QUAESTIONES DISPUTATAE DE POTENTIA DEI

Is God’s Power Infinite?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xxv, a. 2: C.G. I, 43]

THE second point of inquiry is whether God’s power is infinite: and it would seem that it is not.

1. It is stated in Metaph. ix, 1, that in nature any active power that has no corresponding passive power is fruitless. But no passive power in nature corresponds to an infinite power in God. Therefore an infinite power in God would be fruitless.

2. The Philosopher proves (Phys. viii, 10) that a thing of finite magnitude has not infinite power: since if it had it would act in no time. Because the greater power acts in less time: wherefore the greater the power the less the time. But there is no proportion between an infinite and a finite power. Neither, therefore, is there proportion between the time taken by the action of an infinite power, and that taken by the action of a finite power. Yet between an time and any other time there is proportion. Therefore since a finite power takes time to move, an infinite power will move in no time. For the same reason, if God’s power is infinite, it will always act without time: but this is false.

3. To this you may reply that God’s will determines in how much time he will bring his effects to completion. —On the contrary, God’s will cannot change his omnipotence. But it is natural to an infinite power to act without time. Therefore this cannot be changed by God’s will.

4. A power is made known by its effect. But God cannot produce an infinite effect. Therefore his power is not infinite.

5. Power is proportionate to operation. But God’s operation is simple. Therefore his power is simple also. But the simple and the infinite are mutually incompatible. Therefore the same conclusion follows.

6. Infinity is an attribute of quantity according to the Philosopher (Phys. i, i). But in God there is neither quantity nor magnitude. Therefore his power cannot be infinite.

7. Whatever is distinct is finite. But God’s power is distinct from other things. Therefore it is finite.

8. The infinite denotes something endless. Now end is threefold: the end of a magnitude, as a point; the end of perfection, as a form; and the end of intention, as a final cause. But the last two since they belong to, perfection must not be removed from God. Therefore the divine power is not infinite.

 9. If God’s power be infinite, this can only be because it is concerned with infinite effects. But there are many other things which have effects potentially infinite; thus the intellect can understand an infinite number of things potentially, and the sun can produce an infinite number of things. If, then, God’s power be infinite, for the same reason many other powers will be infinite: which is impossible.

10. Finish is something excellent: and all that is excellent should be ascribed to God. Therefore God’s power should be described as finite.

ii. According to the Philosopher (Phys. iii, 6) infinity implies parts and matter: which imply imperfection and are unbecoming to God. Therefore there is no infinity in God’s power.

12. According to the Philosopher (Phys. i, 6) a term is neither finite nor infinite. But God’s power is the term of all things. Therefore it is not infinite.

13. God works with his whole power. If then his power be infinite, his effect will be always infinite: and this is impossible.

On the contrary, Damascene says that the infinite is that which neither time nor place nor mind can grasp. Now this is becoming to the divine power. Therefore God’s power is infinite.

Further, Hilary says (De Trin. viii) that God’s power is immeasurable; he is the living mighty One, ever Present, never failing. Now that which is immeasurable is infinite. Therefore God’s power is infinite.

I answer that a thing is said to be infinite in two ways: First, by way of privation; thus a thing is said to be infinite, when it is in its nature to have an end, and yet it has none: but such infinity is found only in quantities. Secondly, by way of negation, when it has no end. Infinity cannot be ascribed to God in the former sense, both because in him there is not quantity, and because all privation denotes imperfection, which is far removed from God. On the other hand infinity in the second sense is ascribed to God and to all that is in him, because he himself, his essence, his wisdom, his power, his goodness are all without limit, wherefore in him all is infinite.

With special regard to the infinity of his power it must be observed that whereas active power answers to act, the quantity of a power depends on the quantity of the act: since the more actual a thing is the more it abounds in active power. Now God is infinite act: for act can be finite in two ways only. First, on the part of the agent: thus an architect by his will sets definite bounds to the beauty of a house. Secondly, on the part of the recipient: thus the heat of a furnace is limited by and its intensity depends upon the disposition of the fuel. Now God’s action is not limited by any agent, because it proceeds from no other but himself: nor is it limited by any recipient, because since there is no passive potency in him, he is pure self-subsistent act. Wherefore it is clear that God is infinite: and this can be made evident as follows: The being of man is limited to the species of man, because it is received into the nature of the human species: the same applies to the being of a horse, or of any other creature. But the being of God, since it is not received into anything, but is pure being, is not limited to any particular mode of a perfection of being, but contains all being within itself: and thus as being taken in its widest sense can extend to an infinity of things, so the divine being is infinite: and hence it is clear that his might or active power is infinite. But we must note that, although his power is infinite by reason of his essence, nevertheless from the very fact that we refer it to the things whereof it is the source, it has a certain mode of infinity which the essence has not.

For in the objects of power there is a certain multitude, in action also there is a certain intensity according to its efficiency, so that a certain infinity may be ascribed to active power after the manner of the infinity of quantity, whether continuous or discrete. Of discrete quantity, forasmuch as the quantity of a power is measured by many or few objects,—and this is called extensive quantity: of continuous quantity, forasmuch as the quantity of a power is measured by the intensity or slackness of its action, —and this is called intensive quantity. The former quantity is ascribed to power in respect of its objects, the latter in respect of its action: and active power is the principle of both. In both ways the divine power is infinite: since never does it produce so many effects that it cannot produce more; nor does it ever act with such intensity, that it cannot act more intensely. But in the divine operation intensity is not measured according as operation is in the operator, for then it is always infinite, since God’s operation is his essence, but according as it attains its effect, for thus some things are moved by God more efficaciously, some less.

Reply to the First Objection. Nothing in God can be called fruitless: for a fruitless thing is one that is directed to an end which it cannot attain: whereas God and all that is in him, are not directed to an end, but are the end. Or we may reply that the Philosopher is speaking of, a natural active power. For there is co-ordination in the things of nature, and in all created things: whereas God is outside that order, since to him as an extrinsic good is the whole of it directed, as the army to the commander-in-chief, as the Philosopher says (Metaph. xii, 10). — Consequently there is no need in creatures for a power corresponding to God’s power.

Reply to the Second Objection. According to the Commentator (Phys. viii, com. 79) this argument drawn from the proportion between time and the mover’s power means that a magnitude’s infinite power is proportionate to an infinity of time, since they both belong to one definite genus, i.e. continuous quantity; but it does not hold with regard to an infinity apart from magnitude, that is not .proportionate to an infinity of time, since it is of another kind. It may also be replied, as hinted in the objection, that since God acts by his will, he adapts the movement of whatever he moves, according as he wills.

Reply to the Third Objection. Although God’s will cannot change his power, it can limit its effect: because the will is the motive force of power.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. The very notion of being made or created is incompatible with the infinite. The very fact that it is made out of nothing, argues its imperfection and potentiality, and shows that it is not pure act: and consequently it cannot be equalled to the infinite, as though it also were infinite.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. Privative infinity is an attribute of quantity and is repugnant to simplicity; whereas negative infinity is not.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. This argument applies to infinity taken as a privation.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. A thing may be distinct in two ways. First, by some kind of adjunct; thus man is distinct from an ass by the difference of reason: and a distinct thing of this kind must needs be finite, because the adjunct defines it as a particular thing. Secondly, by itself —and thus God is distinct from other things: and this for the simple reason that it is impossible to add anything to him: hence it does not follow that he is finite, either in himself or as regards anything that is attributed to him.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. Since end implies perfection, it is ascribed to God in the highest possible way; namely, that he is essentially the end, and not denominatively finite.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. As in quantities we may consider infinity in regard to one dimension, and not in regard to another, or again in regard to all dimensions; even so may we consider infinity in effects. Thus it is possible for a creature considered in itself to be able to produce an infinity of effects in some particular respect, for instance, as regards number in one species; and then the nature of all those effects is finite, being confined to one particular species—for instance, an infinite number of men or asses. But it is impossible for a creature to be able to produce an infinity of effects in every way, in point of number, species and genera: this belongs to God alone, wherefore his power alone is simply infinite.

The reply to the Tenth Objection is the same as to the Eighth.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. This argument takes infinity as a privation: and the same answer applies to the Twelfth Objection.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. God always works with the whole of his power. But his effect is limited according to the determination of his will and the order of reason.

Are Those Things Possible to God Which Are Impossible to Nature?

THE third point of inquiry is whether God can do what nature cannot: and the reply seemingly should be in the negative.

1. The (ordinary) gloss on Romans xi, 24 says that since God is the author of nature he cannot do what is contrary to nature. Now things that nature cannot do are contrary to nature. Therefore God cannot do them.

2. As all that is necessary in nature can be demonstrated, so whatsoever is impossible in nature can be disproved by demonstration. Now every conclusion of a demonstration involves the principles of that demonstration: and all principles of demonstration imply the principle that yes and no cannot be both true at the same time. Therefore this principle is involved whenever a thing is impossible to nature. But according to the respondent God cannot make yes or no to be both true at the same time. Therefore he cannot do what is naturally impossible.

3. There are two principles under God, reason and nature. Now God cannot do what is impossible to reason, for instance, that a genus be not predicated of its species. Neither therefore can he do what is impossible to nature.

4. As false and true are in relation to knowledge, so are possible and impossible to operation. Now God cannot know what is false in nature; therefore he cannot do what is impossible in nature.

5. SO far as there is uniformity among a number of things, what is proved of one is taken to be proved of all: thus if it be proved of one triangle that the three angles equal two right angles, we take this to be proved of all triangles. Now all impossible things apparently agree in the point of their being possible or impossible to God: both in relation to the doer, since God’s power is infinite, and in relation to the thing done, since everything has an obediential potentiality to God. Therefore, if there be anything naturally impossible that God cannot do, seemingly he cannot do anything that is impossible.

6. It is written (2 Tim. ii, 13) that God is faithful, he cannot deny himself. But he would deny himself, says the (interlinear) gloss, if he fulfilled not his promise. Now, as God’s promise comes from God, so is all truth from God: because (according to a gloss of Ambrose [=Ambrosiaster] on 1 Corinthians xii, 3, No man can say, the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Spirit) all truth, by whomsoever uttered, is from the Holy Spirit. Therefore God cannot act counter to the truth. He would, however, were he to do what is impossible. Therefore he cannot do what is naturally impossible.

7. Anselm says (Cur Deus homo, i, 24) that God cannot do what is in the least way unbecoming. Now it would be unbecoming for yes and no to be true at the same time, because the mind would be in a fix. Therefore God cannot do this; and consequently he cannot do whatever is impossible to nature.

8. No artist can Work counter to his art, since this is the very principle of his work. But God would be working against his art, were he to do what is impossible in nature, because the order of nature, in relation to which that thing is impossible, is a reflection of the divine art. Therefore God cannot do what is naturally impossible.

9. That which is impossible in itself is more impossiblee than what is impossible accidentally. Now God cannot do what is accidentally impossible, for instance, that what has been should not have been; thus Jerome says (Ep. 22, Ad Eustoch., de cust. virg.) that God, whereas he can do other things, cannot make a virgin of one who is not a virgin. See also Augustine (Contra Faust. xxvi, 5) and the Philosopher (Ethic. vi, 2). Therefore God cannot do what is in itself naturally impossible.

i. On the contrary, it is written (Luke i, 37): No word shall be impossible with God.

2. Any power that can do one thing, but not another, is limited. If, then, God can do what is possible to nature, but not that which is impossible, or some that are impossible and not others, it would seem that his is a limited power, which is contrary to what we have proved above. Therefore, etc.

3. That which is uncircumscribed by anything in existence, cannot be hindered by anything in existence. Now God is uncircumscribed by anything in existence. Therefore nothing in existence can be a hindrance to him: so that the truth of the principle of contradiction cannot be a hindrance to God’s action. The same applies to all other principles.

4. Privation is not susceptive of degrees. Now the impossible connotes privation of power. Therefore if God can do one impossible thing, for instance restore sight to the blind, it would seem that he can do all.

5. All resistance is by reason of opposition. But nothing can oppose God’s power, as shown above. Therefore nothing can resist it: and so he can do all things impossible.

6. As blindness is opposed to sight, so is virginity opposed to birth-giving. Now God made a virgin to give birth and yet remain a virgin. Therefore he can equally make a blind man to see while remaining blind, and he can make yes and no to be true at the same time, and consequently all impossible things.

7. It is more difficult to unite diverse substantial forms, than diverse accidental forms. Now God united together the most diverse substantial forms, namely the divine and human natures, which differ as uncreated and created. Much more, therefore, can he unite two accidental forms, so that the same thing be black and white: and thus the same conclusion follows.

8. If we deny of the thing defined part of its definition, it will follow that contrary statements are true at the same time; for instance, if we were to say that a man is not a rational being. Now it is part of the definition of a straight line that its extremities are points. Therefore if anyone were to deny this of a straight line, it would follow that two contrary statements are simultaneously true. Now God did this when he came in to his disciples, the doors being closed: since two bodies were then in the same place, so that two lines would have terminated in two points only, and each of them also in two points. Consequently God can make yes and no to be true at the same time, and therefore he can do all things impossible.

I answer that according to the Philosopher (Metaph. v, 12) a thing is said to be possible or impossible in three ways. First, in respect of a power active or passive: thus it is possible for a man to walk in respect of his ability to walk, whereas it is impossible for him to fly. Secondly, not in respect of a power but in itself: thus we say that a thing is possible if it be not impossible, and that a thing is impossible which of necessity is not. Thirdly, a thing is said to be possible in respect of mathematical power, as we say in geometry; thus a certain line is potentially measurable, because its square is measurable. Omitting this last kind of possibility, let us consider the other two. It must be noted that a thing is said to be impossible, not in respect of any power, but in itself, by reason of the mutual exclusion of terms. Now all such mutual exclusion corresponds to some opposition: and every opposition connotes affirmation and negation, as is proved in Metaph. x, 4, so that all impossibilities of this kind imply the mutual exclusion of an affirmation and a negation. That this cannot be ascribed to any active power is proved as follows. All active power is consequent upon the actuality and entity of the thing to which it belongs. Now every agent has a natural tendency to produce its like: wherefore every act of an active power terminates in being. For although at times non-being is the result of an action, such as, for instance, corruption, this is simply because the being of one thing is incompatible with the being of another; thus the being of a hot thing is incompatible with the being of a cold thing: wherefore the chief purpose of heat is to generate heat, but that it destroys cold is by way of consequence. Now, for yes and no to be true at the same time cannot have the nature of being, nor even of non-being, since being removes non-being, and nonbeing removes being: and consequently it can be neither the principal nor the secondary term of action of an active power.

On the other hand a thing is said to be impossible in respect of a power in two ways. First, on account of an inherent defect in the power, in that the effect is beyond its reach, as when a natural agent cannot transform a certain matter. Secondly, when the impossibility arises from without, as in the case of a power that is hindered or tied. Accordingly there are three ways in which it is said to be impossible for a thing to be done. First, by reason of a defect in the active power, whether in transforming matter, or in any other way. Secondly, by reason of a resistant or an obstacle. Thirdly, because that which is said to be impossible cannot be the term of an action. Those things, then, which are impossible to nature in the first or second way are possible to God: because, since his power is infinite, it is subject to no defect, nor is there any matter that he cannot transform at will, since his power is irresistible. On the other hand those things which involve the third kind of impossibility God cannot do, since he is supreme act and sovereign being: wherefore his action cannot terminate otherwise than principally in being, and secondarily in nonbeing. Consequently he cannot make yes and no to be true at the same time, nor any of those things which involve such an impossibility. Nor is he said to be unable to do these things through lack of power, but through lack of possibility, such things being intrinsically impossible: and this is what is meant by those who say that ‘God can do it, but it cannot be done.’

Reply to the First Objection. Augustine’s words quoted in the gloss mean, not that God is unable to do otherwise than nature does, since his works are often contrary to the wonted course of nature; but that whatever he does in things is not contrary to nature, but is nature in them, forasmuch as he is the author and controller of nature. Thus in the physical order we observe that when an inferior body is moved by a higher, the movement is natural to it, although it may not seem in keeping with the movement which it has by reason of its own nature: thus the tidal movement of the sea is caused by the moon; and this movement is natural to it as the Commentator observes (De coelo et mundo, iii, comm. 20), although water of itself has naturally a downward movement. Thus in all creatures, what God does in them is quasi-natural to them. Wherefore we distinguish in them a twofold potentiality: a natural potentiality in respect of their proper operations and movements, and another, which we call obediential, in respect of what is done in them by God.

Reply to the Second Objection. Every impossibility involves the incompatibility of affirmation and negation as such. Those things, however, that are impossible by reason of a lack of the natural power, such as that a blind man can be made to see, and the like, since they are not intrinsically impossible, do not involve such an impossibility in themselves, but only in relation to the natural power to which they are impossible. Thus were we to say that nature can make a blind man to see, the statement would involve an impossibility of this kind, because nature’s power is confined to definite effects, beyond which is the effect we would ascribe to it.

Reply to the Third Objection. Philosophical reasoning regards impossibilities not in relation to a power, but in themselves: because it does not consider things in their application to matter or to any natural power.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. That which is naturally false is false simply; hence there is no comparison.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. Impossibilities are not all in the same ratio: since some things are impossible in themselves, and some with respect to a power, as above stated. Nor does the fact that they bear different relations to the divine power militate against the infinity of that power, or the obedience of the creature thereto.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. God does not destroy what is already true: because he does not make that which was true not to have been: but he does make that which otherwise had been true, not to be true. Thus when he raises the dead to life, he makes it to be untrue that he is dead, which would have been true otherwise.—Or we may reply, that there is no comparison, since were God not to keep his promise, it would follow that he is untruthful: whereas this does not follow if he undoes what he has done: because he has not decreed that whatever he does should always remain so, as he has ordained to keep his promise.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. God cannot make yes and no to be true at the same time, not because it is unbecoming, but for the reason stated above.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. God’s art extends not only to the things made but to many others also. Hence when he changes the course of nature in anything, he does not therefore act against his art.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. It is accidentally impossible for Socrates not to have run, if he did run: since that Socrates runs or runs not, considered in itself, is a contingency: yet since it would imply that what has been has not been, it becomes impossible in itself. Hence it is said to be impossible accidentally, that is through some adventitious circumstance: which circumstance is impossible in itself, and clearly involves a contradiction: since to say that a thing has been, and that it has not been are contradictory statements: which would be the case if the past were made not to have been.

Reply to, the First Objection on the other side. A word is not only uttered by the lips but is also conceived in the mind. Now the mind cannot conceive yes and no as being true at the same time (Metaph. iv, 3), and therefore it cannot conceive anything in which this is involved. For otherwise since, according to the Philosopher, contrary opinions involve contrary statements, it would follow that the same person would have contrary opinions at the same time. Wherefore it is not contrary to the angel’s statement to say that God cannot do the above-mentioned kind of impossibility.

Reply to the Second Objection. God cannot do this kind of impossibility because it is outside the range of possibility: wherefore God’s power is not said to be limited, although he cannot do it.

Reply to the Third Objection. God is said to be unable to do this, not as though he were prevented by the free-will, as stated above, but because this cannot be the term of action of an active power.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Privation as such is not susceptive of degrees, but it can be in respect of its cause: thus a man who has lost an eye is more blind than one who is prevented from seeing by some disease of the eye. In like manner that which is impossible in itself may be said to be more impossible than a thing which is impossible simply.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. As stated above, God is said to be unable to do this, not because something prevents him, but for the reasons given.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. Virginity is not opposed to child-bearing as blindness to sight: it is opposed to copulation without which nature cannot cause a child to be born, whereas God can.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The created and uncreated, though disparate, were not in Christ in the same respect, but in respect of the different natures: hence it does not follow that God can make opposite things to be in the same subject and in the same respect.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. When Christ entered, the doors being closed, and two bodies were in the same place, nothing occurred contrary to the principles of geometry. For then not one but two lines terminated in two points of different bodies on the one side. Although two mathematical lines are not distinguishable except by, their position, so that one cannot conceive two such lines to be in the same Place: nevertheless two natural lines are distinguishable by their subjects, so that, granted that two bodies occupy the same place, it follows that two lines coincide, as well as two points, and two surfaces.

Should We Judge a Thing to Be Possible or Impossible With Reference to Lower or to Higher Causes?

THE fourth point of inquiry is whether we ought to judge of a thing’s possibility or impossibility in reference to its lower or its higher causes. And it would seem that we should consider its higher causes.

1. The (interlinear) gloss on 1 Corinthians i says that the folly of the wise men of the world consisted in their judging of possibility and impossibility by observing nature. Therefore we should judge a thing to be possible or impossible by considering not its lower but its higher causes.

2. According to the Philosopher (Metaph. x, i), that which is first in any genus is the measure of whatsoever is included in that genus. Now God’s power is the first power. Th fore a thing should be deemed possible or impossible in reference to it.

3. The more a cause penetrates its effect, the better it serves as a guide to our judgement of the effect. Now the First Cause reaches further into the effect than do secondary causes. Therefore we should rather judge of an effect by referring to the First Cause: and consequently we should deem a thing possible or impossible in relation to the higher causes.

4. To give sight to a blind man is impossible with respect to the lower causes: and yet it is possible, since sometimes it is done. Therefore we should judge of a thing’s impossibility not according to the lower but according to the higher causes.

