a. Graces gratuitously given, i.e., spiritual charisms (qq. 171–78)
b. The active and contemplative lives (qq. 179–82)
c. Various ecclesiastical offices (qq. 183–89)
Tertia Pars, IIIa (1272–73).
Christ as the way, or the consummation of the theological task
1. Christ in himself (qq. 1–59)
a. Introduction: The fittingness of the Incarnation (q. 1)
b. The mode of the union (qq. 2–15)
— The union and the Person assuming (qq. 2–3)
— The human nature assumed (qq. 4–6)
— What was co-assumed (qq. 7–15):
* Christ’s grace (qq. 7–8)
* Christ’s knowledge (qq. 9–12)
* Christ’s power (q. 13)
* Christ’s weaknesses of soul and body (qq. 14–15)
c. Consequences of the union (qq. 16–26)
— Concerning Christ himself (qq. 16–19)
— Christ in relation to the Father (qq. 20–24)
— Christ in relation to us (qq. 25–26)
d. The mysteries of Christ’s life and death (qq. 27–59)
— Christ’s birth (qq. 27–36)
— Circumcision (q. 37)
— Baptism (qq. 38–39)
— Life in the world and miracles (qq. 40–45)
— Passion (qq. 46–52)
— Resurrection and exaltation (qq. 53–59)
2. Christ active in the sacraments (qq. 60–90)
a. Sacraments in general (qq. 60–65)
b. Sacraments in particular (qq. 66–90)
— Baptism (qq. 66–71)
— Confirmation (q. 72)
— Eucharist (qq. 73–83)
— Penance (qq. 84–90)
Supplementum, Supp. 99 qq., put together by Thomas’s disciples after his death, mostly drawn from his earlier Writing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard
1. The sacraments in particular, continued (qq. 1–68)
a. Penance, continued (qq. 1–28)
b. Extreme unction (qq. 29–33)
c. Holy orders (qq. 34–40)
d. Matrimony (qq. 41–68)
2. The last things and eternal life (qq. 69–99)
a. The resurrection of the body and last judgment (qq. 69–91)
— The place of souls after death (qq. 69–72)
— The signs of the last judgment (qq. 73–74)
— The resurrection itself (qq. 75–78)
— The condition of the resurrected (qq. 79–87)
— The last judgment (qq. 88–91)
b. Heaven (qq. 92–96)
c. Hell (qq. 97–99)
The Prima Pars
After discussing sacra doctrina in article 1, the Prima Pars begins with Thomas’s teaching about God and includes sections on the divine essence in itself (qq. 2–26), the Trinity of Persons (qq. 27–43), and the procession of creatures from God (qq. 44–119). Like a series of Chinese boxes, each of these sections opens up to reveal other boxes and yet smaller boxes within. In investigating many of the doctrines treated in the Summa, Aquinas follows a pattern of asking three questions: (1) whether the thing in question exists (an sit); (2) what the thing is (quid sit); and (3) how the thing functions (qualis sit). Thus, the section on the essence of God deals with three issues: whether God exists (q. 2); how God exists, “or rather, how God does not exist,” as Thomas tellingly puts it (qq. 3–13); and finally how God acts (qq. 14–26).1
Analysis I. The God Question (Ia, qq. 2–13)
Question 2 of the Summa, with its “five ways” (quinque viae) or proofs, for the existence of God, is perhaps the most read portion of the whole book. What was Thomas trying to do in the three articles that make up this brief question? Many argue that he was constructing a demonstration in what we today call philosophical theology, that is, a natural proof of God’s existence. Others contend that the Summa is not a philosophical exercise as such but rather a series of reflections based in revealed truth on the role of reason in faith. This is why at the start Thomas cites a biblical, not a philosophical authority, Exodus 3:14, “I am who am” (q. 2.3). A second point of contention is whether or not Thomas is in fact giving his own proofs for God’s existence. There is disagreement here, too, as some contend that he is not so much providing his own proofs as reflecting on the types of arguments philosophers have made for God’s existence.
