated in the creed suffices, although they
are to be prone to accept whatever else attends belief in, say, the death of
Christ as reported in Scripture.
Human beings are involved in God’s revealing and the process of
articulation. The truths needed for salvation are revealed in Scripture, and
God reveals these truths to the human authors of Scripture and does so in
such a way that they cannot be mistaken. They pass on these truths to others
as God intends.25 And church leaders articulate the faith through their
participation in councils. It pertains to a council to determine, in the face of
heretical challenge, on a matter of importance to the faith, that is, to further
articulate the faith. This the council does in dependence on Scripture,
determining the correct interpretation, in terms of major matters of faith, of
Scripture. A council, according to Aquinas, is called by the pope, to whom it
also belongs to confirm and publish conciliar articulations. These
articulations of the faith constitute the rule of faith, itself reflective of God’s
revelation, which is the measure of true faith.26 In both revelation and
articulation, the human role is real, albeit secondary. It is God who reveals
the truths necessary for salvation; and the Holy Spirit guides the deliberations
and determinations of the councils. Humans act instrumentally. In his
discussion of faith, Aquinas can mention one other human, whose
contribution, however, is the most important: Christ, the Word incarnate.
What is to be held by faith, on the basis of God’s authority, might also be
designated the “doctrine of Christ,”27 for it is Christ, the God become human,
the one to whom the Old Testament has been pointing, who provides the
definitive and final revelation of God’s saving truth. There is a considerable
gap between this human and the others involved in revelation and
articulation. Christ is the Word of God become human, and the second divine
person is the bearer, the subject, of the human nature of Christ; the human
nature stands to the divinity as a conjoined instrument. The others involved
in revelation and articulation are not, obviously, God, and act as separated
animated instruments of God. Their authority then can only be participated,
derived from the God who acts through them. In referring to Christ’s
doctrine, Aquinas is anticipating the fuller, much more expansive treatment
of Christ as teacher in the third part of the Summa;28 that later treatment itself
builds on, as does the discussion of faith in the Secunda Secundae, the
opening question of the Summa, on sacred doctrine.29

FORMED AND UNFORMED FAITH; UNBELIEF

Aquinas distinguishes between formed and unformed faith.30 What unites

them is that both are habits perfective of the intellect; they are also both gifts
of God, infused by God in their recipient. They differ in terms of charity,
which is perfective of the will. When charity is infused with the habit of
faith, there is formed faith; when the habit of faith is infused without charity,
that is unformed faith. Charity orders acts, including the act of faith, to God
as beatifying end; and acts done under the influence of charity bring the actor
closer to that end and are meritorious of that end. When charity is present, the
habit of faith is truly good, and the habit is deemed a virtue. Unformed faith,
where charity is lacking, is not a virtue.31 Formed faith can become
unformed: this occurs when one sins mortally, destroying charity, the form of
faith. Unformed faith can become formed; this occurs when God infuses the
virtue of charity, perfective of faith and its act.32 The move from formed to
unformed is due to the human person, who opts for mortal sin. The move
from unformed to formed is due to God, in accordance with God’s saving
will for that person. The person can do nothing to necessitate the giving of
charity. And it may be that the person never receives the charity that would
form faith to God as beatifying end. That person will simply believe and do
so on the basis of God’s authority, but to no good, saving effect.
What destroys the habit of faith is unbelief. This is the vice opposed to the
internal act of faith.33 Unbelief is more than the simple absence of faith. It
involves a hostility to faith, a rejection of faith. The act of faith is to think
with assent; unbelief involves dissent, and a malice in the will, which
commands the act of the intellect.34 To the internal act of faith, Aquinas adds
an external act, confession,35 the public profession of the faith to which one
assents, when circumstances require. Blasphemy is the vice opposed to the
public profession: this is the overt rejection of what God teaches, through the
church, for human salvation.36
Heresy is a class of unbelief.37 Heresy is the obstinate holding of a belief
in opposition to the faith. It is to reject one of the articles of faith. With
regards to the other articles of faith to which the heretic assents, the heretic
has neither formed nor unformed faith. The heretic does not hold those
articles as does the person who has received, by God’s gift, the habit of faith.
In rejecting one of the articles of faith, the heretic has rejected the authority
of the Church, which, on the basis of God’s revelation in Scripture that is
articulated in the rule of faith, proclaims God’s saving truth. The heretic will
affirm those other articles, not on the basis of God’s revealing, conveyed by
the Church, but due to his own will. They appeal to his sensibilities and so
are affirmed by him.38

HOPE

To hope is to desire a future good that is difficult yet possible to attain.39

Perfective of the rational appetite, the will, the theological virtue of hope has
God as its principal object. Theological hope aspires to God as beatifying
end; God as beatifying is the future good to which hope aspires. Reaching
that end is difficult, and certainly lies beyond the natural capacities of any
human. But, reaching that end is possible; otherwise there would be no hope;
one would simply despair of reaching that end. The possibility affirmed in
hope rests in God. God through God’s grace makes possible reaching the end
that is God. Thomas thus posits two objects of the theological virtue of
hope.40 The principal object is God as beatifying end. The secondary object
is the aid of God, on which the person of hope relies in order to reach God as
end. By trusting in the aid of God, one can have an assurance of attaining
eternal life. Grace, then, can be said to be involved in this theological virtue
in two ways. The virtue is infused in the person as a grace, accompanying
habitual grace and the other theological virtues. And, God’s gracious aid, on
which the person relies, moves the graced and virtuous person to the end set
for humans by God, God.
Hope finds the mean between two vices that oppose it—despair and
presumption.41 To despair is to deny to oneself the possibility of attaining
God as end. Despair is compatible with correct belief.42 One might hold,
correctly, that God does offer salvation to those who repent and who pursue a
moral life in keeping with God’s salvific will; but one denies that this
extends to oneself. There is something in oneself, the one who despairs
thinks, that places an obstacle to the working out of salvation in her own
case. In hope, by contrast, one does not fixate on one’s own limitations, on
what makes one unworthy of eternal life. One turns, rather, to God. By God’s
power and mercy, what is impossible of oneself, is acknowledged as possible
and applicable to oneself; one here trusts in God to help in reaching the end
set by God for humans.
Presumption can take different forms. One might presume too much about
oneself. Such a person would be insufficiently attentive to the difficulty
involved in reaching a future good and think that the individual’s powers
(without the benefit of grace) would suffice for reaching the future good that
is God. It is another form of presumption, however, that might be the more
likely, according to Aquinas, when thinking of theological hope. One might
presume too much on another.43 In relying on the help of a friend, the one
who presumes will leave it all to the friend. Here, then, grace is not denied.
But God’s expectations of the person who is the recipient of grace are set to
the side, and all is left to God and God’s grace. For Aquinas, people
participate in the working out of their own salvation; that is what God
desires. Thus, they must move away from sin and toward God; and once in
grace and the infused virtues, they will do what God seeks of humans who
are true to themselves, as made by and for God, doing so by the aid of
additional graces. God’s initiative is throughout maintained; and that
initiative is viewed differently, at different points in the saving process. God
simply works conversion; God works with the converted and is involved in
their merit, and so they progress, in accordance with God’s plan for the
working out of salvation, to the end set for them by God. But, God does not
work out a person’s salvation despite that person, but through and with that
person. The person, by God’s aid, contributes to that person’s salvation.44
Now, by charity people are made friends of God; God is their Friend. And by
hope God’s friend trusts in God’s aid. One presumes too much in that Friend
when one is intent on leaving it all to the Friend, ignoring what the Friend
seeks of those whom God brings to their God-established end.
It has been suggested that in his talk of the secondary object of hope and
reliance on God’s grace, Aquinas anticipates the position of Luther about
justification by faith.45 For Luther, the heart of faith is trust, a trust that
brings assurance. What is impossible for a human is quite possible for God;
and so by faith one renounces one’s attempt to save oneself and accepts, in
the faith that is trust, God’s saving grace. Too much, however, should not be
made of the overlap between Aquinas’s hope as trust, with the assurance that
brings, and Luther’s faith as trust, with its confidence, rooted in God’s grace.
There is considerable distance between the two positions. For Luther, all that
is required for being right before God is faith, by which one renounces one’s
attempts to save oneself and trusts in God’s grace. And, that grace is
conceived principally as the offer of forgiveness. For Aquinas, however,
grace involves forgiveness of sin but is also construed as transformational.
The infusion of habitual grace and of the theological virtues, including hope,
brings new capacity. The graced and virtuous person is by divine initiative
capable of acts that lie beyond the person’s merely natural capacity, acts that
bring that person to eternal life. And those acts, made possible by God, do
make a difference, do contribute to the working out of the person’s salvation.
God asks them of the beneficiaries of God’s grace and other gifts, and will
reward them, as done by the human with the aid of further grace. In Luther,
trust will exclude merit; in Aquinas, hope and merit are quite compatible.

CHARITY
The treatise on charity is the lengthiest of those in the Summa on the
theological virtues, consisting of two more questions (24) than the other two
treatises combined (16 questions on faith, 6 on hope).46 The treatise on
charity is divided into four main segments: a consideration of the virtue
itself, including an in-depth analysis of its object; the principal act of the
virtue, love, accompanied by its effects; the vice opposed to love, hatred, as
well as the vices opposed to the effects of charity; and, questions on the
precepts, gift of the Holy Spirit, wisdom, that perfects charity, and the vice
opposed to wisdom, folly.
That Aquinas offers an analysis of charity in such detail and complexity is
most fitting for more than one reason. Scripture makes much of charity, as
does the subsequent Christian tradition, and the treatise aims at gathering up
and synthesizing these various comments. Charity stands at the heart of the
medieval Christian version of the journey to God as end and will be
manifested in all acts that lead to the God who beatifies. And, as Aquinas
puts it in one of the articles of the treatise,47 charity, simply put, is the
greatest of all the virtues, standing first, in terms of perfection, not only in
comparison with the acquired virtues but also in terms of the other
theological virtues. The acquired virtues have their particular goods,
proportioned to the human as human. The other theological virtues relate the
person to God, as to one who offers what the person needs to attain God as
end, whether knowledge of the end and the way to the end, or the help
required to reach eternal life. Charity unites in will the lover and the beloved:
God is loved as God should be, for God’s own sake and as God is.
Charity is friendship.48 For friendship, several criteria must be met: that
one wills the good of another, the well-being of that other; that the willing of
good be mutual; that there be a community between the two on which charity
is based. All of this holds for friendship between God and those endowed
with the virtue of charity. The community is that of beatitude. Beatitude
pertains to God as God; God wills to share this beatitude with human beings
and wills that in love; God’s love is causal, and so the virtue of charity is
infused in the soul as the created effect of God’s love. On the basis of that
causal love, human beings have the possibility of attaining to God as
beatifying end. The love is mutual. First God loves, and on the basis of that
love, with the further aid of grace, the recipient of God’s love loves in return,
out of the virtue of charity; and this person shows that love in acts of love,
elicited by the will, and of acts of will, shaped by charity, that command
other acts of the person (see, e.g., on faith, above, and on charity as form,
below). God in love wills the person to share in beatitude, and the person
loves God, and loves God as God deserves to be loved, as truly and fully
good. The friendship, then, is that that pertains to the virtuous:49 it holds
between God, who is fully good, and those whom God makes good, by
God’s loving gifts.
 OBJECTS OF CHARITY
God is the principal object of the love of charity. Aquinas asserts other
objects of charity, all ordered to God as principal object. He adopts the list of
four objects of charity offered by Augustine, in the first book of the De
doctrina, in parsing the twofold command, to love God above all things, and
the neighbor as oneself.50 Thus, the person who has received the virtue of
charity will love by that charity God, the neighbor, oneself, and one’s body.
God is loved as the absolute good, who is the beatifying end of the human
person. God is loved for God’s own sake. One loves the neighbor, and
oneself, in charity, as participating in beatitude. One loves the neighbor as
made by and for God as end; so too one loves oneself. In this sense, one
loves the neighbor and oneself as in God, as ordered to God as beatifying
end. The body is loved in charity also in terms of beatitude. In the beatific
vision, the soul will be fulfilled in knowing and loving God directly. There
will be an overflow to the body, which in this life had been involved in the
actions sought by God of those who will attain God as end, from soul: and so
in the vision, through this overflow, the body will be clarified, made subtle
and agile.
With the tradition, Aquinas thinks of the possibility of progress in charity,
of degrees of charity that can be plotted along the journey of a life, which, if
successful, finds its term in heaven.51 There are different pursuits that
characterize the three degrees of charity: beginning, progress, and perfection.
At first a person will be chiefly occupied with avoiding sin and resisting his
concupiscence, which works against charity. In beginners, charity has to be
fostered and fed, so as not to be destroyed. Eventually, as one increases in
proficiency, the person’s chief pursuit is to aim at progress in good. And,
finally, the perfect will aim at union with and enjoyment of God; these desire
to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Can, however, charity be truly perfect
in this life?52 There is a perfection in charity that is reserved to the next life,
when the person who is in God’s presence is in act ever and wholly borne
toward God. Such an unfailing actual loving of God is not possible in the
present life; because of human weakness it is not possible actually to think
always of God and so be moved actually at all times to love of God. But,
there is a kind of perfection that is possible in the present life, when the
person makes an earnest endeavor to give his time to divine things, while
scorning other things except as the needs of life in the world demand. Such
however is not common to all who have charity. What will be found in
others, who fall short of that perfection (as in the members of religious orders
who have given themselves wholly over to the single-minded pursuit of
God), is a giving of the heart over wholly to God habitually, that is, by
neither thinking nor desiring anything contrary to the love of God.
Does the love of charity extend to others, to, say, the sinner, or to the
enemy? Jesus, after all, tells his followers to love the enemy,53 who,
however, seems missing from the list of objects of charity adopted by
Aquinas from Augustine. That a person is a sinner means that she is at odds
with God; and so at first glance would not appear to belong to God and so be
subject to the love of charity. And, the enemy can similarly be viewed as at
odds with God, having done something that is destructive of community with
God and with those who belong to God. Sin, of course, is an impediment to
the attaining of God; and charity is incompatible with mortal sin. But, even in
terms of the sinner and the enemy, one can posit a connection to God, which
is the basis for a community of them with God and with those called to love
in charity. For, while not now in correct relationship to God, a human being
is potentially in that relationship, and will be in that relationship if sin is
rejected and the person turns to God. And, given that potentiality, the sinner
and the enemy can be said to belong to God, and so too are subject to charity.
One will, as Jesus asks, love the enemy, although not as enemy, and will love
the sinner, but not the sin; one loves the sinner or the enemy, for God’s sake.
Aquinas thinks of an order among the objects of charity.54 God is the
principal object and is to be loved above all things and for God’s sake. The
neighbor and oneself are to be loved as called to beatitude, as belonging to a
fellowship that God has initiated and sustains. But, another human will be
loved more, in accordance with a greater reason, or better, more reasons, to
love that one in comparison to another object of love. The basic idea is that
community or fellowship with some is deeper than with others. In addition to
the fellowship established with all other humans, as made by and for God,
who have been the recipients of God’s special love, which is causal of their
own charity, a person can have additional bonds with others and so be related
to them more closely. Aquinas can mention in this regard the bonds of
country or city, as well as those of family, all of which can strengthen the
links among people. A person will love a relative more than someone to
whom he is not related. And, the union with relatives is more stable than
those with others, which may come into existence or pass away (e.g., as civic
needs and responsibilities come to be but might find an end; the union of
kinship abides).55
Even among relatives, Aquinas can posit a greater or lesser love. Should a
parent be loved more than a child?56 The better something is and the more
akin to God it is, the more it is to be loved; and so in this sense, a parent, who
is one’s principle (and so like God, the principle of all), should be loved more
than one’s child. From another perspective, however, one can say that the
child is to be loved the more, for the parent is more closely connected to the
child, and so the child is better known and so more loved, than the other way
around. Aquinas will offer various observations to support this contention.
Thus, for example, parents love their children as being part of themselves; so
the child is loved as the parent loves himself. And, parents know better that
this one is their child; there can be, it appears, some doubt about one’s own
parents. And, parents love their children right from the start and so longer
than a child loves a parent; apparently there is a lag, in coming to love a
parent, for a child (who must mature to be capable of expressing love).
Aquinas can also inquire about a child loving her parents: whom should be
loved more, the mother or the father?57 Both are principles, and so both have
a likeness to God. Should they then be loved equally? Here, trading on his
Aristotelian biology, Aquinas opts for the father: the father is the active, the
mother, the passive, principle of the child; and so the father, as more alike to
God, deserves more love. (This is an argument in need of revision, in light of
a more updated account of conception.) And, finally along these lines, who is
to be loved more by a man, his wife or his parents?58 Again, Aquinas will
show why each are deserving of love: the parents, as the principle, and so the
affinity with God; the wife, to whom the man is united as one, for she is
closer to him and is loved by him as he loves himself, in relation to God.
Depending on the perspective from which one is answering the question,
then, one will answer that one or the other is to be loved the more.

VICES OPPOSED TO CHARITY

Love is the principal act of charity, elicited by the will informed by this
virtue.59 Thomas asserts other acts or effects of charity. Three are internal:
joy,60 peace,61 and mercy.62 Three are external: beneficence,63 almsgiving,64
and fraternal correction.65 And, each has a vice opposed to it. Thus, the vice
opposed to love is hatred: one hates God and that hate destroys the
community expressed by charity.66 Two vices are opposed to joy: sloth is
destructive of the joy that one has as joined correctly in will to God and to
those who belong to the God who beatifies; envy is destructive of the joy that
one has in the good of another.67 A series of vices are opposed to the peace
that charity brings: discord, contention, schism, war, strife, and sedition.68
And, finally, in terms of vice, there is that of scandal, which is opposed to
beneficence.69 The consideration of acts of charity and the vices opposed to
love and joy and the others is nuanced, and certainly suggestive of what
would fall under the truly Christian life, and what outside of it. As united in
will to God by charity, one will seek God and order all relationships to others
in light of that unity with God, and seek the good not only of oneself but of
others, and strive to be of service to the other. And, those who reject God as
end, will themselves be disordered and contribute to disorder, in various
contexts, in the world. But, while the enumeration of acts and effects, with
their opposed vices, adds texture to the analysis, the basic point remains:
every mortal sin, whatever its sort of vice, destroys charity, disclosing an
aversion to God and faulty relation with others.

CHARITY, FORM OF THE VIRTUES

Aquinas returns repeatedly to a favorite designation of charity. Whether
discussing the virtues in general (in the Prima Secundae) or the theological
virtues individually (in the Secunda Secundae), he refers to charity as the
“form of the virtues.”70 Here he is referring to charity not as a formal but as
an efficient cause. There are acts particular to the various virtues. These
virtues each have their distinctive good, to which the act is ordered. The will
commands these other acts; and, when the will is perfected by the virtue of
charity, by the charitable will, these acts are ordered to the ultimate end, to
the God who beatifies. They are put, as it were, in a larger context, and they
are made conducive of attaining the supernatural end to which human beings
are called by God.
Aquinas has other designations to make the same point. Charity is too the
“root of the virtues” as directing them to the beatifying God; in the same
way, it is their “mother.”71 Aquinas can also convey the teaching in a more
negative way. Every habit that gives rise to a good act that attains the good of
that habit is a virtue. The acquired virtues are virtues, with regards to the end
that is connatural to a human being as human. The theological virtues of faith
and hope order the person to the supernatural end. But, without charity, all of
these, including faith and hope, are only imperfect virtues, not virtues in the
full, perfect sense.72 Charity perfects them, makes them complete, by
directing them to God as supernatural end. In performing these acts, as under
charity, these acts will be meritorious of eternal life.

CONNECTION
Aquinas asserts the connection of the virtues, with an eye to underscoring the
importance of charity.73 In terms of the theological virtues, asserting their
connection is to repeat the claim about charity as the form of the virtues.
Faith and hope find their completion in charity, for charity relates them to
God as beatifying end. Without charity so orienting, the other theological
virtues are imperfect and not conducive to eternal life. Charity in this sense
employs these other virtues, in exercising its role as form of the virtues, and
disposes them well. These other virtues with their acts provide the matter for
the activity of charity. It perfects these virtues and makes their acts better: by
charity, one believes well, hopes well, for this believing and hoping leads to
God as beatifying end. The connection goes, as well, in the other direction.
Here, Aquinas echoes his teaching about the order of generation of these
virtues: first faith, then hope, then charity. One loves only on the basis of
knowing what is to be loved and having a confidence that what is to be loved
can be attained. Remove faith and hope, and there is no charity.
Aquinas asserts an additional connection of virtues, of charity with the
infused moral virtues, which are infused with the theological virtues at the
term of the process of conversion.74 The infused moral virtues make possible
moral acts that are pleasing to God and lead to eternal life; they are not to be
reduced to the acquired moral virtues, gained through acts of a kind and
ordered to the person’s natural end. The infused moral virtues are, as are the
theological virtues, simply infused, given by God as gift, in accordance with
God’s will for a person. As with that with the other theological virtues, the
connection of charity with the infused moral virtues can be thought of as
going in both directions. Charity is their form, moving and directing them to
God as beatifying end, making them better, well done. And, charity too is
dependent on them: the infused moral virtues are the principles of good
moral acts that lead to God as end; charity works through them to bring a
person to God; take them away and charity has nothing to act on.

LOSS OF VIRTUE
In describing increase in the theological virtues, Aquinas can gesture in a
relatively straightforward way to what is the case for the acquired virtues.
Those increase by acts of that kind; those acts incline the possessor of the
acquired virtue the more to acts of that kind. So too for the virtues of faith,
hope, charity, which increase by acts of faith, hope, charity, as aided by God.
There is no parallel, however, in the losing of the virtues. Language of
“decrease” is appropriate to an analysis of the acquired virtues. That decrease
will be due to lack of use of that virtue or infrequent use of it. By inactivity,
there can be an erosion of that inclination to such act, to the point that the
habit disappears. A single act will not destroy such virtue, which had been
acquired and built up by acts of that kind. In his lengthy discussion of the
loss of charity, however, Aquinas disallows talk of “decrease.” Failing to act
out of that virtue, or acting only infrequently out of it, may be inadvisable, as
rendering the will prone to fall from charity. But such inactivity does not
forfeit charity. Rather, the virtue of charity is lost only by sin, mortal sin, and
is destroyed by a single mortal sin.75
Charity involves fellowship between humans and God, due to the divine
initiative. On the basis of God’s loving, there is a mutual love between
humans and God. One loves God above all things and loves others in relation
to God. A mortal sin destroys this community. In sinning mortally, one acts
against the love of God and of neighbor; in this there is a loss of the virtue
that makes charitable acting possible. It may be that charity will be restored,
but that will not be due to the efforts of a person to regain it. The restoration
of charity, as in its first giving, is due to God’s initiative, in accordance with
God’s saving will for that person. It may be that there will be no return of
that person who has lost charity to fellowship with God.
 Aquinas can adopt a different image to account for the destructive effect
of mortal sinning. God always offers God’s love to the possessor of the virtue
of charity. The appropriate response is that person’s own loving. Sometimes,
however, a person will refuse that response, instead opting to put an obstacle
to God’s offered love. No longer in relationship to the source of spiritual life,
the virtue of charity thus dies.76 That mortal sin is possible is due to the
human will. The virtue of charity inclines its possessor to the act of charity. It
does not necessitate such acting. By the will, the one endowed with charity
may decide to act in a way that is counter to charity; the virtue then is lost.
Mortal sin also destroys the infused moral virtues that accompany charity
in its initial infusion. Those virtues are dependent on charity for their proper
ordering and for their good expression. Once charity is destroyed, so too are
the infused moral virtues.77 They will be regained, if they are, only when and
if God restores, by God’s free giving, charity to a person. But, the loss of
charity does not mean the loss of the habit of faith or of that of hope.78 The
mortal sin that destroys charity does not destroy either of the others. What is
removed by that sin is the form that perfects them. Aquinas refers frequently
to “formed faith” and “unformed faith”; and there is a formed and an
unformed hope as well.79 The form of charity disposes well the believer, the
one who hopes, to the God who is the beatifying end; the loss of charity
means that belief and hope are no longer related to that God in a way that is
savingly conducive. Whether formed or unformed, however, the habit of
faith remains; it is no longer virtuous, a full virtue. But, it is still faith. The
same is true of hope, whether formed or unformed. Both are, and remain
(with or without charity), a gift of God. There can, then, be a move from
formed faith to unformed faith; that is due to mortal sin, to the instability of
the will and the failure to act out of the charity that binds one to God as
beatifying end. There may be a move from unformed faith to formed. But,
that is up to God, to the God who gives God’s gifts to whom God wills. As
long as charity is absent, the act of faith will not justify before God. In terms
of the threefold credere: when the act of faith issues from the virtue of faith,
as shaped by charity, all three aspects are found. One believes God, believes
correctly about God, believes in a way that expresses love of God and so
brings one closer to that God as end. When charity no longer forms faith, one
will still believe God and on the basis of God as first truth; one will not
believe unto God, believe in a way that expresses love, bespeaks a correct
orientation to God. As for hope, since charity is missing, the one who hopes
will not do the moral good that is meritorious before God, and so will not
hope in a way that facilitates the end to which one aspires. To destroy the
habit of faith, or of hope, a vicious act is required, an act of a vice that is
proportioned to that habit. Hence, faith is destroyed by unbelief, hope by acts
of despair or of presumption.

DURATION

Will the theological virtues remain in heaven?80 Guided by the Apostle Paul
(1 Corinthians 13:8, 10–12), Aquinas denies the virtues of faith and of hope
to the beatified. These virtues, suited to the present life, will not be needed in
heaven. At the core of each of these virtues is a fundamental imperfection,
when viewed in comparison with the heavenly state. “Now we see in a glass
darkly, then we will see face to face.” In the entry into heaven, belief will
yield to vision, which is a superior form of knowing. And, hope has to do
with a future good. When that good is no longer future, but present, the need
for hope is removed. The one who had hoped, which sustained her in the
journey to God in the confidence of God’s aid, now comprehends, clings,
directly, to the God who is her end. Of the theological virtues, only charity
will remain in heaven. By charity, people are united in will to God. In
heaven, that union is consummated; charity remains, but in its fullest form, as
the person wills God in the immediate presence of God, who loves in return.
In his Christology, Aquinas adds nuance to this account of duration. Did
Christ have the theological virtues during his earthly sojourn?81 On initial
reflection, one might think that he did; for, he had the fullness of grace, and
the theological virtues are infused with habitual grace. However, Aquinas
believed that Christ enjoyed the beatific vision from the first moment of his
conception. And so, what holds of those in heaven, holds of Christ. He had
the virtue of charity, and in its fullness (and so in his every human action
related his acts to God as end), but lacked the virtues of faith, of hope, as
unnecessary, to one who is blessed. Yet in that same question on the grace
and virtues of Christ, Aquinas adds that while Jesus did not need these
virtues, he still had what was perfect or complete in them.82 What Aquinas
means becomes clearer from the parallel discussion in the disputed question
on hope. As in the ST, Aquinas thinks there of a twofold object of hope: God
as future good, and God in God’s aiding, by which the one who hopes can
attain to God as end. Aquinas then links language of imperfection, and, of
completion or perfection, to the two objects of hope. With regards to the
principal object of hope, there is imperfection, because that object is in the
future, not presently held. But, with regards to divine help, hope is a
tendency of someone perfect, for human perfection consists in holding on to
God.83 And so, Aquinas explicitly states later in the same article, with
regards to the completeness of the virtue of hope, Christ possessed hope
utterly in this sense, since he held utterly on to God’s help.84 Aquinas adds
that the same is true of the virtue of faith, which too has a completion or
perfection in addition to its fundamental imperfection. Faith is imperfect in
that one does not yet see what one believes, but perfect in that it holds on to
the witness of the first truth.85 Through this discussion of Christ, Aquinas has
nicely indicated for both hope and faith a fundamental continuity between the
present state and heaven, while remaining faithful to Paul’s point.

SOURCES
That the discussion of the theological virtues takes as its point of departure
what Scripture proclaims about faith, hope, and charity, and that the
scriptural witness frames the analysis, is patent enough. Without Scripture,
Aquinas would be unable to discuss these properly Christian things. In
reflecting on these virtues, Aquinas has been aided by the intervening
Christian theological tradition. He is not, obviously, the first theologian to
write about faith and the others, or to think of these virtues as theological;
there is the weighty precedent of such as Augustine and Gregory the Great,
themselves following after the Apostle Paul on these virtues. Post-scriptural
Christian theologians can also provide stimulus to fruitful interpretation in
particular ways. Aquinas’s understanding of faith as intellectual assent stands
in close dependence on Augustine;86 he owes Augustine as well for the
parsing of the act of faith in terms of the threefold credere;87 and, Augustine
too had defined virtue in a useful way, emphasizing in that definition what is
pertinent to these particular virtues (that is, the grace of God, working these
virtues in their recipient).88 That definition was conveyed to Aquinas through
its quotation in the Lombard’s Sentences. The Lombard could in his own way
further Aquinas’s analysis of the theological virtues. The Lombard’s
identification of charity with the Holy Spirit lies behind Aquinas’s insistence,
to the contrary, that charity is something created in the soul, infused by God
to make possible acts pleasing to God.89 The person is not, as the Lombard’s
straightforward identification would suggest, simply moved by the Spirit;
that person has an endowment, itself owed to God’s initiative, that makes the
person capable of acts on the supernatural order. It is the person who loves,
with the help of the Holy Spirit. The Lombard too helped Aquinas to clarify
an important point when it comes to hope. Does one hope on the basis of
grace and merits?90 Rather, Aquinas insists, one hopes for God and in God,
not in one’s own accomplishments. And yet hope does not exclude merit.
God seeks the graced behavior of those who will reach God as end. And so,
if that is what the Lombard meant, one can allow a place to merits in the
realization of one’s hope. And, Aquinas is the beneficiary of what he has
read in non-Christian sources, not least in Aristotle. The questions on these
virtues are replete with references to the Ethics, whether for a definition of
habit and virtue, or for an account of the faith, of the hope, of the love, with
which Aristotle was familiar. Christian faith is like, but unlike, the faith that
the philosopher knew; so too for Christian hope and for Christian charity.
Those comments could be useful, then, to put these virtues, unknown to
Aristotle, in their proper relief.

NOTES
1. In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas discusses the theological virtues at I-
II q.62, and in some of the articles in questions that closely follow (q.64 a.4;
q.65 a.2–5; q.66 a.6; q.67 a.3–6). The discrete discussions of the theological
virtues are found at the beginning of the Secunda Secundae: II-II q.1–16, for
faith; q.17–22, for hope; and, q.23–46, for charity. Aquinas returns to the
theological virtues in his Christology: III q.7 a.3–4, 9. Some of his
Quaestiones disputatae are devoted to theological virtues: de caritate (in
thirteen articles), de correctione fraterna (in two articles), and de spe (in four
articles). For all of the disputed questions on the virtues in English
translation, see Thomas Aquinas Disputed Questions on the Virtues, ed. E. M.
Atkins and Thomas Williams, trans. E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
 2. This is argued at length of charity at ST II-II q.23 a.2.
3. For the following paragraphs in the text, see ST I-II q.62 a.1.
4. On the increase of charity, see ST II-II q.24 a.4–7.
5. See ST I-II q.62 a.4; there, reference is made as well to the order of
perfection, examined later in the text.
6. See, e.g., ST I-II q.62 a.3 s.c.
7. For the precepts of faith, see ST II-II q.16; for hope, II-II q.22; for
charity, II-II q.44.
8. In treating each of the theological virtues, Aquinas is flexible in the
actual order of discussion. Thus, in discussing faith, in looking at faith itself,
he considers its object, act, and only then the virtue, and then turns to the
gifts, the vices, and the precepts. In discussing hope, he considers hope itself
and its subject, then its gift, and then the opposing vices, and finally the
precepts. For the order of the discussion of charity, see below in the text,
under “Charity.”
9. ST II-II q.2 a.1. For scholarly discussions of Aquinas on faith: Benoit
Duroux, La Psychologie de la foi chez S. Thomas d’Aquin (Tournai: Desclée
de Brouwer, 1963); Tad W. Guzie, “The Act of Faith according to St.
Thomas: A Study in Theological Methodology,” The Thomist 29 (1965):
239–80; Daniel Bourgeois, “‘Inchoatio vitae eternae’: La Dimension
eschatologique de la vertu théologale de foi chez saint Thomas d’Aquin,”
Sapienza 27 (1974): 272–314; Stephen F. Brown, “The Theological Virtue of
Faith (IIa IIae, qq.1–16),” in Stephen J. Pope, ed., The Ethics of Aquinas
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 221–31.
10. ST II-II q.4 a.1.
11. ST II-II q.2 a.2.
12. ST II-II q.6 a.1.
13. James 2:19 refers to the believing of the demons. For Aquinas, that
belief is not due to a gift of God. And, it does not involve assenting to the
actual truths revealed by God and conveyed through the church. Rather, it is
based on evident signs: in seeing those signs, the demons recognize that what
is taught is from God. That is the basis, and extent, of their believing. That is
how they have read the signs, and so they have opted for a faith. But, that
faith is vague, and certainly is not salvific. They are not thereby correctly
related to God, nor less hostile to God and those who love God. See ST II-II
q.5 a.2. For the denial that such faith is even unformed faith (discussed later
in the text), see ad 2.
14. ST II-II q.1 a.7, 16.
15. ST I q.1 a.1.
16. ST II-II q.1 a.2 ad 2.
17. ST II-II q.1 a.2 obj. 2 and ad 2.
18. ST II-II q.1 a.2.
19. ST II-II q.1 a.6.
20. The verse from Hebrews is quoted at ST II-II q.1 a.7.
21. ST II-II q.1 a.8.
22. In that same article, Aquinas notes that others think that six, not seven,
articles fall under each main heading, the Godhead, and, the humanity of
Christ.
23. ST II-II q.2 a.7.
24. Ibid.
25. See ST I q.1 a.8 ad 2, and in the same question, a.9 ad 2. For Scripture
as the locus of God’s revealing of saving truth, see too ST II-II q.1 a.9 ad 2.
26. On this work of the council and the pope, see ST II-II q.1 a.9–10. For
the guiding work of the Holy Spirit, see II-II q.1 a.9, s.c.
27. See ST II-II q.11 a.1.
28. ST III q.42.
29. ST I q.1.
30. See ST II-II q.4 a.3–5.
31. For the denial that unformed faith is a “virtue,” see ST II-II q.4 a.5, and
I-II q.65 a.4.
32. ST II-II q.4 a.4.
33. ST II-II q.10.
34. ST II-II q.10 a.1–2.
35. ST II-II q.3.
36. ST II-II q.13.
37. ST II-II q.11.
38. ST II-II q.5 a.3.
39. For this description of the object of hope, see, e.g., ST II-II q.17 a.1.
For scholarly discussions of hope in Aquinas: C.-A. Bernard, Théologie de
l’espérance selon Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1961); G. M. Conlon,
“The Certitude of Hope,” The Thomist 10 (1947): 76–119, 226–52; V. De
Couesnongle, “Le ‘Dieu de l’espérance’ de saint Thomas Aquinas,” Studia
Theologica Varsaviensis 12 (1974): 103–20; Romanus Cessario, “The
Theological Virtue of Hope (IIa IIae, qq. 17–22),” in Stephen J. Pope, ed.,
The Ethics of Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
2002), 232–43.
40. For the language of principal and secondary, see ST II-II q.17 a.4.
41. For despair, see ST II-II q.20; for presumption, II-II q.21.
42. ST II-II q.20 a.2.
43. ST II-II q.21 a.1.
44. See too ST II-II q.21 a.2.
45. See S. Pfürtner, Luther and Aquinas on Salvation, trans. E. Quinn (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1964); see as well Joseph Wawrykow, God’s Grace
and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 247–59.
46. For scholarly discussions of charity in Aquinas: A. J. Falanga, Charity:
The Form of the Virtues according to Saint Thomas (Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press, 1948); J. Aumann, “Thomistic
Evaluation of Love and Charity,” Angelicum 55 (1978): 534–56; P. Wadell,
The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas (New
York: Paulist Press, 1992); G. Mansini, “Similitudo, Communicatio, and the
Friendship of Charity in Aquinas,” in Thomistica, Recherches de théologie
ancienne et médiévale, Supplement 1 (Leuven, 1995), 1–26; E.
Schockenhoff, “The Theological Virtue of Charity (IIa IIae, qq.23–46),” in
Stephen J. Pope, ed., The Ethics of Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press, 2002), 244–58; M. Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love:
Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004).
47. ST II-II q.23 a.6; see too I-II q.66 a.6. In this assessment, Aquinas is
echoing Paul, I Corinthians 13:13.
48. ST II-II q.23 a.1.
49. On the kinds of friendship, see ST II-II q.23 1 obj. 3 and ad 3.
50. ST II-II q.25 a.12.
51. ST II-II q.24 a.9.
52. ST II-II q.24 a.8.
53. Matthew 5:44 is quoted at ST II-II q.25 a.8 s.c.
54. ST II-II q.26.
 55. ST II-II q.26 a.8.
56. ST II-II q.26 a.9.
57. ST II-II q.26 a.10.
58. ST II-II q.26 a.11.
59. ST II-II q.27.
60. ST II-II q.28.
61. ST II-II q.29.
62. ST II-II q.30.
63. ST II-II q.31.
64. ST II-II q.32.
65. ST II-II q.33.
66. ST II-II q.34.
67. ST II-II q.35 for sloth; q.36 for envy.
68. ST II-II q.37–42.
69. ST II-II q.43.
70. See, e.g., ST I-II q.62 a.4; II-II q.4 a.3; II-II q.23 a.8.
71. For charity as form, mother, and root, see, e.g., ST I-II q.62 a.4, as well
as II-II q.23 a.8.
72. On the need for charity for perfect virtue, see, e.g., ST II-II q.23 a.7,
and I-II q.65 a.4.
73. ST I-II q.65.
74. For the following, see ST I-II q.65 a.2–3.
75. See ST II-II q.24 a.10–12.
76. ST II-II q.24 a.12.
77. ST I-II q.65 a.2.
78. ST I-II q.65 a.4.
79. For a reference to a “formed hope,” see, e.g., ST II-II q.17 a.8 ad 3; in
the background here is the understanding of the order of perfection that holds
for the theological virtues, as discussed in ST I-II q.62 a.4.
80. ST I-II q.67 a.3–6.
81. ST III q.7 a.3, did Christ have faith; a.4, did he have hope?
82. ST III q.7 a.9 ad 1.
83. QD de spe, a.1, ad 4; trans. Atkins, p.222.
84. QD de spe, a.1, ad 12; trans. Atkins, p.225.
 85. QD de spe, a.1, ad 4; trans. Atkins, p.222. See as well de spe, a.4, ad
14; Atkins, p.239.
86. See ST II-II q.2 a.1 s.c., where Aquinas notes that this is Augustine’s
definition in de praedestinatione sanctorum.
87. See ST II-II q.2 a.2 s.c.
88. See ST I-II q.55 a.4.
89. For the Lombard’s identification, see Super Sent Bk. I, d.XVII. For
Aquinas’s discussion, see ST II-II q.23 a.2. On this and other points on which
thirteenth-century scholastics questioned the Lombard, see E. Synan,
“Brother Thomas, the Master, and the Masters,” in St Thomas Aquinas 1274–
1974 Commemorative Studies, vol. 2 (Toronto: PIMS, 1974), 219–42.
90. Aquinas refers at ST II-II q.17 a.1 obj. 2 to a saying in the third book of
the Sentences (d.26) that appears to make merits, as well as grace, the object
of hope.
 PART V

EPISTEMOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

 CHAPTER 23

HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

MARTIN PICKAVÉ

WHAT is knowledge and how do we acquire knowledge? These are core

philosophical questions, and one can expect any major figure in the history of
philosophy to deal with them in one way or other. Naturally, this expectation
also applies to Aquinas. It is, however, surprisingly difficult to get a clear
picture of his epistemological views. On the one hand, epistemology is not
really a central and well-defined topic for Aquinas. He did not write a
separate treatise on epistemology, and when he talks about epistemological
issues, for instance in the first part of his Summa theologiae, he does so
mostly from a psychological perspective. On the other hand, it is simply not
clear which term in Aquinas’s philosophical vocabulary—or in that of
medieval philosophers in general—corresponds to what we today call
knowledge. As is often noted, Aquinas’s fundamental epistemic category is
cognition (cognitio, notitia); but clearly not everything to which Aquinas
refers as cognition is knowledge.1 For, according to Aquinas, it is possible
for cognitions to be false; but false knowledge is clearly a contradiction in
terms.2 However, if we look in Aquinas for knowledge as a mental state
directed at truth, we discover that he holds that there is more than just one
such state; following Aristotle, he names five: art, scientia, wisdom,
prudence, and understanding.3 Commentators regularly turn to Aquinas’s
account of scientia as his account of knowledge; and they therefore regard
Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics as the key text for
his epistemology. But it is not clear that this is legitimate either. When
Aquinas talks about scientia, he closely follows Aristotle’s views about
epistēmē; in fact the Latin term scientia translates the Greek term epistēmē.
Many scholars, however, believe that Aristotle’s theory in the Posterior
Analytics should be read as a theory of what it means to have (scientific)
understanding rather than as a theory of knowledge.4 So one has to wonder
whether the same might not be true of Aquinas’s account of scientia.
Moreover, scientia (as epistēmē) is said to be only of what is necessary; for
Aquinas, scientia is not of contingent facts. But there is nothing wrong with
saying, for instance, that I know that a cup and a computer screen are here in
front of me. Scientia seems to be much too restricted to cover what we
consider as instances of knowledge.
Despite the apparent differences between scientia and knowledge, I shall
attempt in the following to defend a “naïve” interpretation according to
which Aquinas’s account of scientia is his account of knowledge. Since
Aquinas’s epistemological views cannot be understood without the
psychological and metaphysical views on which they are founded, I shall first
give a brief summary of Aquinas’s cognitive psychology and his views about
how we come to cognize something. Unfortunately, I will not have space to
say much about Aquinas’s general views about cognition. In particular, I will
not deal with what exactly cognition is for Aquinas, since my focus is rather
on how knowledge is different from other forms of cognitive access to the
world. But the most immediate question we have to address is why Aquinas
believes that we can know something in the first place. How can Aquinas be
sure that human beings are capable of knowledge? The last part of this
chapter will deal with what, according to Aquinas, we cannot know, that is,
with the limits of human knowledge.

CAN WE KNOW SOMETHING?

Commentators on Aquinas’s epistemological views often emphasize his
epistemological optimism and the fact that skeptical worries seem completely
absent from his writings. We should not take his attitude for granted. Many
Latin philosophers of the thirteenth century were familiar with skeptical
arguments from the discussion of ancient skepticism in Augustine’s Against
the Academicians and On the Trinity; some were even familiar with Cicero’s
Academica. Henry of Ghent, writing a couple of years after Aquinas’s death,
begins his own theological Summa with the question whether human beings
can know something. Unsatisfied with Henry’s treatment of the issue, John
Duns Scotus later advances his own refutation of skepticism. These two
authors are presumably the best-known examples of medieval philosophers
engaging with skepticism. But even during Aquinas’s lifetime philosophers
found it necessary to examine skeptical challenges. Let me just mention two
examples: the Franciscan Thomas of York, who was active in Oxford around
the middle of the thirteenth century, and Siger of Brabant, Aquinas’s
notorious colleague at the University of Paris.5
Aquinas’s silence with regard to skepticism is indeed striking. The closest
he gets to engaging with skeptical worries is when he chastises the
Presocratic philosophers for their materialism, which seems to him to rule out
knowledge of the material world, or when he insists against Protagorean
relativism that natural objects are the measure of our intellectual capacities
and our knowledge and not the other way round.6 But from the fact that
Aquinas never discusses the question of whether we can know or cognize
things in the first place it does not follow that his epistemological optimism
is unfounded. On the one hand, it is founded on some basic theological
doctrines such as the view that God is supremely good and that God’s
creatures are likenesses of God’s goodness.7 Is it really imaginable that a
good God brings about a creature endowed with cognitive capacities and that
such a creature is systematically led astray by the same capacities? On the
other hand, Aquinas’s optimism also has a philosophical foundation. The
latter becomes clear if we remind ourselves of Aquinas’s commitment to two
broadly Aristotelian principles. According to the first principle, nature makes
nothing in vain.8 As Aquinas frequently emphasizes, referring to the opening
statement of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, “all men by nature desire to know.”9 If
it were impossible for us to know anything, then our natural desire for
knowledge would indeed be in vain, because it could never be fulfilled.10
According to the second principle, which is somewhat related to the first one,
everything has its own proper function to which it is directed. But the proper
function or operation of human beings is to understand and to reason; in this
human beings surpass all other animals.11 Human beings must therefore be
capable of cognition, for otherwise they would not be able to achieve the
very operation that is proper to them; and this would be deeply odd.
So, according to Aquinas, we are in principle capable of cognition and
knowledge. There is no reason to deny that our cognitive capacities might
occasionally go wrong; every one of us experiences this all too often. But in
general we can expect them to lead us to cognition and knowledge. For why
would we have cognitive capacities such as the senses and the intellect if
they did not convey to us cognition about the world around us?12 For
Aquinas, as for many other medieval philosophers, the more serious
philosophical problem is rather how falsity and error are possible.

HOW DO WE ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE?

Aquinas’s account of cognition and the acquisition of knowledge is grounded
on two fundamental principles: (1) that sensory perception is the starting
point of human cognition and (2) that there is a huge difference between our
sensory powers and our intellect and thus between sensation and acts of
intellectual understanding. Let me begin with the latter claim, for it is the
least obvious from a modern perspective.13
According to Aquinas, human beings are equipped with a variety of
sensory powers, which can be divided into two groups: the external senses
(sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) and the internal senses (the common
sense, imagination, the estimative power, memory).14 We share most of these
sensory powers with other animals, and although it might be true that as a
whole they are more developed in human beings, there is, with the exception
of the so-called estimative power, no real qualitative difference between
these powers as they can be found in human beings and as they can be found
in nonrational animals. On the contrary, we have to acknowledge that
nonrational animals often outclass human beings with respect to certain
sensory powers. For this reason we employ, for instance, dogs and other
animals to sniff out truffles or explosives.
Each of our sensory powers is essentially connected with a specific
corporeal organ. When the organ is damaged or destroyed, the sensory power
is damaged or destroyed too. Moreover, from the fact that they are tied to
specific corporeal organs and thus to material conditions, sensory powers are
limited to their specific sensory objects; because of the material conditions of
the eye, our visual powers are limited to colors and only colors, because of
the material conditions of the ear, our hearing receives information only
about sounds and so on. According to Aquinas, we can notice the limitations
material conditions impose on sensation when we are sick. A sick person’s
tongue, for instance, “infected with a jaundiced and bitter humor, cannot
perceive anything sweet.”15 However, all of us are also aware that we have a
mental capacity that is not restricted to a certain class of objects, for we can
think about everything; we can even think about things that do not exist or
are completely impossible. Hence, Aquinas concludes that human beings
have a cognitive power, the intellect, which transcends the sensory powers.
And because of its universal scope Aquinas concludes that the intellect must
be incorporeal and cannot be tied up with a corporeal organ.16 The human
intellect is not a highly sophisticated sensory power that uses a corporeal part
(the brain) as its organ; it is a cognitive power of an entirely different kind.
Thanks to their intellects, human beings are not only open to all kinds of
thoughts; the intellect is also the power that enables us to form propositions,
engage in deliberation, make arguments, come up with definitions, and so on.
Higher-level nonrational animals may exhibit behavior that appears
somewhat similar to the behavior of rational creatures, but strictly speaking,
nonrational animals do not think.
Despite the qualitative difference between the senses and the intellect, the
various cognitive powers of a human being are closely connected. Our
intellect simply cannot operate under normal conditions without receiving
input from the senses and without cooperation of the sensory powers.17 Even
when we are engaged in the most abstract thoughts, for instance, when we try
to prove a mathematical theorem, we need sensory images (such as graphs
and signs) to fix our attention. Aquinas describes the intellect’s reliance on
sensation in general and the images provided by the imagination in particular
with the talk of a “connaturality” (connaturalitas) between the intellect and
the input provided by the sensory powers.18 In this respect the human
intellect is different from the intellective powers of higher-level creatures,
like angels, who lack sensory input but also do not require it.
Commentators have frequently noted that Aquinas explicitly endorses the
famous empiricist principle according to which “nothing is in the intellect
that has not previously been in the senses.”19 So far as I know there is only
one passage in his work where he mentions the principle in its classical form,
but there are many passages where he expresses the same idea in different
terms, for instance, when he claims that “the whole of our intellect’s
cognition derives from the senses.”20 Of course, this does not mean that the
intellect can only understand objects with which we are acquainted through
the senses, for then it would be impossible to know anything about God or
abstract objects like numbers or truth. What Aquinas means is rather that the
senses provide the intellect with the basic “raw material” for higher-level
cognitive activity. The intellect’s dependence on sensation becomes
especially clear if one looks at how Aquinas describes the psychological
activity underlying cognitive acts. Cognitive acts require the reception of
representational devices or “species” (species). The eye sees the color of the
wall because it receives a species of the color, conveyed to the eye through
the species of the color in the medium (i.e., air). Acts of higher-level sensory
powers involve species they receive from lower-level sensory powers. And to
be able to think of, say, a tree, the intellect similarly requires a species of the
tree. This latter species, an intelligible species (as opposed to a sensible
species), cannot be directly transferred from the sensory powers into the
intellect. Because of the materiality of the sensory powers, sensible species
or other representations produced in the senses are themselves material and
thus of no use for an immaterial power such as the intellect. Hence, human
beings possess a second intellective power, the so-called agent intellect, the
function of which consists in nothing other than to make the sensory content
provided by the sensible species available to the intellect by producing an
intelligible species from it.21 The intelligible species is finally able to inform
the intellect and provides the basis for the first act of the intellect, the
formation of concepts, on the basis of which the intellect can then form
propositions and engage in complex acts of reasoning. Only on the level of
the operations of the intellect can we expect to find something like
knowledge.
Aquinas considers his own account of the acquisition of cognition as
opposed to accounts positing innate cognition, in particular innate cognition
on the intellectual level. To express his discontent with innativist views,
Aquinas appeals to the traditional image of the intellect as a blank slate
(tabula rasa). In addition, he advances three main arguments against
innateness.22 According to the first argument, innativists fail to explain how
the allegedly innate cognition is hidden from us until we first become aware
of it. Suppose that we have innate cognition of certain objects. In this case we
need an explanation for why we are not aware of such knowledge right away
and before we “remember” it. The only real explanation for our initial
forgetfulness seems to be the one provided by the Platonists, according to
whom the body is to be blamed. But that is odd: our body is part of our
human nature, so why would it be natural for human beings to have a body if
that body impedes the operation that is most proper to human beings, namely
to know? For Aquinas, innateness ultimately involves a mistaken
understanding of human nature and of the body’s relationship to the soul and
its cognitive capacities.23
Aquinas’s second argument focuses on the role sensory perception would
have to play if (some or all) cognition were already innate in the intellect. In
the innativist picture, it looks as if the role of sensory perception will be
restricted to merely providing occasions to retrieve the concepts and
principles innate in the intellect, and it seems that sensation does so by
removing an impediment to the intellect’s exercise. But this sort of
connection between sensation and intellectual understanding seems too loose.
For if we lack a certain sensory power, it is impossible for us to have full
cognition of the objects related to this power. A blind person, for instance,
cannot have full intellectual cognition of colors. But if sensation only
removes an impediment to our awareness of what is innate, then it should at
least in principle be possible to have intellectual cognition of sensory objects
without having the corresponding sensations.24
Moreover, Aquinas frequently contrasts the assumption of innate
cognition with Avicenna’s view, according to which intellectual cognition is
acquired by way of emanation from a higher intellectual nature.25 Whereas
for Aquinas innativists such as Plato are mistaken in believing that
knowledge derives entirely from within the mind, Avicenna is mistaken in
holding that knowledge comes entirely from outside the intellect. So what is
at stake, for Aquinas, is the right balance between the spontaneity and the
receptivity involved in cognition, a balance that he sees captured best in
Aristotle’s account of intellectual cognition, an account that takes seriously
both the contribution of sensory perception and the activity of the intellect.
Proponents of innateness often restrict the innateness hypothesis to certain
nonempirical concepts or first principles, such as the principle of
noncontradiction. Aquinas highlights the special role of first principles by
calling them the “seeds of knowledge” (semina scientiarum); for without
such principles no further scientia can be attained. Our intellect grasps these
first principles immediately and intuitively whenever it is provided with the
right sort of sensory input. Because this process is so immediate and natural
to our intellect, Aquinas will occasionally say that cognition of first
principles is innate in us.26 However, this should not be taken too literally,
for in the light of the arguments above Aquinas clearly does not hold that we
have an innate possession of first principles (habitus principiorum).27 What
is innate is rather the “light of reason” (rationis lumen), that is, the
intellective power, through which we have a natural grasp of these
principles.28
What I have described so far is how Aquinas conceives of the normal
processes through which a human being acquires cognition. On the basis of
sensory input, the human being is capable of higher-level cognitive acts, for
example, acts through which we form propositions such as “this thing in
front of me is a tree.” The human mind can arrive at holding this proposition
and related acts through sensory input and its own spontaneous activity.
Nothing further is required for the mind and its “natural light” (lumen
naturale) to perform such acts; in particular, the human mind does not
require special divine assistance. Since God, as the first cause, moves and
directs all other things, it is indeed possible to say that God illuminates the
mind in all of its acts. But, according to Aquinas, it is not necessary to
assume the existence of an additional divine support, a further special
illumination, to explain normal cognitive processes. In this respect, Aquinas
disagrees with some of his contemporaries who insisted on the necessity of a
special divine illumination even for what Aquinas refers to as “natural
cognition” (cognitio naturalis).29

SCIENTIA AS KNOWLEDGE
As I noted earlier, it is far from clear which expression in Aquinas’s
philosophical vocabulary corresponds to what we would usually refer to as
knowledge. But despite the reservations mentioned above, it can be argued
that Aquinas’s scientia is equivalent to what we call knowledge. When we
describe knowledge in the broadest possible terms, we usually compare it to
belief or opinion and say that knowledge possesses something that sets it
apart from mere belief or opinion. The task of the epistemologist is to capture
what exactly knowledge has that belief lacks. Aquinas similarly compares
scientia with belief (and faith) with the aim of determining how they differ
from one another. What would be the point of such a comparison, if scientia
were for Aquinas right from the start only a very restricted and highly special
sort of cognition, such as a specific scientific understanding? It is obvious
that belief and faith are different from that in many ways. But isn’t there
space in between for another cognitive attitude, the comparison with which is
more elucidating for the case of belief and faith than the comparison with a
strange and highly specific form of cognition?
One way to distinguish scientia from belief or opinion (opinio) and faith
(fides) is presumably with respect to the objects to which these different
cognitive attitudes are directed. However, Aquinas frequently opts for
another way. In his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, for example, he
distinguishes them by focusing on the subject that has such attitudes. From
the subject’s point of view, scientia and belief and faith are similar insofar as
they all incline their subjects to only one of a pair of contrary propositions, as
opposed to, for instance, mere suspicion (suspicio), where reason is not
completely inclined to one or the other. But they differ insofar as belief and
faith are “with fear of the opposite” (cum formidine alterius).30 In other texts,
Aquinas puts the comparison somewhat differently. There mere belief is
characterized by the fear of the opposite, whereas in both scientia and faith
such fear is absent.31 The apparent contradiction disappears if we keep in
mind that in the first text, Aquinas talks about belief and fear merely insofar
as these are cognitive states brought about by the intellect itself. It is true that
faith involves a firm commitment to what is believed, but such a commitment
“without fear of the opposite” is not brought about by the intellect itself, but
by other factors such as the will and grace.32 If, however, we simply focus on
the overall degree of conviction involved in the three states, not regarding the
source of the conviction, scientia and faith are more similar to each other
than to belief.
All this shows that for Aquinas scientia is inseparably linked with
certainty (certitudo).33 According to Aquinas, I cannot be said to have
scientia of something if I am in doubt about it. The notion of certainty also
explains why Aquinas is so prone to restrict scientia to a clearly defined class
of objects. In another passage in his commentary on the Posterior Analytics,
he provides some sort of definition of what it means to know (scire). The
definition also explains why scientia is necessarily about what is true and
involves a grasp of the causes of that which is known:

To know something [scire aliquid] is to cognize it perfectly [perfecte cognoscere], but

this is to apprehend its truth perfectly. For the principles of a thing’s being are identical
with the principles of its truth, as is clear from book II of the Metaphysics. It is therefore
 necessary that the knower, if she is to cognize perfectly, cognizes the cause of the thing
known…. But because scientia is also a certain [certa] cognition of a thing, yet no one
can know with certainty something that could be otherwise, it is also necessary that what
is known [id quod scitur] could not be otherwise.34

One might wonder whether this definition is complete; to give just one
example, it does not mention, as Aquinas insists elsewhere, that scientia is
always of something universal. But however this may be, together with
Aquinas’s remarks on certainty and the absence of “fear of the opposite,” the
definition illustrates that, for Aquinas, a series of conditions, both internal
and external from the point of view of the knowing person, have to be met
for there to be scientia. In this way Aquinas combines elements of externalist
and internalist epistemologies. If knowing is supposed to be a perfect form of
cognizing, it cannot consist simply in a mental state that is founded on more
basic beliefs and characterized by a high degree of conviction; people in such
a state could, at least in principle, be entirely wrong. Scientia also requires
that the reasons on the basis of which we are convinced of the truth of
something be adequate. Aquinas’s remarks on certainty make it especially
clear that he takes the certainty involved in scientia not only to be subjective
certainty, but a certainty which precludes the very possibility of scientia
being objectively uncertain. This leads Aquinas to restrict knowledge or
scientia to necessary objects. On the other hand, it is not enough for scientia
that someone have a true belief, including a grasp of the causes of what he
believes to be the case, and that the true belief be about something that could
not be otherwise. If such a person lacks subjective certainty and is “with fear
of the opposite,” one cannot, according to Aquinas, attribute scientia to her
either. Moreover, due to it being a perfect form of cognizing, scientia also
involves for Aquinas what Jaakko Hintikka has called the KK-thesis: a
knower in the sense of someone having scientia also knows that she knows.35
Aquinas’s definition of scire and scientia looks like a definition of
knowing and knowledge. From a modern perspective his definition is
admittedly strange. But there is no reason to assume that Aquinas talks about
something other than knowledge rather than that his views on knowledge
differ from ours in interesting ways. If we start with the idea that Aquinas’s
scientia is something completely different from our idea of knowledge, we
deprive ourselves of the possibility of recognizing how different Aquinas’s
take on (what we call) knowledge is. It is true that ultimately Aquinas’s
characterization of knowledge does not apply to many instances of what we
would call knowledge, for instance, knowledge of contingent facts. This,
however, is not because Aquinas restricts his understanding of knowledge
right away to necessary facts, but because only in grasping necessary facts
can we finally attain real and absolute certainty and thus perfect cognition.
When Aquinas insists, for example, that we do not have knowledge of
contingent facts, this does not mean he is denying that we can cognize
contingent facts or that we can have true cognition of contingent facts. It just
means that Aquinas does not think that our cognition of contingent facts
qualifies as knowledge in the strict sense because such cognition lacks the
high degree of certainty that he considers as required for knowledge.
But where there is perfection, there are things that fall short of perfection.
By insisting that knowledge is perfect cognition, Aquinas turns knowledge in
the strict sense into an ideal. Yet the various cognitive states that fall short of
that ideal are not necessarily discounted as mere beliefs. In the passage
quoted above, Aquinas insists that perfect cognition requires cognition of the
causes; in other words, knowledge as perfect cognition is explanatory. But
Aquinas admits that we sometimes know that something is the case not
because we know its immediate causes, but because we know certain other
facts from which the truth of what we know follows; for instance, when we
know about the existence of a cause through the existence of its effects. In
those cases we can be said to have knowledge in an extended and qualified
sense, and we possess more than just belief. This is just one example; there
are many other ways in which true cognition can fall short of knowledge
proper, but where Aquinas is happy to talk about knowledge (scientia) in a
qualified sense.36
In different contexts, Aquinas emphasizes different aspects of what I take
to be his overall account of what it means to know. The absence of “fear of
the opposite” was, as we have seen, a key criterion for distinguishing
knowledge from faith and mere belief. When Aquinas explains what causes
the cognizing agent not to be uncertain and in “fear of the opposite,” he
usually points to the grasp of principles, “for knowledge [scientia] possesses
certainty, which results from the understanding of principles.”37 This leads to
the question of how understanding of principles leads to certainty, a question
Aquinas usually answers by providing a foundationalist account of
knowledge. Foundationalism distinguishes between basic and nonbasic
beliefs, where nonbasic beliefs are accepted (and known), directly or
indirectly, on the basis of basic beliefs. Aquinas undeniably endorses
foundationalism when he declares that scientia “proceeds from propositions
which are true, first, and immediate, i.e., from propositions which are not
demonstrated by something intermediate but which are evident by
themselves.”38 Such basic beliefs are for Aquinas either self-evident
principles, such as the principle of noncontradiction, or beliefs that we
immediately accept on the basis of sense perception. The point of the theory
of demonstrative syllogisms, as we find it in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics
(and in Aquinas’s commentary), is thus to explain how nonbasic beliefs are
accepted on the basis of basic beliefs.39
It is very common among interpreters to classify Aquinas’s
epistemological views as a whole as a sort of foundationalism.40 This
tendency is understandable in light of what he says about how we acquire
certainty in knowledge and if we turn to his commentary on Aristotle’s
Posterior Analytics as a point of reference for his epistemology. Recently,
however, some commentators have argued that the picture of Aquinas as a
foundationalist is flawed and that he should rather be thought of as defending
“an externalism with reliabilist elements.”41 From what has been said above,
it should be clear that I do not consider Aquinas an epistemological
internalist committed to a purely foundationalist view of knowledge, but I
also do not want to downplay the undeniably foundationalist aspects of his
epistemology. If what has been said is correct, foundationalism only
describes some elements of Aquinas’s account of knowledge, namely how
we acquire (subjective) certainty and also how we understand something
through its causes; these are the elements that he examines in his
commentary on the Posterior Analytics.42 But there are other elements, of a
more externalist sort, that also have to be in place for something to count as
knowledge. A fair appreciation of Aquinas’s epistemology will have to do
justice to both tendencies.43
It is easy to imagine someone resisting my reading of Aquinas’s account
of scientia as an account of knowledge. Take the example of the principles of
scientia: given Aquinas’s definition it would follow from my identification
of scientia with knowledge not only that we have no scientia of those
principles but also that we do not know them; a very strange result indeed.
But the objection is less problematic than it seems. Although we do not have
proper scientia or knowledge of these principles, we can still be said to know
them in some qualified sense,44 for our cognitive grasp of the principles is
somewhat similar to knowledge proper. Consider as an example the self-
evident principle that the whole is greater than its part. We grasp this
principle presumably without “fear of the opposite” and although we do not
grasp it by means of an inference, that is, by means of an inferential
justification, we still perceive its truth by perceiving the self-evident
relationship between the various terms making up the principle, that is, we
accept it by means of a noninferential justification.
This response, however, invites a new problem: it now seems as if
Aquinas ranks scientia higher than the simple acts of understanding on which
scientia is based, for scientia is the paradigmatic case of knowledge and
knowledge of principles is knowledge only in a qualified sense. And why
after all is only scientia perfect cognition and not the much simpler intuitive
act by which we grasp the principles? An answer to these problems will have
to point to some facts about the nature of the human mind. Human beings are
rational beings and this means that the typical mode of operation of our
intellective capacities is discursive reasoning. Unlike higher-level intellectual
creatures (i.e., angels), we do not understand everything intuitively; in
understanding we typically move “from one thing to another” (ab uno in
aliud).45 From this perspective, scientia seems to be the mode of
understanding most appropriate to human beings, because in scientia too we
move from one thing to another, from the understanding of the causes and
principles to the understanding of the conclusion.

THE LIMITS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

From what has been said, it follows that we cannot know everything. The
strict requirements of scientia or knowledge proper can only be met by a very
restricted class of objects, a class that notably contains nonbasic
mathematical and logical truths, of which true demonstrative proof from
prior causes and principles is possible. But to ask about the limits of human
knowledge in this restricted sense is not very illuminating. What can we say
about the limits of knowledge in the broader sense, that is, about the limits to
what we can have true cognition of without fear of the opposite, and not
merely belief? In other words: how far do paradigmatic and nonparadigmatic
knowledge extend?
 That according to Aquinas all human cognition is either sensory cognition
or derived from sensory cognition does not mean that we can only know
objects that we can also sense. It is also possible for us to have knowledge of
objects that never fall within the scope of the senses, because these objects
are immaterial. Presumably the most important question is how we can have
knowledge of God. In this respect, Aquinas notoriously holds that “we can
know [scire] of God that God exists, but we cannot know what God is,” a
view that gained some additional prominence by the fact that it was included
in the list of 219 articles censured by Stephen Tempier, the bishop of Paris, in
1277.46 Aquinas arrives at his seemingly radical conclusion by arguing that
we know the essence or quiddity of something either because our intellect
has immediate access to it or because it has access to it by means of
something else. The first possibility is ruled out in the case of God, for that
way of knowing an essence or quiddity of an object requires sensory
information about the object, which is impossible in the case of God. But
indirect grasp of the divine essence is also impossible for our intellect,
because that would require a close resemblance between the medium and that
which is understood by means of the medium. I can, for instance, understand
the essence of Socrates as a human being by understanding the essence of
another human being, since both individuals fall under a common species.
But we cannot understand the essence of God in this way. God is so different
from creatures that God and creatures do not have anything real in
common.47 We therefore cannot know what God is, although the proofs for
the existence of God, which argue from perceivable effects to the existence
of a first cause, provide us with ample evidence that God exists.48 Aquinas
arrives at the same conclusion regarding our capacity to know other
immaterial substances: we can at most know about their existence, but
because of their entirely different nature, we cannot know anything about
their quiddities or essences.
Two questions arise at this point: (1) If in this life we cannot know even
through revelation what God is, why does Aquinas engage in theology?
Don’t we know something about God when we know that God is immaterial,
infinite, omniscient, and so on? (2) How can we know of something that it
exists if we do not know what it is? The latter question indicates that it is
necessary to distinguish between different ways of knowing what something
is: perfect quidditative knowledge and imperfect quidditative knowledge. I
do not have to know what exactly water is in order to find out whether there
is water in my cup; a confused knowledge of what is meant by the term
“water” together with some criteria for how to apply the term is presumably
enough; in the same way, I do not have to know what exactly God is in order
to prove God’s existence.49 It is enough to know that the name “God” stands
for “first cause” or “highest being” to go looking whether there is a first
cause or highest being. Yet I do not know what this first cause is that I am
looking for.
To the first question we can reply in a similar way: yes, in a way we get to
know something about God when we manage to show by philosophical (or
theological) arguments that God is immaterial, infinite, and the like. By this
process we advance our very imperfect knowledge of God, but we never get
to a real and perfect understanding of the divine quiddity itself, an
understanding Aquinas characterizes as “comprehensive” (comprehendens),
“defining” (definiens), and “adequating” (adaequans).50 All the knowledge
we acquire about God in this life is of what God is not: God is not material,
does not lack knowledge, is not limited, and so on. This is very different
from a positive understanding of God’s immateriality, omniscience, infinity,
and so on.
Knowing what God is not provides us with at least some knowledge of
God. Yet there are certain things about God we cannot know at all (at least in
this life), for instance, that God is three persons. The reason for this is simple.
Only from God’s effects can we derive knowledge about God, but since the
persons of the Trinity do not act as separate causes, we have no way of
demonstrating—and thus knowing of—their distinctness.51 For Aquinas, the
proposition that God is triune is an article of faith, and articles of faith are in
principle not knowable, at least not by natural reason. Aquinas sees,
however, an important parallelism between what we know and the principles
on the basis of which we are said to know, on the one hand, and theological
beliefs and the articles of faith on the basis of which we accept these beliefs
as true, on the other hand. This leads Aquinas to the conclusion that there is
theological knowledge, which is a nonparadigmatic form of knowledge
(scientia). The most important distinction between theological knowledge
and naturally acquired knowledge is that the principles of naturally acquired
knowledge are self-evident for the knowing subject, whereas the principles of
theological knowledge, the articles of faith, are accepted on the basis of the
light of faith, which is a gift of divine grace.52
 If human knowledge of nonmaterial things is somewhat restricted,
Aquinas’s epistemological optimism seems to dictate that we can, at least in
principle and often only with nonparadigmatic knowledge, know all aspects
of material reality. But here two final questions arise: (1) Given Aquinas’s
emphasis on the importance of sensory perception one might wonder whether
we can really know the substances to which the sensible qualities perceived
by the senses belong. Isn’t this case similar to the knowledge of immaterial
substances? Aren’t the sensible qualities just the effects on the basis of which
we know the existence of the underlying substances without knowing what
they are? (2) In a famous and often quoted passage from his sermon on the
Apostle’s Creed, Aquinas remarks that “our cognition is so weak that no
philosopher was ever able to inquire perfectly into the nature of a single
fly.”53 Does Aquinas in the end deny that we can know any nature or
quiddity, even that of material things?
To the extent that Aquinas addresses these questions, he seems to address
them together. He clearly thinks that we do know material substances and
that to provide us with this knowledge is one of the main roles of our
intellect.54 The intellect even has its name from the fact that it is the faculty
through which we cognize the inner constitution of an object, whereas the
senses only detect an object’s external accidental properties.55 How exactly
the intellect understands substances on the basis of a sensory grasp of
sensible qualities is less clear in Aquinas, and the whole question turned into
an extensive debate a couple of years after Aquinas’s death.56 Related to the
view that the intellect understands substances is the further view that the
essence or quiddity is the proper object of the intellect. In fact, in most of the
passages where Aquinas addresses the cognition of substances, he simply
says that the intellect understands the essence of the thing underlying the
sensible qualities,57 the idea being that there is for the intellect nothing else
to understand concerning a substance than its essence. This leads us to
Aquinas’s well-known thesis of the veracity of the intellect, according to
which the intellect is, under normal circumstances, never deceived with
respect to its natural object, that is, the essence or quiddity of a material
object, in the same way as the sensory powers are, under normal
circumstances, never deceived with respect to their primary objects. For
Aquinas, falsity and error only occur on the level of the second act of the
intellect, the act of composition or division through which we form
judgments.58 What exactly the doctrine of the veracity of the intellect
amounts to need not detain us here; clearly it does not entail the claim that
everyone has a perfect understanding of the natures and essences of the
objects around us, for that is obviously not the case. But insofar as the
doctrine presupposes the possibility of quidditative knowledge of material
objects, it confirms the impression we get from Aquinas’s explanation of
how we understand substances: human beings not only are capable of
understanding essences or quiddities of material objects in a certain way,
they also actually attain such knowledge whenever the intellect grasps an
object. The best way to make sense of Aquinas’s pessimistic remark from his
sermon on the Apostle’s Creed is thus to distinguish between two ways in
which natures and essences are understood: in an imperfect way, when we
grasp the nature or essence of the fly as something to be understood further,
and in a perfect way, which comes with real knowledge of its nature or
essence. The imperfect grasp takes place whenever our intellect’s gaze
focuses on a material object, but the perfect understanding of a thing’s
essence is something requiring much effort and time, and sometimes even
more than a lifetime. If Aquinas is an epistemological optimist, and I have no
reason to doubt this, his optimism is obviously also accompanied by a
profound epistemological modesty.

NOTES
1. For the problems in mapping Aquinas’s epistemic categories onto ours,
see Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 217–43; John I.
Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 15–17; Scott MacDonald, “Theory of Knowledge,”
in Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, eds., The Cambridge
Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
160–95.
2. Aquinas talks about false cognition (cognitio falsa) in ST I q.17 a.3; ST
I-II q.2 a.3 ad 3; and In DA, lib.3, lect.12.
3. In PA, lib.1, lect.44; ST I-II q.57; QDVCom a.7. For Aristotle’s account
of the five so-called intellectual virtues, see Nicomachean Ethics, bk VI.
4. See, for instance, Myles F. Burnyeat, “Aristotle on Understanding
Knowledge,” in Enrico Berti, ed., Aristotle on Science: The “Posterior
Analytics,” Proceedings of the Eighth Symposium Aristotelicum (Padua:
Editrice Antenore, 1981), 97–139.
5. Thomas of York engages with skeptical arguments in his Sapientiale,
bk VI, c.24; for an edition of this text, see John P. E. Scully, Reality and
Truth in Thomas of York (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1960), vol. 2,
338–60. Siger’s discussion of skepticism is examined in Antoine Côté, “Siger
and the Skeptic,” Review of Metaphysics 60 (2006): 305–25. For more on
medieval discussions of skepticism, see Dominik Perler, Zweifel und
Gewissheit: Skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter (Frankfurt a.M.:
Klostermann, 2006); Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Rethinking the History of
Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
6. For the first, see ST I q.84 a.1; for the second, see, for instance, QDP,
q.7, q.10, ad 5; QDV, q.1, a.2. Parts of bk IV of Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
namely the discussion of the principle of noncontradiction, were often read
by medieval authors as Aristotle’s response to skepticism. In this sense it is
possible to read the relevant parts of Aquinas’s commentary on the
Metaphysics as also engaging in such a response.
7. See, for instance, ST I q.91 a.3; ST I q.93 a.2, a.4, and a.6.
8. See Aristotle, Politics, 1253a9; Parts of Animals, 658a8; Progression of
Animals, 704b15.
9. Metaphysics, 980a21. For the importance this statement has for
Aquinas, see Jan A. Aertsen, “Aquinas and the Human Desire for
Knowledge,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2005): 411–30.
10. See, for instance, SCG, lib.3, cap.48: “Impossibile est naturale
desiderium esse inane; natura enim nihil facit frustra. Esset autem inane
desiderium naturae si nunquam posset impleri.”
11. See, for instance, SCG, lib.2, cap.60: “Sed homo habet propriam
operationem supra alia animalia, scilicet intelligere et ratiocinari, quae est
operatio hominis inquantum est homo, ut Aristoteles dicit in I Ethicorum.”
See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I 7.
12. A more exhaustive examination of Aquinas’s account of the reliability
of our cognitive capacities can be found in Norman Kretzmann, “Infallibility,
Error, and Ignorance,” in Richard Bosley and Martin Tweedale, eds.,
Aristotle and His Medieval Interpreters (Calgary: University of Calgary
Press, 1991), 159–94.
13. For more details on Aquinas’s cognitive psychology, see Stump,
Aquinas, 244–76; Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
14. For Aquinas’s account of sensory cognition and the sensory powers,
see ST I q.78 a.3 and a.4; In DA, lib.2, lect.13–24 and lib.3, lect.1–6; QDA,
a.13.
15. ST I q.75 a.2; translation by Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas: The
Treatise on Human Nature: Summa Theologiae 1a 75–89 (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2002), 5.
16. ST I q.75 a.2; QDA, a.1 and a.2; In DA, lib.3, lect.7; ST I q.84 a.2; ST I
q.86 a.2 ad 4.
17. ST I q.84 a.7.
18. In BDT, q.1, a.2.
19. QDV, q.2, a.3, obj.19 and ad 19.
20. See, for instance, In BDT, q.1, a.3.
21. ST I q.79 a.3; ST I q.54 a.4; QDA, a.4; SCG, lib.2, cap.77; In DA, lib.3,
lect.10. Despite its name, the agent intellect is not the power in and by which
thinking actually takes place in human beings. Aquinas calls the thinking
power the possible intellect, but for sake of brevity I will refer to this power
simply as the intellect.
22. Not surprisingly, Aquinas associates innate cognition with Plato. In
addition to the two arguments mentioned in the following, Aquinas
sometimes also argues against a specific aspect of Plato’s version of innate
cognition, namely the idea that the soul exists (and understands) before it is
joined with the body: see, for instance, QDV, q.10, a.6; QDV, q.18, a.7.
23. QDV, q.10, a.6; QDV, q.19, a.1; ST I q.84 a.3; QDA, q.15.
24. QDV, q.10, a.6; QDV, q.19, a.1; ST I q.84 a.3; QDA, q.15.
25. QDV, q.10, a.6; QDV, q.11, a.1; QDA, q.15.
26. See, for instance, QDV, q.10, a.6, ad 6; QDV, q.11, a.1, ad 5.
27. He also says so explicitly in In PA, lib.2, lect.20. See also Horst Seidl,
“Über die Erkenntnis erster, allgemeiner Prinzipien nach Thomas von
Aquin,” in Albert Zimmermann, ed., Thomas von Aquin: Werk und Wirkung
im Licht neuerer Forschungen, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 19 (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1988), 103–16.
28. QDV, q.11, a.1. Some interpreters, however, interpret Aquinas’s
account of cognition in more innativist terms. For a recent example of this
tendency, see Houston Smit, “Aquinas’s Abstractionism,” Medieval
Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001): 85–118.
29. ST I-II q.109 a.1; In BDT, q.1, a.1. See also Etienne Gilson, “Pourquoi
saint Thomas a critiqué saint Augustin,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et
littéraire du Moyen Age 1 (1926/27): 5–127.
30. In PA, lib.1, lect.1. Aquinas takes the expression cum formidine alterius
from Avicenna and uses it frequently in his writings: see, for instance, In
BDT, q.3, a.1; Super Sent III, d.17, q. un., a.2, qc.1; Super Sent III, d.23, q.2,
a.2, qc.1; QDV, q.14, a.1; In DA, lib.1, lect.4; ST II-II q.2 a.1. Where the
Latin translation has cum formidine, the Arabic text rather suggests a
translation as cum possibilitate; see Avicenna, Liber de anima, tract. V, cap.
1, ed. S. Van Riet (Louvain/Leiden: Editions Orientalistes/Brill, 1968), 79,
including the editor’s note. I thank Deborah Black for pointing this out to me.
A rendering as “with the possibility of the opposite” (cum possibilitate
alterius) suggests a less subjective understanding of the cognitive states in
question.
31. For instance, in ST I-II q.67 a.3.
32. See ST II-II q.1 a.4 and q.2 a.1.
33. See also SCG, lib.3, cap.39.
34. In PA, lib.1, lect.4; see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 993b28–31. Aquinas’s
definition is based on Posterior Analytics, 71b9–12, but it is interesting to see
what Aquinas adds to Aristotle’s words: by saying that knowing is perfectly
cognizing Aquinas explains why knowing involves grasp of the causes, and
by bringing certainty into the picture he explains why we only know what is
necessary. The notion of certainty is in general absent from Aristotle’s
epistemology and was introduced into medieval epistemology via the Arabic
philosophers. For more on this see Robert Pasnau, “Science and Certainty,”
in Robert Pasnau and Christina Van Dyke, eds., The Cambridge History of
Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 357–
68.
35. QDV, q.10, a.10 ad 5. For Aquinas and the KK-thesis see Christopher J.
Martin, “Self-Knowledge and Cognitive Ascent: Thomas Aquinas and Peter
Olivi on the KK-Thesis,” in Henrik Lagerlund, ed., Forming the Mind:
Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to
the Medical Enlightenment (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 93–108.
36. For a very good discussion of some of these points, see MacDonald,
“Theory of Knowledge,” 174–80. Aquinas mentions some of the “improper”
modes of knowing in In PA, lib.1, lect.4.
37. ST I-II q.67 a.3.
38. In PA, lib.1, lect.4.
39. For a very detailed account of Aquinas’s foundationalism, see
MacDonald, “Theory of Knowledge.”
40. See, for instance, MacDonald, “Theory of Knowledge.”
41. Stump, Aquinas, 235. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith, and Kretzmann,
“Infallibility, Error, and Ignorance,” endorse a similar view.
42. In the prologue to his commentary on the Posterior Analytics (In PA,
lib.1, lect.1), Aquinas remarks on the title of Aristotle’s work. He notes that
the expression “Analytics” means the same as “resolution” (resolutio) and
explains that both the Prior and Posterior Analytics have to do with the
analysis or resolution of judgments; for only in this way can we achieve
certainty in our judgments. From this it is clear that Aquinas considers the
Posterior Analytics as dealing with how the knowing subject acquires
certainty.
43. For a very different attempt to harmonize the externalist and internalist
elements of Aquinas’s epistemology, see Thomas S. Hibbs, “Aquinas, Virtue,
and Recent Epistemology,” Review of Metaphysics 52 (1999): 573–94. Hibbs
sees similarities between Aquinas and modern proponents of virtue
epistemology.
Since I have emphasized the notion of certainty (certitudo) for Aquinas’s
account of knowledge, I should add a note of caution. For it is not entirely
clear what Aquinas means by certitudo. It obviously means more than what
we normally call certainty, for it captures more than just, say, the total
absence of doubt. Certitudo also requires that something cannot be otherwise.
And when Aquinas compares different areas of knowledge, he remarks that
some, like arithmetic, are more certain than others (see, for instance, In PA,
lib.1, lect.41). What I have said about Aquinas’s account of knowledge as a
whole seems also to apply to one of the key notions of this account: in order
for something to be certain (certum), a series of conditions have to be met,
some of which are internal to the knower, and some of which are external.
44. In PA, lib.1, lect.4.
45. QDV, q.15, a.1; ST I q.79 a.8; In PA, lib.1, lect.1.
46. ST I q.3; In BDT, q.1, a.2; In BDT, q.6, a.3. For a discussion of the
corresponding article of the condemnation, i.e., article 215, see Roland
Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277
(Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1977), 32–34.
47. In BDT, q.6, a.3. For a thorough discussion of the various texts in
which Aquinas develops his view of the impossibility of quidditative
knowledge of God (in this life), see John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 2000), 501–75.
48. Our knowledge of the existence of God is, of course, knowledge only
in a qualified sense. For we have such knowledge not through the causes of
God’s existence (there are none), but only a posteriori, from God’s effects.
49. See In BDT, q.6, a.3.
50. QDP, q.7, a.5, ad 6.
51. Super Sent I, d.3, q.1, a.4; In BDT, q.1, a.4; QDV, q.10, a.13; ST I q.32
a.1.
52. For theology as a non-paradigmatic scientia, see Jenkins, Knowledge
and Faith.
53. Expositio in Symbolum Apostolorum, proem.
54. Quodl VIII, q.2, a.2: “Intellectus cognoscit ipsam naturam et
substantiam rei.” See also ST I q.17 a.3; ST I q.58 a.5; ST I q.85 a.6; Super
Sent III, d.35, q.2, a.2, qc. 1.
55. QDV, q.1, a.12: “Dicendum quod nomen intellectus sumitur ex hoc
quod intima rei cognoscit; est enim intelligere quasi intus legere: sensus enim
et imaginatio sola accidentia exteriora cognoscunt; solus autem intellectus ad
interiora et essentiam rei pertingit.” For the following see also Philip
Reynolds, “Properties, Causality, and Epistemic Optimism in Thomas
Aquinas,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 68 (2010):
270–309.
56. See Aurélien Robert, Penser la substance: étude d’une question
médiévale (XIIIe–XIVe siècles) (Paris: Vrin, forthcoming).
57. See the passages in nn. 54 and 55 above.
58. See, for instance, ST I q.85 a.6; In DA, lib.3, lect.11. For more
discussion of this theory see Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith, 101–17, and
Kretzmann, “Infallibility, Error, and Ignorance,” 181–94.
 CHAPTER 24

THE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES

TOBIAS HOFFMANN

AQUINAS’s account of the intellectual virtues is highly indebted to the

Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle discusses them mainly with the goal of
clarifying phronesis (prudence), which is at the crossroads of practical
knowledge, desire, and action. For Socrates, every human virtue is a kind of
wisdom because correct practical knowledge entails good moral action, and
moral failure is due to ignorance alone. Aristotle, on the other hand, qualifies
the importance of knowledge for virtuous action. According to Aristotle, it is
not enough to have right knowledge in order to live temperately and justly;
rather, temperance and justice are virtues of character, that is, moral virtues,
which are not the fruit of teaching but have to be acquired by repeated
practice. In his view, most intellectual qualities contribute little or nothing to
the practice of the moral virtues; thus someone might be tremendously
learned and yet lead a foolish life. Only prudence, which includes the ability
to evaluate what contributes to the good life as a whole and the convinced
willingness to act accordingly, effectively allows one to put the moral virtues
into practice. Conversely, the moral virtues make prudence possible by
enabling one to judge correctly in concrete situations. A successful response
to Socrates’ intellectualism, in fact, turns on an adequate account of
prudence. Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics precisely aims at offering such
an account of prudence by distinguishing it from other intellectual virtues.
Aquinas’s treatment of the intellectual virtues likewise emphasizes prudence.
Yet while prudence is pivotal in both Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s ethics, they
also consider theoretical wisdom of utter importance for an accomplished
human life.
After brief remarks about Aquinas’s conception of intellectual virtue, the
present chapter will consider his account of the individual intellectual virtues,
with special focus on prudence.1

WHAT IS AN INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE?