5. Before the world existed it was possible that it would exist. But this possibility did not rest on lower causes. Therefore the same conclusion follows.

1. On the contrary an effect should be adjudged possible in reference to the cause on which its possibility is based. Now an effect derives its possibility, contingency or even necessity from its proximate and not from its remote cause: thus merit is a contingent effect by reason of the free-will, its proximate cause, and not a necessary effect by reason of its remote cause which is divine predestination. Therefore one should judge of a thing’s possibility or impossibility by referring to its lower or proximate causes.

2. What is possible in regard to lower causes is also possible in regard to higher causes, and therefore in every way possible. Now that which is possible in every way is possible simply. Therefore in order to judge whether a thing be simply possible, we must refer to the lower causes.

3. The higher causes are necessary. If, then, we are to consider effects in the light of higher causes, all effects win, be necessary: and this is impossible.

4. All things are possible to God. Therefore if we must judge of a thing’s possibility or impossibility in reference to him, nothing will be impossible: and this is absurd.

5. In the employment of terms we should follow the common use. Now we are wont in referring to power, to speak of power, disposition, necessity and action as being related to one another. But these are to be found in the lower and not the higher causes. Therefore we should judge of the possibility or impossibility of a thing in reference to the lower and not the higher causes.

I reply that judgement as to the possibility or impossibility of a thing may be considered in two ways; with reference to the one who judges, and with reference to the thing in question.

As regards the first it must be observed that if there are two sciences, one of which considers the higher causes, and the, other the less high, judgement in each must not be formed in the same way, but in reference to those causes which both sciences consider. Take, for instance, the physician and the astrologer, of whom the latter considers the highest causes and the former the proximate causes: the physician will form his judgement about a man’s illness or death according to the proximate causes, namely the forces of nature and the gravity of the disease: whereas the astrologer will judge according to the remote causes, namely the position of the stars. It is thus with the point at issue. For wisdom is twofold: mundane wisdom called philosophy, which considers the lower causes, causes namely that are themselves caused, and bases its judgements on them: and divine wisdom or theology, which considers the higher, that is the divine, causes and judges according to them. Now the higher causes are the divine attributes, such as the wisdom, goodness, will of God, and the like. It must be noted, however, that there is no point in referring this question to those effects which belong exclusively to the higher causes, and which God alone can produce; since it were senseless to say that they are possible or impossible in relation to lower causes. The point in question is about effects produced by lower causes: since such effects may be produced by both lower and higher causes, and it is about them that a doubt may occur. Again the question at issue does not concern things that are possible or impossible not with respect to a power, but in themselves. Accordingly these effects of second causes with which this question is concerned are judged by the theologian to be possible or impossible with regard to the higher causes, and by the philosopher, with regard to the lower causes. If, however, this judgement be formed with respect to the nature of the thing in question, it is clear that the effects must be judged to be possible or impossible with respect to their proximate causes, since the action of their remote causes is determined according to their proximate causes, to which those effects are especially likened: and with respect to which, therefore, any judgement about the effects should be formed. This may be made evident by comparison with passive power. For properly speaking matter is not said to be potentially this or that when the matter is remote, as earth with respect to becoming a goblet: but when the matter is proximate and potentially receptive of actuality by one agent, as the Philosopher says (Metaph. ix, 1, 7): thus gold is potentially a goblet, since it receives that form by art alone. In like manner an effect, so far as its nature is concerned, is said to be possible or impossible in respect of its proximate causes alone.

Reply to the First Objection. The wise men of the world are said to be foolish because they judged things that are impossible with regard to lower causes, to be absolutely and simply impossible even to God.

Reply to the Second Objection. The possible is compared to power not as the thing measured is compared to its measure, but as object to power. And yet the divine power is the measure of all powers.

Reply to the Third Objection. Although the first cause has the greatest influence on the effect, its influence, nevertheless, is determined and specified by the proximate cause, whose likeness therefore the effect bears.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Although to make the blind see is possible to God, it cannot be said to be possible in every way.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. That the world would exist was possible with respect to the higher causes; hence this does not concern the question at issue. Wherefore the statement that the world will exist, was possible not only as regards the divine power, but also in itself, because the terms do not contradict each other.

Reply to the First Objection on the other side. This argument considers the nature of the effect that is in question.

Reply to the Second Objection. Although what is possible with respect to inferior causes is also possible with respect to higher causes, this does not apply to the impossible, rather is it the other way about. Consequently we must not form a universal decision on the matter, or judge that a thing is possible or impossible in every case with respect to lower causes.

Reply to the Third Objection. We do not judge a thing to be possible or impossible to this or that cause through some likeness in point of possibility or impossibility between that cause and some other cause, but because it is possible or impossible to that cause.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. The theologian would say that whatever is not impossible in itself is possible to God; according to Mark ix, 22, All things are possible to him that believeth, and Luke i, 37, No word shall be impossible with God.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. Though all these things are not to be found in the higher causes, they are subject to them: hence this argument considers passive and not active power of which we are speaking now.

Can God Do What He Does Not?

[Sum. Th. 1, Q. xxv, A. 5; xiv, A. 8: Q. xv; C.G. II, 23-30]

THE fifth point of inquiry is whether God can do what he does not, and leave undone what he does? It would seem that the reply should be in the negative.

1. God cannot do otherwise than what he foresees that he will do. Now he does not foresee that he will do otherwise than what he does. Therefore God cannot do otherwise than he does.

2. But, say you, that argument considers power in its relation to prescience, and not absolutely.—On the contrary, the things of God are more unchangeable than the things of man. Now with us it is impossible for what has been not to have been. Much less then is it possible that God did not foresee what he foresaw: and so long as his foreknowledge stands, he cannot act otherwise. Therefore absolutely speaking God cannot do otherwise than he does.

3. God’s wisdom is unchangeable even as his nature. Now those who said that God acts by natural necessity, said that he cannot do otherwise than he does. Therefore we too must say so, who say that God acts according to the order of his wisdom.

4. But it may be said that the foregoing argument considers power as controlled by wisdom and not absolutely. —On the contrary, that which is impossible in the order of wisdom is said without qualification to be impossible to the man Christ: although it was possible to him absolutely. Thus it is said (Jo. viii, 55): If I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. For Christ could say those words, but since it was against the order of wisdom, it is said without any qualification that he could not lie. Much more therefore must we say absolutely that God cannot do what is contrary to the order of wisdom.

5. Two things that are in mutual contradiction cannot be in God. Now the absolute and the conditional are in mutual contradiction, since the absolute is that which is considered in itself, while the conditional depends on something else. Therefore we should not place in God an absolute and a conditional power.

6. God’s power and wisdom are equal: wherefore one does not extend beyond the other. Therefore his power cannot be separated from his wisdom, and consequently is always regulated by it.

7. What God has done is just. But he cannot act but justly. Therefore he cannot do otherwise than he has done or will do.

8. It becomes God’s goodness not only to communicate itself, but to do so in most orderly fashion; hence what God does is done in an orderly way. Now God cannot act without order. Therefore he cannot do otherwise than he has done.

9. God cannot do but what he wills to do: because in voluntary agents the power follows the will as commanded by it. Now he wills not save what he does. Therefore he cannot do save what he does.

10. Since God is a most wise operator, he does nothing without an idea. Now the ideas’ on which God acts are, according to Dionysius (Div. Nom. v), productive of the things that exist: and the things that exist are the things that are: wherefore God has no other things in hiss mmindd save those that are. Therefore he cannot do otherwise than he does.

11. According to the philosophers, the things of nature are in the first mover, that is God, as in the craftsman are the things that he makes: wherefore God works like a craftsman. Now a craftsman does not work without having the form or idea of his work: for according to the Philosopher (De Gener. Anim. ii, i) the material house comes from the house that is in the builder’s mind. But God has ideas of those things only that he has done, or does, or will do. Therefore God cannot do anything else.

12. Augustine (De Symbolo i) says: God is unable to do that alone which he does not wish to do. Now he does not wish to do save what he does. Therefore he cannot do but what he does.

13. God cannot change. Therefore he cannot be indifferent to either of two contraries: so that his power is fixed on one thing. Therefore he cannot do otherwise than he does.

14. Whatever God does or omits to do, he does or omits for the best reason. Now God cannot do or omit to do save for the best reason. Therefore he cannot do or omit except what he does or omits to do.

15. According to Plato the best produces the best: and so God who is supremely good, does whatever is best. Now the best, being superlative, is only one. Therefore God cannot do otherwise or other things than he has done.

1. On the contrary Christ, God and man, said (Matt. xxvi, 53): Cannot I ask my Father? Therefore Christ could do what he did not.

2. It is said (Ephes. iii, 20): To him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand. But he does not do all things. Therefore he can do things that he? does not.

3. God’s power is infinite. But it would not be were it confined to the things that he does. Therefore he can do other things besides.

4. Hugh of St. Victor says that God’s works are not equal to his power. Therefore his power surpasses his work: and consequently he can do more than he does.

5. God’s power is an endless act, since nothing can put an end to it. Now this would not be the case if it were limited to what it does. Therefore the same conclusion follows.

I reply that the error of those who say that God cannot do otherwise than he does is connected with two schools of thought. Certain philosophers maintained that God acts from natural necessity: in which case since nature is confined to one effect, the divine power could not extend to other things besides what it actually does. Then there have been certain theologians who maintained that God cannot act beside the order of divine justice and wisdom according to which he works, and thus they came to say that God cannot do otherwise than he does. This error is ascribed to Peter Almalar.

Let us now inquire into the truth or falsity of these opinions. To begin with the first, it is evident that God does not act from natural necessity. Every agent acts for an end, since all things seek the good. Now for the agent’s action to be suited to the end, it must be adapted and proportionate to it, and this cannot be done save by an intellect that is cognisant both of the end and of its nature as end, and again of the proportion between the end and the means: otherwise the suitability of the action to the end would be fortuitous. But this intellect ordering the means to the end is sometimes united to the agent or mover; such is man in his actions: sometimes it is separate, as in the case of the arrow whose flight in a definite direction is effected by an intellect united not to it but to the archer. Now that which acts of natural necessity cannot determine its end: because in the latter case the agent acts of itself, and when a thing acts or is in motion of itself, there is in it to act or not to act, to be in motion or not to be in motion, which cannot apply to that which is moved of necessity, since it is confined to one effect. Hence everything that acts of natural necessity must have its end determined by an intelligent agent. For this reason philosophers say that the work of nature is the work of an intelligence. Therefore whenever a natural body is united to an intellect, as in man, as regards those actions whereby that intellect determines the end, nature obeys the will, as when a man walks:, whereas as regards those actions by which the intellect does not fix the end, nature does not obey, as in the process of nourishment and growth. Accordingly we conclude that a thing which acts from natural necessity cannot be a principle of action, since its end is determined by another. Hence it is impossible that God act from natural necessity, and so the foundation of the first opinion is false.

It remains for us to examine the second opinion. Observe then that there are two senses in which one is said to be unable to do a thing. First, absolutely: when, namely, one of the principles necessary for an action does not extend to that action; thus it his foot be fractured a man cannot walk. Secondly, by supposition, for if we suppose the opposite of an action, that action cannot be done, thus so long as I sit I cannot walk. Now since God is an intellectual and voluntary agent, as we have proved, we must consider in him three principles of action: first, the intellect, secondly, the will, thirdly, the power of nature.

Accordingly the intellect directs the will, and the will commands the executive power. The intellect, however, does not move except by proposing to the will its appetible object, so that the entire movement of the intellect is in the will. Now God is said in two ways to be unable to do a thing. In one way when his power does not extend to it; thus we say that God cannot make yes and no to be true at the same time, as we have shown above. In this way it cannot be said that God cannot do but what he does, for it is evident, that his power can extend to many other things. In another way, when God’s will cannot extend to it. For every will must needs have an end which it wills naturally, the contrary of which it cannot will: thus man naturally desires to be happy and cannot wish to be unhappy. Moreover the will, besides having of necessity a desire for its natural end, desires also of necessity those things without which it cannot obtain that end, if they be known: such things are those that are proportionate to the end: thus if I wish to live I wish for food: whereas it does not of necessity desire these things without which the end can be obtained. Now the natural end of the divine will is the divine goodness, which it is unable not to will. Creatures, however, are not proportionate to this end, as though without them the divine goodness could not be made manifest, which manifestation was God’s intention in creating. For even as the divine goodness is made manifest through these things that are and through this order of things, so could it be made manifest through other creatures and another order: wherefore God’s will without prejudice to his goodness, justice and wisdom, can extend to other things besides those which he has made. And this is where they erred: for they thought that the created order was commensurate and necessary to the divine goodness. It is clear then that God absolutely can do otherwise than he has done. Since, however, he cannot make contradictories to be true at the same time, it can be said ex hypothesi that God cannot make other things besides those he has, made: for if we suppose that he does not wish to do otherwise, or that he foresaw that he would not do otherwise, as long as the supposition stands, he cannot do otherwise, though apart from that supposition he can.

Reply to the First Objection. When you say that God is not able to do except what he has foreseen that he would do, the statement admits of a twofold construction: because the negative may refer either to the power signified in the word able, or to the act signified in the word do. In the former case the statement is false: since God is able to do other things besides those that he foresees he will do, and it is in this sense that the objection runs. In the latter case the statement is true, the sense being that it is impossible for God to do anything that was not foreknown by him. In this sense the statement is not to the point.

Reply to the Second Objection. In God nothing is past or future: in him everything is in the eternal present. And when we speak of him in a past or future tense, it is not he but we who are past or future: wherefore the objection by referring to the necessity of the past misses the mark. We must also observe that the objection is not to the point, since God’s foreknowledge of What he will do is not commensurate with his power to do (which is the object of our present inquiry) but only with what he actually does, as already stated.

Reply to the Third Objection. Those who maintained that God acts from natural necessity, held the opinion we are discussing, not only on account of the unchangeableness of nature, but also because nature is confined to one process of action. But divine wisdom is not confined to one manner of action, and its knowledge extends to many things. Hence the comparison fails.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Christ could not wish to say those words absolutely, without prejudice to his goodness, since they would be untrue. This does not apply to the question at issue, as we have already indicated; hence the conclusion does not follow.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. The absolute and the conditional are ascribed to the divine power solely from. our point of view. To this power considered in itself and which we describe as God’s absolute power, we ascribe something that we do not ascribe to it when we compare it with his ordered wisdom.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. Wherever God’s power works his wisdom is present; nevertheless we consider power without reference to his wisdom.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. God has done whatever is actually just not whatever is just potentially: since he is able to do that which at present is not just through not being in existence; yet if it were, what he does would be just.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. The divine goodness is able to communicate itself in orderly fashion, not only in the way in which things are actually set in order, but in many other ways.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. Though God does not wish to do save what he does, he can nevertheless wish to do other things: wherefore absolutely speaking he can do other things.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. When Dionysius speaks of the divine ideas as being productive of things, he is speaking absolutely without implying that those things actually exist at present.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. The question is whether there is in God an idea of those things that neither exist, nor will exist, nor have existed, and that nevertheless God is able to make. Seemingly the reply should be, if we take an idea in, its complete signification, namely as signifying the art-form, not only as conceived by the intellect, but also as directed to execution by the will, then of such things God has no idea. On the other hand if we take an idea in its incomplete state, as the mere mental conception of the worker, then God has an idea of those things. For it is clear that the created craftsman conceives works that he has no intention of executing. Now whatever God knows is in him as something thought out, since in him actual and habitual knowledge do not differ: for he knows his whole power and whatsoever he is able to do: hence in him are, thought out as it were, the ideas of whatsoever things he is able to make.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. This means that God is unable to do what he does not wish to be able to do; hence it is not to the point.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Though God is unchangeable, his will is not confined to one issue as regards things to be done: hence he has free-will.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. The best reason for which God does everything, is his goodness and wisdom, which would remain even though he made other things or acted otherwise.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. What God does is the best in reference to his goodness: hence whatsoever else can be referred to his goodness, according to the order of his wisdom, is still the best.

Can God Do What Others Can Do?

THE sixth point of inquiry is whether God can do things that are possible to others, for instance, can he sin, walk and so forth? And seemingly the reply should be in the affirmative.

i. Augustine says (Enchir. cv) that it is a better nature that can sin than that which cannot. Now whatsoever is best should be ascribed to God. Therefore God can sin.

2. We should not withhold from God anything that is praiseworthy. Now it is said in praise of a man (Ecclus. xxxi, 10) that he could have transgressed and hath not transgressed. Therefore the power to sin and not to sin should be ascribed to God.

3. The Philosopher says (Topic. iv, 5) that evil deeds are possible to a god or a wise man. Therefore God can sin.

4. To consent to a mortal sin is to sin mortally: and he who commands the commission of a mortal sin, is a consenting party, in fact sometimes he is the principal. Since then God commanded Abraham to commit a mortal sin, namely to slay his innocent son, and Osee to take a wife of fornication, and have of her children of fornication, and Semei to curse David (2 Kings xvi), although he sinned by so doing since we find that he was punished for the deed (3 Kings ii); it would seem that he sinned mortally.

5. It is a mortal sin to co-operate with one who sins mortally. Now God co-operates with him who commits a mortal sin: since he operates in every deed, and consequently in every man who commits a mortal sin. Therefore God sins.

6. Augustine (De Gratia et Lib. Arb. xxi, cf. Gloss on Rom. i) says that God operates in the hearts of men, by inclining their will whithersoever he will, be it to good or to evil. Now it is a sin to incline a man’s will to evil. Therefore God sins.

7. Man was made to God’s image (Gen. i). Now whatsoever is in the image must needs be in the original: and man’s will is indifferent to this or that. Therefore God’s will is also: and consequently he can sin and not sin.

8. Whatsoever a lower power can do, a higher power can do also. Now man whose power is inferior to God’s power is able to walk, to sin and so forth. Therefore God also can do these things.

9. To omit is not to do the good one is able to do. But God is able to do many good things that he does not. Therefore he omits them and consequently sins.

10. Apparently he sins who can prevent the commission of sin, and prevents it not. Now God can prevent all sins being committed. Since then he does not do so it would seem that he sins.

11. It is written (Amos iii, 6): Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done? But this cannot refer to penal evil, since it is written (Wis. i, 13): God made not death. Therefore it must refer to the evil of sin: so that God is the author of the evil of sin.

On the contrary it is said (1 Jo. i, 5): God is light, and in him there is no darkness. Now sin is spiritual darkness. Therefore in God there can be no sin.

Moreover, a sovereign is not bound by his own laws. And every sin is contrary to the divine law as Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 27). Therefore God cannot be subject to sin.

I answer that, as already stated (A. 5) there are two ways in which God may be said to be unable to do a thing, in respect of his will and in respect of his power. On the part of his will God cannot do what he cannot will. And since no will can consent to the contrary of what it naturally desires,—thus a man’s will cannot desire unhappiness,—it is clear that God’s will cannot will what is contrary to his goodness, since he wills this naturally. Now sin is a lapse from divine goodness: wherefore God cannot will to sin. Therefore we must grant absolutely that God cannot sin. On the part of his power God is said in two ways to be unable to do a thing, in respect of his power and in respect of the thing. His power considered in itself, since it is infinite, lacks nothing that appertains to power. There are certain things, however, which in name denote power whereas in reality they are wanting in power. Such are many negations that are expressed affirmatively: as when we say that so and so can fail, the terms would seem to imply some sort of power, whereas it is rather a lack of power that is signified. For this reason, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. v, 12) a power is said to be perfect when it is unable to do such things: because while such affirmations are in reality negations, the corresponding negations have an affirmative force. Hence we say that God cannot fail, and consequently that he cannot be moved (since movement and failing imply imperfection), and therefore that he cannot walk nor perform any other bodily actions, since these are inseparable from movement. On the part of the thing, God is said to be unable to do a thing when it implies a contradiction, as stated above (A. 5): and in this way we say that God cannot make another God equal to himself: since a contradiction is implied in that what is made must needs be somewhat in potentiality, seeing that it receives its being from another, and consequently cannot be pure act which is proper to God.

Reply to the First Objection. This comparison must not be taken universally, but only as between man and dumb animals.

Reply to the Second Objection. That which is said in praise of man is not always becoming to the praise of God; it might even be a blasphemy, as if I were to say that God repents and the like. Because, as Dionysius says (De Div. Nom. iv) what is praised in a lower nature is blamed in a higher.