It is important to pay attention to the location of the five modes for arguing for God’s existence in the structure of question 2. Thomas begins (art. 1) by ruling out any a priori, or self-evident, proofs for God’s existence, that is, demonstrations based on the nature of the term God or on the mind’s ability to conceive of truth as demanding a “First Truth.” Thomas insists that God’s existence is self-evident to God (quoad se), but not to the limited human mind (quoad nos) that cannot know the divine essence. Here Thomas is taking a stance against some important strands in Christian thought. The second article rules out the opposing error of fideism, the view that God’s existence can be affirmed on the basis of faith alone because of its superiority to reason. Thomas contends that while we cannot prove God’s existence by demonstrating why God must exist, because we do not know God’s nature, we can still demonstrate that God exists from his effects. In article 3 then, he investigates “whether God exists” through five ways, or lines of argument.
In investigating five arguments for the existence of God, Thomas follows previous philosophers—especially Aristotle—but the arguments are condensed and adapted for his purposes. Each of the five ways follows a similar structure. Thomas begins from observations about the world around us, then investigates the nature of the phenomenon by invoking metaphysical principles. In the first way, for example, Thomas argues that change cannot be fully understood in the realm of physics alone; it demands a metaphysical explanation. Change—that is, a transition from potentiality to actuality (e.g., the transition from being cold to being hot)—demands a catalyst of change outside the being that is changing, because “a thing in the process of change cannot itself and in the same way be both the cause of motion and what is moved; it cannot change itself. Everything that is changed [in this sense] must be changed by something else.” With regard to necessary causes, where the cause of change must be presently active for the change to take place (e.g., the stick has to be present for it to move the stone), Thomas argues that an infinite regress of causes is impossible. He therefore concludes that there must be “a First Cause of change, which everyone calls God.”
A full explanation of Thomas’s five ways of proving God’s existence is beyond the purview of this book. Each has elicited a large literature, with many Thomists upholding the validity of the arguments, and other philosophers and theologians denying them.2 Since the five ways reflect the arguments of previous thinkers,3 some students of Thomas have wondered if there is a more properly “Thomist” proof, either implicit in them, or developed in some other place in Thomas’s writings. Such questions cannot delay us here. It is important to note, however, that the five ways must be seen within the perspective of the whole program of the Summa.
Having determined “that God is” (an sit), Thomas turns to exploring “what God is” (quid sit) in questions 3 to 13. The exercise is paradoxical, because God is not a “what,” that is, a being like any of the beings we can know and define. God does not fall under the general notion of being (ens commune) at all. Thomas again reminds us that he treats God from the perspective of revealed truth by citing John 4:24, “God is spirit” (q. 3.1). The questions that follow in this part of the Summa are exercises in the logic of speaking about the unknowable God.
The key to Thomas’s doctrine of God is found in question 3 on the divine simpleness (simplicitas). Everything we know in the created world has some kind of composition, for example, the composition of parts in a body, the composition of formal and material principles, and the composition of essence and existence—that is, between what something is and the fact
that it is. (Knowing what a dinosaur is does not mean that dinosaurs have to exist, as we know from experience because there are no more dinosaurs.) God is not a body, nor any kind of composite thing, because there is no difference between God and whatever things we truly ascribe to him, such as divinity, life, goodness, and so on. God is his goodness. In article 4 Thomas poses the question, “Whether in God essence (essentia, i.e., what God is) is the same as his act of existence (esse)?” He answers in the affirmative. Every being whose essence is not its existence—that is, every being that does not need to exist—must have its existence caused by a being that necessarily exists. Since God is the First Cause of all, “it is impossible … that his existence is one thing and his essence another.” Thomas continues, “Because existence is the actuality of every form and nature … , it is necessary that existence itself (ipsum esse) be compared to the essence that is different from it, as act is compared to possibility.” Whereas in Aristotle’s universe all beings were composed of possibility for a form and its actuation, in Thomas’s universe, by contrast, the relations of possibility and actuality in creatures are rooted in a deeper distinction, namely, the difference between the God who must be, because what he is is nothing other than his existence, and all other things, which need not have been, but have been called into being by God’s creative will.