The intellect proceeds differently when understanding a mathematical
theorem, making a geometrical demonstration, fixing a car, and choosing a
career. We may be better at some kinds of intellectual activities than at
others, for example, thanks to natural talent and learning, we may be well
disposed to solve difficult mathematical problems, but because of lack of
experience, we may not be good at evaluating alternative professional paths
in light of all the factors involved, professional and nonprofessional. All of
these activities can be perfected by habits (that is, stable dispositions),
namely, by intellectual virtues. Aristotle and Aquinas distinguish five
principal intellectual virtues: wisdom (knowledge of the highest causes of
reality), understanding (the capacity to grasp the first principles of
demonstration), science (systematic demonstrative knowledge of a certain
subject matter), art (craft knowledge or professional competence), and
prudence.
Yet for Aquinas, intellectual virtues are virtues only in a qualified sense.
Only moral virtues, that is, habits that are in the appetitive part of the soul or
depend for their existence on the appetitive part, are virtues in the full sense.
Moral virtues not only make one able to act well, but they also ensure that
one make good use of this ability; they are good habits not only materially
(insofar as they are ordered to the good) but also formally (insofar as they are
ordered to the good under the aspect of good). For example, justice not only
disposes a person to just deeds but also effectively makes him or her act
justly. In contrast, intellectual virtues are only materially good habits; they
make an individual capable of a good activity, such as speaking correct Latin
or making good swords, without ensuring that he or she make good use of
that activity (e.g., speaking the truth and doing so at the appropriate time;
fabricating a reliable sword for an honorable purpose). Accordingly, a bad
will is compatible with science or art but not with justice or temperance.2
This explains why Aquinas regards the virtues of truthfulness and
studiousness as moral rather than intellectual virtues. Truthfulness concerns
not the ability to know the truth but the willingness to speak the truth;
therefore, Aquinas connects it to the virtue of justice. Studiousness likewise
does not concern knowledge as such but rather a well-ordered desire for
knowledge; hence, it is connected to temperance.3 Prudence is the only
intellectual virtue that is essentially connected with good desire and that is
therefore essentially ordered to a good use of the intellectual capacity. Thus,
Aquinas considers prudence both an intellectual and a moral virtue.4
Although for Aquinas the intellectual virtues (apart from prudence) are
virtues only in a qualified sense, he considers them superior to the moral
virtues. Qua virtues, the moral virtues excel over intellectual virtues; yet qua
habits, the intellectual virtues are nobler, for while the moral virtues perfect
the appetitive powers, the intellectual virtues perfect reason, which is
superior to the appetitive powers.5

THE DIFFERENT INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES

Apart from Aquinas’s commentary on book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics
(the place where Aristotle discusses the intellectual virtues) and quaestio 57
of the Prima Secundae of the Summa theologiae, which is like an extension
of this commentary, his discussion of the intellectual virtues is scattered
throughout his oeuvre. In his Secunda Secundae, where he examines the
virtues in detail, Aquinas’s treatment of the intellectual virtues is much more
independent from Aristotle, both as regards the manner of presentation and
the substance of his account. The only intellectual virtue that receives
extensive treatment in the Secunda Secundae is prudence, a cardinal virtue.
The reason is that the four cardinal virtues, together with the three
theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, constitute the major organizing
principle of the Secunda Secundae. Since Aquinas considers art to be morally
irrelevant, he does not discuss it in the Secunda Secundae. Wisdom,
understanding, and science are briefly discussed in connection with the so-
called gifts of the Holy Spirit (that is, habits that result not from human
reason but from a divine impulse and that dispose one to respond to divine
inspiration).6
Aquinas uses fundamentally the same criteria as Aristotle to distinguish
between the intellectual virtues. Thus, the succinct summary of Aristotle’s
account in his commentary on the Metaphysics expresses both his
understanding of Aristotle and his own view:
 [Aristotle] refers to his work on morals, that is Ethics 6, where he discusses the way
science and art and wisdom and prudence and understanding differ. To put it briefly,
wisdom and science and understanding are in the speculative part of the soul, which he
here calls the scientific part of the soul. They differ in that understanding is the habit of
the first principles of demonstration; science concerns conclusions about lesser things,
whereas wisdom considers the first causes, so in the same place it is called the chief of
the sciences. Prudence and art are in the practical part of the soul, which reasons about
contingent things that can be done by us. But they differ, for prudence directs actions
which do not pass into exterior matter but are perfections of the agent; hence prudence is
called there right reason about things to be done [recta ratio agibilium]. But art directs
in making, which passes into exterior matter, such as to build and to saw; hence art is
called right reason about things to be made [recta ratio factibilium].7

Considering the intellectual virtues individually will bring out more clearly
how Aquinas understands the distinctive characteristics of the five
intellectual virtues, and in particular of prudence, which is the intellectual
virtue that is most easily misconstrued.

Wisdom
Aquinas’s understanding of wisdom is rooted mainly in Aristotle’s
Metaphysics, where Aristotle provides a more elaborate account of wisdom
than in his Nicomachean Ethics. For Aristotle, wisdom concerns knowledge
of the highest causes and the ability to judge and order subordinate things by
these standards.8 Aquinas understands this idea both in a comparative and in
an absolute sense. Comparatively, those are called wiser who are more
knowledgeable about things of a higher order, by which knowledge they can
evaluate things of a lower order; thus, the architect is wiser than the
bricklayer. In the absolute sense, those are wise who have knowledge of the
highest cause of the entire universe, which is God. Wisdom as an intellectual
virtue concerns God as he is knowable by natural human reason, that is, as he
is investigated in the science of metaphysics. In the supernatural order,
wisdom can be either identified with “sacred doctrine” (that is, with theology
as the science of God that is based upon divine revelation) or with wisdom as
a gift of the Holy Spirit (that is, a connatural familiarity with divine matters,
by which one is able to evaluate and order things according to a divine
standard).9
Because of the eminence of the object of wisdom, that is, God, Aquinas
considers wisdom the highest intellectual virtue. Wisdom provides one with
the criteria by which to judge and order all the other intellectual virtues.
Wisdom moreover has an ethical dimension in that it contemplates God, the
object of “felicity” (felicitas, Aquinas’s word for philosophical happiness, as
opposed to beatitudo, which is supernatural happiness). Thus, Aquinas says
that wisdom is even more closely related to happiness than prudence. This
reflects his view that the “contemplative life” (that is, living a concern for
knowledge of the truth) is superior to the “active life” (that is, the practice of
the moral virtues).10

Science
Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s understanding of science is quite different from
today’s use of the term. As an intellectual virtue, science is a “demonstrative
habit,”11 namely, a habit whereby one possesses knowledge acquired by
means of demonstration. Aquinas’s most developed account of science is
found in his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, where he follows
Aristotle closely. Since he uses this same account in his theological works as
the basis for his discussion of theology as a science, we should assume that
his comments on Aristotle’s text here reflect his own view and not only his
understanding of Aristotle. According to this account, the domain of a
specific science is defined by its “subject,” which is confined to a single
genus. For example, the subject of arithmetic is number, and the subject of
geometry is spatial magnitude. Certain derivative facts about the subject of a
science are demonstrated; for example, it is demonstrated in geometry that
the interior angles of any triangle are equal to two right angles. According to
the Posterior Analytics, there are a number of conditions for demonstrative
scientific knowledge, which Aristotle for the most part does not address in
his brief account in the Nicomachean Ethics.12 There he emphasizes merely
that science concerns necessary things, that is, things which cannot be
otherwise than they are. Thus, science is distinguished by its object from
prudence and art, which concern contingent matters that are done through
human agency.

Understanding
Whereas science is knowledge obtained through demonstration,
understanding is knowledge that is obtained nondiscursively of a proposition
which is “known through itself” (per se notum), that is, knowable thanks to
the terms of the proposition.13 It may seem that knowledge of what is known
through itself is no accomplishment, and thus one may wonder why it has the
character of an intellectual virtue. Yet such propositions are not necessarily
known instantly and without effort. According to Aquinas, not all that is per
se notum is clear to everyone. Aquinas distinguishes between that which is
“per se notum to all,” because everybody easily grasps the terms of the
proposition (such as “whole” and “part” in “the whole is larger than its
part”), and what is “per se notum only to the knowledgeable,” that is, to those
who understand a proposition consisting of less obvious terms (as in the
statement that an angel does not occupy a specific space). The common
English translation of “per se notum” as “self-evident” does not take this
important nuance into account.14

Art
The intellectual virtue of art refers to what the medievals called the
mechanical arts. It is distinct from the so-called liberal arts (Grammar,
Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). For
Aquinas, the liberal arts are speculative habits like the theoretical sciences;
they merely have a resemblance to the mechanical arts in that they involve
such activities as counting and measuring.15 Art as an intellectual virtue is
what we would call the knowledge or the professional competence of a
craftsman. Thus, a cabinetmaker uses his or her art to produce a good piece
of furniture. Using Aristotle’s formula, Aquinas defines art as right reason
about things to be made.16 Thus, at first sight, art is very similar to prudence,
which Aquinas and (less explicitly) Aristotle define as right reason about
things to be done.17 What art and prudence have in common is that they are
habits of practical reason, whereas wisdom, science, and understanding are
habits of speculative reason. Yet from the ethical perspective, art and
prudence differ significantly, even as production and action differ in a crucial
respect. As Aquinas explains with reference to Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
production is an activity that passes into a thing outside of the individual,
such as to build or to saw. Action, in contrast, is an activity that remains
within the individual, such as to see, to think, and to wish.18 In other words,
products are distinct from their producers, while actions are inseparable from
their agents. This implies that the work of art is judged solely according to
the quality of the product and not according to the good will of the craftsman.
The work of prudence, by contrast, is not merely assessed according to the
results of action, but above all, whether it is done for the right reason and
with the appropriate disposition of the will.19 Art thus exemplifies what is
characteristic of all the intellectual virtues apart from prudence: they provide
the ability to carry on intellectual activities, but they do not affect the will of
the individual. In order for craftsmen to make good use of their competence,
they need the moral virtue of justice that inclines them to work in the fitting
manner.20
Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s emphasis on the difference between action and
production, or between art and prudence, indicates how far removed their
ethics is from utilitarianism, for which this distinction is morally irrelevant.
In utilitarianism, what counts are the results of an activity, not the mindset
with which it was done.

Prudence
To lead a good life and thus to attain the properly human good means to act
in an excellent and thoughtful manner in the various domains and the
particular circumstances of life: in other words, it means to act virtuously.
None of the previously discussed intellectual virtues can sufficiently provide
the knowledge that would effectively allow us to live virtuously. For one
thing, the knowledge obtained through understanding of the first practical
principles and through moral science is too abstract to guide us in particular
situations. Moreover, such general knowledge is often too weak to withstand
the interference by desires or fears that make it ineffective. Socrates’ claim
that it is sufficient to know what is best in order to act accordingly is
contradicted by the facts: weakness of will, that is, acting contrary to one’s
better judgment, is a common human phenomenon. Not just any knowledge,
but only prudence guarantees that we judge correctly what specific situations
require and that we act accordingly.
For a better understanding of Aquinas’s notion of prudence, we must first
see what it is not. In English and in the Romance languages, prudence
connotes above all the ability to avoid dangers; in German, Klugheit evokes
astuteness, which is why Kant qualifies shrewd selfish behavior as prudent
and dissociates prudence from virtue.21 In contrast, for Aquinas, who follows
Aristotle on this point, a prudent person experiences perfect harmony
between correct practical knowledge, upright desire, and action. Furthermore,
for Aquinas as for Aristotle, prudence does not concern limited purposes, but
rather what is relevant for the good life as a whole.22 For this reason,
Aquinas in one place calls it “wisdom in human affairs.”23 Yet prudence is
not only practical wisdom, for it is not mainly about practical considerations.
Rather, the main task of prudence is to apply general practical knowledge to
a specific deed.24 The passage from correct general practical considerations
to a concrete action that embodies these considerations, which is the work of
prudence, is anything but trivial. It requires experience, acumen, foresight,
circumspection, caution, and other characteristics that enhance the cognitive
capacity of prudence.25 Moreover, it requires the support of well-ordered
desire. In prudence, cognitive and appetitive qualities are unified in such a
way that the practical knowledge of what is best is fully internalized. No one
can replace us in our decision-making. Even when we consult the advice of
other prudent persons, or when we act in accordance with a good law, we
must appropriate the criteria that prudent people or good legislators are
offering us.26
In order to appreciate the nature of prudence and its preconditions, we
must briefly look at Aquinas’s account of the stages of human action. When a
sick person is serious about wanting to become healthy, he intends to take
specific measures. Unless these measures are immediately apparent, he
deliberates about them, such as whether he needs to see a doctor and which
doctor would be best. Having concluded that the first step toward health is to
visit a particular doctor, he actually goes to see her. Thus, the basic steps in
the process of his action are intention of an end to be attained by some
means, deliberation about which means are suitable and which are not,
decision to employ the most suitable means, and execution of the required
action(s). In Aquinas’s account, each of these stages has a cognitive and a
volitional dimension, which interpenetrate each other and which are
inseparable.27
The practice of the moral virtues involves analogous considerations about
means and end. A soldier who intends to act bravely has to deliberate
whether a given situation requires him to move toward the enemy or away
from him. What in one situation might be considered as brave could on a
different occasion turn out to be reckless or cowardly. No routine and no
general policy can replace the brave soldier’s reflection about which steps are
concretely involved in acting bravely and in avoiding cowardice and
recklessness. It is the task of prudence to establish the mean of virtue in the
ever-changing circumstances of human life, by employing the appropriate
means to a virtuous end.28
Prudence guides the stages of human action from the good intention to the
actual performance of the deed in concert with three subordinate intellectual
virtues. The ability to make good practical deliberations is due to euboulia,
while the aptitude to make the correct practical judgment is owing to synesis
(in ordinary matters) and gnome (in matters where ordinary guidelines must
be overruled). Even more crucial than these steps, which as such could even
remain theoretical considerations about action, is the application of the
decision to a concrete action. Thus, the proper act of prudence, according to
Aquinas, is to “command” (praecipere, imperare) oneself to put the decision
into practice.29
Failure is possible at each of the stages of human action. For example, one
can fail with regard to the end by seeking an evil end (cunning) or by seeking
a good end in a selfish manner without concern for the common good.30 Or
one may fail with respect to deliberation, or the practical judgment that
informs the decision or execution; each of these deficiencies constitutes a
special kind of imprudence.31 The moral virtues are crucial to avoid these
shortcomings. Above all, the pursuit of good ends is the work of moral
virtues, for they make it “connatural” to judge correctly about which specific
ends are truly worth pursuing; thus for a just person, the idea of stealing or
cheating has no appeal. The moral virtues furthermore temper the passions
(such as excessive fear or intemperate desire) that might interfere with
practical deliberation, the attainment of the practical judgment, or the
“command” by which the decision is carried out.32
For Aquinas (as for Aristotle), the interconnection between prudence and
the moral virtues implies that all genuine virtues are connected in such a way
that one can only possess all moral virtues together with prudence, or none.
This claim is not as implausible as it might appear at first sight. If one
possesses a “virtue” independently of other virtues, it is only an
approximation of virtue, not a true virtue. Moreover, prudence is a single
intellectual habit that is required for each genuine moral virtue. For Aquinas,
it is not the case that each moral virtue is perfected by its own prudence.
Nothing could better illustrate the peculiaritiy of Aquinas’s notion of
prudence: as an indivisible principle of moral virtue, prudence informs all
human action in view of the comprehensive human good. Any specific vice
corrupts right reason in general, thereby destroying prudence not only with
regard to the virtue in question, but also all the others. Thus, intemperance
would sooner or later lead to injustice, as is clear in the case of adultery. In
contrast, the other intellectual virtues can be instantiated separately, for they
do not originate in a single principle. Thus, a good geometrician might be
bad at metaphysics, or a good cabinetmaker might be a bad car mechanic.33
Later authors, such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, rejected
Aquinas’s view, arguing that each moral virtue has its own distinct
prudence.34 Thus, prudence lost its eminent character as the intellectual
virtue that concerns life as a whole. It became a habit that is instrumental to
limited goals.
Aquinas admits, however, that prudence has some important limitations
with respect to the moral life. For instance, while prudence allows one to find
the means by which the moral virtues are implemented, it does not discover
the ends to which these are ordered. Aquinas attributes this task to
understanding, by which we grasp the first principles not only of speculative
reason, but also of practical reason, such as “no evil is to be done” or “no one
is to be harmed.” Aquinas treats understanding of the first practical principles
as synonymous with synderesis, the habit of the first principles of practical
reason, which belong to the natural law. Like judgments of conscience, so
also prudential decisions presuppose insight into the principles of natural
law. In a manner that is foreign to Aristotle, Aquinas thus links prudence to
the natural law.35
A further limitation of prudence, for Aquinas, lies in the fact that the
ultimate end of human life consists in friendship with God. Charity, a
supernatural habit infused by God, makes it possible to attain this
supernatural end. Together with charity, other virtues are divinely infused,
including infused prudence, which essentially differs from naturally acquired
prudence. Infused prudence informs the infused moral virtues that in turn
order the various aspects of life to God.36 Yet even infused prudence is
insufficient to guide decision-making in view of the ultimate end, for infused
prudence or infused euboulia is limited to deliberations about things one can
understand. In order to make the right decisions regarding things that are
beyond human understanding, one needs the gift of counsel.37
 NOTES
I wish to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for supporting me
during my work on this article.

1. While there is abundant secondary literature on Aquinas’s account of

prudence, the other intellectual virtues have been given significantly less
attention. For a general account, see Gregory M. Reichberg, “The Intellectual
Virtues (Ia IIae, qq. 57–58),” in Stephen Pope, ed., The Ethics of Aquinas
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 131–50.
2. QDVCom a.7, c. and ad 5; ST I-II, q.56, a.3; ST I-II, q.57, a.1.
3. ST II-II q.109 a.3; ST II-II q.166 a.2, resp. and ad 2; ST II-II q.167 a.1.
4. ST II-II q.47 a.4. See also ST I-II q.57 a.4; ST I-II q.58. a.3 ad 1; ST II-II
q.181 a.2 ad 3; QDVCard a.1, ad 3.
5. ST I-II q.66 a.3; cf. ST I-II q.61 a.1 ad 3.
6. Cf. ST II-II prol. For Aquinas’s understanding of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, see ST I-II q.68 a.1–2.
7. In Meta 1, lect.1, n.34, Thomas Aquinas, Selected Writings, trans.
Ralph McInerny (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 732
(emended translation). See also QDVCom a.12.
8. Met. 1.1–2.
9. SCG 1, cap.1; ST I q.1 a.6; ST I-II q.57 a.2; ST I-II q.62 a.2 ad 2; ST I-II
q.68 a.1 ad 4; ST II-II q.45 a.1–2.
10. ST I-II q.66 a.5 resp. and ad 2; In Meta prol.; ST II-II q.182 a.1. For the
eminent role of wisdom in Aquinas’s ethics, see Thomas S. Hibbs, Virtue’s
Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence and the Human Good (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2001).
11. NE 6.3.1139b31–32.
12. For Aquinas’s appropriation of Aristotle’s account of science, see John
I. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 11–50. Jenkins summarizes the most important traits
on pp. 37–39. Aquinas’s discussions of the intellectual virtue of science in
the Summa theologiae are brief; see ST I-II q.57 a.2 for the distinction
between science, understanding, and wisdom; ST II-II q.9 a.1 ad 1 for the
distinction between science as an intellectual virtue and as a gift of the Holy
Spirit.
 13. In PA 1, lect.44, n.397. See also ST I-II q.57 a.2; ST II-II q.8 a.1; In NE
6, lect.5, n.1179.
14. See, e.g., ST I q.2 a.1; ST I-II q.94 a.2. The most comprehensive
treatment is found in Luca Tuninetti, “Per se notum”: Die logische
Beschaffenheit des Selbstverständlichen im Denken des Thomas von Aquin
(Leiden: Brill, 1996).
15. Super Sent 3, d.23, q.1, a.4, qc.1, ad 4; ST I-II q.57 a.3 ad 3. See also In
BDT 3, q.5, a.1, ad 3.
16. NE 6.4.1140a10.
17. Cf. NE 6.13.1144b27–28.
18. ST I-II q.57 a.4; see also n. 7 above. Cf. Aristotle, Met. 9.8.1050a30–
b2.
19. ST I-II q.57 a.3; ST I-II q.57 a.5 ad 1; In NE 6, lect.4, n.1167.
20. ST I-II q.57 a.3 ad 2; ST I-II q.57 a.4; In NE 6, lect.4, n.1172.
21. See, e.g., Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie Ausgabe,
vol. 4, 402 and 442.
22. An excellent commentary on Aquinas’s account of prudence, originally
published in the late 1940s, can be found in Saint Thomas d’Aquin, La
Prudence: 2a–2ae, Questions 47–56, trans., notes, and appendices by Thomas
Deman, 3d ed. (Paris: Cerf, 2006). A perceptive more recent study is Daniel
Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in
Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
23. ST II-II q.47 a.2.
24. ST II-II q.47 a.1 ad 3; ST II-II q.47 a.3.
25. ST II-II q.49. Aquinas appropriates these traits of prudence from Stoic
and Neoplatonic authors.
26. For the inadequacy of substituting someone else’s advice for one’s own
prudent reflection, see ST I-II q.57 a.5 ad 2 and In NE 6, lect.11, n.1284. For
teachableness in a good sense (docilitas), see ST II-II q.49 a.3. For the need
of prudence in following the laws, see ST II-II q.47 a.12 and ST II-II q.50 a.2.
27. ST I-II q.12–17. For Aquinas’s explanation of the process of human
action, see Westberg, Right Practical Reason, 119–83.
28. ST II-II q.47 a.6–7.
29. ST I-II q.57 a.6; ST II-II q.47 a.8; ST II-II q.51.
30. ST I-II q.57 a.4; ST II-II q.55 a.3; ST II-II q.47 a.10.
 31. ST II-II q.53–54; for a schematic overview of the different vices of
imprudence, see ST II-II q.53 a.2.
32. ST I-II q.58 a.5 resp. and ad 3.
33. ST I-II q.65 a.1; QDVCard a.2, especially ad 4 and ad 8; In NE 6,
lect.11, nn.1286–88. See also ST I-II q.60 a.1 ad 1. For the plausibility of
Aquinas’s account, see Jean Porter, “The Unity of the Virtues and the
Ambiguity of Goodness: A Reappraisal of Aquinas’s Theory of the
Virtuous,” Journal of Religious Ethics 21 (1993): 137–63.
34. See Duns Scotus, Ordinatio 3, d.36, nn.72–100, Vatican Edition, vol.
10 (Vatican City: Typis Vaticanis, 2007), 249–61; William of Ockham,
Quaestiones variae, q.7, a.3, Opera Theologica, vol. 8 (St. Bonaventure,
N.Y.: St. Bonaventure University, 1984), 362–74.
35. ST I-II q.58 a.4–5; ST II-II q.47 a.6 resp., ad 1, and ad 3; ST II-II q.49
a.2 ad 1. For the relation between prudence and the natural law, see Hibbs,
Virtue’s Splendor, 88–119.
36. ST I-II q.65 a.2; QDVCard a.2.
37. ST II-II q.52 a.1 resp. and ad 1.
 CHAPTER 25

THE RELATION OF REASON TO FAITH

BRUNO NIEDERBACHER, S.J.

HOW does Aquinas conceive of the relation between reason and faith? In
order to answer this question I will first briefly summarize Aquinas’s account
of faith. Then I will identify and assess the different ways in which Aquinas
believes that faith and reason are related.

AQUINAS’S CONCEPTION OF FAITH

By “faith” (fides), Aquinas usually means Christian faith. He is aware that
“Christian faith” can be used to mean several different albeit related things:
the object of faith, the interior and the exterior act of assenting to the object
of faith, and the virtue of faith that enables one to assent properly to the
object of faith.1

The Object of Faith

In Aquinas’s view the object of faith is God as the first truth2 and the last end
of human longing.3 Thus, the object of faith is related to both, intellect (truth)
and rational appetite (last end). How intellect and rational appetite (will) are
related can be made understandable in the following way. In order to pursue
an end one needs some cognition4 of the end. One needs to grasp what the
end consists in, that it is available and how one can attain it.5 Human beings
naturally long for happiness as their last end. But they do not naturally know
what happiness consists in and whether it is available. True cognition of this
is offered by God’s revealing himself to human beings as the fulfillment of
their life.
 Aquinas sharpens this characterization of the proper object of faith in two
ways: first, by taking into account the special conditions of the human
cognizer in this life. Human beings cognize things, even simple things like
God, in a propositional way.6 Via the propositions believed, they get into
contact with the things.7 Second, Aquinas sharpens the account of the object
of faith from an epistemological point of view. What can be demonstrated
about God does not—strictly speaking—belong to the object of faith. Only
those truths belong to the object of faith that are believed on God’s
authority.8 Aquinas calls such truths “credibles.” Putting the things said
together, I suggest the following definition of a credible proposition:
A proposition p is a credible proposition (short: pc) if and only if

(i) p is true;
(ii) p is revealed by God;
(iii) p is assented to because p is revealed by God;
(iv) p presents truths about God and created things insofar as they are
necessary and sufficient for orienting the life of human beings toward
their last end.

The Interior and the Exterior Act of Assenting to the Object of Faith
The interior act of faith is a human person’s act of assenting to pc. Aquinas
explores the kind of the act involved by doing two things: first, he tries to
situate the kind of assent involved in the act of faith by comparing it to other
acts of assent to propositions.9 Regarding the firmness of assent, the act of
faith is similar to insight and science. Regarding the way the assent is
brought about, the act of faith is rather similar to opinion and conjecture.
Their objects do not by themselves sufficiently move the intellect to assent to
them. One does not see that they are true. An act of will is required. In
Aquinas’s words: “The act of believing [credere] itself is an act of the
intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command of the will that is
moved by God through grace.”10 Thus, the act of faith is a cognition action.11
Second, Aquinas distinguishes three aspects of the one interior act of faith
with the aid of the traditional formula to believe that God (credere Deum), to
believe God (credere Deo), to believe in God (credere in Deum).12
 (i) The first part of the formula focuses on what is believed, on the
content of faith; in short: S assents that pc.
(ii) The second part focuses on the reason for assenting. A person assents
that pc on God’s say-so: because God reveals—directly or mediated
through other persons—that pc. This part of the formula captures the
trust aspect of the act of faith. Putting (i) and (ii) together, one could
say: S believes God that pc.13
(iii) The third part of the formula focuses on the relation of the object of
faith to the will, the rational appetite of the believer. The propositions
of faith represent the good believers are lovingly longing for as the
fulfillment of their life. This part of the formula captures the
existential aspect of the act of faith. What one believes matters heavily
for the orientation of one’s life as a whole.

With “faith” can be meant the exterior act of faith, that is: the speech act
of confessing to believe the Christian content.

The Virtue of Faith

Primarily, however, Aquinas means with “faith” the virtue of faith, which he
defines as “a habit of the mind whereby eternal life is begun in us, making
the intellect assent to what is not apparent.”14 Faith belongs with hope and
charity to the theological virtues. They are called theological virtues because
they have God as their object, because they are infused in us all at once by
God alone, and because they are made known only by divine revelation in the
Holy Scripture.15 On the one hand, faith is the first of the theological virtues
insofar as one is able to hope for and to love something only if one has some
cognition of it. Faith is the cognitive element in Christian life. On the other
hand, virtuous acts of faith require that they are motivated—“formed”—by
charity.16 Formless faith leads, like formed faith, to acts of the structure: S
believes God that pc. However, acts of formless faith are not virtuous because
the assent is not brought about by a will that loves and trusts God but by
some other motive.17 Virtuous faith, then, is an infused habit that enables
human beings to believe God out of love that pc.18
 THE RELATIONS OF REASON TO FAITH
With this sketchy exposition of Aquinas’s account of faith, I can now turn to
the question of how reason relates to faith.

What Human Beings Cognize by the Virtue of Faith is Above but not
Against Reason
In the context of epistemology Aquinas usually means with “reason”—ratio
—in its wide sense capacities and acts of natural human cognition. Natural
human cognition starts by sense perception and, through processes of
abstraction, ends up by grasping the essences of things. In a narrower sense,
“reason” means cognitive acts of drawing conclusions from premises or
finding premises for conclusions.
Aquinas claims that human beings are not able to cognize pc by such acts
of reason. Nevertheless, he insists that what human beings cognize by natural
reason and what they cognize by faith is consistent with each other. He says:
“Although the truth of Christian faith exceeds the capacity of human reason,
nevertheless what reason is naturally endowed with cannot be contrary to that
truth.”19 This optimistic claim follows from the conviction that God is the
origin of both human nature and revelation.

There can be a Science that Deals with Faith

With many other theologians of the thirteenth century, Aquinas claims that
sacred doctrine is a science (scientia). Thus, he thinks that the content of
faith can fulfill the highest rationality conditions as Aristotle developed them
in the Posterior Analytics. The main obstacle for treating the content of faith
within science is the problem of the principles. Sciences proceed from
principles that are self-evident. The propositions of faith, however, are not
self-evident and cannot be inferred from principles that are self-evident. In
order to deal with this problem, Aquinas utilizes the distinction between
propositions that are self-evident in themselves and as such known to all
cognizers and propositions that are self-evident in themselves and as such not
known to all cognizers. He uses this distinction in two different solutions. In
a first solution Aquinas bites the bullet and claims that the propositions of
faith are self-evident, but only for those who have the infused virtue of faith.
Thus, he claims that for virtuous Christian believers the propositions of faith
have the same epistemic status as the principles that are naturally known.20
This solution however is problematic. If the propositions of faith were self-
evident for those having the virtue of faith, no act of will would be required
for assent. This contradicts Aquinas’s analysis of faith. Moreover, even
Christian believers will not say that the proposition that God is triune in
nature is self-evident for them. Aquinas does not mention this solution in his
later writings.21 His famous second solution draws on the model of two
related sciences that are hierarchically ordered. The one science has among
its starting points what is proved by the other. Applied to our topic: the
propositions of faith are self-evident only for God and the blessed. God sees
the truth, and through revelation humans on earth come to believe what God
sees. In Aquinas’s words:

And in this way sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles known
by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just
as music believes the principles taught it by the arithmetician, so sacred doctrine
believes the principles revealed to it by God.22

This is a congenial solution. For now Aquinas has both: theology is a science
in the Aristotelian sense, and nevertheless, the principles of this science are
the articles that Christians accept in faith. These principles cannot be
demonstrated by human beings. But they can be defended. Thus, Aquinas
claims, that one should be able to show that these principles of faith are not
impossible, that they do not contradict what is self-evident or demonstrable,
that defeaters can be defeated, that one can draw conclusions from the
principles in a deductive way.23
These are rationality requirements that Aquinas thinks theologians should
be able to fulfill. But surely he did not think that normal Christians have to
do all this theological work in order to be rational believers. Thus, the
question arises as to the rationality of faith itself.

The Deliverances of Faith are Rational

It is rational to believe on the basis of divine testimony
The first and most obvious aspect of reason in Aquinas’s account of faith is
that one believes on the basis of divine testimony. Aquinas writes:

The reason why the will is inclined to assent to what it does not see is because God says
it, just as a human being concerning things he does not see believes the testimony of a
good man who sees what he himself does not see.24

Aquinas alludes to dialectics where the epistemic source from authority

(locus ab auctoritate) is assumed.25 He says that although the argument from
human authority is the weakest, the argument from divine authority is the
most efficient.26 This is understandable. For the human authority might err or
lie, and the believer might be mistaken in taking somebody to be an
authority. But, in the case of divine authority, deficiencies of the first kind
are excluded. The omniscient and supreme good God cannot err or lie.27
Thus, we have the claim: if God communicates to S that pc, then S is in the
highest degree justified in believing that pc. However, believing God that pc
presupposes at least believing that

(i) God exists;

(ii) what God communicates is pc.

These two beliefs cannot themselves be part of pc. There must be

independent sources of belief formation and justification for these two
beliefs.
Aquinas thinks that (i) can be demonstrated by a demonstration that. The
Five Ways are instances of such demonstrative proofs. But many will not be
able to produce such demonstrative proofs. An alternative to strict
demonstrations is Aquinas’s idea that human beings produce by natural
reason simple cosmological-style arguments. They observe order in the
universe and form the belief that there must be an orderer.28 Moreover,
Aquinas thinks that there is evidence for (ii). Some speak of “credibility
arguments,” a collection of which is contained in the Summa contra Gentiles.
Aquinas argues that believers of the Christian content do not believe lightly,
for God confirms the things that exceed natural cognition by showing
“visible works which surpass the power of the whole of nature.”29 Among
these works, Aquinas quotes: wondrous healing of the sick, raising of the
dead, alteration of movable celestial bodies, inspiration of human minds,
such that uneducated people attain in an instant highest wisdom and
eloquence, the conversion of many, simple and wise, to Christian faith, not
by violence of arms, not through the promise of sensual delights but amid the
tyranny of persecutions, and the fulfillment of the oracles of the prophets.
No doubt, Aquinas thinks that arguments for the existence of God and
credibility arguments are available. But does he think that such arguments are
necessary for rational assent to the propositions of faith? His writings hint in
two directions. Some passages suggest the answer “yes.”

That God exists and other like things, that can be known about God by natural reason, as
it is said, are not articles of faith, but preambles to the articles. For faith presupposes
natural cognition, just as grace nature, and perfection something that can be perfected.30

In another passage Aquinas gives the impression that the act of faith
includes having credibility arguments. To the objection that accuses believers
of being gullible he responds:

The believer has sufficient evidence for believing, for he is induced by the authority of
the divine doctrine confirmed by miracles, and, what is more, by the inward instinct of
the inviting God: hence he does not believe lightly. He has not, however, sufficient
evidence for scientific knowledge, hence the ground for the merit is not lost.31

To be sure, Aquinas does not think that the evidence by miracles is sufficient
for assenting, “for of those who see the same miracle, or who hear the same
sermon, some believe, and some do not.”32 Nevertheless, miracles
confirming the authority of divine doctrine seem to play an evidential role.
On the other hand, there are also passages indicating that Aquinas holds
that arguments for the existence of God and credibility are not necessary for
rational assent to the propositions of faith. First, he insists that it is possible
and safer to believe on faith even the propositions about God that can
naturally be known.33 Second, he comments on the passage of the gospel
according to John 4, where the woman comes to believe in Jesus as the
Messiah. The woman tells the people of her village about Jesus. At the end
the people of the village come to believe in Jesus and they say to the
woman:34 “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard
for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the saviour of the world.”
Aquinas comments:
 Faith is proper if one obeys the truth not because of something else but because of the
truth itself. And thus [the evangelist] says that they say to the women, that “we now
believe” the truth [veritati] “not because of your speech” but because of the truth itself.
For three things lead us to the faith of Christ: first, natural reason […]; second the
testimonies of the Law and the Prophets […]; third, the sermon of the Apostles and
others. But when somebody, who is guided by this, believes, then one can say that he
does believe because of none of them: not because of natural reason, not because of the
testimonies of the Law, not because of the sermon of others, but alone because of the
truth itself; Gen 15.6: Abraham believed God, and this was credited to him as
righteousness.35

The first question that arises is whether this passage can be reconciled with
the others. I think the passages can be reconciled by interpreting the
presuppositions as preparatory for faith. But they would not themselves be
part of faith. They would be neither necessary nor sufficient for the
rationality of the assent to the propositions of faith. Some believers could
quote such arguments when asked. But they would not believe because of
these arguments.
The second question is whether faith that is independent of such
arguments or reasons can be rational. For Aquinas, faith is a habit of belief
formation, which is together with hope and charity infused by God, designed
to get the truth in order to find orientation in one’s life toward the last end
one is longing for: beatitude. Faith is a cognitive habit sui generis that cannot
be reduced to other habits of belief formation like intellect, science, or
wisdom. This view of faith can be and has been interpreted as a version of
epistemological externalism.36 One’s assent to the propositions of faith is
epistemically justified by being the outcome of the cognitive habit called
faith. Moreover, there are passages that suggest that such beliefs are basic:
first, Aquinas compares them with principles. Principles are basic, not
inferred, not believed on the evidential basis of other beliefs. Second, when
Aquinas deals with the gifts of the Holy Spirit that belong to faith, namely
insight and science, he stresses the nondiscursive character of both these
gifts.37
However, I said above that believing God that pc presupposes some other
beliefs that cannot themselves be part of pc, for example, God exists, what
God communicates is pc. These propositions can be inferentially justified.
But if Aquinas thinks that even such propositions can be believed on faith, he
must have in mind a different, wider, meaning of “faith,” perhaps in the sense
of taking something to be true without arguments. One suggestion to
understand this would be the following: if my mother tells me something I
do, of course, not believe her that she exists and that she is communicating
something to me. But I do not believe these propositions on evidential
grounds either. I just believe them in the basic way. Similarly, if somebody
experiences that God speaks to him, he does not believe God that God exists
and that God is communicating something to him. But he need not believe
these propositions on evidential grounds either. They could be believed in the
basic way.
It is rational to believe in the existence of the complete good that attracts
the will
The second aspect of reason can be found in the role the will plays in
assenting to the propositions of faith. Aquinas writes:

Sometimes the intellect can be determined to one side of a pair of contradictory

propositions neither immediately through the definition of the terms, as is the case with
principles, nor in virtue of principles, as is the case with demonstrative conclusions; it is
rather determined by the will, that elects to assent to one side in a determinate and
precise way because of something that is sufficient to move the will but not to move the
intellect, namely, since it seems good or convenient to assent to this side. And this is the
disposition of the believer, as when somebody believes what another says because it
seems fitting or useful to do so. And in the same way also we are moved to believe to
what is said insofar the prize of eternal life is promised to us, if we believe. And this
prize moves the will to assent to the things said although the intellect is not moved by
something that is seen.38

This sounds like Pascal’s wager. Assent on epistemic considerations alone

cannot be brought about. But on practical considerations it can. One is
practically rational and justified if one assents to the propositions of faith. I
doubt, however, that Aquinas understood the passage this way. He would
probably deny that such calculated belief is meritorious.
The question is whether the role that the will plays in assent entails also
aspects of epistemic rationality. I know of two interpretations that suggest
this. A first approach can be developed from Aquinas’s moral philosophy. In
a virtuous human being there is a sort of connaturality between the appetite
and real goods. Because of this connaturality the will is attracted by real
goods.39 A judgment that follows such attraction is justified. Similarly, the
believer’s will is formed by the virtue of charity that is infused by God. Thus,
there is a connaturality between the will and the supreme good. Because of
this connaturality, the will is attracted by the supreme good presented in the
propositions of faith.40 And assent to the propositions of faith that follows
such attraction would be justified. A second approach can be developed from
Aquinas’s metaphysics according to which the terms “being” and “goodness”
are extensionally equivalent: where there is being there is also goodness and
where there is goodness there is also being. Limited goodness has some kind
of being, but it does not necessarily exist. Thus, if somebody is attracted by
the imagination of some limited good one would not be justified to believe
that the good actually exists. This is different in the case of perfect being. For
what is perfect in being exists necessarily. If somebody is attracted by a
perfect good, then one is justified to believe in the existence of this good.41
From the point of view of contemporary epistemology, both approaches are
externalist.

CONCLUSION
Thomas Aquinas thinks that faith is a virtue. Anthony Kenny, however,
writes

that faith is not, as theologians have claimed, a virtue, but a vice, unless a number of
conditions can be fulfilled. One of them is that the existence of God can be rationally
justified outside faith. Secondly, whatever are the historical events which are pointed to
as constituting the divine revelation must be independently established as historically
certain with the degree of commitment which one can have in the pieces of historical
knowledge of the kind I have mentioned.42

Aquinas does not deny that both kinds of arguments can be produced. He
seems however to deny that a Christian must have such arguments in order to
believe rationally and meritoriously. The virtue of faith alone is necessary
and sufficient. Is he right? If faith is a God-given habit, designed to get the
truth in matters of God, our last end and the way to achieve it, then the belief
resulting from such a habit is justified indeed. If a person’s will is heightened
by the grace of God and, through being attracted by the supreme good
presented in the propositions of faith, influences the intellect to assent, then
such assent is justified indeed. The question is: Does the Christian need some
justification for the belief that the antecedents are true? In a world without
doubts regarding the reliability of faith and without irritations regarding the
truth of its output, I think, the answer is: probably not. But we do not live in
such a world. In our world where people have very different religious beliefs,
I think, some arguments are required: not only in order to defeat the defeaters
of one’s belief but also in order to sustain belief in the antecedent. Thus, I
think that pure epistemological externalism concerning the justification of
religious beliefs is not satisfying. This, however, does not mean that every
Christian must be intellectually trained. I would like to bring in the old idea
of the division of epistemic labor. In other areas, for example, in physics,
biology, astronomy, lay people are justified in holding particular beliefs
without being in a position to understand the details and to know what speaks
in favor of them. They are justified by relying on the experts who are in a
position to know the details and the evidence. Similarly, simple religious
believers are justified in holding their religious belief without being in a
position to understand the details and to have arguments and defeaters
against defeaters. They are justified by relying on the experts who do have
some arguments. Thus, Aquinas might be right when he claims at the
beginning of the Summa Theologiae that sacred doctrine in the sense of
theology is necessary—even if he intends his argument there to answer a
quite different problem.43

NOTES
1. Aquinas mentions this distinction in ST I–II q.55 a.1 ad 1. Moreover, he
construes his treatise on the virtue of faith according to this distinction.
2. ST II-II q.1 a.1.
3. ST II-II q.1 a.8: “Those things belong per se to faith the vision of which
we shall enjoy in eternal life and by which we are lead to eternal life”; ST II-
II q.2 a.2: “For the first truth refers to will insofar as it has the aspect of an
end”; ST II-II q.2 a.5: “One must therefore say that the object of faith per se
is that by which a human being is made happy.”
4. “Cognition” is the translation of the Latin word cognitio, which is the
broadest concept under which all cognitive acts (understanding, knowledge,
opinion, conjecture, etc.) can be subsumed. In this sense I will also use the
rather unfamiliar words “cognizer” and “to cognize.”
5. ST I q.1 a.1: “But the end must first be cognized by human beings who
are to direct their intentions and actions to the end.” See also ST I-II q.6 a.2.
6. ST II-II q.1 a.2: Aquinas here says that on the part of the believer the
object of faith is “aliquid complexum per modum enuntiabilis,” something
complex by way of a proposition. Note that “enuntiatio” is the translation of
the Greek “apophansis,” Aristotle’s central term in Peri hermeneias. What is
meant by this term is that kind of speech that has the property of being either
true or false.
7. In ST II-II q.1 a.2 ad 2, Aquinas deals with the problem that in the creed
we say “I believe in God almighty” and not “I believe that God is almighty.”
Thus, the objection runs, the object of faith is the thing itself—God—not a
proposition. Aquinas solves the objection by saying that the act of the
believer does not terminate in a proposition but in the thing. By forming
propositions, we cognize the things.
8. ST II-II q.1 a.1: “For the faith of which we are speaking does not assent
to anything, except because it is revealed by God. Hence faith proceeds from
the divine truth itself like a middle term.”
9. ST II-II q.1 a.4; ST II-II q.2 a.1; ST II-II q.4 a.1; QDV, q.14, a.1; In Heb,
c.12, l.1.
10. ST II-II q.2 a.9. See also ST II-II q.1 a.4 and ST II-II q.2 a.1 ad 3. This
translation, as well as all the other translations from Aquinas in this article, is
my own.
11. Thus, Aquinas is committed to a version of cognitive voluntarism.
Whether cognitive voluntarism is tenable is a much disputed issue that I
cannot deal with here properly. In my view Aquinas does not hold an
extreme cognitive voluntarism but a modest form of it. In Aquinas’s view,
first, one has voluntary control over belief formation only vis à vis some
classes of cognitive objects. Second, having voluntary control over belief
formation does not require that one has no evidence whatsoever for the truth
of the target proposition. Who forms an opinion or a suspicion is not without
evidence. Third, habits that we acquire voluntarily over a long period of time
play a role. They influence the way we choose and ponder arguments pro and
con; they influence how compelling arguments appear to us. For a detailed
discussion, see Claudia Eisen Murphy, “Aquinas on Voluntary Belief,”
American Philosophical Quarterly 74:4 (2000): 569–97; Bruno
Niederbacher, Glaube als Tugend bei Thomas von Aquin:
Erkenntistheoretische und religionsphilosophische Interpretationen
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003), 60–66; Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London
and New York: Routledge, 2003), 342–49.
12. ST II-II q.2 a.2.
13. Aquinas is aware that revelation comes to most people via mediators
such as parents, preachers of faith, etc. Nevertheless, he thinks that the true
believer believes human beings insofar as God is speaking through them. See
Super Sent III, d.23, q.2, a.2, qc.2, ad 3: “The believer believes a human
being not insofar he is a human being but insofar as God speaks in him.”
14. ST II-II q.4 a.1.
15. ST I-II q.62 a.1.
16. ST II-II q.4 a.3.
17. Cf. QDV, q.14, a.2, ad 10; QDV, q.14, a.7; ST I-II q.65 a.4.
18. Super Sent III, d.23, q.2, a.2, qc.2, ad 4.
19. SCG 1, 7.
20. Super Sent I, Prologus, q.1, a.3, qc.2, ad 2.
21. In ST II-II q.1 a.4 ad 2 and ad 3, Aquinas mentions ways in which the
believer can be said to “see.” But these ways are not meant in the strict sense
of insight into the truth of the propositions of faith but rather in the sense of
seeing that the propositions of faith ought to be believed.
22. ST I q.1 a.2. The subalternation-idea is also to be found in some
editions of Super Sent I, Prologus, q.1, a.3, qc.2. For text-critical details, see
Johannes Beumer, “Ein nichtauthentischer Text im Prolog zum
Sentenzenkommentar des hl. Thomas von Aquin (q.1.a.3.sol.2),” Scholastik
33 (1958): 247–52; Marie-Dominique Chenu, La Théologie comme science
au XIIIe siècle, 3d ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1957); Bruno Niederbacher,
“Erläuterungen des Prologs zum Sentenzenkommentar des Thomas von
Aquin,” in Bruno Niederbacher and Gerhard Leibold, eds., Theologie als
Wissenschaft im Mittelalter: Texte, Übersetzungen, Kommentare (Münster:
Aschendorff, 2006), 277.
23. I collect these rationality-requirements from: Super Sent I, Prologus,
q.1, a.3, qc.2, ad 2; ST I q.1 a.8.
24. Super Sent III, d.23, q.2, a.2, qc.2. Cf. ST II-II q.2 a.2.
25. QDV, q.14, a.2, ad 9.
26. See ST I q.1 a.8 ad 2. For a precise analysis, see Niederbacher, Glaube
als Tugend bei Thomas von Aquin, 67–81.
27. ST II-II q.2 a.4; ST II-II q.4 a.8 ad 2.
28. See SCG 3, 38.
 29. SCG 1, 6.
30. ST I q.2 a.2 ad 1.
31. ST II-II q.2 a.9 ad 3; see also ST II-II q.2 a.1 ad 1; ST II-II q.1 a.4 ad 2.
32. ST II-II q.6 a.1.
33. ST II-II q.2 a.4; ST I q.2 a.2 ad 1.
34. In Aquinas’s view, and according to the tradition, the woman
symbolizes human reason. See ST II-II q.2 a.10. Cf. William of Auxerre,
Summa aurea, liber 1, prologus.
35. In John, c.4, l.5. Cf. ST II-II q.27 a.3 ad 2.
36. John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997) has developed an interpretation along
externalist lines, as well as Alvin Plantinga, “Warranted Christian Belief: The
Aquinas/Calvin Model,” in Godehard Brüntrup and Ronald C. Tacelli, eds.,
The Rationality of Theism (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999),
125–43; and Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000). See also James R. Brent, “The Epistemic
Status of Christian Beliefs in Thomas Aquinas” (Ph.D. diss., Saint Louis
University, 2008).
37. See ST II-II q.8 a.1; ST II-II q.8 a.5 ad 3; ST II-II q.9 a.1 ad 1. These
gifts of the Holy Spirit are not to be confused with the intellectual virtues of
the same name.
38. QDV, q.14, a.1.
39. See ST I-II q.62 a.3.
40. Cf. ST II-II q.45 a.2. For details of this interpretation, see Niederbacher,
Glaube als Tugend bei Thomas von Aquin, 137–41, and Brent, “The
Epistemic Status of Christian Beliefs in Thomas Aquinas,” ch. 5.
41. This line of argument is developed in detail by Eleonore Stump, “Faith
and Goodness,” in Godfrey Vesey, ed., The Philosophy in Christianity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 167–91.
42. Anthony Kenny, What is Faith? Essays in the Philosophy of Religion
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 57.
43. ST I q.1 a.1.
 CHAPTER 26

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND HUMAN NATURE

ROBERT PASNAU

BIOLOGICAL OR THEOLOGICAL
A theory of human nature must consider from the start whether it sees human
beings in fundamentally biological terms, as animals like other animals, or
else in fundamentally supernatural terms, as creatures of God who are like
God in some special way, and so importantly unlike other animals. Many of
the perennial philosophical disputes have proved so intractable in part
because their adherents divide along these lines. The friends of materialism,
seeing human beings as just a particularly complex example of the sort of
complex organic structure found everywhere on Earth, suppose that we are
ultimately constituted out of just the same material from which squirrels and
rabbits are made. The friends of dualism, instead, think that such a story can
hardly do justice to what is special about human nature. Likewise, the friends
of a libertarian, robustly nondeterministic conception of free will see
something special in human spontaneity and moral responsibility. To their
opponents, human beings operate on the same principles, albeit more
complex, as do squid and plankton.
These and other such disputes need not divide along religious lines. One
may oppose naturalism without embracing a supernatural theistic
perspective; one might, for instance, think it simply a matter of fact that
human beings are fundamentally unlike other biological organisms, but yet
not suppose we are made that way by any higher power. Conversely, the
theist may think it part of the divine plan to have made human beings as
nothing more than the most complex of biological organisms, constituted out
of the same stuff and constrained by the same laws. So although the choice I
have described between two perspectives—biological and naturalistic versus
theological and supernatural—captures an important fault line that runs
through the debate over human nature, it by no means determines all of one’s
subsequent philosophical choices.
The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas exemplifies the sorts of tensions that
arise from these two perspectives. For while the overall orientation of
Aquinas’s work is, of course, profoundly theistic, he nevertheless harbors a
certain sympathy for a naturalistic, biological understanding of human
nature. In some cases, as in his account of the human intellect, the
supernaturalist slant clearly wins out. In other cases, as in his conception of
human beings as a soul–body union, it is equally clear that biological
considerations are paramount. In still other cases, as for instance his views on
free will, it is very difficult to say which line of thought holds sway, and the
preference of interpreters for one reading or another seems largely governed
by their own predilections.
The traditional way of making this point about Aquinas is to describe him
as mediating between the theological teachings of the Church and the
philosophical writings of Aristotle. Historically, this is an apt place to begin
thinking about Aquinas’s philosophy, because there is no doubt that the
central philosophical challenge Aquinas faced over the course of his career
was to find a place for the newly recovered work of Aristotle within the
overriding framework of Christian belief.1 To find a place for Aristotle,
however, means finding a place for a conception of human nature that is
decidedly biological in its overall orientation. This is clear from the
fundamental Aristotelian text on human nature, the De anima, which as it
happens was the subject of the first and most careful of Aquinas’s many
Aristotelian commentaries. For us, the notion of a soul (anima) has become
firmly associated with a supernatural perspective on human nature. But for
Aristotle the term “soul” has not the slightest of nonnaturalistic implications.
On the contrary, a soul is something that all living things possess, from
human beings down to the simplest of life forms, and indeed the De anima is
not so much a study of human nature as it is the foundational treatise in
Aristotle’s long sequence of biological works.
The project of reconciling Aristotle and Christianity, however, important
as it is to understanding Aquinas’s historical situation, does not fit the
natural–supernatural distinction as neatly as one might expect. For even if the
Aristotelian notion of soul is fundamentally biological, the De anima
nevertheless seems to treat the capacity for thought—the intellect—as quite a
special feature of human nature and, indeed, as “immortal and eternal.”2 As
we will see, these few brief, notoriously obscure remarks supply a
bridgehead from Aristotle’s naturalistic biology to Christian soteriology.
There is movement in the other direction as well. For even while there are
tendencies in Christian thought toward treating the body in Platonic fashion,
as a temporary prison of the soul, there is also the doctrine of the
resurrection, according to which the separation of body and soul at death is a
temporary state of affairs, to be remedied by the body’s ultimate restoration,
for all of eternity, at the time of the Final Judgment. As we will see, Aquinas
understands the resurrection as pointing toward the fundamentally biological
character of human nature, in the sense that human beings are, essentially,
not just souls but incarnate souls. Although it is certainly the case that
Aquinas regards the most important human attributes—our intellectual and
volitional powers—as arising from the side of the soul rather than body, he is
nevertheless adamant that a full understanding of human nature requires
understanding our bodily nature as well. God did create purely spiritual
beings, the angels, who are nothing more than disembodied minds, but that is
not what we are. We are, essentially, mind–body composites. So to
understand human nature, one must study not just our mental capacities,
intellect and will, but also the human body. Hence, the task is partly
biological, but not wholly so.

THE HUMAN SOUL

The most concise and authoritative statement of Aquinas’s theory of human
nature comes in questions 75–89 of the first part of the Summa theologiae,
known as the Treatise on Human Nature.3 That discussion begins with a very
quick argument for the twin theses that human beings have a soul, and that
this soul is not a body. These look like giant, contentious claims to come so
quickly at the start, but Aquinas is quick here for a reason: one of the claims
is simply a matter of terminological stipulation, and the other is such a large
question that it can scarcely be adjudicated within the context of a discussion
of human nature. What is supposed to be true by stipulation is that human
beings have a soul. Following Aristotle, Aquinas holds that “the soul is said
to be the first principle of life in the things that are alive around us.”4 This
means that “soul” is simply a convenient catchphrase for the sort of thing that
biologists investigate to this day—the fundamental (“first”) explanation
(“principle”) of life in the natural world. If Aquinas were here assuming that
there is just one kind of explanation shared by all living things, or even that
within a single thing there is just one fundamental explanatory principle, then
he would be saying something controversial. But these are further issues that,
as we will see, he takes up later. For now we have just the stipulation that
“soul” will be used not in any sort of speculative, supernatural sense, but in
the down-to-earth biological sense recommended by Aristotle.
Too large to be treated adequately within a theory of human nature is the
further thesis that the human soul is not a body. This is not the claim it is
likely to seem at first glance. Aquinas is not supposing from the start the
truth of dualism in its popular, bastardized form—the idea that the soul is not
made of material, corporeal stuff, and so must be made of some other, more
ethereal stuff. This is a thesis that medieval authors entertained, but they did
so with regard to the celestial realm. Like all of his contemporaries, Aquinas
took the heavens to be made of an imperishable sort of stuff utterly unlike the
stuff in our familiar material realm—not composed of any of the four
elements, then, but of some kind of quintessence. This is an idea that has
tempted cosmologists ever since Aristotle, holding sway until Galileo in the
seventeenth century, then going out of fashion, and now coming back into
fashion with our modern talk of dark matter. As far as our own natures are
concerned, however, it has never seemed very credible on serious reflection
to suppose that we are composed of some sort of dark stuff of our own,
imperceptible but yet constituting our essence. This way of understanding
dualism, indeed, is one that only an opponent of the theory is likely to find
very appealing. Historically, the advocate of dualism has generally wanted to
say that what makes human beings special is not that we contain some
special, ghostly stuff, but that our nature is partially constituted by something
that is not stuff at all, but is an entirely different kind of explanatory
principle. In the Aristotelian tradition, this principle is known as a form.
Aquinas’s fundamental thesis about human nature, then, is that we are not
just bodies, but bodies animated by a certain kind of form, a soul. This is,
however, not a result that is specific to human beings; it is instead an instance
of Aquinas’s general embrace of Aristotle’s hylomorphic metaphysics—that
is, the thesis that corporeal substances in general are form–matter
composites. Matter by itself—“prime matter”—cannot exist at all without
form: “in itself it can never exist, because given that by its nature it has no
form, it has no actual existence, since actual existence comes only through
form, whereas it is solely in potentiality.”5 On this understanding of the
hylomorphic framework, everything that exists has form. So the fact that
human nature consists not just of a body, but of an informed body, is just an
application of a broader metaphysical thesis. And, as we have seen, to call
this form a soul is simply an application of the stipulative point that, in the
case of living things, that which fundamentally makes them be alive is what
will get called their soul. Hence, all things have forms. And all living things
have souls.
Nothing could be more important to an overall evaluation of Aquinas’s
theory of human nature than a just appraisal of its background
hylomorphism. Considered most broadly, the appeal to form represents a
rejection of the reductive approach of much of early ancient philosophy. The
main line of pre-Socratic thought, culminating in the atomism of Democritus,
approached philosophical explanation as an exercise in finding the right sort
of material stuff to serve as the building blocks of nature. According to
Aquinas, “the first of those who philosophized about the natures of things
held that only bodies exist. They claimed that the first principles of things are
certain corporeal elements, either one or many.”6 On the more refined line of
thought pursued by Plato and then, in a different way, by Aristotle,
explanation requires appeal not just to matter but to form. This idea, in one
shape or another, would hold sway throughout late antiquity and the Middle
Ages, first dominating Islamic philosophy and then Christian, all the way
until the seventeenth century, when Descartes and others suddenly shook it
off and turned back to the reductive approaches of old. Famously, Descartes
drew a line between the human case and others, treating the rest of the
natural world as simply bodies in motion, while ascribing to human beings
alone an explanatory principle of another kind, an immortal soul. This is an
instance—indeed the exemplary instance—of the supernatural approach that
Aquinas only partly embraces. On his view, instead, human beings have a
form just as all things have a form and have a soul just as all living things
have a soul. Descartes, however, sees things quite differently. From his
perspective, Aquinas and others are best seen not as applying their
overarching naturalism to the human case, but as overgeneralizing from the
human case to the rest of nature. That is, Descartes regards the appeal to form
as inherently supernatural in character, and so treats talk of forms and souls
throughout nature as a sort of misguided obscurantism that makes it
impossible to give a naturalistic explanation of anything.7
However much we may regard hylomorphic explanation as appropriate for
the natural world in general, Aquinas thinks that its application to human
beings must be handled carefully, inasmuch as we are indeed a special case.
For even while he begins the Treatise on Human Nature by situating human
beings within the rest of nature, as creatures composed of matter and form,
he immediately turns to show that human beings are special, in virtue of
having a form that can exist apart from matter. Here is where, as he sees it,
the naturalistic approach runs out. Obviously, this is a result that Aquinas
needs as a Christian, since if human beings are to survive death it is
minimally required that their souls survive death, which means that these
souls must survive the destruction of their bodies. Over the course of his
career, Aquinas makes various attempts to prove that the human soul can
exist apart from its body, and something should be said about these
arguments. The first thing to consider, however, is whether it is even
coherent to treat the human soul both as a form and as independent from
matter.
One bad reason for suspicion is an overly crude conception of what a form
is. To be sure, if one thinks of a form on the model of a shape, then it will
look just preposterous to suppose that the human soul can exist apart from its
body. It is indeed hard to see how anyone could think that a shape can exist
apart from some sort of stuff that has that shape. Aquinas, however, as will
become progressively more clear, does not think of souls as anything like
shapes. A moment’s reflection will make this obvious. For even if it is
natural to motivate the hylomorphic framework by appealing to a case like a
statue, where the matter is the bronze and the form is the shape, the human
case must clearly be quite different. A statue, perhaps, can be roughly
understood as nothing more than a certain sort of stuff having a certain sort
of shape—though even here the clever student will see the potential for
difficulties. But a human being is more than a certain sort of stuff so shaped.
That will not take account, most obviously, of what distinguishes a living
body from a corpse. The reductive materialist must disagree. If human beings
are just so many molecules organized in such and such a way, then the
difference between a living human being and a corpse just will consist in
either a difference in molecules or a difference in how those molecules are
arranged. But from Aquinas’s perspective one can have all the right material
and still not have a human being, not because the materials have the wrong
spatial alignment—the wrong shape—but because they are lacking some
further explanatory principle, a soul. Forms, for Aquinas, are not mere
shapes, but are causal principles in the natural world. They are indeed the
primary causal principles in nature, actualizing matter that would otherwise
be characterless and inert, if it could exist at all.8 A soul without a body is
therefore not to be conceived on the model of a free-floating shape. Souls are
causal agents, powers.
A soul is a form of a special kind, a substantial rather than an accidental
form, which is to say that it is the kind of form that defines a substance as
what it is. Setting aside until later the precise role of a substantial form, and
considering forms in general as causal powers in nature, it may look as if all
such forms should be able to exist apart from matter. This is precisely the
sort of result one finds mocked in Descartes and other seventeenth-century
critics of scholasticism. Aquinas, however, thinks the human soul is a special
case—the only case where it is naturally possible for a form to exist without
the matter it informs.9 Only our substantial forms are such that “they do not
exist in matter in such a way that their existence depends on matter.”10 This
is certainly a good reason to be suspicious about the human soul’s alleged
separability. Why should it be a special case, in a way so nicely calibrated to
accommodate the Church’s teachings on human immortality? The key idea,
for Aquinas, is that the human soul is the sort of causal agent that can operate
independently of the matter it inheres in. Whereas every other form in the
natural world can act only in virtue of informing a body of the proper sort,
the human soul does not require a body. More specifically, the human soul
can think without a body. This is the fundamental premise on which the
whole of Aquinas’s theory of human nature rests. Let us call it the
Independent Operation Premise (IOP) and state it in Aquinas’s own words:

IOP: “The intellectual principle, which we call mind or intellect, has an operation of its
own, in which the body has no share.”11

Before turning to the arguments for IOP, we should be clear about what it
entails. By itself, clearly, IOP does not show that the “intellectual principle”
(the soul that is ultimately responsible for intellectual cognition) is immortal.
Moreover, IOP does not even show that the soul has the possibility of
existing apart from the body. To get those further results, Aquinas argues,
first, that a thing’s manner of operation tracks its manner of existence, so that
whether or not a thing can operate apart from other things shows whether or
not it can exist apart from other things. This shows, as Aquinas thinks of it,
that the human soul is a substance, because to be a substance just is to be the
sort of thing that can exist without inhering in something else.12 Of course,
not all substances are incorruptible, so to get the further result that the human
soul will naturally continue to exist even apart from its body, Aquinas further
argues that whereas form–matter composites are always corruptible,
substances that are pure forms are by nature such that, once created, it is
impossible for them naturally to cease to exist.13
The supplementary principles just mentioned are perhaps just as doubtful
as is IOP itself, but even so it seems right to keep our focus on that
fundamental premise. For if Aquinas can establish that the human soul has an
operation of its own, independent of the body, then he will have dealt a fatal
blow to the sort of reductive materialism that, then as now, looms as the main
adversary to a view like Aquinas’s. For we would then know that “human
soul” is not just a convenient catchphrase for whatever it is that explains
human life, but that it in fact picks out an independent causal principle within
us, irreducible to any material description. Admittedly, that alone does not
show that the soul can exist apart from the body, but it takes the decisive first
step.

THE SOUL’S INDEPENDENCE FROM BODY

When historians of philosophy attend to the arguments of their heroes—if in
fact they ever do attend to the arguments themselves, rather than simply gaze
in admiration at the unfolding tapestry of doctrines—they often do so with a
certain sinking feeling, because the arguments invariably fail. What? Has no
one ever proved anything in the history of philosophy? Well, perhaps
Newton did in his Principia, or Lavoisier in his Traité élémentaire de chimie.
But precisely because these works were so successful, we no longer read
them as part of the history of philosophy. Successful philosophical proofs, as
a general rule, form the foundation of a new science. So far, the efforts of the
psychologists notwithstanding, we have no science of the soul. Accordingly,
when we turn our attention to the arguments that Aquinas gives for one or
another of his more substantive conclusions regarding the human soul, we
should expect these arguments to fail. If Aquinas had really proved anything
in this all-important domain, we might expect the world to have noticed, and
to have commenced to build upon those foundations.
Even so, an argument may fail to count as a genuine proof and yet still be
worthy of attention, either because it strikes many readers as being
persuasive to some degree or another, even if not decisive, or because it
seems to point, however elusively, in the direction of an argument that might
really be decisive. I am not sure whether either of these scenarios obtains in
the present case, but here I will simply make the best case I can for several of
Aquinas’s arguments, and let the reader judge. The Treatise on Human
Nature makes two distinct arguments for IOP, each of which focuses on a
different aspect of the intellectual operation—thought—that is crucially at
issue. The first of these arguments runs as follows, with numbers supplied to
mark the main premises and conclusions.

It is necessary to say that the principle of intellectual operation, which we call the soul
of a human being, is a nonbodily and subsistent principle. [1] For it is clear that through
the intellect a human being can cognize the natures of all bodies. [2a] But that which can
cognize certain things must have none of those things in its own nature, because that
which exists in it naturally would impede its cognition of other things. In this way we
see that a sick person’s tongue, infected with a jaundiced and bitter humor, cannot
perceive anything sweet; rather, all things seem bitter to that person. Therefore if the
intellectual principle were to contain within itself the nature of any body, it could not
cognize all bodies. But every body has some determinate nature. Therefore [3a] it is
impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body. [3b] It is likewise impossible for it
to operate through a bodily organ, because [2b] the determinate nature even of that
bodily organ would prevent the cognition of all bodies. Analogously, a determinate color
not just in the pupil, but even in a glass vase, makes liquid poured into that vase seem to
be of the same color. [IOP] Therefore this intellectual principle, which is called mind or
intellect, has an operation of its own that the body does not share in.14

What drives this argument is the idea that the intellect displays a startling
plasticity in its cognitive range. Our other cognitive capacities—sight,
hearing, and so on—are each rigidly limited to a certain domain, that of
color, sound, and so forth. But the intellect, according to the first premise of
the argument, can think about anything (or at any rate anything in the
material realm, which is as strong a claim as Aquinas takes himself to need).
The second premise of the argument then asserts that such plasticity would
be impossible if the intellect either (a) were a body or (b) were to operate
through a body. From these two premises, the subconclusions of (3a) and
(3b) immediately follow, and they together yield IOP.
It hardly needs saying that this falls short of being a demonstrative proof.
Although the logical form of the argument is valid, none of the premises are
self-evident in the way they would have to be to carry complete conviction. It
is not perfectly clear, for instance, that the intellect can “cognize the natures
of all bodies.” Even more doubtful is the second premise (2a, 2b). Although
the comparisons to taste and sight point toward the kind of point Aquinas
wishes to make, these are merely illustrative examples, and hardly show that
the intellect, if it relied on the brain, would similarly be limited in the scope
of what it could grasp.
Still, there is undoubtedly something suggestive about the argument. For it
really is a remarkable feature of the mind that it can range so widely—in a
seemingly unlimited fashion—over the whole of the world around us, readily
grasping entirely new concepts of all kinds. Such plasticity is strikingly
different, Aquinas thinks, not just from what one finds in the case of the
senses, which are so obviously tied down to a single sort of object, but also
from what we observe of the higher-level cognitive abilities of other animals,
which Aquinas regards as similarly bound to a certain predetermined range
of objects. Swallows make judgments of a certain sort about nests, and bees
about honeycombs,15 but they have no capacity to expand beyond their
limited horizons. The bee could not form the idea of opening a retail outlet to
market its product. And once one gets squarely in focus this remarkable
feature of the human mind, it can begin to seem at least worth taking
seriously the idea that our soul is not just a larger, more complex version of
what swallows and bees have, but that it is something qualitatively different.
What exactly that difference might be is again not a claim that Aquinas can
establish decisively, but his suggestion is that the soul acts independently of
the material conditions that lock other souls into a narrow framework of
operation.
A second line of argument for IOP rests on the intellect’s capacity to form
universal concepts. Aquinas’s overarching cognitive theory rests on the
empiricist principle that all information arises from the senses.16 At the
sensory level, however, that information is always represented as here and
now—a particular sensible quality in the world at a particular place and time.
The intellect represents information differently, in abstraction from any such
particular conditions, and Aquinas takes such facts to form the basis of an
argument for IOP:

[1] It is clear that everything received in something is received in it according to the

mode of the recipient. [2] But any given thing is cognized in keeping with how its form
exists in the one cognizing. [3] Now the intellective soul cognizes a thing in that thing’s
unconditioned (absoluta) nature—for instance, it cognizes a stone as it is a stone,
without [material] conditions. [4] Therefore the form of the stone exists in the
intellective soul without conditions, in terms of the stone’s own formal character. [5]
Therefore the intellective soul is an unconditioned form, not something composed of
form and matter.17

The conclusion of (5) is equivalent to (3a) from the previous argument—that

is, it is tantamount to the claim that the human soul is not a body. This is a
claim that, in some sense, holds of every soul, and every form, as we saw in
the previous section. But here Aquinas means to assert the stronger thesis,
distinctive of the human soul, that it operates independently of the body. That
is, he means to assert IOP. Thus, he immediately goes on to contrast the
operations of intellect with the operations of the senses: “For if the
intellective soul were composed of matter and form, then the forms of things
would be received in it as individuals; then it would cognize only singular
things. This is what happens in the sensory capacities, which receive the
forms of things in a corporeal organ.”
Beyond the fundamental datum of the argument, that the intellect grasps
the universal, and the senses the particular, Aquinas is relying on a
metaphysical principle that he immediately goes on to make explicit: that
“matter is the principle of individuation for forms.” So the idea is that the
senses, inasmuch as they represent particulars, represent the material
conditions of those individuals. If they did not, they would not be
representing particulars at all. The intellect, in order to grasp the universal,
must strip away the material, to get at the thing’s “unconditioned” or
“absolute” nature (as premise 3 puts it). This already requires us to embrace a
rather robust set of metaphysical assumptions, which would themselves take
extended argument to establish, and almost certainly could not themselves be
proved.18 But supposing we do embrace that metaphysics, as well as the
fundamental datum that drives the argument, we still need to accept a further
and very large claim: that an inference can be made from the representational
content of the mind to the mind’s intrinsic character. It is the burden of the
first two premises of the argument to license this move. Aquinas seeks to
show that for the intellect to represent the nature of a stone, apart from the
individuating material conditions, the intellect must itself lack matter. On his
picture, that immaterial “mode of the recipient” (premise 1) is what will
account for how “the thing is cognized” (premise 2), and so ultimately for the
fact that “the form of the stone exists in the intellective soul without
[material, individuating] conditions” (premise 4). It is far from clear that this
pattern of inference is valid. One might instead think that there is no
straightforward connection to be drawn from the content of what a cognitive
system represents to the intrinsic character of that system. One can represent
visual images using numbers, and represent numbers using visual images;
one can use shapes to represent sounds, and use sounds to represent abstract
ideas. The sort of argument Aquinas wants to make depends, minimally, on a
more elaborate theory of mental representation than he here offers us.19
Again, however, one may feel this argument to have a sort of elusive
power to it. For there can easily seem to be something quite special and
distinctive about the human capacity to think abstractly and universally.
What distinguishes us from swallows and bees, it seems, is not just the scope
of our cognitive abilities, but our ability to think abstractly. Swallows and
bees seem limited to the here and now, whereas we can think not only about
the past and future, but more generally about food and shelter in the abstract.
This in turn gives rise to the complex linguistic and economic systems that
distinguish our species from every other. Are these simply more complex
manifestations of the same sorts of biological processes found throughout the
rest of nature, or are they evidence of cognitive capacities of a fundamentally
different kind?
This second argument displays the same general pattern as the previous
one. In each case, there is an initial datum, a cognitive capacity allegedly
distinctive of human beings that allegedly points toward the mind’s
immateriality. Many modern arguments in this domain have a similar sort of
structure, but with a different emphasis. What strikes philosophers today
about the mind tends to be the phenomenon of consciousness—the way in
which to have a thought or a perception involves a certain experience, a vivid
“what it is like” that is presumably absent from, say, a computer’s
representation of reality. Aquinas is strikingly silent about this aspect of the
mind, attending instead to features that seem more distinctively characteristic
of human beings. In all of these cases, however, what drives the argument is
a phenomenon of our cognitive capacities for which we have—to this day—
no clear explanation in terms of physical mechanisms. In such cases, it must
remain an open question whether or not a thoroughly naturalistic model of
explanation will capture what is characteristic of human nature.

THE SOUL’S POWERS

The arguments of the previous section seek to open up a divide between
human beings and other animals. One way to express this divide is by saying
that, among all the souls of all the animals, only the human soul is
immaterial. This, however, is liable to mislead. For it is not the case that
Aquinas thinks the souls of nonrational animals are corporeal, as if he were
resorting to the pre-Socratic notion that the soul of a camel might be some
subtle blend of fire, air, or some other kind of stuff. As stressed already, souls
are always forms. They are, accordingly, never bodies, and so never material,
even in part. The special sense in which the human soul is immaterial is
articulated by IOP: the human soul, unlike other souls, has an operation of its
own, independent of the body it informs. Other souls are material just insofar
as they need matter in order to operate, and so in order to exist. This shows
that, in a sense, the human soul is not a special kind of entity—it is a form
just like other forms, up and down the great chain of being. And although it
is unusual, in the context of other animals, for the human soul to have an
independent operation, this too, in the greater scheme of things, is by no
means unprecedented. The created order, as Aquinas thinks of it, contains
many animal species, each bound to a certain kind of body. But, says
Aquinas, this world contains an even greater number of angelic species.
Indeed, the number of angels “exceeds every material multitude,”20 which
seems to mean that there are more angels than there are physical particles in
the universe. (And why not? Angels are God’s greatest creation. Does it not
stand to reason that God would have created more of what is greater than of
what is lesser?) Each angel is an immaterial form of the same general kind as
the human soul—an intellectual substance, which is to say a causal power
capable of a certain sort of abstract cognition and volition, requiring no body
in order to operate. From this point of view, the place of human beings is
quite natural and intuitive. We are the animals with minds so advanced as to
be like the angels. Or, looked at from the other end round, we are the
intellectual creatures with minds so crude that we benefit from union with an
animal body.21
 This sort of big-picture perspective helps one escape the sense that there is
something unhappily ad hoc about Aquinas’s theory of human nature.
Viewed in another way, however, it highlights our unique position. Like
other animals, our animating principle is a form, naturally suited to actualize
matter. Yet, like other intellectual creatures, that form is capable of operating
apart from matter, and so capable of existing apart from matter. We are, then,
uniquely positioned between angels and animals, sharing metaphysical
principles with each. This raises various hard questions about human nature.
One question concerns why human beings have this sort of oddly hybrid
status. Why we have immaterial souls, according to Aquinas, has been
explained already, by the arguments for IOP. But why then do we, unlike the
angels, have bodies at all? Why is this part of our nature? A second sort of
question concerns the character of the soul–body union. Granted that there is
some sort of advantage to our soul’s being joined to matter, what sort of
conjunction is this? Given our soul’s independence, can we really count as
organic unities in the way that other animals are? A third sort of question
concerns whether it is even coherent to suppose that our souls are, at the
same time, both bodily forms and independently operating minds. Granted
that Aquinas has reasons to want to say both of these things, how can he say
both of these things at once?
I will begin by answering the first two questions very briefly, then
answering the third in more detail, and finally circling back for the remainder
of this chapter to the first two questions. To the first question, then, of why
the human soul is joined to a body at all, the quick answer is that our soul
benefits from such a body because our mind works best when united to an
animal sensory system. Even though, as IOP insists, the mind does not need
the senses to operate, still the mind does work best that way, for reasons we
will consider in more detail in the section on “The Essential Bodily
Component.” That leads to the second question, of how the soul and body are
united. Aquinas’s answer is that they are united in the same way that any
hylomorphic composite—that is, any material substance—is united. The soul
stands to the body as substantial form to prime matter. The details of this
union will occupy the section on “The Human Substance.” But even this
short answer helps to make vivid the problem raised by the final question
above: how can the soul be both an independently operating power and the
form of the body?
One kind of difficulty here concerns whether the soul can both be a form
and be subsistent—that is, be a genuine substance. Aquinas’s response is that
there is no obstacle to a substance’s being itself composed of further
substances. The human body, for instance, is composed of integral parts—
hands, arms, and so on—each of which is itself an incomplete substance
making up the whole. The human soul is, to be sure, not an integral part,
inasmuch as it is not a body at all, but it is a kind of substantial constituent of
the complete substance that is a human being.22 Another kind of problem
concerns how the soul can be said both to operate independently of the body
(IOP) and to be the form of the body. Aquinas acknowledges that these are
quite different characterizations of the soul, but he thinks both can be true
inasmuch as the soul is multifaceted. Rather than treat the soul as something
simple, Aquinas postulates a real distinction between the soul itself and its
powers. Considered in its own right, the soul essentially is the form of a
body. As such, the soul is the ultimate intrinsic explanatory principle for the
existence of the composite substance that is a human being. To make a
human being exist, however, is not to be understood as bestowing on a heap
of matter some sort of generic property of existing. Rather, for a human being
to exist is for that matter to become capable of the various operations that
characterize human beings, including nutritive, sensory, and intellectual
operations. This is to say, however, that the human soul, as the first internal
principle of life for a human being, is the source for the various powers that a
human being requires in order to carry out the operations distinctive of such
life. Thus “all the soul’s capacities, whether their subject is the soul alone or
the composite, flow from the essence of the soul as their source.”23
Aquinas distinguishes among these powers in various ways. Most
fundamental is a distinction between (a) the nutritive or vegetative powers,
(b) the sensory powers, and (c) the intellectual or rational powers. The last
two categories further divide into those powers that are cognitive and those
that are appetitive. The cognitive sensory powers divide into the familiar five
external senses and the four internal senses, which is Aquinas’s term for
those cognitive powers that are lodged in the brain: common sense,
imagination (also known as phantasia), the estimative or cogitative power,
and memory. The appetitive sensory powers divide into the irascible and
concupiscible. At the intellectual level there is just one appetitive power, the
will, and two cognitive powers, the agent intellect and the possible
intellect.24
 An investigation of these powers would take us into a much wider domain
of issues concerning perception, desire, free will, and rationality, all of which
are discussed elsewhere in this volume. For present purposes, the point that
needs stressing is the way a distinction between the soul and its powers
makes it easier for Aquinas to treat the human soul as the form of the body
even while he stresses that it operates independently of the body. In
discussing these issues, he is always very careful to distinguish between what
holds of soul itself, essentially, and what holds of it insofar as it contains one
or another power. The soul, considered in its own right, is the form of the
body, and its defining function is to actualize that body. But this is consistent
with that soul’s having powers—intellectual powers—that are not the
actuality of the body, and do not even require the body for their operation.
Thus, “we do not say that the human soul is the form of the body with respect
to its intellective power, which … is not the actuality of any organ.”25 The
great appeal of this strategy is that it lets Aquinas have it both ways. Viewed
from one angle, Aquinas treats the human soul in broadly naturalistic terms,
as a soul like other souls, inhering in a body and giving rise to the various
powers—nutritive and sensory—that other animals possess. But some of
those powers that the human soul gives rise to are intellectual, and although
these are just some of its powers among many, they make a fundamental
difference. For because we have a mind that operates apart from the body, it
is possible for our soul to exist apart from the body. Thus we are, ultimately,
quite different from other animals.