Reply to the Third Objection. The saying of the Philosopher must be understood as conditional to the will. This conditional statement is true: God can do wicked things if he will, although both antecedent and consequence are impossible; thus it is clear that if a man flies he has wings.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Nothing prevents an act that is in itself a mortal sin from becoming virtuous through the addition of a circumstance. Thus absolutely speaking it is a mortal sin to kill a man: yet it is not a mortal sin but an act of justice for the judge’s minister to put a man to death for justice’ sake in pursuance of the judge’s sentence. Now, even as the civil authority has the disposal of men in matters of life and death, and all that touches the .end of its government, namely justice, so God has all things at his disposal to direct them to the end of his government, which end is his goodness. Wherefore though it may be in itself a mortal sin to slay an innocent son, yet if this be done at God’s command for an end foreseen and preordained by God, though unknown to the slayer, it is not a sin but a meritorious act. The same applies to the fornication of Osee, for it is clear that God orders all human procreation. Some, however, assert that this did not happen in reality, but only in a prophetic vision. As to the command given to Semei we must give a different reply. God is said in two ways to command. In one way by speaking either interiorly or outwardly through a created substance: and thus he commanded Abraham and the Prophets. In another way by inclination: thus it is related that he commanded a worm to consume the ivy (Jonas iv, 7). In this way he commanded Semei to curse David, by inclining his heart, and this in the manner we shall explain in the Reply to the Sixth Objection.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. The sinful act, forasmuch as it has entity and actuality, is to be referred to God as its cause; but in so far as it has the deformity of sin, it must be referred to the free-will and not to God: thus all that there is of movement in limping comes from the power to walk, whereas the defect is owing to a misshapen leg.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. God is said to incline man’s will to evil, not as though he infused malice into it, or urged it to wickedness, but by permitting and directing the evil, for instance he directs the exercise of cruelty to the punishment of those whom he deems deserving of it.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. Although man is made in God’s image, it does not follow that whatever is in man is also in God. Nevertheless, as to the point raised, God’s will is indifferent to this or that, since it is not fixed to one object. For he is able either to do a thing or not to do it, to do this or to do that: yet it does not follow that in either case he can do ill, which is to sin.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. This argument applies to those things which refer to the perfection of power but not to those which refer to the lack of power.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. Though God is able to do many good things which he does not, he does not omit them, since he is not bound to do them, which is a necessary condition of an omission.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. The same answer applies here, since a man is not guilty of a sin through failing to prevent it, unless he be bound to do so.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. The words of Amos refer to penal evil. And the words of the Book of Wisdom, God hath not made death, refer to the cause of death, as the wages of sin; or to the original formation of human nature when man was made by nature immortal.

Is God Almighty?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xxv, A. 3: III, Q. xiii, A. I: C.G. ii, 22, 25]

THE seventh point of inquiry is: Why is God called almighty?

1. It would seem that the reason is because he can simply do all things. For he is called almighty in the same way as he is called omniscient. Now he is called omniscient because he simply knows all things. Therefore he is called almighty because he can simply do all things.

2. If the reason for calling him almighty is not because he can simply do all things, then the implication that he can do all things is not absolutely true but only in an accommodated sense: in which case the predication would not be universal but particular, and consequently the divine power would be confined to certain effects and therefore finite.

On the contrary, as stated above (AA. 3, 5) God cannot make yes and no to be true at the same time: neither can he sin or die. Yet these things would be included in the above predication were it to be taken absolutely. Therefore it must not be taken absolutely: and consequently the reason why God is called almighty is not because he can absolutely do all things.

3. It would seem that he is called almighty because he can do whatsoever he wills. For Augustine says (Enchir. xcvi): He is called almighty for no other reason but that he can do whatsoever lie wills.—On the contrary. The blessed can do whatsoever they will, otherwise their will would not be perfect. And yet they are not called almighty. Therefore the fact that God can do whatsoever he wills is not sufficient reason for calling him almighty. Further, a wise man does not will the impossible, wherefore no wise man desires to do except what he is able to do. And yet not all the wise are almighty. Therefore the same conclusion follows.

4. It would seem that he is called almighty because he can do whatsoever is possible. For he is called omniscient because he knows all things knowable. Therefore there is equal reason for calling him almighty because he can do all things possible.—On the contrary, if he be called almighty because he can do all things possible,, this is either because he can do all things possible to him, or because he can do all things possible to nature. In the latter case his power would not surpass that of nature, which is absurd: in the former case, everyone would be called almighty, since everyone can do what is possible to himself. Moreover such an explanation is by way of circumlocution, which is inept.

5. If God is called almighty and all-knowing, why is he not also called all-willing?

I answer that in an attempt to assign a reason for God’s omnipotence some have sought it in things that are not the reason but rather the cause of omnipotence, or which appertain to the perfection of his omnipotence, or to the nature of his power, or to the way in which he has power. Thus some have said that God is almighty because his power is infinite: these assigned not the reason but the cause of omnipotence: for instance, a rational soul is the cause not the definition of a man. Some said that God is almighty because he is impassible and indefectible, and nothing can act on him, and so on, all of which appertain to the perfection of his power. And some said that he is called almighty because he can do whatsoever he wills, and this by nature and essentially; but this regards the way in which he has power. Now all these reasons are insufficient in that they fail to account for the relation between operation and its object, which relation is implied in omnipotence. Wherefore we reply that we must take one of the explanations indicated in the objections which take into account this relationship to objects.—Accordingly, as stated above (A. 5) God’s power, considered in itself, extends to all such objects as do not imply a contradiction. Nor does the objection stand that refers to things which imply a defect or bodily movement, since the very possibility of such things involves their impossibility to God. And as regards things that imply a contradiction, they are impossible to God as being impossible in themselves. Consequently God’s power extends to things that are possible in themselves: and such are the things that do not involve a contradiction. Therefore it is evident that God is called almighty because he can do all things that are possible in themselves.

Reply to the First Objection. God is called omniscient because he knows all things knowable. Now the false are not knowable and therefore he knows them not: and things impossible in themselves are compared to power as the false are compared to knowledge.

Reply to the Second Objection. This argument would stand if the universality were confined within the genus of things possible so as not to extend to all things possible.

To the second reason suggested for calling God almighty we have to say that to be able to do whatsoever he wills is not a sufficient reason, though it is a sufficient sign: it is ‘in this sense that we must take the works of Augustine. To the argument advanced for the third reason, we reply that God is called almighty because he is able to do all things that are absolutely possible: hence it is not to the point where the objection distinguishes between things possible to God and those which are possible, to nature.

To the last question we reply that in voluntary actions, power and knowledge (as stated in Metaph. ix, 2, 5) are brought into action by the will: wherefore in God power and knowledge are described in universal terms as being without limit, as when we say that God is all-knowing and almighty: whereas the will, seeing that it is the determining force, cannot cover all things, but only those to which it determines power and knowledge: hence God cannot be called all-willing.

QUESTION II

Of God’s Generating Power

THERE are six points of inquiry: (1) Is there a generating power in God? (2) Whether the power to generate is applied to God essentially or notionally? (3) Whether the power to generate is brought into act by a command of the will? (4) Whether there can be more than one Son in God? (5) Whether the generating power is included in omnipotence? (6) Whether the generating power is the same as the creative power?

Q. II: ARTICLE I

Is There a Generative Power in God?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xii, A. 4]

WE are inquiring about God’s generative power, and the first point of inquiry is whether in God there is the power to beget. The reply seemingly should be in the negative.

1. All power is either active or passive. Now there can be no passive power in God: nor in him can a generative power be active, because then the Son would be the result, of an action and would be made, which is against the faith. Therefore there is no generative power in God.

2. According to the Philosopher (De Somn. et Vig. i), action belongs to that which has power. Now in God there,. is no begetting: and consequently there is no generative power. The middle proposition is proved thus. Wherever there is a begetting there is communication and reception of nature. But since reception involves matter and passive power, which are not in God, reception is inadmissible in God: and therefore there can be no begetting in God.

3. The begetter must needs be distinct from the begotten. Not, however, in that which the begetter communicates to the begotten, since rather are they the same in that regard. Consequently in the begotten there must needs be something besides that which he receives by generation from the begetter: so that seemingly whatsoever is begotten must be composite. But in God there is no composition. Therefore there cannot be a begotten God, and consequently there can be no begetting in God, and the same conclusion follows.

4. No imperfection should be ascribed to God. Now every power, active or passive, in comparison with its act is imperfect. Therefore we should not attribute a generative power to God.

5. But, you will say, this applies to a power that is not united to its act.—On the contrary, whatsoever is perfected by another is less perfect than that by which it is perfected. Now the power that is united to its act is perfected by that act. Therefore that act is more perfect than the power: so that even a power that is united to its act is imperfect in comparison with its act.

6. The divine nature is more effective in acting than created nature. Now there is among creatures a nature that works not through the medium of a power, but by itself: thus the sun enlightens the air, and the soul quickens the body. Consequently there is much stronger reason why the divine nature should be by itself the generative principle and not through a power. Therefore there is no generative power in God.

7. Generative power is a sign either of perfection or of imperfection. It is not, however, a sign of perfection because if it were it would be found in the higher ranks of creatures rather than in the lower, in the angels and heavenly bodies more or rather than in animals and plants. Therefore it is a sign of imperfection, and consequently should not be ascribed to God.

8. A twofold generative power is to be found in things here below. It is complete in those things where generation is effected by sexual intercourse: it is incomplete when generation takes place without mingling of sexes; in plants, for instance. Since then we cannot ascribe the complete power to God in whom there cannot be an intercourse of sexes, it would seem that generative power cannot in any sense be ascribed to God.

9. The object of power can only be something possible: since power (potentia) is so called from its relationship to the possible (possibilis). Now the existence of generation in God is not a possible or a contingent thing, since it is eternal. Therefore we ‘cannot ascribe to God a power in respect of generation, and consequently the power to generate is not in him.

10. The power of God, being infinite, is not terminated either by its act or by its object. Now if in God there be a generative power, its act will be generation, and its effect will be a Son. Therefore the Father’s power will not be confined to the begetting of one Son but will extend to many; which is absurd.

11. According to Avicenna, when a thing has a certain quality entirely from without, to that thing considered in itself we attribute the opposite quality: thus the air which has no light except from without, is dark considered in itself. In this way since all creatures derive being, truth, and necessity from without, considered in themselves they are non-existent, untrue, and impossible. But nothing of the kind is possible in God. Consequently in God there cannot be one who has being entirely from another, nor can there be one that is begotten, nor generation and generative power.

12. In the Godhead the Son has nothing but what he receives from the Father, else it would follow that there is composition in him. Now he receives his essence from thee Father: and consequently there is nothing in him but the essence. Hence if there be generation in God, or if the Son be begotten, it will follow that the essence is begotten: and this is false, since then there would be a distinction in the divine essence.

13. If, in God, the Father begets, this must belong to him in respect of his nature. But the nature is the same in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For the same reason, then, both Son and Holy Spirit will beget; which is contrary to the teaching of faith.

14. A nature that exists perpetually and perfectly in one supposite, is not communicated to another supposite. Now the divine nature exists perfectly in the Father, and again perpetually since it is incorruptible. Therefore it is not communicated to another supposite: and consequently there is no generation there.

15. Generation is a kind of change. But there is no change in God. Neither therefore is there generative power.

On the contrary, according to the Philosopher a thing is perfect when it is able to produce its like. Now God the Father is perfect. Therefore he can produce his like, and beget a Son.

Moreover Augustine says (Cont. Maxim. iii, 7) that if the Father could not beget, it follows that he lacked the power. But there is no lack of power in God. Therefore he was able to beget, and in him is the generative power.

I answer that it is in the nature of every act to communicate itself as, far as possible. Wherefore every agent acts forasmuch as it is in act: while to act is nothing else than to communicate as far as possible that whereby the agent is in act. Now the divine nature is supreme and most pure act: wherefore it communicates itself as far as possible. It communicates itself to creatures by likeness only: this is clear to anyone, since every creature is a being according to its likeness to it. The Catholic Faith, moreover, asserts another mode of communication of the divine nature, in that it is communicated by a quasi-natural communication: so that as one to whom the human nature is communicated is a man, so one to whom the Godhead is communicated is not merely like God, but is truly God. But here we must observe that there is a twofold difference between the divine nature and material forms. In the first place material forms are not subsistent, so that the human nature in a man is not the same thing as the man who subsists: whereas the Godhead is the same thing as God, so that the divine nature itself is subsistent. Secondly, no created form or nature is its own being: whereas God’s very being is his nature and quiddity; so that the name proper to him is: He who is (Exod. iii, 14), because thereby he is named as if from his proper form. Consequently since forms here below are not self-subsistent, there must needs be in the subject to which a form is communicated, besides the form, something whereby the form or nature receives subsistence: this is matter, which underlies material forms and natures. And seeing that a material form or nature is not its own being, it receives being through its reception into something else: wherefore according as it is received into a diversity of subjects it has a diversity of being: thus human nature in respect of being is not one in Socrates and Plato, although the essential notion of humanity is the same in both. On the other hand since the divine nature is self-subsistent, in the communication thereof there is no need of anything material for subsistence: and consequently it is not received into a subject by way of matter, so that he who is begotten be composed of matter and form. And because again the divine essence is its own being, it does not receive being from the supposite in which it is: so that by virtue of one and the same being it is in both the communicator and the one to whom it is communicated, thus remaining identically the same in both.

We have an example of this communication, and that most becomingly, in the intellect: for the divine nature is spiritual, wherefore it is manifested better by means of spiritual examples. Thus when our intellect conceives the quiddity of a thing that is self-subsistent and outside the mind, there is a kind of communication of this self-subsistent thing, inasmuch as our intellect receives in a way from the exterior thing the form of the latter: and this intelligible form having its existence in our intellect proceeds in a way from that exterior thing. Since, however, the exterior thing differs in nature from the understanding intellect, the form understood by the intellect and the form of the self-subsistent object differ in their respective beings. But when our intellect understands its own quiddity, both conditions stand, since in its process of formation the form understood proceeds after a fashion from the intellect understanding it into the intellect receiving it, and besides a certain unity is maintained between the conceived form which proceeds and the thing whence it proceeds, since both have intelligible being, seeing that one is the intellect, while the other is the intelligible form which is called the word of the intellect. Since, however, our intellect is not by its essence established in the perfect act of intellectuality, nor is the human intellect identical with human nature, it follows that although the aforesaid word is in the intellect and somewhat conformed to it, yet it is not identified with the essence of the intellect, but it expresses its likeness. Again, in the conception of this intelligible form the human nature is not communicated, wherefore it cannot properly be called a begetting which implies a communication of nature.

Now even as when our intellect understands itself there is in it a word proceeding and bearing a likeness to that from which it proceeds, so, too, in God there is a word bearing the likeness of him from whom it proceeds. The procession of this word transcends in two ways the procession of our word. First, because our word differs from the essence of the intellect, as already stated, whereas the divine intellect being by its very essence in the perfect act of intellectuality, cannot be the recipient of an intelligible form that is not its essence: consequently its word is essentially one with it. Secondly, the divine nature itself is its intellectuality, wherefore a communication that takes place in an intellectual manner, is also a communication by way of nature, so that it can be called a begetting, and thus again the divine word surpasses the procession of our word, and Augustine (De Trin. i) assigns this mode of generation. Since, however, we are treating of divine things according to our mode whereby our intellect proceeds from its knowledge of things here below, therefore as in these latter wherever we find action we find an active principle which we call power, so do we also in matters concerning God, although in him power and action are not distinct as in creatures. For this reason, given that in God there is generation, a term that is significative of action, it follows that we must grant him the power to beget, or a generative power.

Reply to the First Objection. The power which we attribute to God is neither active properly speaking nor passive, seeing that the predicaments of action and passion are not in him, and his action is his very substance: but the power which is in him is designated by us after the manner of an active power. Nor does it follow that the Son is the result of action or making, even as neither does it follow that in God there is properly speaking action or passion.

Reply to the Second Objection. While the term and end of receiving is having, there are two ways of receiving and two ways of having. In one way matter has its form, and a subject an accident, or in fact anything that is possessed besides the essence: in another way the supposite has a nature, for instance, a man has human nature: for the nature is not beside the essence of the haver, indeed it is his essence: thus Socrates is truly that which is a man. Accordingly the begotten one even in mankind receives the form of his begetter, not as matter receives form, or subject accident, but as a supposite or hypostasis has the specific nature: and it is thus in God. Hence in God begotten there is no need of matter or of a subject of the divine nature: but it follows that he is the subsistent Son having the nature of God.

Reply to the Third Objection. God begotten is not, distinct from the begetting God by an added essence, since, as stated above, there is no need for matter as a, recipient of the Godhead: they are distinct, however, by the relation implied in receiving one’s nature from another: so that in the Son the relation of sonship, takes the place of all the individualising principles in things created (for which reason it is called a personal property), while the divine nature takes the place of the specific nature. Yet since this same relation is not really distinct from the divine nature, it does not involve any composition therein, whereas with us a certain composition results from the specific and individualising principles.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. This argument avails when power and act, whether united or not, are distinct from each other: but this is not the case in God.

Wherefore the Reply to the Fifth Objection is clear.

I Reply to the Sixth Objection. Anything that is a principle whereby an action is done is of the nature of a power, whether it be an essence, or an accidental medium such as a quality standing between essence and action.. In corporeal creatures, however, seldom or never do we find a subsistent nature in action without an intervening accident; thus the sun illumines by means of the light in it. But that the soul quickens the body, is by means of the soul’s essence: yet though the word quickening expresses action, it is not in the genus of action, since it is first act rather than second.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. In creatures generation is impossible without a distinction of essence or nature in point of existence, since their nature is not their existence. Consequently generation among creatures suggests imperfection: wherefore it is unbecoming to the higher creatures. But in God generation is possible without this or any other imperfection: and so nothing forbids us to ascribe it to God.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. This argument considers generation in the material world, and therefore it is not to the point.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. It is true that the object of an active or passive power must be possible and contingent, when the action or passion in question is accompanied by movement (since all movable things are possible and contingent). Such, however, is not the generative power in God, as stated above, wherefore the argument does not prove.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. The Son of God is not the effect of the generative power, for we confess our belief that he is begotten, not made. If, however, he were the eff ect ‘ the power of the Begetter would not terminate in him, although he cannot beget another Son, because the Begetter is infinite. The reason why there cannot be another Son in God is because Sonship is a personal property and thereby the Son is, so to say, individualised. And the principles of individuality of each individual thing belong to that thing alone: otherwise it would follow that a person or an individual thing would be logically communicable.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. The saying of Avicenna is true when that which is received is not identically the same in recipient and giver, as is the case in creatures in relation to God. Hence whatsoever is received by a creature is as vanity in comparison with the being of God, since a creature cannot receive being in that perfection with which it is in God. On the other hand in God the Son receives the same identical nature as that which the Father has: hence the argument fails.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. The Son has nothing that is really distinct from the essence which he receives from the Father: but from the very fact that he receives from the Father it follows that in him is a relation by which he is referred to and distinct from the Father. And yet this relation is not distinct from his essence.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Though the same nature is in Father and Son, it is in each by a different mode of existence, that is to say with a different relation. Consequently that which belongs to the Father in respect of his nature does not of necessity belong to the Son.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. Creatures become like God by participating in their specific nature; hence the fact that a particular created supposite subsists in a created nature, is directed to something else as its end. Consequently if the end be sufficiently attained by one individual by a perfect and proper participation in the specific nature, there is no need for another individual participating in that nature. On the other hand God’s nature is the end and is not for, the sake of an end: and it is meet that the end should be communicated in every possible way. Hence though in God it is found perfectly and properly in one supposite, nothing, forbids its being in another.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. Generation is a kind of change in so far as by means of generation the common nature is received in some matter which is the subject of change. This is not the case in the divine generation, so the conclusion does not follow.

Is Generation Attributed to God Essentially or Notionally?

[Sum. Theol. I, xxxii, A. 2.]

THE second point of inquiry is whether generation is attributed to God essentially or notionally. And it would seem that it is only attributed notionally.

1. Power is a kind of principle, as appears from the definition in Metaph. v, 12. Now when we use the term principle in reference to a divine person the term is used notionally. Since then the generative power implies a principle in this sense, it would seem that it is attributed to God notionally.

2. Should it be said that it denotes both the essence and a notion,—on the contrary, according to Boethius (De Trin.) there are two predicaments in God, substance to which the essence belongs, and relation to which the notional acts belong. But a thing cannot be in two predicaments, since a white man is not one thing save accidentally (Metaph. v, 7). Therefore the generative power cannot include both, substance namely and notional act.

3. In God the principle is distinct from that which proceeds therefrom. But there should be no distinction in his essence. Consequently the idea of principle is incompatible with the essence: so that power which involves the idea of a principle does not denote the essence in God.

4. In God property is relative and notional: while that which is common is essential and absolute. Now the generative power is not common to Father and Son, but is proper to the Father. Therefore it is attributed as a notion or relation, and not essentially nor absolutely.

5. The principle of a thing’s proper action is its proper form and not the common form: thus man understands by his intellect, because this action is proper to him in relation to other animals, even as the form of rationality or intellectuality. Now generation is the proper operation of the Father as Father. Therefore its principle is Paternity which is the Father’s proper form, and not the Godhead which is the common form. But Paternity is a relative term. Therefore the generative power not only viewed as a principle, but also as to the thing which is a principle, denotes a relation.

6. As the generative power does not really differ from the essence, so neither does paternity. But this does not prevent paternity from being a purely relative term. Therefore neither does it oblige us to say that the generative power denotes the essence together with a relation.

7. In God three things have the nature of a principle, power, knowledge and will, and these are ascribed to God essentially. Now knowledge and will in God do not each signify at the same time some relation or notion. For equal reason, therefore, neither does power: and so it cannot be said that the generative power signifies at the same time the essence on the part of the power, and a notion on the part of generation: but seemingly it signifies nothing. but the notion for reasons already given.

On the contrary the Master says (I.D.vii) that the generative power in the Father is the very essence of God.