For Thomas, when we think about the world we are confronted by the question, “Why is there anything?” One might be tempted to reply, “Who cares? That’s just the way it is.” Thomas, of course, does care. His search for ultimate answers led him to conclude that all the beings we know need not have been. They are, in other words, contingent. But the fact that they do exist requires a being whose essence (what it is) is identical with existence (it is), and that such a being is one and the same as the God of Exodus 3:14, who said, “I am who am.” God, therefore, is not the highest of beings in a hierarchy of good, better, and best within the category of “being in general.” Instead, he is totally outside any genus or hierarchy of being (q. 3.5) in a realm beyond our ability to conceptualize. Thomas is far from subscribing to the view that theologians later called “ontotheology,” that is, the notion that God can be spoken of within the categories we use for other beings.4 As Etienne Gilson and others have shown,5 for Thomas ultimate reality is not substance, or the One, or essence, or some other of the transcendental terms explored by philosophers. The pure act of existence is not a concept, a property or an attribute. Rather, it is what we affirm when we make the judgment that God is.6 In this sense, questions 3 to 13 of the Prima Pars are an exercise in transcendental tautology in which we learn that our attempts to capture the absolute simpleness of God in human language simply cannot apply to God. Because there is no difference in God between his essence and his existence, or between his perfections and his nature, all statements such as “God is good” or “God is perfect” can be reduced to the formula, “To be God is to be.” In Thomas’s view, the wisdom of sacra doctrina is not learning more of what can be said about God, but in coming to appreciate more and more fully the mystery of God’s unknowable existence by exploring how language falls short of knowing or naming God.
Further on in this initial God section of the Prima Pars (qq. 4–11), Thomas conducts a survey of the traditional “divine names,” that is, terms or predicates ascribed to God. Here he takes up a theme explored by early Christian thinkers, especially Pseudo-Dionysius. Thomas distinguishes between the negative names (God’s lack of composition, lack of end, lack of change) and positive ones (God’s perfection, goodness, omnipresence, eternity, and oneness).7 God’s absolute simpleness, states Thomas, expresses his transcendent difference from created reality, while naming God as the perfection of all perfections shows that he is immanent in his creation.8 The different expositions in this section of Prima Pars each reveal something of the richness of Thomas’s theology of the divine names.
Thomas caps his treatment of the divine essence with two questions of great import. Question 12 explores how we can be said to know God, that is, the modes in which our intellect relates to knowledge of God, while question 13 asks what exactly we do when we name God. Question 12 begins by noting that because God is infinite, we can never know God essentially, that is, the way he knows himself, although faith teaches us that our “natural desire to know the cause from the effect” means that our final happiness rests in the vision of God. Nor can we know God through any created likeness or illumination. Even the vision of God in heaven, although it will involve a direct beatifying sight, will not be a comprehensive vision in which we will see God as God sees God. Here Thomas also denies that anyone in this life could see God’s essence save by a brief miraculous exception, and closes by arguing that in our present limited condition grace grants us higher knowledge of God than reason does.