THE HUMAN SUBSTANCE

In wanting to have it both ways—a biologically grounded account of human
nature that leaves room for our distinctively immaterial character—Aquinas
wants above all to preserve the organic unity of the human being, as a soul–
body composite. This is not something that theories of human nature have
always made much effort to accommodate. Plato seems, at least in some
dialogues, to have thought that our bodies are not a part of us at all, and
Descartes tends in that direction as well. Aquinas’s contemporaries generally
rejected this Platonic line, supposing instead that human beings are the union
of body and soul, but they were hard pressed to explain what that unity
consists in. Aquinas, by contrast, has an impressive theory to offer. It is,
indeed, the most impressive—and influential and contentious—aspect of his
whole theory of human nature.
To understand Aquinas’s view, it is helpful to begin with some
foundational metaphysical distinctions. Most fundamentally, there is the
distinction between genuine beings and mere aggregates. Heaps, for instance,
are aggregates, as are artificial constructions like houses.26 Living things, and
substances of all kinds (water, stones, etc.) are beings, as are the accidental
properties of substances, which get divided along the lines of Aristotle’s
category scheme into qualities, quantities, relations, and so on. The problem
of accounting for the unity of the soul–body composite, for Aquinas, just is
the problem of how to ensure the place of human beings among substances,
as genuine entities, rather than as mere heaps, which do not themselves have
any proper existence beyond the existence of their parts. Aquinas’s solution
is to insist on treating the human soul naturalistically, as simply a form like
the forms of other living things. That this soul has intellectual powers that are
independent of the body does not matter, because Aquinas distinguishes the
soul from its powers. It also does not matter that this soul is itself subsistent,
since as we saw it is normal for substances to be composed of other
substances. All that does matter, then, is that the human soul functions within
the human being in the same sort of way that other forms function within
other substances.
The theory that Aquinas has to offer at this juncture is his theory of
substantial form. Aquinas, like other medieval Aristotelians, distinguishes
between two kinds of form, substantial and accidental. Accidental forms are
those forms that can come and go while a substance remains; they are the
entities that populate the nine accidental Aristotelian categories. The
substantial form of a substance defines the substance as the kind of thing it is,
which is to say that the substantial form comprises the essence of a thing.27
Essences, however, at least for the medieval Aristotelian, are not abstract
descriptions, but rather a particular sort of causal power within a substance.
This, of course, must be so for Aquinas, since we have seen already that
souls are causally efficacious in various ways. But what exactly does the soul
do as the substantial form? One way in which Aquinas likes to answer this
question is by saying that whereas an accidental form makes a thing be thus
and so, a substantial form makes a thing be simpliciter.28 But this is liable to
suggest a misleadingly obscurantist notion of what a substantial form does, as
if there is some sort of abstract property of being, simpliciter, for which the
rational soul is responsible. Instead, the substantial form is the most basic
internal causal explanation for the substance’s various intrinsic features. As
we have seen already, for instance, a soul gives rise to the various powers
associated with life: nutritive, sensory, and rational. More generally, the
substantial form organizes the matter of a substance into one chemical
structure or another, and consequently is responsible for whether a substance
will be hard or soft, shiny or dull, red or green. Of course, whether or not the
sun shines on a given day on a given leaf is not something a plant’s
substantial form controls. In general the substantial form is responsible only
for the intrinsic features of a substance—not whether it is well illuminated, or
well nourished, or well loved. Still, in general, a certain substantial form,
inhering in prime matter, will give rise to a certain kind of substance with
certain kinds of properties: “Every natural body has some determinate
substantial form. Therefore, since the accidents follow from the substantial
form, it is necessary that determinate accidents follow from a determinate
form.”29
The principal advantage of this conception of substantial form is that it
yields a highly unified conception of substance. The complex chunk of
matter that we think of as a single thing, displaying a consistent pattern of
properties over time, but sometimes changing in those properties, can be
understood to derive its unity—both at a time and over time—from the
substantial form that explains those properties. As long as the same
substantial form continues to structure a suitable chunk of matter, we have
the same substance, and the chunk itself is unified by being so structured.
Critical to Aquinas’s theory, however, and the most contentious part of it,
is his claim that each substance has just a single substantial form. This is not
the view that most of Aquinas’s contemporaries held. They took the
distinctively immaterial character of the intellect to require a distinction
between it and the substantial form of the body—not a distinction between
the soul and a power, as Aquinas has it, but a distinction between the body’s
substantial form and a further substantial form, the rational soul, that inheres
in the prior body–form composite.30 Such a view, however, wrecks
Aquinas’s account of substantial unity, and so he complains:

Everything that gets added to something after its complete existence gets added to it
accidentally, since it lies outside its essence. But every substantial form yields a
 complete being in the genus of substance, since it yields an actual, particular being.
Therefore whatever gets added to a thing after its first substantial form gets added to it
accidentally. So, since a nutritive soul is a substantial form, inasmuch as living is
predicated substantially both of human beings and of other animals, it would follow that
a [further] sensory soul would get added accidentally, and likewise for a [further]
intellective soul. And thus neither “animal” nor “human being” would signify a thing
that is unconditionally one, nor would these terms signify any genus or species in the
category of substance.31

The advocate of a plurality of substantial forms thus loses any ability to treat
human beings and other animals as substances. The body would be a
substance, in virtue of the first substantial form that inheres in it, but any
further form added after that point could not possibly perform the role of a
substantial form, because that role is already taken. Accordingly, for a living
thing to possess a rational soul would be like a tree’s taking on a new color—
the additional feature would be a mere accidental addition, and rational
animal would no more pick out a distinct category of substance than does
maple-tree-with-orange-leaves. The cost of failing to explain the substantial
unity of a human being, then, is quite dire: human beings fail to be
substances at all, which is to say that they fail to count as entities in any
proper sense.
The key to the argument is Aquinas’s robust conception of substantial
forms as causal principles. In effect, Aquinas is advancing a physical, proto-
scientific hypothesis about what distinguishes substances from
nonsubstances. This is exactly what one should expect from Aquinas’s
commitment to a biological approach to human nature. Human beings are
material substances like other substances, which is to say that we have a
unifying intrinsic principle like other substances, explained not by a priori
metaphysical considerations, but by the substantial form’s concrete causal
role within substances. If we were to decide that human beings, and perhaps
living things in general, lack any such organizing principle, then we would
have to conclude that human beings, viewed as mind–body composites, are
not substances at all. Either that, or we would have to formulate an entirely
new theory of substance.

THE ESSENTIAL BODILY COMPONENT

We have now considered two of the three questions raised earlier: how the
human soul can be at the same time a form and an immaterial intellect, and
how it can forge a genuine substantial unity with its body. That leaves one
final question: why is it so important for the human soul to be united to a
body at all?
That such union is important—indeed, that it is essential—Aquinas leaves
no room to doubt. As noted already, he regards the body as part of the
essence of a human being. We do not need to have any particular corpuscles,
of course, since these are constantly changing, but we need to have the kind
of body that is distinctively human. Aquinas even relies on this fact in
attempting to provide some philosophical justification for the theological
doctrine of the resurrection. For it is obvious that, at death, the human body
is corrupted. The human soul remains, for reasons that we have seen, but
according to Aquinas the survival of the human soul is not sufficient for the
survival of the human being: “The soul, since it is part of the human body, is
not the whole human being. My soul is not I. So even if the soul were to
achieve salvation in another life, it would not be I or any human being.”32
Accordingly, Aquinas’s argument for the human soul’s subsistence, via IOP,
shows less than one would naturally suppose. It shows that some part of me
will survive, but it does not show that I myself will survive. In fact, Aquinas
thinks that no philosophical argument can establish human immortality—
yours or mine—because that is possible only if our souls are reunited with
bodies of the right sort to be informed by our souls. Although Aquinas offers
various considerations for why God might perform this sort of miracle, the
fact that he will do it can be accepted only on faith.33
This is a remarkable doctrine. It is one thing to reject the Platonizing
denigration of the human body as some kind of punishment imposed on the
soul. It takes only a modicum of sympathy for biological naturalism to think
that our bodies are not all bad. But Aquinas goes much farther than that,
insisting not only that our bodies play a positive role in our lives, but that
they are in fact essential to our continued existence. This is perhaps the most
impressive manifestation of the biological side of Aquinas’s theory of human
nature. Even in the midst of his commitment to the supernatural doctrine of
the resurrection, he insists that what God will preserve is an animal—an
animal with a mind.
In part, Aquinas holds this view because he regards the order of life in our
current state as the natural order. True, it is of only finite duration, dwarfed
on either side by the eternity that came prior to creation and the eternity to
come after the Final Judgment. Still, our present state is our natural state, one
in which there is hope of supernatural aid in the form of grace, but which
nevertheless shows us as we essentially are, as created by God.34 Our having
a body, then, for Aquinas, is not a temporary aberration; rather, it defines
what we are. And given the hylomorphic conception of unity described in the
previous section, according to which our soul is responsible for the kind of
body that we have, it is not surprising that Aquinas thinks we not only
essentially have a body, but that we essentially have a body of just this
familiar sort.
These remarks still leave open the question, however, of why we were
created this way—of why a mind such as ours, immaterial and therefore
incorruptible, should be attached to a body such as ours, weak and
perishable. Aquinas has a good deal of interest to say about this question,
much of which turns on the details of how our minds and bodies interact. In
referring to mind–body interaction, I do not mean to invoke the much-
discussed “problem” of mind–body interaction. That we still think of this as a
problem is rather curious, since it is a historical artifact of a few decades in
the seventeenth century when philosophers like Descartes formed the
conviction that all causation at the material level occurs through mechanical
impact, and at the same time wanted to treat the mind as immaterial and still
interacting with bodies. Once Cartesian mechanism was abandoned in favor
of a broader conception of forces as the causal agents in nature, the mind can
be seen as just one among many forces in the natural world. And this is the
older Aristotelian perspective as well, inasmuch as our intellectual powers
are just forms—powers of the soul—that can act in nature just as other forms,
accidental and substantial, act in nature.
Aquinas sees so little difficulty in mind–body interaction that he puts their
interlocking roles at the center of his theories of our cognitive and volitional
systems. If we focus on the cognitive side, the bodily role is most obvious
right at the start of the process, in the mind’s need to acquire information
through the senses:

Inasmuch as the human soul has an operation transcending matter, its existence is
elevated above the body and does not depend on it. But inasmuch as it is naturally suited
to acquire its immaterial cognition from a material cognition, it is clear that the
fulfillment of its species can occur only when united to a body.35
The senses, relying on the familiar bodily organs of the eyes, ears, and so on,
acquire information about the world, and the mind works on that information,
abstracting it to form the sorts of universal concepts described earlier.
Aquinas does not think that the intellect must have such sensory information
in order to operate, but this, as he puts it here, is how the intellect is
“naturally suited” (nata) to operate.
More interesting than this familiar empiricism is Aquinas’s insistence on
the intellect’s need to “turn toward phantasms” every time we think. The
term “phantasm” is Aquinas’s general label for sensory information as it gets
processed in the four inner senses listed earlier. For other animals, this is
where the highest level of cognitive processing occurs. The inner senses are
important in human beings, too, not just in their own right but also because
these images (visual, auditory, etc.) get put at the service of intellectual
cognition. They are not just the data by which we initially form abstract
thoughts; beyond that, they crucially accompany all of our ongoing thoughts,
so that when the intellect is thinking about, for instance, the nature of a
triangle, or the nature of a camel, the inner senses are at the same time
framing sensory images of triangles or camels. (When one tries to think
about things one has never perceived, one may form images that are likely to
be a close approximation. When one tries to think about imperceptible things,
like the human soul or an angel, still one forms images, but to little
advantage, which is precisely why it is so hard for us to think about such
things.) Thus, as with the initial gathering of information through the senses,
“turning toward phantasms is, for the soul, its natural mode of thinking.”36 In
this process, the intellect and the senses run in tandem, with the result that
what does the thinking is not the intellect alone or the senses alone, but the
human being as a whole, using all of its cognitive faculties.37
These remarks threaten to bring us around in a circle, back to the idea that
using the senses is simply the soul’s nature. What we sought, instead, was an
account of why it is its nature. Aquinas’s view is that the mind not only
naturally does work in tandem with the senses, but that it works best that
way. This point is made with particular vividness in his discussions of how
the soul will operate for the period of time between its death and the
resurrection of the body, at the Final Judgment. Apart from the body, the soul
will operate as the angels do, by directly grasping intelligible truths conveyed
to it by other intellectual substances. (The idea seems to be that our souls
will, during this time, communicate telepathically with the angels, and
perhaps with other separated souls.) One might suppose that this mode of
thought will be better than our earthly mode, thereby making the eventual
resurrection of the body undesirable. Not so, according to Aquinas, because
although this mode of cognition is better for the angels, it is not better for us.
Just as people who are less intelligent need many concrete examples to bring
them to an understanding of something abstract, so our minds are such that
we work best through the senses: “in order for human souls to be able to have
a complete and distinctive cognition of things, they are constituted by nature
so as to be united to bodies; in this way they acquire a distinct cognition of
sensible things from the things themselves.”38
Again, and now at a deeper level, we can see the essentially biological
orientation of Aquinas’s thinking about human nature, even in a highly
theological context. The soul will exist apart from the body and will during
this time communicate with the angels. But it is not our nature to exist that
way, and reflection on our cognitive processes shows why it is not. Even
though the mind itself does not use the body when it thinks, nevertheless our
minds work best when attached to a body. We are, essentially, rational
animals.

NOTES
1. See James Doig’s contribution to this volume.
2. Aristotle, De anima. III.5, 430a23.
3. The Treatise on Human Nature was written ca. 1267. At roughly the
same time, Aquinas composed his more detailed Disputed Question on the
Soul (QDA), and his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (In DA). Readers
interested in exploring Aquinas’s views should begin with the Treatise,
which contains the most concise and elementary account, and then look to
QDA for a more developed statement, and to In DA for a fuller understanding
of the Aristotelian background. Also particularly important is the treatment in
SCG II.56–90 dating from the early 1260s. My translation of the Treatise
(Hackett, 2002) contains extensive notes intended for non-experts.
4. ST I q.75 a.1; cf. De anima II.1, 412a28.
5. DPN 2 (Leonine lines 112–18; Marietti §349).
6. De substantiis separatis 1 (Leonine lines 1–5; Marietti §43).
 7. This debate over the status of Aristotelian hylomorphism obviously
runs too deep and wide to be pursued here. The main task of my
Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011) is to
assess the rise and fall of hylomorphic metaphysics in the years from
Aquinas to Descartes and Locke.
8. The paradox of a stuff, matter, that is intrinsically characterless is one
of the principal difficulties of the hylomorphic approach, and is handled very
differently by different scholastic authors. For Aquinas’s approach, see
Jeffrey Brower’s contribution to this volume and also, for an extensive
textual analysis, John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 2000).
9. Supernaturally, Aquinas thinks it is possible for any form to exist apart
from matter, a doctrine that looms largest in discussions of the Eucharist.
Hereafter, however, I will generally ignore such absolute, supernatural
possibilities. When I speak without qualification of what is possible or
necessary, the modality at issue will generally be natural or physical, rather
than metaphysical or logical.
10. SCG II.51.
11. ST I q.75 a.2.
12. Aquinas often couches this thesis regarding the human soul as the
thesis that the human soul is “subsistent” (e.g., ST I q.75 a.2; QDA 1). This is
his label for the precise characteristic of substances that they are the sorts of
beings that can exist without inhering in other things (see my discussion in
Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature §2.2). To understand scholastic theories
of substance, such as Aquinas’s, it is important to frame the theory more
precisely than is usually done. The theory does not require that substances be
(naturally) capable of existing apart from everything else. That criterion
immediately admits of obvious counterexamples. Rather, the theory requires
that substances be able to exist without inhering in any subject. This rules out
all accidental forms, which (naturally) require a subject, and rules out all
substantial forms other than the human soul, since they require matter for
their operation, and so cannot exist apart from matter. (This last inference
again presupposes a connection between operating and existing. For that
principle, see, e.g., ST I q.75 a.3: “all things have existence and operation in a
similar way.”) The subsistence criterion does not rule out accidental unities
such as a heap of stones. A heap is not a substance, however, because it is not
a being at all, and so is not even a candidate for the subsistence criterion,
which applies only to things or beings. A heap is not a being because it lacks
a substantial form, for reasons that will be clearer below.
13. For this stage of the argument, going from IOP to immortality, see, e.g.,
ST I q.75 a.6 and QDA 14.
14. ST I q.75 a.2. For another version of this argument, see In DA III.7
(Leonine lines 131–59; Marietti §680), which elaborates on a sketch along
these lines that Aristotle had put forth at De anima III.4, 429a18–24.
15. For these examples, see QDV 24.1c. The focus there is on free will, but
Aquinas takes the distinctive character of human freedom to be the direct
result of our greater cognitive capacities. For discussion of this issue, see
Thomas Williams’s chapter in this volume.
16. Aquinas only once utters the famous principle often associated with his
name—“nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu”—and he does so
only as an initial objection to his position (QDV 2.3 obj. 19). In his response
to that objection he signals, however, that he accepts the principle, reworded
as the thesis that “what exists in our intellect must first have existed in the
senses” (QDV 2.3 ad 19). Does this make Aquinas an empiricist? As the later
history of philosophy demonstrates, one’s commitment to empiricism must
be judged not so much by abstract principles such as this, but by the rigor
with which they are applied.
17. ST I q.75 a.5.
18. For Aquinas’s theory of individuation, see again Jeffrey Brower’s
contribution to this volume.
19. On Aquinas’s theory of mental representation, see Claude Panaccio,
“Aquinas on Intellectual Representation,” in D. Perler, ed., Ancient and
Medieval Theories of Intentionality (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 185–201, as well as
Jeffrey Brower and Susan Brower-Toland, “Aquinas on Mental
Representation,” Philosophical Review 117 (2008): 193–243.
20. ST I q.50 a.3.
21. For the place of human beings in the larger context of intellectual
substances, including the angels, see SCG II.46–55, as well as Disputed
Question on Spiritual Creatures and the treatise De substantiis separatis.
22. The first article of Aquinas’s Disputed Question on the Soul takes up
this issue in careful detail, asking whether the human soul can be both a form
and a hoc aliquid, a particular thing, which he goes on to explain as
tantamount to the soul’s being a subsistent entity. For a thorough discussion
of Aquinas’s views in this area, see Bernardo Carlos Bazán, “The Human
Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas Aquinas’ Critique of Eclectic
Aristotelianism,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age
64 (1997): 95–126. For a more general evaluation of Aquinas’s position as a
version of dualism, see Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge,
2003), ch. 6.
23. ST I q.77 a.6.
24. For a brief overview of this division, see ST I q.78 a.1. For a fuller
account of many of the details, see In DA. I discuss all of these powers at
some length in Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, chs. 5–10. For a recent
summary of the broader medieval background regarding the soul’s powers,
see Dag Nikolaus Hasse, “The Soul’s Faculties,” in R. Pasnau, ed., The
Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 305–19.
25. DUI ch. 3 (Leonine lines 378–81; Marietti §233).
26. On the status of artifacts for Aquinas, see, recently, Michael Rota,
“Substance and Artifact in Thomas Aquinas,” History of Philosophy
Quarterly 21 (2004): 241–59. It is unclear whether Aquinas wants to
recognize aggregates of nonliving substances—e.g., a pool of water or a
stone—as a substance over and above the minimal-sized water and stone
particles that make up the aggregate. I argue that he does not in Thomas
Aquinas on Human Nature, ch. 3.
27. This is “essence” in the strict Aristotelian sense of what defines the
thing, rather than in the weaker modern sense of merely being necessary. A
thing has many necessary properties, but one defining essence. Strictly
speaking, for Aquinas, the essence is not simply the substantial form, but
rather the substantial form together with the common matter (see ST I q.29
a.2 ad 3; I q.75 a.4), a detail that helps safeguard the essentially bodily aspect
of human beings.
28. E.g., ST I q.76 a.4.
29. ST I q.7 a.3. I discuss Aquinas’s theory of substantial form in more
detail, in its broader historical context into the seventeenth century, in “Form,
Substance, and Mechanism,” Philosophical Review 113 (2004): 31–88. For a
still broader and more detailed look at scholastic views in this domain,
focusing on the later Middle Ages, see my Metaphysical Themes, chs. 24–26.
 30. For views prior to Aquinas, see Anton C. Pegis, St. Thomas and the
Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Toronto: Pontifical Institute
of Mediaeval Studies, 1934), and Richard Dales, The Problem of the Rational
Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). For the later
debate, see Marilyn Adams, William Ockham (Notre Dame, Ind.: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1987), ch. 15; Richard Cross, The Physics of Duns
Scotus: The Scientific Context of a Theological Vision (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1998), ch. 4; Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes, ch. 25.
31. SCG II.58.6.
32. In I Cor 15.2.924.
33. An important further detail here is that, for Aquinas, a particular soul
can be joined only to a body of exactly the right sort—my soul needs my
body, or at any rate a body just exactly like it, and could not be joined to
anyone else’s body. “Just as specifically the same matter is needed for
specifically the same form, so numerically the same matter is needed for
numerically the same form. For just as a cow’s soul cannot be the soul of a
horse’s body, so one cow’s soul cannot be another cow’s soul. Therefore,
since numerically the same rational soul remains, it must be united again at
the resurrection with numerically the same body” (CT I.153 [Marietti §305]).
For further discussion of these issues, from a somewhat different perspective,
see Eleonore Stump’s chapter in this volume on “Resurrection and the
Separated Soul.” I myself discuss these issues further in Thomas Aquinas on
Human Nature, ch. 12.
34. Even the punishment of Original Sin is simply the abrogation of a gift
given to Adam and Eve; our punishment is having to live in our natural state,
infirm and unwise (see ST I q.100 a.1). On grace, see the chapter in the
present volume by Andrew Pinsent.
35. QDA 1c.
36. ST I q.89 a.1.
37. On the need for phantasms, see ST I q.84 a.7 and In DMR 2. I discuss
this doctrine in detail in Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, §9.4.
38. ST I q.89 a.1.
 PART VI

THEORY OF LANGUAGE
 CHAPTER 27

THEORY OF LANGUAGE

GYULA KLIMA

AQUINAS does not have a “philosophy of language.”1 He does have, however,

some important and interesting ideas on how language (any human language)
is related to the world through the mediation of human thought, without the
proper understanding of which much of what he has to say in his metaphysics
and epistemology will not be properly understood.
Perhaps, the best way to introduce Aquinas’s relevant ideas is through the
analysis of an example. Take the sentence “Socrates is wise.” In
contemporary analytic philosophy, the truth conditions of this sentence are
usually stated either in terms of set membership or in terms of property
possession: this sentence is true just in case Socrates is a member of the set
of wise things (this set being “the extension” of the term “wise”) or just in
case Socrates has the property of wisdom (this property being some abstract,
“Platonic entity,” sometimes thought of as the “intension” of the term). But
in Aquinas’s ontology, given his rejection of Platonic abstract entities, there
are neither sets nor properties in the modern sense. There are, however,
substances, and their individualized forms, whether those forms are
substantial or accidental.2 Thus, on his analysis, what makes this sentence
true is the actuality of Socrates’ wisdom (as opposed, say, to the non-
actuality of his stupid and malevolent accuser’s, Meletus’s wisdom).
This brief comparison, however, so far only provides us with an indication
of the differences of different ontologies involving different types of entities
(sets, properties, individualized forms, besides individual substances, such as
Socrates or Meletus). The fundamental differences in the corresponding
conceptions of how language is related to reality will emerge if we focus on
the relations themselves that relate items of language to items in these
ontologies, that is, semantic relations. On the modern conceptions, the
semantic function of the predicate of “Socrates is wise,” or for that matter of
any sentence of this type, would be to denote a set or to express a property.
On Aquinas’s conception, however, the corresponding function of the
predicate is to signify the individualized forms of individuals, whether these
forms are actual or not (for, of course, if it signified only actual forms, then
no sentence could be false, since for Aquinas, as I have just noted, it is the
actuality of the form that makes the predicate signifying it true of the
subject).

SIGNIFICATION AND IMPOSITION

But putting the matter in this way immediately gives rise to some questions.
In the first place, what is it that establishes this signification relation? How
can a term come to signify these so-called “individualized forms”? Indeed,
what are these “individualized forms,” if there are any? And what is their
actuality or non-actuality, on which, for Aquinas, the truth of our
propositions should ultimately depend?
In accordance with the common logical doctrine of the time, Aquinas
holds that what establishes signification is an act of imposition, a sort of
“name-giving.” A human language primarily consists of utterances, that is,
articulate sounds (and secondarily of written marks or any other forms of
conventional symbols that can “stand in” for spoken words or expressions,
say, hand gestures, smoke signals, Morse code, etc.), which in themselves
may or may not be meaningful (or significative, to use an Anglicized version
of the Latin technical term). For instance, if I utter the articulate sound
“biltrix,” an ordinary speaker of English or Latin literally has no idea what I
mean. But, of course, we, the users of these languages, can make this
utterance meaningful, if we agree what we want to use it for, somehow
making clear what we are supposed to have in mind when we are using it in
our conversation. This can be done in a number of different ways, for
example, by ceremonially naming something or someone by it, as in a
baptism, or by providing its definition, or by simply starting to use it in
contexts when what we mean is made clear in the situation itself (say, from
behavioral clues, the circumstances, etc.; just think of how the utterance “to
google” only relatively recently became meaningful in English, for example).
What any of these procedures establishes is a connection between this
utterance and a cognitive act whereby we conceive of the same thing or
things in the same way. Once this connection is established, medieval
logicians would say that the utterance is imposed to signify precisely the
thing or things we conceive of, and precisely in the ways we conceive of it or
them. Thus, the utterance becomes a significative utterance, that is to say, a
word of our language. For medieval logicians, a mere articulate sound, such
as “biltrix,” is not a word, precisely because it has no connection with a
cognitive act, it “brings nothing to mind,” or in other words, it constitutes no
understanding in the mind of someone who hears it.3 The cognitive act
whereby we conceive of the thing or things signified by the word is called a
concept. So, an act of imposition is the act establishing the connection
between an utterance and a concept, thereby rendering the utterance
significative of the thing or things conceived by means of the concept
precisely in the way conceived by means of the concept.
But why does Aquinas (and other medieval authors, for that matter) need
to complicate the explanation of meaningfulness by bringing in such an
obscure item into this explanation, a “spooky mental entity,” a concept? Are
not words meaningful simply on account of being the signs of things? And
are not the meanings of words simply constituted by the ways we use them as
such signs?
Addressing these questions very briefly on Aquinas’s behalf, one may say
that words are meaningful, since they are signs, namely, meaningful symbols
of a certain sort, but the doctrine of imposition is supposed to explain how an
utterance (or written mark, etc.) can become a conventional sign, a
meaningful artificial symbol in the first place. And even if we normally learn
the meaning of these symbols through acquiring the ability to use them
intelligently, in the way competent users use them, nevertheless, this
competence and intelligence in use clearly rides on our understanding of
what these symbols can be used for, and it is this act of understanding, which
is called a concept, to which an act of imposition is supposed to relate an
otherwise meaningless entity. This is because we can intelligently use these
utterances to talk about things only if we understand what things they are
supposed to signify and how. For words are not simple labels attached to
singular things we can point to; the relationships between words and things in
a human language are much more complicated, as medieval authors were
keenly aware.
 In fact, Aquinas provides an interesting reason for the need to refer to
concepts in explaining meaning, in terms of the different ways the same
things can be signified on account of the different ways in which we conceive
of them. Commenting on Aristotle’s “semantic triangle” of words, concepts,
and things, Aquinas provides the following explanation:4

Now the discussion concerns utterances that are meaningful on account of human
agreement. Thus, by the phrase “affections of the soul” [passiones animae] we must
understand the concepts of understanding [intellectus conceptiones], which nouns, verbs
and expressions immediately signify, according to Aristotle’s position. They cannot
immediately signify things, as is clear from their mode of signification; for the noun
“man” signifies human nature in abstraction from the singulars. Therefore, it cannot
immediately signify a singular human, whence the Platonics posited that it should
signify the separate Idea of Man. However, since this does not subsist in the abstract in
reality according to Aristotle’s position, but is only in the intellect, it was necessary for
him to say that utterances immediately signify the concepts of the intellect and by their
mediation the things.5

Since for Aquinas there are no universal entities as Plato imagined, we

cannot explain the universality of our universal words by claiming that they
signify universal things. The universality of our words, on account of which
they are related not just to one peculiar sort of thing, a universal, but rather to
a multitude, indeed, a potential infinity of ordinary things, is the result of our
ability to conceive of these things in a peculiar manner, namely, universally,
and to use the word to express this universal conception, or as Aquinas often
refers to it, the universal ratio of these ordinary things.
Aquinas’s notion of ratio is what we can justifiably identify as Aquinas’s
idea of mental content, the information encoded by our mental concepts
about the things we conceive. Aquinas provides a rather detailed description
of what he means by the term ratio in the following passage:

The ratio of every single thing is what its name signifies, as the ratio of a stone is what
its name signifies. But names are the signs of intellectual conceptions, whence the ratio
of any single thing signified by a name is the conception of the intellect that the name
signifies. And this conception of the intellect is in the intellect as in its subject, but it is
in the thing thought of as in that which is represented: for the conceptions of the intellect
are certain similitudes of the things thought of. But if the conception of the intellect were
not assimilated to the thing, then the conception would be false of that thing; for
example, if the intellect would think something that is not a stone to be a stone. So the
ratio of the stone is in the intellect as in its subject, but it is in the stone as in that which
causes truth in the conception of the intellect thinking the stone to be such and such.6
Thus, the ratio, indeed, the same ratio, is both in the intellect, as the
conception of the intellect, and in the object, as in what is conceived by that
conception. This conception is said to be similar to the object precisely on
account of embodying (or should I say, encoding?), the same ratio that is in
the object. And it is precisely the presence of the same ratio in the object that
renders the conception of the intellect true of the object.
In another passage, in connection with the question of how the attributes
we predicate of God may apply to Him, Aquinas explains in more detail in
what sense we can say that the ratio is in the thing:

we should know that a ratio, as taken here, is nothing else, but what the intellect
apprehends from the signification of some name, and this in the case of those things that
have definition is the definition of the thing itself, in accordance with what the
Philosopher says: “the ratio signified by the name is the definition.”7 But some things
that are not defined are [also] said to have a ratio in this way, e.g., things such as
quantity or quality, which are not defined because they are most general genera.
Nevertheless, the ratio of quality is what is signified by the name of quality; and it is
that from which quality has it that it is quality. Thus, it makes no difference whether
those things that are said to have a ratio have a definition. And so it is clear that the ratio
of wisdom predicated of God is what is conceived of in the signification of this name,
even if divine wisdom itself cannot be defined. Nevertheless, the name “ratio” does not
signify this conception itself, because that is signified by the name of wisdom, or by
some other name of the thing, but it signifies the intention of this conception, just as the
name “definition” and other names of second imposition do. And thus the second point,
namely, the one concerning how the ratio is said to be in the thing, is also clear. For this
does not mean that the intention itself which is signified by the name “ratio” would be
in the thing, nor even that the conception to which this intention applies would be in the
thing outside the soul, for it is in the soul as in its subject; but it is said to be in the thing
insofar as there is something in the thing outside the soul that corresponds to the
conception of the soul, as what is signified [corresponds] to the sign.8

So, the ratio that is immediately signified by the name of some sort of thing
is an inherent act of the human mind considered precisely with regard to its
information content,9 that is, a concept, whereby the mind conceives of the
sort of thing in question. This relation of immediate signification, as we have
seen, is established by an act of imposition. But when we impose words to
signify, we normally do not impose them to talk about our concepts, but to
talk about the things we conceive, unless of course we are imposing names
on concepts by which we conceive of concepts. The utterance imposed on
our concept by which we conceive of human beings, say, “man” in English
or “homo” in Latin, is not used to talk about this concept, but rather to talk
about what we conceive by this concept. But, of course, we can form
concepts by which we conceive of concepts, and thus the name imposed on
such a concept is used to talk about these concepts. Such a name, in fact, is
the name “ratio,” which, as Aquinas indicates in the passage above,
(immediately) signifies an intention, namely a concept whereby we conceive
of other concepts (by which, in turn, we may conceive external things). An
intention or concept of this sort, therefore, is usually referred to in the
medieval logical literature as a second intention (i.e., an intention by which
we conceive first intentions), and its name a name of second imposition. But,
again, just as a name of first imposition is not used to talk about the concept
on which it is imposed, but about the things conceived by that concept, so a
name of second imposition is not used to talk about the second intention on
which it is imposed, but about the first intentions conceived by this second
intention. Thus, although imposition (of any order) primarily establishes the
relation of immediate signification between an utterance and a concept,
because of the naturally representative nature of the concept itself, this also
establishes the relation of conventional ultimate signification, on account of
which the word signifies not the concept, but rather the object of the concept,
namely, whatever it is that is conceived by this concept.
Therefore, Aquinas’s conception is by no means susceptible to
Wittgensteinian objections to a “private language.” On Aquinas’s and his
contemporaries’ conception, our concepts are in fact very public entities. Our
concepts form the natural representational system of the human mind, which
is therefore common to all human beings, and which we express by each and
every meaningful utterance we make, using these utterances to refer, not to
some hidden, private mental events, but whatever we conceive by these
“mental events,” the commonly accessible objects of our thought.10
Now what is such an object of thought, what is it that is conceived by a
concept? Clearly, the answer depends on the kind of concept we are talking
about. So far, we have only considered concepts that provide the signification
of so-called categorematic terms, i.e., terms that can be the subject or
predicate of a proposition.11 And even among these, we have only considered
simple, universal terms, as opposed to complex terms and singular terms,
respectively. Aquinas and his contemporaries were, of course, very much
aware of the variety of semantic functions of various parts of speech, which,
in line with the common doctrine of imposition and signification, they would
all primarily attribute to the different semantic functions of the concepts on
which these parts of speech are imposed.
Aquinas wrote at a time when influential textbooks on logic devoted
thoroughgoing, subtle discussions to the issue of the signification of
syncategorematic terms, that is, parts of speech we nowadays would refer to
as those expressing logical connectives. Of course, none of these authors held
that by these concepts we conceive of, and so by the corresponding terms we
signify, things in the way we do by categorematic concepts. (Just what would
be the thing we conceive by the concepts expressed by the words “no,”
“and,” or “every”?) Therefore, they rather analyzed the ways in which
constructing these terms together with categorematic terms modifies the
semantic functions of the latter.12 Aquinas, not being a logician but a
theologian, did not devote separate attention to syncategorematic terms per
se. However, he did deal in great detail with one syncategorematic term in
particular, or rather a term that has both syncategorematic and categorematic
functions, namely, the verb “est” [“is”] and its cognates, such as its infinitive
form “esse” [“to be”] or its participle “ens” [“being”].

AQUINAS ON THE COPULA

For Aquinas, the verb functioning as a copula (as is “est” in Latin, “is” in
English, etc.), besides its obvious syntactical function of linking subject and
predicate to form a new syntactical unit, a proposition (as opposed to a mere
list of terms), also retains the function that it has when it is attached to a
subject as an absolute predicate, namely, to signify actual existence. For as
an absolute predicate, as in “Socrates est” [“Socrates is”] the verb signifies
the existence of the thing referred to by the subject absolutely. But when then
verb joins a predicate to the subject, as in “Socrates est sapiens” [“Socrates is
wise”], it signifies the existence of the ultimate significate of the predicate in
the subject, that is, it signifies the existence or actuality of the subject not
absolutely, but with qualification, with respect to this ultimate significate
(that is to say, it signifies not the existence of Socrates, but the existence of
Socrates’ wisdom, i.e., Socrates’ actuality, not absolutely, but with regard to
his wisdom). As Aquinas explains in his commentary on Aristotle’s On
Interpretation, this is why the copulative function of linking predicate to
subject is exerted by the verb that primarily signifies existence (as opposed to
any other word that might exercise the mere linking of subject and
predicate):13

The reason why [Aristotle] says that the verb “is” co-signifies composition is that it does
not principally signify composition, but secondarily; for it primarily signifies what
occurs to the mind in the way of actuality absolutely: for “is,” uttered absolutely,
signifies being in act, and hence it signifies as a verb. But since actuality, which the verb
“is” principally signifies, is in general the actuality of every form, whether it is a
substantial or an accidental actuality, this is why when we want to signify any form or
act to actually inhere [inesse] in a subject, we signify this by means of the verb “is,”
either absolutely [simpliciter] or with some qualification [secundum quid].14

This theory of predication (often referred to in the secondary literature as

“the inherence theory” on account of the central idea of the actual inherence
of forms in their subjects) has a number of important, both logically and
metaphysically, relevant implications.

(1) According to this theory, for every true singular affirmative

predication, there has to be some individualized form signified by the
predicate in the subject. However, the forms signified by these
predicates cannot all be regarded as beings in the same sense (indeed,
they cannot all be regarded as forms in the strict metaphysical sense, let
alone beings in the same sense as the substances they inform).15
Consider the predication “Homer is blind.” According to the inherence
theory, this predication is true if and only if Homer’s blindness exists.
But for Homer’s blindness to exist is nothing but for him not to be able
to see, that is, for his sight not to exist. So the existence of Homer’s
blindness is nothing but the nonexistence of his sight, and so, since
nothing can be existence and nonexistence in the same sense, this
blindness cannot exist in the same sense as the opposite sight; therefore,
this blindness cannot be an existent or being in the same sense as the
opposite sight is.
(2) The inherence theory clearly establishes a close connection between
the notions of existence and truth, insofar as it grounds the truth of a
singular predication in the actual existence of the significate of the
predicate in the referent of the subject.

However, these two points immediately give rise to a strictly logical

problem (as opposed to the host of metaphysical problems) concerning
Aquinas’s theory. For Aquinas does indeed claim that the significata of
various predicates exist in different senses of existence determined by the
nature of the significate in question, and yet he also claims that the copula of
affirmative predications signifies existence always in the same sense; in the
sense in which it signifies the truth of a proposition.16 How can we reconcile
these two claims? Does the copula express various senses of existence,
depending on the signification of the predicate it joins to the subject, or does
it express uniformly the same sense in all predications? As we shall see, the
simple answer is: both. But how is that possible?

THE MULTIPLICITY OF THE SEMANTIC

FUNCTIONS OF THE COPULA
A consistent solution to this problem can easily be provided if we consider
the multiple semantic functions of the verb “est” as a copula. As we have
seen, the copula signifies the actuality of its subject with respect to what is
signified in it by the predicate. However, it also signifies the actuality of
what is signified by the proposition that results from its joining the subject to
the predicate as a whole, the so-called enuntiabile. By talking about an
enuntiabile as what is signified by a proposition as a whole, Aquinas joins a
long tradition (going back at least to Aristotle) of theorizing about the
significata of propositions.17 To be sure, Aquinas’s scattered remarks do not
provide us with anything like a systematic doctrine found in the logical
treatises of his contemporaries and predecessors. However, it is clear even
from these scattered remarks that he consciously and deliberately uses this
logical tradition, which would regard the total significata of propositions as
the “truth-makers” of propositions, in accordance with Aristotle’s dictum in
the Categories: “a sentence is true according as the thing is or is not,” where
“the thing” in question is the significate of the proposition as a whole.18
Now, whatever such an enuntiabile is (nowadays we would probably refer to
it as a “state of affairs”), it clearly is in an ontological category that is very
different from “ordinary” things. Thus, such things, if they exist, must exist
in a sense that is different from the sense in which these “ordinary” things
exist. But then, setting the metaphysical issue of what these alleged entities
are aside, we immediately have a solution to the logical problem concerning
the signification of the copula raised above.
For positing these enuntiabilia, whatever they are, the simple solution is
that in any given predication the copula signifies the existence of the ultimate
significate of the predicate in the subject in the sense of existence determined
by the nature of this significate, and yet it uniformly signifies the existence of
the enuntiabile in the same sense in all predications. That is to say, it
signifies existence in various senses with respect to the significata of various
predicates, yet it signifies existence in one sense with respect to the
enuntiabile signified by any proposition. So, it signifies multiply in some
respect (i.e., with respect to the significata of various predicates) and
uniformly in some other respect (i.e., with respect to the significate of the
whole proposition involving any predication). By way of an illustration,
consider the following two propositions: “Tom is a cat” and “Jerry is a
mouse.” For Aquinas, the predicates of these propositions signify cat nature
and mouse nature, respectively, and the propositions are true just in case
these natures actually exist in their respective subjects. It is precisely the
actual existence of these natures, namely, Tom’s cat nature and Jerry’s
mouse nature that the copula signifies in these respective subjects. The
existence of cat nature in Tom, however, is nothing but Tom’s existence,
existence determined, as it were, “catwise,” that is, cat life, whereas the
existence of mouse nature is existence determined “mousewise,” that is, a
mouse life. But mouse life and cat life, or existing mousewise or catwise, are
certainly radically different (just as much as are cats and mice), and it is this
difference that Aquinas is talking about when he says that the significata of
different predicates determine different senses and modes of being. So, with
regard to these significata of different predicates, signifying different forms
or natures, the copula signifies the existence of these natures in different, yet
analogically related senses. However, with regard to the states of affairs or
enuntiabilia signified by these propositions, since they are in the same
ontological category, the copula states their existence in the same sense: the
state of affairs that Tom is a cat obtains or exists (in case Tom does in fact
exist catwise) in exactly the same sense as the state of affairs that Jerry is a
mouse obtains (just in case Jerry does exist mousewise). So the copula
signifies existence with regard to the different natures signified by the
predicates of these propositions in different senses (determined by the
different natures signified by these predicates) and yet with regard to the
significata of the whole propositions themselves, the respective enuntiabilia,
it signifies existence in the same sense (in the sense in which such
enuntiabilia can exist at all). But this is quite possible, whence there is
clearly no inconsistency involved in this position.
Yet, this solution still leaves a number of logical questions open (again,
disregarding the swarm of metaphysical questions it raises). For even if it
may provide a consistent interpretation for Aquinas’s claims about the
multiplicity of the senses of existence expressed in various predications and
the uniform signification of the copula with regard to the enuntiabilia in all
predications, it is still quite unclear how any of the senses of existence
expressed by the copula is related to the senses of existence expressed by
“est” as an absolute predicate. Furthermore, it is quite unclear how any of
these senses is related to the sense of identity Aquinas also attributes to the
copula,19 and in general, how the various senses of existence expressed by
any absolute or copulative uses of the verb are supposed to be related to each
other in Aquinas’s celebrated doctrine of the analogy of being.20

PREDICATION AND THE ANALOGY OF BEING

For Aquinas, the primary sense of “est,” or its English equivalent “is,” is
expressed by its use as an absolute predicate of primary beings, that is,
primary substances, signifying their actuality absolutely, namely, the
actuality of their substantial act of being, as in “Socrates est” or “Socrates
is.” In fact, at one point, he would analyze the semantics of “Socrates est”
[“Socrates is”] on a par with “Socrates currit” [“Socrates runs”], insofar as
they are both supposed to signify an act, indeed, an activity of the subject.
For just as the predicate of the latter sentence signifies an accidental activity
of Socrates, namely his running [currere], so does the predicate of the former
signify the substantial activity of Socrates, namely, his act of being [esse],
which is nothing but his actual existence, his actuality, absolutely speaking,
namely, his substantial activity of living. As Aquinas puts it:

Existence itself [ipsum esse] is not signified as the subject of existence, just as [the act
of] running [currere] is not signified as the subject of running, therefore, just as we
cannot say that [the act of] running itself runs, so we cannot say that existence itself is.
But just as that-which-is is signified as the subject of existence, so that-which-runs is
signified as the subject of running. Therefore, just as we can say of that which runs, or
the runner, that it runs, insofar as it is subjected to running, so we can say of a being
 [ens], or that which is, that it is, insofar as it participates in the act of existing
[inquantum participat actum essendi].21

So, “est” as an absolute predicate of Socrates, signifies his substantial act of

being, his life, as determined by his essence, namely, a human life, although
this determination is not expressed in the predication itself. But the
predication is true only if Socrates does have his life actually, and since
Socrates is essentially human, he can only have a human life, if he exists at
all. This determination is expressed, however, when “est” is not used as an
absolute predicate, but as a copula linking an essential predicate to the
subject, as in “Socrates est homo” [“Socrates is a man”]. In this case “est”
still signifies the same substantial act of being, namely, Socrates’ life, but
this time the predicate explicitly imposes the determination of human essence
upon the act of existence that Socrates has, explicating that the act of
existence on account of which Socrates actually exists is a human life. By
contrast, in its function as the copula of the predication of an accident of such
a substance, signified by an accidental predicate, as in “Socrates est videns”
[“Socrates is sighted”], the copula has the function of signifying the actuality
of the subject not absolutely, but with respect to the accident signified by the
predicate, namely, the accidental act of being of Socrates’ sight.
In these two cases, therefore, the verb has the function of signifying real
acts of being of primary substances, namely, their substantial and accidental
acts of being, respectively. However, in the case of the predication of a
privation, the verb cannot have the function of signifying any real act of
being, for the being of a privation is precisely the nonbeing of the opposite
positive quality that would have real being if it existed. Therefore, in the
predication “Socrates est caecus,” that is, “Socrates is blind” the copula can
only signify the actuality of the lack of a real act of being: for the presence of
blindness is the absence of sight. Still, this absence itself is present; this lack
of real being is really actual, so it is there in some further sense of “is.” But
obviously the presence of this absence can only be expressed or conceived by
means of conceiving the nonpresence of the opposite real being. So, the
presence of a privation is conditioned not only on the lack of real being but
also on the human mind’s ability to conceive of the situation by applying its
concept of negation necessarily involved in the concept of any privation. This
is the reason why Aquinas would identify the being of privations as a sort of
being of reason, esse rationis: not that he regarded their being as somehow
fictional, or made up by reason, but as something the presence of which is
conditioned both on the ways things are in reality and on the ways this reality
is conceived by human reason. The same type of consideration applies to the
being of the enuntiabile signified by the whole proposition: when a
proposition is true, then, of course, it signifies a situation that is really actual;
but what the proposition as a whole signifies, and what can be referred to by
a corresponding sentential nominalization, is also a being of reason, insofar
as its presence is conditioned not only on the ways real beings are but also on
the activity of human reason capable of conceiving of this real situation by
means of forming the proposition in question.22
As can be seen from the foregoing, on this conception there is a
systematic connection between the various absolute and copulative uses of
the verb “est” and its equivalents, which clearly accounts for the analogical
relationship between the primary and secondary senses of the verb and the
corresponding participle “ens” or “being.” The primary sense of the verb is
expressed by its use as it is truly predicated of primary substances. Its various
secondary senses are expressed by its use in variously qualified predications,
where the qualification may be expressed either (1) by a predicate added to
the verb functioning as a copula, or (2) as an explicit determination added to
the verb used as an absolute predicate, or (3) by the nature of the subject of
which the verb is predicated without any explicit qualification, as illustrated
by the following three equivalent propositional forms, respectively:

(1) x is F
(2) x is-with-respect-to-its-F-ness
(3) The F-ness of x is

Here x is some primary substance, and F is some nonessential predicate of x,

signifying in it a real accident or a privation or even a relation of reason as in
“Socrates is admired by Plato.” What is important to realize about these
propositional schemata is that the occurrence of “is” in each signifies the
same act of being determined by the significate of the term “F” (referred to
by the corresponding abstract term “F-ness” in the last two).23 If F is an
essential predicate of x, then the same schemata are further equivalent to a
fourth schema, in which “is” is predicated absolutely. For example, if x is
“Socrates” and F is “wise,” then the first three propositions resulting from
their substitution are clearly equivalent. However, in this case “Socrates is”
would not entail any of these, since clearly, just because Socrates is, it does
not follow that he is wise: for Socrates to be is not for him to be wise. On the
other hand, since for Socrates to be is for him to be a man, that is, “man” is
Socrates’ essential predicate, using “man” in the place of F would render all
three resulting propositions equivalent to “Socrates is.”
Now where does identity fit into this scheme? It should be noticed here
that in the foregoing schemata what provided the qualification on the sense of
“is” was the significate of the predicate in the thing referred to by the subject.
The predicate, however, according to many medieval logicians (actually, a
notable exception would be Peter of Spain)24 functions there also with
another one of its semantic values, namely, its (personal) suppositum,25 that
is, a thing that actually has its significate. Therefore, the sense of the copula
in which it expresses the sense of identity may be regarded as the result of
simply adding another qualification to its absolute form, namely, one that
refers to the suppositum, rather than the significate of the predicate, as in

(4) x is-(actual)-with-respect-to-a-thing-that-is-F,

which is true just in case x is an F, that is, if x is identical with a thing that is
F, namely, itself, provided it is F (for if the thing is not F, then it is clearly
not identical with any thing that is an F). So, in this sense the qualified sense
of “is” clearly expresses the actual identity of x with itself under the
designation of being an F.26
Indeed, we can also explain along the same lines why the enuntiabile
signified by the whole proposition has to be signified to be a being by the
copula in the same sense, as Aquinas claims, in which it would signify the
being of a privation or any other being of reason. For the primary semantic
value of the predicate F is neither its suppositum (a thing that is actually F),
nor its ultimate significate (the thing’s individualized F-ness), but its
immediate significate, namely, F-ness in general, as it is conceived by the
abstractive mind forming the abstract concept expressed by the term F.27 So,
what the proposition as a whole signifies, namely, that x is F, is actual in the
same sense in which we can say that

(5) x is-(actual)-with-respect-to-F-ness-(in-general).
Here the qualified predicate obviously has to express the actuality of the
subject with respect to a being of reason, given that the qualification itself
refers to something that is the direct object of reason, namely, the nature of
the thing conceived in abstraction from its individuating conditions.
To be sure, Aquinas never spells out the idea expressed in the
propositional schemata listed here in exactly such terms. However, his
several remarks made in various contexts about the primary and secondary
senses of being relating to each other as unqualified (simpliciter) and
qualified (secundum quid), as well as his remarks about how the different
semantic values of the same term added to the copula may provide different
qualifications on its primary sense (thereby determining different secondary
senses of the verb), may well justify the connections expressed by the
foregoing propositional schemata.
Indeed, further justification may be gleaned from the fact that once we
realize these connections, it is easy to see how Aquinas’s claims about the
analogical predication of being of substances, especially of God and His
creatures can also receive a consistent interpretation in the same framework.

THE ANALOGY OF BEING BETWEEN GOD AND

CREATURES
Consider the absolute predication of being of some primary substance x, as in

(6) x is (or exists),

the predication of a substantial predicate S of the same, as in

(7) x is S

and the predication of being explicitly qualified by the significate of this

predicate, namely, the essence of x, as in

(8) x is-with-respect-to-its-S-ness.

According to Aquinas’s doctrine of the real distinction between essence and

existence in creatures and the real identity of the same in God, if the variable
“x” in these schemata stands for a creature, then the significate of this
qualified predicate and the significate of the predicate “S” in x are distinct
items of reality. However, if the variable “x” stands for God, then these
significates are the same, namely, the absolutely simple, indivisible divine
nature, which is nothing but divine existence.
In accordance with the foregoing, the predicates of the two equivalent
claims in (6) and in (8) signify the same act of being of x. However, if x is
God, then, and according to Aquinas only then, the determination referred to
in the qualified predicate in (8), namely, divine essence is not distinct from
what is signified by the absolute predicate in (6), namely, divine existence.
Therefore, in this case and only in this case, the qualification does not impose
any determination or limitation on the sense of the absolute predicate: God is
the only entity that absolutely IS without any limitation whatsoever. By
contrast, if x is a creature, then the determination referred to in the qualified
predicate in (8), a creaturely essence, is distinct from the significate of the
absolute predicate in (6), some creaturely existence. In this case, therefore,
the determination does impose some limitation on the mode of being
signified by the qualified predicate, in the sense that the nature of the creature
delimits what the creature can or cannot be, have, do, or suffer. Thus, since
the qualified predicate (8) signifies the same act of being that is signified by
the absolute predicate in (6), the qualification imposes a determination also
on the sense of the absolute predicate: a creature can only exist in the way
determined by its limited nature, and so that it is can only be true of it in the
sense of being that expresses this way of being. Clearly, a mouse cannot be or
exist (that is, live) precisely in the way a cat does (for then it would have to
hunt mice, for example), and so it can truly be said to exist only in the precise
sense of being that expresses this mode of being: existing mousewise, living
a mouse life. That is to say, the nature of a creature, being distinct from its
existence, imposes an implicit determination on the sense in which the
creature can be. Since for a mouse to be is for it to be a mouse, a mouse can
only be in the way a mouse can be, which is an essentially limited form of
existence; it certainly does not involve the power of reason and the freedom
it yields in human existence, which in turn is still limited relative to angelic
existence, but which, again, is still limited, no matter how much more power,
freedom, and perfection it involves than human existence.
By contrast, even if also for God to be is for Him to be God, for God to be
is not a limited form of existence, since for God to-be-with-respect-to-his-
divinity is the same as for God to-be-with-respect-to-his-existence, and an act
of existence does not delimit itself.28 So, it is only God whose existence is
absolute BEING, whereas any creaturely existence is only being somehow, in a
creaturely way. As Aquinas says:

A created spiritual substance has to contain two [principles], one of which is related to
the other as potency to act. And this is clear from the following. It is obvious that the
first being, which is God, is infinite act, namely, having in Himself the whole plenitude
of being not contracted to the nature of some genus or species. Therefore, it is necessary
that His being itself should not be an act of being that is, as it were, put into a nature
which is not its own being, for in this way it would be confined to that nature. Hence, we
say that God is His own being. But this cannot be said about anything else; just as it is
impossible to think that there should be several separate whitenesses, but if whiteness
were separate from any subject and recipient, then it would be only one, so it is
impossible that there should be a subsistent act of being, except only one. Therefore,
everything else after the first being, since it is not its own being, has being received in
something, by which its being is contracted; and thus in any created being the nature of
the thing that participates being is other than the act of being itself that is participated.29

The analogical character of the predication of being in this case is obvious, if

we consider the following: just as the predication of being of an accident is
diminished relative to the predication of being of a substance, so the
predication of being of a created substance is diminished relative to the
predication of being of God.30 To be sure, this does not render the absolute
predication of being of created substances diminished in and of itself; it is
diminished merely relative to the “absolutely absolute” predication of being
of God.
In fact, for Aquinas, the predication of being of created substances is
epistemologically prior to the predication of being of God. But in the process
of forming our concept of the being of God, we have to realize that even if
creaturely being is better known, and thus epistemologically prior to us,
creaturely being cannot be what is primarily signified by “being” absolutely
speaking, since creaturely being is, of course, ontologically secondary to
divine being. According to Aquinas, it is precisely this disparity between the
ontological order and the epistemological order that is reflected in the
disparity between the signification and mode of signifying of the names we
can properly apply to God on account of what they signify, although not
according to how they signify:
 We should consider, therefore, that because names are imposed by us, and we do not
know God except from creatures, [the names of God] are always defective in their
representation with respect to their mode of signifying [quantum ad modum
significandi], for they signify divine perfections in the way in which they are
participated by the creatures. But if we consider the thing signified [res significata] by
the name, which is that which the name is imposed to signify, we find that some names
are imposed to signify primarily the perfection itself exemplified by God absolutely,
without implying a certain mode in their signification, while others [are imposed] to
signify a perfection in accordance with a certain mode of participation. For example, all
cognition is exemplified by divine cognition, and all knowledge by divine knowledge.
The name “sense,” however, is imposed to signify cognition in the manner in which it is
received materially by a power of an organ. But the name “cognition” does not signify a
mode of participation in its principal signification. Therefore, we have to say that all
those names which are imposed to signify some perfection absolutely are properly said
of God, and they apply to Him primarily as far as the thing signified is concerned,
although not as far as the mode of signifying is concerned, such as “wisdom,”
“goodness,” “essence,” and the like.31

Thus, since according to Aquinas we gain our primary concept of being from
created substances, we need to understand divine being by analogically
“stretching” our mundane concept. We first need to grasp the analogy
between the being of created substances and accidents, thereby understanding
that accidents exist in a diminished sense relative to substance. Then we can
grasp the analogy between the being of created substances and God, whereby
we understand that just as accidental being is diminished relative to
substantial being on account of the limitation imposed on the accident’s act
of being by its nature, so creaturely being is diminished relative to divine
being on account of the limitation imposed on a creaturely act of being by a
creaturely nature. Thus, the primary significate of the term “being” in the
ontological order has to be divine being. But this is cognized by us only
secondarily, on the basis of a primary concept we first acquire from
creaturely being.32 To be sure, if we gained our primary concept of being
directly from God, that is, if the primum cognitum of our minds were divine
being, and not created being in general, then we could understand created
being directly as a sort of diminished being, delimited and specified by the
limited nature it realizes, and then the cognitive order would match the
ontological order. However, since our mind is first confronted with the being
of created substances, it has to arrive at the cognition of divine being in this
more circuitous way, at least in accordance with Aquinas’s doctrine. But
pursuing the implications of this observation would already lead our
discussion into the arcana of late-medieval disputes concerning the primum
cognitum, which would be certainly beyond the scope of this chapter.33

AQUINAS AND THE “PHILOSOPHY OF

LANGUAGE”
So, returning in conclusion to the mundane issue of Aquinas’s “philosophy
of language,” I think even this rather sketchy survey of his relevant ideas
shows that while, on the one hand, Aquinas does show a keen interest in
issues concerning how language actually works in reflecting reality, on the
other hand, this keen interest is always subordinated to the overriding interest
in putting language to work in finding out about that reality, and even
stretching it to its limits to express what is beyond our more directly
accessible reality. This is precisely what accounts for the peculiarities of
Aquinas’s doctrine on language. This is why his doctrine has to be pieced
together from cursory observations made in the course of other discussions in
the first place. And this is also why the doctrine itself is shot through and
through with metaphysical and theological concerns, holding the entire
doctrine together. So, Aquinas is definitely not the empirical linguist who
just wants to describe how language actually works in its actual use in human
reasoning and communication. And he is not even the logician or linguistic
philosopher who is theorizing about these empirical phenomena, trying to
tease out a theoretical, not merely descriptive, but also normative model for
them (establishing, for instance, the theoretical rationale for the rules of
grammaticality, logical validity, etc.). Aquinas does have all these mundane
interests to a certain extent. However, he always has them subordinated to his
primary interest in truth, indeed, not just any mundane truth, but the First
Truth.

NOTES
1. In fact, in medieval philosophy in general, there was no philosophical
discipline identifiable as “philosophy of language.” This is not to say,
however, that medieval thinkers had no philosophical reflections on language
as the conventional medium of human thought and communication. But these
reflections can be found mostly in works on grammar and logic, or scattered
all over in works in other disciplines, putting these reflections to work in
handling other philosophical, theological, or scientific problems. Aquinas,
being a theologian, never produced a major systematic work on grammar or
logic. He did produce commentaries on Aristotle’s On Interpretation and
Posterior Analytics (Aristotle’s logical works dealing with propositions and
with demonstrations, respectively), and there are some short logical treatises
dubiously attributed to him (on such topics as modal propositions and
fallacies). But one has to piece together his views on language mostly from
scattered remarks in his other, philosophical and theological works, and from
contemporary logical doctrines he knew and used, as something presupposed
in his philosophical and theological discussions.
2. By way of a preliminary description, one may say that a form in general
is a determination of the way something is. Thus, a form of a thing is what
makes the thing actual (i.e., actually existing) either absolutely speaking, if
the form is a substantial form, or in some respect, if the form in question is an
accidental form. See, e.g., De Principiis Naturae, c.1.
3. The allusion in the last clause is to Aristotle’s description of
signification in his On Interpretation (1.6b21–22), which functioned pretty
much as “the standard definition” of meaning for medieval logicians. See
Aquinas, In Peri hermeneias, lib.1, l.5, n.16: “it is a property of a
significative utterance that it generates some understanding in the soul of the
listener” (proprium vocis significativae est quod generet aliquem intellectum
in animo audientis).
4. Translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
5. In Peri hermeneias, lib.1, l.2, n.5.
6. Resp. ad lect. Vercell. de art. 108, q.1. Cf. “The ratio that a name
signifies is the conception of the intellect about the thing signified by the
name” (Ratio enim quam significat nomen, est conceptio intellectus de re
significata per nomen.) ST I q.13 a.4.
7. See, In Meta, lb.4, lc.16, n.733.
8. Super Sent, lib.1, ds.2, q.1, a.3. in corpore.
9. That is to say, a ratio is a mental act considered only insofar as it is a
carrier of some specific sort of information, regardless of just what sort of
entity this carrier of information is, namely, whether it is some brain function
or some purely spiritual modification of an immaterial mind. That is a
completely separate issue. But then, based on this understanding of what a
concept or ratio is, Aquinas will argue that our universal concepts, carrying
just the type of information they do, cannot be the acts of a material organ.
See G. Klima, “Aquinas on the Materiality of the Human Soul and the
Immateriality of the Human Intellect,” Philosophical Investigations 32
(2009): 163–82.
10. For a brief discussion of the medieval conception of a naturally
common, and in this sense “public” mental language, as opposed to the post-
Cartesian conception of “a private” language of ideas, see G. Klima, “Review
of C. Panaccio: Le Discours intérieur de Platon à Guillaume d’Ockham,”
History and Philosophy of Logic 23 (2002): 71–73. Of course, for an
excellent survey and detailed discussion of premodern conceptions of mental
language, one should consult Panaccio’s book reviewed there.
11. For further niceties of the medieval (and later) distinction between
categorematic and syncategorematic terms, see G. Klima,
“Syncategoremata,” in Keith Brown, ed., Elsevier’s Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistics, 2d ed. (Oxford: Elsevier, 2006), 12:353–56.
12. This is not to say, however, that some of them did not attribute any
representative function to such concepts. In fact, Peter of Spain argued that
syncategorematic concepts exercise their function of modifying the
representative function of categorematic concepts as a result of their own
representative function, representing as they do certain modes of the things
represented by categorematic concepts, as conceived by these categorematic
concepts. Cf. Peter of Spain, Tractatus, called afterwards Summule
Logicales, ed. L. M. De Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), 195 and 212; Peter
of Spain, Syncategoreumata, ed. L. M. De Rijk and trans. J. Spruyt (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1992), 106–9.
13. After all, we might introduce just any old symbol to do this linking,
say, the “=” sign, uttered, for instance, as “equals.” So, out of a mere list of
names, such as “Socrates,” “a man,” “Plato,” “a philosopher,” instead of
forming propositions by using the copula (as in “Socrates is a man” or “Plato
is a philosopher”), we might form propositions, such as “Socrates = a man,”
“Plato = a philosopher,” in which there would be not a hint of the idea of
being or existence.
14. In Peri hermeneias, 1.5, n.22.
15. As St. Thomas wrote: “we should say that the thing from which
something is denominated does not always have to be a form according to the
nature of the thing; it is enough if it is signified in the way a form would be
signified, grammatically speaking. For a man is denominated from his
actions or from his clothes, which are not forms in reality” (dicendum est
quod illud a quo aliquid denominatur non oportet quod sit semper forma
secundum rei naturam, sed sufficit quod significetur per modum formae,
grammatice loquendo. Denominatur enim homo ab actione et ab indumento,
et ab aliis huiusmodi, quae realiter non sunt formae) (QDP, q.7, a.10, ad 8).
Cf. also, e.g., Cajetan: “Don’t be misled when you hear that a denominative
comes from a denominating form, and don’t believe on account of the word
‘form’ that the denominating thing has to be a form of the thing that is
denominated; you have to know that by the name ‘form’ in this context we
understand anything from which something is said to be such, whether in
reality it is an accident, or a substance, or matter or form” (Verum ne fallaris
cum audis denominativum a forma denominante oriri, et credas propter
formae vocabulum quod res denominans debet esse forma eius quod
denominatur, scito quod formae nomine in hac materia intelligimus omne
illud a quo aliquid dicitur tale, sive illud sit secundum rem accidens, sive
substantia, sive materia, sive forma) (Cajetan [Thomas de Vio], Scripta
Philosophica: Commentaria in Praedicamenta Aristotelis, ed. M. H. Laurent
[Rome: Angelicum, 1939], 18).
16. Cf. In Meta, lb.6, lc.4; In Meta, lb.5, lc.9, n.895.
17. Cf. G. Nuchelmans, Late Scholastic and Humanist Theories of the
Proposition (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1980), and Theories
of the Proposition: Ancient and Medieval Conceptions of the Bearers of
Truth and Falsity (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1973). D.
Perler, “Late Medieval Ontologies of Facts,” The Monist 77 (1994): 149–69.
18. For this interpretation, clearly reflecting Aquinas’s doctrine, see
Cajetan, Scripta Philosophica, 87.
19. Cf. Super Sent, lib.3, d.5, q.3, a.3; In Meta, lb.9, lc.11; ST I q.13 a.12;
ST I q.85 a.5 ad 3-um; ST III q.16 a.7 ad 4-um; a.9, ad 3-um.
20. The literature on this doctrine is simply staggering. For an up-to-date
survey of the literature, as well as an eminently accessible account of
Aquinas’s great commentator’s, Cajetan’s interpretation, and further
articulation of Aquinas’s doctrine, see Joshua P. Hochschild, The Semantics
of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2010).
21. In De Hebdomadibus, lc.2, n.22.
 22. For a more comprehensive treatment of Aquinas’s conception of beings
of reason along these lines, see G. Klima, “The Changing Role of Entia
Rationis in Medieval Philosophy: A Comparative Study with a
Reconstruction,” Synthese 96 (1993): 25–59.
23. For a technical, model-theoretical account of exactly how this
secondary signification of “is” can be compositionally obtained from its
primary signification, see G. Klima, “Aquinas’ Theory of the Copula and the
Analogy of Being,” Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy 5 (2002):
159–76.
24. See G. Klima, “Peter of Spain, the author of the Summulae,” in J.
Gracia and T. Noone, eds., Blackwell’s Companion to Philosophy in the
Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 526–31, esp. 529–30.
2. For a brief, up-to-date survey of the medieval theories of supposition,
see Stephen Read, “Medieval Theories: Properties of Terms,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2006 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta,
forthcoming <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2006/entries/medieval-
terms/>.
26. Cf. Super Sent, lib.3, d.5, q.3, a.3 expos. “We have to say that there is a
difference between substantive and adjective names. For substantives signify
not only a form but also the suppositum of a form and can be predicated on
account of both. And when they are predicated on account of the suppositum,
then the predication is said to be predication by identity; and when on
account of the form, then it is said to be predication by denomination or by
information. And the latter is a more appropriate predication, because terms
as predicates are taken formally. Adjectives, however, only signify a form,
and so they can be predicated only by information. Therefore, this is false:
‘the essence is generating’, although this is true: ‘the essence is the Father’.
Thus, when it is said that the Son of God is a man, then the predication is by
information and identity; but when it is said that the divine essence is a man,
then it is by identity, for [the divine essence] is really identical with a
suppositum of man, but not by information, for divine nature is not signified
as a suppositum subsisting in human nature” (Dicendum, quod differentia est
inter nomina substantiva et adjectiva. Substantiva enim significant non
tantum formam, sed etiam suppositum formae, unde possunt praedicari
ratione utriusque; et quando praedicantur ratione suppositi, dicitur
praedicatio per identitatem; quando autem ratione formae, dicitur per
denominationem, sive informationem: et haec est magis propria praedicatio,
quia termini in praedicato tenentur formaliter. Adjectiva autem tantum
significant formam; et ideo non possunt praedicari, nisi per informationem:
unde haec est falsa: essentia est generans; quamvis haec sit vera: essentia
est pater. Cum igitur dicitur, filius Dei est homo, est praedicatio per
informationem et identitatem; cum vero dicitur: essentia divina est homo, est
praedicatio per identitatem, quia est idem secundum rem cum supposito
hominis; non autem per informationem, quia natura divina non significatur
ut suppositum subsistens in humana natura). See also Super Sent., lib.3, d.7,
q.1, a.1, co; ST I q.39 a.6 ad 2; ST I q.13 a.12; Contra errores Graecorum,
pars 1, cap.18 co.
27. See Cajetan’s astute discussion of this issue in Thomas de Vio Caietani
In De Ente et Essentia D. Thomae Aquinatis, Marietti, 1934, Quaestio 7:
Utrum natura absolute sumpta sit illa quae praedicetur de individuis, 100–
101.
28. That an act of existence (a significate of the verb “is” or “exists”) does
not delimit itself is not some arcane metaphysical principle that only “the
initiated” could grasp: in general, a qualification added to a predicate
referring to the significate of the predicate itself is non-diminishing, and so it
can be dropped salva veritate. For example, saying “This sheet of paper is
white with respect to its whiteness (or with respect to its color)” amounts to
the same as saying absolutely “This sheet of paper is white.” By contrast, if
the qualification refers to something else, say, the quantity informed by this
whiteness, as in “This sheet is white with respect to its one side,” then it is
diminishing, for this claim can be true of a sheet that is not totally white but
only on one side, and in that case the qualification cannot be dropped salva
veritate, for of that sheet the absolute predication “This sheet is white” is not
true. For more about the issue of diminishing vs. non-diminishing
qualifications and their relation to analogical predication and the related issue
of the medieval treatment of the fallacy secundum quid et simpliciter, see G.
Klima, “The Semantic Principles Underlying Saint Thomas Aquinas’s
Metaphysics of Being,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996): 87–
141.
29. QDSC, q. un., a.1.
30. It should be noted here, however, that this is not “the criterion” on
account of which “being” ought to be regarded as predicated analogically of
God and creatures. Throughout this chapter, a predicate is regarded as
analogical if and only if it has a primary sense and some secondary sense(s)
somehow related to, and therefore derivable from, the primary sense by
means of some diminishing qualification. This “semantic derivability” need
not reflect at all the actual process of the formation of an analogical concept.
For the finer details of this issue in the context of thirteenth-century logic, see
E. J. Ashworth, “Analogy and Equivocation in Thirteenth-Century Logic:
Aquinas in Context,” Mediaeval Studies, 54 (1991): 94–135, and E. J.
Ashworth, “Medieval Theories of Analogy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2004 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2004/entries/analogy-medieval/>.
31. Super Sent, lib.1, d.22, q.1, a.2 co.
32. Cf. “Although in the natural order of cognition God is the first thing to
know, nevertheless, as far as we are concerned, his sensible effects are
known by us earlier” (Quamvis enim secundum naturalem ordinem
cognoscendi Deus sit primum cognitum, tamen quoad nos prius sunt cogniti
effectus sensibiles eius). In De Hebdomadibus, lc.4. Cf. ST I q.88 a.3 resp.
and ad 1.
33. A difficult, but very illuminating discussion of the problem can be
found in the first question of Cajetan’s commentary on Aquinas’s De Ente et
Essentia. See op. cit. Quaestio 1: Utrum ens sit primum cognitum ordine et
via originis, 2–19.
 CHAPTER 28

THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE AND THE NOTION

OF ANALOGY

BRIAN DAVIES

THE LIMITS OF LANGUAGE

Why should anyone think that language is limited? Does it not serve us very
well and do just what we want it to? Language succeeds in allowing us to
communicate with each other. By means of language we describe the world
and even tell each other how we feel about it. And we surely have no
thoughts that cannot be conveyed by means of language, for our thinking is
tied to language just as the color red is tied to a physical manifestation of
redness. To think that redness exists is just to think what is said by claims to
the effect that this, that, or the other thing is red. Similarly, to think that Paris
is the capital of France is just to think what “Paris is the capital of France”
says. How, we might ask, can language be limited since it gives us so much?
What might we want to do that we cannot achieve by means of language?
Obviously, language cannot help us win a lottery or get us from London to
New York in ten seconds. But that does not mean that it is limited considered
as what it is. My cat Smokey cannot cook a curry, but that does not mean that
he is limited as a cat. Considered as such, he lacks limitation, since (be
assured) he is in perfect health and is able to do all that one might expect a
cat to do. Similarly, language seems to be in good order and not in any way
lacking. For it allows us to do just what we expect it to: to communicate, to
report, to express feelings and desires, to make jokes, and so on.
Yet might there not be something with respect to which language falls
short? We sometimes say things like “I cannot tell you how much I love
you,” and many people would sympathize with such a statement and believe
it to be true. Yet we are not dealing with a limitedness when it comes to
language here. Mary may express her love for John in any number of ways
that is not captured by the simple sentence “Mary loves John.” It remains,
though, that what she does (and is) as loving John is perfectly reported by
saying that she loves him. In cases like this, we are not dealing with language
being limited. We are only dealing with a lack of descriptions. Mary’s most
accurate biographer shall, in time, be able to tell us how much she loved John
even though she may not have been able to do so.
What, though, if we are trying to talk about what does not seem to fit our
grammatical and syntactical norms? To say that Smokey is agile is to pick
out an individual (a particular cat) and to describe it. “Smokey is agile” is a
well-formed sentence, one with a subject term (Smokey) and a predicative
term (is agile). And to say that Smokey is agile is to attribute a property or
attribute to him, one that can be distinguished from him, since he might cease
to be agile without ceasing to exist. Yet what if we want to try to talk about
something not distinguishable from its attributes? Here, so one might think,
language indeed does fail us. For it does not seem to have the resources to
talk about what cannot be distinguished from what it is. Its subject/predicate
structure seems to prevent it from doing so (as the shape of a glove prevents
it from fitting onto a shower head).
Again, consider the fact that we always speak in language that is tensed.
We say that Hannibal crossed the Alps, that you are reading, and that
France’s foreign policy shall go in such and such a direction in the future.
When we single out things to talk about we regularly seem to locate them
temporally. Yet what if we want to try to talk about something that has no
spatio-temporal location? Here, so one might again think, language fails us.
For it does not seem to have the resources to talk about what is not a spatio-
temporal individual. Its commitment to tense seems to prevent it from doing
so (as a drill is incapable of painting a wall).

AQUINAS ON GOD: SOME BASICS

Aquinas seems to be sensitive to all that I have just said. He recognizes that
the ways in which we usually talk pose problems if we are trying to speak
about what is not distinct from what can be attributed to it, or about
something that has no spatio-temporal location. At the same time, however,
he also believes that there is something that is not distinct from what can be
attributed to it, something that also lacks spatio-temporal location—the
something in question here being God, the “beginning and end of all things,”
as Aquinas likes to say. So, unsurprisingly, Aquinas thinks it worth asking
how we can manage to say anything true about God at all.
To understand how he tries to answer this question we need to remember
some of his fundamental teachings when it comes to what we can know of
God when reflecting philosophically. These are all excellently documented
by other contributors to this volume, so I shall be very brief when reporting
them for present purposes. Indeed, I shall simply provide a bald list of them.
Thus, according to Aquinas: (1) God accounts for the existence (esse) of all
substances for as long as they exist (and whether or not they began to exist);
(2) God is nothing bodily; nor is he something with attributes distinguishable
from himself; God is identical with what can be truly affirmed of him; and
God is immutable; (3) There is no distinction in God of essence (essentia)
and existence (esse); so God is ipsum esse existens (“subsistent being
itself”).1
Many theistic authors do not subscribe to these teachings. All theists agree
that God is not material, but lots of them would deny that God and God’s
attributes are one and the same reality, or that God is subsistent being itself.
Many would say that God is an incorporeal “person” with distinct attributes,
something that undergoes change as time goes on, something, even, able to
be causally altered by the activity of creatures. And theists such as these
clearly have few problems when it comes to the question “How can we talk
sensibly about God?” If God is an incorporeal person (as, for example,
Descartes took himself to be), then the language we use when talking of
ourselves is straightforwardly applicable to God. The argument might go like
this: I think. So we can say that God thinks. I have knowledge, so we can say
that God has knowledge. I am (in certain respects) good, so we can say that
God is good. And by “thinks,” “knows” and “good” here we can take
ourselves to be saying of God exactly what we might say of me.
But what if we do not take God to be a temporal person alongside us?
What if we agree with Aquinas that God and his nature are not distinct (that
God is what God has)? What if we agree that God’s nature is simply to be
(and to be simply)? Then, of course, we might worry when it comes to
talking of God by speaking of him as we speak of what is not divine. We
might ask whether we can speak of God intelligibly. We might, as does
Aquinas, wonder whether our language is up to the job of saying what God
is. Aquinas believes that God and created things are seriously different from
each other. In his view, therefore, there is a real question when it comes to
making sense of talk about God. For that borrows from talk of creatures.
When we speak of God we do so as if God really were an individual in the
world, something to be described by terms that we use when talking of what
is not divine, as if God were just another thing that could come under our
ordinary categories without further ado. If God is not such an individual,
however, then how can our talk of him make sense, or capture what he is?

REJECTED ANSWERS
When turning to this question, Aquinas notes two responses to it both of
which he takes to be mistaken.
The first holds that all that we say of God should be construed in negative
terms—that, for example, “God is good” should be taken to mean “God is
not bad,” or that “God is living” should be taken to mean “God is not
inanimate.” Aquinas rejects these construals, since, so he argues, people who
say that God is good just do not mean that God is not bad. They mean that
God is actually good in and of himself. And people who say that God is
living are not just saying that God is not inanimate; they are telling us what
God really is (living as opposed to inanimate).
The second response tries to construe talk of God in causal terms and
argues that to say that God is X, Y, or Z is just to say that God causes things
to be X, Y, or Z. In terms of this response, to say, for example, that God is
good is just to say that God causes or accounts for there being good things.
Turning to this response, however, Aquinas argues that it seems to license us
to say what we cannot possibly say when it comes to God. God may cause
what is good, but, as Creator of the universe, as the cause of the esse of
things, God also causes (makes to be) what is bodily. Yet we surely cannot
conclude from this that God is something bodily. And should we suppose
that God is only good because he brings it about that good things exist? If
that were so, then God’s being good would depend on him creating good
things. Yet, Aquinas argues, God does not have to create and, therefore, we
cannot take statements like “God is good” only to mean that God produces
something good in the created universe. In Aquinas’s view, God is good, and
is whatever he is by nature, regardless of what he has brought about
(created/caused to be).

MOVING FORWARD
As he seeks to present his account of what is going on as we talk sensibly of
God, Aquinas notes two ways in which we use words, and he then asks
whether we can think of ourselves as using them in either of these ways as
we start to talk about God. His key terms here are “univocal/univocally” and
“equivocal/equivocally.”
One employs a word univocally, thinks Aquinas, when one uses it to talk
of two or more things and when the word means exactly the same each time
it is used. Suppose I say that Julius Caesar was a man and that Alexander the
Great was a man. According to Aquinas, I would be using “man” here
univocally. Again, suppose that I say that Paris is a city and that London is a
city, or that Paris is highly populated and that London is highly populated.
Aquinas would hold that I am here using “city” and “highly populated”
univocally.
By contrast, however, think of someone saying that they have money in
the bank and that their boat has just run into a bank (i.e., a river bank).
“Bank” used to speak about places in which we keep money, and “bank”
used to refer to what is to be found alongside rivers, is purely equivocal, or
so Aquinas would say. It is a linguistic accident that “bank” is used of things
that bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever (as it is a linguistic
accident that, for example, the word “date” is used to refer to what can be
eaten and to someone whom one might take out for a romantic evening). The
same can be said with an eye on, for example, “pen” as in “I keep my pen in
my pocket” and “I keep my pigs in a pen.”
With these distinctions in mind, Aquinas asks whether words applied both
to God and creatures should be thought of as univocal (meaning exactly the
same) or purely equivocal (having no meaning in common). And he rejects
both alternatives.
Words applied to creatures, he argues, cannot mean exactly the same
when applied to God, since God is not something distinct from his nature.
The reasoning goes roughly like this: (1) To say, for example, that John is
wise is to note that he has various attributes, not that he is these attributes; (2)
To say that God is wise is not to say that he has a collection of attributes
distinct from what he (considered as an individual) is; in God, wisdom is not
something different from God; (3) Clearly, therefore, “wise” in “John is
wise” and “God is wise” does not signify (pick out) exactly the same thing.
As used of John, it signifies an attribute distinct from an individual. As used
of God, it signifies the individual that God is. Or, in Aquinas’s words, and
focusing on the adjective “wise”:

When we say that a man is wise, we signify his wisdom as something distinct from the
other things about him—his essence, for example, his powers, or his existence. But
when we use “wise” when talking about God we do not intend to signify something
distinct from his essence, power or existence.… So it is clear that we do not use “wise”
in the same sense of God and people, and the same goes for all other words. So we
cannot use them univocally of God and creatures.2

On the other hand, Aquinas also wants to say, words applied to creatures
cannot mean something entirely different when applied to God. According to
Aquinas, we have positive reasons (philosophical ones) for saying that God
is, for example, active, powerful, living, and good, reasons based on what we
know of creatures. Yet, so he reasons, this could not be so if words like
“active,” “powerful,” “living,” and “good,” as used to talk about God, have
no meaning in common with our use of these words when we apply them to
creatures. Or as Aquinas again puts it: “Although we never use words in
exactly the same sense of creatures and of God, we are not merely
equivocating when we use the same word … for if this were so we could
never argue from statements about creatures—any such argument would be
invalidated by the Fallacy of equivocation.”3

ANALOGY
Immediately following the above observation, Aquinas writes: “So, we must
say that words are used of God and of creatures in an analogical way.” But
what does he mean here? His basic thought is that, when we apply words
signifying perfections to God (words that we learn in the first place when
taught to speak about creatures), the words in question (a) are truly
applicable to God, and (b) do not mean exactly what they do when used to
talk about creatures.
Note the word “perfections” here. When he says that words are used of
God and creatures in an analogical way Aquinas is not saying that all that we
might say of God is to be construed analogically. He does not, for example,
think that “The Lord is my shepherd” uses “shepherd” analogously.
Analogical predication is, for Aquinas, literal predication (is literally true,
not figuratively or metaphorically true). To say that Smokey is a cat is to say
what is literally true of him. And to say that I am alive is to say what is
literally true of me (as I write now). For Aquinas, though, to say that God is a
shepherd is not to say what is literally true of him, for God is not literally
someone in a field who looks after sheep. But, Aquinas also wants to say, we
can predicate certain terms literally of God if the terms in question do not
have some irreducibly creaturely meaning built into them. “Shepherd” means
something irreducibly creaturely (a shepherd is a human being with a
particular job at a particular time and a particular place). But what of words
like “good,” “living,” “wise,” and “powerful”? Can we use these words (and
similar ones) when speaking of what is not a creature? Aquinas thinks that
we can, and it is from here that his teaching on God and analogy takes off.
A central element in it is the conviction that we can use certain words
without meaning exactly the same thing on various occasions while also not
meaning something entirely different. And the conviction here is a sound
one. Consider, for example: “I love my family,” “I love my job,” and “I love
chicken curry.” Does “love” mean exactly the same in each of these
sentences? Hardly. But neither does it mean something entirely different.
And, notice, there is no problem in supposing that people who utter these
sentences are speaking literally. What we need to note is that love can
(literally) take different forms. Again, consider the sentences “My baby is
strong,” “My horse is strong,” and “The FBI is strong.” These can all be
thought to express literally true propositions. Yet the strength of babies is
hardly equal to the strength of horses, and the strength of the FBI goes well
beyond that of either babies or horses. What we need to note is that strength
(power) can take different forms.
With thoughts like these in mind Aquinas argues that we can use certain
words when talking of God and that we can understand them literally. He
would, however, want to add that we need to recognize how these words do
not mean just what they do when used to talk about creatures. Hence, for
example, he would find no problem in saying that the FBI is powerful and
that God is powerful. But, he would add, God is not a collection of material
individuals, as the FBI is. He would say that God’s power goes well beyond
that of the FBI, while also being comparable to it. Actually, he would say
that God’s power runs to creating the FBI (while not being an attribute that
he has distinct from himself).
Does Aquinas have some rule of thumb for determining what we can and
cannot take God to be? Yes, since he thinks that words signifying perfections
can always be used when talking of God so long as the perfections in
question are not such as to be had only by a creature of God. Being able to
purr is a perfection in the feline world. Perfect cats are purring cats. A cat
who cannot purr is sick or in some way thwarted. Yet Aquinas would not
want to say that God is able to purr. He would, however, say that God is, for
example, good. To call something good is not to categorize it as a creature of
some kind. Things of many different kinds can be thought of as good.
Goodness, we might say, can be had by anything that exists. So, thinks
Aquinas, goodness, considered as a perfection, can be ascribed to God.
Something is good, says Aquinas, insofar as it is desirable. But God is
desirable. So God is good.4
On the other hand, however, when it comes to much talk about God
Aquinas does not have a rule of thumb. Frequently, his line is that we are
justified in speaking of God with some words that we normally use to talk
about creatures just because we have one or another reason to do so. Should
we, for example, say that God is something that acts? Yes, replies Aquinas,
since we have reason to suppose that God has produced something and that
he continues to do so.5 Again, should we say that God is alive? Yes, replies
Aquinas, since we have reason to suppose that God acts of himself and not as
moved by something else.6 In general, Aquinas seeks to show that words X,
Y, or Z can be used when talking truly (and literally) of God by trying to
show that we have reason to use the words in question.
Question 13 of the Prima Pars is instructive when it comes to all of this.
Here Aquinas defends the claim that we can speak of God analogously with
words that we normally use when talking of creatures. But he does not
suggest (as some seem to have taken him to do) that we therefore have a
calculator that allows us mechanically to determine what can and cannot be
truly said of God. Commenting on Aquinas’s view that talk about God uses
words “analogically,” Peter Geach observes: “It would be better to say that it
turns out to be analogical: what happens, on Aquinas’s view, is that we first
call God “wise”; then discover that “the wisdom of God” is a designation of
God himself, whereas the like does not hold of any other being whom we
rightly call “wise”; and thus reflecting upon this, we see that “wise” cannot
be applied to God in the same way as to other beings.”7 With respect to
Prima Pars 13, Geach is exactly right. That question of the Summa
theologiae is best read as what Americans refer to as a “State of the Union
Speech.” In such speeches U.S. presidents tell their country where things
stand now given what has recently happened. In Prima Pars 13 Aquinas is
doing something like that with an eye on what he has written beforehand. He
has argued for the truth of “Deus est” (“God exists”); he has then noted ways
in which God must differ from creatures; then he has argued that certain
words that we use when talking of creatures can, for various reasons, be used
when talking of God; then he notes how these words, though not to be
thought of as used in a purely equivocal sense, are also not to be thought of
as used univocally.
In general, Aquinas’s mature view of “God talk” holds that terms we use
when speaking of creatures can be used to talk truly of God if we have reason
for using them with respect to God. And their sense, when used to talk about
God, is to be gleaned from the reasons we have for using them when talking
of God. So critics of Aquinas on talk about God do not need to worry about a
“theory of analogy.” They simply need to ask themselves if Aquinas delivers
good reasons for saying that God is X, Y, or Z, while also bearing in mind,
and, of course, evaluating, his reasons for denying that God is this, that, or
the other.8 “We cannot,” says Aquinas, “speak of God at all except in the
language we use of creatures.”9 Yet, he thinks, language we use of creatures
can be used to talk literally of God. Why? Because, thinks Aquinas, we have
a variety of reasons to use it in this way. To evaluate the truth of this
conclusion, readers will need to examine Aquinas’s many arguments for the
truth of the many propositions about God which he claims to be literally true.