Further, Hilary says (De Synod.) that the Father begets by virtue of the Godhead. Therefore the Godhead is the principle of generation, and is in the nature of a power.

Further, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 27) that generation is the work of nature; and thus the same conclusion follows.

Further, there is but one power in God. Now the creative power is attributed to the essence. Therefore the generative power should be also.

I answer that there are several opinions on this point. Some maintained that the generative power is not ascribed to God otherwise than relatively: and they were moved by the following argument. Power is essentially a principle of a kind: and a principle signifies a relation and a property if attributed to the divine power and not to creatures. Bit in arguing thus they were at fault in two ways. First, although power is rightly described as a kind of principle which comes under the generic head of relation, nevertheless the thing which is a principle of action or passion is not a relation but an absolute form, namely the essence of the power. Wherefore the Philosopher places science in the genus, not of relation but of quality, although a relation is incidental to both. Secondly, when speaking of God, terms that signify a principle in respect of operation are not employed relatively as denoting properties but only those that signify a principle in respect of the term of operations. Because when we speak of a principle as a property in God we refer to the subsistent person: whereas the term operation does not involve subsistence: and consequently it does not follow that terms which denote a principle of operation are employed to signify a property, otherwise will, knowledge, intellect and all like terms would be employed as indicating properties. Power, however, although it is a principle sometimes both of action and of the product of action, yet the latter is incidental to it while the former is essential to it: because active power by its action does not always produce something that is the term of that action, since, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 1; Metaph. ix, 6), there are many operations that have no product: whereas power is always a principle of action or operation. Consequently it does not follow that because power implies the relation of a principle, it is therefore predicated of God relatively.

Moreover this opinion appears to be in conflict with the truth. If the thing that is a power is the same as the principle of action, it follows that the divine nature is the thing that is a principle in God: for since every agent as such produces its like, that thing in the begetter is the principle of his begetting, in respect of which the begotten is likened to the begetter: thus a man by virtue of his human nature begets a son who is like him in that nature. Now God begotten is like God the Father in the divine nature: hence the divine nature is the generating principle whereby the Father begets, as Hilary says (l.c.).

For this reason others said that the generative power signifies the essence alone. But this opinion again appears to be at fault. An action done by virtue of the common nature, by an individual included in that nature, takes on a certain mode from its proper principles: thus an action due to a man’s animal nature is produced in him in accordance with the principles of the human species, wherefore a man on account of his rational nature enjoys a more perfect act of the imagination than other animals. Again actions peculiar to man are performed by this or that individual in accordance with the individualising principles of this or that man; the result being that one man understands better than another. Consequently if the common nature be the principle of an operation that belongs to the Father alone, it follows that it is the principle in accordance with the personal property of the Father. And for this reason the idea of power includes, after a fashion, paternity even in respect of that which is the principle of generation.

For these reasons we must say with others that the generative power denotes at the same time the essence and the property.

Reply to the First Objection. Power conveys the idea of a principle in relation to operation which, as already stated, is not ascribed to God as a notional act.

Reply to the Second Objection. Among creatures one predicament is accidental to another, wherefore one thing cannot result from two, except what is one accidentally; whereas in God relation is in reality the very essence; and thus there is no comparison.

Reply to the Third Objection. Among creatures the principle of generation is twofold, namely the generator and that whereby he generates. The generator, however, is distinct from the thing generated by virtue of the generation, since nothing generates itself: whereas that whereby the generation takes place is not distinct but is common to both, as stated above. Consequently it does not follow that there is a distinction in the divine nature, as the generative power, since power is the principle whereby the effect is produced.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. By reason of the implied relation the generative power is not common but proper.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. In every generation, the generating principle in chief is not an individual form but the form proper to the specific nature. Again there is no need for the thing generated to be like the generator in regard to individual conditions, but in regard to the specific nature. Now fatherhood is not in the Father as the form of a species, as human nature is in man, for then the divine nature is in him; but it is in him, so to speak, as the principle of his individuality, since it is a personal property. Consequently it does not follow that in him it is the generating principle in chief, but that it is understood along with it, so to speak, as we have already explained: otherwise it would follow that the Father by begetting would communicate not only his Godhead but also his Fatherhood which is inadmissible.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The generative power is really identical with the divine nature, so that the nature is essentially included in it: it is not the same with the Paternity, wherefore the comparison fails.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. Knowledge or will are not the principle of generation, since generation belongs to the nature which as a principle of action may be considered as a power. Hence it is that in God power is cosignified with relation, which does not apply to knowledge or will.

The replies to the arguments on the other side may be easily gathered from what has been said.

In the Act of Generation Does the Generative Power Come into Action at the Command of the Will?

[Sum. Th. 1, Q. xli, A. 2]

THE third point of inquiry is whether in the act of generation the generative power comes into action at the command of the will. It would seem that the reply should be in the affirmative.

1. Hilary (De Synod.) says that not by natural necessity was the Father led to beget the Son. Now if he did not beget of his will he begot of natural necessity, since an agent is either voluntary or natural. Therefore the Father begot the Son by his will: and thus the generative power proceeded to generate through the command of the Will.

2. But, you will say, the Father begot the Son by an act of his will, neither preceding nor following but accompanying the act of generation.—On the contrary this argument is seemingly inadequate. For since everything in God is eternal, nothing in him can precede in point of time anything that is in him: and yet we find in him one thing having to another the relation of a principle, for instance, his will in relation to his election of the just, from the mere fact that it proceeds from his intellect. Therefore though the will to beget did not precede the begetting of the Son, nevertheless it would seem that we may consider it to be the principle of the Son’s generation, for the reason that it proceeds from the intellect.

3. The Son proceeds through an act of the intellect since he proceeds as the Word: because there is no intellectual word except when thinking of a thing we understand it, according to Augustine (De Trin. ix, 4). Now the will is the principle of the intellectual operation: for it commands the act of the intellect, even as those of the other powers, as Anselm says (De Simil. ii): thus I understand because I wish to do so, just as I walk because I wish to walk. Therefore the will is the principle of the Son’s generation.

4. But, say you, it is true of man that the will commands the act of the intelligence, but not of God.—On the contrary, predestination is, in a way, an act of the intelligence: for we say that God predestined Peter because he willed, according to Romans ix, 18: He hath mercy on whom he eill, and whom he will he hardeneth. Therefore not only in man but also in God does the will command the act of the intelligence.

5. According to the Philosopher (Phys. viii, 5) that which causes its own movement can be either in motion or not: and for the same reason that which is cause of its own act, can act or not act. But nature cannot act or not act, since it is determined to one action. Therefore it is not the cause of its own action, but acts as moved by another. Now this cannot be the case in God. Therefore in God no action is from nature, and consequently neither is generation. Therefore generation is from his will, since all agents are reduced to nature or will as stated in Phys. ii, 4.

6. If the action of nature precede that of the will, this leads to an absurdity, for the will would be rendered void. Because since nature is determined to one course of action, if it moved the will, it would move it to one thing alone, and this is contrary to the essence of the will which, as such, is free. On the other hand if the will move nature, neither nature nor will is abrogated, since that which is indifferent to many things is not debarred from moving towards one. Therefore the action of the will reasonably precedes the action of nature, rather than vice versa. Now the generation of the Son is pure action or operation. Therefore it comes from the will.

7. It is written (Ps. cxlviii, 5): He spake and they were made, which words Augustine expounds as follows (Gen. ad lit. ii, 6, 7): He begat the Word in whom they were that they might be made. Accordingly the procession of the Word from the Father is the reason of the creature’s production. Wherefore if the Son proceeds not from the Father by the command of the Father’s will, it would seem that all creatures proceed from the Father naturally and not only by his will which is erroneous.

8. Hilary says (De Synod.): If anyone say that the Son was born of the Father without the concurrence of the Father’s will, let him be anathema. Therefore the Father did not beget the Son involuntarily; and so the same conclusion follows.

9. It is written (Jo. iii, 35): The Father loveth the Son, and he hath given all things into his hand, which words a gloss expounds of the giving of the eternal generation. Therefore the love of the Father for the Son is the reason rather than the sign of the eternal generation. Now love is from the will. Therefore the will is the principle of the Son’s generation.

10. Dionysius (De Div. Nom. iv) says that God’s love does not allow him to be without offspring. Hence again it would seem to follow that love is the reason of generation.

11. Any opinion about God that does not involve absurdity or error can be maintained. Now if we suppose that the Father begat the Son voluntarily, no absurdity follows, since neither does it follow apparently that the Son is not eternal, nor that he is not consubstantial with or equal to the Father, since the Holy Spirit who proceeds as an act of the will, is co-eternal, co-equal and consubstantial with the Father and Son. Therefore seemingly it is not erroneous to assert that the Father begat the Son by his will.

12. No will can fail to will its last end. Now the end of God’s will is to communicate his goodness, and this is especially effected by generation. Therefore the Father’s will cannot but will the generation of the Son. Therefore by his will he begat the Son.

13. Human generation is drawn from the divine according to Ephesians iii, 15: Of whom all paternity is named in heaven and on earth. Now human generation is subject to the command of the will, else there could be no sin in the act of generation. Therefore the divine generation is also, and so the same conclusion follows.

14. Every action proceeding from an unchangeable nature is necessary. Now the divine nature is utterly unchangeable., Wherefore if the (divine) generation be the operation of the nature and not of the will, it follows that it is necessary, so that the Father begat the Son of necessity: and this is contrary to the teaching of Augustine (Ad Oros. iii).

15. Augustine (De Trin. xv, xx) says that the Son is Counsel of counsel, and will of will. Now the preposition of indicates a principle. Therefore the will is the principle of Son’s generation, and so the same conclusion follows.

On the contrary Augustine (Ad Oros. iii) says The Father begot the Son neither by his will nor of necessity.

Again, the supreme effusion of the will is through the channel of love. But the Son proceeds not by way of love, rather is it the Holy Spirit who proceeds thus. Therefore the will is not the principle of the Son’s generation.

Further, the Son proceeds from the Father as brightness from light according to Hebrews i, 3: Who being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance. Now brightness does not proceed from light by the will. Neither therefore does the Son proceed thus from the Father.

I answer that the generation of the Father may be referred to the will as the object of the will: since the Father both willed the Son and the generation of the Son from eternity: but by no means can the will be the principle of the divine generation. This is made evident as follows. The will as such being free is indifferent to either of the alternatives: for it can act or not act, do thus or do otherwise, will and not will. And if this does not apply to the will with regard to a certain thing, this will be true of the will not as will, but on account of the natural inclination it has for a certain thing, as for the last end which it is unable not to will: thus the human will is unable not to will happiness, and cannot will unhappiness. Wherefore it is clear that whenever a thing has the will for its principle, it is possible for it to be or not to be, to be such or otherwise, to be now or then. Now everything of this description is a creature; since in an uncreated being there is no possibility of being or not being, but the essential necessity of being, as Avicenna proves (Metaph. viii, 4). Wherefore if we suppose the Son to be begotten by the will, it must needs follow that he is a creature. For this reason the Arians who held the Son to be a creature, said that he was begotten by the will: whereas Catholics say that he was begotten not by will but by the nature. For nature is determined to one effect: and accordingly since the, Son is begotten of the Father by nature, it follows that it is impossible for him not to be begotten, or to be otherwise than he is, or not consubstantial with the Father: since that which proceeds naturally, proceeds in likeness to that from which it proceeds. This is the teaching of Hilary (De. Syn.): God’s will gave every creature its nature, whereas a perfect nativity gave the Son his nature. Hence everything is such as God willed it to be, while the Son is such as God is. Now, as already stated, although the will is indifferent to some things, it has a natural inclination in regard to the last end: and in like manner the intellect has a certain natural movement in respect of its knowledge of first principles. Moreover, the principle of the divine knowledge is God himself, who is the end of his will; wherefore that which proceeds in God by his act of self-knowledge, proceeds naturally, and likewise that which proceeds by his act of self-love. And for this reason, since the Son proceeds as the Word by an act of the diviue intellect inasmuch as the Father knows himself, and the Holy Spirit by an act of the will inasmuch as the Father loves the Son: it follows that both Son and Holy Spirit proceed naturally, and further, that they are consubstantial, coequal and coeternal with the Father and with each other.

Reply to the First Objection. Hilary is speaking of the necessity that denotes violence: this is evident from the words that follow: Not led by natural necessity, since he willed to beget the Son.

Reply to the Second Objection. There is not an antecedent will in God in respect of anything whatsoever; because everything that God ever wills, he has willed from eternity. But his will is concomitant with every good that is in him and creatures: for he wills himself to be and the creature to be. It is, however, precedent or antecedent in point of time with reference to creatures alone who have not existed from eternity. His intellect is precedent as regards those eternal acts which are denominated as terminating in creatures, such as government, predestination and the like. But the generation of the Son is neither a, creature nor does it signify an act terminating in a creature. Therefore with regard to it God’s will is not antecedent, either in time or in our way of thinking, but only concomitant.

Reply to the Third Objection. just as the act of the intellect seems to follow the act of the will, in so far as it is commanded by the will, so on the other hand the act of the will seems to follow the act of the intellect, in so far as the will’s object, namely the good understood, is offered to it by the intellect. Hence we should go on indefinitely unless we come to a stop either in the act of the intellect or in the act of the will. But we cannot come to a stop in an act of the will whose object is presupposed to its act. Therefore we must come to a stop in an act of the intellect, and an act which proceeds from the intellect naturally, so as not to be commanded by the will. It is in this way that the Son of God proceeds as the Word, by an act of the divine intellect, as we have already stated.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. The act of the divine intellect is natural, in so far as it terminates in God himself who is the principle of his intellect: but in so far as it is described as terminating in creatures, its relation to whom is somewhat like the relation of our intellect to its conclusions, it proceeds not naturally but voluntarily. Consequently some of the acts of the divine intellect are designated as being commanded by the divine will.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. With regard to those things to which it can extend by virtue of its essential principles, nature does not need to be determined by another, but only with regard to those things for which its own principles do not suffice. Consequently philosophers in saying that the work of nature is the work of an intelligence, were not led by observing the effects of heat and cold considered in themselves, since even those who said that natural effects were necessitated by matter referred all the works of nature to the agency of heat and cold. But they were led by observing those effects which were beyond the power of these qualities of heat and cold: such as the arrangement of members in the body of an animal in suchwise that nature is safeguarded. Since this generation is the work of the divine nature considered in itself, there is no need for it to be determined to such an action by the will.—It may also be replied that nature is determined by something for some particular end. But a nature which is itself the end and not directed to an end does not require determination from without.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The action of the will precedes the action of nature if we take them in separate subjects. Wherefore the action of the entire inferior nature is dependent on the will of its Governor. But in the same subject the action of nature must needs precede the act of the will. For nature is logically prior to will, since nature in the logical order comes the first in a thing’s subsistence, while the will comes last as directing that thing to its end. Yet it does not follow that the will is rendered void. For although the will follows the natural inclination in being determined to that one thing which is the last end to which nature inclines, it nevertheless remains undetermined with regard to other things. Take man, for instance, who desires happiness naturally and of necessity, but not other things. Accordingly in God the action of nature precedes the act of the will both naturally and logically: for the generation of the Son is the prototype of all the productions that proceed from the divine will, that is to say of all creatures.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. Though all creatures were made’by the Word of God begotten of the Father, it does not follow that if the Word proceeded naturally, creatures also proceed naturally: thus although our intellect knows first principles naturally, it does not follow that it knows naturally the conclusions deduced from them. For the will makes use of our natural gifts for this or that purpose.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. The Father begot voluntarily, but this indicates nothing else than his concomitant will.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. If these words are made to refer to the eternal generation, the Father’s love for the Son is not to be taken as the reason but as the sign of that giving whereby the Father from all eternity gave all things to the Son. For likeness is the reason of love.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. Dionysius is speaking of the formation of creatures, not of the generation of the Son.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. The Holy Spirit is said to proceed by way of the will, because he proceeds by an act which is naturally an act of the will, namely the mutual love of the Father and the Son. For the Holy Spirit is love even as the Son is the Father’s Word expressive of himself.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Again this argument proves only that the Father wills the generation of the Son: and this denotes a concomitant will that regards the generation as its object, not as something whereof it is the principle.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Human generation is effected by a natural force, namely the generative power, through the medium of the motive power which is subject to the command of the will, whereas the generative power is not. This does not apply to God, and so the comparison fails.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. Augustine does not mean to deny the necessity attaching to immutability as the argument suggests, but the necessity induced by force.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. When it is said that the Son is ‘will of will’ the sense is ‘will of the Father’ who is will. Hence this preposition ‘of’ denotes the generative principle that is the begetter, and not the principle whereby generation is effected, which is the point of our inquiry.

Is the Generative Power Included in Omnipotence?

THE fifth point of inquiry is whether the generative power is included in omnipotence. And seemingly the reply should be in the negative.

1. Omnipotence is becoming to the Son according to the words of the Creed: The Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, the Holy Spirit is almighty. But the generative power is not becoming to him. Therefore it is not included in omnipotence.

2. Augustine (Enchir. xcvi) says that God is almighty because he is able to do whatsoever he wills: so that it would seem to follow that omnipotence includes any power that is at the command of the will. Now such is not the generative power: since the Father did not beget the Son by his will, as we have shown above (A. 3). Therefore the generative power does not belong to omnipotence.

3. Omnipotence is attributed to God in the sense that it extends to all those things that are in themselves possible. But the generation of the Son or the Son himself comes within the range not of things possible, but of things necessary. Therefore the generative power is not included in omnipotence.

4. That which belongs to several things in common belongs to them in respect of something that is common to all of them. Thus in every triangle the three angles are together equal to two right angles, and this applies to all triangles inasmuch as they are triangular figures. Consequently that which belongs to one thing alone, belongs to it in respect of that which is proper to it. Now omnipotence is not proper to the Father. Since then the generative power in God belongs to the Father alone, it does not belong to him as omnipotent, and consequently is not included in omnipotence.

5. Even as there is one essence of Father and Son, so is there one omnipotence. Now it does not pertain to the Son’s omnipotence that he be able to beget. Neither, then, does it belong to the omnipotence of the Father: and consequently by no means does the generative power belong to omnipotence.

6. Things differing in kind do not come under the same heading: thus when I say ‘all dogs’ I do not include both the dog that barks and the constellation. Now the generation of the Son and the formation of the other things that are the subject-matter of omnipotence are not of the same kind. Therefore when I say: ‘God is almighty’ I do not include his power of generating.

7. The subject-matter of omnipotence is anything to which omnipotence extends. Now in God there is no subject-matter according to Jerome. Therefore neither the Son’s generation nor the Son himself is the subject-matter of omnipotence: and the same conclusion follows as before.

8. According to the Philosopher (Phys. v, i) a relation cannot be the direct term of a movement, nor consequently of an action: and therefore it cannot be the object of a power, since power connotes direction to an action. Now generation and Son imply relation in God. Therefore God’s power does not extend to them: and consequently omnipotence does not include the power to beget.

On the contrary Augustine says (Contra Maxim. ii, 7, 18, 23): If the Father is unable to beget a Son equal to him, where is his omnipotence? Therefore omnipotence includes begetting.

Further, omnipotence is attributed to God in respect not only of external acts, such as creation, government and the like, which are expressed as terminating extrinsically in their effects, but also of interior acts, such as intelligence and will. For if anyone were to say that God cannot understand, he would take away from his omnipotence. Now the Son proceeds as Word by an act of intelligence. Therefore God’s omnipotence is understood to include the begetting of the Son.

Again, it is a greater thing to beget the Son than to create heaven and earth. But the power to create heaven and earth belongs to omnipotence. Much more, then, does the power to beget the Son.

Moreover, in every genus there is a principle to which all that belong to that genus are reduced. Now in the genus of powers the principle is omnipotence. Therefore all power is reduced to omnipotence; and consequently the generative power is either included in omnipotence, or there will be two principles in the genus of power, which is impossible.

I answer that the power to beget belongs to the omnipotence of the Father, but not to omnipotence simply. This may be proved as follows.

Since power is considered as being rooted in the essence and is the principle of action, we must judge of the power and action as of the essence. Now in the divine essence we must note that, by reason of its supreme simplicity, whatever is in God is his essence: wherefore the very relations by which the persons are distinct one from another, are in reality the divine essence. And though one and the same essence is common to the three persons, nevertheless the relation of one person is not common to the three, on account of the opposition in which these relations stand to one another. Thus paternity is the divine essence, yet paternity is not in the Son, because paternity is opposed to sonship. Hence we may say that paternity is the divine essence forasmuch as this is in the Father, not as in the Son; because the divine essence is not in the same way in the Father as in the Son: it is in the Son as received from another: but not in the Father. And although the Father has paternity which the Son has not, it does not follow that the Father has something that the Son has not: because the relation, by reason of its generic nature as such, is a thing (aliquid), but is purely relative (ad aliquid). That it is something real is due to the fact that it is in a subject, which is either identical with it as in God, or is its cause, as in creatures. Wherefore since that which is absolute is common to Father and Son they are distinct not by something absolute but by something relative: and therefore we must not say that the Father has something that the Son has not, but that something belongs to the Father in one respect, to the Son in another. The same then applies to action and power. Generation denotes action with a certain respect, and the generative power denotes power with a certain respect: so that generation is God’s action, but only as it is in the Father: likewise the generative power is the divine omnipotence, but only as this is in the Father. Yet it does not follow that the Father is able to do what the Son cannot do: but whatsoever the Father can do, the Son can do likewise, although he cannot beget, because to beget implies a relation.