Question 13 is a reflection on speaking about God as simple, perfect, good, one, and the like. What rules ought to govern such speaking, and what do they tell us about the limits of language about God? What terms are appropriate for speaking about God? Thomas begins with the issue of whether any names could really fit God. Thomas approaches the question by invoking a central motif of his thought, the three modes of predicating terms of God. “Because God cannot be seen by us in this life through his essence, he is known by us through creatures, [1] insofar as he is their source, and [2] by way of eminence [i.e., as surpassing them all], and [3] by negation.” Here he takes exception to the negative view of Maimonides, according to which all true statements about God are essentially negative, such that names like “goodness” can signify only that God is not like the evil or privation found in created things. Thomas, on the contrary, holds that words indicating perfections—like goodness—really do signify that God is good, but also that the manner of God’s goodness goes beyond anything we could ever know. To say that God is living, for example, “signifies God as the source in whom life pre-exists, although in a higher way than we can understand or signify.” Certain words (e.g., goodness and wisdom) can be used of God directly (proprie), and not just because God is the cause of these realities in creatures. “Words like this signify the divine perfection, but imperfectly, just as creatures represent him in an imperfect way.” Although these names/words can be used properly of God, what does this mean given the imperfection of all our terms in relation to God? How is radical imperfection compatible with proper predication? At this point Thomas introduces an important distinction: “In the names we give to God there are two things to be considered, first, the perfections themselves, such as goodness, life, and the like, and the second, the mode of signifying” (a. 3 corp.). What Thomas means is that we can be sure that goodness is true of God, but that we have no idea of how transcendent goodness is realized in God. Once again, there is no knowledge of God’s essence, or of the perfections that are identical with it.
Thomas’s line of argument reaches its culmination in article 5, which asks, “Whether things said of God and creatures are expressed univocally?” Univocal speaking means that when we use a term like “being” of God and a creature we are using it in one and the same way (i.e., both God and creature are beings). Equivocation, on the other hand, means that the same word (e.g., “tart”) is used of two totally different things, that is, a dessert and a woman of dubious repute. Thomas argues against both these positions, defending the middle path of analogy: “words of this kind [i.e., perfection terms] are spoken about God and creatures by way of analogy, that is, according to a kind of proportion.” Thomas’s teaching on analogy has been the subject of a large literature.9 He employed analogy as a tool for talking about God and God’s relation to creatures—for saying how God and creatures are “differently the same.” The sameness resides in the fact that both God and creatures are affirmed as truly good; the difference is based on the fact that we can understand how creatures are good, but not how goodness is transcendentally realized in God. Speaking by way of analogy is central to the Summa. Many of the more than two thousand articles that follow
make use of analogy, because any time we use words both of God and created reality, they have to be employed in an analogical way.
Having finished his consideration of God’s essence (quid sit), Thomas turns to how God acts in questions 14 to 26, that is, how God knows and wills. With his treatment of God’s nature as one then completed, the next major section of the Prima Pars (qq. 27–43) treats God as Trinity. Thomas insisted that revelation teaches two kinds of truths: those that are accessible to human reason, but with difficulty, and those that surpass the powers of reason. Among the latter is the doctrine that the one God is a Trinity of persons.10 The Trinity was central to the Christian reading of both the Old and the New Testaments. Thomas’s task was (1) positively, to synthesize the scriptural teaching about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that is, to construct an ordered account of the Trinitarian doctrine found in the Bible and ecclesiastical tradition, as well as (2) negatively, to answer objections that for God to be one and three is nonsense or a logical contradiction. Treating the Trinity after the divine unity, as Thomas does, is not the only way to organize the data of sacra doctrina, but it need not be taken as somehow devaluing or minimizing Trinitarian doctrine. For Thomas, the Trinity is central—the God from whom all things come and to whom they return is a communion of shared knowing and loving, a transcendent divine “friendship” beyond our powers of understanding. Organizing his account around four fundamental categories (procession, relation, person, and mission), Thomas’s theology of the Trinity has remained influential in the West down to the present.
Analysis II. What Is Creation? (Ia, qq. 44–46)
Having completed his consideration of God’s nature in itself, Thomas takes up God as the creator of the universe under three headings: (1) the notion of creation (qq. 44–46), (2) the kinds of creatures in God’s dominion (qq. 47–102), and (3) the providence by which God governs creation (qq. 103–19).
An essential difference between the worldviews found in ancient philosophy and the belief systems of the three monotheistic faiths concerns the notion of creation. This is the difference between a view of the universe as something that always was and a quite different picture of a contingent universe brought into being by the free decision of the Creator God.11 From the perspective of creation, God is utterly transcendent to the world, not merely its best or highest part. Aquinas’s understanding of creation is a systematic expression of this foundational truth.
Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae Page 7