NOTES
1. Statements (2) and (3) here are what Aquinas has in mind when saying
that God is entirely simple. Aquinas’s doctrine of divine simplicity is
discussed in this volume by Eleonore Stump, so I shall not labor to expound
it in any more detail.
2. ST I q.13 a.5. I should say that in this section of the present volume I
am concentrating on what Aquinas has to say about talking of God in the
Summa theologiae, in which his most mature treatment of the topic is to be
found.
3. ST I q.13 a.5.
4. ST I q.6 a.1.
5. Here, of course, Aquinas’s causal arguments for the truth of “God
exists” (Deus est) are relevant.
6. ST I q.18 a.3.
7. G. E. M. Anscombe and P. T. Geach, Three Philosophers (Blackwell:
Oxford, 1961), 122 f.
8. In Appendix 4 to vol. 3 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa
Theologiae (London and New York: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964), Herbert
McCabe writes, “Too much has been made of St Thomas’s alleged teaching
on analogy. For him, analogy is not a way of getting to know about God, nor
is it a theory of the structure of the universe, it is a comment on our use of
certain words” (106). McCabe seems to me to hit the nail on the head here.
9. ST I q.13 a.5.
 PART VII

PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY
 CHAPTER 29

PROVIDENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

ELEONORE STUMP

INTRODUCTION
The problem of evil is raised by the combination of certain traditional theistic
beliefs and the acknowledgement that there is evil in the world. If, as the
major monotheisms claim, there is a perfectly good, omnipotent, omniscient
God who creates and governs the world, how can the world such a God
created and governs have evil in it? In medieval philosophy in the Latin-
speaking west, philosophical discussion of evil is informed by Augustine’s
thought.1 Readers who have some acquaintance with the history of Christian
thought in general and with Augustine in particular may expect Aquinas’s
position as regards the problem of evil to be some version of what is often
understood, mistakenly, as Augustine’s theodicy.2 It will save confusion to
set this mistaken expectation aside at the outset.
Augustine struggled with the question of the metaphysical status of evil;
and his ultimate conclusion, that evil is a privation of being, was shared by
many later medieval philosophers, including Aquinas. “Privation” here is a
technical term of medieval logic and indicates one particular kind of
opposition; its correlative is possession. A privation is the absence of some
characteristic in a thing that naturally possesses that characteristic. So, on
Augustine’s views, evil is not nothing, as he is sometimes believed to have
maintained. Rather, it is a lack or deficiency of some sort of being in
something in which that sort of being is natural. This position of Augustine’s
is an attempt to explain, as it were, the ontology of evil. Nothing about this
ontological position constitutes a solution to the problem of evil, nor did
Augustine or any later medieval philosophers suppose it did.3 Aquinas
himself would certainly not have supposed that anything about the
metaphysical status of evil provided a reason for God’s permitting human
suffering to occur.4
Augustine is also known for his suggestion that the evil permitted by God
contributes to the beauty and goodness of the whole universe, just as a dark
patch may contribute to the lightness and beauty of a painting. Some people
also mistakenly interpret this suggestion on Augustine’s part as an attempt at
theodicy. But taking Augustine’s point in this way is to suppose that, for
Augustine, the answer to the question of why God allows suffering is that
suffering has an aesthetic value for God. The moral repulsiveness of such a
position strikes many people as obvious; it would most certainly have been
obvious to Aquinas.5 Aquinas himself explicitly repudiates the idea that God
would allow the suffering of human persons for any reason other than benefit
to the sufferers. So, for example, Aquinas says,

Whatever happens on earth, even if it is evil, turns out for the good of the whole world.
Because as Augustine says in the Enchiridion, God is so good that he would never
permit any evil if he were not also so powerful that from any evil he could draw out a
good. But the evil does not always turn out for the good of the thing in connection with
which the evil occurs, because although the corruption of one animal turns out for the
good of the whole world—insofar as one animal is generated from the corruption of
another—nonetheless it does not turn out for the good of the animal which is corrupted.
The reason for this is that the good of the whole world is willed by God for its own sake,
and all the parts of the world are ordered to this [end]. The same reasoning appears to
apply with regard to the order of the noblest parts [of the world] with respect to the other
parts, because the evil of the other parts is ordered to the good of the noblest parts. But
what ever happens with regard to the noblest parts is ordered only to the good of those
parts themselves, because care is taken of them for their own sake, and for their sake
care is taken of other things.… But among the best of all the parts of the world are
God’s saints.… He takes care of them in such a way that he does not allow any evil for
them which he does not turn into their good.6

AQUINAS’S SCALE OF VALUE

With this possible confusion set aside, we can begin the examination of what
Aquinas’s theodicy actually is by considering the standard of value he
accepts for human flourishing. Any discussion of the problem of evil
presupposes some standard of value, in accordance with which the existence
of suffering is judged at least prima facie inconsistent with the existence of a
good God.
 It is easiest to begin with the extrinsic lower limit to human flourishing.
What is the worst thing that can happen to a human being? On Aquinas’s
views, the worst thing that can happen to a person is to become alienated
from God; it is to be endlessly isolated from God’s redemptive goodness.
What underlies Aquinas’s adoption of this characterization of the worst thing
for human beings is the conviction Aquinas shares with other thinkers in the
Christian tradition that personal relationship is the genus within which the
greatest goods for human beings fall. On this conviction, the greatest good
for human beings—the greatest flourishing of human beings—consists in
personal relationships of a certain sort. For Aquinas, God has a mind and a
will; and so, in our sense of the word “person,”7 God is a person, on
Aquinas’s views of God. A union of love with God is thus a personal
relationship, too; on Aquinas’s views, it is the greatest of personal
relationships. The best thing for human beings, the intrinsic upper limit on
human flourishing, is to be in a union of love with God. And so the worst
thing for human beings and the best thing for human beings are correlatives.
Put this way, the point is not exactly right. That is because, on Aquinas’s
views, the hallmark of a great good is that it is shareable, that it is not
diminished by being distributed. The union of love with God, which is the
greatest of goods for a human being and the best of personal relationships, is
consequently also the most shareable. The love of one human being for
another is also a shareable good, and human loves can themselves be woven
into the shareable love between God and human persons. So the shared union
of love among human beings and God is the best thing for human beings, on
Aquinas’s scale of value.
Furthermore, on Aquinas’s views, human beings are permanent and not
transitory things. For this reason, the best thing and the worst thing for
human beings can also be permanent things. For Aquinas, heaven is the best
thing made permanent and unending. The permanent shared union of loving
personal relationship with God in heaven is thus, finally, the truly best thing
for human beings. The worst thing is the permanent absence of that shared
union. For Aquinas, because a human will is free in a libertarian sense,8 it is
possible for a human being never to want or to achieve real closeness or love
with God or with any human persons either. A human being is capable of
being in such a condition forever; and this is hell.9 On Aquinas’s worldview,
then, not only is loneliness hellish, in the sense that it is one of the worst
things for a human being, but also hell, which is the worst thing made
permanent and unending, is lonely.10
As these remarks make clear, it is part of Aquinas’s worldview that a
human being’s life is divided into two unequal portions, one very little
portion before death and another, infinitely enduring, after death.11 For
reasons having to do not with his theology but with his philosophical
psychology,12 Aquinas holds that the state of a person at the end of the little
portion of his life determines his state in the infinitely extended portion of his
life after death. For any human person, the degree of his flourishing in
perpetuity is set by his condition at the end of the first, little portion of his
life.13
Aquinas’s views of the best thing and the worst thing for human beings
mark out a scale of value on which human suffering and the benefits which
might be thought to redeem it can be measured. Aquinas himself thinks that
acceptance of the view that there is an afterlife and that true happiness
consists in union with God in that afterlife is essential to his theodicy.
Without it, he thinks, the theodicy he adopts will appear senseless. So, for
example, he says,

If there is no resurrection of the dead, it follows that there is no good for human beings
other than in this life. And if this is the case, then those people are more miserable who
suffer many evils and tribulations in this life. Therefore, since the apostles and
Christians [generally] suffer more tribulations, it follows that they, who enjoy less of the
goods of this world, would be more miserable than other people.14

What Aquinas goes on to say spells out explicitly the difference between the
commonly accepted worldview of his society and that of the popular culture
of our own. He says,

If there were no resurrection of the dead, people would not think it was a power and a
glory to abandon all that can give pleasure and to bear the pains of death and dishonor;
instead they would think it was stupid.

So, in order to see human suffering as Aquinas does in his theodicy, in order
not to see the acceptance of human suffering or the justification of God’s
allowing such suffering as senseless, it is essential to Aquinas’s theodicy also
to include the doctrine that human beings are capable of everlasting union
with God in the afterlife.
 It is also important to recognize that the best thing, the upper limit of
Aquinas’s scale of value for human lives, comes in degrees.15 This may
appear paradoxical, but a moment’s thought will dissipate the appearance. As
regards physical condition, the best state for human beings is to be in peak
physical condition. But human beings will differ greatly in what constitutes
peak physical condition for them. The peak physical condition for a professor
will be considerably less impressive as regards physical condition than the
peak physical condition of a professional athlete. Analogously, on Aquinas’s
views, human beings differ greatly in what constitutes for them the peak
human condition of union with God.16
That is because it is possible to have more or less of a loving relationship
in union with any person. It is possible to have more or less of a loving
relationship in union with God, too. The love and presence of omnipresent
God are fully and equally available to all human beings.17 But there are
differences in the willingness and the capacity to receive God’s love even on
the part of those human beings who are in union with God. Even in heaven,
then, the best thing for human beings, their glory, as Aquinas would call it,
comes in degrees. For this reason, what constitutes the most excellent state
for human beings is itself a degreed state; it is not had equally by all those
who are in that state.

THE GOOD OF THE SUFFERER

With this much description of Aquinas’s scale of value for a human life, we
can now turn to what Aquinas sees as the morally sufficient reason for God
to allow suffering.18 On Aquinas’s theodicy, God is justified in allowing the
suffering by one or the other of two possible benefits, where Aquinas’s scale
of value is the measure of the benefits.19
Which of the two possible benefits goes to a particular sufferer on any
given occasion depends on the condition of the sufferer herself at that time.
Aquinas takes a person of faith to be someone who has committed herself to
living a life like that of Christ, with the explicit recognition that such a life
includes suffering for the sake of greater spiritual good. And so a person of
faith has in effect given consent to living a life which includes suffering. Any
particular suffering on the part of a person of faith may in fact be
involuntary; but, in virtue of the fact that she has voluntarily chosen a course
of life in which (involuntary) suffering has a central role, her suffering is not
involuntary simpliciter. Because of her commitment to the life of faith, her
suffering is involuntary only in a certain respect. By contrast, when a
sufferer who is not a person of faith involuntarily endures the sufferings of
life,20 his suffering is involuntary simpliciter. A person who does not have
faith, who is not committed to a Christian life, has not given consent for
suffering in any sense.
On Aquinas’s views, the benefit that defeats suffering has to be
understood differently for these two groups. So, for example, in his
commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, Aquinas says,

If all the pain a human being suffers is from God [as Aquinas thinks it is], then he ought
to bear it patiently, both because it is from God and because it is ordered toward good;
for pains purge sins, bring evildoers to humility, and stimulate good people to love of
God.21

For a person who does not have faith, whose suffering is involuntary
simpliciter, God is justified in allowing suffering and suffering is defeated
because of the contribution suffering makes to warding off a greater harm for
the sufferer. On the other hand, for a person who is committed to a life of
faith, whose suffering is involuntary only in a certain respect, God is justified
in allowing suffering and suffering is defeated because of the contribution of
suffering to providing a greater good for the sufferer.22 Union with God
features in each of these benefits. The greater harm warded off is the
permanent absence of shared union with God; and the greater good provided
is the increased degree of everlasting shared union with God.
Since it is an extrinsic lower limit on the scale of human flourishing, the
negative value of the permanent absence of union with God outweighs the
negative value of suffering of any kind. And since union with God is the
intrinsic upper limit to human flourishing, the greater good of this union
outweighs the good of the avoiding of suffering. The main question for
Aquinas’s theodicy therefore is not whether the good of the benefit
outweighs the suffering in any given case but rather whether the suffering is
appropriately connected to one or the other of these benefits. Even if we
weigh the relative value of the benefits and the suffering as Aquinas does, the
question arises why Aquinas would suppose that suffering is connected to
these benefits in the way it needs to be for the purposes of theodicy.

THE OBSTACLES TO HUMAN FLOURISHING

It helps in trying to find the answer to this question to see what Aquinas takes
to be the impediments to union with God. For Aquinas, the obstacle to any
person’s flourishing in union with God comes from dispositions in that
person’s will, which incline him to prefer his own short-term pleasure and
power over greater goods. On Aquinas’s understanding of the doctrine of
original sin, all human beings have a sort of cancer of the will,23 a proneness
to evil, which invariably eventuates in moral wrongdoing sooner or later and
which in the right circumstances blows up into moral monstrosity.24 No
human being who remains uncured of the disease of the will can be united
with God. For Aquinas, then, the obstacle to a person’s having the best thing
for human beings, shared union with God, is that person’s condition in the
will.25 Since the best thing for human beings and the worst thing for human
beings are jointly exhaustive, warding off the worst thing for any human
person is also a matter of healing this internal condition.
Aquinas takes the justification and sanctification of postlapsarian human
beings to be the means by which a person becomes healed of the disease in
the will. (The full story of Aquinas’s account of redemption lies outside the
scope of this entry; it includes not only Aquinas’s understanding of grace but
also his theory of the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of
Christ.26)
Justification occurs when a human person recognizes and rejects the moral
evil in himself and yearns for the goodness of God.27 It includes most
centrally an act of will that is a global second-order desire for a will that wills
the good. Aquinas thinks of this as the volitional component of the act of
faith. On Aquinas’s account of faith, a person who forms such an act of will
is in effect forming a volition for God to alter her will by making it
progressively more and more internally integrated in the good.28 Aquinas
takes this act of will to be the sole necessary and sufficient condition for
warding off the worst thing for human beings. While this act of will remains
in a person, permanent isolation from God is ruled out for her. Warding off
for a person the greater harm of permanent absence of union with God is thus
a matter of bringing about and maintaining this volition in her.29
For Aquinas, then, the morally sufficient reason for God’s allowing
suffering that is involuntary simpliciter for a person is the role of such
suffering in bringing that person to the act of will in faith constitutive of
justification.
When a person forms the act of will constitutive of justification, this act of
will is only the beginning of a process of healing the will for that person. The
ongoing healing is the process of sanctification. In this process, God works
together with the will of a human person in a cooperative enterprise that
gradually integrates her more and more in goodness.30 Sanctification brings a
person into as deep a union with God as she is willing to have. Insofar as her
greatness is correlative with her union with God, sanctification also
transforms her into something glorious.
For those human beings who are committed to the cooperative enterprise
of sanctification, then, the morally sufficient reason for God’s allowing their
suffering, which is involuntary only in a certain respect, is the role of that
suffering in their sanctification.

THE ROLE OF SUFFERING IN WARDING OFF

THE WORST THING
Because Aquinas thinks of justification and sanctification as healing for a
human psyche, he often speaks of suffering as God’s medicine for the
psychic disorder of postlapsarian human beings.31 In his commentary on
Thessalonians, he says,

As water extinguishes a burning fire, so tribulations extinguish the force of concupiscent

desires, so that human beings don’t follow them at will.… Therefore, [the Church] is not
destroyed [by tribulations] but lifted up by them, and in the first place by the lifting up
of the mind to God, as Gregory says: the evils which bear us down here drive us to go to
God.32

Aquinas comments in great detail on the line in Hebrews: “whom the Lord
loves he chastens.”33 He says, for example,

Since pains are a sort of medicine, we should apparently judge correction and medicine
 the same way. Now medicine in the taking of it is bitter and loathsome, but its end is
desirable and intensely sweet. So discipline is also. It is hard to bear, but it blossoms into
the best outcome.34

The same general point appears recurrently in Aquinas’s commentary on Job.

Arguing that temporal goods such as those Job lost are given and taken away
according to God’s will, Aquinas says,

someone’s suffering adversity would not be pleasing to God except for the sake of some
good coming from the adversity. And so although adversity is in itself bitter and gives
rise to sadness, it should nonetheless be agreeable [to us] when we consider its
usefulness, on account of which it is pleasing to God.… For in his reason a person
rejoices over the taking of bitter medicine because of the hope of health, even though in
his senses he is troubled.35

In commenting on a line in Job containing the complaint that God sometimes

does not hear a needy person’s prayers, Aquinas says,

Now it sometimes happens that God hearkens not to a person’s pleas but rather to his
advantage. A doctor does not hearken to the pleas of the sick person who requests that
the bitter medicine be taken away (supposing that the doctor doesn’t take it away
because he knows that it contributes to health); instead he hearkens to [the patient’s]
advantage, because by doing so he produces health, which the sick person wants most of
all. In the same way, God does not remove tribulations from the person stuck in them,
even though he prays earnestly for God to do so, because God knows these tribulations
help him forward to final salvation. And so although God truly does hearken, the person
stuck in afflictions believes that God hasn’t hearkened to him.36

For Aquinas, then, suffering is medicinal for the parts of a person’s psyche in
need of healing.37 For those who are already healed to a certain extent, the
experience of suffering enables them to open in a deeper way to the love of
God, as Aquinas says in the commentary on the Creed. But for those who are
very far from being healed, suffering is medicinal in the sense that, as
Aquinas puts it, it helps the sufferer forward to salvation. For those very
alienated from themselves and from God, suffering contributes to warding
off from the sufferer the worst thing for human beings.

THE ROLE OF SUFFERING IN PROVIDING THE

BEST THING
Given Aquinas’s view of suffering as medicinal for the human psyche, one
might be tempted to think that Aquinas would also take the degree of a
person’s suffering to be in direct proportion to her need for psychic healing.
One might suppose, that is, that since for Aquinas suffering is medicinal, he
would also think that a person who was more advanced in healing would
need and so would get less suffering. But, in fact, Aquinas’s position is just
the opposite.
On Aquinas’s theodicy, the more a person is healed, the more advanced
she is in the process of drawing near to God, the more likely it is that she will
experience suffering. In explicating two metaphors in one of Job’s
speeches,38 comparing human beings in this life to soldiers on a military
campaign and to employees, Aquinas makes the point in this way:

It is plain that the general of an army does not spare [his] more active soldiers dangers or
exertions, but as the plan of battle requires, he sometimes lays them open to greater
dangers and greater exertions. But after the attainment of victory, he bestows greater
honor on the more active soldiers. So also the head of a household assigns greater
exertions to his better servants, but when it is time to reward them, he lavishes greater
gifts on them. And so neither is it characteristic of divine providence that it should
exempt good people more from the adversities and exertions of the present life, but
rather that it reward them more at the end.39

Aquinas’s sense that the inner wholeness of a person renders her more, rather
than less, likely to suffer can be understood in light of his taking suffering as
medicinal. Strenuous medical regimens are saved for the strongest patients,
in the hopes of bringing them to the most robust health and functioning. On
Aquinas’s theodicy, for those people who are psychically healthier, the
benefit that justifies suffering is the connection between suffering and glory.
So, for example, he says,

All the saints who have pleased God have gone through many tribulations by which they
were made the sons of God.40

In his commentary on Thessalonians, Aquinas makes the same point in a

slightly different way:

Many who are alive [in the eschaton] will be tried in the persecution of Antichrist, and
they will surpass in greatness the many who had previously died.41
Elsewhere he puts the point in a more general way. He says,

from sufferings borne here a person attains to glory.42

These and many other passages make it clear that Aquinas thinks there is a
connection between suffering, on the one hand, and glory in shared union
with God, on the other. It is not surprising, then, to find that Aquinas sees a
person’s enduring severe suffering as a sign of the spiritual greatness of the
sufferer.
Aquinas does not lose sight of the fact that any particular involuntarily
endured suffering is real suffering, lamentable, sorrowful, execrable, and to
be avoided or remedied if at all possible. But because Aquinas thinks that the
suffering for those able and willing to receive it as sanctifying contributes to
the best thing for human beings, he also thinks that there is something to
exult in as regards such suffering. So, for example, he says,

It is a sign of the ardent hope which we have on account of Christ that we glory not only
because of [our] hope of the glory to come, but we glory even regarding the evils which
we suffer for it. And so [Paul] says that we not only glory (that is, in our hope of glory),
but we glory even in tribulations, by which we attain to glory.43

SUFFERING AND CONSOLATION

Even with this much clarification, Aquinas’s theodicy is still not presented in
full. What is yet missing is his understanding of the role of divine
consolation.
Because God is omnipresent and perfectly loving, Aquinas thinks that all
suffering is encompassed even in this life by the love of God. The experience
of the personal presence of God is not reserved just for mystics.44 On the
doctrine of omnipresence, God’s personal presence is always available to
every human being. A person has only to be wholeheartedly willing to
receive God’s love and presence in order to have them, to one degree or
another.45 For those who are open to God’s presence, the minimal
omnipresence of God becomes presence in love; and this presence brings
consolation with it.
In fact, Aquinas thinks that, for sufferers who are open to God’s presence,
the consolation of that presence is felt with increased intensity in direct
proportion to their sufferings. At the start of his commentary on 1
Thessalonians, Aquinas quotes with approval the line in 2 Corinthians, which
says that “as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also
abounds by Christ” (2 Cor. 1:5).
It should also be said that Aquinas’s notion of consolation is not abstract
or anemic; rather, it emphasizes the role of personal presence in relationship
with God. So, for example, Aquinas says,

the ultimate perfection, by which a person is made perfect inwardly, is joy, which stems
from the presence of what is loved. Whoever has the love of God, however, already has
what he loves, as is said in 1 John 4:16: “whoever abides in the love of God abides in
God, and God abides in him.” And joy wells up from this.46

Elsewhere, commenting on a text in the epistles of Paul, Aquinas puts the

point this way:

When [Paul] says “the Lord is near,” he points out the cause of joy, because a person
rejoices at the nearness of his friend.47

Moreover, on Aquinas’s views, the joy that comes from such personal
presence between God and a human person is essential to a religious life of a
believer; and he expects that all persons of faith will have such joy.48 As
Aquinas sees it, without the joy of this relationship, no progress is possible
for anyone in the life of faith.49
Someone might object that suffering interferes with the joy of loving
relations and that Aquinas simply fails to appreciate this point. In response to
such an objection, Aquinas would grant that loving relationship even with the
deity does not prevent or take away suffering.50 On the other hand, however,
Aquinas would reject the objection itself. Aquinas thinks that no sort of
suffering, not even pain, can destroy the good of the loving personal
relationship between God and a human being open to God’s presence.51

CONCLUSION: THE MYSTERIOUSNESS OF

SUFFERING
Finally, a word should be said about the mysteriousness of suffering. In
recent years, a substantial literature has developed that contends on the basis
of epistemological considerations that a theodicy is not needed in order to
rebut the argument from evil. This response to the problem of evil has come
to be called “skeptical theism,” and it is centered on the limitedness of human
cognitive capacities. On the view of skeptical theism, we can know that we
are not in an epistemic position to recognize morally sufficient reasons for
God’s allowing suffering,52 because we can see that finite human minds
cannot comprehend the infinite mind of God or cannot evaluate the
intricacies of probabilistic reasoning or cannot calculate complicated modal
claims.53 Since we can know that our minds are limited in one or more of
these ways, the response of skeptical theism goes, then the argument from
evil is undermined.54
Aquinas would suppose skeptical theism to be false.55 He takes it to be
true that human beings are in a position to know what God’s reasons are for
allowing suffering—that is, the suffering of fully functional adult human
beings, to which the theodicy under discussion in this entry is limited. But
Aquinas would suppose that this theodicy is applicable only in general or in
theory. For any particular case of suffering, because of the opacity of the
benefits defeating suffering, human beings will typically not be in a position
to know what justifies God in permitting that suffering. The epistemic
problem for Aquinas is not the inscrutability of God’s mind (as skeptical
theism alleges) but the inscrutability of the human heart and the complexity
of a human life. On Aquinas’s views, then, there is a mundane reason for
being doubtful about our ability to discern the morally sufficient reason
justifying any particular case of human suffering: the particular benefits that
could defeat that particular suffering are not transparent to us. So, for
example, in explaining why some things are not known to some cognizers,
Aquinas says,

[one reason why something is not known is that] it is obscured by being inside
something [else]. The things most obscured in this way are the things hidden in the
[human] heart, which is exceedingly deep and inscrutable.56

What requires healing about a particular person, what role a particular

instance of suffering plays or might play in that person’s redemption and
glory—these are things which no human being, including the sufferer, may
be in a position to know. The role of any particular case of suffering in
contributing to bringing a particular person closer to God can be evident only
to a person in a position to see more than human persons typically can see.
For this reason, the inference in any particular instance of suffering to the
absence of a benefit defeating suffering from the appearance of the absence
of such a benefit is not valid. On Aquinas’s account, the nature of a particular
benefit able to defeat suffering in any given case is such that reason may not
be able to see it. Unlike the agnosticism of skeptical theism, however, this is
not an agnosticism about the general nature of the morally sufficient reasons
for God’s allowing suffering. Consequently, this agnosticism does not
militate against the possibility of theodicy in general, as skeptical theism
does. Rather, Aquinas’s views about the benefits that could defeat suffering
constitute an argument only against confidence in human abilities to evaluate
the application of the general claims of theodicy to any particular case of
suffering. If in some particular case of human suffering we can see no
particular benefit that justifies that suffering, we are not thereby entitled to
claim that in that case there is none.
And so, although Aquinas supposes that there is available to human
beings a good and acceptable theodicy, it remains the case that, on his views,
any particular case of suffering is likely to remain a mystery to us. A
theodicy, as Aquinas understands it, cannot give a specific answer to the
question why Aunt Sallie was hit by a car.57
It should also be said here that, in the same way and for analogous
reasons, Aquinas’s theodicy cannot give a specific answer to questions about
suffering of large-scale societies. If we want to know why God allowed the
suffering of the western world during World War I, or what benefits in
particular defeated the great communal suffering elicited by that social
convulsion, then it is important to recognize that, on Aquinas’s account, we
are not in a position to give an answer to the question.
For Aquinas, such an answer would have to fall within the general
outlines of his theodicy. That is, the benefits would have to go primarily to
the sufferers, as measured by Aquinas’s scale of value for human flourishing.
Furthermore, because the question asks about the communal suffering of
many nations taken together, the benefit would have to be commensurate in
scope and size. That is, the benefit would have to affect many societies, and
it would also have to impact society as a whole, influencing the entire
community in such a way as to ward off the worst thing for human beings or
contribute to the best thing for human beings taken communally. Only
someone in a position to be aware of the trajectory of whole societies could
answer the question about suffering of this magnitude. It seems clear that
human beings are very rarely in a position to grasp things of this sort.
And so although there is no answer to the question about suffering
affecting whole societies, on Aquinas’s theodicy we can see that we are
rarely if ever able to see the things about such extensive organizations of
people, which we would have to see in order to apply Aquinas’s theodicy to
suffering on that scale.58

NOTES
1. The literature on Augustine’s reflections on goodness is vast; but see,
e.g., Christopher Kirwan, Augustine (London: Routledge, 1989) and G. R.
Evans, Augustine on Evil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
for helpful introductions. For more recent discussion, see Norman Kretzmann
and Eleonore Stump, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For a good overview of the
problem in the context of medieval philosophical theology, see Ingolf
Dalferth, Malum: Theologische Hermeneutik des Bösen (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2008).
2. For some further discussions of the issues in this section, see my “The
Problem of Evil,” in Robert Pasnau, ed., The Cambridge History of Later
Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
3. For a general discussion of this Augustinian position in later medieval
philosophy, see, e.g., Scott MacDonald, ed., Being and Goodness: The
Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
4. In this essay, I am limiting consideration not just to human suffering
but in fact to the suffering of normally functioning adult human beings. The
reasons for such a limitation on the description of Aquinas’s theodicy and the
possibility of extrapolating from that theodicy to other cases of suffering not
covered in it are explored in detail in my Wandering in Darkness: Narrative
and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
 5. Augustine would also have found such a position unacceptable, in my
view. For a discussion of this issue, see my “The Problem of Evil,” in Robert
Pasnau, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Some parts of this entry are
taken from that essay.
6. In Rom 8.6.
7. In Aquinas’s terms, the point has to be put differently, of course; on the
doctrine of the Trinity, in medieval terms, there is one God in three persons.
But this is a technical sense of “person,” drawn from Boethius’s formulation:
a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Nonetheless, the
technical sense as it is used in the doctrine of the Trinity is compatible with
the claim that God is a person, in our sense of the word “person.” There is
just one will and one intellect in the triune God, on the orthodox views
Aquinas accepts. Insofar as, in our sense of “person,” something having one
mind and one will is a person, it is true to say that for Aquinas God is a
person. Some readers will also want to object to the claim that for Aquinas
God has a will and a mind, on the grounds that for Aquinas God is simple
and therefore has no parts that can be distinguished from one another as mind
is distinguished from will. But although it is true that Aquinas’s God is
simple, Aquinas himself talks about the intellect and the will of God.
Formulating claims about God in order to bring the doctrine of simplicity to
the fore requires so much clumsiness in locution that Aquinas himself
regularly omits it. For defense of Aquinas’s views on simplicity, see the
relevant chapter in my Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003).
8. For an explanation of Aquinas’s kind of libertarianism, see the chapter
on free will in my Aquinas.
9. There is more to hell than simply the loss of God’s presence, on
Aquinas’s views, because there is also penalty or punishment; but Aquinas
supposes that the loss of God’s presence is sufficient for hell.
10. For examination of Aquinas’s view that the union of love is possible
only in integration around goodness, see my “Love, By All Accounts,”
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 80:2
(November 2006): 25–43.
11. For Aquinas’s position on the separated soul, see my entry in this
volume.
12. Because of the connection he accepts between the intellect and the will,
Aquinas thinks that there is no major change of heart possible after a person
has his first experience of the afterlife and sees whatever of God he can see.
For explanation of Aquinas’s moral psychology, see the chapters on freedom
and on wisdom in my Aquinas.
13. Aquinas supposes that there is no traffic between heaven and hell; that
is, no person who was really in heaven ever goes to hell, and no person who
was really in hell ever goes to heaven. (The qualifier “really” is needed to
handle some theological complexities, such as the harrowing of hell, which
are not relevant to the topic of this essay.) It is clear enough why the inability
to lose heaven would be essential to peace and joy in heaven. But it is less
easy to see why a person in hell could not repent and come to heaven. The
reasons Aquinas gives for his view that it is not possible have to do with his
understanding of the conditions needed for changing one’s mind. If he were
wrong on this score, the error would necessitate only a redescription of the
extrinsic lower limit of the scale of value for human flourishing.
14. Aquinas, In I Cor 15.2.
15. It is also the case that, for Aquinas, the extrinsic lower limit on
flourishing comes in degrees. The state of everlasting distance from God is a
degreed state too, on his views. As far as I can see, this part of his worldview
makes no significant difference to the lineaments of his theodicy, and so I am
leaving it out of account here, for the sake of keeping complications to a
minimum. But if in fact someone supposes that this part of Aquinas’s
worldview does make a difference to his theodicy, it can be added in at no
cost except that of complexity. In that case, the lower limit of flourishing
would have to be dealt with in the same way as the upper limit.
16. Cf., e.g., ST I-II q.112 a.4 ad 2, where Aquinas addresses the objection
that there cannot be greater or lesser grace in one person than in another,
either in this life or in heaven. In the reply to that objection, Aquinas makes
clear that there are differences of degree even, as he says, in final glory.
17. For further discussion of Aquinas’s position on God’s grace and its role
in human salvation, see the chapters on faith and on grace and free will in my
Aquinas.
18. Some readers will suppose that by speaking of a morally sufficient
reason for God to allow evil, one attributes moral obligations to God; and
they will resist such attribution. It is important to recognize that this position
is not entailed by a theodicy; a theodicy does not require anyone to posit
moral obligations for God. A morally sufficient reason for God to allow
suffering is only a reason which, by the moral standards of human beings
considering the problem of evil, is sufficient to justify God in our eyes for his
permission of human suffering.
19. In what follows, the discussion is limited to the suffering of fully
functional adult human beings, for the sake of brevity. For a consideration of
the reasons for this limitation and suggestions for ways in which Aquinas’s
basic theodicy as presented here might be extended, see my Wandering in
Darkness.
20. The point of the clumsy phrase “the sufferings of life” is, of course, to
exclude some sorts of partly voluntary suffering, such as the suffering
experienced by athletes or soldiers in the course of their activities as athletes
or soldiers.
21. For an annotated translation of the text, see Nicholas Ayo, The Sermon-
Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). Although I have preferred to
use my own translation, I found Ayo’s helpful, and for this work I give
citations both to the Latin and to Ayo’s translation. Thomas Aquinas,
Collationes Credo in Deum, sec. III; Ayo, Sermon-Conferences, 40–42.
22. Of course, the same person might at one time not be a person of faith
and at another time might be a person of faith. So the benefit defeating
suffering has to be relativized not only to a person but also to the condition of
that person at a particular time.
23. Strictly speaking, this claim needs to be slightly qualified for reasons
having to do with the Incarnation.
24. Aquinas, Super ad Hebraeos, chap. 12, lect. 2.
25. To say that this is the only obstacle is not to say that a human being can
achieve this union on her own without help from God. But since, on
Aquinas’s views, the apostle Paul is correct in claiming that God desires to
save all human beings, the obstacle to union with God comes only from
human beings.
26. For discussion of these topics, see the relevant chapters in my Aquinas.
27. For the connection between this claim and Aquinas’s theory of the
atonement, see the chapters on faith and on atonement in my Aquinas.
28. For the role of grace in the formation of this act of will, see the chapter
on grace in my Aquinas.
29. For more discussion of justification, see the relevant chapters in my
Aquinas.
30. For a discussion of the sort of cooperation at issue here, see the
chapters on faith and on grace in my Aquinas.
31. For futher discussion of suffering as medicinal in the thought of
Thomas Aquinas, see the chapter on providence and suffering in my Aquinas.
32. There is a translation of this commentary: Commentary on Saint Paul’s
First Letter to the Thessalonians and the Letter to the Philippians by St.
Thomas Aquinas, trans. F. R. Larcher and Michael Duffy (Albany, N.Y.:
Magi Books, 1969). Although I have preferred to use my own translations, I
found the Larcher and Duffy translation helpful. Thomas Aquinas, Super ad
Thessalonicenses I, prologue; Larcher and Duffy, Commentary, 3.
33. Super ad Hebraeos, chap. 12, lect. 1.
34. Super ad Hebraeos, chap. 12, lect. 2.
35. Aquinas, Expositio super Job, chap. 1, sec. 20–21; Thomas Aquinas,
The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary concerning
Providence, trans. Anthony Damico and Martin Yaffe, The American
Academy of Religion Classics in Religious Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1989), 89.
36. Aquinas, Expositio super Job, chap. 9, sec. 15–21; Damico and Yaffe,
Literal Exposition on Job, 174.
37. To say that it is medicinal for all sufferers is not to say that all sufferers
are justified and sanctified by it; not all things that are medicinal are
efficacious for cure.
38. Only one of the two metaphors is in the text translated in the Revised
Standard Version, the King James, and the Anchor Bible.
39. Aquinas, Expositio super Job, chap. 7, sec. 1; Damico and Yaffe,
Literal Exposition on Job, 146.
40. Super ad Hebraeos, chap. 12, lect. 2.
41. Aquinas, Super ad Thessalonicenses I, chap. 4, lect. 2; Larcher and
Duffy, Commentary, 39.
42. Aquinas, Super ad Philippenses, chap. 3, lect. 2; Larcher and Duffy,
Commentary, 102.
43. Aquinas, Super ad Romanos, chap. 5, lect. 1.
44. It is clear that there are degrees of such experience. For human beings
in this life, the religious experience of mystics no doubt is an upper bound.
At the lower bound, it is possible to receive something of the consolation of
God’s presence and love without recognizing it as such. The consolation of
love, and its opposites, need not operate at the level of full consciousness.
Perhaps it is possible even for a person who believes of himself that he is
alienated from God or an atheist to receive some kind of consolation from
God’s presence, provided that, contrary to what he believes of himself, he
has not closed God out entirely. There is a poignant description of such a
complicated psychic state in the autobiographical work, Grace Abounding to
the Chief of Sinners, by the seventeenth-century Puritan writer John Bunyan.
So perhaps there are people who believe of themselves that they have no
religious experiences but who are wrong in that claim.
45. The notable exception to this claim has to do with the dark night of the
soul, a complicated religious phenomenon that has to be left aside here.
46. There is an English translation of this work: Commentary on Saint
Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians by St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. F. R. Larcher
and Richard Murphy (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966). Although I have
preferred to use my own translations, I found the Larcher and Murphy
translation helpful. Super ad Galatas, chap. 5, lect. 6; Larcher and Murphy,
Commentary, 179–80.
47. Super ad Philippenses, chap. 4, lect. 1; Larcher and Duffy,
Commentary, 113.
48. For Aquinas, joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and it is the state
resulting from the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are necessary to salvation. See,
e.g., ST I-II q.70 a.3.
49. Super ad Philippenses, chap. 4, lect. 1; Larcher and Duffy,
Commentary, 112.
50. See, e.g., Aquinas’s interpretation of the suffering of Christ in his
commentary on the Gospel of John.
51. We ourselves share this view when it comes to relationships between
human persons. That is why we do not leave a person in pain to himself. We
suppose that there is some great consolation for him, which even pain cannot
take away, in having someone who loves him near him in his suffering.
52. As pointed out by William Rowe, in his classic formulation of the
argument from evil, it is also possible to rebut the argument from evil
effectively without a theodicy by employing on it what Rowe calls “the G. E.
Moore shift” (William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of
Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 [1979]; reprinted in Daniel
Howard-Snyder, The Evidential Problem of Evil [Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1996], 1–11). As Rowe explains it, the G. E. Moore shift
consists in taking as a premiss the negation of the conclusion of an
opponent’s argument and deriving as a conclusion the negation of one of the
premisses in the opponent’s argument. In the case of the argument from evil,
the G. E. Moore shift is a matter of taking as a premiss the existence of God
and concluding that there is a morally sufficient reason for God to allow evil.
This response to the argument from evil depends on some support for the
premiss that God exists, support which is not effectively undercut by the
problem of evil itself. The G. E. Moore shift has not received much attention
by contemporary philosophers because they suppose that support for the
premiss that God exists would have to come from arguments for the
existence of God, and few people now have much confidence that such
arguments can be adequately defended. So, e.g., Peter van Inwagen says that
a response of this sort to the argument from evil is “unappealing, at least if
‘reasons’ [for preferring the claim that God exists to the rival claim of
atheism] is taken to mean ‘arguments for the existence of God’ in the
traditional or philosophy-of-religion-text sense. Whatever the individual
merits or defects of those arguments, none of them but the ‘moral argument’
(and perhaps the ontological argument) purports to prove the existence of a
morally perfect being. And neither the moral argument nor the ontological
argument has many defenders these days” (Peter van Inwagen, “The Problem
of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence,” in Daniel Howard-
Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil [Bloomington: Indiana
University Press: 1996], 154). Even if none of the arguments for the
existence of God is successful, however, it might still be the case that for any
particular individual belief in God is rooted in religious experience or is in
some other way a properly basic belief. In that case, the G. E. Moore shift
would be an adequate response to the argument from evil for such a person.
On the other hand, even if it were successful, the G. E. Moore shift would not
obviate the usefulness of a theodicy, because a theodicy contributes an
explanation of evil, as the G. E. Moore shift does not.
53. Skeptical theism comes in different varieties, some considerably
different from or more complicated than the short description in the text here
indicates. For a good introduction to the varieties of skeptical theism and
objections to them, see Paul Draper, “The Skeptical Theist,” in Daniel
Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996), 175–92.
54. See, e.g., William Alston, “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the
Human Cognitive Condition”; Stephen Wykstra, “Rowe’s Noseeum
Arguments from Evil”; Peter van Inwagen, “The Problem of Evil, the
Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence”; Paul Draper, “The Skeptical
Theist”; and Peter van Inwagen, “Reflections on the Chapters by Draper,
Russell, and Gale,” in Daniel Howard-Snyder, ed., The Evidential Argument
from Evil (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 97–125, 126–50,
151–74, 175–92, 219–43, respectively.
55. Aquinas would agree with skeptical theism that a limited human mind
cannot comprehend the infinite mind of God. But Aquinas accepts the idea
that God can communicate his purposes to human beings through revelation.
So even if skeptical theism is right about what unaided human intellects can
understand, Aquinas would suppose that human intellects are not always
unaided.
56. Super ad Hebraeos, chap. 4, lect. 2.
57. I say “specific” in this context because, of course, Aquinas’s theodicy
provides a general answer which applies in an abstract way to every case of
human suffering.
58. I am grateful to Brian Davies for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
 CHAPTER 30

THE TRINITY

GILLES EMERY

AQUINAS places the Trinity at the heart of the Christian faith: “The Christian
faith chiefly consists in confessing the holy Trinity.”1 The revelation of the
Trinity is thus of central importance: “To know the divine persons was
necessary for us for two reasons. First, in order to have a right view of the
creation of things … The other and principal reason is so that we may have
the right view of salvation of mankind, accomplished by the Son who
became flesh and by the gift of the Holy Spirit.”2 Faith in Christ intrinsically
implies faith in the Trinity.3 Final beatitude consists in the vision of the Holy
Trinity, and, “moreover, what brings us to beatitude is the mission of the
divine persons.”4 Aquinas’s account of Christian faith is Trinitarian in
nature.5 “The vision of the Father (visio Patris) is the end of all our desires
and actions.”6

EXPOSITION OF SPECULATIVE TRINITARIAN

THEOLOGY
Faith in the Trinity depends exclusively on Revelation whose center is the
Incarnation of the Son, his life in the flesh and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Aquinas not only rules out the possibility of natural reason attaining to
knowledge of the Trinity7 but also refuses to consider God’s personal
plurality as the fruit of an essential fecundity of the divine being.8 He draws a
clear distinction between our knowledge of the divine essence and our
knowledge of personal plurality in God: this straightforward distinction is
one of Aquinas’s most salient features, particularly in comparison to
Bonaventure. For Bonaventure, the plurality of divine persons is held by
faith, but even so the believing mind can show this plurality by means of
“reasons” (drawn on God’s simplicity, primacy, perfection, happiness,
charity, and actuality) that have the force of necessity;9 whereas Aquinas
maintains that only the “truth of faith” leads one to affirm the plurality of
divine persons: reasons such as those given by Bonaventure do not conclude
necessarily.10
Concerning Trinitarian faith, arguments advanced by the theologian are
thus chiefly of two kinds. The first kind of argument falls under the authority
of Holy Scripture, which reveals that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are
distinct yet perfectly one. The other kind of argument consists of
“persuasions” that do not demonstrate the Trinity but seek to render the
Trinitarian faith more articulate in the minds of believers and that show that
what is proposed to faith is not impossible,11 so that “the mind is lifted up to
get some glimpse of the truth that suffices for excluding errors.”12 Thomistic
Trinitarian theology is a “spiritual exercise.”13 In order to manifest biblical
faith concerning the Trinity, Aquinas exploits numerous sources: creeds, the
liturgy, Latin Fathers (chiefly Augustine, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of
Milan), Greek Fathers (chiefly John Damascene and Pseudo-Dionysius but
others also), and medieval (Boethius, Anselm), as well as philosophical
(Aristotle) authors, not to mention the contribution of the Trinitarian debates
of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century. First place among
these goes to Augustine and his medieval reception: the “manifestation” of
the Trinity by the “similitude” of the Word and Love in the human mind
explicitly follows the way traced out by Augustine.14
Aquinas has supplied several syntheses of Trinitarian doctrine (Super
Sent, SCG, QDP, CT, and ST in particular). The principal elements of his
Trinitarian doctrine are present as well in his biblical commentaries (on John
and Paul in particular). The Summa theologiae offers his most complete
synthesis. Concerning the structure of the study of God, Aquinas
distinguishes between “first, that which pertains to the divine essence,
secondly, that pertaining to the distinction of the persons, and thirdly that
concerning the procession of creatures from God.”15 This structure, which
does not signify the modern separation between a treatise on the One God
and a treatise on the Triune God, seeks to fulfill three fundamental doctrinal
exigencies: the distinction between God in himself and in his effects
(“theology” and “economy”); the double mode of our access to knowledge of
God (reason and faith); and the double perspective of the human grasp of the
Trinitarian mystery: the perspective of the common essence and the
perspective of the relative properties of the persons. To render account of the
faith, Aquinas’s speculative Trinitarian theology rests chiefly on two
doctrinal pillars: the conception of the divine person as a subsistent relation,
as well as the doctrine of the Word and Love.

PROCESSIONS, RELATIONS, AND PERSONS

Aquinas conceives of the divine person as a “subsistent relation.” To grasp
the divine person then, it is first of all necessary to clarify what a relation is.
Now, in our world, real relations do not suddenly appear from nowhere but
come from a foundation that causes them. In the case of the Trinity, this
foundation is the procession that our mind conceives as the source of the
relation. Thus, the order of the speculative manifestation of divine
tripersonality will be: procession, then relation, then person.
Interpreting Aristotle, Aquinas holds that two bases can cause a real
relation: quantity and action-passion.16 Since quantity must be excluded from
God, that leaves action and procession. By “procession,” one must
understand “the drawing out of a reality that issues from a principle.”17 In
God, the action that gives rise to the procession of a person consubstantial to
its principle can only be an “immanent” action, that is, an action that remains
within the agent itself. Aquinas recognizes two kinds of immanent procession
in an intellectual nature: that of the intellect and that of the will.18 In God, the
first procession is that of the Word, who proceeds by way of intellect: this
procession is properly a generation. The second procession is that of the
Spirit, who proceeds by way of love. Aquinas shows that the procession of
Love is distinguished from the Word’s generation in the real order, because
generation takes place through the mode of a similitude, while the procession
of Love takes place through the dynamic mode of a principle of impulsion
toward the being that is loved.19 Aquinas gradually elaborated this doctrine,
which appears beginning with the SCG. He considers the analogical mode,
intellectual and voluntary, according to which the intelligent being is present
to itself.
 The doctrine of procession takes note of the real relations between the
principle of the procession and the term that proceeds: paternity (the Father’s
relation to the Son), filiation (the Son’s relation to the Father), spiration (the
relation of the Father and the Son to the Spirit), and procession (the Spirit’s
relation to the Father and the Son). The reality of these relations flows from
their foundation (immanent action) and arises from the fact that those who
are related share in the same divine nature and are thus of the same order. In
every real relation, Aquinas distinguishes two aspects: the proper essence or
“ratio” of the relation and the being or “esse” of the relation. Under the
aspect of its “ratio,” the divine relation consists of a pure relationship to the
other according to origin. But under the aspect of its being, the divine
relation is formally identical with the divine essence and thus possesses the
“esse” of the divine essence. The relations founded on the processions of the
Word and of Love thus integrate a double aspect in themselves: the real
distinction between “opposed relations” (paternity–filiation and spiration–
procession) and divine existence, to the extent that these relations possess
divine existence.20
Aquinas takes up Boethius’s definition of a person: “a person is an
individual substance of a rational nature.” A person is thus defined by three
characteristics: individuality, that is, the mode of existence of a real
incommunicable singular; subsistence, that is, substantial existence of that
which exists distinctly by and in itself; and intellectual nature, that is, the
essence of beings endowed with intelligence and freedom. This interpretation
of Boethius’s definition supplies an analogical notion that is applied to God
the Trinity differently than to angels and human beings. To grasp the divine
person, Aquinas brings the analysis of the divine relation to bear under the
double aspect of its “ratio” and its “esse.” He holds that the “divine person,”
“the distinct subsistent in the divine nature,” signifies the relation itself
insofar as it subsists, that is, “relation as something subsisting.” In other
words, a divine person “signifies relation by way of substance, which is a
hypostasis subsisting in the divine nature.”21 Aquinas does not apply this
conception of a person as relation, to human beings; he reserves it to the
divine person: the distinction of created persons is through principles that
constitute the essence while in God alone the relations subsist.22 This
doctrine of “subsistent relations,” which accounts for both essential unity and
personal plurality in the Trinity, constitutes the keystone of Aquinas’s
Trinitarian doctrine. On one hand, the consistency of this doctrine of
“subsistent relations” depends on Aquinas’s analysis of relations in the
created world. Namely, there are real relations where such relations are
accidents with a “ratio” and a real “esse”; and these relations differ from the
other accidents that found them (quantity, action-passion). Aquinas stresses
the unique status of the proper “ratio” of a relation: this “ratio” is not derived
from a respect to the subject that bears the relation, but it consists of a pure
relationship to the correlative term. On the other hand, divine simplicity and
analogy play an important role in the doctrine of subsistent relations. To the
objection: “No substance is a relation,” Aquinas answers: “The divine
essence is not in the genus of substance, but is, rather, above every genus,
embracing in itself the perfections of all genera. That is why nothing prevents
one from finding that which pertains to relation within it.”23
In the wake of Albert the Great,24 and as opposed to Bonaventure (who
gives priority not to relation but to “origin,” namely generation and
procession),25 Aquinas holds that the divine persons are formally
distinguished and constituted by relations: it falls to “personal relation”
(paternity, filiation, and procession), which is intrinsic to the divine person,
to distinguish and constitute the person,26 in such a way that if we were to
abstract the relations, we would no longer be able to conceive of the divine
persons.27

THE PROPERTIES AND THE NAMES OF THE

FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Father is characterized by two properties: paternity and innascibility
(with the “notion” of spiration). The word “Father” is not a metaphor but a
proper name that distinctly signifies the divine person who is the principle of
the Word. Paternity signifies first of all the relation of the Father to the Son,
that is, the eternal relation of divine person to divine person: it is in the
Father and the Son that the perfection of paternity and filiation resides, “since
one is the nature and glory of the Father and the Son.”28 Thus, the person of
the Father is known to us only through the revelation of the Son. Paternity
also designates, by analogy to this full and principal sense, and at different
levels, the relation that God maintains with all creatures (in virtue of
creation) and with his adopted children (in virtue of grace). The second
property by which we know the Father, is innascibility: the Father is not
generated. Unlike other authors (Bonaventure) for whom innascibility
designates the “fontal plenitude” of the Father,29 Aquinas considers
innascibility to be a property whose content is not positive but negative: the
Father has no principle. While paternity and spiration show the Father’s
fecundity as “source,” our knowledge of the Father is perfected by
innascibility: the Father is the principle without principle.30
Aquinas manifests the property of the Son around three names that signify
him properly: Son, Word, and Image. Beginning with the Summa contra
Gentiles, it is by means of the notion of the “Word” that Aquinas will show
what the names “Son” and “Image” signify. In the human mind, a word is not
a “species intelligibilis” by which the intellect is reduced to the act of
knowledge (this “species” is the principle of the act of understanding) but is
the concept of the reality known, which the intellect forms and expresses;
this concept is the term of the act of understanding.31 This analysis shows
that the word is a reality relative to its principle. This makes it possible for
Aquinas to show analogically that the name “Verbum” properly and
exclusively signifies the Son who is conceived by the Father, who remains in
the Father and who is of the same nature as the Father. In knowing himself,
the Father conceives his Word, who is his perfect expression, and who is
distinguished from him by a pure relation of origin.32 The name “Word” first
of all signifies the Son in his relation to the Father and secondarily the Son in
his free relation to creatures, in the order of creation and that of grace. The
divine Word is “both expressive and causative with respect to creatures.”33
The doctrine of the “Word” thus makes it possible for Aquinas to show that
the Son manifests and reveals the Father (expressive dimension of “word”),
that the Father accomplishes all things through his Son (operative and
expressive dimension of “word”), and that adoptive filiation by which human
beings are made children of God is a participation in the filiation of the
Word: “He who is adopted as a son of God is conformed to his True Son.”34
Far from being forgotten, it is the Holy Spirit who in the Summa
theologiae receives the most developed treatment (three questions).35 On one
hand, Aquinas’s pneumatology is characterized by a very firm affirmation of
the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, the Father and the
Son being one single principle of the Spirit. The doctrine of relative
opposition according to origin obliges the recognition that if the Holy Spirit
did not proceed from the Son, the Holy Spirit would not be distinguished
personally from the Son (Sabellianism). To Aquinas, who has multiplied
arguments on this point and devoted long elaborations to the question, the
Byzantine doctrine that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and not
from the Son appears to be profoundly unintelligible. On the other hand, in a
manner comparable to the role played by the notion of “Word” in grasping
the Son, it is the property of Love that Aquinas emphasizes in order to
manifest the personal identity of the Spirit.36 By “love,” in analogical
fashion, he does not mean the act of loving but the “affection” that in the
human will is found at the beginning of the act of loving, that is, what
“moves and impels the will of the lover towards the beloved.”37 So, here love
designates the “imprint of the reality loved” that proceeds in the will when
the will loves, that is, the affectionate imprint (“impressio”) according to
which the being loved is present in a dynamic way in him who loves, and that
moves the will toward the being that is loved.38 This “imprint” possesses a
relation of origin to the will from which and in which it proceeds: this
relation of origin, distinct from the relation of the Word, makes it possible to
manifest the Holy Spirit as Love in person, in the Trinity. Aquinas welcomes
and reinterprets as well the Augustinian theme of the Spirit as the mutual
Love of the Father and the Son. The theme of mutual Love does not signify
the Spirit as an intermediary person between the Father and the Son but as
proceeding from the Father and the Son who love each other with one same
and single love. It is also by means of Love that Aquinas shows that the
Spirit is Gift, because “love has the property of being the first gift.”39 When
Aquinas considers the Spirit as Gift in person, he does not signify a Gift that
the Father makes to the Son and reciprocally, but he shows that in virtue of
his property of Love, it belongs properly to the Spirit to be given in person to
the angels and to human beings in grace.40 It is thus by means of the property
of Love that Aquinas explains the entire work of the Spirit taught by
Scripture, in the order of nature and in that of grace, from creation to final
beatitude.41 As the Father utters himself and every creature by his Word, so
he loves himself and every creature by the Holy Spirit.42 In summary: “The
Father and the Son love each other and love us by the Holy Spirit, or Love
proceeding.”43
Today, theologians often reproach Aquinas for having constructed his
Trinitarian doctrine on the basis of a “psychological analogy” drawn from an
analysis of the human soul rather than from God’s action in history, so that
his doctrine supposedly obscures the economic dimensions of the Trinitarian
mystery. But in reality, a reading of Aquinas reveals that his theology of the
Word and Love seeks to illuminate the very foundations of the economy
established by God who acts, creates, and saves by his Son and his Holy
Spirit.

THE CREATIVE AND SANCTIFYING ACTION OF

THE TRINITY
The divine persons act in the world in virtue of their single essence.
Following this principle issuing from the Greek and Latin Fathers, the Trinity
works inseparably in any action performed on behalf of creatures. In other
words, power, divine action, and its effects belong to the whole Trinity.44
The essential divine attributes, divine action, or effects can be “appropriated”
to one person by reason of an affinity with the property of that person: it is
thus, for example, that eternity (an attribute of God in his being itself that is
without beginning), unity (God in his undividedness), power (the principle of
operation), and creation (an originating divine action) are appropriated to the
Father because he is the “principle without principle.” The divine person,
beforehand known by his property, is indirectly manifested by means of
essential attributes: such is the procedure of appropriation, which moreover is
not limited to divine action in the world but is applied in a general way to
what concerns the one single essence of God.45 Appropriation, which
Aquinas exploits abundantly, constitutes a common teaching of the Masters
of the thirteenth century.
Nevertheless these elements do not constitute the last word on the
Trinitarian dimension of divine action. On one hand, Aquinas explains that
the processions of the divine persons, which include divine knowledge and
will, are the cause of and reason for the production of creatures. On the other
hand, each person engages in the one single divine action according to his
personal property. So, for instance, Aquinas explains that it is in a proper
manner and not only by appropriation that the Son is he “through whom the
Father does all things.”46 Each divine person acts with the others according
to his proper and distinct mode of acting, a relative mode of acting that
concerns the intratrinitarian relations of divine person to divine person. This
personal dimension of divine action implies that an integral understanding of
creation and the exercise of providence requires Trinitarian faith.47
The life of grace is procured by the mission of the Son and the Holy
Spirit. This doctrine of missions constitutes the crowning of Trinitarian
theology.48 The “invisible mission” designates the sending of the Son and the
Holy Spirit into souls. This sending consists in the eternal procession of the
Son and of the Spirit and in a new mode of presence of the Son and the Spirit
in rational creatures. This mode of presence implies that the Son and Spirit,
as well as the Father who sends them, “indwell” the souls of the saints.
Through the invisible mission of the Son and Spirit, “God is said to be
present in the rational creature as the known is in the knower and the beloved
in the lover.” This invisible mission thus takes place according to the gifts of
sanctifying grace.49 The created gifts of sanctifying grace dispose one to
receive the divine person himself who is sent, the divine person being the
source and end of the gifts of grace.50 These gifts of grace assimilate their
beneficiaries to the person sent. Through the gift of wisdom, which is a
participation in the personal relation that the Word has with the Father, the
just are made like the Son. Through the gift of charity, which is a
participation in the personal property of the Holy Spirit, the just are
conformed to the Holy Spirit.51 Thus, through their missions, the Son and
Spirit give sanctifying knowledge and the love of God to the saints, through
which God makes himself present as the known and beloved. The invisible
mission of persons, through which the saints are conformed to God known
and loved, brings about their divinization. What Trinitarian doctrine
expresses with respect to God himself, the doctrine of man as the image of
the Trinity expresses with respect to the human being.52 When the human
mind knows and loves itself, “there is a representation of the uncreated
Trinity according to analogy,” but when it knows and loves God “the mind
itself becomes conformed to God.”53 This is the divinization by which the
saints “are in some way transformed into God.”54 We find here again the
objective assimilation observed in the doctrine of the invisible missions.
The doctrine of the missions culminates in the exposé of the “visible
mission” of the Son (Incarnation) and the “visible missions” of the Holy
Spirit (Baptism and Transfiguration of Christ, Christ’s breathing of the Spirit
on the Apostles, and Pentecost). The “visible” mission adds to the “invisible
mission” the manifestation of the procession of the divine person and the
manifestation of the fullness of grace through a tangible sign. In accord with
his property of Love, the Holy Spirit is sent as the “Gift of sanctification,”
that is, as sanctifying Gift in person. Regarding the Son, in accord with his
property as Son in virtue of which he is the principle of the Holy Spirit, he is
sent visibly as the “Author of sanctification,” that is, as him who gives the
Holy Spirit with the collaboration of the humanity that he assumes in the
Incarnation.55 Trinitarian doctrine, which enlightens creation, thus supplies
the foundations of the economy of grace and Christology. The revelation of
the Trinity and the gift of salvation consist in the missions of the divine
persons.
Contemporary criticism generally recognizes the metaphysical and logical
achievement of Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology but often reproaches him for a
lack of existential impact for believers, as well as an insufficient
consideration of the economy of salvation in the elaboration of speculative
themes. The difficulties posed by this criticism suggest that the study of the
method and purpose of Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology,56 as well as the study
of the biblical foundation and soteriological dimensions of this Trinitarian
theology57 (the place of Trinitarian faith in the whole of theology, in relation
to the speculative manifestation of the Trinity), constitute privileged fields of
current research.

NOTES
1. De rationibus fidei, c.1.
2. ST I q.32 a.1 ad 3. Translations of the ST are taken, with some
modifications, from: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. Thomas
Gilby and T. C. O’Brien, 60 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode; New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1964–73). Other translations are mine.
3. ST I-II q.2 a.8.
4. ST I-II q.2 a.8 ad 3; cf. Super Sent I, dist.1, q.2, a.2.
5. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master,
trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2003), 23–224: “A Trinitarian Spirituality.” Most of the elements
outlined in the present contribution are developed at greater length (with a
bibliography) in Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, trans. Francesca Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
6. Aquinas, Super Johan, c.14, lect.3.
7. ST I q.32 a.1.
8. Hans Christian Schmidbaur, Personarum Trinitas: Die trinitarische
Gotteslehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquin (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1995).
9. Bonaventure, Super Sent I, dist.2, a.1, q.2; Opera omnia, vol. 1
(Quaracchi: Ed. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882), 53–54. See Gilles Emery,
Trinity in Aquinas, 2d ed. (Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2006), 16–23.
10. Aquinas, Super Sent I, dist.2, q.1, a.4; cf. ST I q.32 a.1.
11. ST II-II q.1 a.5 ad 2.
12. QDP, q.9, a.5.
13. Gilles Emery, Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic
Essays (Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2007), 1–72.
14. ST I q.32 a.1 obj. 2; QDP, q.9, a.5.
15. ST I q.2 prol.; cf. CT I, c.2.
16. ST I q.28 a.4.
17. Super Sent I, dist.13, q.1, a.1.
18. ST I q.27 a.5.
19. ST I q.27 a.1–4.
20. ST I q.28.
21. ST I q.29 a.4.
22. ST I q.39 a.1 ad 1.
23. QDP, q.8, a.2, ad 1.
24. Albert, Super Dionysium de divinis nominibus, c.2, §25–26; Opera
omnia (Cologne edition), vol. 37/1, ed. Paulus Simon (Münster: Aschendorff,
1972), 60. See also Albert, Super Sent I, dist.28, a.4; Opera omnia (Paris
edition), vol. 26, ed. Auguste Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1893), 59–61.
25. Bonaventure, Super Sent I, dist.26, a.1, q.3; Opera omnia, 1:456–58.
26. ST I q.40 a.2.
27. ST I q.40 a.3.
28. ST I q.33 a.3.
29. Bonaventure, Super Sent I, dist.27, pars 1, a.1, q.2, sol. and ad 3;
dist.28, a.1, q.2; dist.28, dubium 1; Opera omnia, 1:469–72, 499–500, and
504.
 30. ST I q.33 a.4.
31. SCG I, c.53; QDP, q.8, a.1; Super Johan, c.1, lect.1.
32. SCG IV, c.11; ST I q.34 a.1–2.
33. ST I q.34 a.3.
34. In Rom, c.8, lect.6; ST III q.23. a.3.
35. ST I q.36–38.
36. ST I q.37 a.1–2; SCG IV, c.19.
37. ST I q.36 a.1.
38. ST I q.37 a.1; I-II q.28 a.2 resp. and ad 1.
39. ST I q.38 a.2.
40. ST I q.38 a.1.
41. SCG IV, c.20–22.
42. ST I q.37 a.2 ad 3.
43. ST I q.37 a.2.
44. ST I q.32 a.1; q.45 a.6.
45. ST I q.39 a.7–8.
46. Super Johan, c.1, lect.2; ST I q.39 a.8.
47. Emery, Trinity, Church, and the Human Person, 115–53.
48. ST I q.43; Super Sent I, dist.14–16.
49. ST I q.43 a.3.
50. Super Sent I, dist.14, q.2, a.1, quaestiunc.2; cf. ST I q.43 a.3 resp. and
ad 1.
51. ST I q.43 a.5 ad 2; Super Sent I, dist.15, q.4, a.1; In Rom, c.5, lect.1.
52. ST I q.93 a.5 and a.7–8.
53. QDV, q.10, a.7.
54. In II Cor, c.3, lect.3.
55. ST I q.43 a.7; cf. In Rom, c.1, lect.3.
56. See, for instance, Timothy L. Smith, Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian
Theology: A Study in Theological Method (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 2003).
57. See, for instance, Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics:
Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004);
Gilles Emery, “Theologia and Dispensatio: The Centrality of the Divine
Missions in St. Thomas’s Trinitarian Theology,” The Thomist 74 (2010):
515–61; Guillermo A. Juárez, Dios Trinidad en todas las creaturas y en los
santos: Estudio histórico-sistemático de la doctrina del Comentario a las
Sentencias de Santo Tomás de Aquino sobre la omnipresencia y la
inhabitación (Córdoba, Argentina: Ediciones del Copista, 2008). On the
person of the Father, see John Baptist Ku, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Treatment
of the Name ‘Father’ in ST I, q. 33, a. 2,” Nova et Vetera 9 (2011): 433–78.
—I owe a special thanks to John Baptist Ku, O. P. who translated the present
chapter from French into English.
 CHAPTER 31

INCARNATION

MICHAEL GORMAN

INTRODUCTION
According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ is a divine person who became
“incarnate,” that is, who became human. A key event in the second act of the
drama of creation and redemption, the incarnation could not have failed to
interest Aquinas, and he discusses it in a number of places. A proper
understanding of what he thought about it is thus part of any complete
understanding of his work. It is, furthermore, a window into his ideas on a
variety of other topics: God, human nature, language, substance, and so on.
Finally, it forces us to come to grips with what is at stake in acknowledging
that Aquinas was not only a philosopher but a theologian as well.

THE INCARNATION AS A PROPERLY

THEOLOGICAL PROBLEM
The claim that God became human is, or should be, a surprising one. As a
matter of fact, Aquinas thinks it cannot be known by human reason operating
alone. Instead, it is revealed by God through Scripture as authoritatively
interpreted by the Church. As Aquinas explains, appeal to the authority of
revelation establishes that something is the case, but it does not provide an
understanding of how it is so.1 The theologian’s job is to accept what is
revealed, an acceptance called “faith,” and then to reflect on it in as
satisfactory a way as possible by drawing out implications, making
comparisons between revealed realities and more familiar things, and so on.
This task might even involve modifying philosophical categories and tools to
make room for possibilities that show themselves only in theological
contexts. There is, to be sure, a point beyond which the human intellect
cannot go, at least in this life.2 But even once that point has been reached, the
quest for understanding need not be abandoned altogether: it will at least be
possible to give an intelligent characterization of where our understanding
falls short.
On the one hand, the attempt to make revelation the basis of theological
inquiry is far from incoherent. If there is a God at all, it is to be expected that
detailed information about him will be very hard for humans to acquire, but
also to be expected that, if he so chooses, God can reveal himself. On the
other hand, it cannot be demonstrated that revelation actually has taken place,
and some readers of Aquinas will in fact reject the notion of divine revelation
outright. For any reader, however, it would be a mistake to expect Aquinas to
set out a theory of the incarnation (or of any properly theological topic) that
in no way relies on what he takes to be revelation or that resolves all
difficulties in a way that is entirely satisfying to reason apart from revelation.
Aquinas would consider such attempts to be at once futile and presumptuous.

SOME BASIC THOMISTIC CLAIMS ABOUT THE

INCARNATION
Christians believe that God wills the salvation of human beings from sin and
that his plan to bring this about involves the second person of the Trinity’s
becoming human and living out a true human life, a life that leads to his
atoning death, resurrection from the dead, and further salvific actions such as
the sending of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ, then, is a divine person, the
second person of the Trinity and the eternal Word of the Father, who has
become human. After disputes lasting generations, this understanding of
Christ was formulated in a.d. 451 by the Council of Chalcedon as the
teaching that Christ is one person existing in two natures, divine and human.
(Since the word “hypostasis” can usually be used interchangeably with the
word “person” in these debates, the union of natures resulting from the
incarnation is often called the “hypostatic union.”)
Now the Chalcedonian definition did not bring all discussion to an end;
more debates and councils brought further refinements, and the history of
these councils and their after-effects is complicated. It is safe to say,
however, that essentially Chalcedonian ideas served as the context within
which Aquinas and his contemporaries worked. In that context, the two most
important ideas are nature and person. For present purposes, let us jump
straight to Aquinas’s understanding of them.
The nature or essence3 of something is what corresponds to its real
definition.4 A human being, for example, is defined as a rational animal, and
that is because its nature or essence is to be just such an entity. And it is
worth noting that what Aquinas means by “nature” or “essence” is something
narrower than what contemporary analytic philosophers are likely to mean by
“essence”; the essential attributes of a thing for Aquinas are not the same as
the attributes that the thing cannot exist without. Aquinas holds that
something might have attributes without which it cannot exist but which are
nonetheless not essential to it—these “flow from” the essence rather than
forming part of it.5
With regard to the concept “person,” Aquinas follows Boethius, who sets
out two conditions: a person must be an individual substance (hypostasis,
supposit), and it must have a rational nature. To understand the first
condition, consider the horse Bucephalus. Bucephalus exists independently,
or “subsists”: it is not part of his nature to inhere in, or belong to, anything
else. By contrast, his accidents depend on him, exist in him, inhere in him,
and it is part of their nature to do so.6 So Bucephalus is an individual
substance, but is he a person? He is not, because his nature, horseness, is not
a rational one. Socrates, however, also a substance, does have a rational
nature, humanity, and for that reason he is not just an ordinary substance or
supposit, but a person.7
So when Aquinas says that Christ is one person, he means that Christ is
one individual rational substance. The incarnation is not a relationship
between two rational substances—for example, a relationship by which the
Word of God makes Jesus holy. Rather, Christ’s humanity is a constituent of
the one rational supposit that Christ is. And when Aquinas says that Christ
has two natures, he means that there are two kinds of which we could say that
Christ is a substance of that kind: if for a moment we make so bold as to
speak of defining God, we could say that Christ fits the real definition of God
and the real definition of a human being. Humanity is not joined to Christ in
a way that results in a merging or blending of humanity and divinity—the
two natures remain distinct.8 Not that they are on a completely equal footing,
to be sure: Christ had his divine nature from eternity, and only at a certain
point in the world’s history did he assume a human nature.
More should be said about Christ’s humanity. Aquinas thinks that Christ
could have had every possible human perfection, and his list of these is a
generous one: in principle, Christ could have known everything a human can
know, could have been free of all temptation and all passions, could have
been free of every bodily ailment, and so on. Being perfectly human, in short,
is not inconsistent with being human. In fact, however, Aquinas attributes
only some of these perfections to Christ, depending on whether possessing
them or not possessing them furthers his salvific mission.9
Christ’s human knowledge was as extensive as human knowledge could
be: he had the beatific vision, full infused knowledge, and full acquired
knowledge.10 Of his possession of the beatific vision, Aquinas notes that this
enabled Christ to be, in virtue of his humanity, the source of truth for other
humans.11 He also had a human will and the ability to perform authentically
human actions.12
At the same time, Aquinas is clear that Christ did have imperfections or
defects both of body and of soul. Bodily defects are usually imposed, as a
penalty for sin; this does not apply to Christ, of course. He accepted such
defects willingly, as part of his salvific mission. In particular, Aquinas says
that Christ took on bodily defects for three reasons: to be able to atone for
our sins by taking our punishment upon himself, to make his human nature
more believable, and to be able to provide us with an example of patience in
the face of suffering.13 In addition to these defects of body, Christ took on
defects of soul; for example, he was liable to physical pain and sorrow.
Aquinas is careful to note that the way in which Christ suffered from such
defects was different from the way in which we suffer from them: in our
case, defects of soul often interfere with the exercise of reason and lead to
sin, but in Christ’s case they did not.14
Aquinas intends what he says about Christ’s human defects, and what he
says about Christ’s human perfections, to be consistent with the central claim
that Christ has a human soul and a human body, with human mental and
physical powers that allow him to perform true human acts. Mark 10:13–16
portrays Christ as embracing young children. His decision to embrace them
was on Aquinas’s understanding a real human decision; the arms with which
he embraced them were real human arms, animated by a real human soul and
folded around the children in a real human greeting. Christ really was (and is)
a man, a human being.
But who—that is, which person—is Christ? Or to put the question in
linguistic terms, which person does the expression “Christ” stand for? It
stands for the very same person that expressions like “the Word” or “the Son
of God” or “the second person of the Trinity” stand for, and also for the very
same person that “Jesus” stands for.15 The human being at issue is not a
different person from the second person of the Trinity but rather the very
same person. Christ is one divine-and-human person whose humanity retains
its own powers while serving as an instrument of the divinity. Thus, for
Aquinas, it is the one Christ who, in one act, both touches a leper by virtue of
his human power and heals him by virtue of his divine power.16
In line with a long tradition, Aquinas would say that a good test of
whether one has correct views in Christology is whether one accepts the
“communication of idioms,” that is, the sharing of properties. One must be
willing to say not only that the Word of God created the stars but also that
Jesus created the stars; likewise, one must be willing to say not only that
Jesus suffered on the cross but also that the Word of God suffered on the
cross. “The Word” and “Jesus” are two names for one person who both
created and suffered. At the same time, one must know when and how to
qualify such claims when necessary, lest misunderstandings arise; the Word
suffers on the cross not in virtue of his divinity, but rather in virtue of his
humanity.17

A DIFFICULT ISSUE
So far I have simply laid out some of the many claims that Aquinas makes
about the incarnation, without much attempt to indicate where difficulties
arise or how Aquinas might address them. In the remainder of this article, I
will focus by way of example on one difficult topic. The goal, besides
exploring more of Aquinas’s views, will be to provide an example of how
Thomas uses and adapts philosophical ideas in carrying out his Christological
investigations.
 Let us begin by briefly stepping back from Christ’s humanity and talking
instead about Socrates’. Socrates’ human nature is a principle in virtue of
which he exists in a certain way, as an entity of a certain sort—namely, as a
human being.18 But it is not only for being an entity of a certain sort that he
is dependent on having a human nature—he is also dependent on having a
human nature for the simple fact that he exists at all, as an individual
substance or supposit of any sort.19 In other words, he depends on his human
nature not only for being such-and-such a sort of thing but also for what
Aquinas would call his “simple” or “absolute” existence. Without his
humanity, Socrates would not only fail to be human, he would fail to be
anything at all—he would simply not exist.20 Let us say henceforth that
Socrates’ human nature is not only a “humanizing” nature but also a
“supposit-supporting” nature.
Now is what is true of Socrates’ human nature true of every instance of
human nature? If we were to say “yes,” implying that Christ’s human nature
too is not only humanizing but also supposit-supporting, then we would run
into problems. Given that there is only one supposit in Christ and that this
supposit is the second person of the Trinity, we would be committed to
saying that Christ’s human nature is supposit-supporting for a divine
supposit, that is, that a divine supposit depends for its absolute existence on
being human. Obviously, Aquinas is not going to take this route.
So it seems necessary to answer “no,” that is, to say that there can be a
human nature that is humanizing but not supposit-supporting. And in fact this
is just what Aquinas holds: “On the basis of his human nature, the Son of
God does not exist absolutely … but only as a human being.”21 The person or
supposit of the Son of God is not supported by Christ’s human nature. His
humanity is a principle in virtue of which he is human, as well as divine, but
not a principle in virtue of which he exists as opposed to not existing at all.
Indeed, there is no supposit or person that depends for its absolute existence
on Christ’s humanity.
It might sound wrong to say that Christ’s humanity does not account for
the absolute existence of any supposit or person. Saying so seems to imply
that his human nature is somehow lacking in metaphysical dignity. Worse, it
might seem to imply a sheer impossibility, namely, that something could be a
human nature and yet not be that on which the absolute existence of a person
depends.22
 Concerning the dignity of Christ’s human nature, Aquinas says that “it is
more dignified for something to exist in something else that is of greater
dignity than for it to exist through itself.”23 To forgo a lower role (being
responsible for the existence of a supposit) for the sake of a higher one (being
a constituent of a divine–human supposit) is no loss—in fact, it is gain.
Concerning the second and deeper worry, that is, the worry about whether
it is even possible for there to be a human nature that is humanizing but not
supposit-supporting, Aquinas clearly thinks that it is possible, so long as the
nature exists in some pre-existing supposit (it could not exist in no supposit
at all). His idea seems to be that it is not a necessary condition of something’s
being a human nature that it actually be a principle upon which a supposit
depends for its absolute existence—what is necessary is only that it be the
sort of reality to which it is natural to have a supposit thus dependent upon it.
This is still true of Christ’s human nature, even though it is not supposit-
supporting in actual fact.
The same point can be made from the complementary perspective, that of
the supposit rather than that of the nature. Everything that possesses a human
nature must have absolute existence as a supposit, that is, every human being
must be a supposit. But from this it does not follow that everything that
possesses a human nature must have absolute existence as a supposit in virtue
of possessing that nature. It might, as in Christ’s case, have it in virtue of
possessing some other nature. Before the Son became human, he was already
subsistent, already a supposit, and therefore becoming subsistent was not
possible for him. Christ’s human nature was given no opportunity to be
supposit-supporting; from the very first it existed only as a constituent of a
supposit that was, so to speak, already supported. But, of course, that does
not mean that Christ’s human nature does nothing—before the incarnation,
the Son was not human, and Christ’s human nature serves for him precisely
as a humanizing principle, a principle in virtue of which he is not only divine
but human as well. Although in the incarnation the Son does not come to be a
supposit or person, he does come to be human, to be corporeal and animate in
a fully and properly human way.
To say that there can be a human nature that is humanizing but not
supposit-supporting is certainly to deviate from the usual way of thinking.
Such a deviation might be looked upon as a valuable insight, or it might be
looked upon as a desperate ad hoc maneuver. Whether one thinks of it as
desperate or not depends, in large part, on whether one thinks it rational to
adopt Aquinas’s faith-based point of view in the first place. As for its being
ad hoc, however, there is a sense in which Aquinas would gladly agree: he is
explicit about the fact that the incarnation is a unique case, and so in a sense
an ad hoc solution is just what one should expect.24 As noted at the outset,
theology in Aquinas’s understanding must not only employ philosophical
notions but modify them when necessary.25

NOTES
1. Quodl 4, q.9, a.3, response.
2. See, e.g., ST I q.12 a.12–13.
3. For “essence” and other synonyms of “nature,” see, e.g., DEE, c.1.
4. See, e.g., Super Sent 3, d.5, q.1, a.2; SCG 4, c.35; QDP, q.9, a.1,
response; QDV, a.1; ST III q.2 a.1.
5. For helpful remarks on some of Aquinas’s views here, see Matthew J.
Kelly (1976), “‘Subject,’ ‘Substance,’ and ‘Accident’ in St. Thomas,” New
Scholasticism 50 (1976): 232–36. For a partial attempt to recapture the same
sort of approach in a contemporary framework, see Michael Gorman, “The
Essential and the Accidental,” Ratio 18 (2005): 276–89.
6. That last claim would need to be qualified in light of Aquinas’s
understanding of transubstantiation, but such concerns lie beyond the scope
of this chapter.
7. See Super Sent 3, d.5, q.1, a.3; Super Sent 3, d.6, q.1, a.1, qa.1,
response; QDP, q.9, a.1–2; DUI, a.1–2; ST I q.29 a.1–2; ST III q.2 a.2–3.
Lafont has laid stress on the fact that for Aquinas the divine persons are
subsisting relations (e.g., ST I q.28 a.2), and he thinks that the Boethian
notion of person as rational substance is not always adequate for
Christological purposes. The particular problems that Lafont is concerned
with are not at issue here, however, so the point will not be pursued further.
See Ghislain Lafont, Peut-on connaître Dieu en Jésus Christ? (Paris: Cerf,
1969), 107–57. For further complications, see John Wippel, The
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 2000), 228–37.
8. ST III q.2 a.1–3; see also SCG 4, c.41; QDVUI, a.1–2.
 9. A good discussion of Aquinas on Christ’s human nature from just this
perspective can be found in Marilyn McCord Adams, What Sort of Human
Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1999), 49–68.
10. For an overview of Christ’s human knowledge, see ST III q.9. For
details on Christ’s possession of the beatific vision, see ST III q.10; for
details on his infused knowledge, see ST III q.11; for details on his acquired
knowledge, see ST III q.12.
11. See ST III q.9 a.2.
12. See ST III q.18–19.
13. ST III q.14 a.1; for more on Christ’s bodily defects, see the whole of ST
III q.14.
14. ST III q.15 a.4; for more on Christ’s sinlessness, see ST III q.15 a.1–2;
for physical pain, see ST III q.15 a.5; for sorrow, see ST III q.15, a.6.
15. For a sustained reflection on some of the linguistic issues concerning
the incarnation, and on the metaphysical issues that lie behind them, see
Henk J. M. Schoot, Christ the “Name” of God: Thomas Aquinas on Naming
Christ (Leuven: Peeters, 1993).
16. ST III q.19 a.1 ad 5; see also ST III q.18 a.1 ad 2.
17. See ST III q.16.
18. See, e.g., DEE, c.1.
19. See, e.g., QDVUI, a.4.
20. Here it is worth comparing Socrates’ humanity with one of his
accidental forms: in virtue of his whiteness, Socrates is the sort of thing that
is white, but he does not depend on his whiteness for his absolute existence
(cf. QDVUI, a.4).
21. “Non enim ex natura humana habet Filius Dei quod sit simpliciter …
sed solum quod sit homo” (ST III q.3 a.1 ad 3), my translation. See also
Super Sent 3, d.6, q.1, a.1, qa.4, ad 1. QDVUI, a.1, ad 15, as it appears in the
Marietti edition, seems to undermine or even contradict the idea that Christ is
humanized by his human nature, but the text of that edition is flawed there:
see Michael Gorman, “Christ as Composite according to Aquinas,” Traditio
55 (2000): 143–57, at 150 n.12. For a few more relevant passages, not all of
them easy to interpret, see Super Sent 3, d.10, q.1, a.2, qa.1, ad 1–2; Super
Sent 3, d.10, q.1, a.2, qa.2, ad 1; Super Sent 3, d.12, q.1, a.1, ad 2; ST III q.2
a.2 ad 2; ST III q.2 a.3 ad 3; ST III q.16 a.6 ad 1; ST III, q.16 a.12 resp. and
ad 1.
22. Here it is worth mentioning a distinct but related problem. According to
Aquinas’s canonical way of speaking, a human nature is but one principle of
a human being, and human beings are not identical to their natures. From this
perspective it makes sense to consider the possibility that Christ’s human
nature is unique inasmuch as it fails to support a human supposit, but it does
not make sense to consider the possibility that Christ’s human nature is
unique inasmuch as it fails to be a human supposit—such is true of every
human nature. But there is another way of using the expression “human
nature,” also found in Aquinas, in accordance with which it might indeed
make sense to say that ordinary human natures are human persons but that
Christ’s human nature, uniquely, is not. If we did say that, then we would
face the analogous difficulty of explaining how it could be true at all, and
how it could be true without Christ’s human nature being inadequate in some
way. For discussion, see, e.g., Othmar Schweizer, Person und Hypostatische
Union bei Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg [Schweiz]: Universitätsverlag, 1957);
Michael Gorman, “Uses of the Person–Nature Distinction in Thomas’s
Christology,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 67 (2000):
58–79; Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 246–56; Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London
and New York: Routledge, 2003), 409–10. Although I do not think that
Aquinas’s views on this problem have yet received a fully adequate
interpretation, I do think it safe to say that the right path is the one laid out by
Schweizer and Stump.
23. “Dignius autem est alicui quod existat in aliquo se digniori, quam quod
existat per se” (ST III q.2 a.2 ad 2), my translation.
24. For example, in QDVUI, a.3, response, Aquinas notes that in the case
of the Trinity there is one nature with three supposits, and in the case of the
incarnation two natures with only one supposit, but that in every other case,
the correspondence between natures and supposits is one-to-one. See also ST
III q.2 a.6 ad 1, where Aquinas quotes John Damascene to the effect that the
incarnation is not wholly like anything else.
25. I would like to thank Anne-Marie Gorman and Thomas Weinandy for
helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
 CHAPTER 32

THE SAVING WORK OF CHRIST

RIK VAN NIEUWENHOVE

INTRODUCTION
How we have been saved in Christ is undoubtedly one of the most central
questions for any Christian theologian, and it is not any different with
Aquinas.1 In recent years Aquinas’s soteriology has not enjoyed the same
attention as his theology of the Trinity, or his virtue ethics. Nevertheless, in
my view Aquinas’s soteriology deserves more consideration, not only
because it is a fairly sophisticated one, central to all his theological
endeavors, but also because it differs rather considerably in inspiration,
presuppositions, and issues it addresses from those of modern-day
theologians. It is exactly because of these differences (which often evoke
criticism) that it can begin to challenge us at a more fundamental level.
Theologians of a liberal mindset, for instance, may want to question a
soteriology that (allegedly) attributes saving significance to the innocent
suffering of Jesus of Nazareth. It has been argued that the Anselmic theory of
satisfaction that Aquinas adopts (with modifications) comes dangerously
close to turning God into a vindictive, punitive God who needs a bloody
sacrifice before he becomes reconciled with this sinful world. The theory of
satisfaction, so it is further alleged, is legalistic, transactional, more indebted
to feudal categories than to the Scriptures, and effectively glorifies innocent
suffering, instead of providing us with resources to challenge it. In this vein
E. Schillebeeckx has famously argued that we have been saved “despite the
Cross.”2 He writes, “Many existing theories of our redemption through Jesus
Christ deprive Jesus, his message and career of their subversive power, and
even worse, sacralize violence to be a reality within God. God is said to call
for a bloody sacrifice which stills or calms his sense of justice.”3 I will argue
that Aquinas is very much aware of the concerns that Schillebeeckx raises
and is perfectly capable of dealing with them.4 Moreover, I am in little doubt
that Aquinas would be ill at ease with the disturbingly unscriptural stance
that is implied in Schillebeeckx’s disparagement of the Cross as the central
event in Christian salvation.
Other theologians, such as J. Moltmann, have developed an influential and
popular theology of suffering that does pay attention to the Cross as the
supreme saving event but rather than interpreting it in terms of a salvation
from evil it is interpreted in terms of a salvation from suffering: in the Cross
God suffers and dies for us, and this is the only viable theodicy that can meet
the challenges of the atheist critique.5 Now Aquinas is perfectly happy to
state that God suffers and dies for us on the Cross in the humanity of the
incarnate Word—but unlike Moltmann he explicitly rejects the view that this
suffering and death can be attributed to the divinity: “The Lord of glory is
said to be crucified, not as the Lord of glory, but as a man capable of
suffering.”6 This traditional view, which Aquinas represents here, does not
go far enough for Moltmann who criticizes it (erroneously in my view) on
the grounds that this emphasis upon the impassibility of God is due to the
influence of Aristotelian philosophy (the unmoved mover). Now Moltmann’s
theopaschite theology has, in turn, come in for a sharp critique from a
number of thinkers who argue that a suffering God may perhaps give us
some psychological solace—we are not alone in our suffering—but from a
mature religious point of view it will not do: if even God is subject to
suffering and in need of salvation there is no hope left. That is not to say that
the issue of suffering is not relevant to Aquinas; but he approaches it by
focusing our attention on the God-man, the Word-become-human, as I hope
to show in this contribution, and not on the intratrinitarian life, as Moltmann
does.7
In what follows I will outline Aquinas’s soteriology by examining the
following themes: the saving significance of the Passion of Christ, the Body
of Christ, and the role of the Eucharist. Given the systemic nature of
Aquinas’s theological enterprise, these themes are deeply interwoven with
one another.