Reply to the First Objection. Omnipotence includes the power to beget, but not as it is in the Son, as stated above.

Reply to the Second Objection. In these words Augustine does not intend to explain the whole meaning of omnipotence, but to indicate a sign of omnipotence. Nor is he speaking of omnipotence except in reference to creatures.

Reply to the Third Objection. The possible things to which omnipotence extends must not be confined to those that are contingent, since even necessary things were brought into being by the divine power. Hence there is no reason why the begetting of the Son should not be included among the things possible to the divine power.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Though omnipotence absolutely considered is not proper to the Father, nevertheless as considered together with its Particular mode of existence, or definite relation, it becomes proper to the Father. In the same way the expression God the Father is proper to the Father, although God is common to the three persons.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. just as the three persons have one and the same essence, it is not in each under the same relation, or with the same mode of existence: and the same applies to omnipotence.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The generation, of the Son and the formation of creatures are of the same kind not univocally indeed, but only by analogy. Thus Basil (Hom. de Fide xv) says that the Son receives in common with all creatures. In this sense he is called the Firstborn of every creature (Colos. i, 15), and for the same reason his generation may be placed under one common head with the production of creatures.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The generation of the Son is the subject-matter of omnipotence; not, however, so as to imply that being subject denotes inferiority, but so as subject-matter indicates the object of power.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. The generation of the Son signifies the relation by way of action, and the Son signifies the relation as a subsistent hypostasis: and thus there is no reason why we should not refer omnipotence to these things.

The arguments on the other side merely prove that the omnipotence of the Father includes the power to beget.

Are the Generative and Creative Powers the Same?

THE sixth point of inquiry is whether the power to beget is the same as the power to create: and the answer, seemingly should be in the negative.

1. According to Damascene (De Fide Orthod. ii, 27) generation is the operation or work of nature: whereas according to Hilary (De Synod.) creation is a work of the will. Now will and nature are not one and the same principle, but are opposite members of a division, as stated in Phys. ii, 4, 5. Therefore the generative and creative powers are not the same.

2. Powers are distinguished by their acts (De Anima ii, 4). Now generation and creation are very different acts. Therefore the generative and creative powers are also distinct.

3. There is less unity among things that admit of a same common predication, than among those that have the same being. Now in no respect do the generative and creative powers admit of a same common predication, as neither do the acts of generating and creating, nor the Son and a creature. Therefore the generative and creative powers are not the same in being.

4. There is no order among things that are identical. Now the creative power logically precedes the generative power, even as the essential precedes the notional. Therefore these powers are not the same.

On the contrary in God power and essence are not distinct. But there is only one divine essence. Therefore there is only one divine power. Therefore the powers in question are not distinct.

Again, God does not do by several means what he is able to do by one. Now God is able both to generate and to create by one power, and all the more seeing that the generation of the Son is the prototype of the production of creatures, as Augustine expounds the words, He spake, and they were made (Gen. ad lit. ii, 6, 7): That is to say He begot the Word in whom they existed as things to be made. Therefore the generative and creative powers are but one power.

I answer that, as stated above (A. 5), in speaking of the divine power we must take as our guide those things that apply to the divine essence. Now in God though one relation is really distinct from another on account of the mutual opposition between the relations which are real in God, nevertheless the relation and the divine essence are distinct not really, but only logically, since there is no opposition between them. Consequently we cannot grant that there are several absolute things in God, as some have asserted who maintained that there is a twofold being in God, an essential being and a personal being. The reason is that all being in God is essential, and the very, persons are constituted by virtue of that essential being. Now when we consider the divine power we find besides the power a certain relation to what is subject to that power. Accordingly if we take power in its relation to an essential act, such as intelligence or creation, and power in its relation to a notional act such as generation, and compare them together as power, we find that they are one and the same power, even as nature and person have but one being. And. yet we understand at the same time that each power has its peculiar relationship to its respective act to which it is directed. Therefore the generative and creative powers are one and the same power, if we consider them as powers, but they differ in their respective relationships to different acts.

Reply to the First Objection. Although in creatures nature and will are distinct, in God they are one and the same.—Or we may reply that the creative power does not denote the purpose or will, but the power as directed by the will: whereas the generative power acts as inclined by nature. But this does not necessitate a distinction of powers, since there is nothing to prevent the same power from being directed to one act by the will and inclined to another by nature. Thus our intellect is urged by the will to believe, and is led by nature to understand first principles.

Reply to the Second Objection. The higher the power the wider its scope: so that a diversity of objects does not require that it should be divided: thus the imagination is one power covering all objects of sense, for the perception of which distinct senses are appropriated. Now the divine power is raised above all others: wherefore a difference of acts requires no distinction therein, if we consider it as power; but God by his, one power is able to do all things.

Reply to the Third Objection. The generative and creative powers, considered as to their substance, so to speak, do not merely admit of a same common predication, but they are one and the same thing: the analogy comes in through this relationship to their respective acts.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. There is no order of first and second between these powers, except in respect of their being distinct: so that such an order is only in reference to their acts. Hence it is clear that the generative power precedes the creative power, as generation preceded creation. But in relation to the essence they are identical and there is no order between them.

QUESTION III

CREATION

THERE are nineteen points of inquiry: (1) Can God create? (2) Is creation a kind of change? (3) Is creation something real in the creature? (4) Can the creative power be communicated to a creature? (5) Is it possible for anything to be that is not created by God? (6) Is there but one principle of creation? (7) Does God operate in every operation of nature? (8) Does creation take part in the works of nature? (9) Is the soul created? (10) Is the soul created in the body, or outside the body? (11) Do the sensitive and vegetative souls come into being by creation? (12) Are those souls in the seed at the time of impregnation? (13) Can that which derives its being from another be eternal? (14) Can anything that is essentially distinct from God be eternal? (15) Did things proceed from God by natural necessity? (16) Is it possible for many things to proceed from one? (17) Has the world always existed? (18) Were the angels created before the material world? (19) Could angels have existed before the material world?

Q. III: ARTICLE I

Can God Create a Thing from Nothing?

[Sum. Th. 1. Q. xiv, A. 2]

WE now inquire about the creation, which is the first effect of the divine power; and the first point of inquiry is whether God can create anything out of nothing. Seemingly the reply should be in the negative.

1. God cannot act counter to first principles; for instance, he cannot make a whole not greater than its part. Now according to Aristotle (Phys. i, 8) philosophers declare it is a commonly received axiom that out of nothing nothing comes. Therefore God cannot make a thing out of nothing.

2. Whatever is made was possible before it was made for if it could not be, it could not be made, since the impossible cannot be the term of a change. Now the potentiality by virtue of which a thing is possible, cannot be otherwise than in a subject, unless it be itself a subject: because an accident cannot exist but in a subject. Therefore whatever is made, is produced from matter or a subject. Therefore nothing can be made out of nothing.

3. Infinite distance cannot be crossed. Now there is an infinite distance between absolute non-being and being: because the less a potentiality is disposed to actuality the further is it removed from act, so that if there be no potentiality at all, the distance will be infinite. Therefore it is impossible for a thing to come into being from absolute non-being.

4. The Philosopher says (De Gen. i, 7) that things utterly dissimilar do not act on one another: because there must be common genus and matter in agent and patient. Now absolute non-entity and God are utterly dissimilar. Therefore God cannot act on absolute non-entity: and consequently he cannot make a thing out of nothing.

5. Should it be said that the foregoing argument applies to an agent whose action is distinct from its substance, and presupposes a subject into which it is received? —On the contrary, Avicenna says (Metaph. ix, 2) that if heat were separated from matter it would act of itself without its matter: and yet its action would not be its substance. Therefore the fact that God’s action is his substance is no reason for his not needing matter.

6. From no premises we can draw no conclusion, which is a process, of reason. Now logical being is consequent to natural being. Therefore neither can anything in nature be made from nothing.

7. If a thing is made from nothing, this preposition from connotes either cause or order. And apparently if it connotes a cause it will be either the efficient or the material cause. But nothing cannot be the efficient cause of being, nor can it be the material cause, so that as regards the point at issue ‘from’ does not denote a cause. Nor can it denote order, because as Boethius says there is no order between non-being and being. Therefore in no sense can a thing be made from nothing.

8. According to the Philosopher (Metaph. v, 12) active power is the cause whereby one thing is changed into another, as such. Now there is no power in God save that which is active. Therefore it requires a thing which is the subject of change and consequently cannot make a thing out of nothing.

9. Things differ from one another in that one is more perfect than another. Now the cause of this difference is not on the part of God, since he is one and simple. Therefore we must assign matter as the cause thereof: and consequently we must hold that things were made from matter and not from nothing.

10. That which is made from nothing has being after nonbeing. Consequently it is possible to conceive an instant which is the last of its non-being, and when it ceases not to be; and another instant which is the first of its being and from which it begins to be. Now these instants are either one and the same, or distinct. If they coincide it follows that two contradictory statements are true at the same instant: if they are distinct, then since there is an intervening time between the two instants, it follows that there is a mean between affirmation and negation: for it cannot be said that it is not after the last instant of its non-existence, nor that it is before the first instant of its existence. But both these things are impossible, namely that contradictory statements be true simultaneously, and that they have a mean. Therefore a thing cannot be made from nothing.

11. That which is made of necessity at some time was becoming: and what is created was at some time being created. Hence that which is created was becoming and was made either simultaneously or not simultaneously. Now it cannot be mid that it was not simultaneously, since the creature, before it is made, is not: and if its becoming precedes its having been made, there must have been a subject of the making, and this is contrary to the definition of creation. On the other hand if its becoming and its having been made are simultaneous, it follows that at the same time it is being made and not being made, since in things that are not purely transient, that which has been made is: whereas that which is being made, is not. But this is impossible. Therefore it is impossible for a thing to be made from nothing or to be created.

12. Every agent produces its like: and every agent acts forasmuch as it is actual. Therefore nothing is made but what is actual. Now primal matter is not actual. Therefore it cannot be made, especially by God who is pure act. Hence whatsoever things are made, are made from pre-existing matter, and not from nothing.

13. Whatsoever God makes he fashions according to his idea, even as an artist produces art-works according to art-forms. Now there is no idea of primal matter in God, because an idea is a form and the likeness of that which it represents: whereas primal matter, since it is conceived to be essentially formless, cannot be represented by a form. Therefore primal matter cannot be made by God; and thus the same conclusion follows.

14. The same thing cannot be a principle both of perfection and of imperfection. Now things are said to be imperfect when they are inferior to others, and this can only be the case when their inferiority is due to their being imperfect. Since then God is the principle of perfection, we must needs ascribe imperfection to some other principle: and this can only be matter. Therefore things must needs have been made from matter of some kind, and not from nothing.

15. If a thing. is made from nothing, it is made therefrom either as from a subject, as a statue made of bronze; or as from its opposite, as a shape from something shapeless: or as from these two combined, as a statue from shapeless bronze. Now a thing cannot be made from nothing as subject, since non-being cannot be the matter of being. Nor as a composite, since then non-being would be transformed into being, as shapeless bronze is transformed into shapely bronze; so that there would have to be something common to being and non-being; which is impossible. Nor again as from its opposite, since absolute non-being differs more from being than two beings, of the same genus, and yet one of the latter cannot be changed into another; for instance, shape is not changed into colour, except perhaps accidentally. Therefore by no means can a thing be made from nothing.

16. Whatsoever accidentally is originates in that which is essential. From that which is opposite a thing is made accidentally, and from a subject a thing is made essentially: thus a statue is made accidentally from that which is shapeless, but from bronze essentially, since shapelessness is accidental to the bronze. If, then, a thing is made from nothing, this will be accidentally: and thus it follows that it will need to be made from a subject, and therefore not from nothing.

17. The maker gives being to that which is made. If then God makes a thing out of nothing, he gives being to that thing. Hence either there is something that receives being, or there is nothing. If nothing, then nothing receives being by that action of God’s, and thus nothing is made thereby. And if there is something that receives being, this something will be distinct from that which is from God, since recipient is distinct from that which is received. Therefore God makes a thing from something already existing, and not from nothing.

On the contrary, on Genesis i, 1, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, a gloss taken from Bede says that to create is to make a thing from nothing. Therefore God can make a thing from nothing.

Again, Avicenna (Metaph. vii, 2) says that an agent who acts by virtue of an accident requires matter to act upon. But God does not act by virtue of an accident, indeed his action is his very substance. Therefore he requires no matter to act upon, and consequently can make a thing from nothing.

Again, God’s power is greater than that of nature. Now the power of nature makes things from that in which previously they were in potentiality. Therefore God’s power does something more, and makes things out of nothing.

I answer that we must hold firmly that God can and does make things from nothing.

In order to make this evident we must observe that every agent acts forasmuch as it is in act: wherefore action must needs be attributed to an agent according to the measure of its actuality. Now a particular thing is actual in a particular manner, and this in two ways. First by comparison with itself, because its substance is not wholly act, since such things are composed of matter and form: for which reason a natural thing acts not in respect of its totality, but in respect of its form whereby it is in act. Secondly, in comparison with things that are in act: because no natural thing comprises the acts and perfections of all the things that are in act: but each one has an act confined to one genus and one species, so that none has an activity extending to being as such, but only to this or that being as such, and confined to this or that species: for an agent produces its like. Wherefore a natural agent produces a being not simply, but determines a pre-existent being to this or that species, of fire, for example, or of whiteness and so forth. Wherefore the natural agent acts by moving something, and consequently requires matter as a subject of change or movement, and thus it cannot make a thing out of nothing.

On the other hand God is all act,—both in comparison with himself, since he is pure act without any admixture of potentiality,—and in comparison with the things that are in act, because in him is the source of all things, wherefore by his action he produces the whole subsistent being, without anything having existed before (since he is the source of all being), and in respect of his totality. For this reason he can make a thing from nothing, and this action of his is called creation. Wherefore it is stated in De Causis (prop. xviii) that being is by creation, whereas life and the like are by information: for all causation of absolute being is, traced to the first universal cause, while the causation of all that is in addition to being, or specific of being, belongs to second causes which act by information, on the presupposition as it were of the effect of the first cause. Hence no thing gives being except in so far as it partakes of the divine power. For this reason it is said again in De Causis (prop. iii) that the soul, by giving us being, has a divine operation.

Reply to the First Objection. The Philosopher says that it is a common axiom or opinion of the physicists that from nothing nothing is made, because the natural agent, which was the object of their researches, does not act except by movement. Consequently there must needs be a subject of movement or change which, as we have stated, is not required for a supernatural agent.

Reply to the Second Objection. Before the world was, it was possible for the world to be: but it does not follow that there was need of matter as the base of that possibility. For it is stated in Metaph. v, 12, that sometimes a thing is said to be possible, not in respect of some potentiality, but because it involves no contradiction of terms, in which sense the possible is opposed to the impossible. Accordingly it is said that before the world was it was possible for the world to be made, because the statement involved no contradiction between subject and predicate. We may also reply that it was possible by reason of the active power of the agent, but not on account of any passive power of matter. The Philosopher uses this argument (Metaph. vii, 13) in treating of natural generation against the Platonists who maintained that separate forms are the principles of natural generation.

Reply to the Third Objection. Between being and absolute non-being there is an infinite distance in a certain sense, and that always, but not in the same way. Sometimes it is infinite on both sides, as when we compare non-being with the divine being which is infinite: thus we might compare infinite whiteness with infinite blackness. Sometimes it is finite on one side only, as when we compare absolute non-being with created being which is finite: thus we might compare infinite blackness with finite whiteness. Accordingly then from non-being it is impossible to pass to the being that is infinite: but it is possible to pass to the being that is finite, inasmuch as the distance from non-being to that kind of being is determinate on the one side, although there is no passage properly speaking: for thus it is in continuous movements through which one part passes after another. But there is no such passage for that which is infinite.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. When a thing is made from nothing, non-being or nothing does not hold the position of patient, save accidentally, but rather that of the opposite to the thing made by the action. Nor again is the opposite in the position of patient in the action of nature, except accidentally; but the subject is this.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. If heat were separated from matter, it would act indeed without matter as a requisite for the agent, but not without that matter that is required on the part of the patient.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. In the acts of the reason to come to a conclusion is like being moved in the processes of nature, because in reaching a conclusion the reason discourses from one thing to another: wherefore as all natural movement is from a starting-point, so also is every conclusion of the reason. And as the understanding of first principles, which is the starting-point whence the conclusion is derived, does not proceed as a conclusion from something else, even so creation which is the principle of all movement, is not from something else.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. When a thing is said to be made from nothing, the sense is twofold, as Anselm says (Monolog. v, viii). The negative implied in the word nothing may bear directly on the preposition from, or it may be included in that preposition. If it bears directly on the preposition, again a twofold sense is possible. It may bear on the whole so that the negative extends not only to the preposition but also to the verb; in this sense we might say that a thing is made from nothing because it is not made: thus it could be said of a silent man that he speaks of nothing. In this sense we may say of God that he is made from nothing, because he is utterly not made: but this manner of speaking is not customary. In another sense the verb remains affirmed, and the negative bears on the preposition only: and then we say that a thing is made from nothing, because it is made indeed, but there is no preexisting thing from which it is made: thus we say that so-and-so grieves for nothing, because he has no cause for grieving: it is in this sense that a thing is said to be made from nothing by creation. If, however, the preposition includes the negation, then again the sense is twofold, one true, one false. It is false if the preposition connotes causality (since in no way can non-being be the cause of being): it is true if it implies mere order, so that to make a thing from nothing, is to make a thing whereas before there was nothing, and this is true of creation. The statement of Boethius that there is no order between non-being and being, refers to the order of definite proportion, or of real relation; such order, says Avicenna (Metaph. iii) cannot be between being and non-being.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. This definition applies to a natural active power.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. God produces things not of natural necessity but according to the order of his wisdom. Hence it does not follow that diversity among things arises from their matter but from the ordering of divine wisdom, which established diverse natures for the adornment of the universe.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. When a thing is made from nothing, its being begins in an instant, and its non-being is not in that instant, nor is it in any real but only in an imaginary instant. For as outside the universe there is no real but only in an imaginary dimension, in respect of which we may say that God is able to make a thing outside the universe at this or that distance from the universe; even so before the beginning of the world there was no real but an imaginary time, wherein it is possible to conceive an instant which was the last instant of non-being. Nor does it follow that there must have been a time between those two instants, since real time is not a continuation of imaginary time.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. That which is made from nothing becomes and is already made simultaneously: and the same applies to all instantaneous changes; thus the air is being illuminated and is actually illuminated at the same time. For in such things to become and to be already made are synonymous, in so far as a thing already is in the first instant of its making.

It may also be replied that a thing which is made from nothing is said to be in course of making when it is already made, not in respect of movement, which is from one term to another, but in respect of the outflow of the agent into the thing made. For these two are to be found in natural generation, namely transition from one term to another, and outflow of agent into the thing made, but the latter alone has a place in creation.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Properly speaking neither matter, nor form, nor accident are said to be made: but that which is made is the thing that subsists. For since to be made terminates in being, it belongs properly to that to which it belongs per se to be, namely to a subsistent thing: wherefore neither matter, nor form, nor accident are said properly speaking to be created, but to be concreated: whereas a subsistent thing, whatsoever it may be, is properly said to be created. Without, however, laying stress on this, we may reply that primal matter has a likeness to God in so far as it has a share of being. For even as a stone, as a being, is like God, although it has no intelligence as God has, so primal matter in so far as it has being and yet not actual being, is like God. Because being is, so to say, common to potentiality and act.

The reply to the Thirteenth Objection follows from this: because properly speaking there is no idea of matter but of the composite, since the idea is the form whereby something is made. Yet we may say that there is an idea of matter in so far as matter in a sense reflects the divine essence.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. If one of two creatures be inferior to the other, it does not follow that it is imperfect, because imperfection denotes the lack of something which is natural or due to a thing. Hence in heaven though one saint is above another, none will be imperfect. And if there be imperfection in creatures, it need not be ascribed to God or to matter, but to the fact that the creature is made from nothing.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. A thing is said to be made from nothing as from an opposite, in the sense explained above. Yet it does not thereby follow that a being of one kind can be made from one of another kind, for instance, shape from colour: because being and non-being cannot possibly co-exist, whereas colour and shape can. On the other hand that wherefrom a thing is made must needs be in contact with the thing made, yet they are not simultaneous.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. If from connotes causality, a thing is not made from its opposite except accidentally, that is by reason of the subject. If however it connotes order, a thing is made from its opposite even per se: hence privation is said to be the principle of a thing’s becoming but not of its being. It is in this sense, as stated above, that a thing is said to be made from nothing.

Reply to the Seventeenth Objection. God at the same time gives being and produces that which receives being, so that it does not follow that his action requires something already in existence.

Is Creation a Change?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xiv, A. 2, ad 2]

THE second point of inquiry is whether creation is a change: and seemingly the reply should be in the affirmative.

1. Change denotes the succession of one being after another, as stated in Phys. v, i: and this is true of creation, which is the production of being after non-being. Therefore creation is a change.