CHRIST, THE SACRAMENT OF OUR SALVATION

A good place to start is the Compendium of Theology.8 Here Aquinas
describes how Christ’s death was “a salutary means of satisfaction,” freeing
us from the debt of penalty—a topic which I will discuss in the next section.
His death “was also appropriate as a sacrament. Christ wished to make clear
by his death that we ought so to die in our carnal life that our spirit might be
raised to higher things. Hence He himself says, in John 12:32: ‘I, if I be lifted
up from the Earth, will draw all things to myself.’” Finally, Christ’s death is
an example of perfect virtue, exemplifying perfect virtue (John 15:13),
obedience, fortitude, and patience. In this section I will examine the second
element.
It is only very rarely that Aquinas calls the death of Christ a sacrament of
our salvation (salutis sacramentum).9 However, the theological notion it
expresses does receive considerable attention in Aquinas’s later works. By
adopting the notion of the humanity of Christ as the instrument of his
divinity,10 Aquinas can argue that every aspect of Christ’s life, death, and
resurrection has a sacramental meaning and power.11 Aquinas puts it with
unrivalled clarity in his Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans (In
Rom): “as the humanity of Christ was so to speak the instrument of his
divinity, as John Damascene says, all the sufferings and works of the
humanity of Christ have saving value for us, as they are derived from his
divine power.”12 The phrase “instrument of the divinity” should not be taken
to imply that the significance of Christ’s humanity is undervalued. It is the
exact opposite: while the divine and human natures of Christ retain their
distinctiveness they nevertheless act in unison, thereby bestowing upon every
aspect of the life and death of the man Jesus a sacramental power: “the
principal efficient cause of man’s salvation is God. But since Christ’s
humanity is the instrument of the Godhead as stated above [ST III q.43 a.2],
therefore all Christ’s actions and sufferings operate instrumentally in virtue
of His Godhead for the salvation of men.”13 This explains the saving power
of Christ’s body, both historically (in his healings), through his death and
resurrection, and in the sacraments in the strict sense. Through Baptism, for
instance, we are made conformable to Christ’s Passion and Resurrection,
insofar as we die to sin and begin to live anew to righteousness.14 Through
faith, hope, and love, we become incorporated in Christ, so as to die to sin
through his death, and to live for God through his resurrection.15 I will now
examine in some more detail how Christ’s death in particular has saving
value for us.16

THE DEATH OF CHRIST, THE UNIVERSAL

CAUSE OF SALVATION (CF. SCG IV, 55.29)
In his earlier works, Aquinas refers mainly to the notion of “making
satisfaction” to describe the saving meaning of Christ’s death. In ST the
picture becomes more diverse, and he appeals also to a number of other key
categories, including the more biblical notion of “sacrifice.”17 Nevertheless,
the notion of making satisfaction remains important for Aquinas in his
mature works, and it is this notion we will examine first. I will also deal with
a number of objections that have been raised against this notion.
It was Anselm of Canterbury who developed the so-called theory of
satisfaction in his work Cur Deus Homo—although the notion has patristic
roots and cannot be simply associated with the feudal context in which he
was working.18 The following quotation from CT summarizes the doctrine
quite well:

If God had decided to restore man solely by an act of His will and power, the order of
divine justice would not have been observed. Justice demands satisfaction for sin. But
God cannot render satisfaction, just as he cannot merit. Such a service pertains to one
who is subject to another. Thus God was not in a position to satisfy for the sin of the
whole of human nature; and a mere man was unable to do so.… Hence divine Wisdom
judged it fitting that God should become man, so that thus one and the same person
would be able both to restore man and to offer satisfaction.19

While the onus was on humanity to restore the relationship with God, we
could not do so, infected as we are by sin. Therefore, it was necessary that
somebody who was both human and divine (and thus sinless) would restore
this relationship (i.e., make satisfaction). I would like to make a number of
comments.
First, it is a gross misreading to understand “making satisfaction” in terms
of retribution and punishment. Aquinas repeatedly points out that there are
two major differences between punishment and making satisfaction. The first
difference is that punishment is inflicted upon the sinner against his will,
while making satisfaction is something we freely undertake to restore a
broken relationship with somebody: grieving for the offence we committed
we are anxious to become reconciled with, or make satisfaction to, our
friend.20 Hence, for Aquinas, as for Anselm, satisfaction excludes
punishment. Incidentally, the language of friendship Aquinas uses here
suggests a personalist rather than a judicial or legalistic paradigm for
understanding salvation. This is further confirmed by the link between the
satisfaction Christ makes on the Cross, and the sacrament of penance.21
Given the fact that penance is described as “a spiritual healing of a sort”22 or
as “a spiritual medicine”23 and that sin is called “a sickness of the soul”
(infirmitas animae),24 it is clear that “making satisfaction” too should be
understood in medicinal terms. It comes therefore as no surprise to find that
Aquinas describes Christ as a doctor.25 These metaphors reveal, of course, a
world of difference: whereas a judge punishes, a doctor heals.
The second major difference between punishment and making satisfaction
is that one person can make satisfaction for another if the two are united in
charity.26 By drawing on the Pauline notion of the Church as the mystical
Body of Christ,27 Aquinas argues that Christ’s saving activity benefits all the
faithful. I will come back to this important point in the next section.
Some readers might perhaps be wondering whether Aquinas’s soteriology
is not excessively subjectivist: has the Cross actually made an objective
difference in the world? Undoubtedly, Aquinas puts a very strong emphasis
upon our need to somehow “appropriate” the saving work of Christ: Christ’s
Passion, which is a kind of universal cause of merit and of the forgiveness of
sins, still needs to be applied to each individual for the cleansing of personal
sins.28 Similarly, as a doctor prepares a medicine, we still need to apply it
through faith, love, and the sacraments of the Church.29 However, although
there is undoubtedly a strong personalist or subjectivist element to Aquinas’s
soteriology, this should not be taken to imply that the saving work of Christ
has nothing to do with the restoration of justice in “objective” terms. The
order of the world, as created by God, was distorted by sin. This needs to be
rectified, and if it had not been for Christ’s saving work this distortion and
alienation would have been perpetuated indefinitely (an alienation that would
involve, according to Aquinas, the punishments of hell). In that sense there is
something “objectively” changed in the world in that the disorder that sin has
caused is being rectified through the redeeming and meritorious work of
Christ. Sin cannot have the last word: it needs to be cancelled out by the
overarching mercy of God.
This restoration of the order of justice in the world should not be taken to
mean, as is sometimes alleged, that God somehow subjects his mercy to his
justice in the redemptive work of Christ. In agreement with Anselm, Aquinas
argues that in the divine self-gift that is the life and death of Christ the divine
mercy and justice are in perfect harmony with one another.30 Also, when I
speak of an “objective” dimension of Aquinas’s soteriology, I mean that
something is changed in the world—not in God. Aquinas, like other medieval
theologians before him, rejects the view that God is somehow “changed” by
the life and death of Christ:31 the Cross is the expression and manifestation of
God’s love, not the cause of it.32
But some readers might still share Schillebeeckx’s reservations: is it
appropriate to attribute saving significance to the suffering of an innocent
man? Should we not see the Cross for what it is: a horrible crime inflicted
upon a defenceless victim, rather than the way in which God reconciles the
world? Aquinas, however, argues that this is a false dilemma. Given his
understanding of providential care and divine causality, which implies that
God is such a powerful efficacious Cause that he can attain his goals by
genuinely contingent events,33 Aquinas suggests that it is not incoherent to
state that the slaying of Christ was a most grievous sin, and yet in accordance
—on a more transcendent level, if you like—with God’s providential plan.34
Of course, God could have forgiven us without Christ’s saving work, but
this would have been less “fitting.”35 Examining the reasons why this is the
case reveals a lot about how much Aquinas values human dignity and the
reciprocity of the relationship between humanity and God: if we had simply
been forgiven by a divine fiat, we would not have been allowed to
participate, through Christ and in union with him (as members of his Body),
in the restoration of our relationship with God (i.e., making satisfaction).36
But what exactly is the source of merit in Christ’s saving work? It is not
his sufferings as such but rather what these sufferings reveal: his obedience
and love. Thus, not the sufferings per se but the willingness with which
Christ took them upon himself are a source of merit that can be shared with
all the faithful.37 The emphasis upon the voluntary nature of Christ’s saving
activity allows Aquinas to state in ST that making satisfaction needs to be
understood in terms of a gift of self by Christ (Christus autem satisfecit …
dando … seipsum).38 This is an important observation for two reasons: first,
because, again, it dispels the specter of a revengeful God and instead reveals
a self-giving God;39 second, because this teaches us something about the way
we should approach our own afflictions: we should refrain from attributing
any intrinsic value to them as such; rather, if borne with obedience and love,
they can become an occasion for us to become more Christ-like. I will come
back to this in the next section.
In summary, Aquinas adopts the notion of making satisfaction to explain
how Christ, as the God-man, restores a broken relationship between
humanity and God: while the onus to restore the relationship was on
humanity (as we were the guilty party), only God, as the sinless source of all
merit, could make satisfaction for the whole human race.40 As I tried to make
clear, this theory should not be construed in legalistic or penal terms. Nor
should it be construed in terms of substitution. To explain why this is the
case we need to examine in more detail the theme of our participation in
Christ’s redemptive work as members of his Body.

OUR PARTICIPATION IN CHRIST AS MEMBERS

OF HIS BODY
The key presupposition governing Aquinas’s soteriology, and to which I
have alluded a number of times, is the intimate union between Christ and his
faithful. This element, which had been left underdeveloped by Anselm in his
work Cur Deus Homo, receives major attention in Aquinas’s exposition. In
ST we read for instance: “The head and members are as one mystic person;
and therefore Christ’s satisfaction belongs to all the faithful as being his
members.”41 Similarly, dealing with the issue of how we have been
redeemed from sin by the Passion of Christ, Aquinas writes:

For since He is our head, then, by the Passion which he endured from love and
obedience, He delivered us as his members from our sins, as by the price of his Passion:
in the same way as if a man by the good industry of his hands were to redeem himself
from a sin committed with his feet. For, just as the natural body is one, though made up
of diverse members, so the whole Church, Christ’s mystic body (mysticum corpus
Christi), is reckoned as one person with its head, which is Christ.42

This does not simply mean that Christ is in union with us; it also means
that we are in union with Christ. Thus, it is not just the case that Christ
suffers for us; but also: our own sufferings can be seen as a sharing in those
of Christ. Commenting on John 20:21, Aquinas writes: “He [= Christ] says
As the Father has sent me, so too I sent you, which means: as the Father who
loves me has sent me in the world to suffer the Passion for the salvation of
the faithful … so too I love you, and I send you to endure tribulations for my
sake.”43 The view that our own sufferings are a way of becoming more
Christ-like was a prominent theme amongst the early Church Fathers.
Augustine, for instance, had put it at the heart of his Exposition on the
Psalms and had actually stated in this work44 that the risen Christ himself
continues to suffer in the members of his Body, the Church.45 Aquinas does
not make such a radical statement, and it is revealing that he hardly ever
refers to the crucial text, Colossians 1:24, which at first sight seems to
suggest that the sufferings of Christ are somehow deficient and need to be
completed in the faithful.46 Thus, although he does not go as far as stating
that the risen Christ continues to suffer in his members, Aquinas does adopt
the notion that our sufferings can be interpreted as a means of growing in
conformity with Christ. In SCG, for instance, when dealing with the
objection that it seems odd to claim that Christ saved us while death and
other penalties are still with us,47 he writes that the afflictions that remain
allow us to achieve conformity to Christ as members to the head:

It was both fitting and useful to have the penalty remain even when the fault was taken
away. First, indeed, to achieve conformity of the faithful to Christ as members to the
head; hence, just as Christ bore many sufferings, and thus arrived at the glory of
immortality, it was also becoming to his faithful first to undergo sufferings and so to
arrive at immortality, bearing in themselves, so to say, the marks of the passion of
Christ, in order to achieve likeness to his glory. So the Apostle says: “Heirs, indeed of
God, and joint-heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we might also be
glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).48

Thus, Christ does not take away our afflictions here and now. Rather, we
should regard our continuing afflictions as a way of sharing in his saving
work, as a way of becoming more Christ-like.49 Although Aquinas does not
share the view that the risen Christ continues to suffer in the members of his
Body, he does make room for the notion that Christ’s saving work continues
for all eternity. He does so by developing the idea of Christ’s eternal
priesthood and by pointing out the significance of the sacramental
economy.50

THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST, SACRIFICE, AND

THE LORD’S SUPPER
As suggested earlier, in the ST Aquinas retains the notion of making
satisfaction but he also pays attention to a number of other concepts to
describe the saving work of Christ, including “sacrifice.”51 This concept has
the advantage that it is more biblical; it also allows Aquinas to link in a more
cohesive manner the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross with the sacramental
economy (especially the Eucharist52). This connection is strengthened by
Augustine’s definition of sacrifice from Book X of De Civitate Dei (The City
of God), which Aquinas repeatedly quotes: “the visible sacrifice is the
sacrament, i.e., the sacred sign, of the invisible sacrifice.”53 This text proves
fruitful for a number of reasons. First, as we have already noted, it reiterates
the view that saving value is not to be found in Christ’s sufferings as such but
rather in the obedience and love that they manifest: it is not the external but
the interior sacrifice that matters. Second, it makes clear how the faithful can
share in this sacrifice by offering themselves up, mirroring the self-gift of
Christ, as we saw in the previous section.54 Third, this offering is continued
in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which contains “Christ crucified”55
and which is called “Christ’s sacrifice.”56 Let us examine this connection
between Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross and his sacrifice during the Mass in
some more detail.
When discussing the priesthood of Christ, Aquinas (again quoting
Augustine) points out that Christ was both priest and offering.57 A priest is a
mediator between God and the people, somebody who bestows divine things
upon the people:58 as priest, Christ freely offers himself to suffer on our
behalf. Through this sacrifice of Christ, we become reconciled with God and
partakers of the divine nature.59 As we will see, Aquinas attributes the same
benefits to the Lord’s Supper.
The notions of sacrifice and priesthood allow Aquinas to cover the same
material as that covered by the notion of satisfactio, and sometimes his
terminology reverts to “making satisfaction” when discussing priesthood.60
All the faithful, for instance, can participate in the priesthood of Christ
through faith and love, and by offering themselves up61—a theme I have
already mentioned.62 The notion of sacrifice and priesthood, however, open
up a number of vistas that had been left unexplored in the theory of
satisfaction. Drawing on his commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews
(In Heb), written in the late 1260s, Aquinas states, for instance, that Christ’s
priesthood lasts eternally63 and that the resurrected Christ still carries the
scars of his Passion, so as to allow him to intercede on our behalf with the
Father for all eternity.64 However, it is especially in the Lord’s Supper that
the saving efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is continued.
In a beautiful article,65 Aquinas makes clear that the Lord’s Supper has a
threefold significance. In relation to the past it is a sacrifice, commemorative
of the Passion of our Lord; in relation the present, it establishes union
amongst the faithful through participation in Christ and is therefore called
communion; while in relation to the future, it is called Eucharist or Viaticum:
this is the eschatological meaning, referring to the fact that it anticipates the
union with God that we will enjoy in heaven, a foreshadowing of our
enjoyment of God in the afterlife (hoc sacramentum est praefigurativum
fruitionis Dei). Thus, in the Lord’s Supper we receive grace (Eucharistia,
meaning good grace, bona gratia); the Church as the Body of Christ is
constituted (communio); and the sacrifice that Christ offered on Calvary is
being re-enacted for the forgiveness of sins (sacrificium).66 Through the
Lord’s Supper, the Church as the Body of Christ is established and Christ’s
saving deeds become universally present. As Aquinas puts it in his
Commentary on John:

because this sacrament is that of the Passion of our Lord, it contains within itself the
suffering of Christ; therefore, all the beneficiary effects of the Passion of our Lord reside
plentifully in this sacrament. This sacrament is nothing else but the Passion of our Lord
that is communicated to us.… The destruction of death that Christ has effected by his
death and the renewal of life that he effected through his resurrection are also the effects
of this sacrament.67

Commenting on John 6:54, Aquinas states that through the Eucharistic food
we become Christ-like; it is the Eucharistic food that transforms us into
Christ, makes us members of his Body, deifies us, and inebriates us with the
divinity.68 Because the Word resides in this sacrament according to his
divinity and his humanity, it is the cause of our spiritual and bodily
resurrection.69

CONCLUSION
This is a balanced and beautiful soteriology, utterly faithful to the biblical
witness; it does justice to the reality of sin, the need to tackle the disorder it
causes, and the overwhelming mercy of God. Given the sacramental
understanding of Christ, it is Aquinas’s view that every aspect of Christ’s
life, death, and resurrection has saving meaning. The salvation that Christ
effected, particularly through his redeeming death, continues to reside in the
sacraments, especially in the Lord’s Supper, through which the Church is
established as one Body. This notion of the Church as the Body of Christ is
pivotal in everything that Aquinas has to say about how we appropriate the
salvation Christ accomplished. This suggests the organic unity of Aquinas’s
“theory” of Christ’s saving activity, and his sacramentology. But perhaps we
should not call Aquinas’s soteriology a “theory” of salvation, for it is much
more than that. It offers us spiritual guidance as to how we should live and
die in Christ.

NOTES
1. I developed some of the ideas in this chapter elsewhere, such as in
“‘Bearing the Marks of Christ’s Passion’—Aquinas’ Soteriology,” in Rik
Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas
Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 277–
302; and Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “St Anselm and St Thomas Aquinas on
‘Satisfaction’: Or How Catholic and Protestant Understandings of the Cross
Differ,” Angelicum 80 (2003): 159–76.
2. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern
World (London: SCM, 1980), 729.
3. Edward Schillebeeckx, The Church: The Human Story of God (London:
SCM, 1990), 125.
4. For instance, in SCG IV, 53.16, we find the objection that it seems
“impious and cruel to command an innocent to be led to death, especially on
behalf of the impious who are worthy of death. But the man Christ Jesus was
innocent. Therefore it would have been impious if at the command of God
the Father He had undergone death.” In Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa
contra Gentiles, Book Four: Salvation, trans. Charles O’Neil (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 226. For a reply, see SCG IV,
55.18–19; ST III q.47 a.3 ad 1 and III q. 47 a.4 ad 2.
5. See Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (London: SCM, 1976), esp.
ch. 6.
6. All translations from ST are from the Benzinger edition, St Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican
Province (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1981). ST III q.46 a.12 ad 1.
7. For an excellent critique of Moltmann’s theology, see Thomas
Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000).
8. CT I, 227–28.
9. We do not find the expression in either the SCG or ST.
10. See ST III q.19 a.1.
11. I deliberately write that every aspect of Christ’s life has sacramental
“meaning and power” because for Aquinas causation and signification are
not opposed but mutually enrich one another. This is important to keep in
mind as some recent critics (such as L.-M. Chauvet) have artificially played
out a supposedly more “existentialist” signification against a supposedly
more “metaphysical” causation, preferring the first to the second.
Unfortunately, this runs the risk of reducing God’s sacramental power to our
understanding or experience of it. For a more in-depth discussion of this
issue, see Liam Walsh’s searching contribution on the “Sacraments” in Rik
Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas
Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 326–64,
esp. 329–30.
12. In Rom 4:25, no. 380. My translation from the Marietti edition.
13. ST III q.48 a.6; see also ST III q.49 a.1.
14. ST III q.66 a.2.
15. In Rom 6:11, no. 491.
16. Within the confines of this contribution I cannot develop Aquinas’s
theology of the resurrection. For this, see Van Nieuwenhove, “‘Bearing the
Marks of Christ’s Passion,’” esp. 294–95.
17. In ST III q.48, Aquinas describes how the Passion of Christ effects our
salvation by way of merit, by way of making satisfaction, by way of
sacrifice, and by way of redemption.
18. I have dealt with this in Van Nieuwenhove, “St Anselm and St Thomas
Aquinas on ‘Satisfaction,’” 169–70.
19. CT I, 200, in The Light of Faith: The Compendium of Theology, trans.
by C. Vollert (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 1993), 229–30. See also
SCG IV, 54.9 and ST III q.48 a.2.
20. Cf. ST III q.85 a.3 ad 3 and ST III q.84 a.5 ad 2. Some editions (such as
the Editio Altera Romana, 1894) have “et quod amico homo studeat
satisfacere”; others have “et quod amico homo reconciliari studeat.”
21. Cf. SCG IV, 72.14. The sacrament of penance consists of three
elements: confession, contrition, and making satisfaction (see SCG IV, 72). It
is only the element of making satisfaction (satisfactio) that applies to Christ’s
redemptive activity through the union with his members (see ST III q.48 a.2
ad 1).
22. SCG IV, 72.1.
23. ST III q.84 a.10 ad 5.
24. ST I-II q.88 a.1.
25. In ST III q.49 a.1 ad 3.
26. SCG III, 158, 7 and ST III q.48 a.2 ad 1.
27. ST III q.49 a.1; III q.48 a.2 ad 1.
28. ST III q.49 a.1 ad 4.
29. Cf. ST III q.49 a.1 ad 3; ST III q.49 a.3 ad 1.
30. ST III q.46 a.1 ad 3.
31. Cf. ST III q.1 a.1 ad 1.
32. ST III q.49 a.4 ad 2.
33. Cf. ST I q.19 a.8; SCG III, 72.
34. Cf. ST III q.47 a.4 ad 2; ST III q.47 a.3 ad 1.
35. Cf. ST III q.46 a.1 and a.3.
36. Cf. SCG IV, 54.8.
37. See ST III q.48 a.1; SCG IV, 55, 25–26.
38. ST III q.48 a.4.
39. Cf. In Rom 5:8–9, no. 399.
40. SCG IV, 54, 9.
41. ST III q.48 a.2 ad 1; see also ST III q.8 a.1 and a.3.
 42. In ST III q.49 a.1.
43. Super Johan, no. 2527, my trans.
44. Augustine, Expos. on the Psalms, 62, 2.
45. See Ennerationes in Psalmos 62, 2, in Exposition on the Psalms, vol. 3,
trans. Maria Boulding (New York: New City Press, 2001), 230–31: “This
solidarity [between the Head and the Body] meant that when Christ suffered,
we suffered in him; and it follows that now that he has ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand, he still undergoes in the person of his Church
whatever it may suffer amid the troubles of this world.” See Rik Van
Nieuwenhove, “The Christian Response to Suffering, and the Significance of
the Model of the Church as Body of Christ,” Angelicum 82 (2005): 605ff.
46. He refers to the text only twice outside the Commentary on Colossians
itself (no. 61), namely in ST III q.48 a.5 obj. 3 and in In I Cor 1:13, no. 32. In
each case he points out that the Passion of Christ is the sole cause of our
salvation and that the sufferings of the saints do not have any redemptive but
only an exemplary value.
47. SCG IV, 55.28.
48. Summa contra Gentiles, trans. by O’Neil, 245.
49. Cf. ST III q.49 a.3 ad 3; ST III q.79 a.2 ad 1; ST I-II q.85 a.5 ad 2; ST III
q.56 a.1 ad 1; In Rom 8:17, no. 651.
50. “Sacramental economy” refers to the communication (esp. through the
sacraments) of the fruits of Christ’s paschal mystery into our world.
51. Cf. ST III q.48 a.3.
52. Cf. ST III q.83 a.1; but also ST III q.63 a.6 ad 1.
53. ST III q.22 a.2; III q.48 a.3 obj. 2; III q.60 a.1; II-II q.81 a.7 ad 2.
54. Cf. In Rom 12:1–2, nos. 957–67; ST II-II q.85 a.2; ST II-II q.85 a.3 ad
2; Lectura super Epistolam Pauli ad Ephesos 5:2, no. 270.
55. ST III q.73 a.5 ad 2.
56. ST III q.83 a.1.
57. ST III q.22 a.2.
58. Sacerdos [priest] is derived from sacra dans, to give sacred things, as
Aquinas explains in ST III q.22 a.1.
59. ST III q.22 a.1. Christ’s priesthood fulfils the priesthood of the OT in its
threefold aspect, namely as offerings for sins, peace offerings, and burnt
offerings (ST III q.22 a.2). For an illuminating discussion as to how Christ
fulfils the hopes of Israel, see Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of
Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame, 2002).
60. For instance, in ST III q.22 a.1, we find that Christ in his role as priest
is the mediator who “offers up the people’s prayers to God, and, in a manner,
makes satisfaction to God for their sins” (et pro eorum peccatis Deo
aliqualiter satisfacit). Similarly, ST III q.22 a.3.
61. ST III q.82 a.1 ad 2.
62. See the brilliant contribution by Gilles Emery, “Le Sacerdoce spirituel
des fidèles chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 99 (1999): 211–43.
63. ST III q.22 a.5.
64. ST III q.54 a.4.
65. ST III q.73 a.4.
66. Aquinas states that the sacrifice that is offered every day in the Church
is not distinct from that which Christ himself offered, but is a
commemoration (commemoratio) of it (ST III q.22 a.3 ad 2). It is clear from
his stance on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Bread and Wine
that “commemoration” should not be misunderstood in terms of mere
remembrance.
67. Super Johan, no. 963. My translation. A similar view can be found in
ST III q.73 a.5 ad 2: “The Eucharist is the perfect sacrament of our Lord’s
Passion, as containing Christ crucified.”
68. Super Johan, no. 972.
69. Super Johan, no. 972–73.
 CHAPTER 33

SACRAMENTS

DOMINIC HOLTZ, O.P.

IT is an ancient, and some would say original, conviction of the Church that
the redemption won in the deeds, sufferings, and glorification of Jesus Christ
is communicated to the Christian faithful in the enacting of certain ritual
practices understood in some sense to have been instituted by Jesus Christ
himself. Said differently, the universal tradition of the Church has attributed
to what have been called the sacraments or mysteries the role in Christian life
of making manifest and effective here and now the universal salvation
effected by the Word made flesh. Thomas Aquinas is no different in this
regard, nor does he intend to be. He recognizes as sacraments instituted by
Christ those rites so recognized by the Latin Church in the thirteenth century:
above all Baptism and Eucharist, but also Confirmation, Penance, Extreme
Unction, Order, and Matrimony.

SACRAMENTS AS WORSHIP
Aquinas understands worship, and not simply the internal love shown in
mind and will of a rational creature to its Creator but also the use of material
objects, words, and bodily gestures, to be a natural obligation of all human
beings.1 As a matter of justice, creatures must honor their Creator, even as
children must honor their parents and citizens their city and must also do so
in ways proper to their nature.2 Furthermore, to succeed at its task, any
human religion must include means of designating those who are able to
perform the rites, those who may benefit from them, as well as a means to
restore to right relationship those who have been rendered unfit for worship,
whether unfit to minister or to receive the blessings of ministry.3 That is,
worship, for Aquinas, while at heart directed to God, nonetheless requires the
constitution of a people rightly ordered to one another and to God. As with
many other features of the natural law, the specifics of such natural worship
are not, on Aquinas’s view, necessary, and there are many ways by which a
human creature might rightly devise rites, prayers, festivals, and sacrifices to
fulfill the natural obligation of worship.
However, the worship that derives from a human response to the natural
law will necessarily fall short of its goal. In part, this is because of the effects
of sin on human knowledge and desire. Being subject to the corruption of sin,
knowledge of God is dimmed and the authentic desire to be rightly related to
God is bent, and thus human persons will misconceive not only God’s nature
but also the kind of worship pleasing to him. This false worship will in turn
orient the worshippers either to nothing at all or to some other being
unworthy of divine worship. Moreover, even the best rites of natural worship
will fail to bring the believer to God precisely because, as natural activities,
they are insufficient for their end, which is supernatural. This, Aquinas holds,
is the reason God both revealed the rites of the Tabernacle and Temple for
the Old Covenant and the sacraments of faith for the New. Since the worship
of God found in the Old and New Covenant directs the believer to God as to
a supernatural end, an end that exceeds all unaided human efforts both to
know fully and to achieve, no natural worship originating from human
ingenuity will as such succeed.4 In addition, for such worship to be not
merely rightly oriented but also succeed in accomplishing what it promises,
that is to draw the worshipper into the mystery of the divine interpersonal
communion that is God himself, it must be in important ways an act of God
himself, since only a divine act is proportionate to a divine end. It is uniquely
that worship of God offered by the God-man, the Word Incarnate, Jesus
Christ, through all of his theandric acts and experiences, but most especially
in his death on the Cross,5 that succeeds at being worship in spirit and in
truth, the reasonable or spiritual worship of the New Covenant. Indeed, it is
only insofar as the worship of the Church is the worship of Christ himself,
the acts of his body of which he is the head, and only insofar as the prayer of
the Church is the prayer of the Holy Spirit, that the rites of the Church are
acceptable as true worship and effective for directing and bringing the
believer to eternal life.
 SACRAMENTS AS SIGNS
Aquinas is rightly credited with asserting that the sacraments are better
understood as signs than as causes, and that even as causes, they have their
effect by means of their signifying.6 Of course, to see the sacraments as signs
is nothing new of itself. The earliest discussions of the Christian sacraments
distinguished between what was seen and touched, the words spoken and the
rites performed, on the one hand, and the sacred reality imparted, on the other
hand. In Aquinas’s day, the distinction between sign (sacramentum) and
reality (res) was well established. Moreover, the response in the eleventh
century to the sacramental teachings of Berengar of Tours and subsequent
developments in the twelfth century equipped Aquinas with a threefold way
of discussing the sacraments.7 In every sacrament, there is something that is
only a sign, the dynamic ritual action by members of the faithful rightly
constituted as recipients and dispensers of God’s grace in the Church
(sacramentum tantum), that which is both sign and signified reality, the
healing and sanctifying work of Christ applied to the recipient here and now
(res et sacramentum), and that which is only a signified reality, that ultimate
possession of the reality, inaugurated and experienced in part through the
sacrament, but of which the effect here and now is only a foretaste and a
pledge (res tantum).
The purpose of this analysis of the sacraments is meant to do justice to the
fullness of the sacramental teaching that Aquinas has inherited from the early
centuries of the Church. Aquinas, like other Christians, holds that there is
more to Baptism, for example, than getting someone wet, more to Eucharist
than what appears to the eye and taste as bread and wine, more to penance
than comforting words and admirable or ascetical deeds, and yet that these
ritual actions disclose important features of that reality which they impart.
Yet, while early and Medieval Christians asserted that these human rites had
divine effects, they also accepted that the effect, the reality associated with
each did not always obtain. Not everyone baptized in fact remains dead to
sin. Not all who share in the Eucharist maintain that union of charity in
which the Body of Christ consists, and so on. By the twelfth century in the
Latin West, the threefold schema of sacramental language was thus a means
of upholding all three aspects of this common and ancient wisdom, that not
all the sacraments promise is true here and now, nor perhaps even in the
future, but that no sacrament rightly enacted goes without a real effect.
At the same time, the signification that is true of the sacraments is true
also of other ritual activity that does not pretend to have a direct spiritual,
which is to say supernatural, effect. There is, in other words, a broader way
to speak of sacraments, namely as signs of sacred realities. Taken at its
broadest, it might be possible to claim that everything created, insofar as it is
what it is, insofar as it participates in some way in God’s perfection, is a sign
of a sacred thing, namely, of God’s own being. Aquinas, however, is not
inclined to use the term “sacrament” in this way.8 Similarly, while Aquinas
takes the worship of God to be a natural obligation of human beings as
rational animals, he does not generally speak of the rites of human religion in
general as sacraments. He is, however, willing to speak of the sacraments of
the Old Law, including not only the ceremonies, festivals, and sacrifices but
also those rites that constitute the community of Israel as sacred, as set apart
for worship of the Lord, especially circumcision and the anointing of priests.
While Aquinas asserts that these sacraments of the Old Law signified sacred
realities, and specifically that they presignified the reality of the saving work
of the Incarnate Word,9 Aquinas held that they did not effect what they
signified. It was the faith of the people of Israel in the redemption signified
by these rites, not the rites themselves, which Aquinas takes to be the basis of
the salvation of those who believed in the true God before the coming of
Jesus Christ.10 Still, while this distinguishes the sacraments of the Old
Covenant from those of the New, it also admits a continuity between them.11
Curiously, while Aquinas has a high view of the rites of the Old Law, and
indeed devotes a fair number of questions in his Summa theologiae to the
very topic, he holds celebration of these same rites now, and indeed in any
time since the promulgation of the Gospel by the apostles, to be sinful. Why
should this be so? On Aquinas’s view, ritual activity, ritual signification, is
fundamentally communicative: it “says” something.12 Moreover, it does so in
a “tensed” way. The grammar of rites includes, on Aquinas’s view, a past,
present, and future.13 According to Aquinas, the rites of the Old Law are all
in the future tense. They speak, admittedly in shadow and figured ways, of
the future coming of the Lord. While one could have “said” that the Lord will
come in the flesh and will suffer and die prior to the Incarnation of the Word
and the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of the Son of God, after
these events, such rites will no longer be true.
 Since the sacraments, the signification of enacting the rites themselves,
depend on this kind of contextual meaning, and since the sacraments are
effective only insofar as they succeed in signification, some recent
theologians have wondered whether the seven sacraments recognized by
Thomas Aquinas might not be too deeply enmeshed in the cultural
framework of the classical Mediterranean and the inheritor cultures of the
Greco-Roman world, that is, the culture of Europe and the European
Diaspora.14 Can a Eucharist with wheat bread and wine of the grape have an
effect if the signification of wheat and grape wine is altogether different from
its meaning in Europe, say in sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia? Might not a
different cultural framework require a different, even radically different, kind
of signification, in both matter and ritual word and act (i.e., form) to succeed
in signifying meaningfully?
Aquinas is not unaware that one might imagine both different matter and
different form, particularly different words, to enact the sacraments. In
certain respects, Aquinas is willing to admit a range of signification. Any
wine of the grape, for example, will do.15 Any kind of wheaten bread,
leavened or unleavened, will succeed for the celebration of the Eucharist.16
Any water will do for Baptism,17 whether in a small pool or a running
stream, a lake or the ocean. Likewise, Aquinas is aware that the ritual actions
that surround the sacrament admit to a wide variety, even change. The words
that are used in the sacraments, while not infinitely plastic, likewise may be
subject to legitimate variety and change. Aquinas is keenly aware of the ways
in which the ritual words used by Orthodox Christians in the East differ from
those used by Latin Christians in the West, and he admits that, while the
Latin forms are simply speaking better, the “Greek” (i.e., Orthodox) ritual
forms are no less valid, no less true in their signification.18 Even errors in
speech do not, for Aquinas, necessarily vitiate the signification that is
important for the sacraments to be effective. So long as the intended meaning
of the words is not altogether lost by the error, the signification is
preserved.19
Nonetheless, Aquinas rejects any radical departure from the matter or the
ritual forms accepted by the Church. He notes, for example, that while
Eucharist with barley loaves or a lamb rather than bread of wheat may have a
kind of logic, no rite so celebrated would be a true sacrament. Similarly, to
baptize in the name of the Father who creates, the Son who redeems, and the
Spirit who sanctifies, would be valid and effective, while to baptize in the
name of the Mother, the Daughter, and the Spirit would not.20 What permits
the variety in some sense, but does not allow change in another? Aquinas
recognizes that objects and ritual actions are ambiguous as signs. They
generally require words to locate the meaning that they have here and now.
Moreover, on Aquinas’s view, the signification in the sacraments is located
not principally in the culture in which the sacraments are celebrated, but in
the historical particularities of the earthly life of the Incarnate Word. This
means that the critical question is not, for example, what wheat and wine of
the grape “mean” semantically in Osaka, but whether sake and rice cakes
adequately signify in the way Jesus Christ intended when he instituted the
Eucharist at the Last Supper. The question for Baptism is not whether “Son”
and “Father” have the same signification in North America in the early
twenty-first century that they had in the first in Palestine, but why, in God’s
providence, his Son was Incarnate in first-century Palestine and chose to
reveal himself as the Son of the Father.

SACRAMENTS AS CAUSES
While Aquinas is rightly credited, especially in his later works, with a refined
and enriched conception of the sacraments as signs, it would be a mistake to
overlook the crucial ways that Aquinas wanted to safeguard understanding
the sacraments as true causes of grace. At first glance, one can see why
several of Aquinas’s precursors, and some of his contemporaries as well,
were anxious about the claim that the sacraments cause what they signify.
The sacraments are signs of supernatural effects, of the various participations
in the healing of sin and more importantly of the perfection, the completion
of the human person through a sharing in the life of the Incarnate Word,
Jesus Christ. However, since this is a divine effect, it is difficult to see how
the act of a creature could produce it. Indeed, some of Aquinas’s
contemporaries argued just that, namely, that the sacraments are only signs of
what God does independently of them.21 They are, so they claimed, like a
lead coin that a king has decreed to have commercial value. One can truly
buy things with the coin, not because the coin has value in itself, but merely
by the power of the royal decree. These theologians conceived the
sacraments then as occasions of grace, that God promised to produce certain
effects of grace concurrently with the sacraments, of which the sacraments
were however only the signs.
Others, including Aquinas himself in his early career, were dissatisfied
with this approach. The sacraments, he argued, really produce some effect.
Why? Fundamentally, the early Aquinas and others were convinced from the
language of the Scriptures as understood through the heritage of the Fathers
of the Church that the sacraments did something. Seeing the occasionalist
explanation as a denial of any causality for the sacraments, they rejected it as
unfaithful to the received Tradition. Nonetheless, there remained the problem
of associating a supernatural effect with a natural, and thus finite and
disproportionate, cause. Aquinas’s early solution was to assert that the
sacraments indeed had an effect, but only so as to dispose the recipient to
receive the grace of the sacrament, which grace God imparts directly, without
mediation.22 Since this disposing effect was understood to be proportionate
to the sacraments as finite signs, it was seen as a way to assert, on the one
hand, that the sacraments were indeed efficient signs and, on the other hand,
that it was God, and not created activities, who imparted to believers the gift
of eternal life. Ultimately, Aquinas will abandon this disposing view of the
effect of the sacraments for a more robust claim that the sacraments in fact,
without nuance, impart the grace that they signify, but that in doing so they
do not violate the claim that a finite, physical cause cannot, of itself, produce
a divine, spiritual effect.23 This shift is possible through an appeal to the
notion of instrumental causality, itself enriched not only by an engagement
with the Christological writings of the Christian East, especially John of
Damascus, but also in general of a more comprehensive sense of the
relationship between God’s primary causality and secondary causes in the
created world.
It is also worth noting that, fundamentally, Aquinas’s incentive to hold his
position arises from his conviction that the sacraments are received in faith as
handed on from Jesus Christ, who instituted them, and passed them on to the
apostles, who themselves handed them on to their successors, and through
them to the Church throughout the ages. The sacraments are, for Aquinas, a
theological datum, part of the revelation given in Christ. They are neither the
product of human ingenuity nor can they be derived from prior principles.
There is no more foundational category, “sacramentality,” that can be used to
then discover or produce some new set or ordering of the sacraments of faith
other than the seven sacraments received from Christ by the Church.24
Aquinas does consider the hypothetical possibility, for example, that Christ
might have authorized the apostles to produce new sacraments, or
sacramental effects, in their own name rather than his.25 Likewise, he
accounts for the number of sacraments and what they do on the basis of
anthropology (in light of the origin, growth, maintenance, and restoration of
human beings both as individuals and as social animals) and the virtues
(moral and theological).26 However, in both of these cases, Aquinas is keen
to demonstrate the convenientia, the fittingness of the sacraments as they
have been received. They have an order and a reason to them, but only in the
way that all of the works of God are characterized by wisdom. One could no
more invent a new sacrament on Aquinas’s view than write a new inspired
book of Scripture. One could no more restructure the sacramental system
than one could rewrite the events of Christ’s life.
A more recent worry about Aquinas’s presentation of the sacraments
responds to his understanding of the sacraments as causes. Specifically, the
worry has taken the form of a Heideggerian critique of metaphysics and
“ontotheology,” especially in the work of Chauvet.27 Chauvet, following
Heidegger, worries about the project of seeking a single foundation for all
instances of being, for some indeterminate and unspecified being shared by
all, and then identifying this ground of being with God. As a result, so the
critique goes, while, on the one hand, the richness of individual things as
primary is lost to the vagueness of foundational “being,” so also God is
misrepresented as knowable, as sharing the same kind of being as any other
thing, albeit maximally. God thus becomes the subject of human rational
projects, as opposed to being the One encountered in the world but as always
escaping the capacity of the world to anticipate or categorize. As related to
classic sacramental thought exemplified in Thomas Aquinas, this
ontotheological project is accused of depersonalizing and objectifying the
sacraments, making what should be understood as the creative, self-
producing power of ritual words in an encounter with God who escapes all
human anticipations into a mechanistic scheme of “grace” in which the
actions of God, being capable of categorization in the sphere of being, are
safely known, deprived of mystery.
This is not the place to provide a full response to Chauvet’s critique, much
less to Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology, as they relate to Thomas
Aquinas.28 However, it may be helpful to consider Chauvet’s worry that
Aquinas’s account depersonalizes the sacraments, subordinating them to a
productionist scheme of impersonal objects. On the face of it, the worry does
not seem altogether unfounded. After all, Aquinas does admit that the
sacraments are causes of grace. Even granting that they cause by signing or
through their signification, they are nonetheless causes. Indeed, because they
produce the effects of grace in the recipient, they are efficient causes, and
because they produce their saving effects not of their own materiality or their
intentional ritual use (i.e., their form) but by God’s use of them to produce an
effect properly divine, they are instrumental causes.
Now, efficient causality is not generally how we conceive of the
interaction of persons as persons. The loving encounter between persons is,
one might insist, precisely opposed to producing an effect in the other
directly, as opposed to moving the other by loving example through a kind of
exemplar or final causality. Similarly, if the minister in the ritual enacting of
the sacrament is understood to act as an instrument, and Aquinas’s preferred
analogy for instrumental causality is the saw in the hand of a carpenter,29 we
might rightly worry here that not only the recipient of the sacrament, but also
the minister, is reduced to something inert, an object on which God effects a
change rather than a person invited into the encounter with mystery.
Given these unhappy implications, why would Aquinas assert that
sacraments are instrumental causes? Fundamentally, Aquinas is committed to
the claim that the sacraments are not human acts pointing to God, but divine
acts, God applying the work of salvation effected by the deeds and
experiences of the Incarnate Word to the faithful in the Church, which is
itself the body of the Incarnate Word. They are, in other words, not merely
interpersonal, but in crucial ways intrapersonal, the realization in each of the
members of the body what is fully realized in the head, Jesus Christ, by
means materially and numerically different from the acta et passa Christi,
but which communicate the same power and person those theandric activities
accomplished in the earthly ministry of the Incarnate Word.30
Even so, how should instrumentality not undermine the very personal
reality Aquinas seeks to uphold? The answer lies in the richness Aquinas sees
in the notion of instrumental causality, a richness he has expanded well
beyond its brief discussion in Aristotle, even as Aquinas’s sacramental
thought as a whole enriches and expands the whole understanding of
causality itself.31 The most excellent and pertinent case of instrumental
causality is, for Aquinas, the human nature assumed by the Son of God in the
Incarnation. In this most intimate of all unions, more than even the union of a
hand with its body, the Word of God employs the human nature, an animate,
rational nature, as his own, such that even the simplest of human acts or
experiences of the Incarnate Word is theandric, the human act or experience
of God. Because this fully rational human nature is the human nature of a
divine person, all of the human activity of Jesus Christ is therefore of infinite
value, overflowing with divine charity and sufficient for the salvation of the
whole human race, even if this is all the more evident and effected in those
deeds most clearly enacted out of love for the human race, most especially
his death on the Cross. Thus, in the economy of salvation, all of God’s saving
work is accomplished through the instrumentality of the humanity of the
Incarnate Word and the joining of believers to that saving instrumentality
through the Spirit ordinarily through the instrumentality of the sacraments.
So, in highlighting the instrumentality both of the minister and recipient of
the sacraments, Aquinas is committed neither to a project of
depersonalization nor to the mechanization of the work of grace. The notion
of sacramental character, far from a theological curiosity to distinguish
sacraments that cannot be repeated in the same individual from those that
can, serves to account for how both the reception of the sacraments and their
administration is not merely a human act occasioning or preparing for a
divine act, but a real knowing and loving participation in the personal,
theandric, saving work of the Incarnate Word.32 Indeed, this is why Aquinas
insists that the sacraments do effect what they sign, that they are efficient
causes. To know and love as we ought, to know and love as Christ knows
and loves, to breathe with the same breath that is the Holy Spirit, to be in
other words divinized, is not traceable, reducible, or derivable from any
created nature. No account of semiotics and the power of signs, nor any kind
of formal or final causality alone, can speak meaningfully of what it means
for a created agent to be drawn into the life of the Trinity through the saving
work of the Son of God made flesh. In the end, whatever ways it may also be
the work of the believer, it must necessarily be principally the work of God.
For Aquinas, in line with the historical consensus of Christendom, while
the sacraments share much not only with human religious ceremonies in
general and the offices and sacrifices of the Old Testament in particular,
these sacraments take their origin, institution, meaning, and effect directly
from Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry and as handed on to the Apostles
and their successors. That is, while the sacraments may be said to be
ecclesial (to be sacramenta ecclesiae) insofar as they both constitute the
Church as such and are, especially in the Eucharist, the fundamental activity
of the Church, for Aquinas they are essentially dominical in nature. The
sacraments flow from God’s freedom, from the divine will and plan to draw
his elect to himself by the saving work of the Incarnate Word and the sending
forth of the Holy Spirit. Thus, like any other part of the economy of
salvation, and especially the mysteries of the Incarnation to which they are
intimately linked, the sacraments cannot be deduced by reason, reduced to a
set of principles, or produced by human ingenuity.33 They are irreducibly the
works of Jesus Christ, to be contemplated and explored for deeper
understanding, to be sure, but like all else in the divine economy, explored
not for necessity, but for their fittingness (convenientia) with the eternal
wisdom made manifest in God’s work of salvation in Jesus Christ.

NOTES
1. SCG 3, q.119; ST II-II q.85 a.1.
2. ST II-II q.81 a.2.
3. ST I-II q.102 a.5.
4. ST I-II q.99 a.3.
5. ST III q.48 a.3.
6. ST III q.60 a.1; John P. Yocum, “Sacraments in Aquinas,” in Thomas
Weinandy, Daniel Keating, and John Yocum, eds., Aquinas on Doctrine: A
Critical Introduction (London and New York: T & T Clark International,
2004), 160–64.
7. Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West (Collegeville, Minn.:
Liturgical Press, 1998), 97–102, 120ff.
8. ST III q.60 a.2 ad 1.
9. ST I-II q.102 a.2.
10. ST III q. 62 a. 6.
11. ST I-II q.107 a.1.
12. Yocum, “Sacraments in Aquinas,” 165–68.
13. ST II-II q.93 a.1.
 14. See Phillip Tovey, Inculturation of Christian Worship: Exploring the
Eucharist (Aldershot and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 33–55.
15. ST III q.74 a.5 ad 3.
16. ST III q.74 a.4.
17. ST III q.66 a.4.
18. ST III q.60 a.8; ST III q.66 a.5 ad 1.
19. ST III q.60 a.7 ad 3.
20. ST III q.60 a.7 ad 3; ST III q.60 a.8.
21. ST III q.62 a.1.
22. Super Sent 4, d.1, q.1, a.4, qc.1, co.
23. ST III q.62 a.1.
24. In all his works, Aquinas only uses the word sacramentalitas once,
Super Sent 4, d.31, q.1, a.2, ad 7. Here he seeks to distinguish different
understandings of marriage. While marriage is a sacrament, it is also a form
of life arising from human nature (officium naturae), and so it can be
understood in this latter way, and not only in terms of its signification of,
among other things, inseparability.
25. ST III q.64 a.4.
26. ST III q.65 a.1.
27. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbole et sacrement: Une relecture
sacramentelle de l’existence chrétienne (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1988).
See also Kenan B. Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World: A
Theology for the Third Millennium (New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist
Press, 1999).
28. For a recent critique of Chauvet’s engagement with Aquinas, see
Bernard Blankenhorn, “The Instrumental Causality of the Sacraments:
Thomas Aquinas and Louis-Marie Chauvet,” Nova et Vetera 4:2 (2006):
255–94.
29. ST III q.62 a.1.
30. ST III q.8.
31. Mark D. Jordan, Rewritten Theology: Aquinas after His Readers
(Malden, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 163–68.
32. ST III q.63 a.2.
33. ST III q.64 a.2 ad 3.
 CHAPTER 34

RESURRECTION AND THE SEPARATED SOUL

ELEONORE STUMP

THE SOUL AS SUBSTANTIAL FORM

Aquinas takes human beings to be material things, and he takes the human
soul to be the form of the human body.1 Although Aquinas thinks that not all
forms are forms of material objects, on his view all material things are
composites of matter and form. In the case of human beings, the soul is the
substantial form of the whole. A substantial form of a material object such as
a human being is that in virtue of which the material object is a member of
the species to which it belongs. In general, form for Aquinas is not static but
dynamic. And a substantial form is the configuration or organization that
gives a thing its species-specific causal powers. According to Aquinas, at
death, the human soul is replaced in the body by a different, non-animating
substantial form that takes the place of the soul. In consequence of its
configuration by that form, the matter of the dead body is substantially
different.2 That is why after death the body can be called ‘a human body’
only equivocally. For the same reason, Aquinas thinks that when we use the
names of the parts for the dead body, we use those words equivocally. Once a
human being dies and the soul is gone, Aquinas says, we use words such as
‘flesh’ or ‘eye’ equivocally if we apply them to parts of the corpse.3
For Aquinas, the individuation of a substance is also a function of its
substantial form. Any given particular substance is this thing just in virtue of
the fact that the form which configures it is this form. For example, a
material substance such as Socrates is this human being in virtue of having
this substantial form. What is necessary and sufficient for something to be
identical to Socrates is that its substantial form be identical to the substantial
form of Socrates.4
But how are the substantial forms of material objects such as human
beings individuated? The answer is expressed in Aquinas’s line that matter
individuates.5 The line is well known, but its meaning is less evident.
For Aquinas, the substantial form of any material substance configures
prime matter, that is, matter that is devoid of every form, without any
configuration. On the other hand, when Aquinas attempts to explain the
concept of matter relevant to individuation, he tends to speaks of it as matter
under indeterminate dimensions,6 that is, matter which is extended in three
dimensions but where the degree of extension in any dimension is not
specified. Any actually existing matter has determinate dimensions. But the
particular degree of extension in a dimension is one thing; the materiality, as
it were, of matter is another thing. The determinate dimensions of a material
thing have to do with exactly what space that thing occupies. On the other
hand, matter under indeterminate dimensions, that is, the materiality of the
matter, is responsible for the space-occupying feature itself. Matter is the sort
of thing that is here now, in a way that numbers, for example, are not. But
this feature of matter, its space-occupying character, can be considered
without specifying the precise spatial locations that any particular material
thing occupies. Matter is this matter in virtue of occupying this space, even if
the dimensions of that space are indeterminate.7
And so because matter has an irreducible space-occupying character, we
can distinguish one substantial form from another by its association with
matter. This substantial form is the configuration of this matter, and that one
is the configuration of that matter.8 For Aquinas, all the matter of a material
substance is configured directly by a particular substantial form. That is, the
substantial form of a substance such as a cat does not weave together the
integral parts of the cat—the legs and trunk and so on—or any other matter-
form composites in the cat. Rather, every material part of the cat is a cat-ish
part, which is what it is in virtue of being informed by the substantial form
cat. But what makes a substantial form cat this particular substantial form cat
is that there is some particular materiality, now and here, which is informed
by that form. In the case of human beings, Aquinas’s idea is the same. What
individuates Socrates is this substantial form of a human being; and a
substantial form of a material substance such as Socrates is this substantial
form in virtue of the fact that it configures this matter. On this way of
understanding the form that is the human soul, it is easier to see why Aquinas
thinks that the soul makes matter to be not just human but also this human
being. The soul configures prime matter, whose basic materiality or
extensibility then differentiates this form with its spatio-temporal location
from any other. In fact, Aquinas thinks that, for human beings, each soul is,
as it were, handcrafted by God to inform this matter.
Aquinas holds that the separated soul can exist independently of the body
after death, but Aquinas’s way of individuating the substantial forms of
material substances has seemed to some people to pose a problem for this
claim of his. It is true that the separated soul of Socrates will differ from the
separated soul of Plato in virtue of having configured the body of Socrates
rather than the body of Plato. But some philosophers suppose that, even so,
Aquinas is stuck with an incoherent position. So, for example, Richard
Swinburne says,

If Aquinas’ view is to be spelled out coherently, it must be done.… [in terms of intrinsic
properties of the soul]. What did happen to a soul in the past, namely that it was united
to a certain body, and will happen to it in future cannot make it the soul it is now. That
must be something internal to it now. Religious believers who believe that humans can
exist without their bodies, even if only temporarily, must hold that. So too must any
believer who holds that there is life after death, even if souls do not exist separately from
bodies.9

For Aquinas, however, there will be intrinsic differences between the

separated soul of Socrates and the separated soul of Plato. On Aquinas’s
position,

everything has its being and its individuation from the same source.… Therefore, as the
being of the soul is from God as from an active principle … so also the individuation of
the soul, even if it has a certain relationship to the body, does not perish when the body
perishes.10

One reason for his holding this position is that there is continuity of cognitive
and conative faculties, with their dispositions and occurrent conditions,
between an embodied person such as Socrates and his subsisting separated
soul. For example, the separated soul of Socrates has the memories of
Socrates rather than those of Plato.11 As far as that goes, all the intellectual
faculties, including the rational will, of Socrates are preserved in his
separated soul. But what is contained in these faculties of the separated soul
of Socrates, including the habits of the will, as well as the mind’s memories
and knowledge, will be different from those in the faculties of the separated
soul of Plato. And so there are these intrinsic differences between the
separated souls of Socrates and Plato: the things known, willed, and
remembered by the separated soul of Socrates are different from those
known, willed, and remembered by the separated soul of Plato.
Consequently, on Aquinas’s view, there are intrinsic characteristics that
differentiate one separated soul from another.

CONSTITUTION AND IDENTITY

In addition to this much of Aquinas’s basic metaphysics of the nature of
substantial forms in general and the substantial form that is the human soul in
particular, it is also important to understand that on Aquinas’s views
constitution is not identity.12 Or, to put the same point another way, for
Aquinas a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In many places in his
texts, Aquinas makes plain that, in virtue of having its elements configured
by the form of the whole, a whole has emergent properties not had by any of
its parts, so that a sum of the parts and the properties of the parts will not be
equivalent to the whole. So, for example, Aquinas says, “a composite is not
those things out of which it is composed … [as, for example,] flesh is not
identical to fire and earth [the elements of which it is composed].”13 In fact,
Aquinas’s views of change commit him to the claim that constitution is not
identity. On the Aristotelian understanding of change that Aquinas inherits
and accepts, a thing that gains or loses an accidental form undergoes change
while remaining one and the same thing. Quantities, including quantity of
matter, are also accidents. So, on Aquinas’s position, a human being who
loses a quantity of matter, such as a hand or a leg, for instance, remains one
and the same thing while undergoing change. If, however, constitution were
identity for Aquinas, then a human being whose material constituents
changed would cease to be the thing he was and become some other thing
instead. In that case, contrary to Aquinas’s position, the gain or loss of an
accident such as quantity of matter would not be a change in a human being;
it would be the destruction of one thing and the generation of another.
Furthermore, because constitution is not identity for Aquinas, it is also
possible for him to suppose that a particular substance survives even the loss
of some of its metaphysical constituents, provided that the remaining
constituents can exist on their own and are sufficient for the existence of the
substance. The point applies especially in the case of human beings. A
human being is not identical to either the integral or the metaphysical parts
that constitute him. Normally, the integral parts of a human being include
two hands, but a human being can exist without being in the normal
condition. A human being can survive the loss of a hand or other of his larger
integral parts, as well as the elemental bits of which such larger integral parts
are composed. That is why the loss of a hand or the amputation of a limb is
not the destruction of a human being. Aquinas would therefore repudiate the
sort of mereological essentialism that identifies a person as the whole sum of
his material parts. Analogously, although the metaphysical constituents of a
human being normally include matter and a substantial form, Aquinas thinks
that a human being can exist without being in the normal condition in this
way, because what constitutes a human being is not the same as that to which
a human being is identical. On Aquinas’s view, a human being can survive
even the loss of his entire body, when the substantial form remains.

THE SEPARATED SOUL

Since what makes Socrates this individual substance is the individual
substantial form that configures him, and since the substantial form can exist
independently of the body, then for Aquinas the existence of the substantial
form separated from the body is sufficient for the existence of the human
being whose substantial form it is. Socrates can continue to exist when all
that remains of him is his separated soul. But it does not follow that Socrates
is identical to his soul, because constitution is not identity.
Given these views, Aquinas should be interpreted as holding that, in
Socrates’s disembodied condition, when he is not composed of the normal
constituents for human beings, Socrates is nonetheless identical to the same
thing he was identical to in his embodied condition: an individual substance
in the category rational animal.14
It is easy to become confused about Aquinas’s position here, however,
because Aquinas is adamant in his rejection of Platonic dualism (or Cartesian
dualism, as we would say). He is at pains to make clear that in his view a
human being is not identical to his soul. So, for example, in his commentary
on I Corinthians,15 Aquinas says, “Since a soul is part of a body of a human
being, it is not the whole human being, and my soul is not me.”16 In
consequence of passages such as this, some scholars take it as evident that for
Aquinas the separated soul is not the same as the human being whose soul it
was during that person’s bodily life. On their interpretation of Aquinas,
Aquinas thinks that the soul of Socrates, separated from the body of Socrates,
is not a human being and that, for this reason, the soul of Socrates is not
Socrates.
If the soul is not Socrates, but the soul of Socrates is all that continues to
exist after the death of Socrates’s body, then it seems to follow, on Aquinas’s
views as these scholars read him, that Socrates does not survive bodily death.
Without any doubt, however, Aquinas accepted the Christian doctrine that,
after the death and before the resurrection of the body, the soul persists in a
separated state. And so, on the views of these scholars, Aquinas has to be
read as holding that a human being ceases to exist at bodily death and comes
back into existence only with the resurrection of the body.17 The persisting
separated soul is not to be identified with the person who died.

THE CONSISTENCY OF AQUINAS’S POSITION

This interpretation, however, is not plausible if Aquinas’s views of the
separated soul are considered in the context of his theological claims about it.
To take just one example of many that could be given, on Aquinas’s
theological views, before the general judgment of all humanity, each
separated soul is judged, individually, at the moment of the bodily death of
the human being whose soul it is. But at that individual judgment, the
separated soul is judged on the basis of the actions and dispositions of the
human being it informed. The separated soul of Socrates is judged by Christ
on the basis of the life of Socrates; and, on the basis of this judgment, the
soul either enjoys the blessings of heaven or the pains of the fires of hell.
Aquinas says,

When the soul is separated from the body, it receives its reward or punishment
immediately for those things which it did in the body.… In the providence of God,
rewards and punishments are due to rational creatures. Since when they are separated
 from the body, they are immediately capable both of glory and of punishment, they
immediately receive one or the other; and neither the reward of the good nor the
punishment of the bad is put off until the souls take up their bodies again.18

But if the soul of Socrates is not Socrates, then what justice is there in
assigning to the separated soul either the reward or the punishment merited
by Socrates, who is not the soul? Furthermore, at the resurrection Socrates
will exist again; and the separated soul-which-is-not-Socrates will cease to
exist, since the separated soul will then cease to exist as a separate subsisting
thing. But why should the separated soul-which-is-not-Socrates lose its bliss
when Socrates is resurrected?
The views implied by the position that a human being fails to exist in the
period between bodily death and bodily resurrection are theological
gibberish, and they are contradicted in multiple places by explicit claims on
Aquinas’s part. So, for example, about the nature of the separated soul’s
bliss, Aquinas says that

souls immediately after their separation from the body become unchangeable as regards
the will.… [B]eatitude, which consists in the vision of God, is everlasting.… But it is
not possible for a soul to be blessed if its will did not have rectitude.… And so it must be
that the rectitude of the will in the blessed soul is everlasting.19

This text and many others like it make plain the unacceptability of the
interpretation that assigns to Aquinas the view that a human being ceases to
exist at death and that a separated soul is not the same human being as the
person whose soul it is. That interpretation has to attribute to Aquinas views
that make his theological position bizarre and that he explicitly denied in one
place or another. It is abundantly clear therefore that for Aquinas the
existence of the separated soul is sufficient for the existence of the human
being whose soul it is.
But, then, we need to ask, how can Aquinas also hold that a human being
is a material composite? It seems as if, for Aquinas, either a human being is
identical to his soul, in which case a human being is not a material
composite, or else a human being is a material composite, in which case he is
not identical to his soul. How is it possible for a human being to be a material
composite and yet to continue to exist in the absence of his body?
The consistency of Aquinas’s position is manifest if we give proper
weight to the distinction between constitution and identity in his thought. A
human person is not identical to his soul; rather, a human person is identical
to an individual substance in the species rational animal. A particular of that
sort is normally, naturally, composed of form and matter configured into a
human body. Because constitution is not identity for Aquinas, however, a
particular can exist with less than the normal, natural complement of
constituents. It can, for example, exist when it is constituted only by one of
its main metaphysical parts, namely, the soul. And so although a person is
not identical to his soul, the existence of the soul is sufficient for the
existence of a person. Once we are clear about Aquinas’s distinction between
constitution and identity, we can see that a rejection of the Platonic position
that a human being is identical to a soul is not equivalent to the acceptance of
the position that a human being cannot exist without a body.

RESURRECTION, REASSEMBLY, AND

RECONSTITUTION
Some philosophers and theologians suppose that resurrection is a matter of
the reassembly of the atoms of a person’s earthly body, but this is not
Aquinas’s view at all. For Aquinas, preservation of identity is not something
that has to be guaranteed by recomposing the human being of the same bits
of matter-form composites, such as atoms, as before. Rather, on Aquinas’s
account, the soul is what makes unformed prime matter into this human
being by configuring prime matter in such a way that the matter is this living
animal capable of intellective cognition. In the resurrection of the body, by
informing unformed matter, the soul makes unformed matter this human
being again. And so puzzles about what happens when the same atoms have
been part of more than one human being are avoided.
Furthermore, the material and causal continuity between the matter that
composed Socrates’ at the moment of his death and the matter that at any
subsequent time composes him is provided by the substantial form itself. For
Aquinas, the individuation and identity of anything at all is provided by its
substantial form. And so the matter configuring Socrates’s resurrected body
is the same as the matter configuring Socrates’s earthly body in virtue of the
fact that it is configured by the same particular substantial form, which is the
soul of Socrates.
 For these reasons, on Aquinas’s views, God’s resurrecting Socrates is not
like bringing back the snows of yesteryear,20 because, unlike the snows of
yesteryear, Socrates never ceased to exist. The re-embodiment of Socrates is
not a reassembly of those atoms still available as constituents for Socrates’s
new body. On Aquinas’s account, resurrection is not so much reassembly of
integral parts as it is reconstitution of metaphysical parts. The constituents of
Socrates in his resurrected state are the same as those of Socrates during his
earthly life: this substantial form, the soul, and the prime matter that is
configured by the soul into a body. Unlike the snows of yesteryear or the
atoms of Socrates’s earthly life, prime matter has no form of its own. It exists
only in potentiality; and in order to be the same matter as it was before, it
needs only to be configured by the same form as it was before.
The Thomistic synthesis of Aristotelian hylomorphism and Christian
theology therefore yields a doctrine of the resurrection less open to objection
than some of its critics suppose.21

NOTES
1. For further discussion of the metaphysical issues raised here and in
subsequent sections in connection with Aquinas’s theory of forms, see the
chapter on Aquinas’s theory of things in my Aquinas (London: Routledge,
2003).
2. In DA II.11.226.
3. QDA un.9.
4. In BDT 2.4.2; cf. also ST I q.119 a.1 and QDP 9.1.
5. Perhaps the most detailed exposition of this view of his is in his In BDT
2.4.2.
6. In BDT 2.4.2. Aquinas does not always describe his position on this
score in the same way, and the variation in terminology suggests to some
scholars either a development in his thought or a series of changes of mind.
The issue is complicated, and so I am leaving it to one side here. For the
discussion of the scholarly controversy, see John Wippel, The Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 357–73.
7. But see also Jeffrey Brower’s contribution to this volume.
 8. Cf., e.g., ST III q.3 a.7 ad 1, where Aquinas says that a substantial form
is multiplied in accordance with the division of matter.
9. Richard Swinburne, “Soul, Nature and Immortality of the,” in
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1999).
10. QDA un.1 ad 2.
11. In fact, for Aquinas, there are two memory capacities, one which is
dependent on the senses and phantasia, and one which is dependent on the
intellect. The second is the memory at issue here. For further discussion of
Aquinas’s views of human cognitive capacities, see the chapter on the
mechanisms of cognition in my Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003).
12. See, e.g., In Metaphysica VII.17.1672–1674. There Aquinas says that
in cases in which the composite is one thing, the composite is not identical
with its components; rather the composite is something over and above its
components. For interesting contemporary arguments against the reduction of
wholes to their parts, see Mark Johnston, “Constitution is Not Identity,” Mind
101 (1992): 89–105, and Lynne Rudder Baker, “Why Constitution is Not
Identity,” Journal of Philosophy 94 (1997): 599–621. For an excellent
discussion of the constitution relation, see Lynne Rudder Baker, “Unity
Without Identity: A New Look at Material Constitution,” Midwest Studies in
Philosophy 23 (1999): 144–65. Cf. also Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and
Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
13. In Metaphysica VII.17.1673–1674.
14. For more defense of this position, see my “Resurrection, Reassembly,
and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul,” in Bruno Niederberger and
Edmund Runggaldier, eds., Die menschliche Seele: Brauchen wir den
Dualismus? (Frankfurt a. M.: Ontos Verlag, 2006).
15. I am grateful to Brian Leftow for calling this passage to my attention.
16. In I Cor, ch. 15, l.2.
17. So, e.g., Peter van Inwagen says, “Aquinas.… sees the human person as
essentially a composite of a human soul and a human body. According to the
‘composite’ theory, a person cannot exist without a body: to exist is for one’s
soul (always numerically the same) to animate some human body or other.
(In the interval between one’s death and one’s receiving a new body at the
time of the general resurrection, one’s soul exists and thinks and has
experiences, but one does not, strictly speaking, exist)” (Peter van Inwagen,
“Resurrection,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy [London:
Routledge, 1999]). Robert Pasnau also argues that for Aquinas a separated
soul is not a human being and therefore that a human being ceases to exist at
death, on Aquinas’s position. As one example supporting this interpretation,
Pasnau cites a passage from Aquinas’s Sentence commentary in which
Aquinas is discussing the separated soul of Abraham. In that place, as Pasnau
rightly points out, “Aquinas remarks … that ‘Abraham’s soul is not, strictly
speaking, Abraham himself’” (the passage is cited by Pasnau as Super Sent
IV 43.1.1.1 ad 2). Pasnau claims that Aquinas “insists on this point precisely
so as to argue that bodily resurrection is necessary for human immortality.
Hence [Aquinas] immediately concludes: ‘So Abraham’s soul’s having life
would not suffice for Abraham’s being alive.’” In Pasnau’s view, this
passage shows that Aquinas cannot have supposed that “the persistence of
the soul ‘is sufficient for the existence’ of the human being.” Rather, in
Pasnau’s view, the passage makes plain that Aquinas “would deny that a
human soul could constitute a human being.” See Robert Pasnau’s review of
my Aquinas in Mind 114 (2005): 203–6.
18. SCG IV.91.
19. SCG IV.92.
20. The phrase is Van Inwagen’s; see Van Inwagen, “Resurrection.”
21. I am grateful to Brian Davies for helpful comments on an earlier draft
of this paper.
 CHAPTER 35

PRAYER

BRIAN DAVIES

AQUINAS wrote on prayer (oratio) in a time following some confusion on the

topic, a confusion that seems to prevail even today. In keeping with what
seems to be the New Testament approach, early Christian authors understood
prayer as a matter of petition.1 For them, to pray is primarily to ask God for
things that one wants, and this understanding of prayer survived well into the
Middle Ages. However, prior to Aquinas’s time, and during it, other senses
of “prayer” emerged among theologians. In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, St Paul
tells us to “pray without ceasing,” so there were authors who felt obliged to
understand prayer as encompassing much that clearly does not seem like
asking. St. Bonaventure, for example, says that, in its broadest sense, prayer
means “every good deed.”2 Other authors began to talk about different parts
and kinds of prayer—the idea being (a) that prayer should be formally
subdivided into temporally sequential and ordered stages comparable to the
structure of a liturgy, and (b) that one can “progress” from an inferior form of
prayer to another—from petitionary prayer to “contemplative prayer”
(considered as having nothing to do with anything as lowly as asking for
something). As Simon Tugwell has said, “by the time of St. Thomas … it is
far from clear quite what the word ‘prayer’ means.”3 As Tugwell goes on to
emphasize, however, Aquinas’s most mature and extended discussion of
prayer comes in the Summa theologiae,4 and, though some of his earlier
writings on prayer do not unequivocally do so, the treatment in the Summa
makes it clear that prayer, as in its traditional Christian sense, should be
taken to be petition. In what follows, therefore, it is on the Summa
theologiae’s treatment of prayer that I shall focus.5
 AQUINAS, PRAYER, AND THE NATURE OF GOD
One will never understand what Aquinas says on prayer if one does not
recognize that, like so much else that he writes, it flows from his conviction
that God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens (“Subsisting Being Itself”) and the source
of the existence or being (esse) of everything other than himself. According
to Aquinas, every individual in the universe, and every operation of every
individual in the universe, is being made to be by, is being created by, is
being caused by God.
In various places, Aquinas asks whether or not the universe began to be.
He denies that we can prove that it did, but goes on to say that, even if the
universe had no beginning, it should still be thought of as made to be by God.
For Aquinas, God accounts for the sheer existence of everything other than
himself. So if something is, then, thinks Aquinas, it is, and it is what it is, and
it does what it does, because God is bringing this about—not as a temporal
agent acting on things in the universe, but as the eternal and unchanging
cause of there being any universe at all (as, so we might say, accounting for
the fact that there is, at any time, something rather than nothing).
Aquinas believes that we should ask, and try to answer, a variety of causal
questions concerning how things come to be in the universe. He also believes
that we can seek to answer such questions by appealing to increasingly more
general levels of explanation—that we can, for example, explain how a
particular cat exists by referring to its parents, we can explain how cats come
to exist by referring to conditions on earth favoring the emergence and
continued existence of cats, that we can go on to account for the emergence
of these conditions, and so on. But, Aquinas insists, when we are done with
what we might refer to as “scientific explanations” we are still left with the
question “How come any universe at all?” This is obviously not a scientific
question (since it is asking about the universe as a whole, and since scientific
questions and answers have to do with what are parts of the universe). Yet
Aquinas takes it to be a valid question to which there must be an answer, and
he gives the name “God” to whatever the answer is. God is not part of the
universe. He accounts for it being there at all and at any time. Since changes
that occur in the universe are as real as anything else to be found in it,
Aquinas consequently concludes that all changes, all “operations,” in the
universe are also God’s doing.
 In short, Aquinas has an understanding of God according to which
everything created is at all times made to be what it is by God. Some people
have objected to this understanding, since, so they have said, it seems to
embrace a radical determinism according to which nothing that happens in
the world could fail to happen: if divinity is what Aquinas takes it to be, does
it not follow that everything that happens in the universe is forced to be what
it is by God? This objection to Aquinas, however, is based on a
misunderstanding of how he thinks. When it comes to things in the universe,
Aquinas believes that various events can be determined by their causes. He
would say, for example, that, when sulfuric acid burns my skin, the changes
occurring in my skin are determined by the acid (indeed, he would say, the
changes in my skin are the acid at work). In general, Aquinas holds that if an
agent acts on something so as to oblige it to become thus and so, then we
have an instance of determinism. However, Aquinas adds, God’s creative
causality is not such that God acts on something so as to determine that it
becomes thus and so. For Aquinas, God creates something (brings it about
that something has esse) not by modifying it but by simply making it to be
whatever it is. As he puts it in his commentary on Aristotle’s Peri
Hermeneias:

God’s will is to be thought of as existing outside the realm of existents (extra ordinem
entium existens), as a cause from which pours forth everything that exists in all its
various forms. Now what can be and what must be are variants of being, so that it is
from God’s will itself that things derive whether they must be or may or may not be and
the distinction of the two according to the nature of their immediate causes. For he
prepares causes that must cause for those effects that he wills must be, and causes that
might cause but might fail to cause for those effects that he wills might or might not be.
And it is because of the nature of their causes that some effects are said to be effects that
must be and others effects that need not be, although all depend on God’s will as
primary cause, a cause which transcends this distinction between must and might not.6

In other words, Aquinas thinks that God’s omni-causality does not act as a
rival to the causality of creatures, since it actually empowers this or makes it
to exist.
With this thought in mind, Aquinas draws the conclusion that God is
omnipotent. Unlike some authors, by “God is omnipotent” Aquinas does not
mean that we can stick the expression “God can …” before any expression
signifying any logically possible feat. He does not mean that God is
omnipotent, since, for example, God can ride a bicycle, or fly to Germany, or
sin. Aquinas’s account of omnipotence is tied to his notion of God as
bringing it about that things have esse. His rule is: if it can be thought
(without contradiction) to be, then God can make it to be. And this rule takes
us to the notion of petitionary prayer. For people who pray want it to be the
case that certain things, states, or processes come to be. And, so one might
ask, if Aquinas is right on the topic of God as Creator, then is it not
reasonable for such people to ask God to bring it about that these things,
states, or processes actually do come to be?7

PRAYER AND PRACTICAL REASON

We can, of course, be reasonable in different ways. One way of being
reasonable is to work our way through a series of proofs in logic or
mathematics, or to demonstrate, on the basis of his symptoms, that Fred has
scarlet fever. Here, so Aquinas would say, we would be exercising our
theoretical reasoning. But he also believes that we can engage in practical
reasoning—reasoning with respect to how to achieve our goals, how to get
what we want. And, thinks Aquinas, (a) one reasonable way of getting what
we want is to ask for this from one who is able to provide it, and (b) prayer is
a reasonable practice to engage in given that God is able to provide what we
might reasonably ask for.
Aquinas’s idea here is ridiculously simple. If I want people to help me,
then it is reasonable to ask them to do so (assuming that I know that they are
in a position to oblige). If Mary wants a kitten for her birthday, then she is
reasonable in asking her parents for one. And so on. By the same token,
Aquinas argues, it is reasonable to ask God for things, so long as what one is
asking for is what God is able to provide. Some authors on prayer have
thought of it primarily in emotional or affective terms—the basic idea being
that prayer is all about our feelings and not about our reason. Yet Aquinas
rejects this conclusion. For him, prayer is first of all an example of practical
reasoning. It springs from knowing what we want and recognizing how we
might obtain it.8
This, of course, means that Aquinas thinks of prayer as exactly on a par
with much that we go in for in day to day life. Treatises on prayer, especially
in recent years, have evidently left readers wondering what on earth they
have to do in order to pray. Is there some “state” into which they ought to get
themselves? If so, what is that state? And how should they sustain it? Is
prayer something “mystical”? If so, how does one become “mystical”? Some
writers on prayer have lauded something called “mental prayer,” and their
readers have often wondered what that might be, how they might practice it,
and how long it should last (advocates of mental prayer commonly
recommend two half hours a day). Aquinas, however, just does not get
sucked down into questions like these. His approach to prayer is, we might
say, an attempt to demystify it, to view it as a regular exercise of practical
reason, as a matter of asking for something one wants (which everyone
knows how to do).9 And his basic reason for offering this approach is his
conviction that God is the Creator who can bring about anything that can be
thought to be. Do you want such and such? Then, thinks Aquinas, it is
reasonable to ask for it from God.10

OBJECTIONS TO PRAYER
But is it? Not according to many people. Some of these would object to the
notion of petitionary prayer on the ground that there is no God to pray to,
and, if that is so, then petitionary prayer is obviously misguided. More
commonly, however, critics of petitionary prayer argue that there is
something unreasonable about engaging in it because of what God is
commonly taken to be. God is said to be good and omniscient. In that case,
however, would he not know what we want or need without us telling him,
and would he not provide for us without being asked? And does it not,
therefore, follow that prayer is redundant? Given God’s goodness and
omniscience, many have suggested that this is exactly what it is. Others have
held that petitionary prayer makes no sense given the traditional claim that
God is immutable. If God is immutable, so it has been argued, then he
changelessly wills what he wills from eternity and nothing that we can do or
say can make any difference when it comes to what God wills.
These objections to petitionary prayer, though often voiced today, are
ancient ones. You can find them documented in, for example, chapter 3 of
Origen’s De Oratione (written around a.d. 233).11 And Aquinas is aware of
them. As they emerge in his formulation:
 Prayer seems to be needed to give information about what we want to the person we are
asking for something. But, as it says [Matthew 6:32] “Your Father knows that you need
all these things” … Prayer is a way in which we change the mind of the person to whom
we are praying, so that he will do what is being asked of him. But God’s mind cannot be
changed or deflected.… It is more generous to give something without waiting to be
asked than it is to give something to someone who asks for it.… But God is extremely
generous. So it is apparently not appropriate that we should pray to God.12

Yet Aquinas rejects these objections. And his basic response to them is:

Divine providence does not merely arrange what effects are to occur; it also arranges the
causes of these effects and the relationships between them. And among other causes,
some things are caused by human acts. So human beings have to do certain things, not
so as to change God’s plans by their acts, but in order to bring about certain effects by
their acts, according to the pattern planned by God.… We do not pray in order to change
God’s plans, but in order to obtain by our prayers those things which God planned to
bring about by means of prayers.13

You shall, I hope, see how this response of Aquinas fits in with what I
reported above concerning his take on God as Creator. But let me try to spell
things out a bit.
Given what he says of God in general, Aquinas clearly cannot think of
prayer as having a causal effect on God. In his way of thinking, the source of
the esse of creatures cannot be modified by a creature. So Aquinas does not
think of prayer in magical terms—as a way of manipulating God.
Consequently, he does not think of it as informing God or as changing him in
any way. But he still thinks of prayer as a significant activity, since, so he
believes (and regardless of how good or generous God is), it matters that we
should recognize God for what he is and turn to him for what we need. “We
do not,” he observes, “have to present our prayers to God in order to disclose
to him our needs and desires, but in order to make ourselves realize that we
need to have recourse to his help in these matters.”14
What, then, of the causality of prayer? Evidently, Aquinas cannot say that
my praying causes God to do something in the sense that, say, my tossing a
salad causes its ingredients to become covered in dressing. And yet, so
Aquinas would presumably add, my responding to a request from you is not
caused in this sense either. Aquinas holds that people have freedom of choice
(liberum arbitrium) and, so he would say, a good example of this being
exercised would be someone giving people something for which they ask. Of
course, I might give you what you ask for because you coerce me (because
you force some money out of my hand, say). For Aquinas, though, I would
not really be giving or acting here. I would be operating under duress. On his
account, people freely responding to requests are not being caused by the
requests or the petitioners in the way in which a salad gets caused to be
dressed by one tossing it.
One might, of course, reply that, even if we accept this point, prayer, on
Aquinas’s account cannot really make any difference. The argument might
go like this: If Fred asks John for some money, and if John gives him some,
Fred’s asking might be thought to have made a difference in that John might
not have given Fred money had he not asked for it. If Aquinas is right,
however, God is immutable. So he brings about what he has decreed from
eternity to bring about. What room is there in this picture for a prayer making
any difference at all? And if prayer makes no difference, why bother with it?
To understand Aquinas’s position with respect to this argument, it is
important to note that he genuinely believes that creatures have causal
powers. He thinks, for example, that we actually do digest food, or hit tennis
balls, or build houses. His claim that God acts in every operation is not meant
to deny that creatures genuinely act. It is meant to put the causal activity of
creatures into a deeper context—that of God as Creator. For Aquinas, in
causing the esse of all creatures, God is also empowering their creaturely
causality. And with this thought in mind, Aquinas insists that, for example,
when I act it is true both that I act and that I act only as God is bringing it
about that I do so.
Now consider the case of someone deciding, for example, to build a
house. And imagine this person reasoning thus: “Well, it’s actually pointless
for me to get started since, if Aquinas is right in what he says about God, I
can’t make any difference. If God has from eternity decreed that the house
shall be built, then it will get built and I can spare myself some effort.” This
argument, of course, clearly rests on the assumption that creatures are not
genuine causal agents and that God is an omnipotent puppet master, an
assumption that Aquinas denies. He would say that, as God in his providence
has arranged things, houses do not get built unless people get on with
building them. He would, indeed, agree that whether people build houses,
and whether or not houses come to exist, depend on God’s changeless will as
the Maker of all things. But he would not take this to mean that people do not
make a difference when it comes to what happens.
 That said, we can return to the notion of prayer making a difference. In
Aquinas’s view (if I understand his teaching on miracles correctly), God
could have brought it about that the British Houses of Parliament came to be
by the direct action of God and of nothing else. Yet what in fact happened, so
Aquinas would say, is that God brought them about by the action of people.
By the same token, so Aquinas thinks, God could bring it about that, say, I
recover from an illness without anyone praying that I do so. Yet, Aquinas
also thinks, what might in fact come to pass is that God brings it about that I
recover as having been prayed for—that my improved state of health is an
answer to someone’s concern for me and not just a mere matter of getting
better. “God,” says Aquinas, “gives us many things out of sheer generosity,
without being asked. The reason why he wants to give us some things in
response to our petition is that it is profitable for us to acquire a certain
confidence in running to him and to recognize that he is the source of all that
is good for us.”15

PRAYER AND CHRISTIAN PRACTICE

That last quotation should make it obvious that Aquinas sees value in prayer
regardless of whether or not we obtain what we specifically ask for. Prayer,
he thinks, is an expression of trust in God and is, therefore, intrinsically
meritorious and an “act of religion.” The purpose of religion, thinks Aquinas,
is “offering reverence and honor to God,” and that, he believes is what we do
by praying. “By praying,” he observes, “we offer God reverence, inasmuch
as we subject ourselves to him and profess, by praying, that we need him as
the author of all that is good for us.”16 Prayer, Aquinas also insists, is an act
of charity, for we can pray for others. Indeed, he says, we should pray for
others. “We ought,” he explains, “to desire good things not only for
ourselves, but also for others.… Therefore charity requires us to pray for
other people.”17
And what should we pray for? With an eye on this question, and in
keeping with his view of prayer as an exercise of practical reasoning,
Aquinas avoids high-minded generalities. He does not suggest that we should
only vaguely ask for what is good. To be sure, he is clear that prayer should
be directed to union with God and should be offered by us as seeking to
achieve this. He is also clear that we might just be wrong when it comes to
identifying what is good for us.18 With those provisos made, however,
Aquinas argues that “it is lawful to pray for what it is lawful to desire.”19 So,
as with any mundane asking of things from people, Aquinas holds that, when
we pray, we can specify what we want. We can, for example, pray for
particular temporal things, for forgiveness of specific sins, or for the well-
being of our neighbors (understood in concrete terms). And, thinks Aquinas,
we can be confident in praying. We might not obtain what we specifically
ask for, he agrees, for God’s will for us may not exactly coincide with our
will for ourselves.20 Yet, Aquinas also says, God sometimes wants to give us
what we desire because we have asked for it. And, Aquinas adds, insofar as
we are asking for what leads to beatitude, we are guaranteed what we ask for
as long as we persevere.21
As I have said, Aquinas’s most mature discussion of prayer can be read as
an attempt to demystify it. It does not confuse prayer with Christian goodness
in general. It does not make prayer out to be something for which we need a
manual. It does not confuse prayer with the acquiring of “techniques” or the
entering into of “states.” It locates prayer among one of the most ordinary
and unpuzzling of human activities while also explaining how it elevates
those who pray into the less than ordinary business of seeking to get to God.
Given the complexity and unclarity that some theologians have introduced
when seeking to say what prayer is and why it matters, Aquinas’s treatment
of it surely represents something of an achievement.

NOTES
1. For some history of the term “prayer” in Christian circles, see Michel
Dupuy, “Oraison,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 11 (Paris: Beauchesne
Editions, 1982).
2. Bonaventure, quoted in Super Sent IV, d.15, p.2, a.1, q.4.
3. Simon Tugwell, O.P., Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New
York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1988), 275. See also Simon Tugwell,
O.P., “Prayer, Humpty Dumpty and Thomas Aquinas,” in Brian Davies, ed.,
Language, Meaning and God (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987).
4. ST II-II q.83.
 5. In Super Sent IV, d.15, q.1, a.4, Aquinas seems prepared to take
seriously the suggestion that “prayer” is to be used in more than one sense.
By the time he writes on prayer in the ST, however, his focus is entirely on
prayer as petition. Texts in which Aquinas deals with oratio include: Super
Sent IV, d.15, q.4; QDV, q.6, a.6; SCG, III, 95–96; In 1 Cor 14:13–15.
Reliable translations of these texts, and other texts by Aquinas on prayer, can
be found in Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 363–523.
6. In Peri herm, 1:14. I quote from Timothy McDermott, ed., Aquinas:
Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993),
282f.
7. In ST II-II q.83 a.4, Aquinas argues that it is appropriate to address
prayer to the saints and angels, but only insofar as we ask them to join their
prayers to ours. “We address prayer to the angels and the saints,” he says,
“not because we want them to let God know what we want, but because we
want our petitions to be successful through their intercession and merits.”
8. This is the main point made in ST II-II q.83 a.1.
9. So Aquinas denies that nonrational creatures pray. Cf. ST II-II q.83
a.10.
10. What if I want all babies born within the next twenty-four hours to be
murdered by gangsters? Then, Aquinas would say, I would have no business
asking for this from God, since he is the highest good (the source of all
creaturely goods) and can hardly be called upon to produce what is obviously
evil. That said, however, Aquinas’s position is that if you want it, and if God
can provide it, it makes sense to ask him for it.
11. For a translation of this text, see Origen, On Prayer, trans. E. G. Jay
(London: S.P.C.K., 1954).
12. ST II-II q.83 a.2. I quote from Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 479–80.
13. ST II-II q.83 a.2. Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 481.
14. ST II-II q.83 a.2 ad 1. Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 481.
15. ST II-II q.83 a.2 ad 3. Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 481.
16. ST II-II q.83 a.3. In ST II-II q.83 a.15, Aquinas goes on to note that
prayer is an expression of humility, faith, and devotion, and is, therefore,
meritorious (meaning that it brings us closer to God).
17. ST II-II q.83 a.7. In ST II-II q.83 a.4, Aquinas goes on to say that we
should pray for our enemies.
18. ST II-II q.83 a.5.
 19. ST II-II q.83 a.6.
20. Curiously, Aquinas does not note the obvious point that it might be
logically impossible for God to grant what everyone prays for since different
people might (and do) pray for things that are mutually exclusive (e.g., “a
fine day for my garden party” and “rain for my crops”). Perhaps he does not
note the point since it is, indeed, obvious.
21. ST II-II q.83 a.15.
 CHAPTER 36

THE GIFTS AND FRUITS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

ANDREW PINSENT

INTRODUCTION
Recent scholarship has suggested the need to reconsider the validity of an
Aristotelian reading of Aquinas’s virtue ethics. The recognition that there are
certain differences between the virtues described by Aristotle and Aquinas is
not, of course, anything new. Even a cursory examination of Aquinas’s vast
treatise on the virtues in Summa theologiae1 reveals many perfective
qualities, such as humility, which Aristotle never mentions. Nevertheless, the
general approach of much Thomistic scholarship has been to view Aquinas’s
treatise as following an Aristotelian framework with certain extrinsic
additions. The cardinal virtues in Aquinas’s treatise have long been treated,
in particular, in more or less the same way as their homonymous counterparts
in the Nicomachean Ethics.
The principal motivation for doubting the continued validity of this
approach is a growing recognition of the differences between Aristotle and
Aquinas regarding what is meant by “virtue” in the proper sense.2 Aquinas
does recognize that we can acquire virtues in the Aristotelian manner by
repeated good actions; he calls such virtues acquired virtues. Aquinas also
claims, however, that proper or perfect virtues are not acquired, but infused
in us by God.3 These infused virtues include counterparts of many of the
acquired moral and intellectual virtues. So, for example, as well as acquired
justice, there is infused justice, which is the proper sense of the virtue of
justice. Similarly, besides acquired prudence, there is infused prudence,
which is the proper sense of the virtue of prudence, and so on.4
While defining the relationship between the acquired and the infused
virtues has proved difficult, it is clear that acquired and infused virtues are
distinct in several important ways. First, Aquinas argues that only the infused
virtues are perfect and deserve to be called “virtues” simply.5 Second,
acquired and infused virtues differ in species, distinguished, according to
Aquinas, by their proper objects and the kinds of flourishing to which they
are directed.6 Third, as Jean Porter has noted, all human beings have the
capacity to receive infused virtues, even those, such as children, who lack the
intellectual training required for Aristotelian virtues.7 Fourth, as Porter and
Bonnie Kent have observed, an infused virtue, unlike an acquired virtue, can
be present with a previously acquired contrary disposition.8 Fifth, Aquinas
claims that infused virtues are connected together, unlike specific acquired
tendencies to do good actions.9 Sixth, as Jeffrey Hause argues, the difference
between acquired and infused virtues cannot be reduced to a proportional
change in the good established by reason, such as greater asceticism, since
such a change does not require a different virtue.10 Seventh, even if a person
possesses all the acquired virtues, if he lacks the infused virtues he cannot
enter heaven.11
Besides these important distinctions, the structure of ST II-II q.1–170
provides additional evidence of a non-Aristotelian approach to virtue ethics.
It should occasion some wonder that, despite having the greatest respect for
Aristotle and a detailed knowledge of the structure of the Nicomachean
Ethics,12 Aquinas organized his own treatise on the virtues in such a different
way from that of Aristotle. Furthermore, the difference in Aquinas’s
approach is not just that he has added novel virtues, like the theological
virtues and humility, hallowed by Christian tradition. Even his articles on the
Greek cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance,
interleave these virtues with other attributes that are not virtues at all and
which lack any Aristotelian counterpart.
Consider, for instance, the virtue of courage. Following his treatise on
courage as a virtue,13 Aquinas appends a further question describing an
entirely new quality, the Gift (donum) of Courage.14 Although this Gift of
Courage is infused, Aquinas claims that a Gift is a different kind of quality
from an infused virtue.15 Even the addition of the Gift of Courage is not the
end of the story, though, because Aquinas claims that this Gift is linked to a
further attribute, a Beatitude (beatitudo) called “Hungering and thirsting for
justice.”16 This Beatitude is in turn associated with two final and distinct
attributes, the Fruits (fructus) of Patience and Long-suffering.17 So Aquinas
appends a network with one Gift, one Beatitude, and two Fruits to the virtue
of courage. Similar networks can be found for the other cardinal and
theological virtues, giving the impression of an intricate and even “organic”
structure different from that of the Nicomachean Ethics.18
This non-Aristotelian structure implies that the cardinal virtues Aquinas
examines in ST IIaIIae are not the acquired versions of these virtues, even if
they exhibit many parallels with the acquired virtues and even though
Aquinas often cites Aristotle. ST II-II q.47 a.14 clarifies, in fact, that the
prudence being examined is infused prudence, and there are similar
clarifications for the other cardinal virtues.19 If, then, the cardinal virtues in
ST II-II q.1–170 are infused rather than acquired, a further inference follows.
To grasp what Aquinas means by an infused virtue, it is also important to
study what he means by a Gift, a Beatitude, and a Fruit. These attributes
appear to be interconnected with the virtues, both in ST IIaIIae and according
to a claim Aquinas makes when he introduces the genus of virtue in ST
IaIIae: “We must speak in the first place of the good habitus, which are
virtues, and of other matters connected with them, namely the Gifts,
Beatitudes and Fruits.”20
In this chapter I focus on the first and last of these three kinds of attributes
that Aquinas appends to the virtues: the Gifts and the Fruits of the Holy
Spirit. As I shall show, Aquinas claims that the Gifts are, in fact, essential
and connected to the virtues, while Fruits feature as the terminating attributes
of the entire network. Given these pivotal roles, understanding the Gifts and
Fruits is, therefore, an important step toward grasping Aquinas’s virtue ethics
as a whole.

THE GIFTS
What is a Gift of the Holy Spirit, and how do Gifts relate to virtues and other
perfecting attributes? There are seven Gifts, which Aquinas appends to
various theological and cardinal virtues in ST IIaIIae. The cognitive Gifts are
Understanding (Intellectus) and Knowledge (Scientia), which are appended
to the virtue of faith, Wisdom (Sapientia), appended to the virtue of caritas,21
and Counsel (Consilium), appended to the virtue of prudence. The appetitive
Gifts are Fear (Timor), appended to the virtue of hope, Piety (Pietas),
appended to the virtue of justice, and Courage (Fortitudo), appended to the
homonymous virtue of courage.22 Aquinas also examines the genus of Gift in
ST I-II q.68, immediately following his treatise on the genus of virtue, ST I-II
q.55–67.
ST I-II q.68 a.2 claims that the Gifts are essential to salvation, an explicit
confirmation that they are not adventitious in Aquinas’s account of human
flourishing. ST I-II q.68 a.8 adds that, while the theological virtues are more
excellent than the Gifts, the Gifts are more excellent than the moral and
intellectual virtues, thereby taking precedence over any of the qualities
described in the Nicomachean Ethics.23 Aquinas even claims, in ST II-II q.19
a.9 ad 4, that the Gifts are the origins or foundations (principia) of the
intellectual and moral virtues.
The function of the Gifts is, however, more difficult to grasp than the fact
of their importance. ST I-II q.68 a.4 states that the Gifts extend to all those
things to which the virtues, both intellectual and moral, extend. Yet if the
work of the Gifts parallels that of the virtues, why are the Gifts necessary?
Aquinas’s response is a principle set out in ST I-II q.68 a.1:

Now it is manifest that human virtues perfect man according as it is natural for him to be
moved by his reason in his interior and exterior actions. It is fitting, therefore, for there
to exist in man higher perfections, whereby he is disposed to be moved by God in a
divine way. These perfections are called Gifts, not only because they are infused by
God, but also because by them man is disposed to be made readily moveable by divine
inspiration.24

In this passage, Aquinas claims that what is specific about a Gift is not that it
is infused, since perfect virtues are also infused, but that, by means of a Gift,
we are disposed to be moved by God. What, however, does being “moved”
by God mean in this context? Aquinas clarifies elsewhere that such
movement is not coercive.25 Furthermore, it can be inferred that what is
given by means of the Gifts is not reducible to some propositional description
of the world, a description that could, in principle, be communicated in some
other way.26 In what, then, does Gift-based movement consist?
A partial answer to this question can be inferred from the notion of a
“participated likeness” (participativa similitudo), a phrase that Aquinas uses
when describing the Gift of Knowledge. Aquinas claims that the Gift of
Knowledge enables a “participated likeness” of God’s knowledge,
knowledge that is absolute and simple rather than discursive, as for the
homonymous intellectual virtue.27 A similar notion of participation can be
found in Aquinas’s descriptions of the other Gifts. By the Gift of Piety, we
are moved to regard other persons as God regards them, namely as potential
or actual children, and thereby our brothers and sisters.28 By the Gift of
Courage, we regard present dangers and potential future dangers with the
kind of confidence with which God regards such difficulties.29 By the Gift of
Fear, we regard ourselves as God regards us, as adopted children with whom
God desires to be united, and so shrink from the loss of our own good from
God’s perspective.30 By the Gift of Counsel, we are “directed as though
counseled by God,” implying that we take on God’s stance toward possible
courses of action.31 By the Gift of Understanding, we grasp what is proposed
to us by God.32 Finally, by the Gift of Wisdom, we are enabled to judge
aright about divine things on account of a “connaturality” with them.33 In all
these cases, the movement enabled by the Gifts can be characterized as a
sharing or appropriation of God’s stance toward some object.
Such appropriations of God’s stance cannot, however, be reduced to mere
imitations, as Aquinas shows, for example, in his description of the Gift of
Wisdom: “Wisdom as a Gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual
virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul
with him (unio animae ad ipsum).”34 The idea of a union or oneness of the
soul with God in this passage is reflected in other texts about the Gifts,
especially Aquinas’s claim that whoever has caritas, which unites us to God,
has all the Gifts, none of which can be possessed without caritas.35 So Gift-
based movement is not a mere imitation of God’s stance but implies a union
of the soul with God, a union based on caritas.
Aquinas’s descriptions of Gift-based movement therefore express two
main principles. First, he describes a situation in which a person’s stance
toward some object involves a participation in God’s stance toward the same
object. Second, Gift-based movement involves what Aquinas describes as a
union or oneness of the soul with God. Expressed in these terms, Aquinas’s
descriptions of the operation of the Gifts seem analogous to the phenomenon
of joint attention, the subject of a new field of experimental psychology and
philosophy.36 While the precise definition of joint attention remains a matter
of some debate, the phenomenon has at least the following basic
characteristics. First, joint attention takes place in a person-person-object
situation in which both persons share a stance toward the object that is the
focus of their attention. In the context of parent–child interactions, activities
manifesting joint attention can include, for example, referential use of eye
contact, offering and giving objects to others, pointing at objects and
following others’ points. Second, joint attention involves sharing an
awareness of the sharing of focus with the other person,37 an experience
commonly described as a “meeting of minds.” Both these characteristics of
joint attention with another person have clear parallels with Aquinas’s
descriptions of Gift-based movement.
So a description of the Gifts seems clear and the phenomenon of joint
attention may provide an analogy for their operation. Nevertheless, to show
the function of the Gifts does not, in itself, explain their importance. Why,
exactly, are the Gifts so essential to Aquinas’s conception of human
flourishing? If joint attention is a correct analogy for Gift-based movement,
then it may be possible to answer this question by examining the role of joint
attention in interactions between human persons. In particular, by examining
what happens when joint attention between persons is inhibited, it may be
possible to highlight what is so important about joint attention for human
relationships, and, in turn, what is important about Gift-based movement
with regard to one’s relationship with God.
As it turns out, there is a condition that is characterized by lack of
engagement in joint attention with other human persons. This condition is
autism, the characteristics of which have been both an incentive and a means
to investigate joint attention in recent years. In the following passage, Peter
Hobson, a professor of developmental psychopathology, describes the
outcome of an experiment designed to highlight how autistic children interact
with other persons:

In two respects, then, the children with autism were not moved to adopt the orientation
of the person they were watching. They did not adopt the style with which the
experimenter executed the actions, nor did they identify with him and copy his self-
orientated actions so that these actions became orientated towards themselves. On the
other hand, they were perfectly able to perceive and copy the strategies by which he
achieved the goals in each demonstration. So they were able to learn something from
watching what the experimenter did.… Yet what they learned seemed to be available
from their position as a kind of detached observer of actions and goals. They were not
“moved.”38
The experiment described in this passage showed that autistic children were
perfectly capable of recognizing other persons and following instructions
given by another person.39 Furthermore, they were also able to imitate the
actions and goals of another. What the children with autism did not do,
however, was to appropriate another person’s psychological orientation or to
“identify” with the other person.40 Indeed, in the passage above, Hobson
articulates what is missing from autistic behavior by the same language that
Aquinas uses to describe the Gifts: the children with autism were not
“moved.”
So joint attention provides a possible analogy for Gift-based movement,
and autism provides a corresponding analogy for a person’s condition, in
relationship to God, when the person lacks the Gifts. Now the analogy of
autism with a lack of the Gifts does not imply that the condition of autism
precludes possession of the Gifts. On the contrary, unlike the acquired
virtues, Aquinas is clear that anyone can possess the infused virtues and
Gifts.41 Nevertheless, the analogy between the condition of autism and the
absence of the Gifts gives some indication of why the Gifts are important.
Furthermore, there is another intriguing characteristic of autism that sheds
light on the role of the Gifts in relationship to God. As Leo Kanner noted in
his original description of the syndrome, and many subsequent studies have
confirmed, children with autism often refer to themselves as “you” and the
person they are speaking with as “I.”42 For example, the question, “How are
you?” might elicit the response, “You are fine.” Such instances of pronoun
reversal are not, however, common to children with other kinds of retarded
learning conditions, such as Down Syndrome.43 The fact that those with
autism find it especially hard to grasp the rules for second-personal pronouns
suggests that those with autism have difficulties relating to others in a
specifically second-personal sense. Indeed, if the capacity to engage in joint
attention is inhibited, as in the case of autism, it is hard to see how an
intuitive grasp of the “I”–“you” relationship can be acquired easily in human
development.44
The connection between joint attention and the second person therefore
implies a further way of showing why the Gifts are important for Aquinas’s
understanding of human flourishing. If joint attention enables a second-
personal relationship to other human persons, the Gifts, by analogy, enable a
specifically second-personal relationship with God. If, therefore, virtues can
be classified as first-personal habitus, by which a person is moved easily by
his or her own reason, the Gifts, by contrast, are the second-personal habitus,
by which a person is moved by God in a manner analogous to joint attention.
Such a conclusion is consistent with the intrinsic connection that Aquinas
makes between the Gifts and caritas, given that Aquinas describes caritas as
friendship with God and friendship implies the ability to relate to one’s friend
in a second-personal way.45

THE FRUITS
Aquinas introduces the Fruits by means of a material analogy. Using the
example of a plant, Aquinas observes that a material fruit is “the product of a
plant when it comes to perfection, and has a certain sweetness.”46 These
qualities also characterize the ethical attribute that he calls a “Fruit”: “The
notion of Fruit implies two things: first that it should come last; second, that
it should calm the appetite with a certain sweetness and delight … that which
is last simply, and in which one delights as in the last end, is properly called a
Fruit; and this it is that one is properly said to enjoy.”47 Consistent with the
notion of a Fruit coming last, Aquinas generally assigns the Fruits of each
virtue last in the ST II-II q.1–170, after the appended Gifts and Beatitudes.
Aquinas also examines the genus of Fruit in ST I-II q.70, after examining the
genus of Gift and Beatitude.
What, however, does Aquinas understand by the term “Fruit”? According
to ST I-II q.70 a.3, the Fruits of Caritas, Joy (Gaudium), Peace (Pax),
Patience (Patientia), and Long-suffering (Longanimitas) pertain to the good
ordering of the mind. The Fruits of Goodness (Bonitas), Benignity
(Benignitas), Meekness (Mansuetudo), and Faith (Fides) pertain to one’s
neighbor. The Fruits of Modesty (Modestia), Continency (Continentia), and
Chastity (Castitas) pertain to the body. The twelve Fruits therefore extend to
many, and perhaps all, of the same things to which the virtues and the Gifts
extend. Why, therefore, is there yet another set of attributes, distinct from the
virtues and the Gifts?
The mystery of the Fruits is deepened by Aquinas’s claim that they are not
habitus in the manner of Gifts or virtues.48 On the contrary, Aquinas
describes the Fruits variously as actus or operationes or opera of the virtues
and as the last and congruous products of the Gifts.49 The implication is that
a Fruit is some kind of actualization or manifestation of the virtues and Gifts.
Some of the Fruits, such as Caritas, have homonymous counterparts among
the virtues, whereas others, such as Joy and Peace, are unique to the category
of Fruit. How, then, is the attribute of Fruit to be understood?
Aquinas implies an answer to this question in his description of the Fruit
of Peace, which he classifies as an actus of caritas:

Peace implies a twofold union.… The first is the result of one’s own appetites being
ordered toward one thing; while the other results from one’s own appetite being united
with the appetite of another: and each of these unions is effected by caritas … hence it is
reckoned a sign of friendship if people “make choice of the same things” (Ethic. ix, 4),
and Tully says (De Amicitia) that friends like and dislike the same things.50

In the article cited above, Aquinas highlights the interpersonal aspect of the
Fruit of Peace and its connection with friendship, observing that Peace
implies a harmony between two persons, an alignment in which one chooses
the same things as one’s friend and with one’s friend.51 Aquinas also
describes other Fruits in interpersonal terms: he associates Joy with the
experience of God abiding in a person, and the Fruit of Caritas with both a
union of affections and a union of persons.52
These interpersonal descriptions are consistent with Aquinas’s claim that
the Fruits are the last and congruous products of the Gifts. Since, as argued
previously, the Gifts are second-personal habitus, one would expect the
Fruits, as actus of these Gifts, to have a second-personal aspect as well.
Nevertheless, in Aquinas’s network of perfecting attributes, not all actus of
the Gifts are Fruits. The actus of Counsel, for example, are not Fruits, but
only means for bringing about Fruits.53 Furthermore, the Fruits are also
consequent upon the Beatitudes, as Aquinas states in ST II-II q.139 a.2,54
implying some intermediate step between Gift-based actus in general and the
special class of actus that are Fruits. By what measure, then, are the Fruits
perfect or complete compared to Gift-based actus in general?
Some poetic inspiration to help answer this question may be found in a
scene from Dante’s Paradiso, during which Dante the traveler encounters the
soul of Aquinas in heaven,

And he will have some shadowing forth of that

 True constellation and the double dance
That circled round the point at which I was;55

The idea of “stars,” that is, souls in paradise, revealing their interpersonal
union to Dante by the image of a perfect dance, suggests that it is important
to examine not only what it means to be moved by another person, but the
manner in which such movements are perfected. Orchestras, choirs, or
dancers, for example, do not always harmonize very well and can experience
discords, mistimings, and mistakes. When their joint operation becomes
second nature, however, with the participants being near-perfectly attuned to
one another, there is often a sudden, disproportionate improvement in the
objective quality of the activity. Subjectively, musicians or dancers may also
experience the pleasurable exhilaration of “flying along,” accompanied by
the sense of being “one” with the other persons. This harmonized operation
appears similar to the phenomenon of resonance in physics, when two
systems engage in close to perfect joint operation with disproportionate ease
and intensity.56 In the case of the joint operation of two persons, when
activities in union with the other person have become second nature, the
phenomenon could be described as an interpersonal resonance.
Can the Fruits be regarded as resonances? A resonance is a perfected joint
operation, matching the description of the Fruits as actus that are also
perfections, the terminating attributes of the entire network of Gifts, virtues,
and Beatitudes. An interpersonal resonance also needs at least two persons,
matching the inference that the Fruits, based on the Gifts, are intrinsically
second-personal. A resonance in joint human activity, such as musicians
playing in perfect harmony, is also pleasurable, matching Aquinas’s material
analogy of a Fruit as having “sweetness.” Finally, a resonance indicates that
some aspect of a second person is sealed or imprinted on oneself, knowledge
which is no longer mediated but immediate.57 Within the context of a piece
of music, for example, the musicians can be said to know one another
perfectly and immediately, analogous to the way in which Aquinas associates
the Fruits with having an immediate experience of God being with oneself or
even abiding in oneself.58 I therefore conclude that the Fruits, as Aquinas
describes them, can be characterized as resonances.
 CONCLUSIONS
To grasp what Aquinas means by an infused or perfect virtue, it is also
important to study what he means by a Gift, a Beatitude, and a Fruit. Aquinas
claims that the seven Gifts are necessary for true human flourishing and
appends these to the theological and cardinal virtues. The twelve Fruits, by
way of the Beatitudes, are the terminating attributes of the “organic” network
of ST II-II q.1–170.
The essential characteristic of the Gifts is that they enable a person to be
“moved” by God in a second-personal manner. In other words, the Gifts
enable us to share in God’s stance toward something, in union with God in an
“I”–“You” relationship. To lack the Gifts does not preclude all knowledge of
God or interaction with God, but it is analogous to being autistic with respect
to God, so that second-personal interaction with God is inhibited. The Fruits
are the perfect actus of the Gifts and virtues. These actus also have a second-
personal basis, according to the descriptions Aquinas gives of certain Fruits
and insofar as they conclude a network of attributes in which the Gifts play a
foundational role. Those actus that are Fruits may be characterized as
interpersonal resonances, in which a person’s activity is aligned and united
perfectly with God in a harmonized manner.
It seems, therefore, that Aquinas regards infused virtue ethics as
intrinsically second-personal, both in terms of the foundations of the virtues,
in which the Gifts play an essential role, and the Fruits or interpersonal
resonances to which all perfective attributes are ordered.59

NOTES
1. ST II-II q.1–170.
2. In answering the question of how to define virtue, ST I-II q.55 a.4,
Aquinas defends the definition, “Virtue is a good quality of the mind, by
which we live righteously, of which no one can make bad use, which God
works in us, without us.” Mark Jordan has drawn attention to the fact that this
definition of virtue, the only one Aquinas sets out to defend explicitly, is
drawn from Peter Lombard’s Sentences rather than from Aristotle. This
choice is an early indication in the ST of Aquinas’s non-Aristotelian
approach to virtue in the proper or perfect sense. See Mark Jordan,
“Theology and Philosophy,” in Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump,
eds., The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 237–41.
3. According to Aquinas, only the acquired virtues are caused in an
Aristotelian manner, that is, by repeated good actions, whereas infused
virtues, that is, virtues in the proper sense, are caused by the action of God.
See, e.g., QDVCom a.2, ad 18, in which Aquinas claims that, just as acquired
virtues are increased and fostered by the same sort of acts that caused them,
so the infused virtues are increased by the action of God, by whom they are
caused.
4. Aquinas differentiates acquired and infused justice in ST I-II q.100 a.12,
claiming that only the latter is true justice. In ST I-II q.47 a.14, he
distinguishes acquired and infused prudence. In ST I-II q.63 a.4, he describes
acquired and infused temperance as distinct species of temperance. Acquired
and infused courage are mentioned as distinct virtues in QDVCom a.10, ad
10. John Inglis, “Aquinas’s Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues,”
Journal of Religious Ethics 27:1 (1999): 3–27, has drawn attention to
Aquinas’s introduction of infused counterparts of the acquired moral virtues
and to the need for greater study of the impact of infused virtues on
Aquinas’s ethics as a whole. Robert C. Miner, “Non-Aristotelian Prudence in
the Prima Secundae,” The Thomist 64:3 (2000): 401–22, has examined
prudence in ST I-II and argued that Aquinas’s descriptions differ strikingly
from Aristotelian phronêsis. Most of the intellectual virtues are, however,
replicated as Gifts rather than virtues (ST II-II q.8, 9, 45), a point made by
Eleonore Stump, “Wisdom: Will, Belief, and Moral Goodness,” in Scott
Charles MacDonald and Eleonore Stump, eds., Aquinas’s Moral Theory:
Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1999), 48.
5. ST I-II q.65 a.2: “It is therefore clear from what has been said that only
the infused virtues are perfect, and deserve to be called virtues simply: since
they direct a person well to the ultimate end. But the other virtues, those,
namely, that are acquired, are virtues in a restricted sense, but not simply: for
they direct a person well in respect of the last end in some particular genus of
action, but not in respect of the last end simply.” Aquinas is clear, therefore,
that only the infused virtues are virtues properly speaking. This clarification
further suggests that, when Aquinas refers to a virtue without qualification,
he is referring to an infused rather than an acquired virtue.
6. In ST I-II q.63 a.4, Aquinas claims that acquired and infused virtues
differ in species, both in relation to their proper objects and to their
respective ends, “those infused moral virtues, whereby persons behave well
in respect of their being ‘fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household
of God,’ differ from the acquired virtues, whereby a person behaves well in
respect of human affairs.” Aquinas makes a similar distinction in ST I-II q.65
a.2: “It is possible by means of human works to acquire moral virtues, in so
far as they produce good works that are directed to an end not surpassing the
natural power of man: and when they are acquired thus, they can be without
caritas, even as they were in many of the Gentiles. But in so far as they
produce good works in proportion to a supernatural last end, thus they have
the character of virtue, truly and perfectly; and cannot be acquired by human
acts, but are infused by God.”
7. Jean Porter, “The Subversion of Virtue: Acquired and Infused Virtues
in the ‘Summa theologiae,’” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (1992),
34. Citing ST II-II q.47 a.14, Porter points out that infused prudence is
present, according to Aquinas, in all who have grace, even those who cannot
exercise independent thought and judgment. She concludes that the infused
virtues function in a way that is significantly different from the way in which
the acquired virtues function, “so much so that they can be described as
virtues only in a carefully qualified sense” (ibid. 20).
8. Ibid. 30; Bonnie Kent, “Does Virtue Make It Easy to be Good? The
Problematic Case of St. Paul,” in Bernardo C. Bazán, Eduardo Andújar, and
Leonard G. Sbrocchi, eds., Les Philosophies morales et politiques au Moyen
Âge: Actes du IXe Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale, Ottawa,
17–22 Août 1992 (Ottawa: Legas, 1995), 728. The article from which these
observations are taken is ST I-II q.65 a.3 ad 2: “Sometimes the habitus of
moral virtue experience difficulty in their works, by reason of certain
ordinary dispositions remaining from previous acts. This difficulty does not
occur in respect of acquired moral virtue: because the repeated acts by which
they are acquired, remove also the contrary dispositions.” See also ibid. ad 3:
“Certain saints are said not to have certain virtues, in so far as they
experience difficulty in the acts of those virtues, for the reason stated;
although they have the habitus of all the virtues.”
9. Jordan, “Theology and Philosophy,” 240, points out that Aquinas’s view
of the unity of the virtues is nuanced. If an acquired moral virtue is regarded
simply as an acquired tendency to carry out a particular kind of good action,
then such virtues are not connected, “since we find men who, by natural
temperament or by being accustomed, are prompt in doing deeds of
liberality, but are not prompt in doing deeds of chastity” (ST I-II q.65 a.1).
Infused virtues, on the other hand, are infused together with caritas and
connected on account of caritas (ST I-II q.65 a.3).
10. Jeffrey Hause, “Aquinas on the Function of Moral Virtue,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81:1 (2007): 16. Hause’s argument is
important because Aquinas’s example of infused temperance (ST I-II q.63
a.4) seems to suggest that the difference between acquired and infused
temperance is simply that the latter is more ascetic, promoting fasting rather
than moderate consumption. From this example, it might be thought that the
infused virtues are proportionally harder or more demanding versions of the
acquired virtues. This is the understanding implied by Réginald Garrigou-
Lagrange, who exemplifies the neo-Thomist school of the first half of the
twentieth century. Garrigou-Lagrange conflates the definitions of the
acquired and infused versions of the cardinal virtues, holding that the same
definition holds proportionally for both categories. See Réginald Garrigou-
Lagrange, La Synthèse Thomiste, Bibliothèque française de philosophie
(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1946), 529, 530, 532, and 536. Hause, however,
argues that such an approach cannot be correct. Acquired temperance could
also be constituted in a mean that pursues fasting and chastising. Infused and
acquired virtues must be different in kind and not merely in degree.
11. Acquired virtues imply moral and intellectual maturity, yet once a
person has achieved such maturity, she will tend, among other things, to
deliberate about herself. If this deliberation leads her to direct herself to her
due end, she will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin,
together with caritas and the infused virtues (ST I-II q.89 a.6). If, however, a
person does not direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of
discretion at that particular age, “he will sin mortally, for through not doing
that which is in his power to do” (ST I-II q.89 a.6) and if unrepentant, he will
end in hell (ST I-II q.89 a.6; QDM, q.7, a.10, ad 10). Similarly, if he accepts
grace, and subsequently rejects it by mortal sin, he will again forfeit the
infused virtues, without necessarily losing the acquired virtues. Once again,
if he persists in mortal sin without repentance, he will end in hell. So to be in
a state of possessing only the acquired virtues is of no true benefit to the
moral agent. Indeed, to possess acquired virtues without infused virtues may
even be a sign of the rejection of grace arising from some conscious decision,
arguably a worse state than one in which a person lacks the maturity to
choose.
12. Evidence for Aquinas’s detailed appropriation of the Nicomachean
Ethics can be seen in his analysis of the structure of Aristotle’s work.
Aquinas subdivides the text into a complex nested structure with some fifteen
hundred functionally distinct parts. For an English translation of his
commentary, see St Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger (Notre Dame, Ind.: Dumb Ox
Books, 1993).
13. ST II-II q.123–38.
14. Aquinas introduces the Gift of Courage in ST II-II q.139 a.1, at the
conclusion of his treatment of the virtue of courage. Since Courage and
certain other attributes have homonymous counterparts among the virtues in
Aquinas’s network, I capitalize references to the Gifts, Beatitudes, and Fruits
in this chapter to distinguish them from the virtues.
15. Aquinas devotes ST I-II q.68 a.1; q.69 a.1; and q.70 a.2 to arguments
that the virtues, Gifts, Beatitudes, and Fruits are distinct kinds of attributes
from one another.
16. Aquinas argues that courage is about difficult things and, since it is
difficult to do virtuous deeds with an insatiable desire, which may be
signified by “hunger and thirst for justice,” this Beatitude is properly
assigned to the virtue of courage (ST II-II q.139 a.2), as well as to the virtue
of justice (ST II-II q.121 a.2).
17. ST II-II q.139 a.2 ad 3.
18. Aquinas’s network is described as an “organic unity” in Servais
Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s
Press, 2001), 87. By contrast, most commentators on the non-Aristotelian
aspects of Aquinas’s network of attributes have tended to concentrate on the
Gifts, paying little attention to the virtue-Gift-Beatitude-Fruit network as an
organic whole. The pattern of this approach was set in the seventeenth
century in a classic work by John of St. Thomas. As its title implies, John of
St. Thomas concentrates almost exclusively on the Gifts, devoting ten out of
eleven chapters to commentaries on their general or particular operations.
While he makes occasional references to the Beatitudes and Fruits in these
chapters, it is only in chapter 9 that he considers the Beatitudes as a distinct
group of qualities and it is only in the last two paragraphs that he mentions
the Fruits. For an English translation of this work, see John of St. Thomas,
The Gifts of the Holy Ghost, trans. Dominic Hughes, O.P. (New York: Sheed
& Ward, 1951).
19. In much of the ST II-II q.1–170, Aquinas does not state explicitly
whether he is describing an acquired or an infused virtue. Nevertheless, ST I-
II q.65 a.2 makes clear that “virtue” taken simply means infused virtue.
Furthermore, in ST II-II q.47 a.14, Aquinas shows that the prudence he is
examining is infused prudence, since it is infused along with grace and
caritas, in contrast to acquired prudence, the acquisition of which is “caused
by acts” and which demands “experience and time.” In ST II-II q.123, he
argues that the principal act of courage is martyrdom, involving the virtues of
faith and caritas, underlining that this is the infused rather than the acquired
virtue of courage. In ST II-II q.141 a.1 ad 2, he refers to the temperance that
he is describing, that is, the perfect sense, as not acquired through
habituation, implying that “temperance” taken simply means infused
temperance. In the case of justice, the many theological concepts Aquinas
annexes to justice, such as the act of prayer (ST II-II q.83), provide
corroborating evidence that he is examining an infused rather than an
acquired virtue. So unless Aquinas explicitly states otherwise, the cardinal
virtues of ST II-II q.1–170 appear to be the infused rather than acquired
versions of these virtues.
20. ST I-II q.55 prol. I am grateful to Fr Kevin Flannery, S.J. for the
opportunity to discuss the most appropriate way of expressing certain ideas
in Aquinas’s texts. In this passage, the term habitus is sometimes translated
as “habit” or as “disposition,” but both words are slightly misleading for the
senses in which Aquinas uses the word habitus. I have therefore left the term
untranslated.
21. The word caritas is sometimes translated as “love” or “charity.” Since,
in Aquinas’s work, caritas denotes the unique love pertaining to divine
friendship (ST II-II q.23 a.1), I have left the word untranslated.
22. The questions devoted to the specific Gifts are ST II-II q.8
(Understanding), q.9 (Knowledge), q.19 (Fear), q.45 (Wisdom), q.52
(Counsel), q.121 (Piety), and q.139 (Courage).
23. Whether Aquinas is referring to acquired or infused virtues, his claim
that the Gifts take precedence over the moral and intellectual virtues means
that the Gifts take precedence over any of the qualities described in the
Nicomachean Ethics.
24. ST I-II q.68 a.1. Descriptions of the Gifts as enabling us to be moved by
God can also be found in ST I-II q.68 a.4; II-II q.52 a.1; q.52 a.3; III q.7 a.5.
25. Aquinas argues in ST I-II q.10 a.4 that the will is not moved of
necessity by God. In whatever manner, therefore, God does cause our acts of
will (and this is a point of some debate), it is generally acknowledged that,
according to Aquinas, God’s action on the will is “not coercive” (cf. Brian J.
Shanley, “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72:1 [1998]: 113).
26. In ST II-II q.8 a.5, Aquinas refers to the Holy Spirit enlightening the
mind without the Gifts, in regard to truths that are preambles of faith.
Nevertheless, he also states that such enlightenment, no matter how
extensive, is no substitute for movement by means of the Gift of
Understanding. He confirms this point in ST II-II q.9 a.3 ad 3, in which he
says that not everyone who understands, has the Gift of Understanding, but
only the one who understands from a habitus of grace (cf. ST II-II q.9 a.3 ad
3 on Knowledge). So what is communicated by means of the Gifts cannot be
reduced to propositions, since propositions could, in principle, be
communicated in some other way besides the Gifts.
27. ST II-II q.9 a.1 ad 1. Note that none of the cognitive Gifts are
deliberative, despite the fact that three of them share names with intellectual
virtues that pertain to discursive reasoning. The operations of the cognitive
Gifts are, therefore, consistent with understanding them as enabling
participation in God’s absolute, “simple” cognition.
28. In ST II-II q.121 a.1, Aquinas describes the Gift of Piety as moving us
to have a filial affection toward God, and, as a consequence, to pay
veneration and service to all people on account of their relationship to God.
29. ST II-II q.139 a.1. The Gift of Courage could be said to “cement” the
virtue of courage, because the virtue adequate for current difficulties might
still be feared inadequate for hypothetical future difficulties. The Gift,
however, enables a sharing in God’s standpoint, a confidence that any future
challenge can also be overcome with divine assistance.
30. In ST II-II q.19 a.9, Aquinas describes the Gift of Fear as moving us to
revere God and avoid separating ourselves from him. This Gift enables “filial
fear,” the kind of fear a child has to disappoint a father whom he loves, not
the fear of loss or pain for oneself, which is “servile fear” (ST II-II q.19 a.5).
So the Gift of Fear disposes one to shrink from separation from God, not
from the point of view of one’s own good as desired by oneself, but from the
point of view of one’s own good as desired by God with whom one is united
by caritas.
31. ST II-II q.52 a.1 ad 1.
32. ST II-II q.8 a.4. The relational aspect of the Gift of Understanding is a
point of distinction between the Gift and the homonymous virtue.
33. ST II-II q.45 a.2.
34. ST II-II q.45 a.3.
35. ST I-II q.68 a.5.
36. Naomi Eilan, “Joint Attention, Communication, and Mind,” in Naomi
Eilan et al., eds., Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds: Issues in
Philosophy and Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1.
37. Peter Hobson, “What Puts Jointness into Joint Attention?” in Eilan et
al., eds., Joint Attention, 185. Hobson is a professor of developmental
psychopathology who has developed experiments to study joint attention and
autism.
38. Ibid. 200.
39. An autistic child is, therefore, able to respond to another person in
Darwall’s sense of the “second-person standpoint,” that is, “the perspective
that you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one
another’s conduct and will.” See Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person
Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2006). For an introduction to the main ideas and
examples from everyday life, see pp. 3–38. Douglas Lavin has provided a
helpful review and critique of Darwall’s thesis for the Notre Dame
Philosophical Review, January 2008.
40. Such findings are consistent with other symptoms of autism in young
children, such as a failure to follow the gaze of an adult toward an object,
failing, in other words, to appropriate and track a second person’s stance.
41. Cf. ST II-II q.47 a.14 ad 3.
42. Leo Kanner, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact,” Nervous
Child 2:220 (1943); reprinted in Acta Paedopsychiatrica 35:4 (1968): 100–
36.
43. For a comparison of pronoun reversal in autistic and Down syndrome
children, see, e.g., Helen Tager-Flusberg, “Dissociations in Form and
Function in the Acquisition of Language by Autistic Children: Studies of
Atypical Children,” in Helen Tager-Flusberg, ed., Constraints on Language
Acquisition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), 184.
44. Johannes Roessler, “Joint Attention and the Problem of Other Minds,”
in Eilan et al., eds., Joint Attention, 247.
45. ST II-II q.23 a.1; see also, e.g., QDC, q.2, a.4, ad 11; q.2 a.8, ad 16 and
QDM, q.5, a.5. The centrality of friendship with God as a principle of
Aquinas’s work highlights another distinction between the virtue ethics of
Aquinas and that of Aristotle. Although Aristotle suggests the possibility of
attaining a kind of similitude of divine activity, he denies that a human being
can be friends with any god. See Nicomachean Ethics, X, 8, 1159a3–9.
46. ST I-II q.70 a.1.
47. ST I-II q.11 a.3.
48. Aquinas argues, e.g., that certain specific Fruits, such as Joy and Peace,
are operationes and not virtues (ST II-II q.28 a.4; q.29 a.4).
49. In Gal, 5.6. Regarding terminology, Aquinas uses the word actus, e.g.,
when he argues that Joy and Peace are actus of caritas, and when he
describes a Fruit as an actus of virtue rather than a virtue (ST II-II q.28 a.4).
Aquinas uses the word operatio, e.g., when he argues that Counsel has no
assigned Fruit (ST II-II q.52 a.4 ad 3) and when he describes a Fruit as a kind
of perfect operatio (In Gal, 5.6). Sometimes Aquinas will use the term opus,
when, for example, he describes the Fruits as opera of the virtues and of the
Spirit (opera virtutum et spiritus) (In Gal, 5.6). As the usual translations
(such as “act,” “operation,” or “work”) can be misleading when discussing
the Fruits, I have not translated these words, especially as the determination
of the nature of the Fruits is one of the goals of the chapter.
50. ST II-II q.29 a.3.
51. In ST II-II q.29 a.3, Aquinas is principally referring to the alignment
involved in the friendship of two human persons, but caritas also signifies
friendship with God (I-II q.65 a.5), implying that the Peace involved in the
love of God is also a kind of alignment.
52. ST II-II q.28 a.1; ST II-II q.27 a.2.
53. In ST I-II q.52 a.4, Aquinas assigns no Fruits to the Gift of Counsel,
even though Counsel helps direct or bring about the actions of other Fruits,
such as Goodness and Benignity. Counsel is, therefore, an instance of a Gift
for which the corresponding actus are not Fruits.
 54. In the case of Peace, e.g., the Beatitude of Peacemaking precedes the
Fruit of Peace (ST II-II q.45 a.6).
55. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow (Boston, 1867), Paradiso, Canto XIII, 19–21.
56. When a playground swing, e.g., is given a periodic push at a certain
frequency, the natural frequency of the swing, it is very easy to make the
swing go higher. In the terminology of the physical sciences, the two
systems, the swing and the person pushing, are said to be in resonance.
57. The notion of resonance and habitus matching is also hinted at by
Aquinas’s description of the Fruit of Benignity. Aquinas twice explains that
“Benignity” means “good fire” (bonus ignis), one by which a person “melts”
to relieve the needs of others (ST I-II q.70 a.3; In Gal, 5.6). Given that a
“good fire” is also one of the most common symbols of the Holy Spirit,
Aquinas seems to imply that the person becomes like God in the manner in
which she loves others.
58. ST II-II q.29 a.3; ST I-II q.65 a.5.
59. I am most grateful to Eleonore Stump and Brian Davies for reviewing
earlier drafts of this chapter. I also thank Theodore Vitali for encouraging me
to pursue research in this field. I explore these issues in more detail in a
forthcoming book, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics:
Virtues and Gifts (Routledge, 2012).
 PART VIII

AQUINAS’S INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS AND

THE INFLUENCE OF HIS THINKING
 CHAPTER 37

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AQUINAS’S THOUGHT

GIORGIO PINI

SOME years after Aquinas’s death, the Augustinian theologian, Giles of

Rome, allegedly derided those who were looking for inconsistencies in
Aquinas’s writings by drawing the following contrast between Aquinas and
the masters of the next generation, to which Giles himself belonged:

It is a clear sign of the subtle intelligence and certain judgment of this admirable and
memorable teacher, brother Thomas Aquinas, that, after he became a master of theology,
when teaching or writing, he did not change the original views and arguments he had
endorsed as a bachelor, except in a few cases. By contrast, we modern authors, as suits
people of uncertain and doubtful judgment, change the views we once endorsed any time
an objection is raised against them, no matter how weak.1

It is not sure whether Giles of Rome actually uttered these words. But the
claim attributed to him is fairly accurate. Even though Aquinas’s teaching
stretched over a period of twenty years, his thought is remarkably consistent.
Indeed, some events may have caused him to refine his opinions on a few
topics. For example, his direct confrontation with Averroës’s followers
around 1270 may have induced him to reconsider a few issues in his theory
of the soul and cognitive psychology.2 And it has been suggested that his
increasingly critical attitude toward Maimonides may have resulted in a more
nuanced endorsement of negative theology.3 Furthermore, Aquinas’s
relatively late exposure to some important theological and philosophical
writings left a mark in the development of his thought. For example, in 1268
William of Moerbeke’s translation of Proclus’s Elements of Theology
(Elementatio theologica) gave new impetus to Aquinas’s understanding of
Neoplatonism.4 Also, Aquinas’s exposure to the proceedings of ancient
ecumenical councils at the papal court in 1261–65, and more specifically the
proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon, is likely to have influenced the
development of his views on Christ.5 As a final example, Aquinas’s reading
in the 1260s of two of Augustine’s late writings, On the Predestination of the
Saints (De praedestinatione sanctorum) and On the Gift of Perseverance (De
dono perseverantiae), probably played a key role in the development of his
views on grace and merit.6 With the possible exception of the last case,
however, none of these events and readings resulted in a major shift in
Aquinas’s thought.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that Aquinas has often been presented as
a monolithic figure, whose system leaped fully formed from his head. The
very possibility of development has sometimes been rejected as an attempt to
diminish the perfection of Aquinas’s achievement. This attitude may have
been fostered by the understandable and deeply entrenched tendency to
regard the Summa theologiae as the standard or even the only place to look
for Aquinas’s opinion about any given topic. It is quite clear, however, that it
would be unfair, to say the least, to dismiss such masterpieces as his
commentary on the Sentences and the questions De veritate as merely
youthful works—not to speak of the Summa contra Gentiles, the Aristotelian
commentaries and the later disputed questions, most notably De Potentia and
De malo. Once these and other writings are taken into account, it is difficult
to escape the conclusion that Aquinas’s thought did develop and that he did
change his mind about a number of topics. What is more, the view of
Aquinas’s unhesitatingly embracing a certain opinion at the beginning of his
career and sticking to it in all his writings does not fit with what can be
gathered from the autograph of two of his works, namely the third book of
his commentary on the Sentences and the Summa contra Gentiles. As
emerges from the study of those portions of these works that are still extant
in his handwriting, in many cases Aquinas revised and rewrote up to four
times what he had originally written.7 Many of these revisions cannot be
dismissed as merely cosmetic improvements. Rather, they allow us to get a
glimpse at Aquinas’s hesitations and developments about some key topics in
his thought.
Aquinas himself explicitly claimed to have changed opinion about at least
three issues, namely, Christ’s acquired knowledge, the effects of the
Empyrean Heaven on other bodies, and the healing effects of circumcision
before Christ’s incarnation.8 But several other instances have long been
known to both Aquinas’s adversaries and followers and have been
investigated by modern interpreters.
The most remarkable and still most useful tool to investigate the
development of Aquinas’s thinking is the list compiled by some members of
the Dominican order around 1280 to indicate several topics about which
Aquinas changed his mind between writing his early commentary on the
Sentences to drafting his later works. To the original 32 topics listed in 1280,
some more were added in the following years to arrive at a total of 80 topics
about which Aquinas held a “better opinion” in the Summa than in the
Sentences.9
I will not here give an exhaustive treatment of all or even the most
important topics about which Aquinas changed his mind. Rather, I intend to
document the evolution of Aquinas’s thought by focusing on four cases and
merely mentioning a few other shifts in Aquinas’s views. Most of the cases I
will take into consideration have both a theological and a philosophical side.
The two criteria I have followed in my selection are, first, that the evidence
for Aquinas’s change of mind is textually solid and generally undisputed
among modern interpreters and, second, that the topics addressed are
particularly significant from a philosophical and/or a theological point of
view.

SENSORY IMAGES IN INTELLECTUAL

COGNITION: CHRIST AND SEPARATED SOULS
A remarkable change can be documented with regard to Aquinas’s views on
the role sensory images (phantasmata) play in human intellectual cognition.
From the very beginning of his career, Aquinas claimed that sensory images
have a twofold function in intellectual cognition. First, sensory images are
the source from which the content of intellectual cognition is abstracted.
Second, sensory images are that toward which the intellect turns back in
order to pass from dispositional to occurrent knowledge (by way of the so-
called conversio ad phantasmata).10 Let me illustrate this twofold function
with an example.11 Suppose I do not know what a horse is. According to
Aquinas, my learning what a horse is can be described as my intellect’s
action of forming a mental representation of what a horse is (which Aquinas
calls “intelligible species”) on the basis of the sensory images of horses with
which I am acquainted. This mental representation or intelligible species is
both formed by my intellect and received and stored in my intellect. In its
function of forming a mental representation, the intellect is called “agent
intellect.” In its role of subject in which a mental representation is received
and stored, the intellect is called “possible intellect.” The agent intellect’s act
of producing a mental representation out of sensory images is called
“abstraction.” Once my intellect has carried out this operation of abstraction,
I know what a horse is. This does not mean, however, that I am also thinking
about what a horse is. Rather, it often happens that I know what a horse is but
do not actually think about it. In order to pass from dispositional knowledge
(i.e., the state of knowing what a horse is) to actual knowledge (i.e., actually
thinking about what a horse is), Aquinas held that my intellect must turn back
toward sensory images of horses, in order to reactivate the mental
representation (i.e., the intelligible species) of a horse previously abstracted
and stored in the so-called possible intellect. In Aquinas’s jargon, when the
intellect turns back toward the phantasm, the intelligible species passes from
incomplete to complete actuality.12
Throughout his career, Aquinas endorsed this account of the role of
sensory images in intellectual cognition. He changed his mind, however,
about an important point. Specifically, in the first stage of his career, Aquinas
held that there are two instances of human cognition (i.e., the knowledge
possessed by Christ and by separated souls after death) that make exception
to the general rule of the twofold function of sensory images. Later on,
however, he rejected the view that cognitive acts occurring without
abstraction from sensory images or without turning back toward sensory
images can count as genuinely human acts. Thus, in his later years, Aquinas
clearly adopted the view that sensory images are necessary not only to what
typically counts as human cognition, but to any act of human intellectual
cognition whatsoever, in any possible state (i.e., before and after the Fall and
before and after death).
This shift can be documented in Aquinas’s treatment of two apparently
unrelated topics, that is, the sort of knowledge possessed by Christ and by
separated souls, respectively. When addressing the first topic, Aquinas
wondered whether human beings necessarily acquire their information by
abstraction from sensory images. When addressing the second topic, Aquinas
wondered whether human beings necessarily turn back toward sensory
images in order to actually think about something. In his early commentary
on the Sentences, Aquinas answered “no” to both questions. In the Summa
theologiae, he answered “yes” to both questions.
With regard to Christ’s knowledge, Aquinas’s earlier position was that
Christ had only infused, not acquired knowledge.13 This means that Christ
knew the essences of all things from birth and did not learn any of them from
experience. Since Christ was born already provided with this knowledge, he
never acquired a single concept from sensory images. Like any human being,
however, Christ also had sensory images of the things he experienced. But
for him, these sensory images were not the sources of new information;
rather, they only served as that toward which his intellect turned in order to
actually think about what he already knew. As a consequence, sensory
images did not increase Christ’s knowledge; they only added to the certainty
with which Christ knew what he already knew.14
The view that Christ was born with innate knowledge of all the kinds of
things that exist and consequently did not have to acquire any new concept
from experience was the standard opinion in Aquinas’s time. By adopting it,
however, Aquinas had to pay a very high price. He had to concede that, in the
case of Christ, sensory images are not sources of new information.
Accordingly, Christ’s agent intellect never carried out an act of abstraction;
its only function was that of turning back toward sensory images in order to
recover information that had been infused directly by God.15 Since Christ
was in all respects a human being, Aquinas had to concede that human beings
(albeit in a very special case) do not necessarily cognize by acquiring new
information from sensory images.
Some years afterwards, however, Aquinas adopted the view that Christ
did not have innate knowledge of all and every essence. By contrast, Christ
genuinely learned from experience something about essences he was ignorant
of and consequently progressed in knowledge during his life on earth. Thus,
Christ’s intellect carried out the operation of abstraction from sensory images
just like any other human intellect.16
This is one of the three cases in which Aquinas explicitly remarked that he
had previously held a different position.17 Aquinas’s view that Christ
acquired genuine knowledge in this life (which seems to have been
unprecedented among medieval theologians)18 has a clear theological
significance, as it stresses Christ’s humanity in all and every aspect of his
nature and activity. Behind the theological point, an important philosophical
point was also at stake. Aquinas recognized that the agent intellect’s role of
abstracting new information from sensory images is a defining aspect of what
human cognition is. Correspondingly, the role of sensory images as the only
source of new information is a necessary element in any act of human
cognition. The case of Christ constitutes no exception.
With regard to the sort of the knowledge possessed by separated souls
after death and before resurrection, Aquinas always held that separated souls
cannot acquire new information by abstracting intelligible species from
sensory images, since separated souls are not united with their bodies and as
a consequence have no access to sensory information. Separated souls,
however, can acquire new information by receiving intelligible species
directly from God. But this is a supernatural way of acquiring information,
because separated souls require God’s special intervention over and above
their natural capacities in order to acquire new information in that way.19
Separated souls, however, can also think about what they learned when
they were united to their bodies. But the key question is: how can separated
souls carry out this act of thinking about information previously acquired?
It seems possible to distinguish three stages in Aquinas’s development
with regard to this issue.
In his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas held the view that only
when united with a body does a soul need to turn toward sensory images in
order to think about what it already knows. Once a human soul is separated
from its body, nothing in that soul’s nature prevents it from recovering the
intelligible species it had previously acquired when united to its body. Thus,
in order to think about what they learned when united with their bodies,
separated souls only need the habit of previously acquired knowledge; they
do not need any extra help from God’s part. The important philosophical
point here is that Aquinas held that it is within the natural capacities of a
human soul to think without sensory images. That ordinarily we do think by
turning back to sensory images only depends on the burden that the current
union with the body puts on our souls’ natural capacities. Aquinas even
noticed that the view that souls, when separated from their bodies, cannot
think about what they already know is a position that fits well with the
opinion of those who hold that human souls are mortal, that is, that they are
destroyed once the body is destroyed. For, given the link between what
something is and its activity, it is appropriate to say that, if a soul is incapable
of carrying out any activity without its body, then it is also incapable of
existing without its body.20
In the immediately following years, Aquinas maintained the basic
elements of this view but he introduced some important precision. He argued
that human souls keep their own nature whether they are united to their
bodies or are separated from them. In those two conditions, however, souls
have two distinct modes of existing. To each of these two modes of existing
there corresponds a distinct mode of thinking. When souls are united with the
body, they think through sensory images. By contrast, when they are
separated from the body, they can think by themselves, without any need of
sensory images. Specifically, sensory images are needed neither as sources of
new information nor in order to bring back to mind what was previously
learned. First, sensory images are not needed as sources of new information
because, when human souls are separated from the body, they can receive
more easily the influence of separated substances, such as angels and God
himself, and thus can receive new intelligible species directly from those
substances. Thus, we should conclude that the state of being united with the
body prevents a human soul from receiving a more perfect form of
knowledge. Second, separated souls do not need sensory images to think
about what they learned when they were united with the body because a soul
has a natural capacity to access all the information it already possesses.
When united to the body, a human soul maintains this capacity to recover
previously acquired information, but it cannot exercise this capacity without
sensory images. The need for sensory images, however, merely depends on a
soul’s union with a body. Once the body is removed, the soul can exercise its
capacity to recover previously acquired information without the help of
sensory images.21
Finally, in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas maintains the view that souls
have two modes of existing and two corresponding modes of thinking, when
they are united with the body or when they are separated from it,
respectively. But he now claims that the only natural mode of existing for a
human soul is for it to be united to the body. Correspondingly, the only
natural mode of thinking for a human soul is through sensory images. For a
human soul, to think about what it already knows without turning back
toward a sensory image is beyond its natural capacities. Consequently, it is
something that can be achieved only thanks to God’s supernatural
intervention. Left to itself, a separated soul is incapable both of acquiring
new information and of thinking about what it learned when united with the
body.22 Contrary to what he had previously implied, Aquinas even argues
that the supernatural mode of thinking without sensory images is, for a
human soul, worse than the mode of thinking by way of sensory images, for
to think without sensory images is less fitting to a human soul’s nature.23
Behind this technical issue there is again an important philosophical point.
Aquinas came to realize that, in any instance of human cognition, sensory
images are necessary not just as the source of information but also as what
triggers the recovery of information previously acquired. Thus, human
thinking is necessarily and essentially thinking by images. There can be no
exception to this rule. Since separated human souls are not united with a
body, they cannot think by images. As a consequence, they cannot think at all
unless God, by a supernatural intervention, allows them to recover the
information they had acquired when they were united to their bodies.
Most probably, Aquinas progressively shifted his views about the
necessity of sensory images in any instance of human cognition because he
only gradually came to realize all the consequences that the view that human
beings are essentially compound of a soul and a body (his so-called
“hylomorphism”) had on his theory of cognition. Since a human being is
essentially a composite of soul and body, the body is essentially involved in
the process of human cognition via sensory images. At some point, Aquinas
toyed with the idea of different states and of corresponding different modes
of thinking pertaining to a human soul when it is united to a body and when
separated from it. By the time he wrote the first part of his Summa
theologiae, however, Aquinas had reached the uncompromising view that the
only natural state for a human soul is to be united with a body. Consequently,
the only natural mode of cognition for a soul is by way of sensory images,
both in order to acquire new information and in order to think about what it
has previously learned.24

MENTAL WORDS
An important and particularly well-documented development in Aquinas’s
thought concerns the notion of mental word.25
 This shift has both a theological and a philosophical side to it. With regard
to the theological side, in his commentary on the Sentences Aquinas held that
the term “word” can be said both personally and essentially of the Trinity. In
the first sense, the term “word” refers exclusively to the second person of the
Trinity. In the second sense, the term “word” refers to the divine essence. It
is this second sense that is controversial. Aquinas illustrated this point by a
parallelism with human intellectual cognition. According to Aquinas’s earlier
position, there are only two items involved in human intellectual cognition in
addition to the object of thought. First, there is an intelligible species that
makes the intellect actual with regard to the cognition of a certain object and
provides the content of thought. Second, there is the act of thinking itself,
that is, the activity that the intellect carries out once it has been actualized by
the intelligible species. For example, suppose that I am thinking about what a
horse is (i.e., the essence of horses). According to Aquinas’s account in the
Sentences, this intellectual activity can be analyzed into the presence of the
intelligible species that my intellect abstracts from sensory images of horses,
on the one hand, and, on the other hand, my intellect’s act of thinking about
what a horse is. Since these are the only two elements into which thinking
can be broken down, when we apply the term “word” to the activity of
human cognition we may be referring to either the intelligible species or the
act of thinking (Aquinas leaves this option open). As far as God’s intellectual
activity is concerned, however, there is neither an intelligible species nor an
act of thinking distinct from the divine essence itself, due to God’s
simplicity. As a consequence, when applied to God, if the term “word” is
taken to refer to God’s intellectual activity, that term is said essentially of
God, that is, it refers to the entire divine essence and not only to the second
person of the Trinity, since God’s intellectual activity is identical with his
essence.26
Some years afterwards, however, Aquinas became dissatisfied with this
view both theologically and philosophically. The process through which he
reached his mature position was particularly tortured. Some elements of a
new solution can already be found in De veritate, q.4, a.2. But Aquinas’s
mature view emerged only after he drafted a key chapter of the Summa
contra Gentiles no fewer than three times between 1259 and 1264–65.27 By
the time he completes the fourth book of the Summa contra Gentiles, the
questions De Potentia, the first part of the Summa theologiae and the
commentary on St. John’s Gospel, the contours of Aquinas’s definitive
position are clear.28 From a theological point of view, Aquinas rejects the
view that the term “word” can be said of the entire divine essence. Rather,
there is only one sense of the term “word,” and that is the personal sense by
which that term refers only to the second person of the Trinity.29 From a
philosophical point of view, Aquinas rejects the view that the process of
human cognition can be analyzed into only two elements, that is, the
intelligible species and the act of thinking. He now adds a third factor,
namely, a concept (conceptio) produced by the act of thinking. Thus, when I
think about what a horse is, in addition to the object I am thinking about,
there is, first, an intelligible species abstracted from sensory images of
horses; second, there is my intellect’s act of thinking; and finally, there is
also a concept produced by my act of thinking. It is this concept that is called
a “mental word.” To think about something is to produce a concept of that
thing.30
The difference between Aquinas’s first and second account of the process
of intellectual cognition can also be expressed in the following terms. Both in
his earlier and in his later account, Aquinas held that acts of thinking are
what he called “immanent actions,” that is, actions that do not produce
effects distinct from the agents that perform those actions. In that respect,
thinking is different from actions such as building, which produces houses,
and heating, which results in something’s becoming hot. So far, Aquinas did
not change his mind. But whereas in his earlier account he held that thinking
is an action that does not produce anything at all, in his later account he
claims that thinking is an action that produces a result distinct from the
process of thinking, that is, a concept or inner word. That concept or inner
word, however, does not get outside the intellect. As a consequence, Aquinas
can still claim that thinking is an immanent action, but the reason is not that
the act of thinking produces nothing, as he had previously claimed, but that
its product remains within the intellect.
Possibly the most significant philosophical outcome of Aquinas’s new
position on mental words is that he can now introduce a more stringent
parallelism between acts of thinking and natural actions. In both cases, an
agent produces something. Just as the act of building produces a house, so
the act of thinking produces a concept. When considered as a productive act,
an act of thinking can be compared more easily to natural actions such as
heating and cooling and thus be interpreted within the framework of natural
philosophy.31

ANALOGY
Some modern interpreters have called attention to a significant development
in Aquinas’s treatment of analogy and the relation of likeness holding
between creatures and God.32 How can we account for our predicating of
God terms such as “being,” “good,” “wise,” and so on? Aquinas’s answer
was that we can do so because, in some respect, creatures are like God. All
along his career, Aquinas’s constant effort was to account for the relationship
of likeness linking the created world to God while at the same time
contending that there is no common feature shared by both God and
creatures. Because there is a similitude between creatures and God, it is
possible to attribute to God some terms that are ordinarily attributed to
creatures (such as “being,” “good,” “wise,” and the like). Because there is no
common feature between God and creatures, however, these terms do not
have exactly the same meaning when applied to God and when applied to
creatures.33
Granted that Aquinas always subscribed to these claims, it is possible to
distinguish three stages in his understanding of analogy.34
First, in his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas distinguished between
two kinds of analogy. The first kind of analogy is grounded on a relationship
between two (or more) things that share the same feature according to
different degrees. The second kind of analogy is grounded on the relationship
holding between two (or more) things of which one imitates the other within
the limits of its own essence even though there is no common feature shared
by both the imitating and the imitated thing. According to Aquinas’s earlier
view, the first kind of analogy holds among all created things, which all share
the same feature (i.e., being), even though some things (i.e., accidents) are
beings only because they inhere in other things (i.e., substances). By contrast,
the second kind of analogy holds between creatures and God. Creatures
imitate God within the limits of their own nature and are therefore like God
in some respect. Notwithstanding this likeness between creatures and God,
however, there is no common feature shared by both God and creatures.
Aquinas assumed as primitive the relation of imitation on which the analogy
between God and creatures is grounded and did not make any attempt to
explain it.35
Second, in his De veritate, Aquinas adopted a unique view. He rejected
the position he had previously endorsed, according to which creatures are
directly related to God by a primitive relation of imitation. By contrast, he
argued that no relation can directly tie creatures and God, because the
distance between creatures and God is infinite, and any relation holding
between two things presupposes that there is a determined, that is,
measurable and finite, distance between them. Thus, to say that creatures and
God are directly related to each other would entail that there is a finite
distance between creatures and God. But if there were a finite distance
between creatures and God, God would be one of the things of this world.
This would just eliminate God’s transcendence. In order to avoid this result,
Aquinas posited a peculiar kind of analogy, which is based not on a relation
holding between two things but between two proportions. Aquinas called the
relation on which this second kind of analogy is based “agreement of
proportionality” (convenientia proportionalitatis) and contrasted it to the
relation holding between two or more things, which he called “agreement of
proportion” (convenientia proportionis). For example, the number six is
related to the number three just as the number four is related to the number
two. Six and three, on the one hand, and four and two, on the other hand, are
related to each other by the relation of “being the double of.” This relation,
however, holds between two proportions. The terms of each proportion are
not directly related to each other. Similarly, sight is related to the body just as
the intellect is related to the soul, and a pilot is related to a ship just as a
prince is related to a city. Sight is in some way similar to the intellect, but
only by virtue of sight’s being related to the body and the intellect’s being
similarly related to the soul. Sight and intellect are not similar to each other
by virtue of any intrinsic property present in either sight or the intellect. The
same holds for a pilot and a prince. Aquinas contended that the analogy
holding between creatures and God is of this kind. For example, God’s
goodness is related to God’s infinite being just as a creature’s goodness is
related to that creature’s finite being. A creature’s goodness, however, is not
directly related to God’s goodness. In this way, Aquinas could give a detailed
analysis of the relation of imitation, which he had previously assumed as
primitive in his commentary on the Sentences. That creatures imitate God
within the limits of their essence only means that the properties of creatures
are related to their being just as God’s attributes are related to his being. This
solution, however, came at a very high cost. Aquinas had to give up the view
that there is any direct relationship holding between creatures and God. As
several commentators have noted, this comes very close to saying that there
is complete equivocity between what we say of creatures and what we say of
God.36
Third and finally, in his most mature works, Aquinas recovers his first
idea that there is a relation holding directly between creatures and God.
Contrary to what he had done in the Sentences, however, he now gives an
analysis of the relation by which each creature is directly linked to God.
Creatures are related to God and imitate God because they are caused by
God. Specifically, Aquinas holds that it is efficient causality that grounds the
relationship of likeness holding between creatures and God. He now
recognizes that the relation of likeness between creatures and God is just a
consequence of the principle according to which every agent produces
something like itself (omne agens agit sibi simile). This principle holds even
when no common feature is shared by the agent and its effect.37 Furthermore,
Aquinas can now give a unified account of the analogy holding among
creatures, on the one hand, and between creatures and God, on the other
hand. With regard to the former sort of analogy, there is no common feature
shared by accidents and substances. Contrary to what he had previously
claimed, Aquinas now thinks that being is not a common feature shared by
created things.38 All the same, accidents are attributed to substances as to
their cause (presumably, their efficient and material cause). Similarly, with
regard to the latter analogy, there is no feature common to both creatures and
God. All the same, creatures are in some way like God because they are
caused by God. As a consequence of this likeness, terms such as “being,”
“good,” “wise,” and the like, can be literally (i.e., nonmetaphorically)
predicated of both creatures and God.