2. Whatever is made, in a sense is made from non-being: since what is, is not being made. Consequently as generation (whereby a thing is made as to a part of its substance) is to the privation of the form (which privation is non-being in a certain respect), so is creation (whereby a thing is made as to its entire substance) to absolute non-being. Now properly speaking, privation is the term from which generation begins. Therefore properly speaking absolute nonbeing is the term from which creation begins; so that creation properly speaking is a change.

3. The greater the distance between the terms, the greater the change. Thus a change from white to black is greater than a change from white to pale. Now absolute non-being is more distant from being than one contrary from another, or than relative non-being from being. Therefore since transition from contrary to contrary, or from relative non-being to being is a change, much more is creation, a change, since it is the transition of absolute non-being into being.

4. That which is in a condition now otherwise than before is changed or moved. Now the creature is conditioned now otherwise than before: since formerly it was absolute nonbeing, and afterwards became a being. Therefore that which is created is changed or moved.

5. That which passes from potency to act is changed. Now the creature passes from potency to act: since before it was created it was only in the potency of the maker, and now it actually is. Hence that which is created is moved or changed, and consequently creation is a change.

On the contrary, according to the Philosopher (Categ. 14) in his work on the Categories, there are six kinds of movement or change: but none of them is creation, as one may see by taking them one by one. Therefore creation is not a change.

I answer that in every change there needs to be something common to either term thereof: because if the opposite terms of a change had nothing in common, it could not be defined as a transition from one thing to another. For change and transition signify that one same thing is otherwise now than before. Moreover the very terms of a change are not incompatible except in so far as they are referred to one same thing: because two contraries if referred to different subjects can exist simultaneously. Accordingly there is sometimes one actually existent common subject of both terms of a change, and then we have movement properly so called, an example of which we have in alteration, increase and decrease, and local movement. In all such movements the one subject while actually remaining the same is changed from one contrary to another. Sometimes again we find the one subject common to either term, yet it is not an actual but only a potential being, as is the case in simple generation and corruption. For the subject of the substantial form and of the privation thereof is primal matter which is not an actual being: wherefore neither generation nor corruption are movements properly so called, but a kind of change. And sometimes there is no common subject actually or potentially existent: but there is the one continuous time, in the first part of which we find the one contrary, and in the second part the other: as when we say that this thing is made from that, namely after that, for instance, from the morning comes noon. This, however, is a change not properly but metaphorically speaking, forasmuch as we imagine time as being the subject of those things that take place in time. Now in creation there is nothing common in the ways above mentioned: for there is no common subject actually or potentially existent. Again there is no continuous time, if we refer to the creation of the universe, since there was no time when there was no world. And yet we may find a common but purely imaginary subject, in so far as we imagine one common time when there was no world and afterwards when the world had been brought into being. For even as outside the universe there is no real magnitude, we can nevertheless picture one to ourselves: so before the beginning of the world there was no time and yet we can imagine one. Accordingly creation is not in truth a change, but only in imagination, and not properly speaking but metaphorically.

Reply to the First Objection. As stated above, the word change denotes the existence of one thing after another in connection with one same subject: but this is not the case in creation.

Reply to the Second Objection. In generation whereby a thing is made in respect of part of its substance, there is a common subject of privation and form, that is not actually existent: wherefore, just as in generation we find a term properly speaking, so also properly speaking do we find transition: but it is not so with creation, as stated above.

Reply to the Third Objection. It is true that the greater the distance the greater the change, provided that the subject is identical.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. That which is otherwise now than it was before is changed, provided the subject remains: else absolute non-being would be changed, because it is neither the same as nor otherwise than it was before. And in order that there be a change, one same thing must be otherwise than it was before.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. Passive and not active power is the subject of change: hence that which proceeds from passive power into act is changed, but not that which proceeds from an active power: and so the objection proves nothing.

Is Creation Something Real in the Creature, and If So, What Is It?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xiv, A. 3]

THE third point of inquiry is whether creation be anything real in the creature, and if so what is it? Seemingly it is not anything real in the creature.

1. As stated in De Causis (prop. x) whatever is received into a thing is therein according to the mode of the recipient. Now the creative action of God is received in absolute nonbeing, since in creating God makes a thing from nothing. Therefore creation places nothing real in the creature.

2. All that is real is either God or a creature. Now creation is not the Creator, else it would be eternal: nor is it a creature, since then it would need to be created by another creative act: and this creature again would need to be created by yet another creative act, and so on indefinitely. Therefore creation is not a real thing.

3. Whatever is is either substance or accident. But creation is not a substance, for it is neither matter nor form nor composite, as can easily be proved. Nor is it an accident, for an accident is subsequent to its subject, whereas creation is naturally prior to its subject, since it presupposes no subject. Therefore creation is nothing real in things.

4. As generation is to the thing generated, so is creation to the thing created. But the subject of generation is not the thing generated, but its term; its subject is primal matter (De Generat. et Corrupt. x, i). Neither therefore is the thing created the subject of creation. Nor can it be said that its subject is some matter, since the creature is not created from any matter. Therefore creation has no subject, and hence it is not an accident: and it is clear that it is not a substance. Therefore it is nothing real in things.

5. If creation be something real in a thing, since it is not a change, as proved above, it would seem most likely that it is a relation. But it is not a relation, since it cannot belong to any of the species of relation: because absolute being is neither subject nor equal to absolute non-being whence such relation would proceed. Therefore creation is nothing real in a thing.

6. If creation implies a relation of the creature to God from whom it has its being: since such relation remains ever in the creature, not only when the latter begins to be, but as long as it exists, something would be continually created; which would seem absurd. Hence creation is not a relation, and the same conclusion follows as before.

7. Every relation that exists really in things derives from something distinct from that relation, for instance, equality results from quantity, and likeness from quality. If then creation be a relation really existing in the creature, it must needs be distinct from the source whence it flows. Yet this is that which is received through creation. But it would follow that creation is not received by the creative act, and consequently that it, is something uncreated: which is impossible.

8. Every change is reduced to the genus which is its term, for instance, alteration is referred to quality, increase to quantity: and for this reason it is stated in Phys. III, I, that there are as many kinds of movement as there are of being. Now creation terminates in substance, and yet cannot be said, to belong to the genus of substance, as was proved above (Obj. 3). Therefore seemingly it is nothing real.

On the contrary, if creation is nothing real, nothing is really created. Now this is clearly false. Therefore creation is something real.

Again, God is Lord of the creature because he brought it into being by creating it. Now dominion implies a real relation in the creature. Much more therefore does creation.

I answer that some have said that creation is something real between the Creator and the creature. And since the mean is neither of the extremes, it would follow that creation is neither the Creator nor the creature. But the Masters judged this to savour of error, since everything that in any way exists has its existence not otherwise than from God, and consequently is a creature.

Wherefore others said. that creation itself does not posit anything real on the part of the creature. But this would also seem unreasonable. Because in all those things that are referred the one to the other, the one depending on the other but not conversely, there is a real relation in the one that is dependent, and in the other there is a logical relation, as in the case of knowledge and the thing known, according to the teaching of the Philosopher (Metaph. v, 15). Now the creature by its very name is referred to the Creator: and depends on the Creator who does not depend on it. Wherefore the relation whereby the creature is referred to the Creator must be a real relation, while in God it is only a logical relation. The Master says this expressly (I., D. 30).

We must accordingly say that creation may be taken actively or passively. Taken actively it denotes the act of God, which is his essence, together with a relation to the creature: and this is not a real but only a logical relation. But taken passively, since, as we have already said, it is not properly speaking a change, it must be said to belong, not to the genus of passion, but to that of relation. This is proved as follows. In every real change and movement there is a twofold process. One is from one term of movement to the other, for instance from whiteness to blackness: the other is from the agent to the patient, for instance from the maker to the thing made. These processes however differ from each other while the movement is in progress, and when the term has been reached. While the movement is in progress, the thing moved is receding from one term and approaching the other: which does not apply when the term has been reached: as may be seen in that which is moved from whiteness to blackness, for at the term of the movement it no longer approaches to blackness, but begins to be black. Likewise while it is in movement the patient or the thing made is being changed by the agent: but when it is at the term of the movement, it is no longer being changed by the agent: but acquires a certain relation to the agent, inasmuch as it has its being therefrom, and is in some way like unto it: thus at the term of human generation the offspring acquires sonship. Now creation, as stated above (A. 2), cannot be taken for a movement of the creature previous to its reaching the term of movement, but denotes the accomplished fact. Wherefore creation does not denote an approach to being, nor a change effected by the Creator, but merely a beginning of existence, and a relation to the Creator from whom the creature receives its being. Consequently creation is really nothing but a relation of the creature to the Creator together with a beginning of existence.

Reply to the First Objection. In creation the recipient of the divine action is not non-being but that which is created, as stated above.

Reply to the Second Objection. Creation taken actively denotes the divine action to which the mind attaches a certain relation, and thus it is uncreated: but taken passively as stated above, it is a real relation signified after the manner of a change on account of the newness or beginning that it implies. Now this relation is a kind of creature, taking creature in a broad sense for anything that comes from God. Nor is it necessary to proceed to infinity, since the relation of creation is not referred to God by another real relation but by itself: because no relation is related by another relation, as Avicenna says (Metaph. iii, 10). If, however, we take creature in a stricter sense for that only which subsists (which properly speaking is made and created, even as properly speaking it has being), then the aforesaid relation is not a created thing, but is concreated; even as properly speaking it is not a being, but something inherent. The same applies to all accidents.

Reply to the Third Objection. This relation is an accident, and considered in its being, inasmuch as it adheres to a subject, is subsequent to the thing created: even so an accident both logically and naturally is subsequent to its subject: although it is not an accident such as is caused by the principles of its subject. If, however, we consider it from the point of view of its arising from the action of the agent, then the aforesaid relation is after a fashion prior to its subject, because like the divine act itself it is the proximate cause thereof.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. In generation there is both change and a relation whereby the thing generated is referred to the generator. Considered from the point of view of change its subject is not the thing generated but the matter thereof: but considered as implying a relation its subject is the thing generated. On the other hand in creation there is a relation, but there is not a change properly speaking, as already stated: hence the comparison fails.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. This relation is not to be taken as existing between being and non-being, for such a relation cannot be real, as Avicenna says (Metaph. iii.), but as between a being and its Creator: wherefore it is clear that it is a relation of subjection.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. Creation denotes this relation together with inception of existence: hence it does not follow that a thing, whenever it may be, is being created, although its relation to God ever remains. Yet even as the air as long as it is light is illuminated by the sun, so may we say with Augustine (Gen. ad lit. viii, 12) that the creature, as long as it is in being, is made by God. But this is only a distinction of words, inasmuch as creation may be understood with newness of existence or without.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. That from which the creative relation derives chiefly is the subsistent being, from which that relation, itself a creature, differs, not principally but secondarily as it were, as something concreated.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. Movement is reduced to the genus of its term, in so far as there is a process from potency to act; since during the movement the term thereof is potential, and potency and act belong to the same genus. But in creation there is no process from potency to act; wherefore the comparison fails.

Is the Creative Power or Act Communicable to a Creature?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xi. A. 5]

THE fourth point of inquiry is whether the creative power or act be communicable to a creature. And seemingly it is.

1. The same manner and order in which things flow from their first principle is observed in their direction to their last end, since their first principle is the same as their last end. Now the lower creatures are directed to God as their end by means of the higher creatures, because as Dionysius s says (Coel. Hier. v. i) it is a rule of the Godhead to draw to himself the last things through the first. Therefore the lower creatures also flow from their first principle through creation by means of the higher creatures, so that the creative act is communicated to the creature.

2. Whatsoever can be communicated to a creature without taking it outside the bounds of a creature is communicable to a creature by the power of the Creator, who is able to create even new kinds of creatures. Now the power to create if communicated to a creature would not place the creature outside its bounds. Therefore the creative power is communicable to a creature. The minor is proved as follows. To place a creature outside its bounds is to attribute something that is incompatible with the notion of being created. Now it is not incompatible with the notion of being created that a creature be able to create, unless because it would seem to need an infinite power in order to create. But it would not need such a power, as it seems: since a thing is as distant from one of two opposites as it shares in the nature of the other: thus the further a thing is from being black the more white it is. Now the creature has a finite share in the nature of being: wherefore its distance from absolute non-being is also finite. And the bringing of a thing into being from a finite distance is not a proof of infinite power; wherefore the creative act can proceed from a finite power, and consequently the creative power is not incompatible with the notion of being created, nor does it place the creature beyond its bounds.

3. Regarding the statement just made that a thing is as distant from one opposite as it shares in the nature of the other, it might be remarked that this is true when both opposites are natures, such as contraries are, but not when one is a nature and the other not, as privation and habit, affirmation and negation.—On the contrary, the opposition in question is between contraries in the point of their being distant from each other, and this belongs to them inasmuch as they are opposites. Now the cause and root of opposition in contraries is the opposition of affirmation and negation (Metaph. iv, 6). Therefore the above statement is especially true of the opposition of affirmation and negation.

4. According to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. ii, 8) things are said to be made in three ways: in the Word, in the angelic intelligence, in their own nature. Wherefore it is said (Gen. i): He said: Be made, and it was made. Now the manner in which things were made in the angelic intelligence comes between the other two ways. Therefore seemingly creatures come into being in their own nature from the Word of the Creator through the medium of the angelic knowledge: so that they could be created by means of the angels.

5. Nothing and something are more distant than something and being, since nothing and something have nought in common, whereas something is a part of being. Now God by creating makes that which was nothing to become something, and consequently that there be power where before there was no power. Much more then can he make a limited power such as that of a creature to have omnipotence whereby things are created. Therefore he can communicate to a creature the act of creation.

6. Spiritual light is more excellent and more powerful than material light. Now material light multiplies itself. Therefore an angel who is spiritual light according to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. iv, 22) is able to multiply himself. But he cannot do this except by creating. Therefore an angel can create.

7. Substantial forms are not generated, since the composite alone is generated as the Philosopher proves (Metaph. vii, 8, 9), wherefore they cannot be brought into being except by creation. Now created nature disposes matter for its form. Therefore it co-operates in creation ministerially; and consequently a creature can receive the power to help in the work of creation.

8. The work of justification ranks higher than the work of creation, forasmuch as grace surpasses nature. Hence Augustine says (Tract. lxxii, 3, in Joan.) that the justification of a sinner is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth. Now the creature renders service in the justification of a sinner: since the priest is said to justify or forgive sins ministerially. Much more therefore can a creature administer in the act of creation.

9. Every made thing must be like the agent, as is proved in Metaph. vii, 8. Now the corporeal creature-is not like God either specifically or generically. Therefore it cannot come from God by creation except by means of a creature like unto it at least in genus: and consequently it would seem that corporeal creatures are created by God by means of the higher creatures.

10. It is stated in De Causis (prop. xix) that the second intelligence does not receive of the higher goods which come from the first cause, save through the medium of the higher intelligence. Now being is one of the higher goods. Therefore the second intelligence does not receive its being from God except through the first intelligence: so that seemingly God communicates the creative act to a creature.

11. In the same work (prop. viii) it is stated that an intelligence knows what is beneath it after the manner of its substance inasmuch as it is its cause. Now one intelligence understands another that is beneath it: therefore it is its cause. But an intelligence, since it is not composite, is not caused otherwise than by creation. Therefore an intelligence can create.

12. Augustine says (De immortal. anim. xvi) that the spiritual creature gives species and being to the corporeal creature: and so it would seem that corporeal creatures are created by means of the spiritual.

13. Knowledge is twofold, that from which things derive (ad rem) and that which is derived from things (a rebus). Now an angel’s knowledge of corporeal things is not derived from things, since he has no sensitive faculties which are the channels through which the intellect derives its knowledge of sensible objects. Hence he knows things by knowledge from which things derive, which is like God’s. Therefore as God is the cause of things by his knowledge, so seemingly the angelic knowledge is the cause of things.

14. Things come into being in two ways; first through issuing from absolute non-being into being by creation; secondly through issuing from potency into act. Now the material forces of nature can produce things in the second way, namely by drawing them out of potency into act. Therefore an immaterial force which is more powerful, such as that of an angel, can bring a thing into being in the first way which belongs to the greater power, namely by producing it from absolute non-being, which is to create: and so it would seem that an angel can create.

15. Nothing surpasses the infinite. Now it requires an infinite power to produce a thing out, of nothing, otherwise there would be no reason why creatures should not create. Wherefore no other power can surpass it: so that to produce a creature out of nothing and give it the power to create is no more than to create. Now God can do the latter: wherefore he can also do the former.

16. The greater the resistance offered by the patient to the agent, the greater the difficulty encountered by the agent. Now a contrary offers more resistance than a nonbeing: since a non-being cannot act as a contrary can. Since then a creature is able to make a thing from its contrary, much more seemingly should it be able to make something out of nothing, which is to create. Therefore a creature can create.

On the contrary being and non-being are infinitely apart. Now an infinite power is required to operate at an infinite distance. Therefore an infinite power is required to create: so that the creative power cannot be communicated to a creature.

Again, according to Dionysius (Coelest. Hier. xi) the higher creatures such as the angels are divided into essence, power and operation: whence we may conclude that no creature’s power is its essence: so that no creature acts of its whole self, since that by which a thing acts is its power. Now the production of the effect corresponds to the act of the agent. Therefore no creature is able to produce an effect in its entirety, and consequently it cannot create, but always presupposes matter for its action.

Moreover, Augustine (De Trin. iii, 8, 9) says that angels cannot create anything, be they good or bad. Now of all creatures the angels rank highest: much less then can any other creature create.

Again, it belongs to the same power to create and to preserve creatures in being. Now creatures cannot be preserved in being save by the divine power, since if it withdrew from things they would at once cease to be, as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 12). Therefore things cannot be created except by the divine power.

Again, that which belongs strictly to one thing cannot be appropriate to another. Now it is genera ly agreed that to create belongs to God, Therefore to create cannot be appropriate to a creature.

I answer that, certain philosophers held that God created the lower creatures through the instrumentality of the higher (De Causis, prop. x; Avicenna, Metaph. ix, 4; Algazel). They were led t this conclusion through supposing that from one simple being only one being can be produced, and that through the instrumentality of the latter a multitude of things were produced by the first being. They spoke thus as though God acted from natural necessity; for thus from one simple thing only one can. proceed. We, on the other hand, hold that things proceed from Goa by way of knowledge and intelligence, in which way there is nothing to prevent a multitude of things from proceeding immediately from the one first and simple being God, inasmuch as his wisdom contains all things. Hence according to the Catholic Faith we hold that God immediately created all spiritual substances and corporeal matter, and deem it heresy to say that anything was created by an angel or by any creature. Wherefore Damascene (De Orth. Fid. ii, 2) declares: Whosoever shall say that an angel created anything, let him be anathema. Certain Catholic writers, however, have maintained that, although no creature can create, it could be granted to a creature that God should create a thing through its instrumentality. The Master favours this opinion (IV., D. 5). Some on the other hand hold that the creative act cannot in any sense be communicated to a creature: and this is the more common opinion.

In order to make this point clear, we must observe that creation denotes an active power whereby things are brought into being, wherefore it requires no pre-existing matter or previous agency: for these are the only causes that ate pre-requisite for action. The reason of this is that the form of the thing generated is the term of the generator’s action, and is likewise the end of generation which as to its being does not precede. but follows the action. Now it is clear from its definition, that creation does not presuppose matter: since to create is to make a thing from nothing. That it does not presuppose a previous active cause is clear from the teaching of Augustine who (De Trin. iii, 8) proves that the angels cannot create, because they work by means of nature’s implanted seeds, namely the active forces of nature. Accordingly if we take creation thus strictly, it is evident that the first agent alone is competent to create, since a second cause does not act save through the influx of the first: so that every action of a second cause is dependent on a pre-existing active cause. Nor did the philosophers maintain that angels or intelligences create, except through a divine power communicated to them: in the sense that the second cause could have a twofold action, one proceeding from its own nature, the other from the power of a preexisting cause. For it is not possible that a second cause by its own power be the principle of being as such: this belongs to the first cause, since the order of effects follows the order of causes. Now the first of all effects is being, which is presupposed to all other effects, and does not presuppose any other effect: wherefore to give being as such must be the effect of the first cause alone by its own power: and whatever other cause gives being does this in so far as it is the recipient of the divine power and operation, and not by its own power. Thus an instrument performs an instrumental operation not by the power of its own nature, but by the power of the person who handles it: and thus the natural heat engenders living flesh by the power of the soul, while by the power of its nature it merely causes heat and dissolution. In this sense then certain philosophers held the first intelligences to create the second in giving them being by the power of the first cause communicated to them. For being is by creation, while goodness, life and so forth are by information as stated in De Causis. This was the foundation of idolatry, in that divine worship was accorded to created substances as though they were the creators of others.

The Master, however (l.c.), holds that it is possible for a, creature to receive the power to create not as by its own power, or authority as it were, but ministerially as an instrument. But if we look into the question carefully, it will be clear that this is impossible. The action of any thing, even though it be performed instrumentally, must proceed from that thing’s power. And since the power of every creature is finite, no creature can possibly act, even as an instrument, to the effect of creating something: since creation demands infinite energy in the power whence it proceeds. This is made clear by the five following arguments.

The first is based on the fact that the power of a maker is proportionate to the distance between the thing made and the opposite thing from which it is made: thus the colder a thing is, and therefore the further removed it is from being hot, the greater will be the heat-power required to make that cold thing hot. Now absolute non-being is infinitely distant from being: because non-being is further removed from any particular being than any other particular being however distant these may be: and consequently none but an infinite power can produce being from non-being.

The second reason is that in the making of a thing the manner of the making depends on the action of the maker. Now the agent acts forasmuch as it is in act: wherefore that alone acts by its whole self, which is wholly in act, and this belongs to. none but the infinite act who is the first act: and consequently none but an infinite power can make a thing as to its whole substance.

The third reason is that since an accident must needs be in a subject, and the subject of an action is the recipient of that action, that agent alone whose action is not an accident but its very substance requires no recipient matter when it makes a thing; and such an agent is none but God, who therefore alone can create.

The fourth reason is that as all second causes derive their action from the first cause, as is proved in De Causis, prop. xix, xx, it follows that all second agents receive their mode and order from the first agent, who receives neither mode nor order from any other. Now, since the mode of an action depends on the matter that is the recipient of the agent’s action, the first agent alone will be competent to act without presupposing matter from another agent, and to provide matter for all second agents.

The fifth argument is a reduction to absurdity. In so far as they reduce a thing from potentiality to act powers are proportionate to one another according to the distance of the potentiality from the act, since the further the potentiality is removed from the act, the greater is the power required. Hence if there be a finite power productive of something without any presupposed potentiality, there must be some proportion between it and a power that educes a thing from potentiality to act: so that there will be proportion between no potentiality and some potentiality: which is impossible: for there is no proportion between non-being and being. We conclude then that no power of a creature can create, neither by its own virtue, nor as the instrument of another.

Reply to the First Objection. In the bringing of things to their end, the means to that end are already in existence: wherefore it is not impossible for a creature to co-operate, with God in the direction of things to their last end: whereas in the general bringing of things into being nothing existed as yet: hence the comparison fails.

Reply to the Second Objection. Nothing prevents our imagining a distance on the one part infinite and on the other finite. We imagine a distance infinite on either part, when either opposite extreme is infinite, for instance, infinite heat and infinite cold: but the imagined distance will be finite on the one hand, when one of the opposite extremes is finite; for instance, infinite heat and finite cold. Accordingly infinite being is infinitely removed on both hands from absolute non-being: whereas finite being from absolute non-being is removed infinitely on the one hand only; yet it requires an infinite active power.

The Third Objection we grant, since it makes no difference to the point at issue whether both opposite extremes be a nature, or one only.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Things are said made in our intelligence in respect of knowledge only, and by reason of an operative power: wherefore things are brought into being not with the co-operation of the angels, but with their knowledge.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. A thing is said to be impossible to someone not only on account of the distance between the extremes, but also because it is altogether impossible to be done: for instance, we might say that God cannot be made from a body, because it is altogether impossible for God to be made. Accordingly we reply that omnipotence cannot be made from a power, not only on account of the distance between them, but also because omnipotence is utterly unmakable. For whatever is made cannot be pure act, since from the very fact that it has its being from another, it is proved to have potentiality, and consequently cannot have infinite power.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. Material light multiplies itself not by creating a new light, but by shedding itself over matter. This cannot be said of the angels since they are self-subsistent substances.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. A form may be considered in two ways. First, in so far as it is in potentiality: and thus God concreates it with matter, without any concurrent action of nature for the disposition of the matter. Secondly, in so far as it is in act, and thus it is not created, but is educed by natural agency from the potentiality of matter: wherefore there is no need of dispositive action on the part of nature in order that a thing be created. Seeing, however, that there is a natural form, namely the rational soul, which is brought into being by creation, and whose matter is disposed by nature, we must observe that since the creative act is independent of matter, there are two senses in which a thing is said to be created. Some things are created without any presupposed matter, and produced neither from matter nor in matter, for instance, the angels and the heavenly bodies: and for the creation of such nature can do nothing dispositively. On the other hand some things are created, without any matter presupposed from which they be made, but on the presupposition of matter in which they may be: such are human souls. So far then as they have matter in which to be, nature can act dispositively yet not so that the action of nature extend to the substance of that which is created.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. In the work of justification man does something, but only as a minister by employing the sacraments: so that as the sacraments are said to justify instrumentally and dispositively, the solution comes to the same as the preceding one.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. Although between God and the creature there cannot be a generic or specific likeness, there can nevertheless be a certain likeness of analogy, as between potentiality and act, substance and accident. This is true in one way forasmuch as creatures reproduce, in ‘their own way, the idea of the divine mind, as the work of a craftsman is a reproduction of the form in his mind. In another way it is true in that creatures are somewhat likened to the very nature of God, forasmuch as they derive their being from the first being, their goodness from the sovereign good, and so on. However this objection is not to the point: for even granted that creatures proceed from God through the instrumentality of some created power, the same difficulty remains, namely how this first nature can be created by God and yet not be like God.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. This error is contained explicitly in De Causis (prop. x) whose author holds that the lower creatures were created by God by means of the higher: wherefore in this matter the authority of this book is not to be accepted.

The same is to be said of the Eleventh Objection.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Augustine is speaking, there of the soul which gives being and species to a corporeal thing not as creating but as informing it.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Although an angel’s knowledge of things is not derived from them, it does not follow that his knowledge of them is their cause. His knowledge is a mean between the two kinds of knowledge e mentioned. For he knows things by a natural knowledge by means of ideas implanted in his mind from the divine intellect: so that his knowledge is not directed to things as their cause, but is a likeness of the divine intellect which is their cause.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. In the eduction of things from potentiality to act many degrees may be observed, inasmuch as a thing may be educed from more or less remote potentiality to act, and again more or less easily. Hence although the angel’s power surpasses that of material nature it does not follow that he is able to make a thing from absolute non-being because nature is able to educe a thing from potentiality to act: but that he can do this much more easily than nature. Thus Augustine (De Trin. iii, 8, 9) says that demons are able to apply the forces of nature more secretly and efficaciously than we are aware.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. No power is greater than the power to create: nor does this prove that the creative power must include the bestowal on a creature of the power to create, since it is utterly incommunicable to a creature. That a thing be impossible may be due not only to one’s inability to do it, but also sometimes to the fact that the thing itself cannot be done: thus God cannot make God, not through a defect of power, but because God cannot be made by anyone. In like manner the creative power cannot be finite, nor can it be communicated to a creature, because it is infinite.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. A thing is difficult to do in two ways. First, because the patient resists the agent. This does not apply in every case, but only when there is action and reaction, and the agent is subject to the reaction of the patient: thus the heavenly bodies, whose action meets with no opposition on the part of another agent, suffer no difficulty in their action through the patient’s counteraction: and much less does God. Secondly, and this applies to all cases, because the patient is far removed from the action: since the further the potentiality is removed from act, the greater is the difficulty encountered by the action of the agent. Wherefore, since absolute non-being is further removed from act than matter subject to any contrary whatsoever, however intense the other contrary may be: it is evident that it requires a greater power to produce a thing from nothing, than one contrary from another.

Can There Be Anything That Is Not Created by God?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xiiv, A. I]

THE fifth point of inquiry is whether there can be anything that is not created by God. Seemingly this is possible.

1. Since the cause is more powerful than its effect, that which is possible to our intellect which takes its knowledge from things would seem yet more possible to nature. Now our intellect can understand a thing apart from understanding that it is from God, because its efficient cause is not part of a thing’s nature, so that the thing can be understood without it. Much more therefore can there be a real thing that is not from God.

2. All things made by God are called his creatures. Now creation terminates at being: for the first of created things is being (De Causis, prop. iv). Since then the quiddity of a thing is in addition to its being, it would seem that the quiddity of a thing is not from God.

3. Every action terminates in an act, even as it proceeds from an act: because every agent acts in so far as it is in act, and every agent produces its like in nature. But primal matter is pure potentiality. Therefore the creative act cannot terminate therein: so that not all things are created by God.

On the contrary it is said (Rom. xi, 36): From him and by him and in him are all things.

I answer that the ancients in their investigations of nature proceeded in accordance with the order of human knowledge. Wherefore as human knowledge reaches the intellect by beginning with the senses, the early philosophers were intent on the domain of the senses, and thence by degrees reached the realm of the intellect. And seeing that accidental forms are in themselves objects of sense, whereas substantial forms are not, the early philosophers said that all forms are accidental, and that matter alone is a substance. And because substance suffices to cause accidents that result from the substantial elements, the early philosophers held that there is no other cause besides matter, and that matter is the cause of whatever we observe in the sensible world: and consequently they were forced to state that matter itself has no cause, and to deny absolutely the existence of an efficient cause. The later philosophers, however, began to take some notice of substantial forms: yet they did not attain to the knowledge of universals, and they were wholly intent on the observation of special forms; and so they posited indeed certain active causes, not such as give being to things in their universality, but which transmute matter to this or that form: these causes they called intelligence, attraction and repulsion, which they held responsible for adhesion and separation. Wherefore according to them qot all beings came from an efficient cause, and matter was in existence before any efficient cause came into action. Subsequent to these the philosophers as Plato, Aristotle and their disciples, attained to the study of universal being: and hence they alone posited a universal cause of things, from which all others came into being, as Augustine states (De Civ. Dei viii, 4). This is in agreement with the Catholic Faith; and may be proved by the three arguments that follow.

First, if in a number of things we find something that is common to all, we must conclude that this something was the effect of some one cause: for it is not possible that to each one by reason of itself this common something belong, since each one by itself is different from the others: and diversity of causes produces a diversity of effects. Seeing then that being is found to be common to all things, which are by themselves distinct from one another, it follows of necessity that they must come into being not by themselves, but by the action of some cause. Seemingly this is Plato’s argument, since he required every multitude to be preceded by unity not only as regards number but also in reality. The second argument is that whenever something is found to be in several things by participation in various degrees, it must be derived by those in which it exists imperfectly from that one in which it exists most perfectly: because where there are positive degrees of a thing so that we ascribe it to this one more and to that one less, this is in reference to one thing to which they approach, one nearer than another: for if each one were of itself competent to have it, there would be no reason why one should have it more than another. Thus fire, which is the extreme of heat, is the cause of heat in all things hot. Now there is one being most perfect and most true: which follows from the fact that there is a mover altogether immovable and absolutely perfect, as philosophers have proved. Consequently all other less perfect beings must needs derive being therefrom. This is the argument of the Philosopher (Metaph. ii, I).

The third argument is based on the principle that whatsoever is through another is to be reduced to that which is of itself. Wherefore if there were a per se heat, it would be the cause of all hot things, that have heat by way of participation. Now there is a being that is its own being: and this follows from the fact that there must needs be a being that is pure act and wherein there is no composition. Hence from that one being all other beings that are not their own being, but have being by participation, must needs proceed. This is the argument of Avicenna (in Metaph. viii, 6; ix, 8). Thus reason proves and faith holds that all things are created by God,

Reply to the First Objection. Although the first cause that is God does not enter into the essence of creatures, yet being which is in creatures cannot be understood except as derived from the divine being: even as a proper effect cannot be understood save as produced by its proper cause.

Reply to the Second Objection. From the very fact that being is ascribed to a quiddity, not only is the quiddity said to be but also to be created: since before it had being it was nothing, except perhaps in the intellect of the creator, where it is not a creature but the creating essence.

Reply to the Third Objection. This argument roves that primal matter is not created per se: but it does not follow that it is not created under a form: for it is thus that it has actual being.

Is There but One Principle of Creation?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xiix]

THE sixth point of inquiry is whether there be but one principle of creation: and seemingly the reply should be in the negative.

1. Dionysius says (De Div. Nom. iv): The cause of evil is not a good. Now there is evil in the world. Either, then, it is produced by a cause which is not a good, or it is not caused at all, but is a first cause: and in either case we must posit more than one principle of creation: since it is clear that the first cause of good things must be a good.

2. But someone may say that a good is the cause of evil, not per se but accidentally.—On the contrary every effect that flows from a cause accidentally, flows from some other cause per se: since everything accidental can be traced to something per se. Hence if evil be the effect of good accidentally, it will be the per se effect of something else, so that the same conclusion follows as before.

3. An effect that is produced accidentally happens beside the intention of the cause and is not a thing made. If, then, a good be the accidental cause of evil, it follows that evil is not something made. Now nothing is uncreated save the principle of creation, as we have shown above (A. 1). Therefore evil is a principle of creation.

4. No vice occurs in the effect beside the intention of the cause, except either by reason of ignorance on the part of the cause through lack of foresight, or by reason of impotence that could not be avoided. But in God the Creator of all good there is neither impotence nor ignorance. Therefore evil, which is vicious, cannot occur in God’s effects beside his intention; for Augustine says (Enchir. ii) that the reason why a thing is evil is because it is vicious.

5. That which occurs accidentally happens in the minority of cases (Phys. ii, 5). But evil occurs in the majority of cases (Top. ii, 6). Therefore evil is not due to an accidental cause.

6. According to Augustine (De Civ. Dei xii, 7) the cause of evil is not effective but defective. But an accidental cause is effective. Therefore a good is not the accidental cause of evil.

7. That which is not has no cause: since what is not is neither cause nor caused. Now evil, according to Augustine (Tract. i, 13, in Joann), is not a thing. Consequently evil has no cause, neither Per se nor accidental. Therefore there is no truth in the statement that a good is the accidental cause of evil.

8. According to the Philosopher (Metaph. ii, i) that in which a thing is first is the cause of whatsoever contains that thing subsequently: thus fire causes heat in whatsoever is hot. Now malice was first in the devil. Therefore he is the cause of malice in all the wicked: and consequently there is one principle of all the wicked as there is of all the good.

9. According to Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv) good is in one way, but evil in many ways. Consequently evil is nearer to being than good is. Therefore if good is a nature needing a creator, evil also will need a creator: and so the same conclusion follows.

10. That which is not can be neither genus nor species. Now evil is taken to be a genus. For it is stated (Categ., 10) that good and evil are not in a genus but are themselves genera. Evil, therefore, is a being and consequently needs a creator. Therefore since it is not created by a good, we must, apparently admit that there is an evil principle of creation.

11. Both of two contraries is a positive nature, since contraries are in the same genus. Now what is not cannot be in a genus. But good and evil are contrary to each other. Therefore evil is a nature: and we come to the same conclusion.

12. The difference that makes a species signifies a nature wherefore nature, in one way, is that which gives a thing its specific difference, according to Boethius (De Duab. Nat.). Now evil is a difference constituting a species: for good and evil differentiate habits. Therefore evil is a nature: and thus the same conclusion follows.

13. Good is set against evil, and life against death: so also is the sinner against a just man (Ecclus. xxxiii, 15). If, therefore, good is one principle of creation, there must be set against it an evil principle.

14. Intensity and remission connote relation to some term. Now one thing is worse than another. Hence there must be something supremely bad that is the term of all evil: and this must be the principle of all evil things, even as the supreme good is the principle of all good things.

15. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit (Mat. vii, 18). Now evil exists in the world. Therefore it cannot be a fruit, otherwise an effect, of a good cause which is denoted by a good tree: and consequently some first evil must be the cause of all evils.

16. We are told (Gen. i, 2) that when things were first created darkness was on the face of the earth. But the good by its very nature is enlightening and therefore cannot be the creation of darkness. Consequently the creation described there originates not from a good but from an evil principle.

17. The effect bears witness to its cause as being similar thereto. But evil nowis6 bears witness to God, nor is it in any way like him. Therefore it cannot come from him but must be from another principle.

18. Every effect exists potentially in its cause. But evil is not in God, either actually or potentially. Therefore it comes not from God; and the some conclusion follows.

19. just as generation is a natural movement so also is corruption. Now the end of corruption is privation, just as the end of generation is the form. Hence just as the intention of nature is the induction of the form, so also does nature intend privation: and consequently evil being a privation must be produced, even as the form, by a per se active cause.

20. Every agent acts on the presupposition of the first agent. Now the free-will, in sinning, does not act on the presupposition of the divine action: for there are sins like fornication and adultery which are inseparable from their deformity which cannot come from God. Therefore the free-will must either be a first agent or be reducible to a first agent other than God.

21. It will be said perhaps that the substance, and not the deformity of the act, comes from God.—On the contrary the Commentator (in Metaph. vii, 8) says: It is impossible for the matter to result from the action of one agent while the form results from the action of another. Now deformity is the form as it were of the sinful act. Wherefore the deformity of sin cannot be ascribed to one cause, and its substance to another.

22. From one simple cause only a simple effect can proceed. Now God is utterly simple. Therefore suchlike composite things are not from him but from some other cause.

23. The stain of sin is something in the soul: for were it nothing besides the privation of grace, a man by committing one mortal sin would be guilty of all. Now the stain of sin is not from God, for God is not the author of that which he punishes, as Fulgentius says (Ad Monim. i): and since it is not from eternity it must have a cause. Therefore it must be ascribed to some cause other than God.

24. It is written (Ecclus. iii, 14): I have learned that all the works which God hath made, continue for ever. Now corruptible things do not continue for ever. Therefore they are not the work of God, and they must be referred to another principle.

25. Every agent produces its like. But corruptible bodies are not like God, for God is a spirit (Jo. iv, 24). Therefore corruptible bodies are not from God: and the same conclusion follows.

26. Nature always does what is best, according to the Philosopher (De Caelo ii, 5): and this is due to the goodness of nature. But God’s goodness surpasses nature’s. Consequently God makes things as good as he can. Now spiritual things are better than things corporeal. Therefore the latter are not from God, since had he made them he would have given them spiritual goodness. It follows then that we must admit several principles of creation.

On the contrary it is written (Isa. xlv, 6, 7): I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.

Again, evil has no other root but the nature of good, as Dionysius shows (Div. Nom. iv). But this would not be true if the creative principle of evil were distinct from that of good: else the principle of evil things would be more powerful than that of good things since it would produce its own effect even in good things. Therefore evil is not from a creative principle other than that of good.

Again, the Philosopher, shows (Phys. viii, 6) that there is but one principle of movement. But this would not be true, if there were divers first creative principles: because one principle would not govern or move the creatures of another contrary principle. Therefore there is but one principle of creation.

I answer that, as we have already stated, the ancient philosophers, through taking note only of the material principles of nature, when they considered material things fell into the error of holding that all natural things are not created. Hence from holding matter and contrariety to be the principles of nature they came to conceive of two first principles of things: and this was owing to a threefold fault in their consideration of contraries. The first was that they considered contraries only in the point of their specific diversity, and disregarded their generic unity and the fact that contraries are in the same genus. Consequently they ascribed to them a cause not in respect of what they have in common but in respect of that wherein they differ.

Hence, as stated (Phys. i, 4), they referred all contraries to two first contraries as two first principles. Among them Empedocles, made the first contraries to be the first active principles, to wit attraction and repulsion: and it is stated (Metaph. i, 4) that he was the first to uphold two principles, good and evil. The second fault was that they judged both contraries equally, whereas one of them must always imply privation of the other, and consequently be perfect while the latter is imperfect, the former good and the latter less good (Phys. i, 2). In consequence they held both good and evil to be distinct natures, because they seemed to them the most generic contraries. For this reason Pythagoras said that things were divided into two genera, good and evil; in the genus of good things he placed all perfect things, such as light, males, rest and the like, while in the genus of evil things he placed darkness, females and the like. The third fault was that they considered things in reference to the things themselves, or in the mutual relationships between one individual thing and another, but not as bearing upon the order of the universe. Hence when they found one thing harmful to another, or imperfect in comparison with perfect things, they pronounced it to be simply evil in its nature and not to owe its origin to the cause of good. Wherefore Pythagoras placed women, as being imperfect, in the genus of evil. This again was at the root of the Manichean statement that corruptible things being imperfect in comparison with things incorruptible are the work not of the good God but of a contrary principle, and likewise the visible in comparison with the invisible, and the Old Testament in comparison with the New; an opinion that was confirmed by their observing that certain good creatures, man for instance, suffer harm from certain visible and corruptible creatures. Now this error is utterly impossible: since all things must be traced to one first principle which is good. For the present this may be proved by three arguments.

First argument. Whenever different things have one thing in common, they must be referred to one cause in respect of that common thing: since either one is the cause of the other, or they both proceed from a common cause: seeing that it is impossible for that which they have in common to be derived from the properties in which they differ; as we proved before (A. 5). Now all contraries and things differing from one another, that exist in the world, have some one thing in common, either the specific or the generic nature, or at least the common ratio of being: and consequently they must all have one principle which is the cause of being in all of them. Now being, as such, is a good which is evidenced by the fact that everything desires to be and the good is defined as that which is desirable. Hence above all various causes we must place one first cause, even as above these contrary agents in nature the natural philosophers placed one primal agent, namely the heaven, as the cause of all movement here below. Since, however, in this heaven there is variety of position, to which variety is to be traced the contrariety of inferior bodies, it is necessary to have recourse to a first mover that is not moved either per se or accidentally.