THE NECESSITY OF GRACE

A significant change can be noticed in Aquinas’s views concerning the
necessity of grace both in order to avoid committing mortal sin and in order
to carry out the precepts of the divine law (i.e., the ten commandments).39
 With regard to the necessity of grace in order to avoid mortal sin, in his
commentary on the Sentences Aquinas claimed that human beings can avoid
committing mortal sins even without grace. Some people, Aquinas noticed,
held that human beings, even without grace, can avoid committing only some
individual mortal sins, but they cannot avoid sinning altogether; moreover,
those people held that human beings can exceptionally abstain from sinning
even without grace, but only for a short time. Against those people, Aquinas
argued that sin does not destroy human nature and the will’s natural capacity
to choose the good and avoid evil (i.e., its freedom). Consequently, no matter
how badly we sinned in the past, we are always capable of abstaining from
sinning in the future. To the argument that this may be true occasionally but
not for a long time, Aquinas retorted that the more the will refrains from evil
the stronger it becomes in its resistance to sin. Thus, time works in favor, not
against our capacity to avoid sinning mortally.40
Already in the De veritate, however, Aquinas abandoned this optimistic
position.41 In the Summa theologiae, he distinguishes between the human
condition before and after the Fall. He flatly denies that in the present,
postlapsarian condition it is possible for those who are without grace to avoid
committing mortal sins. Aquinas actually adopts the position he had rejected
in the Sentences. Only occasionally and for a short time, he now argues, can
human beings abstain from mortal sins if they are not provided with grace.
Interestingly, Aquinas quotes Aristotle’s emphasis on habit in support of his
new position. Such is the force of habit that the original freedom of the will
turns out to be severely impaired. No matter how perseverant in its efforts, a
will without God’s supernatural help will sooner or later revert to sin.42
A similar shift in Aquinas’s position can be observed with regard to the
mirror question, that is, the necessity of grace in order to carry out the
precepts of the divine law. In his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas
argued that grace is necessary to carry out the precepts of the divine law only
with regard to the mode of the law, not with regard to the substance of the
law. This means that human beings do not need grace to do what the divine
law commands (e.g., to honor one’s own parents, to refrain from stealing,
etc.). Grace is only needed to carry out those precepts according to the
lawgiver’s intention, that is, as God himself wanted those precepts to be
obeyed. According to God’s intention, his precepts should be not just obeyed,
but obeyed out of charity, that is, out of infused love for God himself. Since
charity is God’s gift, grace is necessary in order to carry out the precepts of
the divine law according to God’s own intention. But what those precepts
command can be done by mere free will.43 Already in the De veritate,
Aquinas seems to have embraced this position with much more hesitation.44
In the Summa theologiae, he just reverses his earlier view. Adopting the same
strategy that he had followed when addressing the question whether it is
possible not to sin mortally without grace, he now distinguishes between the
state of nature and the fallen state. In the state of nature, grace was not
necessary to do what the divine law commanded, even though grace was still
required to abide by the divine law out of charity. In the fallen state,
however, healing grace is necessary even to do what the divine law
commands.45
Thus, it seems that for the mature Aquinas somebody deprived of grace,
for example, an atheist or a pagan, is both inevitably prone to sin mortally
and incapable of carrying out what the divine precepts command.46

OTHER ISSUES
There are several other issues about which Aquinas’s thought evolved. Here I
will list only a few cases.47

(1) Whether God can communicate the power to create to his creatures. In
his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas claimed that God can
communicate to creatures the power to create by virtue of his own
causality, that is, as instruments of his action. Aquinas noticed that it is
in this way that some philosophers (e.g., Avicenna) thought that
separated substances create something. Aquinas remarked that this
position is heretical. But at that stage of his career, he did not seem to
have any philosophical objection to it. In his later works, however,
Aquinas rejects the view that creatures can be given the power to create,
even if only as instruments of God’s causality, on the ground that to
create is to give being, and being is God’s proper effect.48
(2) Whether there is a divine idea of prime matter distinct from the idea of
composites of matter and form. In the Sentences, Aquinas claimed that
there is such an idea. In the Summa theologiae, he argues that there is
 not.49
(3) Whether pain is located in the senses (and specifically in touch) or in
the soul (and specifically in that part of the soul that Aristotle called
“appetitive,” which is connected with bodily desires). In the Sentences,
Aquinas claimed that pain is located in touch. In the Summa theologiae,
he argues that pain is located in the appetitive soul.50
(4) Whether God can dispense human beings from the commandments
contained in the second tablet (i.e., those commandments that do not
concern our dealings with God but our dealings with other human
beings). In his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas argued that God
can dispense us from obedience from the commandments contained in
the second tablet. In the Summa theologiae, he argues that this is
impossible.51
(5) Whether Christ’s resurrection is the cause of human salvation. In his
commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas held the traditional view that
Christ’s resurrection plays no causal role in human salvation, for
salvation is caused directly by the divine essence. In the Summa
theologiae, however, he adopts the novel view that Christ’s resurrection
is not only an example but the genuine cause of our own salvation.52
(6) How charity increases when the body is reunited with the soul after
resurrection. In the Sentences, Aquinas held that after resurrection
charity increases both intensively and extensively. In the Summa
theologiae, he claims that after resurrection charity increases only
extensively, not intensively.53

CONCLUSION
As I have said at the beginning of this chapter, Aquinas’s thought is
remarkably consistent. Any suggestion that Aquinas may have changed his
mind about a certain topic should be assessed with extreme care. Sometimes,
this suggestion does not stand the test of an attentive consideration of
Aquinas’s writings. A case in point is Aquinas’s alleged passage from an
intellectualist to a voluntaristic position in his theory of the will. This
hypothesis, once popular among scholars, is most probably one to be
rejected.54 More often than not, however, students of Aquinas (probably
because of a misplaced urge to defend their master) have refused to
contemplate the very possibility that Aquinas ever changed his mind about
any topic whatsoever. This attitude, however, clashes with textual evidence.
As well known already to his contemporaries and first interpreters, Aquinas
did change his mind about a certain number of topics. When taken together,
these changes do not amount to any major turn or reversal in Aquinas’s
thought. Nevertheless, each one of them deserves careful consideration. As
once remarked by Cajetan (possibly the most enthusiastic and influential
among Aquinas’s interpreters), it is not detrimental on Aquinas’s dignity to
have reached his definitive view only step by step, because “it is natural for
the human intellect to be perfected in the course of time.”55

NOTES
1. William of Tocco, Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de
Tocco (1323), ed. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1996), 170. I have adopted the following chronology of
Aquinas’s writings: Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (= Super Sent):
1252–56; Quaestiones disputatae De Veritate (= QDV): 1256–59; Expositio
in librum Boethii De trinitate (= In BDT): 1257–58/59; Summa contra
Gentiles (= SCG): 1259/60–64/65; Quaestiones disputatae De Potentia (=
QDP): 1265–66; Quaestiones de disputata anima (= QDA): 1266–67;
Sententia Libri De anima (= In DA): 1267–68; Quaestio disputata De
spiritualibus creaturis (= QDSC): 1267–68; Summa theologiae (= ST) I:
1265/66–68; I-II: 1271; II-II: 1271–72; III, incomplete: 1272–73;
Quaestiones de quodlibet I–XII (= Quodl) I: 1269; II: 1269; III: 1270; VI:
1270; XII: 1272; Sententia super Metaphysicam (= In Meta): 1270–72;
Quaestio disputata De unione verbi incarnati (= QDUVI): 1272. Unless
otherwise indicated, the translations from Aquinas’s writings are my own.
2. J.-P. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work,
rev. ed., trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1996), 191–96.
3. J. F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 229–40; “Thomas
Aquinas on What Philosophers Can Know about God,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1992): 279–97, esp. 286–88; The Metaphysical
Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 540–41.
4. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 221–22.
5. G. Geenen, “En marge du Concile de Chalcédoine: Les textes du
quatrième Concile dans les oeuvres de S. Thomas,” Angelicum 19 (1952):
43–59; “Doctrinae concilii Chalcedonensis usus et influxus in theologia S.
Thomas Aquinatis,” Divus Thomas (Pl.) 56 (1953): 319–42; D. Ols, Le
cristologie contemporanee e le loro posizioni fondamentali al vaglio della
dottrina di S. Tommaso (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
1991), 161–62, n. 17.
6. H. Bouillard, Conversion et grace chez S. Thomas d’Aquin: Étude
historique (Paris: Aubier, 1944), 92–122; J. P. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and
Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame,
Ind. and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 266–76.
7. P.-M. Gils, “Textes inédits de S. Thomas: Les Premières Redactions du
Scriptum super Tertio Sententiarum,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et
théologiques 45 (1961): 201–28; 46 (1962): 445–62 and 609–28; “S. Thomas
écrivain,” in Sancti Thomae de Aquino Super Boetii De Trinitate. Expositio
libri Boetii de hebdomadibus, Opera omnia, 50, Commissio Leonina, Rome
and Les Éditions du Cerf (Paris, 1992), 173–209, esp. 191–209.
8. On Christ’s knowledge, ST III q.9 a.4: “And thus, although elsewhere I
wrote differently (quamvis aliter alibi scripserim), it must be said that in
Christ there was acquired knowledge”; and q.12,a.2: “Therefore, if in the
soul of Christ there were no habit of acquired knowledge in addition to the
habit of infused knowledge, as it seems to some and sometime seemed to me
(ut quibusdam videtur, et mihi aliquando visum est).” On the Empyrean
Heaven, Quodl 6, q.11, art. un. [19]: “some think that the Empyrean Heaven
has no influence on the other bodies.… And so at some time it seemed to me
(Et hoc quidem mihi aliquando visum est).” On circumcision, ST III q.62 a.6
ad 3: “And thus others say that circumcision conferred grace also with regard
to a certain positive effect, namely by making human beings worthy of
eternal life, but not so as to repress the concupiscence that makes human
beings prone to sin. And so at one time it seemed to me (Quod aliquando
mihi visum est).” See Ols, Le Cristologie, 160–61; T. Litt, Les Corps célestes
dans l’univers de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain and Paris: Publications
universitaires and Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1963), 260, n. 2. I wish to thank
Adriano Oliva and Ruedi Imbach for these indications.
 9. R.-A. Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus frater Thomas melius in
Summa quam in Scriptis,’” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médievale
19 (1952): 271–326. This list of topics was known as “Articles in which
brother Thomas held a better opinion in his Summa than in his Commentary
on the Sentences” (Articuli in quibus frater Thomas melius in Summa quam
in Scriptis” [= Articuli]). For other concordances and similar documents, see
ibid. 292–93.
10. Super Sent II, d.20, q.2, a.2, ad 3; Super Sent III, d.31, q.2, a.4; QDV,
q.10, a.2, ad 7; q.10, a.8, ad 1; SCG II, 73; ST I q.84 a.7; q.85 a.1; Quodl XII,
q.9, a.1. See R. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical
Study of Summa theologiae Ia 75–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 278–95.
11. In what follows, I focus exclusively on the acquisition of simple
concepts such as the concept horse, the concept human being, etc., and on the
acts of understanding and thinking about the real essences that correspond to
those concepts. Aquinas referred to these acts as actus intelligendi or
intellectiones and he used the verb intelligere to indicate the intellect’s
operation of performing those acts. I translate these expressions by “acts of
thinking” and “thinking.” “Acts of understanding” and “understanding” are
also possible translations.
12. QDV, q.10, a.2, ad 4; q.19, ad 1; SCG II, 74; ST I q.79 a.6 ad 3; Quodl
III, q.9, a.1.
13. Articuli, art. 29, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 312–13.
14. Super Sent III, d.14, q.1, a.3, qla 5: “Christ’s knowledge never
increased with regard to the kind of cognition he had … nor did it increase
with regard to the number of things He knew, because from the first instant
of His conception He knew all that pertains to such knowledge. But [Christ’s
knowledge] increased with regard to the mode of certitude”; d.18, a.1, ad 5:
“it must be said that Christ did not have any knowledge received from the
senses; rather, He had infused knowledge.” See Ols, Le Cristologie, 154–56;
J.-P. Torrell, Recherches thomasiennes: Études revues et augmentés (Paris:
Vrin, 2000), 202, n. 1.
15. Super Sent III, d.14, q.1, a.3, qla 5, ad 3: “by virtue of the light of the
agent intellect, no new species was received in His possible intellect; rather,
there occurred a new turning back to the species that were already in His
imagination, just as it happens to somebody who already has the habit of
knowledge with regard to what he imagines or sees.”
 16. ST III q.9 a.4: “Thus is it necessary to say that in Christ there were
some intelligible species received in the possible intellect by the action of the
agent intellect—which is just to say that in Him there was acquired
knowledge, which some call ‘experiential knowledge’”; q.12 a.2: “Christ is
thought to have acquired knowledge … because of what is fitting to the agent
intellect, so that its action, which is to make things actually intelligible, will
not be useless.” Aquinas started questioning his earlier position already in
QDV, q.20, a.3. See Ols, Le cristologie, 156–59. Of course, the question of
acquired versus infused knowledge only concerns Christ as a human being,
not Christ as God.
17. See above, note 8.
18. Torrell, Recherches thomasiennes, 202. By “knowledge” I refer here to
knowledge of essences. Thus, the point is not whether Christ learned that a.d.
January 20, 30 was a sunny day. Rather, the question is whether Christ
learned what a horse is, what a dog is, and so on. See above, note 11.
19. Super Sent III, d.31, q.2, a.4; Super Sent IV, d.50, q.1, a.1; QDV, q.19,
a.1; SCG II, 80–81; QDA, q.15; ST I q.89 a.1; ST I-II q.67 a.2; Quodl III, q.9,
a.1.
20. Super Sent III, d.31, q.2, a.4: “Therefore, a soul separated from its body
will still retain its nature, but will lose its actual union with a body. And thus
that soul, considered just in its nature, will need no sensory image in order to
consider what it already knew [before being separated from the body].
Rather, it will need sensory images only in order to consider those things that
it must learn for the first time. And thus, [that soul] will be able to consider
those things that it already knew not by using a sensory image, but by virtue
of the habit of knowledge that it acquired previously.… For to say that a soul,
in accordance with what now that soul has in its nature, won’t be able to
think at all without its body, is a claim typical of those who hold that the soul
ceases to exist with the body, because, as is said in the first book of On the
Soul, if none of the soul’s operation can exist without the body, then the soul
itself could not exist without the body, since natural operations follows
nature.”
21. QDV, q.19, a.1: “But when the soul will be separated from the body,
just as it will have its being neither dependent on the body nor existing in the
body, so, too, it will receive an influx of intellectual cognition in such a way
that it will neither be confined to the body, as though it had to be exercised
through the body, nor will it have any ordination to the body at all.
Therefore, when at its creation the soul is infused in the body, the only
intellectual cognition that is given it is ordained to the powers of the body.
Thus, through the agent intellect it can make sensory images that are only
potentially intelligible actually intelligible, and through the possible intellect
it can receive the intelligible species thus abstracted. And this is also the
reason why, as long as it has being united to the body in the state of this life,
it does not know even those things whose species are preserved in it except
by insight into sensory images.… But when it will have its being free of the
body, then it will receive the influx of intellectual cognition in the way in
which angels receive it, without any ordination to the body. Thus, it will
receive species of things from God Himself, and it won’t be necessary to turn
back to any image in order to actually think by virtue of those species or of
those that it acquired previously.” The English translation is taken, with some
modification, from St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, vol. 2, trans. J. V. McGlynn
(Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1953), 390. See also SCG II, 81.
22. ST I q.89 a.1: “Therefore with respect to the mode of existence by
which the soul is united to a body, the appropriate mode of thinking for the
soul is to turn toward the sensory image of bodies, sensory images that exist
within bodily organs. But once it has been separated from its body, the
appropriate mode of thinking for the soul is to turn toward intelligible things
straightaway—just as is appropriate for other separate substances. So turning
toward sensory images is, for the soul, its natural mode of thinking, just as
being united to a body is natural. But being separated from its body is foreign
to the character of its nature, and thinking without turning toward sensory
images is likewise foreign to its nature. So it is united to a body in order to
exist and operate in keeping with its nature.” The English translation is taken,
with a few modifications, from Thomas Aquinas, The Treatise on Human
Nature: Summa Theologiae 1a 75–89, trans. Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis
and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 205–6.
23. Ibid.: “One need to consider, then, that although thinking by turning
toward higher things is in itself loftier than thinking by turning toward
sensory images, still that first mode of thinking was less perfect considered
as it was possible for the soul.” (Pasnau’s translation with some
modifications.) Aquinas had already anticipated this position in QDA, q.15,
where he had granted that the knowledge obtained by separated souls is not
as good and precise as that obtained by way of sensory images. Contrary to
what he would say in ST, however, in QDA Aquinas still maintained that
separated souls do not need any supernatural help to think without sensory
images. The QDA are thought to precede immediately or be roughly
contemporary to the first part of ST.
24. Possibly connected to the role of sensory images in human cognition is
the question whether it is possible to see God in this life without the light of
glory (lumen gloriae). In QDV, q.10, a.11, Aquinas held that this is possible.
By contrast, in ST II-II q.175 a.3 ad 2, he argued that this is not possible,
because the human intellect can be actualized only by an intelligible species
abstracted from a sensory image; as a consequence, the human intellect
cannot be actualized directly by God, as is the case in the beatific vision,
without being supernaturally predisposed by the light of glory, which
replaces the agent intellect’s act of abstraction. See Articuli, art. 75 in
Gauthier “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 325.
25. H. Paissac, Théologie du Verbe: Saint Augustine et saint Thomas
(Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1951), 117–218; A. F. von Gunten, “In principio
erat verbum: Une évolution de saint Thomas en théologie trinitaire,” in C.-J.
Pinto de Oliveira, ed., Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris: Hommage au Professeur
Jean-Pierre Torrell OP à l’occasion de son 65e anniversaire (Fribourg,
Suisse: Éditions universitaires, 1993), 119–41; Articuli, art. 8, in Gauthier,
“Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 303.
26. Super Sent I, d.27, q.2, a.2, qla 1. In addition to the studies indicated in
the previous note, see J. Chênevert, “Le Verbum dans le Commentaire sur le
Sentences de Saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Sciences ecclésiastiques 13 (1961):
191–233; 359–90. There are two versions of the relevant part of this
question. See von Gunten “In principio erat verbum,” 212–28; A. Oliva, Les
débuts de l’enseignement de Thomas d’Aquin et sa conception de la sacra
doctrina, avec l’édition du prologue de son commentaire des Sentences
(Paris: Vrin, 2006), 123–29.
27. SCG I, 53. The third and definitive version is the one printed in the
editions of the SCG commonly available. The first and second versions are
given in the appendix to vol. 13 of the Leonine edition, 20*–21*. See L.-B.
Geiger, “Les rédactions successives de Contra Gentiles I, 53 d’après
l’autographe,” in Saint Thomas d’Aquin aujourd’hui (Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer, 1963), 221–40.
28. SCG IV, 11; QDP, q.8, a.1; q.9, a.5; ST I q.27 a.1 and a.2; q.28 a.4 ad
1; q.34 a.1; q.85 a.2 ad 3; Super Johan I, 1.
29. According to Roger Marston’s testimony, the position Aquinas held in
the commentary on the Sentences was excommunicated around 1271–72 in
the course of a disputation attended by Aquinas himself. See Roger Marston,
De emanatione aeterna, q.6, in Quaestiones disputatae (Ad Claras Aquas,
1932), 117. For the debate on the theological issue of mental word, see G.
Pini, “Henry of Ghent’s Doctrine of Verbum in Its Theological Context,” in
Henry of Ghent and the Transformation of Scholastic Thought: Studies in
Memory of Jos Decorte (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1993), 307–26.
30. QDP, q.8, a.1: “And that concept (conceptio) differs from the three
other things I have mentioned. It differs from the thing thought about.… It
differs from the intelligible species.… It also differs from the intellect’s
action, because that concept is considered as the term of the action and as
something produced by it, as it were.… This concept of the intellect is
properly called ‘word’ in us.” On Aquinas’s mature doctrine of mental
words, see C. Panaccio, “From Mental Word to Mental Language,”
Philosophical Topics 20 (1992): 125–47, esp. 126–28; R. Pasnau, Theories of
Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 256–71; C. Panaccio, Le Discours intérieur de Platon à
Guillaume d’Ockham (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1999), 177–92; Pasnau,
Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 327–28; E. Stump, Aquinas (London and
New York: Routledge, 2003), 266–68.
31. G. Pini, “Two Models of Thinking: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns
Scotus,” in G. Klima, ed., Intentionality, Cognition and Representation in the
Middle Ages (New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming).
32. B. Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to
Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski and P. Vandevelde (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 2004). See also G. P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas
Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago:
Loyola University Press, 1960).
33. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 543–72.
34. Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy, 65–93.
35. Super Sent prol., q.1, a.2, ad 2; I, d.19, q.5, a.2; d.35, q.1, a.4; d.48, q.1,
a.1; II, d.16, q.1, a.1, ad 3.
36. QDV I, q.2, a.11.
37. On the likeness obtaining between creatures and God: SCG I, 29; ST I
q.4 a.3. Specifically on analogy: SCG I, 32 and 34; QDP, q.7, a.7; ST I q.13
a.5: “So, whatever we say of both God and creatures we say in virtue of the
order that creatures have to God as to their source and cause, in which all the
perfections of things pre-exist most excellently.” The English translation is
from Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Questions on God, ed. Brian Davies and
Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 149. On the
principle that every agent produces something like itself, which Aquinas
takes to be entailed by the very nature of causality, see Wippel, The
Metaphysical Thought, 517–18, 558–59.
38. SCG I, 34.
39. Articuli, art. 16 and art. 17, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’”
306–7. On Aquinas’s shift concerning grace, probably due to his increased
familiarity with Augustine’s writings, see Bouillard, Conversion et grace,
92–122; J.-P. Torrell, Nouvelle recherches thomasiennes (Paris: Vrin, 2008),
125, n. 2. See also A. E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian
Doctrine of Justification, 3d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 132–38. For a similar shift concerning merit and the role of
predestination from the Sentences to the Summa theologiae, see Wawrykow,
God’s Grace and Human Action. In general on nature and grace in Aquinas,
see Torrell, Nouvelle recherches thomasiennes, 99–129.
40. Super Sent II, d.28, q.1, a.2: “Others, however, with the intention of
preserving the nature of free will, say that human beings, in keeping with
their natural virtue, have been created in such a way that they can avoid sin;
but as a consequence of sin virtue is so changed that one who is already in a
state of sin cannot avoid sin but falls into another sin unless he is freed by
grace. But because they do not want to appear to say that it is absolutely
impossible not to sin, they add that somebody who is in mortal sin can avoid
this or that particular sin, but not all sins. And the same is true of venial sins.
They also state that somebody who is in a state of mortal sin can avoid
sinning for some time, but not for a long time. This position, however, seems
false in several respects. First, it is false because, just as sin reduces but does
not remove the natural goods, a human being cannot lose what pertains to the
nature of a natural power, even though he can become weak in that respect.
Therefore, since the free choice or avoidance of good or evil pertains to the
nature of free will, the capacity to avoid sin cannot be taken away from a
human being. Rather, it can only be reduced, namely in such a way that one
can avoid only with difficulty that sin that previously he could have avoided
easily.… And it cannot even be said that somebody can avoid sinning for
some time but not for long, because a free will that resists evil becomes much
stronger in resisting evil, not weaker; and so it is much more capable of
avoiding sinning after than before.”
41. QDV I, q.24, a.12.
42. ST I-II q.109 a.8: “But in the state of corrupted nature human beings
need grace to heal their nature in order that they may entirely abstain form
sin.… So, too, before a human being’s reason, wherein is mortal sin, is
restored by justifying grace, that human being can avoid each mortal sin, and
for some time, since it is not necessary that he should always be actually
sinning. But it cannot be that he remains for a long time without mortal sin.
… And thus, just as inordinate movements of the sensitive appetite cannot
help occurring when the lower appetite is not subject to reason, so likewise,
when a human being’s reason is not entirely subject to God, the consequence
is that many disorders occur in the acts themselves of reason. For when a
human being’s heart is not so fixed on God as to be unwilling to be parted
from Him for the sake of finding any good or avoiding any evil, many things
happen for the achieving or avoiding of which a human being strays from
God and breaks His commandments, and thus sins mortally; especially since,
when surprised, a human being acts according to his preconceived end and
his pre-existing habits, as the Philosopher says, although with the
premeditation of his reason a human being may do something outside the
order of his preconceived end and the inclination of his habit. But because a
human being cannot always have this premeditation, it cannot help occurring
that he acts in accordance with his will turned aside form God, unless, by
grace, he is quickly brought back to the due order.” The English translation is
taken, with some modifications, from Basic Writings of Saint Thomas
Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis, vol. 2 (New York: Random House, 1945), 991–
92. Around 1280, Roger Marston, while noticing Aquinas’s development on
this topic, did not hesitate to label Aquinas’s earlier position as Pelagian
(“Istud manifeste est de errore Pelagii”). See Roger Marston, De statu
naturae lapsae, q.2, ad 28, in Quaestiones disputatae, p. 200, as quoted in
Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 277–78, n. 17.
43. Super Sent II, d.28, q.3, a.1: “Therefore, it must be said that somebody
can observe the precepts of the law by free will, with regard to what falls
directly under a precept, and without gratuitously given or sanctifying grace
(sine gratia gratis data vel gratum faciente), as long as grace is taken to
mean some infused habit. But with regard to the lawgiver’s intention, the
precepts of the law cannot be observed in the absence of grace, because the
gift of charity cannot become present in us through our own forces but is
infused by God.”
44. QDV, q.24, a.15, ad 2.
45. ST I-II q.109 a.4: “I answer that there are two ways of fulfilling the
commandments of the Law. The first regards the substance of works, as
when somebody does works of justice, fortitude, and of other virtues. And in
this way a human being in the state of integral nature could fulfill all the
commandments of the Law; or otherwise he would have been unable not to
sin in that state, since to sin is nothing else than to transgress the divine
commandments. But in the state of corrupted nature, a human being cannot
fulfill all the divine commandments without healing grace.” The English
translation is taken, with some modifications, from The Basic Writings of
Saint Thomas Aquinas, 2:985.
46. There seems to be a similar shift in Aquinas’s position concerning the
necessity of grace in order to carry out the commandment of loving God
above everything else (grace is not necessary: Super Sent II, d.28, q.1, a.3;
grace is necessary: ST I-II q.100 a.10), as well as in order to prepare
ourselves to the reception of healing grace (grace is not necessary: Super Sent
II, d.28, a.4; grace is necessary: QDV, q.24, a.15; Quodl I, q.4, a.2; ST I-II
q.109 a.6). See Articuli, art. 18 and art. 39, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in
quibus,’” 307 and 317, and, on the latter issue, Roger Marston, De statu
naturae lapsae, q.2, ad 11, 195–96, in Quaestiones disputatae, as quoted in
Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 287, n. 39. A close reading of Aquinas’s
text, however, seems to cast some doubts on Aquinas’s shift especially
concerning the latter issue.
47. Sometimes Aquinas hesitated between two views, but it is not possible
to detect a clear evolution in his position. The question whether supposit and
essence are identical in angels is a case in point. In several places, Aquinas
argued that supposit and essence are identical in angels. See Super Sent I,
d.25, q.1, a.1, ad 3; Super Sent II, d.3, q.1, a.2; Super Sent III, d.5, q.1, a.3;
SCG IV, 55; QDP, q.7, a.4; QDP, q.9, a.1; QDA, q.17, ad 10; In DA 3, 2; ST
I q.3 a.3; q.39 a.3 ad 3; QDSC 5, ad 9; In Meta VII, 5 and 11; VIII, 3. In
other places, however, Aquinas claimed that supposit and essence are really
different in any creature, angels included. See Super Sent I, d.5, q.1; d.34,
q.1, a.1; SCG II, 54; Quodl II, q.2, a.2; QDUVI, 1; cf. also ST III q.17 a.1.
See Articuli, art. 36, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 316–17; Wippel,
The Metaphysical Thought, 238–53. Similarly, Aquinas’s wavered in his
opinion about the role that determinate or indeterminate dimensions play in
the individuation of material things. See Super Sent II, d.3, q.1, a.4; Super
Sent II, d.30, q.2, a.2; In BDT, q.4, a.2 (the individuating principle is matter
considered under indeterminate dimensions); Super Sent III, d.1, q.2, a.5; In
DA 2, c.12; QDA, q.9 (the individuating principle is matter considered under
determinate dimensions). See Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 356–73.
48. Super Sent II, d.1, q.1, a.2; SCG II, 21; QDP, q.3, a.4; ST I q.45 a.5.
See Articuli, art. 12, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 305. John of
Naples noticed this development. See Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’”
287, n. 41.
49. Super Sent I, d.36, q.2, a.3, ad 2; ST I q.15 a.3 ad 3. See Articuli, art.
56, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 321.
50. Super Sent III, d.15, q.2, a.3, sol.1; ST I-II q.35 a.1. See Articuli, art.
30, in Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 313–14. Giles of Rome noticed
this development. See Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 278, n. 18.
51. Super Sent I, d.47, q.1, a.4; ST I-II q.100 a.8. See Articuli, art. 10, in
Gauthier, “Les ‘Articuli in quibus,’” 304.
52. Super Sent IV, d.43, q.1, a.2; ST III q.56 a.1 ad 3. Aquinas’s evolution
concerns the notion of instrumental causality and can be documented also in
QDV, q.27, a.4. See Torrell, Recherches thomasiennes, 214–41.
53. Super Sent, IV, d.49, q.1, a.4, sol. 1; ST I-II q.4 a.5 ad 5. See F. Pelster,
“Das Wachstum der Seligkeit nach der Aufestehung, um die Auslegung von
S. Th. I-II, q. 4 a. 5 ad 5,” Scholastik 27 (1952): 561–63; Torrell, Recherches
thomasiennes, 195–96, n. 3.
54. The view that Aquinas changed his mind about the will was first
proposed in O. Lottin, “La date de la Question Disputée De Malo de Saint
Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 24 (1928): 373–88. It was
then endorsed in many other studies, both by Lottin and other scholars,
including B. Lonergan, “St. Thomas’s Thought on Gratia Operans,”
Theological Studies 2 (1941): 289–324; 3 (1942): 69–88, 375–402, 533–78,
reprinted as Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of Thomas
Aquinas, ed. F. E. Crowe and R. M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2000). Serious doubts have been cast on this hypothesis in D.
Westberg, “Did Aquinas Change His Mind about the Will?” The Thomist 58
(1994): 41–60; and esp. P. Eardley, “Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on
the Will,” Review of Metaphysics 56 (2003): 835–62.
 55. This remark, which concerns Aquinas’s development on mental words,
is taken from the commentary on the first part of the Summa theologiae by
Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, as printed in vol. 4 of the Leonine edition,
368, and quoted in von Gunten, “In principio erat verbum,” 119, n. 2.
I wish to express my gratitude to Adriano Oliva, O.P. (Commissio
Leonina) and Russell Friedman (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) for their
suggestions and help. I also wish to thank Brian Davies for many useful
comments on a first draft of this paper.
 CHAPTER 38

THE INFLUENCE OF AQUINAS

CHRISTOPHER UPHAM

TO INQUIRE about the influence of Aquinas is to ask whether his thought

produced any important effects. Aquinas himself would suggest that there are
four questions to consider when trying to measure something’s effects: (1)
whether any effect exists; (2) what is the form of the effect; (3) what is its
intensity; and (4) what is its duration.1 It goes without saying that the first
question should be answered in the affirmative, so this chapter will be
devoted to probing the remaining three. What has been the nature of
Aquinas’s influence? To what degree has this influence been felt? During
which periods of history has this influence been more significant?
Doubtless, the most salient effects of Aquinas’s doctrines are to be found
in the medieval university setting. Indeed, he would come to be known as
“the Angel of the Schools.” Yet, before he gained this title, he was referred to
as the Doctor Communis.2 Whether this was meant to evoke the affability of
his temperament or the generality of his acceptance, it is difficult to ascertain.
What is clear is that his teaching was not so friendly that it avoided censure,
nor was his authority so well-accepted, as a commentator on Aristotle and as
an orthodox (i.e., Catholic) theologian, that it was beyond reproach. In the
wake of Aquinas’s passing, a number of controversies emerged, but these are
almost entirely confined to the walls of European universities. For this
reason, I will address these conflicts as part of the backdrop for the
burgeoning school of Thomists, in the second section. First, however, I will
mention a few branches of Aquinas’s legacy that deserve more attention,
especially insofar as they illustrate some ways in which his teaching was
quite common, both because it extended beyond the university and because it
affected many ordinary people.
 COMMON DOCTOR: AQUINAS OUTSIDE THE
SCHOOLS

Among the People

If the singular focus on European universities smacks of elitism, this might
be remedied by noting the popular transmission of Aquinas’s work.
Obviously, the vast majority of people being illiterate, Aquinas could only be
known indirectly to most during the High Middle Ages. Notwithstanding this
impediment, even an uneducated commoner could meet with Aquinas’s
influence in two venues: first, in the confessional booth; second, in public
lectures.
Perhaps a surprising, and certainly austere, means of dispensing Aquinas’s
teaching is to be found in the confessional. The medium by which Aquinas’s
moral theology reached confessors was often at a degree of remove: rather
than consulting the Secunda Secundae, priests would have resorted to a
casuist manual for help identifying or addressing particular sins. However, as
Boyle meticulously documents, Aquinas was recorded quite faithfully and
copiously in at least one such casuist manual. Through the widely circulated
Summa confessorum of John of Freiburg, the Common Doctor exerted a
fairly direct sway over pastoral care in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.3
However, it is difficult to offer a succinct description of the precise nature of
Aquinas’s influence or to assess the degree to which Aquinas’s systematic
moral treatises, such as those found in the Summa theologiae, survived the
reconfiguration into case-based manuals. Complicating matters more, the
Summa confessorum draws heavily on more occasional works, like some of
Aquinas’s Quaestiones Quodlibetales, and even the obscure letter to the
Duchess of Brabant, De regimine Iudaeorum (On the Government of the
Jews).
Outside of the practical concerns of the Church, the public disputations
and lectures of medieval scholars presented a more detailed and, for that
reason, less accessible mode of diffusion for Aquinas’s thought. Indeed,
these public disputations could be diffusive in a double sense: they both
disseminated and, at times, diluted the intellectual force of Aquinas’s
arguments. With such scant evidence often in the form of reportationes
(student notes) and ordinationes (notes edited by the magister), it seems
futile to conjecture about the exact nature of the influence Aquinas may have
exerted in these forums, even among his most docile students. Doubtless, the
effect would be even more diminished in cases where a Thomist publicly
defended theses in harmony with Aquinas’s conclusions. All the same, this
venue is the most likely point of contact between the Common Doctor and
Dante Alighieri, who appears to have received his exposure to Thomist
doctrines in a public setting—not in a university—from a student of Aquinas
himself, Dominican Friar Remigio of Girolami.4 As with John of Freiburg,
Dante was most interested in the moral theology of Aquinas. A perusal of
Dante’s Commedia suggests the impact of many of Aquinas’s moral
doctrines, namely, concerning the nature and severity of sins, the relationship
between grace and merit, as well as the characterization of beatitude in visual
terms.5 Admittedly, Aquinas’s hold on Dante’s mind was far from exclusive.
Yet, in a poignant example of Aquinas’s influence, the Doctor Communis
would be immortalized in Dante’s heaven before the Church completed his
canonization in 1323.

Among the Byzantines

At the time of Aquinas’s death, the Western Church was attempting to repair
the rift with the Eastern Orthodox. Despite the significant barriers between
the Latin West and Greek Byzantium, Aquinas earned an unmistakable
authority among some Orthodox theologians, an authority that is evident not
long after his passing in 1274. Although some would refer to the rise of
Byzantine Thomism, this is certainly too triumphalist, since those who
appropriated Aquinas in the Eastern Church were rarely, if ever, unequivocal
proponents of his theological doctrines. With this caveat in mind, however, it
is obvious that Aquinas received serious attention from Eastern Orthodox
theologians during the late Byzantine renaissance of the fourteenth and first
half of the fifteenth century. At least, the fact that Aquinas had any Byzantine
advocates seems noteworthy, especially in this era when the Vatican was
making efforts at reunification with the East.
Unfortunately, a more detailed account of Aquinas’s influence in
Byzantium before the fall of Constantinople (1453) seems to have received
only passing notice at the present, so it is difficult to summarize his impact.
Still, a brief overview of some extant texts carried over to the Greek offers
some suggestive insights into the interests of these Byzantine translators, but
these are mere proposals. One of the earliest conveyors of Aquinas into
Byzantium was Maximus Planudes (1260–1310), who translated a reportatio
of Aquinas, Expositio in symbolum apostolorum (An Exposition of the
Apostle’s Creed).6 On the face of it, this lends itself well to ecumenical uses,
especially because this earliest of creeds predates the Nicene formulation
with the controversial “filioque” clause.7 Another of Aquinas’s writings
suitable to more conciliatory purposes, the Summa contra Gentiles, was
translated into Greek in the mid-fourteenth century by Demetrius Cydones (c.
1320–1400). This piece of philosophical theology also takes on particular
relevance for Byzantine Christians due to their uneasy proximity to the rising
Ottoman Empire.8 With his brother Prochorus, Demetrius even took up
portions of the Summa theologiae into Greek, though it would require a much
more involved treatment of these matters to suggest motives for their
selections. Provisionally, it seems safe to conclude that one important aspect
of Aquinas’s influence concerned Trinitarian theology, especially since the
precise characterization of the relationships between Divine Persons was a
hotly disputed topic.9
By the fifteenth century, Aquinas was familiar enough in Eastern
Christianity that exceptional Byzantine theologians, such as George
Courtesis (c. 1405–1472), would study Aquinas closely and manifest open
respect for his thinking.10 In the case of Courtesis, there seems to have been,
in his early adulthood at least, a deep conviction that Aquinas’s doctrines
could eventually make possible a reconciliation between the East and West,
though political expediency may have also played a role in this optimism.11
The encroaching Ottomans were becoming more hostile, and the hope for
military assistance from Catholic princes may have rendered all forms of
rapprochement—even with Latin theology—more appealing. Whatever
Courtesis’s motives were, reconciliation never came, and when
Constantinople fell to the Turks, he was their selection as the new Patriarch
of Constantinople, Gennadius II Scholarius, whose job description involved
keeping the peace between Christian subjects and Muslim rulers.12 If nothing
else, this is another illustrative example of Aquinas appearing in the midst of
a complex conflict, where unity could only be achieved through a tense
juxtaposition of opposites.

Among the Rabbis

We have seen some ways that Aquinas influenced thinkers outside the
university, both in Christian Europe and in Byzantium. But his works also
reached beyond Christian audiences, finding favor with certain Jewish rabbis,
for example, Hillel of Verona (c. 1220–c. 1295) and Judah Romano (c. 1280–
c. 1325). These Italian Jews sought to interpret Moses Maimonides’ Guide
for the Perplexed without adopting the radical Averroistic Aristotelianism of
some of their contemporaries.13 As a decidedly anti-Averroist reader of
Aristotle, Aquinas was an ally in opposing doctrines like the possibility of
affirming two contradictory truths (one based on reason and one on faith), the
necessity of eternal creation, the immortality of the soul in an unindividuated
state, or the human intellect as a separate and unified faculty. To speak of
“Jewish Thomism” in reference to these rabbis would be misleading at best,
even less apt than the term “Byzantine Thomism.” For these rabbis, Aquinas
was not an unquestioned philosophical authority, much less a theological
master. Rather than defending and advancing the whole scheme of Aquinas’s
views, these rabbis very selectively translated the Common Doctor into
Hebrew,14 finding in him a superb commentator on Aristotle and a rich
source of arguments against Averroists.
This sweeping review of Aquinas’s influence outside the university
reveals that his works were reaching some unlikely audiences within a few
decades of his death. Yet, in these diverse contexts the Common Doctor was
known for different aspects of his thought, whether it be his moral theology,
Trinitarian theology, or Aristotelian anti-Averroism. Hence, it is not obvious
that any single thread of Aquinas’s thinking drew all of his divergent readers
to his lights. With this concession, however, the title of Doctor Communis
takes on new significance: rather than picking out Aquinas’s authoritative
status within the schools, perhaps this shorthand more fittingly connotes his
influence outside the European university. Although Scotists and Ockhamists
did not share Aquinas in common with the Thomists, he was a common
doctor in the sense that his doctrines were studied and applied beyond the
walls of the schools, among the common people, among the Byzantines, and
even among the rabbis.

ANGELIC DOCTOR: AQUINAS AND SOME

THOMISTS
In addition to his renown as the Doctor Communis, Aquinas acquired the title
Doctor Angelicus, bringing to mind the unblemished character of his life and
the seemingly superhuman penetration of his intellect. This denomination
came into currency long after his passing,15 marking more than respect but an
outright adoration of Aquinas by his most ardent defenders and expounders,
those who would form the Thomist school of theology in the medieval
university. While these Thomists would debate for centuries with Scotists
and also nominalists (to mention just two broad categories), the pluralism of
medieval schools of thought would not prevent later generations from
remembering Aquinas as the singular “Angel of the Schools”. For this
reason, it seems most appropriate to discuss his influence within the schools
under this heading.
The remainder of this chapter will recount the highlights of the Thomist
tradition, but in order to do this, it is first necessary to clarify, as much as
possible, just what constitutes a Thomist. Rather than undertake the
problematic task of defining Thomism by a set of common doctrines or
beliefs,16 this brief history will instead identify Thomists by their actions,
considering Thomists to be those particular scholars who self-consciously
devoted themselves to carrying on a theological and philosophical tradition
inaugurated by Thomas Aquinas.17 The aim of this much-abridged history
will not be to catalogue the names and dates of prominent Thomists;18
indeed, many noteworthy Thomists will be entirely ignored. Still, I hope to
provide enough detail to show that, to the extent that there ever has been a
single, orthodox Thomism, its vitality has depended upon the activity of the
Thomists, who followed Aquinas by taking up the challenges of
contemporary scholarship.

Aquinas’s Fitful Rise to Authority: From Condemnation to

Canonization
In spite of an active life filled with teaching, writing, and traveling, or
perhaps because of these preoccupations, Aquinas had few staunch disciples
when he came to his final rest at Fossanova. There is evidence that the
University of Paris mourned his death, in the form of a letter of condolence
from the faculty of arts to the General Chapter of Dominicans in 1274;19
however, conspicuously lacking from the historical record is any sign of
sorrow in the theology faculty, of which Aquinas had been a member. Still, if
Paris was equivocal in its commemoration of Aquinas, Lyon surely had a
unique and poignant sense of his absence, when the Second Council of Lyon
commenced in May 1274. For, Aquinas had been expected to participate in
these sessions, and had been en route from Italy when he caught ill.20
During the immediate aftermath of Aquinas’s burial, little evidence
survives to indicate what we might call an embryonic Thomist school. Yet,
exactly three years post-mortem, unmistakable birth pangs signal a
forthcoming theological movement. On March 7, 1277, Étienne Tempier,
Bishop of Paris, issued to the arts faculty at the university a condemnation of
219 propositions, making plain to its members that “on pain of
excommunication, they are prohibited to dogmatize, disseminate, or sustain
in any way” (dogmatizare, aut defendere seu sustinere quoquo modo)21 the
articles comprised in the document. At Oxford, Archbishop Robert
Kilwardby published a similar condemnation that same year. Ostensibly,
these condemnations were just the latest installment in a decades-long
controversy, especially rife at Paris, over the proper relationship between
faith and reason, namely, the theology and arts faculties.
For, it had only been a few years prior in 1255 that the ban on reading and
lecturing from Aristotle’s natural philosophy (i.e., Physica, De anima, etc.)
was lifted at Paris.22 With access to so much new material, the scope
envisioned for human reason unaided by Divine revelation began to exceed
former limits; if theology was still the unquestioned superior, the extent of
this superiority was now put into question. In this context, though it is
difficult to imagine today, much of Aquinas’s work, involving Aristotle so
frequently and deferentially, was controversial and cutting edge, especially
since he was a theologian. Doubtless, this goes a long way toward explaining
why the arts faculty mourned Aquinas so openly, whereas the theologians
were more reserved.
Against this background, the clear message of the Paris condemnation was
to diminish any hubris rising from the arts: reason cannot gainsay faith;
human capacities are constrained, and God transcends the limits of reason.
Yet, besides this explicit intention, a close examination reveals that no less
than sixteen of the censured propositions may be attributed to Aquinas,23
though Tempier made no mention of his sources. However quietly, official
Church authorities had cast a shadow upon the bold synthesis forged in
Aquinas’s writings.
If the condemnations fit all too well into a familiar narrative of
ecclesiastic obscurantism, the Franciscan criticisms of Aquinas elicit
comparisons to modern academic infighting. This second front of attacks
upon the late theologian was less covert than the Bishops’, and almost
scathingly (or, from our current vantage point, comically) provocative.
Englishman William de la Mare (d. c. 1285) composed the exemplar of these
Franciscan anti-Thomist tracts in 1278—both summarizing and rebutting
Aquinas on 118 of his conclusions—and published his polemic as a
Correctorium Fratris Thomae (A Correctory of Brother Thomas). The
patronizing, diminutive tone still rings through today. With good will already
strained between the Franciscans and Dominicans, this Correctorium
fomented a wave of counter-Correctoria: the pro-Thomist Correctoria
corruptorii Thomae (Correctories of the corruptions of Thomas),24 which
argued that critics had not properly understood Aquinas—hence, they
corrupted him—and which defended his Aristotelian philosophical bent as
entirely faithful to Christian dogma.
As so often is the case, this conflict sharpened the attention of many
scholars, with many lending a critical eye to Aquinas’s writings. These
critical treatments sometimes led to objections, and other times resulted in
careful interpretations of Aquinas. What is more, these early debates give the
contemporary reader insight into the most contentious, and perhaps the most
innovative, aspects of Aquinas’s thought. The fraught metaphysical questions
regarding the unity of substantial form within each singular being, designated
matter as the principle of individuation within a species, and the real
distinction in creatures between the esse and essentia, these all became
focused topics of disputation. Far from inconsequential, defending Aquinas
on these articles could be dangerous. One early Dominican Thomist in
England, Richard [Clapwell] Knapwell (fl. 1284–1286) died in exile after
circulating arguments in favor of the unity of substantial form.25
Despite ecclesiastic and scholastic opponents, no other contemporary
Thomists seem to have met such a dire end as Knapwell. For instance, his
confrère Thomas Sutton26 (c. 1250–1315) produced extensive works that
defended Aquinas and responded to influential critics, one of whom was the
famous Oxford Franciscan, John Duns Scotus27 (c. 1266–1308). Indeed, for
every powerful and vocal anti-Thomist—such as Henry of Ghent28 (d. 1293)
or Durandus of St. Pourçain29 (c. 1275–1334)—there appeared to be an
equally able pro-Thomist—like Hervaeus [Harvey] Natalis30 (c. 1250–1323)
or Nicolai Medensis (fl. 1325–1330), usually called “Durandellus” because
of his opposition to Durandus of St. Pourçain.31
One upshot of these earliest defenses was a growing consensus that
Aquinas’s interpretations of Aristotle needed to be distinguished from those
of the Latin Averroists, something that the initial condemnations seemed to
overlook. Once Aquinas was no longer under suspicion of being Averroist,
his readings of Aristotle would prove to be formidable for opponents, both
for their cogency and for their compatibility with Christian doctrine. As a
result, theologians of all persuasions would begin engaging with Aristotle
rather than ignoring him. Although Aristotle may have gained ascendancy in
the European university without the patronage of the Thomist school,
Aquinas’s particular blend of Christian faith and pagan understanding was a
luminous example that the human mind could attain worldly knowledge
without contradicting supernatural revelation.
It would be wrong to give the impression that Aquinas’s influence in the
schools was only, or even primarily, at the intersection between theology and
philosophy. History records that “Aquinas the philosopher” was certainly an
object of controversy, but he did not draw attention only for going beyond (or
beneath) his purview, as it were, dabbling in philosophy when his vocation
was theology. “Aquinas the theologian” also drew criticism for some of his
distinctive theological claims. For example, at a time when Popes were
consolidating power, John (Quidort) of Paris32 (c. 1255–1306) would
discover in Aquinas the basis for distinct (though not necessarily separate)
papal and regal dominion within society.33 Whereas this represents a
somewhat chastened ecclesiology, Aquinas supplemented this concession to
secular rule with a radically uncompromising Christology, Christ being the
one from whom all authority derives and to whom all allegiance is due. In
fact, Thomists—notably Hervaeus Natalis and John of Naples34 (d. 1331)—
would reserve for Christ such a preeminence that they would even reject the
Scotist position on the immaculate conception of Mary.35
With such avid supporters, there was little chance that Aquinas would be
consigned to obscurity. However, he may have continued as just one
scholastic theologian among many, if it were not for some major Thomist
victories in the first decades of the fourteenth century. First, in a blow to
supporters of the plurality of substantial forms, the Council of Vienne (1311)
confirmed that psychological unity was more compatible with the doctrines
of Christian faith than rival formulations. In addition to this triumph of
Aquinas’s work, the Church went on to validate his person and life,
canonizing him as a saint in 1323. While this did not remove St. Thomas’
writings from scrutiny,36 his canonization seems to have lent his teaching a
newfound weight of authority, especially within the Dominican order. Prior
to 1323, Thomists fought against suspicions of heterodoxy, often from a
position of rhetorical weakness. A sampling of texts from after 1323
illustrates a significant shift. For example, in Durandellus’s Evidentiae
contra Durandum,37 one finds a calm enumeration of arguments in favor of
Aquinas, conspicuously lacking a defensive tone. Even at Cologne, where
Albert the Great held greater sway than Aquinas, Henry of Lübeck (d. 1336)
would record that his thinking aspired to follow “the venerable Blessed
Thomas Aquinas.”38
Just as Thomists were achieving a semblance of security, Aquinas having
attained an authoritative status by the mid-fourteenth century, another
scholastic opponent began to emerge with force: English Franciscan William
Ockham39 (c. 1285–1349), next to Scotus and Aquinas the most reputed
scholastic of the High Middle Ages, and perhaps the most original and
iconoclastic figure, bar none. Ockham’s outspoken nominalist semantics and
logic, with its concomitantly parsimonious ontology, would clear a path for a
drastically new approach to teaching and discussing topics in metaphysics,
philosophical psychology, and natural philosophy in general. This via
moderna, pitting itself against the putatively abstruse and onerous via
antiqua, would threaten to do worse than refute the intricacies of Aquinas’s
thinking; it would move to make him irrelevant. Aside from the nominalist
challenge, the decline of this first phase of Thomists is due to the bubonic
plague that decimated Europe around 1348–1350. With the social and
political fabric of life in tatters, the universities in Europe were likewise worn
thin, being short on students and qualified faculty.

Thomistic Renaissance: From Plague to Prominence

Europe recovered slowly from the plague, and the Great Western Schism
(1378–1417) only enhanced the instability in all facets of life during this
time. After the Black Death of the plague, this second period, spanning the
fifteenth century, can be fittingly described as a Thomist renaissance.
Building on the authority won for Aquinas during the early polemics,
fifteenth-century Thomists would be responsible for putting the Summa
theologiae into some universities’ curricula. Moreover, without the pressure
to defend Aquinas from pariah status, this period sees Thomists devoting
volumes to more detailed expositions. Since the purpose of these writings
was not only to counteract misinterpretations, the Thomist literature of this
period rewards its readers with fruitful developments upon Aquinas’s
doctrines.
One of the first to sow the seeds for this season of new life among the
Thomists was the rather unlikely Henry of Gorkum40 (c. 1386–1431). Not a
Dominican, but a secular priest from what is now Gorinchem, in the
Netherlands, Henry would earn the title Thomistarum Coloniensium
monarcha (Monarch of the Thomists at Cologne). He penned treatises on
predestination and just war, and even finished a compendium on the Summa
theologiae, which was probably the first commentary on Aquinas’s magnum
opus. However, this seems to have been largely overlooked by his
contemporaries. Indeed, Henry’s impact as a scholar seems to have derived
less from his writing and more from his teaching. While on the faculty of the
University of Cologne, Henry dispensed with the tradition of lecturing from
Peter Lombard’s Sentences, placing Aquinas’s Summa theologiae on his
lectern instead.41
The implications of this shift were immediate and enduring. Whereas
Cologne had always been known as a stronghold of Albertist (i.e., Albert the
Great’s) disciples, the fifteenth century saw many active Thomists emerge
from Cologne. For instance, one student at Cologne during Henry’s tenure
was none other than Denis the Carthusian42 (c. 1403–1471), an encyclopedic
writer with an unmistakable debt to Aquinas. Even toward the end of the
fifteenth century, Thomists at Cologne fostered a prolonged debate with the
Albertist faculty, eliciting a finely nuanced discussion in the philosophy of
mind.43
Yet, perhaps the most important Thomist of this period hailed from the
University of Paris. Known as the Princeps Thomistarum (Prince of the
Thomists), John Capreolus (c. 1380–1444) composed his Defensiones
theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis (Defenses of the Theology of Thomas
Aquinas),44 a commentary on the Summa theologiae that aspired to elucidate
Aquinas’s doctrines and refute his critics. His final work was so
comprehensive and successful that it would invite imitators, thus founding
the genre of direct commentaries on Aquinas’s major works. This
commentary, a high-water mark of the Thomist renaissance, is certainly a far
cry from the low point when bishops were condemning Aquinas’s
conclusions.
Yet, not every aspect of this second period is worth celebrating. With the
aid of hindsight, one can discern the first signs of decay in Scholasticism
during this period, even as these Thomists were enjoying a relative heyday.
In short, scholastic professors, and Thomists among them, seemed drawn to
insularity. With the fall of Constantinople and the influx of Byzantine
Christians, many Europeans were faced with uncertainty, as well as new
ideas. Adding to this furor, Gutenberg’s press—in operation at mid-century
—was making more information accessible to the average European, and
allowing for more rapid sharing of ideas. Perhaps we can overlook the fact
that scholastic professors missed an opportunity to adapt their methodologies
to this new technology.45 But, what deserves censure is that, rather than
embrace or even inquire into any contemporary alternatives, the Thomists of
this era seemed singularly interested in upholding their master. To wit,
perusing Capreolus’s commentary, one can discover refutations of Henry of
Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Durandus of St. Pourçain, William Ockham, but
no mention of any living critics. Similarly, though the Thomists at Cologne
interacted with their Albertist colleagues, neither of these parties (whose
differences were remarkably slight) went outside their narrow circle to
grapple with the burgeoning ideas beyond the schools. The doctrines of the
Angelic Doctor may have survived among the Thomists, but his spirit of
conquest, of reining in truth under the standard of faith, seemed long
forgotten.46
Thus, even as Aquinas gathered an increasing number to his following
during the fifteenth century, these Thomists remained limited to a specialized
class of university scholars. In a review of medieval libraries, Jocelyn
Hillgarth confirms this narrow demographic of Thomists, inasmuch as one
could hardly be considered a Thomist without access to some of his works:

Aquinas appealed, as we have seen, to many friars, monks, university teachers, and
students, to relatively few high ecclesiastics, and, among the laity, to some jurists and
doctors. Popes and princes might not read him themselves but, by 1500 at least,
considered him a necessary part of a great library. He did not, it seems, appeal to the
 general intelligent lay person who had not been educated in a university.… Nobles or
rich bourgeois could have acquired the works of Aquinas but they were not interested in
doing so.47

Thomists Enter the Baroque: From Eminence to Decadence

On my assessment, the Thomist renaissance displayed a dual nature:
Thomists were flourishing internally but, viewed from the outside, they were
gradually becoming ossified. This trend continued through this third period
of Thomists, though the authority of Aquinas would reach a new pinnacle.
Arguably, at the utmost peak of his influence, Aquinas would be pivotal in
the Catholic counterreformation, with his doctrines being decisive at the
Council of Trent (1545–1563) in defining Rome’s responses to Protestant
“heresies.” Notwithstanding Aquinas’s active and often authoritative role in
shaping Catholic thought during this period, Thomists during the third period
—in its entirety, encompassing the years 1500 to 1650—were preoccupied
with problems that were meaningful to only a select few, even during their
own time. For this reason, I find it instructive to juxtapose the eminence of
these Thomists within Catholic Europe with the decadence manifested by
their relative seclusion from concerns in the wider culture.
Continuing the trends among Thomists in the fifteenth century, this period
would reap the harvests of the renaissance, as it were. One superbly gifted
lecturer, Peter Crockaert48 (d. 1514) would make a mid-life conversion from
Ockhamist to Thomist, and subsequently, his students would read the Summa
theologiae as their textbook at the University of Paris. Crockaert would
effectively export this practice to Spain, when his pupil, Francisco de
Vitoria49 (1492/93–1546), returned to his native country and obtained the
principle chair in theology at Salamanca in 1526.
Aside from the impact of using Aquinas’s work as a textbook, Vitoria
made some significant contributions with his own applications of Aquinas’s
moral and legal doctrines to the political questions of his day. Vitoria
published few works during his own lifetime, but his lectures were
immensely popular and he also had the ear of Emperor Charles V. During a
time when European rulers were vying with each other and with papal power,
as well as beginning to colonize the newly discovered Americas, Vitoria
expounded Thomistic theories of national sovereignty, the laws of peace and
war, and even international law.50 Vitoria’s emphasis on natural rights and on
political authority as rightly limited by universal norms—though not entirely
original—certainly deserved attention. Indeed, his published lectures would
become a touchstone for much subsequent political thinking. For instance, in
part through Vitoria’s mediation, Thomist doctrines would inform aspects of
Hugo Grotius’s seminal treatise of 1625, De jure belli ac pacis (The Law of
War and Peace), with the Dutch scholar often citing Aquinas directly.51
In another development of earlier trends, the third period of Thomists
boasts the two paradigmatic commentaries on Aquinas’s major works, both
devised by Italians. Thomas de Vio Cajetan52 (1469–1534) took up the
Summa theologiae, and the resulting volumes remain to this day as the
standard commentary on Aquinas’s masterpiece, published along with the
Summa theologiae in the Leonine edition. Cajetan’s compatriot, Francesco
Sylvester of Ferrara (1474–1528), followed suit by commenting on
Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles. Of these two, there is no question that
Cajetan produced a more remarkable imprint in his own lifetime and in the
centuries to follow.
Besides the Summa theologiae commentary, Cajetan penned a perspicuous
defense of Aquinas’s metaphysics in the form of an exposition of the De ente
et essentia. He also composed the noteworthy treatise De nominum analogia
(On the Analogy of Names), which synthesizes Aquinas’s disparate remarks
regarding analogy. The result goes beyond a mere summary of Aquinas and
is perhaps best regarded as an original theory of analogy in its own right,
though certainly inspired by Thomistic theses.53 As influential as Cajetan
was through his writing, he earned an even greater reputation for his skills in
debate. Most famously, after being made cardinal in 1517, Pope Leo X sent
Cajetan to the Diet of Augsburg with the charge of examining the teachings
of Martin Luther. Although Cajetan would ultimately play a role in
excommunicating Luther, the cardinal was impressed by the reformer, to
whom he was willing to make certain concessions. Perhaps because of this
encounter with Luther, Cajetan primarily devoted the latter part of his career
to biblical exegesis, as opposed to his previous work in more speculative
theology.
During this period when the proponents of Aquinas reached the height of
their influence, changes in the broader culture of Europe would signal the
demise of Scholasticism, namely, the rise of humanism and the advent of the
Reformation. Interestingly, Cajetan seemed aware of these important
developments, and he worked to preserve the Thomistic tradition while he
opened himself to insights from new perspectives. Nevertheless, these two
major movements in the sixteenth century would begin to undermine the
authority of Aquinas.
First, the humanist movement of the early sixteenth century, with its
devotion to ancient Greco-Roman achievements in the arts and rhetoric,
would foster a corresponding disdain for medieval modes of education and
argumentation.54 Humanists rejected not only the form of scholastic thought,
but often much of its content. Marius Nizolius of Modena (1498–1575),
author of Contra pseudophilosophos, would recommend that the art of
rhetoric replace the pseudo-sciences of dialectic (logic) and metaphysics.55
Those humanists who did not contemn Aristotle frequently favored a revival
of the ancient philosopher himself, eschewing the subtleties of the scholastic
Aristotelians.56
Second, and most obviously, the Protestant Reformation would instigate a
general upheaval in previous authorities, all but confining Aquinas’s
influence to Catholic countries by the seventeenth century.57 Thomists
thrived especially in the Iberian Peninsula, as this region would avoid the
ravages of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). Yet, even during the Council
of Trent (1545–1563), well-poised Thomists would bring about significant
triumphs for Aquinas’s theological doctrines, with certain key definitions
from the Council following Aquinas closely. To mention perhaps one of the
most bitterly contested between Catholics and Protestants, the Council’s
decree on the doctrine of justification, its preconditions and its causes, is
nearly a paraphrase of certain passages in the Summa theologiae.58
Since this third period is rife with important Thomists, it is simply
impossible to give more exhaustive treatment of their disputes and
contributions.59 What follows is only a glimpse of prolific activity in this
Baroque phase. Besides the long-standing tradition of Dominican and
Carmelite Thomists, St Ignatius of Loyola added to the ranks of the Thomists
in the mid-sixteenth century, when he singled out Aquinas as the preferred
author for instructing the newly founded Society of Jesus in “scholastic
doctrine.”60 A sort of Thomist rivalry between Dominicans and the Jesuits
would goad each to outdo the others. Among the Jesuits, Luis de Molina61
(1535–1600), Francisco Suárez62 (1548–1617), and Gabriel Vasquez63
(1549–1604) would stand out, and often stand against, Dominicans like
Bartholomew of Medina (1527–1581) and Dominic Báñez64 (1528–1604).
Most notably, Medina initiated the probabilist moral theory based on a
reading of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, I-II q.19 a.5, according to which
people can legitimately follow a moral maxim shown to be merely probable,
even if they know of a more probable one. With regard to theological
innovation, Molina would propose middle knowledge, God’s foreknowledge
of unrealized future contingents, as a resolution to the theological problem of
reconciling efficacious grace with human free will. In the area of
metaphysical speculation, Báñez attended to Aquinas’s thoughts regarding
esse, elucidating the importance in holding that esse “signifies the actuality
of every form commonly.”65 Finally, flourishing at the close of this period,
the Portuguese Dominican John (Poinsot) of St. Thomas66 (1589–1644)
serves as a suitable last word. His arguments against Jesuit Thomists,
particularly Suárez, are interesting from the standpoint of the history of
philosophy. For, one founder of modern philosophy, René Descartes, being
educated by Jesuits, had read Suárez but not Poinsot. For this reason, the
latter’s major contributions, a Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus (published
in installments from 1631 to 1635) and a Cursus theologicus, are worth
attention as a sort of missing link between the late scholastic and early
modern eras.67
Although the accomplishments of Thomists during this period endure as
the classic expressions of the Thomist school, they failed to answer the
challenges by humanists, remained foreign to Protestant intellectual
formation, and seemed totally ignorant of the advances in the new science.
When Francis Bacon, in his 1623 treatise De augmentis scientiarum (On the
Advancement of Learning), subjected scholastic thinkers to ridicule,68 the
absence of a Thomist rebuttal spoke volumes. By the mid-seventeenth
century, Aquinas suffered three counts against him, each a considerable limit
upon the reach of his influence: (1) he was Scholastic in method and
language; (2) his religious affiliation was decidedly Catholic; (3) his
authority in philosophy was Aristotle, and an Aristotle often read in
conjunction with Muslim commentators.

Late Thomists: The Death of Thomistic Traditionalism and the Birth of

the Neo-Thomists
What was previously an active tradition of teaching, discussing, and writing
on the doctrines of Aquinas became rigid and traditionalist as the modern era
captured Europe’s minds. The tendency toward insularity, the detachment
from historical developments in arts and sciences, finally overcame the
Thomists in this fourth and final period. Although there are examples of
Thomist scholars throughout the eighteenth century, their intellectual efforts
would remain cloistered in Catholic seminaries. Even within the deferential
context of the seminary, historian Étienne Gilson has suggested that Catholic
theological instruction would become infiltrated by modern metaphysical
assumptions (i.e., those of Leibniz and, later, Wolff), currents that would
subvert the most profound insights of Aquinas’s doctrines.69 The effect of all
these malignant forces, as James Weisheipl so bluntly puts it, was that “by
the middle of the 18th century the Thomistic school was dead.”70 Hence,
Aquinas’s influence waned during this period, whether we look to his friends
or his foes. Within Catholic circles, Aquinas was a revered but distant figure;
among Enlightenment thinkers, he was more often ignored or dismissed
outright. Somewhat paradoxically, even among the emergent Neo-Thomists
around the turn of the twentieth century, which marks the central focus of
activity in this stage of the history, efforts to revive the study of Aquinas
would unwittingly play a role in furthering the demise of his influence.
If one turns to the groundbreaking philosophers at the outset of this
period, both among rationalists and empiricists, already one can barely
discover any connection to Aquinas. Descartes (1596–1650) and Leibniz
(1646–1716), to be sure, seemed bound to pay their respects to Aquinas, not
willing to declare themselves against such an authority. But their deference to
Aquinas amounts to so much lip service; their philosophical positions depend
very little upon Aquinas, and often run counter to his teachings. Despite
Descartes’s protests that the presuppositions of his ontological argument “do
not differ from the Angelic Doctor in any respect,” Descartes quite tellingly
goes on to urge that “existence belongs to [God’s] true and immutable
nature.”71 In the case of Leibniz, his formulation of God as a necessary being
should not be confused with Aquinas’s claims in the Tertia Via. For, Leibniz
was dealing with logical necessity, whereas Aquinas relied on no such notion
in his arguments for the truth of “Deus est.” Quite the contrary, Aquinas held
that logic alone could definitely not solve the question of God’s existence.72
Outside of these rationalist contexts, Aquinas was no longer held in
esteem, even nominally. In his Leviathan, Hobbes (1588–1679) would
mention Aquinas only to spurn the value of appeals to authority, as long as
the source is a mere human being.73 In characteristic modern fashion, Locke
(1632–1704), in his Essay, would dismiss the insights of the entire scholastic
age, whose contributions he caricatures rather than criticizes.74 By the time
of Hume (1711–1776), British empiricism—and modern philosophy as a
whole—was all but a self-contained conversation, hardly concerned to
engage seriously with medieval masters such as Aquinas, even for the sake of
ridicule.
By the late-nineteenth century, the Catholic Church turned to its Angelic
Doctor in order to remedy the theological challenges of the day, all the more
dire against a background of dependence on modern philosophy. Thus, in
1879 the Papal encyclical Aeterni Patris encouraged the “restoration of
Christian philosophy” in the vein of the scholastic doctors, among whom “the
chief and master of all towers [was] Thomas Aquinas.”75 The ensuing Neo-
Thomist revival among Catholics would receive official support from the
Vatican. After a 1914 letter from Pope Pius X (Doctoris Angelici), the Sacred
Congregation of Studies determined twenty-four Thomistic theses for use in
seminaries.76 Years later, Pius XI clarified (in Studiorum Ducem of 1923)
that the doctrines of Aquinas were not merely suggestive hypotheses: “if we
are to avoid the errors which are the source and fountain-head of all the
miseries of our time, the teaching of Aquinas must be adhered to more
religiously than ever.”77
At a first glance, the aim of restoring Christian philosophy with Aquinas
as the guiding luminary may appear a success. These years gave rise to
numerous Thomists. Beyond their prolific writing on Aquinas and other
medieval theologians, all of these Thomists would assist later generations to
appreciate the context and complexity of the scholastic period by founding
medieval institutes and establishing journals dedicated to medieval studies.78
However, the single label “Thomist” masks the diversity among these
disciples of Aquinas. To better appreciate this diversity, let us consider some
of the general categories into which they fall.
Some, known as Aristotelian Thomists (e.g., James Weisheipl79 [1923–
1985]), stressed Aquinas’s dependence upon Aristotle for his philosophical
project, seemingly avoiding the problems of modernity by recourse to a prior
consensus. Others, like the transcendental Thomists80 (e.g., Joseph
Maréchal81 [1878–1944], Karl Rahner82 [1904–1984], and Bernard
Lonergan83 [1904–1984]), sought to preserve the basic elements of Kantian
philosophy alongside the major tenets of Aquinas. Unlike Aristotelian
Thomists, the transcendental Thomists were wary of rejecting all modern
philosophy on the basis of premodern thought. Surely, they might contend,
naïve realism can no longer be a viable option after the skeptical arguments
of Descartes and Hume. Hence, transcendental Thomists would deny a purely
passive cognitive power in favor of a more active construal of the mind’s
relation to the world.84
Finally, there were those who would emphasize Aquinas’s originality, at
least in his characterization of the actus essendi. These were the existential
Thomists (e.g., Jacques Maritain85 [1882–1973] and Étienne Gilson86 [1884–
1978]), raised in the school of Bergson and drawn to Aquinas’s metaphysics
of esse. For them, Aquinas had helpfully gone further than Aristotle, positing
esse as a perfection created by God alone and irreducible to forms.
Besides the interminable issue of how to interpret Aquinas, these more
recent Thomists often varied widely on which of Aquinas’s doctrines were
most important and which might be overlooked as contingent upon his
medieval perspective. Of course, another question often debated was the
extent to which Aquinas may be compatible with other philosophical
systems. Interestingly, the fault lines among Neo-Thomists lay in the fields
of metaphysics and philosophy of mind, often centering around Aquinas’s
thoughts about esse, essence, and intentionality. Modern preoccupations were
often in the foreground, involving dichotomies like realism and idealism, or
direct realism versus representationalism. John Knasas87 and Fergus Kerr88
provide some excellent studies of the twentieth-century Neo-Thomists and
help to navigate the intricacies of their debates, as well as to assess their
contributions.
Without denying the benefits afforded by the Neo-Thomist movement—
perhaps especially in sharpening the critique of modern philosophy among
Catholic intellectuals—there is an important sense in which the papal
directives backfired. For one thing, attention to Aquinas’s own distinction
between sacred doctrine (believed on faith) and scientific understanding
(known by rational demonstration) leaves one to wonder what would
constitute a Christian philosophy. Certainly much of what is philosophical in
the work of the Aquinas derives from pagan or at least non-Christian
thinking. Moreover, if philosophy differs from positive or revealed theology
inasmuch as the former involves an exploration of what the human mind can
know by reasoning without appeals to the supernatural (certainly a plausible
reading of ST I q.1 a.5 ad 2), then presumably the truths attainable in such a
pursuit would be essentially common to all humans, not unique to some
particular community of the faithful.
Aside from the inherent tension between Aquinas’s own teaching and the
aims of developing a Christian philosophy, the Neo-Thomists too often
labored under the seeming contradiction that they were to forge a philosophy
from a preestablished set of doctrines. Again, if religious adherence to
doctrines implies that belief is not based on reasons, which seems a plausible
interpretation of this phrase, then the assent proper to a philosophy would
seem to require, at the very least, an initially indifferent attitude. Hence, in a
way, the papal sponsorship of Neo-Thomists contravened their concerted
endeavors to enliven the philosophical insights of Aquinas, turning the vital
cord of his delicate synthesis into a sort of noose.89
The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) marked a transition, one might
even call it an impasse, for the Neo-Thomists. Clearly, after this period the
Church ceased to prop up a Christian philosophy by enforcing any kind of
rigid Thomist “orthodoxy.” Without institutional support, Neo-Thomists
have been forced to survive on their own merits, and they have not dropped
out of existence. Nevertheless, current interest in Aquinas is not exclusively
or even primarily based on the efforts of Neo-Thomists. Instead, a growing
number of scholars today find that Aquinas is worth reading and
understanding in his own right, apart from any ulterior religious motivation
to circumvent modern philosophy. For, more and more now recognize that
there are independent, even philosophical (as opposed to religious) reasons to
consider many modern assumptions about the mind, about human action, and
about human nature in general to be mistaken or confused. For example, in
the English-speaking world, some disciples of Wittgenstein, notably Peter
Geach and Anthony Kenny, have learned to critique modernity from
Wittgenstein and have discovered an alternate way of thinking in Aquinas.90
Kenny has gone on the record with his opinion that Aquinas is “one of the
dozen greatest philosophers of the western world.”91
This recent interest, which often extends to many medieval thinkers,
means that current scholarship in Aquinas characteristically exhibits a desire
to judge his teaching on its own merits, and not based on preconceived
doctrines of faith nor on how well he measures up to contemporary
intuitions. As scholars better understand Aquinas within his own historical
context, they are also increasingly able to apply his theories to contemporary
philosophical problems. While this approach has earned Aquinas high esteem
among certain thinkers today, many of these no longer would consider
themselves to be Thomists. Their goal is not to defend Aquinas at all costs or
to hold him aloft as some sort of angelic messenger of Truth. Instead,
perhaps it is even more impressive that present-day scholars such as those
found in this volume, though they often subject his teaching to rigorous
criticism, still find much to commend in Aquinas after more than seven
hundred years.

NOTES
1. Summa theologiae I q.42 a.1 ad 1.
2. This is reported by Aidan Nichols in Discovering Aquinas (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 130.
3. Leonard Boyle, “The Summa Confessorum of John of Freiburg,” in
Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas (Louvain: La Neuve, 2000),
37–64.
4. Eugenio Garin, History of Italian Philosophy, tran. Giorgio A. Pinton,
vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 86.
5. The introductions and notes to Esolen’s translation of the Commedia
draw out these connections well. See Dante, Inferno, Purgatory, and
Paradise, tran. Anthony Esolen (New York: Random House Publishing
Group, 2004).
6. Romanus Cessario, O.P., A Short History of Thomism (Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 57.
7. The Eastern Church denies that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the
Father and the Son, and never consented to its presence in the Nicene
symbol. Aquinas’s exposition of the Apostle’s Creed does not evade this
controversy, since he does include a very succinct defense of the Nicene
inclusion.
8. Charles L. Stinger, Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio
Traversari (1386–1439) and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance
(Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1977), 90.
9. Cf. op. cit.: Lending further support to this, Stinger reports that
Planudes also translated Augustine’s De Trinitate.
10. Steven Runciman, The Last Byzantine Renaissance (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 80.
11. J. Gill, “Gennadius II Scholarius, Patriarch of Constantinople,” New
Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed., vol. 6 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 136–37.
12. Ibid.
13. Seymour Feldman, “Maimonides—A Guide for Posterity,” in Kenneth
Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 332–35.
14. Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and
His Work, tran. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1996), 316. Among the texts translated into Hebrew, Torrell
mentions the first part of the De unitate intellectus, extracts from the Summa
theologiae, and the Super de causis.
15. Cf. Nichols, Discovering Aquinas, 130.
16. To be sure, there are certain doctrines almost ubiquitous among
Thomists (here one might mention the real distinction in creatures between
esse and essentia), so that it is not nonsense to speak of Thomism. For an
example of a definition of Thomism based on shared beliefs, see J. A.
Weisheipl, “Thomism,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed., vol. 14 (Detroit:
Gale, 2003), 40–52. Cessario’s Short History of Thomism follows
Weisheipl’s formulation.
17. Here, I am taking my cue from Freddoso in his review of Cessario,
accessed online at: <http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/pubs.htm>.
18. Such a catalogue already exists. Cf. L. A. Kennedy, A Catalogue of
Thomists, 1270–1900 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1987).
19. Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2002), 10.
20. His polemic tract Contra errores Graecorum (Against the Errors of the
Greeks) served in his stead, but one can only imagine that Aquinas in person
would have argued his case more persuasively.
21. As quoted by Hans Thijssen, “Condemnation of 1277,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta,
accessed online at:
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/condemnation/>.
22. For a helpful guide to these controversies, see Edward Grant, The
Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious,
Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 70–85.
23. A list of these can be found in Gyula Klima, with Fritz Allhoff and
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, eds., Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings
with Commentary (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 180–89.
24. Five pro-Thomist correctories remain to this day: D. A. Callus,
“Correctoria,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Gale,
2003), 274–78.
25. Simon Tugwell, Albert & Thomas (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1988),
241.
26. J. J. Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d
ed., vol. 14 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 37.
27. Allan Wolter, “Duns Scotus, John (c. 1266–1308),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 3 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 133–45.
28. Eugene Rairweather, “Henry of Ghent (??–1293),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 312–15.
29. James Weisheipl, “Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (c. 1275–1334),”
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 3 (Detroit:
Macmillan Reference USA, 2006), 148–49.
30. Roland Teske, “Hervaeus Natalis (c. 1250–323),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 343–44.
31. Isabel Iribarren, Durandus of St Pourcain: A Dominican Theologian in
the Shadow of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Two recent
studies of Durandellus are worth attention: Gilles Emery, “La Théologie
trinitaire des Evidentiae contra Durandum de Durandellus,” Revue Thomiste
97:1 (1997): 173–218; M. Lanczowski and R. Wittwer, “Les Evidentiae
contra Durandum de Durandellus,” Revue Thomiste 97:1 (1997): 143–56.
32. James Weisheipl, “John of Paris (c. 1255–1306),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 842.
33. Argued in John’s De Potestate Regia et Papali (On royal and papal
power) of 1302. See John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power: A
Translation, with Introduction, of De potestate Regia et Papali of John of
Paris, tran. Arthur P. Monahan (New York: Columbia University Press,
1974); or John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, tran. J. A. Watt
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002).
34. Edward Bouverie Pusey, First Letter to the Very Rev. J. H. Newman
(London: Rivingtons, 1869).
35. Scotus defended the immaculate conception in his Lectura in III Sent.,
dist.3, q.1.
36. Aquinas would not be declared officially a “Doctor of the Church” until
1567, under Pope Pius V.
37. According to Iribarren, a specialist on Durandus of St. Pourçain, this
exhibits the authoritative status of Thomism within the Dominican order by
1325, when he penned the Evidentiae contra Durandum, 2 vols., ed. P. T.
Stella, critical edition prepared by M. Lanczkowski and R. Imbach, Corpus
Philosophorum Medii Aevi: Opera Philosophica Mediae Aetatis Selecta
(Tübingen and Basle: A. Francke Verlag, 2003).
38. Martin Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben: Abhandlung zur
Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystic, vol. 1 (Munich: Max Hueber, 1926),
421.
39. Ernest Moody, “William of Ockham (c. 1285–1349),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 9 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 770–85.
40. C. R. Meyer, “Henry of Gorkum,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed.,
vol. 6 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 753.
41. M. Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, Abhandlungen zur
Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik, vol. 2, (München, 1936), 443; vol. 3
(1956), 412. Cf. Thomas Franklin O’Meara, Thomas Aquinas Theologian
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 158. Cf. also,
Paul van Geest, Harm Goris, and Carlo Leget, eds., Aquinas as Authority: A
Collection of Studies Presented at the Second Conference of the Thomas
Insituut te Utrecht, December 14–16, 2000 (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters
Publishers, 2002), 31.
 42. a.k.a. Denys van Leeuwen, of Rijkel/Ryckel, Belgium. For more, see B.
Du Moustier, “Denis the Carthusian,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed.,
vol. 4. (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 661–62. For primary sources: “Doctoris
ecstatici Dionysii Cartusiani,” Opera Omnia, 42 vols. (Montreuilsur-Mer:
Tournai Parkminster, 1896–1913, 1935). This is a noncritical, slightly
corrected reissue of the sixteenth-century Cologne edition. Also, see Kent
Emery, Dionysii Cartusiensis Opera selecta: prolegomena Bibliotheca
manuscripta/auctore Kent Emery Jr (Turnholti [Turnhout, Belgium]:
Typographi Brepols, 1991). For secondary sources: Kent Emery, “Twofold
Wisdom and Contemplation in Denys of Ryckel (Dionysius Cartusiensis,
1402–71),” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 18 (1988): 99–
134; David C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana
University Press, 1986); Anselme Stoelen, “Denys the Carthusian,” in James
Walsh, ed., Spirituality through the Centuries (New York: Kenedy & Sons,
1964), 220–32.
43. For details, see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis, vol. 1, Classical
Roots and Medieval Discussions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 360–68.
44. John Capreolus, Defensiones Theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis
(Turonibus: Sumptibus Alfred Cattier, 1900).
45. The format of lectures and disputations makes sense in an oral culture,
where books are not available to all students and lengthy, repetitive
arguments offer the surest means to cover all aspects of a question. Print
media, of course, allow for perfect recall without the need for memorization
by repetition.
46. I should acknowledge one glaring exception to the insularity of this
period: Christopher Columbus’s protector, Diego de Deza, was a Dominican
Thomist, and according to the renowned explorer in a letter dated December
21, 1504, “It is he [Diego de Deza] who was the cause of their Majesties’
possessing the Indies.” One Thomist, namely, de Deza, had a vital role in
Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic, though this can hardly be considered
a direct result of Aquinas’s influence. Quote taken from The Catholic
Historical Review, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 1915), 105. Also, cf. P. Mandonnet, Les Dominicains et la découverte
de l’Amérique (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1893).
47. J. N. Hillgarth, “Who Read Thomas Aquinas?” in The Gilson Lectures
on Thomas Aquinas (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
2008), 46–73. The quote is from page 70.
 48. J. F. Hinnebusch, “Crockaert, Peter,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d
ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 374.
49. Felix Alluntis, “Vitoria, Francisco de (1492/1493–1546),”
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 9 (Detroit:
Macmillan Reference USA, 2006), 698–99.
50. His most famous lectures were collected in relectiones, and include De
Indis, De Iure Belli, De Potestate Civili among the most important. See
Gregory M. Reichberg, “Francisco De Vitoria, De Indis and De Iure Belli
Relectiones (1557): Philosophy Meets War,” in Jorge J. E. Gracia, ed., The
Classics of Western Philosophy: A Reader’s Guide (Malden, Mass.:
Blackwell Publishing, 2003).
51. Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, tran. Francis W. Kelsey
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1925).
52. Joshua Hochschild, “Cajetan, Cardinal (1469–1534),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 2 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 6–7.
53. Cf. Joshua Hochschild, The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading
Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2010).
54. For example, consider Desiderius Erasmus, Moriae Encomium (The
Praise of Folly) (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1887), 142–43.
Originally written in 1509: “Do not wonder, therefore, that at public
disputations they bind their heads with so many caps one over another; for
this is to prevent the loss of their brains, which would otherwise break out
from their uneasy confinement. It affords likewise a pleasant scene of
laughter, to listen to these divines in their hotly managed disputations. To see
how proud they are of talking such hard gibberish, and stammering out such
blundering distinctions, as the auditors perhaps may sometimes gape at, but
seldom apprehend. [paragraph] And they take such a liberty in their speaking
of Latin, that they scorn to stick at the exactness of syntax or concord;
pretending it is below the majesty of a divine to talk like a pedagogue, and be
tied to the slavish observance of the rules of grammar. Finally, they take a
vast pride, among other citations, to allege the authority of their respective
master.”
55. Leibniz would edit this work in 1670.
56. Peter de la Ramée (1515–1572) is indicative of this tendency: “Let us
ignore all these Aristotelians and return to Aristotle, the author of such a
noble discipline [i.e., philosophy], and to Cicero, who tries to emulate
Aristotle’s teaching and to imitate him.” As quoted by Erland Sellberg,
“Petrus Ramus,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008
edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, accessed online at:
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ramus/>. Ramée’s popularity seems to have
exceeded his insights.
57. However, some recent scholarship has suggested some occult
influences that Aquinas may have exerted within the via moderna, as
characterized by Gabriel Biel and transmitted to Martin Luther. See van
Geest et al., eds., Aquinas as Authority.
58. For the preparation for justification, compare ST III q.85 a.5 with the
decrees of the Council of Trent, Session VI, chapter 6. For the causes of
justification, compare ST I-II q.112 a.4 and II-II q.24 a.3 with Session VI,
chapter 7.
59. For a more complete, if somewhat apologetic, summary of Thomists
during this period, see Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of
Thomistic Thought, tran. Patrick Cummins (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1958), ch.
3.
60. Thomas Franklin O’Meara, Thomas Aquinas Theologian (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 162.
61. Michael Griffin, “Molina, Luis de (1535–1600),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 6 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 321–23.
62. John Mourant, “Suárez, Francisco (1548–1617),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 9 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 282–85.
63. Vernon Bourke, “Vasquez, Gabriel (1549–1604),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 9 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 649–50.
64. Vernon Bourke, “Báñez, Dominic (1528–1604),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 476.
65. Cf. Aquinas’s commentary on the De Interpretatione, Bk. I, lect.5.
66. Vernon Bourke, “John of St. Thomas (1589–1644),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 843–44.
67. For more on this suggestive possibility, see John N. Deely, Four Ages
of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient
Times to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (Toronto Studies in Semiotics)
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 447–84.
68. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (Rockville, MD: Serenity
Publishers, 2008), 31. Take the following critical passage: “Surely, like as
many substances in nature, which are solid, do putrefy and corrupt into
worms; so it is the property of good and sound knowledge, to putrefy and
dissolve into a number of subtle, idle, unwholesome, and, as I may term
them, vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness, and life
of spirit, but no soundness of matter, or goodness of quality. This kind of
degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen: who having
sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading,
(but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle
their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and
colleges,) and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of no
great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto us those
laborious webs of learning, which are extant in their books.”
69. Gilson rejects these assumptions as “essentialist,” basing metaphysics
on the abstract notions of the human mind, rather than the transcendent
character of all actual, existent things.
70. James A. Weisheipl, “Thomism,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed.,
vol. 14 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 40–52.
71. René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, tran.
John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), 82–83, emphasis mine.
72. Cf. ST I q.2 a.1. Importantly, Aquinas does not think that a nominal
definition of “God,” such as “that than which nothing greater can be
conceived,” or perhaps “the necessary being” is sufficient by itself to prove
that God exists. For Aquinas, these premises only result in a mental
existence, or conception of God. But Aquinas wants to arrive at a mind-
independent reality for God.
73. Cf. Leviathan, Part I, ch. 4, “necessities of definitions.”
74. Cf. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. III, ch. X, §§6–
10.
 75. Aeterni Patris, accessed online at:
<http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-
xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.xhtml>.
76. For the contents of this list, see
<http://www.catholicapologetics.info/catholicteaching/philosophy/thomast.htm
77. Studiorum Ducem, accessed online at:
<http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P11STUDI.HTM>.
78. On this front, one thinks of the Leonine Commission, which has
worked since 1879 to produce critical editions of the entire body of
Aquinas’s writings. Institutes devoted to all aspects of medieval study have
been formed throughout Europe (e.g., at the University of St Thomas in
Rome, the Thomas-Institut of Cologne, the Grabmann-Institut of Munich, the
Thomas Instituut of Utrecht, and the Thomist Institue of Warsaw, to name
just a few). In North America, I must mention the Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies in Toronto, created in 1929 at the suggestion of Gilson.
Journals include the Revue Thomiste, The Modern Schoolman, and The
Thomist. Finally, an excellent resource for any scholar of Aquinas is Roberto
Busa’s electronic index of Aquinas’s works, accessed online at
<http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/>.
79. N. E. Fenton, “Weisheipl, James Athanasius,” New Catholic
Encyclopedia, 2d ed., vol. 14 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 672–73.
80. W. J. Hill, “Thomism, Transcendental,” New Catholic Encyclopedia,
2d ed., vol. 14 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 52–57.
81. James Conway, “Maréchal, Joseph (1878–1944),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 5 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 707–10.
82. Elizabeth Galbraith, “Rahner, Karl (1904–1984),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 8 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 231–34.
83. F. G. Lawrence, “Lonergan, Bernard,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d
ed., vol. 8 (Detroit: Gale, 2003), 772–75.
84. For Rahner, this activity would most poignantly be expressed in terms
of excessus, which Aquinas mentions in his De divinis nominibus expositio,
c.7, lect.4.
85. Joseph Evans, “Maritain, Jacques (1882–973),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 5 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 712–17.
86. Robert Miller, “Gilson, Étienne Henry (1884–1978),” Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Donald Borchert, 2d ed., vol. 4 (Detroit: Macmillan
Reference USA, 2006), 91–93.
87. John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2003).
88. Kerr, After Aquinas.
89. Theologian Karl Rahner seems to have been well aware of this
problem. In 1980, his response when asked to say a few words about his
philosophy was “Ich habe keine Philosophie” (I have no philosophy). See
William V. Dych, Karl Rahner, Outstanding Christian Thinkers series (New
York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000).
90. For a sampling of Geach on Aquinas, see Three Philosophers:
Aristotle, Aquinas, Frege (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1973). Kenny has
many notable works, but for an introduction to his thinking on Aquinas, see
Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1993); and Aquinas on Being
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
91. Anthony Kenny, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 1.
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AQUINAS’S
WRITINGS

Works sometimes ascribed to Aquinas may well be texts of which he was not
the author in any sense. What follows is a list of Aquinas’s writings with
respect to which there is not too much scholarly controversy concerning their
authenticity. They are cited by the Latin titles commonly used for them,
together with English translations of these. But note that we cannot always be
sure of the titles that Aquinas gave to his writings (notably, in the case of the
Summa theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles). Within each category
below, works are cited in roughly chronological order of composition, though
in some cases this order is uncertain. For detailed discussions concerning the
dating of Aquinas’s writings, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas:
The Person and His Work (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press of
America, 1996).

GENERAL THEOLOGICAL TREATISES

Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (Comentary on the Sentences of Peter
Lombard: c.1252–1257).
Summa contra Gentiles, sometimes referred to as Summa contra Gentes
(Summary against the Pagans [sc. people neither Jewish or Christian]:
c.1259–1265).
Summa theologiae, sometimes referred to as Summa theologica (Summary of
Theology: c.1265–1273).
Compendium theologiae (Compendium of Theology: c.1265–1273).

DISPUTED QUESTIONS
Quaestiones disputatae De veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth: c.1256–
1259).
Quaestiones disputatae De potentia (Disputed Questions on the Power [of
God]: c. 1265–1266).
Quaestio disputata De anima (Disputed Question on the Soul: c.1265–1266).
Quaestio disputata De spiritualibus creaturis (Disputed Question on
Spiritual Creatures: c.1267–1268).
Questiones disputatae De Malo (Disputed Questions on Evil: c.1266–1270).
Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus (Disputed Questions on the Virtues:
c.1271–1272).
Quaestio disputata De unione verbi incarnati (Disputed Question on the
Union of the Incarnate Word: c. 1271–1272).
Quaestiones de quodlibet I–XII (Quodlibetal Questions I–XII [concerning a
very large range of topics]: c.1252–1256 and c.1268–1272).

BIBLICAL COMMENTARIES
Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram (Commentary on Isaiah: c.1248–1254).
Super Ieremiam et Threnos (Commentaries on Jeremiah and Lamentations:
c.1248–1252).
Expositio super Job ad litteram (Commentary on Job/Literal Exposition on
Job: c.1261–1265).
Catena aurea (The Golden Chain: c.1262–1264 [commentary on the Gospels
drawing on quotations from the Church Fathers]).
Lectura super Matthaeum (Commentary on Matthew: c.1269–1270).
Lectura super Ioannem (Commentary on John: c.1270–1272).
Expositio et Lectura super Epistolas Pauli Apostoli (Commentaties on the
Letters of St. Paul: dating very difficult to establish, possibly 1265–
1273).
Postilla super Psalmos (Commentary on the Psalms: c.1273).

COMMENTARIES ON ARISTOTLE
Sententia Libri De anima (Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul: 1267–
1268).
Sententia Libri De Sensu et sensato (Commentary on Aristotle’s On Sense
 [and On Memory]: c.1268–1269).
Sententia super Physicam (Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics: c.1268–
1269).
Sententia super Meteora (Commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology: c.1268–
1270).
Sententia Libri Politicorum (Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics: c. 1269–
1272).
Expositio Libri Peri hermeneias (Commentary on Aristotle’s On
Interpretation [De Interpretatione]: c.1270–1271).
Expositio Libri Posteriorum (Commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics:
c. 1270–1272).
Sententia Libri Ethicorum (Commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean
Ethics: 1271–1272).
Sententia super Metaphysicam (Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics:
c.1270–1272).
Sententia super librum De caelo et mundo (Commentary on Aristotle’s On
the Heavens: c. 1272–1273).
Sententia super libros De generatione et corruptione (Commentary on
Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption: c.1272–1273).

OTHER COMMENTARIES
Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate (Commentary on Boethius’s De
Trinitate: c.1257–1259).
Expositio in librum Boethii De hebdomadibus (Commentary on Boethius’s
Hebdomads [actually, Boethius’s third theological tractate]: c. 1257–
1259).
Expositio super Dionysium De divinis nominibus (Commentary on [Pseudo-]
Dionysius’s The Divine Names: c.1261–1268).
Expositio super librum De causis (Commentary on the Book of Causes:
c.1272).

POLEMICAL WRITINGS
Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (Against those who Impugn the
Cult of God and Religion: 1256).
De perfectione spiritualis vitae (On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life:
1269–1270).
De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas (On the Unicity of the Intellect
Against the Averroists: 1270).
Contra doctrinam retrahentium a religione homines a religionis ingressu
[commonly referred to as Contra retrahentes] (Against the teachings of
those who prevent men entering the religious life: 1271).
De aeterntate mundi (On the Eternity of the World: c.1271).

TREATISES AND OTHER WORKS ON ASSORTED

TOPICS
De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence: c.1252–1256).
De principiis naturae (On the Principles of Nature: c.1252–1256, possibly
earlier).
De regno ad regem Cypri (On Kingship, to the King of Cyprus: c.1267).
De substantiis separatis (On Separate Substances: c. 1271).
Contra errores Graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks: c.1263–1264).
De mixtione elementorum (On the Mixture of Elements: c.1270).

LITURGICAL AND RELATED WORKS

Collationes in decem praecepta (Homilies on the Ten Commandments:
c.1261–1273).
Officium de festo Corporis Christi (Office for the Feast of Corpus Christi:
c.1264).
Hymn Adoro Te (commonly referred to by its Latin title: date unknown).
Collationes in orationem dominicam, in Symbolorum Apostolorum, in
salutatem angelicam (Homilies on the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’s
Creed, and the Angelic Greeting: c.1268–1273).
 EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS

1. PRIMARY SOURCES
The most authoritative listing of Aquinas’s works in English is I. T.
Eschmann, “A Catalogue of St. Thomas’s Works: Bibliographical
Notes,” in E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
(New York: Random House, 1956). It is supplemented by “A Brief
Catalogue of Authentic Works” in James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas
D’Aquino (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974; republished with
Corrigenda and Addenda, Washington D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1983).
The definitive edition of Aquinas’s writings is currently being published by
the Leonine Commission, established by Pope Leo XIII in 1880, which
has now produced volumes containing Aquinas’s most important
works (Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici. Opera Omnia.
Iussu Leonis XIII, Rome: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1882–). Publications
of Aquinas’s writings prior to the Leonine edition include the Parma
edition (Opera Omnia, Parma: Fiaccadori, 1852–73) and the Vivès
edition (Opera Omnia, Paris: Vivès, 1871–82). Most of Aquinas’s
writings have also been published in manual size by the Casa Marietti
(Torino-Rome).
Students of Aquinas should also consult R. Busa, Index Thomisticus
(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974–80), which
provides a text of Aquinas’s writings and a useful, if somewhat
unwieldy, way to search for terms used by him.
A substantial amount of Aquinas’s writings still remains untranslated into
English. There are, however, some currently available English editions
of a number of his more important works.
To date, the best English edition of the Summa theologiae (with notes and
commentaries) is the Blackfriars edition (61 vols., Latin and English
with notes and introductions, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, and New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964–80). Unfortunately,
however, this translation is sometimes unreliable. For a more literal
 rendering of the text, see St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica
(translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
originally published by Burns, Oates, and Washbourne in London in
1911 and now available from Christian Classics, Westminster, Md.,
1981). This edition may be found on the Internet at:
<http://www.newadvent.org/summa>. A searchable concordance to it
can be found on the Internet at:
<http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0023/_FA.HTM>. Also worth
consulting is Timothy McDermott (ed.), St Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae: A Concise Translation (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1989). A Latin concordance of Aquinas’s full corpus can be found at
the Corpus Thomisticum website:
<http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/it/index.age>.
For a reliable translation of the Summa contra Gentiles, see On the Truth of
the Catholic Faith, translated by Anton Pegis, James F. Anderson,
Vernon J. Bourke, and Charles J. O’Neil (New York: Doubleday,
1955–57, reprinted as Summa Contra Gentiles, Notre Dame, Ind. and
London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). An annotated
translation of the Summa contra Gentiles (by Joseph Rickaby, with
some abridgements) is available on the Internet at:
<http://www.nd.edu/departments/maritain/etext/gc.xhtml>.
Other English translations of Aquinas’s writings include:
(a) Disputed Questions
Truth (Quaestiones disputatae De veritate), translated by Robert W.
Mulligan, J. V. McGlynn, and R. W. Schmidt (3 vols., Chicago: Henry
Regnery Company, 1952–54).
On the Power of God (Quaestiones disputatae De potentia), translated by the
English Dominican Fathers (3 vols., London: Burns, Oates, and
Washbourne, 1932–34).
The Soul (Quaestio disputata De anima), translated by J. H. Robb
(Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1984).
On Spiritual Creatures (Quaestio disputata De spiritualibus creaturis),
translated by M. C. Fitzpatrick and J. J. Wellmuth (Milwaukee, Wis.:
Marquette University Press, 1949).
On Evil (Quaestiones disputatae De Malo), translated by Richard Regan
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Disputed Questions on Virtue (Quaestio disputata De virtutibus in communi
and Quaestio disputata De virtutibus cardinalibus), translated by
Ralph McInerny (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999).
On Charity (Quaestio disputata De caritate), translated by Lottie H.
Kendzierski (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1984).
Quodlibetal Questions 1 and 2, translated by Sandra Edwards (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1983).
(b) Commentaries on Scripture
The Literal Exposition on Job (Expositio super Job as litteram), translated by
Anthony Damico (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989).
Commentary on the Gospel of John (Lectura super Ioannem), translated by
James A Weisheipl and F. R. Larcher (2 vols., Albany, N.Y.: Magi
Books, 1980, and Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede’s Publications, 1998).
Commentary on Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians and the Letter
to the Philippians, translated by F. R. Larcher and Michael Duffy
(Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1969).
Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, translated by Matthew
L. Lamb (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966).
Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, translated by F. R.
Larcher (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966).
(c) Commentaries on Aristotle
A Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (Sententia Libri De anima),
translated by Robert Pasnau (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale
University Press, 1999).
Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (Sententia super Physicam), translated by
R. Blackwell (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963).
On Interpretation (Expositio Libri Peri hermenias), translated by Jean T.
Oesterle (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1962).
Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle (Expositio Libri
Posteriorum), translated by F. R. Larcher (Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books,
1970).
Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Sententia Libri Ethicorum),
translated by C. I. Litzinger (2 vols., Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1964).
Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Sententia super Metaphysicam),
 translated by John P. Rowan (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1995).
(d) Other Commentaries
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason, and Theology. Questions I–IV of his
Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius (Expositio super librum
Boethii De trinitate), translated by A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Medieval Studies, 1987).
Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Divisions and Methods of the Sciences.
Questions V and VI of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius
(Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate), translated by A. Maurer
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1986).
Saint Thomas Aquinas, An Exposition of the “On the Hebdomads” of
Boethius, Introduction and translation by Janice L. Schultz and Edward
A. Synan (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
2001).
Commentary on the Book of Causes (Expositio super librum De causis),
translated by Vincent A. Guagliardo, Charles R. Hess, and Richard C.
Taylor (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
1996).
(e) Other Writings
On Being and Essence (De ente et essentia), translated by Joseph Bobik
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965).
Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements (translations of De principiis
naturae and De mixtione elementorum), translated by Joseph Bobik
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998).
On There Being Only One Intellect (De unitate intellectus contra
Averroistas), translated by Ralph McInerny in Aquinas Against the
Averroists (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1993).
Compendium of Theology (Compendium theologie), translated by Richard J.
Regan (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
The Sermon Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostle’s Creed
(Collationes in Symbolorum Apostolorum), translated by Nicholas Ayo
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
Readers might like to note that Thérese Bonin maintains an updated web site
listing currently available English translations of Aquinas at:
 <http://www.home.duq.edu/~bonin/thomasbibliography.xhtml>.
The Thomas Institute in Utrecht also lists translations into English of
Aquinas and provides one of the most helpful of internet research sites
for students of Aquinas. It can be found at:
<http://www.thomasinstituut.org/>.

2. USEFUL SELECTIONS FROM AQUINAS IN

ENGLISH
Steven E. Baldner and William E. Carroll, Aquinas on Creation (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1997).
Mary T. Clark, An Aquinas Reader, revised edition (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2000).
Christopher Martin (ed.), The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (London:
Routledge, 1988).
Timothy McDermott (ed.), Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Ralph McInerny, Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1998).
Anton C. Pegis (ed.), Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: The
Modern Library, 1945).

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Vernon J. Bourke, Thomistic Bibliography: 1920–1940, The Modern
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Richard Ingardia, Thomas Aquinas: International Bibliography 1977–1990
(Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1993).
Terry L. Miethe and Vernon J. Bourke, Thomistic Bibliography, 1940–1978
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980).
The Bulletin Thomiste (1940–65), continued in Rassegna di Letteratura
Tomistica (1966–), receives all Thomistic publications and is a useful
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 INDEX

Abelard, Peter, 51
abstraction, 493
accident, substance and, 105, 500
accidental change, 89–92, 112n2, 117
accidental compound, 89, 92, 96, 101n21
accidental form, 386n2
accidental predicate, 380
acquired virtues, 266, 268–70, 295–96. See also specific virtues
cardinal virtues and, 476
infused virtues compared to, 475–76, 483n3, 484nn5–6, 485n19
sin and, 485n11
act and potency, doctrine of, 67–68, 149, 153
action. See also human action
of angels, 179–80
causation and, 108–9
choiceworthiness of, 251, 253n65
generically evil, 259, 259t
generically good, 259, 259t
immanent, 114n43, 235n4, 498
indifferent, 259, 259
law and, 244–47
passion and, 108–9, 420
production and, 279, 331–32, 498
stages of, 333
transient, 235n4
transitive, 114n43
of Trinity, 423–25
virtue as principle of, 266–71
action of human being (actio hominis), 199, 228
active power, 106, 113n26
act of being (actus essendi), 153, 155
act of will, 113n19
actuality
of form, 371
mover in, 128n24
passive potencies and, 175
actus, of Gifts and virtues, 481–83, 488n49
adjective names, 388n26
Adoro Te (Aquinas), 20
affirmative precepts, 281
afterlife, 37
agency, 9–10, 199–207
agent
causation and, 105–8
defined, 105
deliberate imagination by, 216
fire, 105, 108
intellect, 315, 493
structure of human action and, 202–3
ultimate end and, 200
aggregates, 360, 367n26
agnosticism, 70–71, 136–37
agreement of proportionality, agreement of proportion and, 500
Albert the Great, 16, 37, 45, 154–55, 256, 421
almsgiving, 298
analogy
artist–artwork, 160–61
of being, 379–85, 389n30
development of thought about, 499–501
in language, 379–85, 389n30, 394–97
 Prima Pars and, 396
psychological, 423
Angelic Doctor (Doctor Angelicus)
in Baroque period, 520–23
Neo-Thomists and, 523–26
renaissance of, 518–20
rise to authority, 515–18
angels
action of, 179–80
cognition of, 365
emotions and, 224n7
prayer to, 474n7
species of, 358
time of, 181–82
anger, 174, 211, 220–21
animal
emotion, 224n6
happiness of, 232, 234, 235n7
participation in, 82
sensory powers of, 314
soul of, 357–58
annihilation, 86
anonymous author, erring conscience and, 259–60
Anscombe, Elizabeth, 277
Anselm of Canterbury, 436–41
appetible object, 248–49
appetite
cognition and, 212–16
goodness and, 149
intellective, 212
practical reason and, 277
rational, 248–49
 sensitive, 209–17, 219–20, 222
appetitive powers, 210, 328
appetitive soul, 502–3
Aquinas, Thomas. See also Angelic Doctor; Commentary on the Book of
Sentences; Common Doctor; Quaestiones disputatae de veritate; Summa
contra Gentiles; Summa theologiae
Adoro Te by, 20
on agency, 10, 199–207
Albert the Great and, 16, 37, 45, 154–55, 256, 421
Aristotle’s connection with, 3–4, 16, 22–27, 33–41, 57, 78–79, 93, 108–9,
124, 149, 152, 174, 177, 180–82, 231, 272, 279, 281–82, 325n34, 327,
329–34, 340, 349–51, 373, 420, 437, 475, 485n12, 516–17
Augustine and, 4, 15, 20, 23, 46–48, 50, 56, 192, 251, 279, 296, 303, 401,
442
Averroës and, 15, 26, 35–37, 39, 42n16, 43n19, 67, 78, 491, 514, 517
Avicenna and, 4, 35, 39, 56, 65–70
on being, 77–82
Boethius and, 48–50, 54n16, 78, 81–82, 138–39, 178–79
canonized as saint, 518
Catena aurea by, 20, 24
on causation, 104–11
change theory of, 85–94, 99–100
Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics by, 279
Compendium theologiae by, 19, 175, 437–39
on conscience, 255–62
Contra doctrinam retrahentium a religione by, 17
Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem by, 17
Contra retrahentes by, 26
De aeternitate mundi by, 26
De ente et essentia by, 17, 80–81, 521
De perfectione spiritualis vitae by, 17, 26
De Potentia by, 24–25, 492, 498
De principiis naturae by, 17, 104–5
De substantiis separatis by, 27, 57–59
De ueritate by, 17–18, 25
De unitate intellectus contra averroistas by, 26
development of thought of, 491–503
Disputed Questions and, 17–18, 24–25, 365n3, 367n22
as Doctor Communis, 511–14
early years, 15–16
eclecticism avoided by, 4
on emotions, 209–23
on evil, 401–12
Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus by, 18
on faith, 337–45
on form, 68, 80, 85–100, 109–10
on freedom, 9–10, 199–207
on God’s eternality, 173–84
on God’s goodness, 147–55, 165, 168–69
on God’s immutability, 173–84, 470–71
on God’s impassibility, 173–84
on God’s knowledge, 158–70
on God’s omnipotence, 187–94
on God’s simplicity, 135–43
on happiness, 37, 227–35
on human knowledge, 311–23
on incarnation, 428–33
individuation theory of, 85, 94–100
influence of, 511–26
influences on, 4, 9, 15–16, 20, 40–41
Islamic authors and, 4, 65–72
Jewish authors and, 4, 65–72, 514
on language, 371–86, 390–97
last years of, 27–28
in Latin-Christian tradition, 45–52
on law, 238–51
Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos by, 443
Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos by, 438
on matter, 68, 80, 85–100
on mind and human nature, 349–65
in Naples, 15–16, 27–28
Neoplatonism and, 34, 55–62
in Orvieto, 19–21
in Paris, 16–18, 25–27
philosophical theology of, 6–7
Plato and, 55–62, 152–53, 325n22
on practical reasoning, 228, 276–83, 334
on prayer, 467–73
on providence, 401–12
Quaestiones disputatae de malo by, 205, 208n22, 272, 492
in Rome, 20–25
on sacraments, 448–56
on saving work of Christ, 436–44
scale of value of, 402–4
scholastic tradition and, 50–51
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum by, 209
Sententia Libri De anima by, 33–35, 37, 365n3
Sententia Libri Ethicorum by, 36–37
Sententia super Metaphysicam by, 37–39
Sententia super Physicam by, 35–36, 38
On Separate Substances by, 27, 57–59
Super Boetium De Trinitate by, 18, 23
Super De Causis by, 27
synthesis by, 45
Thomists and, 515–26
on Trinity, 8, 25, 418–25
 on vices, 265–73, 282
virtues and, 231, 236n13, 252n34, 265–73, 287–304, 327–34
voice of, 236n11
Aristotle. See also Metaphysics; Nicomachean Ethics; Posterior Analytics
act and potency doctrine of, 67–68, 149, 153
Aquinas’s connection with, 3–4, 16, 22–27, 33–41, 57, 78–79, 93, 108–9,
124, 149, 152, 174, 177, 180–82, 231, 272, 279, 281–82, 325n34, 327,
329–34, 340, 349–51, 373, 420, 437, 475, 485n12, 516–17
Augustine and, 46–47
Categories by, 33, 57, 378
Christianity reconciled with, 349
contingency defined by, 67
De anima by, 33–35, 47, 276, 349
Ethics by, 16
On Interpretation by, 33, 376, 386n3
Islamic authors and, 66–67
Organon by, 33–34
Peri Hermeneias by, 469
Physics by, 35–36, 38, 117
Plato correcting, 58–62
revival of, 522, 530n56
semantic triangle of, 373
sententiae on works of, 33–39, 41
Summa theologiae and, 39–40
theology and, 33
on virtues, 266, 273n6, 274n33, 327–34, 475–76, 483n2
on wisdom, 37–39, 329–30
art
Augustine on, 279
defined, 331
as intellectual virtue, 328, 330–32
liberal, 331
 mechanical, 331
nature imitated by, 281
as power, 106–7
practical knowledge and, 278
productive, 106
prudence above, 279–80
artifacts, 367n26
artist–artwork analogy, 160–61
atemporal duration, 178
attitude, 174
Augustine
Aquinas and, 4, 15, 20, 23, 46–48, 50, 56, 192, 251, 279, 296, 303, 401,
442
Aristotle and, 46–47
on art, 279
on evil, 401–2
Exposition on the Psalms by, 441
On the Gift of Perseverance by, 492
in Latin-Christian tradition, 46–47
On the Predestination of the Saints by, 492
sin defined by, 260
authority
Angelic Doctor’s rise to, 515–18
epistemic source from, 341
of scripture, 4, 419, 428
autism, 479–80, 483, 487nn39–40
Averroës
Aquinas and, 15, 26, 35–37, 39, 42n16, 43n19, 67, 78, 491, 514, 517
Metaphysics and, 78
aversion, 220–21
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
Aquinas and, 4, 35, 39, 56, 65–70
 contingency defined by, 67
First Philosophy by, 39
al-Shifa by, 66

Bacon, Francis, 523, 530n68

Báñez, Dominic, 522
Baptism, 451–52
bare particular, 90, 92, 101n11
Baroque period, 520–23
beatific vision, 232, 236n19, 237n20, 250
beatitude (beatitudo)
capitalized, 485n14
community of, 296–97
defined, 476–77
faith and, 343
Fruits, Gifts and, 476–77, 483, 485n18
happiness as, 231–34, 236n15, 237n20, 330
hungering and thirsting for justice as, 476, 485n16
being
act of, 153, 155
analogy of, 379–85, 389n30
Aquinas on, 77–82
as being, 68, 77–78
defined, 77
division and multiplication of, 78–79
existence, essence and, 79–81
form influencing, 110–11
genuine, 360
God giving, 166
goodness and, 154, 344
limits of, 178
matter influencing, 110–11
 metaphysics and, 77–78
mobile, 35–36
modes of, 79
participation and, 81–82
sacraments and, 454
believing
of demons, 305n13
faith and, 289
scientia and, 317
voluntary control over, 346n11
beneficence, 298–99
benevolence, 221
Benignity, as Fruit, 481, 488n57
Berengar of Tours, 450
biological perspective, in philosophy of mind and human nature, 348–50
Bochenski, I. M., 117
bodies
Body of Christ, 439, 441–44, 445n45
importance of, 363
as objects, 229–30
in philosophy of mind and human nature, 350–51, 354–65
soul related to, 350–51, 354–65, 368n33, 497
bodily defects, 430–31
bodily pleasures, 234
bodily well-being, 234
Boethius
Aquinas and, 48–50, 54n16, 78, 81–82, 138–39, 178–79
cognition and, 50
De hebdomadibus by, 48–49, 81, 138–39
De Trinitate by, 48–49, 78
on eternity, 178–79
in Latin-Christian tradition, 48–50
 metaphysics and, 48–49
Opuscula Sacra by, 48, 50
person defined by, 420, 430
theology and, 48–49
Bonaventure, 46, 187, 256–57, 259–61
In Sent. by, 259, 260t
on Trinity, 418–19, 421–22
Boyle, John F., 21
Boyle, L., 20
bronze statue example
of causation, 104–7, 109
form and, 85–87, 89, 91, 352
matter of, 85–87, 89, 91
Brunet, Eli, 16
Burrell, David, 136
Byzantines, Doctor Communis among, 513–14

Cajetan, Thomas de Vio, 222, 503, 521

The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Stump and Kretzmann), 8–9
Capreolus, John, 519
cardinal virtues, 236n13, 267–72, 329, 476
caritas (friendship with God), 477–81, 484n9, 488n51
categorematic terms, 375–76, 387n12
Categories (Aristotle), 33, 57, 378
Catena aurea (Aquinas), 20, 24
causa, 104
causal determinism, 204–5
causal impassivity, 174–75
causality, instrumental, 453–55
causal love, God’s, 287
causal relata, 109–10
causation
action and, 108–9
agents and, 105–8
Aquinas on, 104–11
bronze statue example of, 104–7, 109
causal relata, 109–10
change and, 104–5
contemporary accounts of, 111
contradictions and, 192
counterfactuals and, 111
by creatures, 472
efficient, 105, 109–11, 114n49, 119–20, 454
ends and, 107–8
exemplar, 162
final, 111
First Cause, 206
in Fourth Way, 123
freedom and, 204–7
generic notion of, 110–11
by God, 206–7, 287, 468–69, 486n25
highest good and, 150–51
human action and, 204–7
inclinations and, 107–8, 113n24
instrumental, 453–55
through mechanical impact, 364
passion and, 106, 108–9
patients and, 105–6
powers and, 106–7, 472
prayer and, 471–72
as principle, 110
removal of, 120
sacraments and, 449, 451–56
signification and, 445n11
 transmutation and, 109–10
virtues and, 265
certainty (certitudo), 317, 325n34, 326n42
Champion Argument, 218–19
change
accidental, 89–92, 112n2, 117
Aquinas’s theory of, 85–94, 99–100
causation and, 104–5
constitution and, 460
creation and, 86
in creatures, 167
extrinsic, 100n3, 176
form and, 85–94
in God, 167, 176, 183
intrinsic, 100n3, 176
many-one, 94
one-many, 94
one-one, 94
as passion, 106
of past, 192–93
qualitative, 117
quantitative, 117
substantial, 89–92, 112n2
types of, 89–94
charity
acts or effects of, 298–99
connection of, 300
degrees of, 297
faith and, 292–93, 339
as form of virtues, 299
as friendship, 296
joy and, 298–99
 loss of, 301
love of, 296–98
making satisfaction and, 439
moral virtues and, 300–301
obeying and, 502
objects of, 296–98
peace and, 298–99
after resurrection, 503
as theological virtue, 287, 295–303, 343
vices opposed to, 298–99
Chastity, as Fruit, 481
Chauvet, L.-M., 453–54
Chenu, Marie-Dominique, 47
choice
actions and, 251, 253n65
freedom of, 163, 166–68, 471–72
morally evil, 168
choiceworthiness, 251, 253n65
Christ. See also incarnation; Son
Body of, 439, 441–44, 445n45
Council of Chalcedon defining, 429
death of, 437–42, 445n46, 503
defects of, 430–31
defined, 429, 431
faith about, 291–92
gift of self from, 440
humanity of, 430–33, 434n22, 438
knowledge possessed by, 430, 493–97, 505n18
perfections of, 431
priesthood of, 442–44, 445nn59–60
as sacrament of salvation, 437–38
sacrifice of, 438, 442–44, 447n66
 saving work of, 436–44
sorrow of, 173–74
suffering of, 436–37, 440–42, 444n4, 445n45
Christian belief. See faith
Christianity. See also Latin-Christian tradition
Aristotle reconciled with, 349
belief, beyond scope of reason, 126n3
practice, prayer and, 473
Trinity at heart of, 418
Christology, 24, 302–3
Chrysostom, John, 20
Church, as Body of Christ, 439, 441–44, 445n45
citizen, good, 243
coercion, 205–6, 253n43
cognition
acquisition of, 315–16
of angels, 365
appetite and, 212–16
Boethius and, 50
conscience and, 262
defined, 345n4
emotion and, 212–17
false, 311
freedom and, 366n15
Gifts and, 487n27
God’s, 160, 385
innate, 315–16, 325n22
intellective, 212, 223, 493–97
knowledge compared to, 311
natural, 316
perception and, 223, 313, 316
plasticity of, 355
 reason related to, 339–40
sensitive, 212–13, 222
sensory, 321, 493–97, 506n24
wisdom and, 37–38
cognitive power, 215
cognitive voluntarism, 346n11
command (praecipere, imperare), 333
Commedia (Dante), 512–13
commentaries, attention paid to, 17, 53n3
Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics (Aquinas), 279
Commentary on the Book of Sentences (Aquinas)
development of thought and, 492, 494–95, 497, 499–502, 507n29
writing of, 16, 18–22, 45, 51
Common Doctor (Doctor Communis)
among Byzantines, 513–14
among people, 512–13
among rabbis, 514
common good
of community, 238–44
defined, 238–44
intrinsic and extrinsic, 246
law and, 238–44, 246, 251, 254n77
perfections and, 246
will and, 242–43
common sense, 359
communia, 36
communion, 443
community
of beatitude, 296–97
common good of, 238–44
compassion, 170
Compendium theologiae (CT) (Aquinas), 19, 175, 437–39
complete good, will attracted by, 343–44
compliance, with law, 244, 253n43
composite theory, 463, 465n12, 465n17
comprehension, 160
concept
categorematic, 375–76, 387n12
defined, 372–73
development of thought about, 498, 505n11
of faith, 337–45
in semantic triangle, 373
syncategorematic, 376, 387n12
universal, intellect forming, 355–56
concrete individual and properties, 88–89
concupiscible emotions, 209, 218–21
conditional necessity, 166
confidence, 220–21
connection, of virtues, 300
conscience
acting against, as evil, 260
Aquinas on, 255–62
cognitive dimension of, 262
erring, 259–62, 259t–261t
fallibility of, 257–58
moral obligation and, 259–62
prudence and, 258
sexual intercourse and, 257–58
synderesis and, 255–62
consensus (consent), 202
conservation, 110, 129n41
consilium (investigation of means by which end may be attained), 202
consolation, suffering and, 409–12, 415n44
Constantinople, 513–14
constitution, 460–61
contemplative life, 330
Continency, as Fruit, 481
contingency, 166–67
defined, 67
of events, knowledge of, 162–63
of facts, 318
God and, 143, 207
possibility and, 190
contradictions, 191–93, 195n14
Contra doctrinam retrahentium a religione (Aquinas), 17
Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (Aquinas), 17
Contra retrahentes (Aquinas), 26
Conway, David, 122
copula, 376–79, 387n13
Correctorium Fratris Thomae (A Correctory of Brother Thomas) (de la
Mare), 516
corruption, 87, 100n5, 121
Council of Chalcedon, 429, 492
Council of Trent, 520, 522
Council of Vienne, 518
Counsel, Gift of, 283, 477–78, 488n53
counterfactuals, causation and, 111
Courage, Gift of, 476–78, 485n14, 485n16, 487n29
Courtesis, George, 513–14
covetous love, 221
creation, 68–72, 162
change and, 86
development of thought about, 502
as efficient causation, 110
God seeing, 163
gratuitous, 169
 order of, 166
by Trinity, 423–25
Creator, God as, 469–71
creatures
analogy of being and, 382–85
causal powers of, 472
change in, 167
dueness given to, 170
God similar to, 499–501
God’s willing of, 166–68
law and, 244–47
love in, 168
nonrational, 244–47
perfections of, 158–61
words applied to, 394
credibility arguments, 341–42
Crockaert, Peter, 520
Cross, as central event in salvation, 436–37, 439
CT. See Compendium theologiae
Cur Deus Homo (Anselm of Canterbury), 438–39, 441
Cydones, Demetrius, 513

Dante Alighieri, 482, 512–13

Darwinism, 125
DDI. See doctrine of divine immutability
De aeternitate mundi (Aquinas), 26
De anima (Aristotle), 33–35, 47, 276, 349
death, of Christ, 437–42, 445n46, 503
De diuinis nominibus (Pseudo-Dionysius), 25, 147
De ente et essentia (DEE) (Aquinas), 17, 80–81, 521
De fallaciis, 16
De hebdomadibus (Boethius), 48–49, 81, 138–39
de la Mare, William, 516
deliberation, 333
delight, 220–21
demon possession, 59–60
demons, believing of, 305n13
denominating form, 387n15
De Nys, Martin, 122
De Oratione (Origen), 471
dependence
existential, 99, 102n29
origins and, 102n36
De perfectione spiritualis vitae (Aquinas), 17, 26
De Potentia (Aquinas), 24–25, 492, 498
De principiis naturae (Aquinas), 17, 104–5
De propositionibus modalibus, 16
Descartes, René, 229, 235n10, 351–52, 522–23
designated matter, 95–96
desire
aversion and, 220–21
for happiness, 229
natural law and, 250–51
despair
hope and, 220–21, 294
as vice, 294
De substantiis separatis (Aquinas), 27, 57–59
determinate dimensions, 96–99, 103n37, 459
determinism, 204–6
De Trinitate (Boethius), 48–49, 78
De ueritate (Aquinas), 17–18, 25
De unitate intellectus contra averroistas (Aquinas), 26
De Wulf, Maurice, 47
difference, principle of, 94–95
dimensive quantities, 96
diminishing qualifications, 389n28
Dionysian Corpus, 55–56
Dionysius, 55, 58–59, 61
Disputed Question on the Soul (QDA) (Aquinas), 365n3, 367n22
Disputed Questions (disputare), 17–18, 24–25, 365n3, 367n22
distress, 220–21
distributive justice, 170
divine illumination, in Summa theologiae, 46
divine immutability. See immutability
divine law, 245, 260, 260t, 501
divine names, 158
The Divine Names (Dionysius), 55, 58–59
divine perfection
knowledge as, 158–61
will as, 158, 164–66
divine person
missions of, 425
as subsistent relation, 419–21, 434n7
divine science, 78
divine simplicity
doctrine of, 135–43
God’s knowledge and, 160
quantum metaphysics and, 139–41
divine testimony, faith and, 341–43
division, of being, 78–79
Doctor Angelicus. See Angelic Doctor
Doctor Communis. See Common Doctor
doctrine of divine immutability (DDI), 177, 181, 183
doctrine of mean, 272
documentation, concern for, 16
Dominicans. See Order of Preachers
Donagan, Alan, 203
dualism, 348, 350, 462
dueness, given to creatures, 170
Duns Scotus, John, 312, 334
duration, 178, 185n36, 302–3

earthly goods, 231

Eastern Church, 526n7
efficient causation, 105, 109–11, 114n49, 454
creation as, 110
way from, 119–20
Elders, Leo, 136
electio, 202
electrons, inclination of, 107–8
Elements of Theology (Proclus), 55–56, 58–59, 491
emotions (passiones animae). See also specific emotions
angels and, 224n7
animal, 224n6
Aquinas on, 209–23
cognition and, 212–17
concupiscible, 209, 218–21
contemporary theories of, 222–23
defined, 210
God and, 224n7
irascible, 209, 218–21, 225n25
as motion, 211–12
nature of, 210–12
as objectual, 215
passivity of, 211
perceptions and, 223
in Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, 209
in Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, 209
 in Summa theologiae, 209, 221
taxonomy of, 218–22
types of, 209
volition and, 212–17
ends, causation and, 107–8
enemy, love of charity and, 297
entitative perfections, 158
enuntiabile, 378–80
envy, 299
epistemic labor, division of, 345
epistemic rationality, 344
equivocal/equivocally, 393–94
Erasmus, Desiderius, 529n54
erring conscience, 259–62, 259t–261t
esse, 137–43, 144n16, 149, 151–55. See also existence
Báñez on, 522
knowledge, will and, 151, 160, 162, 165–66, 169
in procession doctrine, 420
essence
being and, 79–81
defined, 367n27, 430
as definition of something, 429–30
existence distinct from, 67–68, 79–81
God’s, 135–39, 151–53, 392
goodness and, 151–52
in Summa contra Gentiles, 81
eternal law, 245–51, 253n43
eternity
Boethius on, 178–79
defined, 178
doctrine of, 141–42
God and, 141–42, 173–84
 in Summa contra Gentiles, 183, 186n80
in Summa theologiae, 178–79
Ethics (Aristotle), 16
euboulia, 333–34
Eucharist
as sacrament, 443–44, 447n66, 450–51
Word in, 444
evil
acting against conscience as, 260
Aquinas on, 401–12
Augustine on, 401–2
G. E. Moore shift and, 416n52
generically evil action, 259, 259t
God and, 167–68, 189, 193–94, 401–2, 414n18
law and, 250–51
morally evil choices, 168
proneness to, 406
providence and, 401–12
sensible, 219–20, 224n18
sorrow and, 173–74
suffering from, 402–12
executive power, 217
exemplar causes, 162
existence
being and, 79–81
defined, 82
essence distinct from, 67–68, 79–81
God’s, 116–25, 136–43, 144n16, 192, 383–84, 392
existential dependence, 99, 102n29
Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus (Aquinas), 18
Exposition on the Psalms (Augustine), 441
expositions, 33
exterior act, of faith, 338–39
external senses, 359
extrinsic changes, 100n3, 176
extrinsic common good, 246
extrinsic good, 239

faith
as acceptance, 428
affirmation by, 290–92
Aquinas’s conception of, 337–45
beatitude and, 343
believing and, 289
charity and, 292–93, 339
about Christ, 291–92
cognitive voluntarism and, 346n11
complete good and, 343–44
connection of, 300
defined, 337
divine testimony and, 341–43
exterior act of, 338–39
formed, 292–93, 301
as Fruit, 481
happiness and, 337–38
interior act of, 338–39
loss of, 301–2
object of, 337–39, 346nn6–7
person of, 405, 414n22
rationality of, 341–44
reason related to, 337–45
revelation and, 418
science dealing with, 317, 340–41
as theological virtue, 287–93, 300–303, 339–40, 343–45
 Trinity at heart of, 418
unformed, 292–93, 301
will related to, 340, 343–44
false cognition, 311
false worship, 449
fame, 234
al-Farabi, 65–68
Father, properties and names of, 421–23. See also Trinity
fear, 213–17
confidence and, 220–21
filial, 487n30
Gift of, 477–78, 487n30
of opposite, 317–20
servile, 487n30
felicitas, 231–33
felicity, 330
Fifth Way, 124–25
filial fear, 487n30
filiation, 421
final causation, 111
fire, as agent, 105, 108
First Cause, 206
first-personal habitus, 480
First Philosophy (Avicenna), 39
First Way, 116–20, 175–76
Five Ways
defined, 115–16
Fifth, 124–25
First, 116–20, 175–76
Fourth, 123–24
Second, 119–20, 122, 129n36
Summa contra Gentiles and, 116
 Third, 121–22, 180
flourishing, of human beings, 403, 405–7, 412, 413n15
flow, of now, 181–82
Flying Man, 35
forgiveness, 440, 443
form. See also substantial form
accidental, 386n2
actuality of, 371
Aquinas on, 68, 80, 85–100, 109–10
being influenced by, 110–11
bronze statue example of, 85–87, 89, 91, 352
change and, 85–94
charity as form of virtues, 299
defined, 351–52, 386n2
denominating, 387n15
human, 352
of human beings, 352
individualized, 371–72
individuation and, 85–100
inherence of, 377
matter and, 68, 80, 85–100, 112n2, 351, 366n9, 459
soul as, 353, 361–62, 367n22, 458–60
types of, 89–94
formed faith, 292–93, 301
Fourth Way, 123–24
Fox, Rory, 179–80, 185n36
fraternal correction, 298
freedom
agency and, 9–10, 199–207
Aquinas on, 9–10, 199–207
of choice, 163, 166–68, 471–72
cognition and, 366n15
 determinism incompatible with, 204–6
hell and, 403
human action and, 204–7
law and, 247–51
necessitation, causation and, 204–7
prayer and, 471–72
friendly love, 221
friendship
charity as, 296
with God, 477–81, 484n9, 488n51
fruitio (enjoyment), 202–3, 208n10
Fruits, of Holy Spirit
as actus, 481–83, 488n49
Beatitudes and, 476–77, 483, 485n18
capitalized, 485n14
defined, 476–77, 480–81
Gifts and, 476–83, 485n18
habitus and, 481
future contingent events, knowledge of, 162–63

G. E. Moore shift, 416n52

Geach, Peter, 118–19, 396, 526
generation, 87, 100n5, 121
generically evil action, 259, 259t
generically good action, 259, 259t
generic notion of causation, 110–11
Gennadius II Scholarius, 514
genuine being, 360
gifts. See also specific gifts
actus of, 481–83, 488n49
Beatitudes and, 476–77, 483, 485n18
capitalization of, 485n14
 cognition and, 487n27
defined, 476–77
Fruits and, 476–83, 485n18
function of, 477–78, 482–83, 486n26
of Holy Spirit, 269, 272, 274n33, 329–30, 423, 475–83
intellectual virtues as, 483n4
movement based on, 477–79
Original Sin and, 368n34
salvation and, 270, 477
of self, from Christ, 440
virtues distinguished from, 269, 329–30
Giles of Rome, 491
Gilson, Étienne, 47, 83n2, 525
giving, will as, 165
glory, 234
gnome, 333
God. See also Trinity
agnosticism about, 136–37
analogy of being and, 382–85
attributes of, 115
being given by, 166
causation by, 206–7, 287, 468–69, 486n25
changes in, 167, 176, 183
cognition of, 160, 385
contingency and, 143, 207
creation seen by, 163
as Creator, 469–71
creatures similar to, 499–501
emotions and, 224n7
essence of, 135–39, 151–53, 392
eternal law and, 248
eternity and, 141–42, 173–84
 evil and, 167–68, 189, 193–94, 401–2, 414n18
existence of, 116–25, 136–43, 144n16, 192, 383–84, 392
friendship with, 477–81, 484n9, 488n51
goodness of, 147–55, 165, 168–69
human terms used in speaking of, 39–40
immutability of, 173–84, 470–71
impassibility of, 173–84
joy in, 168–69
justice of, 169–70
knowledge about, 62, 140–41, 321, 391–92
knowledge of, 158–70
language and, 391–97
love in, 168–69, 174
mercy of, 169–70
nature of, prayer and, 468–69
as object of faith, 337–39, 346nn6–7
omnipotent, 187–94
omnipresent, 409–10
perfections and, 71–72, 151, 158–61, 164–66
simplicity of, 135–43
strength of, 187–88
theological virtues and, 287–304
timelessness of, 180–84
Treatise on, 115
union with, 232, 406–7, 414n25, 441, 483
uniqueness of, 69
will of, 158–59, 164–70, 189, 192–94, 207, 429
good. See also common good
complete, will attracted by, 343–44
extrinsic, 239
generically good action, 259, 259t
greatest, 403
 highest, 150–51
intrinsic, 239
sensible, 219–20, 224n18
of sufferer, 404–5
goodness
appetite and, 149
Aquinas on, 147–55, 165, 168–69
being and, 154, 344
defined, 147–50, 153
essence and, 151–52
as Fruit, 481
of God, 147–55, 165, 168–69
happiness and, 227
perfection and, 149
Quaestiones disputatae de veritate on, 149–50, 153–54
Summa theologiae on, 147–55
will and, 165
governance, way from, 124–25
grace
development of thought about, 501–2, 509n46
life of, 424
necessity of, 501–2
sacraments causing, 454
gradation, way from, 123–24
greatest good, 403
Gregory the Great, 15, 20
grief, 212, 216
growth, 210
Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 68, 514

habitual knowledge, 257

habitus
 first-personal, 480
Fruit and, 481
second-personal, 480–81, 483
virtues as, 265–66, 269–72, 273n2
happiness
of animals, 232, 234, 235n7
Aquinas on, 37, 227–35
as beatitudo, 231–34, 236n15, 237n20, 330
defined, 37, 227, 229, 231
desire for, 229
faith and, 337–38
as felicitas, 231–33
goodness and, 227
human action and, 228–29
imperfect, 37
pleasure and, 229, 234, 235n7
ultimate, 233–34, 237n20
virtues and, 236n13, 268
hate, 220–21, 299
Hause, Jeffrey, 204, 476, 485n10
healing, 408
heaven
outermost, 182
traffic from hell to, 413n13
Heidegger, Martin, 453–54
hell, 413n9
freedom and, 403
traffic from heaven to, 413n13
Henry of Ghent, 312
Henry of Gorkum, 519
heresy, 293
highest good, 150–51
Hillgarth, Jocelyn, 520
history, of philosophy, 57–58
Hobbes, Thomas, 524
Hobson, Peter, 479
Holy Spirit. See also Fruits, of Holy Spirit; Trinity
Eastern Church on, 526n7
Gifts of, 269, 272, 274n33, 329–30, 423, 475–83
missions of, 424–25
properties and names of, 421–23
in Summa theologiae, 422
honors, 234
hope
connection of, 300
despair and, 220–21, 294
loss of, 301
objects of, 294, 302–3
as theological virtue, 287, 293–95, 300–304, 343
Hugh of St.-Victor, 51
human action (actus humanus)
action of human being contrasted with, 199, 228
causation and, 204–7
defined, 199, 228
end of, 199–202
freedom and, 204–7
happiness and, 228–29
intellectualism and, 203–4
necessitation and, 204–7
structure of, 202–3
voluntarism and, 203–4
human beings
action of, 199, 228
flourishing, 403, 405–7, 412, 413n15
 form of, 352
as material composite, 463, 465n12
substance of, 360–62
humanism, 521–22
humanity
of Christ, 430–33, 434n22, 438
defined, 101n12
justice and mercy of, 169
of Socrates, 432, 434n20
zygotehood and, 91, 93
humanizing nature, 432–33
human knowledge
acquisition of, 313–16
Aquinas on, 311–23
about God, 62, 140–41, 321, 391–92
limits of, 320–23
Metaphysics and, 313
perfection and, 319
questions about, 311, 322
human law, 246–47, 251
human nature. See mind and human nature, philosophy of
human terms, in speaking of God, 39–40
Hume, David, 524
hylomorphic view, 85–88, 229, 351–52, 363, 497

Ibn Sina. See Avicenna

identity, 460–61
id quod est, 137–41, 143
Ignatius of Loyola, 522
ignorance, of moral law, 261
ill-will, 221
Image, 422
imagination
deliberate, 216–17
power of, 359
immanent action, 114n43, 235n4, 498
immaterial objects, matter and, 89
immutability
DDI, 177, 181, 183
God’s, 173–84, 470–71
impassibility
causal impassivity and, 174–75
God’s, 173–84
impassivity, causal, 174–75
impeccability, 193–94
imperium (intellect’s command), 202–3, 280
imposition, in theory of language, 372–76
impotence, 224n22
impulsion, principle of, 420
incarnation
Aquinas on, 428–33
basic claims about, 429–31
Christ’s humanity and, 430–33
as properly theological problem, 428–29
sacraments linked to, 456
inclinations
causation and, 107–8, 113n24
natural law and, 250
powers distinct from, 113n26
Summa theologiae and, 107–8
will as, 205–6
incontinent, 283
In DA. See Sententia Libri De anima
Independent Operation Premise (IOP), 353–56, 358
indeterminate dimensions, 459
indifferent action, 259, 259t
individuality, 97–99
individualized forms, 371–72
individuation
Aquinas’s theory of, 85, 94–100
form and, 85–100
individuality and, 97–99
matter and, 85–100, 101n17, 101n21, 102n29, 102n36
quantity and, 97–99
inferential knowledge, 161
inferior reason, 258, 263n18
infused virtues, 266, 268–70, 340. See also specific virtues
acquired virtues compared to, 475–76, 483n3, 484nn5–6, 485n19
caritas infusing together, 484n9
importance of, 485n11
In Heb. See Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos
inherence theory, 366–77
In Meta. See Sententia super Metaphysicam
innascibility, 421–22
innate cognition, 315–16, 325n22
innateness, arguments against, 315–16, 325n22
In NE. See Sententia Libri Ethicorum
In Phy. See Sententia super Physicam
In Rom. See Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos
Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum (Bonaventure), 259, 260t
instrumental causality, 453–55
intellect
actualized, 506n24
agent, 315, 493
command of, 202–3, 280
defined, 324n21
 importance of, 349
judgment and, 77
operations of, 77
powers of, 359
in production of act, 279
ratio in, 374
reason contrasted with, 276–77
sensation and, 313–15, 367n16
structure of human action and, 203–4
of Trinity, 413n7
universal concepts formed by, 355–56
veracity of, 323
will and, 203–4, 413n12
intellective appetite, 212
intellective cognition, 212, 223, 493–97
intellective soul, 210
intellectualism, 203–4
intellectual virtues
Aristotle on, 327–34
art, 328, 330–32
defined, 328
as Gifts, 483n4
habits compared to, 328
in Metaphysics, 329–31
moral virtues contrasted with, 271
in Nicomachean Ethics, 327, 329–30
prudence, 327–34
reason perfected by, 328
science, 328, 330
understanding, 256, 328, 331
wisdom, 328–30
intentio, 202–3, 214–15, 224n18
intention, 333
Interference Argument, 218
interior act, of faith, 338–39
interminable life, 178
internal senses, 359, 364
interpersonal resonance, 482–83
intrinsic change, 100n3, 176
intrinsic common good, 246
intrinsic good, 239
invisible mission, 425
involuntary simpliciter, 405–6
IOP. See Independent Operation Premise
irascible emotions, 209, 218–21, 225n25
Islamic authors. See also Avicenna
Aquinas and, 4, 65–72
Aristotle and, 66–67
contributions of, 65
al-Farabi, 65–68
initial philosophical theology of, 66
Metaphysics and, 66–67
Plato and, 66
iudicium (judgment of best means), 202–4

Jerome, 255
Jesuits, 522
Jesus. See Christ
Jewish authors. See also Maimonides, Moses
Aquinas and, 4, 65–72, 514
Doctor Communis among, 514
Job, 407
John Damascene, 279, 438
John of Freiburg, 512
John of St. Thomas, 522
joint attention, 478–79
joy
charity and, 298–99
as Fruit, 481
God’s, 168–69
passion, 168
judges, 242, 254n77
judgment, intellect and, 77
justice
acquired, 483n4
distributive, 170
God’s, 169–70
of humanity, 169
hungering and thirsting for, 476, 485n16
infused, 483n4
restoration of order of, 439–40
as virtue, 328
will and, 169–70
justification, 406–7

Kanner, Leo, 480

Kant, Immanuel, 262
Kenny, Anthony, 344–45, 526
Kent, Bonnie, 476
Kerr, Fergus, 525
Kilwardby, Robert, 46, 516
Knapwell, Richard, 517
Knasas, John, 525
knowledge. See also human knowledge
Christ’s, 430, 493–97, 505n18
cognition compared to, 311
 of contingent facts, 318
defined, 159, 170n5
as divine ideas of created things, 162
as divine perfection, 158–61
esse and, 151, 160, 162, 165–66, 169
of future contingent events, 162–63
Gift of, 477–78
about God, 62, 140–41, 321, 391–92
God’s, 158–70
habitual, 257
inferential, 161
as mental state, 311
observational, 176
as operative perfection, 158
practical, 277–79
science and, 311–12, 317–20
speculative, 278
in Summa theologiae, 159–60
of Trinity, 322
Kretzmann, Norman, 8–9, 174

language, theory of
analogy in, 379–85, 389n30, 394–97
Aquinas on, 371–86, 390–97
concepts in, 372–73
copula in, 376–79, 387n13
enuntiabile in, 378–80
God and, 391–97
imposition in, 372–76
limits of, 390–97
mental content in, 373–74
perfection and, 394–95
 predication in, 371–84
ratio in, 373–75, 386n9
rejected answers and, 392–93
signification in, 372–76, 381
tensed, 391
univocal and equivocal use of words in, 393–94
large-scale suffering, 412
Latin-Christian tradition
Aquinas in, 45–52
Augustine in, 46–47
Boethius in, 48–50
law. See also natural law
action and, 244–47
Aquinas on, 238–51
common good and, 238–44, 246, 251, 254n77
compliance with, 244, 253n43
defined, 244
divine, 245, 260, 260t, 501
eternal, 245–51, 253n43
evil and, 250–51
freedom and, 247–51
human, 246–47, 251
judges and, 242, 254n77
moral, 261
nonrational creatures and, 244–47
Old Law, 450
will and, 238, 249–50
lawfulness, 244
learning, teaching and, 108–9, 113n30
Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos (In Heb) (Aquinas),
443
Lectura super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Romanos (In Rom) (Aquinas),
 438
legal directives, externally imposed, 247
Leibniz, Gottfried, 523–24
Leonine Commission, 531n78
liberal arts, 331
Liber de causis, 55–59, 62
libertarians, 206, 348
light, 137, 140, 145n36
local motion, 117
Locke, John, 524
logical connectives, 376
logical participation, 82
Lombard, Peter, 16, 45, 51, 191, 266, 303, 519
Long-suffering, as Fruit, 476, 481
Lord’s Supper, 442–44
love
causal, 287
of charity, 296–98
covetous, 221
in creatures, 168
friendly, 221
in God, 168–69, 174
hate and, 220–21, 299
of relatives, 298
self-love, 268
will and, 168–69, 174
Word and, 419–20, 422–23
Luther, Martin, 295, 521

MacDonald, Scott, 116–17, 201

magic, 59–60
Maimonides, Moses, 4, 68–72, 491
 agnosticism and, 137
Guide of the Perplexed by, 68, 514
revelation and, 68
many-one change, 94
Maritain, Jacques, 525
marriage, 456n24
Master Martin, 15
Masters, 17–18, 33–35
material composite, human being as, 463, 465n12
materialism, 348, 352
materiality, of matter, 459
matter. See also prime matter
Aquinas on, 68, 80, 85–100
being influenced by, 110–11
bronze statue example of, 85–87, 89, 91
change and, 85–94
designated, 95–96
form and, 68, 80, 85–100, 112n2, 351, 366n9, 459
immaterial objects and, 89
individuation and, 85–100, 101n17, 101n21, 102n29, 102n36
materiality of, 459
types of, 89–94
uses of, 112n2
Maximus Planudes, 513
McCabe, Herbert, 230, 236n11, 397n8
McInerny, Ralph, 50
mean, doctrine of, 272
means, deliberation about, 280
mechanical arts, 331
Medina, Bartholomew of, 522
Meekness, as Fruit, 481
memory, 359, 465n11
mental content, 373–74
mental events, 375
mental prayer, 470
mental representation, theory of, 357
mental words, 497–98
mercy
charity and, 298
God’s, 169–70
of humanity, 169
metaphysics
basic topics of, 9
being and, 77–78
Boethius and, 48–49
natural theology subordinate to, 5
participation and, 81–82
quantum, 139–41
theology distinguished from, 49
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 5, 36–39, 49
Averroës and, 78
being and, 78
Fourth Way and, 124
human knowledge and, 313
intellectual virtues in, 329–31
Islamic authors and, 66–67
mind and human nature, philosophy of
Aquinas and, 349–65
biological perspective, 348–50
body in, 350–51, 354–65
human substance in, 360–62
hylomorphism in, 351–52, 363
IOP in, 353–56, 358
soul in, 349–60
 in Summa theologiae, 350
theological perspective, 348–50
Treatise on Human Nature and, 350, 352, 354, 365n3
miracles, 189, 342
missions, doctrine of, 424–25
mobile being, 35–36
Modesty, as Fruit, 481
Molina, Luis de, 522
Moltmann, J., 437
moods, 215, 224n22
moral law, 261
morally evil choices, 168
moral obligation, 259–62
moral perfection, 194
moral science, 37, 279
moral theology, 23–24
moral truths, 279
moral virtues
charity and, 300–301
intellectual virtues contrasted with, 271
means, end and, 333
prudence as, 278, 328, 333–34
unity of, 484n9
motion
emotions as, 211–12
local, 117
meaning of, 116
potency and, 176–77
of sensitive appetite, 219
time reduced to, 182–84
types of, 219
way from, 116–19, 175
motive power. See executive power
mover
in actuality, 128n24
ultimate end as, 201
unmoved, 118, 128n31, 437
movetur (is moved), 116–17, 127n18
multiplication, of being, 78–79

names
adjective, 388n26
divine, 158
substantive, 388n26
of Trinity, 421–23
Naples, Aquinas in, 15–16, 27–28
natural cognition, 316
naturalism, 348
natural law, 246–51, 449
desire and, 250–51
inclinations and, 250
prudence linked to, 334
synderesis connected to, 256
natural philosophy, 210
natural theology, 4–7
natural worship, 449
nature
approach, 153
art imitating, 281
defined, 429–30
of emotions, 210–12
of God, 468–69
humanizing, 432–33
pre-rational, 248
 rational, 248
supposit-supporting, 432–33, 434n22
of Trinity, 435n24
necessitation, 204–7
necessity
of coercion, 205–6
conditional, 166
of grace, 501–2
of past, 193
way from, 121–22, 130n37
negative precepts, 281
Neo-Augustinianism, 47
Neoplatonism, 34, 55–62, 491
Neo-Thomists, 523–26
New Covenant, 449, 451
Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle)
sententia on, 36–37
structure of, 476, 485n12
virtues in, 273n6, 327, 329–30, 475–76
Nizolius, Marius, 522
noncontradiction, 191–93
nondiminishing qualifications, 389n28
nonrational creatures, law and, 244–47
now, flow of, 181–82
nutrition, 210, 359

object
appetible, 248–49
bodies as, 229–30
of charity, 296–98
of faith, 337–39, 346nn6–7
of hope, 294, 302–3
 immaterial, 89
proper, 214–15, 224n17
ratio in, 374
of thought, 375
wisdom, 330
observational knowledge, 176
Ockham, William, 334, 518
Old Covenant, 449, 451
Old Law, 450
omnipotence
Aquinas on, 187–94
defined, 188–91
God’s, 187–94
impeccability and, 193–94
noncontradiction and, 191–93
in scriptural texts, 187
sin and, 194
strength and, 187–88
in Summa contra Gentiles, 189–90, 193
in Summa theologiae, 188, 193
omnipresence, 409–10
one-many change, 94
one-one change, 94
On Interpretation (Aristotle), 33, 376, 386n3
On the Gift of Perseverance (De dono perseverantiae) (Augustine), 492
On the Predestination of the Saints (De praedestinatione sanctorum)
(Augustine), 492
ontological participation, 82
operations, 77, 174, 468. See also Independent Operation Premise
operative perfections, 158
opposite, fear of, 317–20
Opuscula Sacra (Theological Treatises) (Boethius), 48, 50
order
of creation, 166
of justice, 439–40
of parts, 239–40
ordered series, 119–20
Order of Preachers, 15–16
ordo disciplinae, 51
Organon (Aristotle), 33–34
Origen of Alexandria, 471
Original Sin, 368n34
origins, dependence and, 102n36
Orvieto, 19–21
outermost heaven, 182

pain, 227, 235n1, 502

PAP. See Principle of Alternative Possibilities
Paradiso (Dante), 482
Paris, Aquinas in, 16–18, 25–27
Parmenides, 79
participated likeness (participativa similitudo), 478
participation, 81–82, 152–54
particular reason, 215
parts
order of, 239–40
wholes and, 238–44
passion
action and, 108–9, 420
causation and, 106, 108–9
as change, 106
concupiscible, 221
God’s impassibility and, 173–84
irascible, 221
 of love and joy, 168
mercy as, 170
reason shaping, 267
passive potency, 173–76, 211
passive power, 106
past, changing, 192–93
paternity, 40, 420–21
Patience, as Fruit, 476, 481
patients, causation and, 105–6
peace
charity and, 298–99
as Fruit, 481
penance, sacrament of, 439, 445n21
perception, 210, 212
cognition and, 223, 313, 316
emotions and, 223
theories, 222–23
perfections
Christ’s, 431
common good and, 246
creaturely, 158–61
divine, 158–61, 164–66
entitative, 158
in Fourth Way, 124
God and, 71–72, 151, 158–61, 164–66
goodness and, 149
human knowledge and, 319
language and, 394–95
moral, 194
operative, 158
scope of, 131n61
virtues as, 266–69
 of wholes, 239
will as, 158, 164–66
Peri Hermeneias (Aristotle), 469
per se notum (known through itself), 331
person
defined, 420, 430
divine, 419–21, 425, 434n7
of faith, 405, 414n22
interaction with, 454
as subsistent relation, 419–21, 434n7
Trinity and, 419–21, 425
personal relationships, 403, 416n51, 421
Peter of Ireland, 15
Peter of Spain, 387n12
petitionary prayer, 467, 470–71, 474n10, 474n20
phantasm, 364, 493
philosophical theology
of Aquinas, 6–7
defined, 6
Islamic authors’, 66
revealed propositions explained by, 8
topics, 10
philosophy. See also mind and human nature, philosophy of
errors of, 58, 313
natural, 210
Plato’s place in, 57–58
philosophy of language. See language, theory of
physical processes, 230
Physicists, 58
Physics (Aristotle), 35–36, 38, 117
Piety, Gift of, 477–78, 487n28
Plantinga, Alvin, 138–39, 141
plasticity, cognitive, 355
Plato, 4, 34, 47, 351
Aquinas and, 55–62, 152–53, 325n22
Aristotle corrected by, 58–62
in history of philosophy, 57–58
Islamic authors and, 66
“real me” of, 229
Republic by, 66, 218
separated soul of, 459–60
pleasure, 229, 234, 235n7
Plotinus, 68
political virtues, 270–71
Porter, Jean, 201, 476, 484n7
possibility
contingency and, 190
PAP, 206
way from, 121–22, 130n37
Posterior Analytics (Aristotle), 33, 311, 317, 319, 330
highest rationality conditions in, 340
title of, 326n41
potency
act and, 67–68, 149, 153
motion and, 175–77
passive, 173–75, 211
powers. See also omnipotence
active, 106, 113n26
appetitive, 210, 328
art as, 106–7
causation and, 106–7, 472
cognitive, 215
executive, 217
imagination, 359
 inclinations distinct from, 113n26
intellectual, 359
rational, 359
sensory, 313–14, 359
soul’s, 357–60
ultimate happiness and, 234
practical knowledge, 277–79
practical reasoning
appetite and, 277
Aquinas on, 228, 276–83, 334
practical knowledge and, 277–79
prayer and, 469–70
principles, precepts, and structure of, 279–81
prudence and, 282–83
in Secunda Secundae, 279
sin and, 280
speculative reason and, 276–77
syllogism and error, 281–83
practical wisdom, 332
prayer (oratio)
to angels, 474n7
Aquinas on, 467–73
causality of, 471–72
Christian practice and, 473
confusion about, 467
defined, 467, 474n5
freedom and, 471–72
mental, 470
nature of God and, 468–69
objections to, 470–73
petitionary, 467, 470–71, 474n10, 474n20
practical reason and, 469–70
 to saints, 474n7
in Summa theologiae, 467
predicaments, 79
predication
accidental, 380
substantive names and, 388n26
suppositum in, 381–82
theory of, 376–77
in theory of language, 371–84
way of, 38–41
pre-rational nature, 248
presumption, 294
priesthood, of Christ, 442–44, 445nn59–60
Prima Pars, 21, 35, 37
analogy and, 396
Neoplatonic aspects of, 61
on speculative knowledge, 278
primary precepts, 281
Prima Secundae, 21–22, 265, 273, 329
prime matter
defined, 90, 112n2
development of thought about, 502
form and, 351, 459
individuation and, 90–93, 95–99, 101n17, 101n21, 102n29, 102n36
primum cognitum, 385
principle, cause as, 110
Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), 206
principle of impulsion, 420
private language, 375
privation, 380–81, 401
processions
defined, 420
 Trinity and, 419–21
Proclus, 55–62, 491
production, action and, 279, 331–32, 498
productive arts, 106
proof, of tenets beyond scope of reason, 126n3
proper object, 214–15, 224n17
proportion, agreement of, 500
proportionality, agreement of, 500
providence
Aquinas on, 401–12
flourishing of human beings and, 403, 405–7, 412, 413n15
problem of evil and, 401–12
prudence
art subordinated to, 279–80
conscience and, 258
defined, 327
infused, 484n7
as intellectual virtue, 327–34
limitations of, 334
as moral virtue, 278, 328, 333–34
natural law linked to, 334
practical knowledge and, 278
practical reasoning and, 282–83
types of, 271
Pseudo-Dionysius, 4, 16, 25, 147
psychological activity, 212
psychological analogy, 423
psychology, 210
punishment, 439

QDA. See Disputed Question on the Soul

QDM. See Quaestiones disputatae de malo
QDV. See Quaestiones disputatae de veritate
Quaestiones disputatae de malo (QDM) (Aquinas), 205, 208n22, 272, 492
Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (QDV) (Aquinas)
development of thought and, 492, 498–99, 501–2
on emotions, 209
on goodness, 149–50, 153–54
qualitative change, 117
quantitative change, 117
quantity, 420, 461
quantum metaphysics, 139–41
quid est, 137, 139, 143
Qur’an, 66–67, 69

rabbis, Doctor Communis among, 514

Rahner, Karl, 531n89
rancor, 221
ratio
in intellect, 374
in language theory, 373–75, 386n9
in procession doctrine, 420
rational appetite, 248–49
rationality
epistemic, 344
of faith, 341–44
highest conditions, 340
rational nature, 248
rational powers, 359
reactions, 211
“real me,” 229
real participation, 82
reason. See also practical reasoning
belief beyond scope of, 126n3
 cognition related to, 339–40
defined, 339
faith related to, 337–45
inferior, 258, 263n18
intellect contrasted with, 276–77
intellectual virtues perfecting, 328
irascible emotions close to, 225n25
particular, 215
passions shaped by, 267
speculative, 276–77
superior, 258, 263n18
theoretical, 256
reassembly, 464
reconstitution, 464
Reformation, 521–22
relations, Trinity and, 419–21
relatives, love of, 298
removetur (removing), 117
reproduction, 210
Republic (Plato), 66, 218
resonance, 482–83, 488nn56–57
resurrection
charity after, 503
composite theory and, 465n17
reassembly and, 464
reconstitution and, 464
soul and, 458–64
revealed theology
incarnation and, 429
natural theology compared to, 6–7
as science, 7–8
revelation
 faith in Trinity depending on, 418
Maimonides and, 68
via mediators, 346n13
sacraments as, 453
revenge, 174
riches, 233–34
Rome, Aquinas in, 20–25
Romulus and Remus example, 94–99, 102n29, 102n36, 103n37
Rowe, William, 416n52

sacra doctrina. See revealed theology

sacraments
Aquinas on, 448–56
Baptism, 451–52
being and, 454
as causes, 449, 451–56
cultural framework of, 449
defined, 448, 450
Eucharist, 443–44, 447n66, 450–51
incarnation linked to, 456
of penance, 439, 445n21
as revelation, 453
sacrifice related to, 455
of salvation, Christ as, 437–38
as signs, 449–53
in Summa theologiae, 449
as worship, 448–49
sacred doctrine, 330, 345
sacrifice
of Christ, 438, 442–44, 447n66
sacraments related to, 455
saints
 Aquinas canonized as, 518
prayer to, 474n7
salvation
Body of Christ in, 439, 441–44, 445n45
Christ as sacrament of, 437–38
Cross in, 436–37, 439
through death of Christ, 438–41, 445n46, 503
Gifts essential to, 270, 477
God willing, 167, 429
priesthood of Christ and, 442–44, 445nn59–60
as sacrifice, 438, 442–44, 447n66
through saving work of Christ, 436–44
in Summa contra Gentiles, 438–42, 444n4
theory of satisfaction, 436–44
sameness, principle of, 94–95, 98, 102n24
sanctification
suffering and, 407
by Trinity, 423–25
satisfaction, theory of, 436–44
saving work, of Christ, 436–44
scale of value, 402–4
scandal, 299
SCG. See Summa contra Gentiles
Schillebeeckx, E., 436–37, 440
scholastic tradition, Aquinas and, 50–51
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 235n8
science (scientia)
believing and, 317
divine, 78
explanations from, 468
dealing with faith, 317, 340–41
as intellectual virtue, 328, 330
 knowledge and, 311–12, 317–20
moral, 37, 279
theology as, 7–8, 50–51
theoretical, 78
of truth, 5–6
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (Super Sent.) (Aquinas), 209
scripture
authority of, 4, 419, 428
omnipotence in, 187
theological virtues in, 288–90, 295
secondary precepts, 281
second-personal habitus, 480–81, 483
Second Vatican Council, 525
Second Way, 119–20, 122, 129n36
Secunda Pars, 22, 27, 36–37, 265
Secunda Secundae, 21–22, 265, 271–72, 329
practical reasoning in, 279
theological virtues in, 289, 292
self-love, 268
self-movement, 210
semantic relations, 371
semantic triangle, 373
seminal reasons, 46
sensations, 235n10
intellect and, 313–15, 367n16
phantasms and, 364, 493
senses
external, 359
internal, 359, 364
sensible good/evil, 219–20, 224n18
sensitive appetite, 209–17, 219–20, 222
sensitive cognition, 212–13, 222
sensitive soul, 210
sensory images, 321, 493–97, 506n24
sensory powers, 313–14, 359
Sentences (Lombard), 16, 45, 191, 303, 519. See also Commentary on the
Book of Sentences
sententiae, 204
on Aristotle’s works, 33–39, 41
on De anima, 33–35
defined, 33
Sententia Libri De anima (In DA) (Aquinas), 33–35, 37, 365n3
Sententia Libri Ethicorum (In NE) (Aquinas), 36–37
Sententia super Metaphysicam (In Meta) (Aquinas), 37–39
Sententia super Physicam (In Phy) (Aquinas), 35–36, 38
separation
defined, 78
of soul, 458–64, 493–97
understanding of, 83n5
servile fear, 487n30
sexual intercourse, dictates of conscience and, 257–58
al-Shifa (Avicenna), 66
sight, as passive potency, 211
signification
causation and, 445n11
immediate, 375
mode of signifying disparate with, 384
of sacraments, 450
in theory of language, 372–76, 381
ultimate, 375–76
significative utterance, 372
signifying, mode of, 384
signs
sacraments as, 449–53
 words as, 373
similitude, 420
simpliciter, 361, 382, 405–6
simplicity, of God, 135–43
simultaneity, 129n39
sin
acquired virtues and, 485n11
Augustine defining, 260
avoidance of, 501
destructive effect of, 301
omnipotence and, 194
Original, 368n34
practical reasoning and, 280
responsibility for, 248
skeptical theism, 410–11, 417n55
skepticism, 312–13, 410–11, 417n55
sloth, 299
Socrates, 159, 327, 332
humanity of, 432, 434n20
separated soul of, 459–64
Son. See also Trinity
mission of, 424–25
properties and names of, 421–23
sorrow, 173–74
soteriology, 436–44
soul (anima), 34–35, 41n5
animal, 357–58
appetitive, 502–3
body related to, 350–51, 354–65, 368n33, 497
constitution and, 460–61
defined, 349–50, 353–54
as form, 353, 361–62, 367n22, 458–60
 identity and, 460–61
independence of, 354–57
intellective, 210
modes of existing, 495–96
in philosophy of mind and human nature, 349–60
powers of, 357–60
resurrection and, 458–64
sensitive, 210
separated, 458–64, 493–97
as subsistent, 366n12, 367n22
as substantial form, 353, 361–62, 458–60
types of, 210
speculative knowledge, 278
speculative reason, 276–77
speculative Trinitarian theology, 418–19
spiration, 420–21
spirits, gifts as, 269
ST. See Summa theologiae
strength, of God, 187–88
strong DDI, 177
Stump, Eleonore, 8–9, 200, 203
Suárez, Francisco, 522
subalternation-idea, 347n22
Submission Argument, 218–19
subsistent relations, 419–21, 434n7
substance, 68, 79, 101n21, 289
accidents and, 105, 500
human, 360–62
substantial change, 89–92, 112n2
substantial form, 90, 93, 96–98, 386n2
causal relata and, 109
prime matter and, 459
 soul as, 353, 361–62, 458–60
substantial unity, 362
substantive names, 388n26
suffering
of Christ, 436–37, 440–42, 444n4, 445n45
consolation and, 409–12, 415n44
from evil, 402–12
good of sufferer, 404–5
as involuntary simpliciter, 405–6
large-scale, 412
as medicinal, 408, 415n37
mysteriousness of, 410–12
in providing best thing, 408–9
role of, 407–9, 411
sanctification and, 407
in warding off worst thing, 407–8
Summa confessorum (John of Freiburg), 512
Summa contra Gentiles (SCG) (Aquinas)
in Baroque period, 521
credibility arguments in, 341–42
date of, 19
development of thought and, 498, 521
essence in, 81
eternity in, 183, 186n80
Five Ways and, 116
importance of, 492
natural theology developed in, 4–5
Neoplatonic aspects of, 60–61
omnipotence and, 189–90, 193
procession doctrine in, 420
purpose of, 5, 19, 116
salvation in, 438–42, 444n4
 scope of, 3
structure of, 19, 21–22
Summa theologiae (ST) (Aquinas). See also Five Ways
Aristotle and, 39–40
in Baroque period, 521–22
Body of Christ in, 441
dates of, 21
development of thought and, 494–95, 498, 501–3
divine illumination in, 46
emotions in, 209, 221
end of human action in, 199–201
erring conscience in, 259–62, 259t, 261t
eternity in, 178–79
God’s simplicity in, 136
on goodness, 147–55
in Greek, 513
Henry of Gorkum on, 519
Holy Spirit in, 422
importance of, 492
inclinations and, 107–8
knowledge in, 159–60
making satisfaction in, 438
moral theology in, 23–24
Neoplatonic aspects of, 60–62
omnipotence in, 188, 193
as philosophical theology paradigm, 6
philosophy of mind and human nature in, 350
prayer in, 467
Prima Pars of, 21, 35, 37, 61, 278, 396
Prima Secundae of, 21–22, 265, 273, 329
sacraments in, 449
sacred doctrine in, 345
 scope of, 3
Secunda Pars, 22, 27, 36–37, 265
Secunda Secundae, 21–22, 265, 271–72, 279, 289, 292, 329
Sententia Libri De anima and, 34–35
Sententia Libri Ethicorum and, 36–37
structure of, 19, 51, 72
synderesis in, 256
Tertia Pars, 21–22, 27
Treatise on Human Nature in, 350, 352, 354, 365n3
Trinity in, 8, 419
virtues in, 265, 270–71, 288–89, 292, 304n1, 475–77, 480–81, 483
writing of, 21–23
Super Boetium De Trinitate (Aquinas), 18, 23
Super De Causis (Aquinas), 27
superior reason, 258, 263n18
Super Sent. See Scriptum super libros Sententiarum
supposit-supporting nature, 432–33, 434n22
suppositum, 381–82
Sutton, Thomas, 517
Swinburne, Richard, 459–60
syllogism, practical, 281–83
syncategorematic terms, 376, 387n12
synderesis (infallible moral awareness)
conscience and, 255–62
defined, 255–56, 281
Jerome on, 255
natural law connected to, 256
in Summa theologiae, 256
synesis, 333

taxes, 243–44
taxonomy, of emotion, 218–22
teaching, learning and, 108–9, 113n30
temperance, 270, 485n10, 485n19
Tempier, Étienne, 516
Tertia Pars, 21–22, 27
testimony, divine, 341–43
theological perspective, in philosophy of mind and human nature, 348–50
theological virtues
charity, 287, 295–303, 343
connection of, 300
defined, 287–89
duration, 302–3
faith, 287–93, 300–303, 339–40, 343–45
God and, 287–304
happiness and, 236n13
hope, 287, 293–95, 300–304, 343
loss of, 300–302
political virtues and, 270–71
in scripture, 288–90, 295
in Secunda Secundae, 289, 292
sources, 303–4
theology. See also philosophical theology
Aristotle and, 33
Boethius and, 48–49
incarnation as problem of, 428–29
metaphysics distinguished from, 49
moral, 23–24
natural, 4–7
in philosophy of mind and human nature, 348–50
revealed, 6–8, 429
as science, 7–8, 50–51
scope and philosophical character of, 3
speculative Trinitarian, 418–19
theoretical reason, 256
theoretical science, 78
theoretical wisdom, 327
things, in semantic triangle, 373
Third Way, 121–22, 180
Thomists, Aquinas and, 515–26
time
of angels, 181–82
defined, 181
motion and, 182–84
timelessness, 180–84
Torrell, Jean-Pierre, 9
transcendentals, doctrine of, 147
transient action, 235n4
transitive action, 114n43
transmutation, 109–10
Treatise on God, 115
Treatise on Human Nature, 350, 352, 354, 365n3
Trinity
Aquinas on, 8, 25, 418–25
Bonaventure on, 418–19, 421–22
contemporary criticism of, 425
creative action of, 423–25
Disputed Questions and, 25
in exposition of speculative Trinitarian theology, 418–19
at heart of Christian faith, 418
id quod est and, 138–39
intellect of, 413n7
knowledge of, 322
nature of, 435n24
persons and, 419–21, 425
processions and, 419–21
 proofs of, 126n3
properties and names of, 421–23
relations and, 419–21
sanctifying action of, 423–25
in Summa theologiae, 8, 419
will of, 413n7
Word in, 419–20, 422, 498
truth, science of, 5–6
Tugwell, Simon, 467

ultimate end, 199–202

ultimate happiness, 233–34, 237n20
ultimate signification, 375–76
unbelief, 292–93
understanding
Gift of, 477–78, 486n26, 487n32
as intellectual virtue, 256, 328, 331
of separation, 83n5
unformed faith, 292–93, 301
union, with God, 232, 406–7, 414n25, 441, 483
universal concepts, intellect forming, 355–56
universal entities, 373
University of Paris, 3, 45, 515
univocal/univocally, 393–94
unmoved mover, 118, 128n31, 437
Urban, Linwood, 123
Urban IV (pope), 20
usus (making use), 202

value, scale of, 402–4

Vasquez, Gabriel, 522
verb, 376–81
Viaticum, 443
vices
Aquinas on, 265–73, 282
opposed to charity, 298–99
despair, 294
presumption, 294
unbelief as, 293
vicious, 283
virtues. See also specific virtues
actus of, 481–83, 488n49
Aquinas and, 231, 236n13, 252n34, 265–73, 287–304, 327–34
Aristotle on, 266, 273n6, 274n33, 327–34, 475–76, 483n2
cardinal, 236n13, 267–72, 329, 476
causation and, 265
charity as form of, 299
Christ’s death as, 437
connection of, 300
defined, 231, 266, 475, 483n2, 484n5
gifts distinguished from, 269, 329–30
as habitus, 265–66, 269–72, 273n2
happiness and, 236n13, 268
justice as, 328
loss of, 300–302
in Nicomachean Ethics, 273n6, 327, 329–30, 475–76
as normative ideals, 272–73
as perfections, 266–69
political, 270–71
as principle of action, 266–71
in Summa theologiae, 265, 270–71, 288–89, 292, 304n1, 475–77, 480–81,
483
unity of, 484n9
will shaped by, 268
 as wisdom, 327
visible missions, 424–25
Vitoria, Francisco de, 520–21
volition, 212–17
voluntarism, 203–4, 503
voluntas, 202, 208n8

way. See also Five Ways

from efficient causation, 119–20
from governance, 124–25
from gradation, 123–24
from motion, 116–19, 175
from possibility and necessity, 121–22, 130n37
of predication, 38–41
weak DDI, 177
Weisheipl, James, 523–24
Westberg, Daniel, 280
wholes
parts and, 238–44
perfection of, 239
will
act of, 113n19
cancer of, 406
common good and, 242–43
complete good attracting, 343–44
defined, 164
electio and, 202
esse and, 151, 160, 162, 165–66, 169
faith related to, 340, 343–44
as giving, 165
God’s, 158–59, 164–70, 189, 192–94, 207, 429
goodness and, 165
 as inclination, 205–6
intellect and, 203–4, 413n12
intentio and, 202–3, 214, 224n18
joy and, 168–69
justice and, 169–70
law and, 238, 249–50
liberty of, 253n62
love and, 168–69, 174
mercy and, 169–70
moved, 486n25
as perfection, 158, 164–66
sensitive appetite subordinate to, 217
of Trinity, 413n7
virtues shaping, 268
voluntas and, 202, 208n8
William of Moerbeke, 491
willing, of creatures, 166–68
Wippel, John, 116–17, 124, 128n20
wisdom
Aristotle on, 37–39, 329–30
cognition and, 37–38
Gift of, 477–78
as intellectual virtue, 328–30
object of, 330
practical, 332
theoretical, 327
virtues as, 327
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 230, 236n11
Word
in Eucharist, 444
Love and, 419–20, 422–23
in Trinity, 419–20, 422, 498
words
applied to creatures, 394
mental, 497–98
in semantic triangle, 373
as signs, 373
univocal and equivocal use of, 393–94
worship, sacraments as, 448–49
wrath, 221

zygotehood, 91, 93