Second argument. Every agent acts forasmuch as it is in act, and consequently forasmuch as it is in some way perfect. Now forasmuch as a thing is evil it is not in act, since a thing is said to be evil through being in a state of potentiality, and deprived of its proper and due act. But forasmuch as a thing is in act, it is good; because in this respect it has perfection and entity, and it is in this that the good essentially consists. Therefore nothing acts forasmuch as it is evil, but everything acts inasmuch as it is good. Consequently there cannot be an active principle of things other than a good. And since every agent produces its like, nothing is produced except forasmuch as it is in act, and for this reason, forasmuch as it is good. On both sides therefore the position is shown to be untenable which holds evil to be the creative principle of evils. This argument agrees with the words of Dionysius (Divin. Nom. iv) who states that evil acts not save by virtue of a good, and that evil is outside the scope of intention and generation.

Third argument. If diverse beings were to be exclusively to contrary principles without these being traced to one supreme principle, they could not possibly come together into one order except accidentally: because co-ordination of many things cannot result but from one co-ordinator, except by chance. Now we observe corruptible and incorruptible things, spiritual and corporal, perfect and imperfect coming together into one order. Thus the spiritual move the corporal: which is evident at least in man. Again things corruptible are controlled by incorruptible: as may be observed in the alterations of elements by heavenly bodies. Nor may it be said that such occurrences are fortuitous: for they would not happen always or for the most part, but only in the minority of cases. Consequently all these various things must be traced to one first principle whereby they are co-ordinated: and for this reason the Philosopher concludes (Metaph. xii, 10) that there is one ruler over all.

Reply to the First Objection. As we have shown above, Avil is not a being but a lack of being, and consequently cannot be a per se effect. In this sense Dionysius says that good is not the cause of evil, and not as though evil were to be made a first cause.

Reply to the Second Objection. This argument. is true of an effect that can have a cause per se. Such is not evil: which therefore cannot properly speaking be described as an effect.

Reply to the Third Objection. Evil is incidental to an effect, but it is not an effect properly speaking: this follows from the fact that it is not intended. And yet it does not follow that it is a first principle, unless it be added that evil is a nature. For just as evil, since it is not a being but a privation of being, lacks the essential condition of an effect, so and much more indeed does it lack the necessary condition of a cause, as we have shown.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. According to Augustine (Enchir. xcvi): God is so good that never would he allow evil to exist, unless he were so powerful as to be able to draw good from evil. Hence it is due to neither impotence nor ignorance on God’s part that evils occur in the world, but it is owing to the order of his wisdom and to the greatness of his goodness, whence come the many and divers grades of goodness in things, many of which would be lacking were he to allow

no evil to exist. Thus there would be no good of patience without the evil of persecution, nor the good of the preservation of its life in a lion, without the evil of the destruction of the animals on which it lives.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. Evil occurs in the minority of cases if we compare effects with their proper causes. This is clear in the process of nature: because there is no fault or evil in the action of nature, except when the active cause is affected by some impediment: and this is only in the minority of cases, as when nature produces monsters and the like. On the other hand in the domain of the will evil would seem to be of more frequent occurrence in things done than in things made, forasmuch as art through imitating nature fails only in the minority of cases. Whereas in actions which are affected by vice and virtue there is a twofold appetite moving man to action, to wit the rational and the sensual: and that which is good in relation to the one appetite is evil in relation to the other: thus the pursuit of pleasure is good with reference to the sensual appetite, which we call sensuality, whereas it is evil with reference to the appetite of reason. And seeing that the majority follow their senses rather than their reason, consequently bad men are more numerous than good. On the other hand he who follows his rational appetite behaves well more often than ill.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The accidental, cause is twofold. The one does something towards the effect, but is said to cause it accidentally, because the effect that ensues is not intended by it: such is the man who finds a treasure while digging a grave. The other does nothing towards the effect, but is called accidental because it is accidental to the active cause: thus white may be said to be the cause of the house, because it is an accident of the builder. Likewise the accidental effect is twofold. The one could be the term of the cause’s action, but occurs beside the cause’s intention, as, for instance, the finding of the treasure: such an effect, though accidental with regard to that cause, can be the per se effect of another cause. In this sense evil has no accidental cause, because as already stated it cannot be the term of an action. The other kind of accidental effect is one which is not the term of an agent’s action, but it is called an accidental effect because it is accidental to an effect: thus white that is accidental to a house may be said to be an accidental effect of the builder. In this sense nothing prevents evil from having an accidental cause.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. Evil, though it is not as nature, is not a pure negation but a privation: and this according to the Philosopher (Metaph. iv, 2) is a negation adhering to a subject, for privation is negation in a subject, so that inasmuch as it is accidental to something, it can have an accidental cause in the sense already explained.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. Evil was in the devil before others in point of time; but not in point of nature, as though wickedness were his essence or an accident deriving from the principles of his nature. Nor does it matter that he ,be worse than others, since this is not on account of any connaturality of wickedness to him, but is accidental through his having sinned more grievously. Now a thing is said to be a principle in relation to other things with regard to that which is said of it per se and not accidentally.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. It is owing to its perfection that good happens in but one way: because a thing cannot be perfect unless all those conditions are fulfilled which combine together to make it perfect. If any of these be lacking the thing is imperfect and therefore evil: and consequently the imperfection of evil is the reason why evil is so manifold: and thus evil is less a being than good is.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. The statement of the Philosopher refers to the opinion of Pythagoras who maintained that good and evil are genera, as we have said above. This opinion, however, has some truth in it. For since, as we have observed, good indicates something positive whereas evil indicates a privation; just as every form is a good, so is every privation an evil, wherefore good and evil are in a sense convertible with being and privation of being. Now, it is shown in Metaph. x, 4, that in all contraries there is an implication of privation and habit, so that always the contrary that is the more perfect is reducible to a good, while the other which is less perfect is reducible to an evil.

Hence the Philosopher (Phys. i, 9) says that one of two contraries is harmful: and in this sense good and evil may be described as contrary generically.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. The evil that is contrary to a good indicates not only a privation of that good, but a habit to which that privation is annexed: which habit is evil not by reason of its entity, but because it has annexed to it the privation of a due perfection.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Evil differentiates the vicious habit, not merely as a privation, but with the addition of the intention of an undue end, which intention does not include the notion of evil except in so far as the end in question is inconsistent with a due end: thus the end of carnal pleasure is inconsistent with the good dictated by reason. The reason why good and evil are assigned as specifying the habits of the soul is that moral acts, and consequently habits, are specified by the end, which is so to say the form of the will, the proper principle of evil deeds and good and evil denote relation to the end.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. The meaning is not that good is set against evil as one first principle against another first principle, but that they both derive from one first principle, the one per se, the other accidentally: this is clear from what follows: And so look upon all the works of the Most High, etc.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. Evil is not intensified by approach to a term, but by recession from a term: for as a thing is said to be good as participating of goodness, so is it said to be evil as lacking in goodness.

Reply to the, Fifteenth Objection. By the good tree our Lord means a cause of good, not the first cause but the second cause in relation to some particular effect: the same applies to the evil tree. Hence by the evil tree he indicates heretics who are known by their works, as a tree by its fruit. This is clear if we consider the comparison: for the first cause of the fruit is not the tree but the root. If, however, we take the tree to signify any cause, as Dionysius apparently does, then we reply as in the answer to the First Objection, that good is not the per se cause of evil.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. The darkness mentioned as existing at the beginning of the creation was not a creature, but simply the absence of light in the atmosphere. It was not however an evil, since absence of good is an evil only when that good can and ought to be present. Thus it is not an evil in a stone that it cannot sense, nor is it an evil in a newly born child that it cannot walk. Nor was it owing to imperfection in the active cause that the air was created without light, but through its wisdom that so orders things that they are brought from imperfection to perfection.

Reply to the Seventeenth Objection. This argument supposes that evil has a cause per se: and we have shown this to be false.

The Eighteenth Objection is met with the same reply.

Reply to the Nineteenth Objection. Nature stands in relation to generation otherwise than to corruption. The form that is the term of generation is directly intended by nature both universal and particular, whereas privation of a form is beside the intention of a particular nature, although it is intended by universal nature, not indeed directly but as necessary for the introduction of another form. Hence generation is natural in every way, whereas corruption is sometimes against nature, if we refer it to a nature in particular.

Reply to the Twentieth Objection. Whatever there is of entity or action in a sinful act is referred to God as first cause: while the element of deformity is referred to the free will as cause. Thus when a man limps his walking is due, to the motive power as first cause, but that he walks awry is due to a deformity in his leg.

Reply to the Twenty-first Objection. This argument applies to two agents entirely unrelated, but not when one of them operates in the other: for then one effect can proceed from both. Now God operates in every nature and in every will: hence the argument does not prove.

Reply to the Twenty-second Objection. This argument refers to an agent that acts of natural necessity: and one such agent is confined to one effect. Nor does it follow that an effect must be simple because its cause is simple: because an effect need not equal its cause either in universality or in simplicity. But God does not act of natural necessity, but of his own will: wherefore he is able to make both simple things and composite things, things mutable and things immutable.

Reply to the Twenty-third Objection. The stain of sin does not impose a nature on the soul, but only the privation of grace: which privation is referred to the preceding sinful act, that caused or might have caused it. Consequently it does not follow that one who has not committed the act of a particular sin, has the stain of that sin.

Reply to the Twenty-fourth Objection. God’s works continue for ever not in number but in species or genus; in their substance, but not in their mode of being, for the fashion of this world passeth away (1 Cor. vii, 31).

Reply to the Twenty-fifth Objection. Although God is a spirit his wisdom contains the ideas of bodies; and bodies are made like them in the same way as a craftsman’s work is like him in respect of his art. However, bodies are like God in respect of his nature, in so far as they have being, goodness and a certain unity.

Reply to the Twenty-sixth Objection. Nature always does what is best, not with regard to the part but with regard to the whole: otherwise it would make a man’s body all eye or all heart: for it would be better for the part but not for the whole. In like manner, although it would be better for this or that thing to be placed in a higher order, it would not be better for the universe, which would remain imperfect if all creatures were of one order.

Does God Work in Operations of Nature?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. cv, A. 5: C.G. III. lxvii; I-II, Q. x, art. 4]

THE seventh point of inquiry is whether God works in the operations of nature: and apparently the answer should be in the negative.

1. Nature neither fails in necessary things nor abounds in the superfluous. Now the action of nature requires nothing more than an active force in the agent, and passivity in the recipient. Therefore there is no need for the divine power to operate in things.

2. It may be replied that the active force of nature depends in its operation on the operation of God.—On the contrary as the operation of created nature depends on the divine operation, so the operation of an elemental body depends on the operation of a heavenly body: because the heavenly body stands in relation to the elemental body, as a first to a second cause. Now no one maintains that the heavenly body operates in every action of an elemental body. Therefore we must not say that God operates in every operation of nature.

3. If God operates in every operation of nature God’s operation and nature’s are either one and the same operation or they are distinct. They are not one and the same: since unity of operation proves unity of nature: wherefore as in Christ there are two natures, so also are there two operations: and it is clear that God’s nature and man’s are not the same. Nor can they be two distinct operations: because distinct operations cannot seemingly terminate in one and the same product, since movements and operations are diversified by their terms. Therefore it is altogether impossible that God operate in nature.

4. It will be replied that two operations can have the same term, if one is subordinate to the other.—On the contrary, when several things are immediately related to some one thing, one is not subordinate to the other. Now both God and nature produce the natural effect immediately. Therefore of God’s operation and nature’s one is not subordinate to the other.

5. Whenever God fashions a nature, by that very fact he gives it all that belongs essentially to that nature: thus by the very fact that he makes a man he gives him a rational soul. Now strength is essentially a principle of action, since it is the perfection of power, and power is a principle of acting on another which is distinct (Metaph. v,12). Therefore by implanting natural forces in things, he enabled them to perform their natural operations. Hence there is no need for him also to operate in nature.

6. It might be replied that natural forces like other beings cannot last unless they be upheld by the divine power.—On the contrary, to operate on a thing is not the same as to operate in it. Now the operation whereby God either produces or preserves the forces of nature, has its effect on those forces by producing or preserving them. Therefore this does not prove that God works in the operations of nature.

7. If God works in the operations of nature, it follows that by so doing be imparts something to the natural agent: since every agent by acting makes something to be actual. Either then this something suffices for nature to be able to operate by itself, or it does not suffice. If it suffices, then since God also gave nature its natural forces, for the same reason we may say that the natural forces were sufficient for nature to act: and there will be no further need for God to do anything towards nature’s operation besides giving nature the natural forces. If on the other hand it does not suffice, he will need to do something more, and if this is not sufficient, more still and so on indefinitely, which is impossible: because one effect cannot depend on an infinite number of actions, for, since it is not possible to pass through an infinite number of things, it would never materialise. Therefore we must accept the alternative, namely that the forces of nature suffice for the action of nature without God operating therein.

8. Further, given a cause that acts of natural necessity, its action follows unless it be hindered accidentally, because nature is confined to one effect. If, then, the heat of fire acts of natural necessity, given heat, the action of heating follows, and there is no need of a higher power to work in the heat.

9. Things that are altogether disparate can be separate from each other. Now God’s action and nature’s are altogether disparate, since God acts by his will and nature by necessity. Therefore God’s action can be separated from the action of nature, and consequently he need not operate in the action of nature.

10. A creature, considered as such, is like God inasmuch as it actually exists and acts: and in this respect it participates of the divine goodness. But this would not be so if its own forces were not sufficient for it to act. Therefore a creature is sufficiently equipped for action without God’s operation therein.

11. Two angels cannot be in the same place, according to some, lest confusion of action should result: because an angel is where he operates. Now God is more distant from nature than one angel from another. Therefore God cannot operate in the same action with nature.

12. Moreover, it is written (Ecclus. xv, 14) that God made man and left him in the hand of his own counsel. But he would not have so left him, if he always operated in man’s will. Therefore he does not operate in the operation of the will.

13. The will is master of its own action. But this would not be the case, if it were unable to act without God operating in it, for our will is not master of the divine operation. Therefore God does not operate in the operation of the win.

14. To be free is to be the cause of one’s own action (Metaph. i, 2). Consequently that which cannot act without receiving the action of another cause is not free to act: now man’s will is free to act. Therefore it can act without any other cause operating in it: and the same conclusion follows.

15. A first cause enters more into the effect than does a second cause. If, then, God operates in will and nature as a first in a second cause, it follows that the defects that occur in voluntary and natural actions are to be ascribed to God rather than to nature or will: and this is absurd.

16. Given a cause whose action suffices, it is superfluous., to require the action of another cause. Now it is clear, that if God operates in nature and will, his action is sufficient, since God’s works are Perfect (Deut. xxii, 4). Therefore all action of nature and will would be superfluous. But nothing in nature is superfluous, and consequently neither nature nor will would do anything, and God alone would act. This, however, is absurd: therefore it is also absurd to state that God operates in nature and will.

On the contrary it is written (Isa. xxvi, 12): Lord, thou hast wrought all our works in us.

Moreover, even as art presupposes nature, so does nature presuppose God. Now nature operates in the operations of art: since art does not work without the concurrence of nature: thus fire softens the iron so as to render it malleable under the stroke of the smith. Therefore God also operates in the operation of nature.

Again, according to the Philosopher (Phys. ii, 2) man and the sun generate man. Now just as the generative act in man depends on the action of the sun, so and much more does the action of nature depend on the action of God. Therefore in every action of nature God operates also.

Further, nothing can act except what exists. Now nature cannot exist except through God’s action, for it would fall into nothingness were it not preserved in being by the action of the divine power, as Augustine states (Gen. ad lit.). Therefore nature cannot act unless God act also.

Again, God’s power is in every natural thing, since he is in all things by his essence, his presence and his power. Now it cannot be admitted that God’s power forasmuch as it is in things is not operative: and consequently it operates as being in nature. And it cannot be said to operate something besides what nature operates, since evidently there is but one operation. Therefore God works in every operation of nature.

I answer that we must admit without any qualification that God operates in the operations of nature and will. Some, however, through failing to understand this aright fell into error, and ascribed to God every operation of nature in the sense that nature does nothing at all by its own power. They were led to hold this opinion by various arguments. Thus according to Rabbi Moses some of the sages in the Moorish books of law asserted that all these natural forms are accidents, and since an accident cannot pass from one subject to another, they deemed it impossible for a natural agent by its form to produce in any way a similar form in another subject, and consequently they said that fire does not heat but God creates heat in that which is made hot. And if it were objected to them, that a thing becomes hot whenever it is placed near the fire, unless some obstacle be in the way, which shows that fire is the per se cause of heat; they replied that God established the order to be observed according to which he would never cause heat except at the presence of fire: and that the fire itself would have no part in the action of heating. This opinion, is manifestly opposed to the nature of sensation: for since the senses do not perceive unless they are acted upon by the sensible object—which is clearly true in regard to touch and the other senses except sight, since some maintain that this is effected by the visual organ projecting itself on to the object—it would follow that a man does not feel the fire’s heat, if the action of the fire does not produce in the sensorial organ a likeness of the heat that is in the fire. In fact if this heat-species be produced in the organ by another agent, although the touch would sense the heat, it would not sense the heat of the fire, nor would it perceive that the fire is hot, and yet the sense judges this to be the case, and the senses do not err about their proper object.

It is also opposed to reason which convinces us that nothing in nature is void of purpose. Now unless natural things had an action of their own the forms and forces with which they are endowed would be to no purpose; thus if a knife does not cut, its sharpness is useless. It would also be useless to set fire to the coal, if God ignites the coal without fire.

It is also opposed to God’s goodness which is self-communicative: the result being that things were made like God not only in being but also in acting.

The argument which they put forward is altogether frivolous. When we say that an accident does not pass from one subject to another, this refers to the same identical accident, and we do not deny that an accident subjected in a natural thing can produce an accident of like species in another subject: indeed this happens of necessity in every natural action. Moreover, they suppose that all forms are accidents, and this is not true: because then in natural things there would be no substantial being, the principle of which cannot be an accidental but only a substantial form. Moreover, this would make an end of generation and corruption: and many other absurdities would follow.

Avicebron (Fons Vitae) says that no corporeal substance acts, but that a spiritual energy penetrating all bodies acts in them, and that the measure of a body’s activity is according to the measure of its purity and subtlety, whereby it is rendered amenable to the influence of a spiritual force. He supports his statement by three arguments. His first argument is that every agent after God requires subject-matter on which to act: and no corporeal agent has matter subject to it, wherefore seemingly it cannot act. His second argument is that quantity hinders action and movement: in proof of which he points out that a bulky body is slow of movement and heavy: wherefore a corporeal substance being inseparable from quantity cannot act. His third argument is that the corporeal substance is furthest removed from the first agent, which is purely active and nowise passive, while the intermediate substances are both active and passive: and therefore corporeal substances which come last, must needs be passive only and not active.

Now all this is manifestly fallacious in that he takes all corporeal substances as one single substance; and as though they differed from one another only in accidental and not in their substantial being. If the various corporeal substances be taken as substantially distinct, every one will not occupy the last place and the furthest removed from the first agent, but one will be higher than another and nearer to the first agent, so that one will be able to act on another. Again in the foregoing arguments the corporeal substance is considered only in respect of its matter and not in respect of its form, whereas it is composed of both. It is true that the corporeal substance belongs to the lowest grade of beings, and has no subject beneath it, but this is by reason of its matter, not of its form: because in respect of its form a corporeal substance has an inferior subject in any other substance whose matter has potentially that form which the corporeal substance in question has actually. Hence it follows that there is mutual action in corporeal substances, since in the matter of one there is potentially the form of another, and vice versa. And if this form does not suffice to act, for the same reason neither does the energy of a spiritual substance, which the corporeal substance must needs receive according to its mode.—Nor does quantity hinder movement and action, since nothing is moved but that which has quantity (Phys. vi, 10). Nor is it true that quantity causes weight. This is disproved in De Coelo iv, 2. In fact, quantity increases the speed of natural movement, thus a weighty body, the greater it is, the greater the velocity of its downward movement, and in like manner that of a light body in its movement upwards. And although quantity in itself is not a principle of action, no reason can be given why it should hinder action, seeing that rather is it the instrument of an active quality; except in so far as active forms in quantitative matter receive a certain limited being that is confined to that particular matter, so that their action does not extend to an extraneous matter. But though they receive individual being in matter, they retain their specific nature, by reason whereof they can produce their like in species, and yet are unable themselves to be in another subject. Hence we are to understand that God works in every natural thing not as though the natural thing were altogether inert, but because God works in both nature and will when they work. How this may be we must now explain.

It must be observed that one thing may be the cause of another’s action in several ways. First, by giving it the power to act: thus it is said that the generator moves heavy and light bodies, inasmuch as it gives them the power from which that movement results. In this way God causes all the actions of nature, because he gave natural things the forces whereby they are able to act, not only as the generator gives power to heavy and light bodies yet does not preserve it, but also as upholding its very being, forasmuch as he is the cause of the power bestowed, not only like the generator in its becoming, but also in its being; and thus God may be said to be the cause of an action by both causing and upholding the natural power in its being. For secondly, the preserver of a power is said to cause the action; thus a remedy that preserves the sight is said to make a man see. But since nothing moves or acts of itself unless it be an unmoved mover; thirdly, a thing is said to cause another’s action by moving it to act: whereby we do not mean that it causes or preserves the active power, but that it applies the power to action, even as a man causes the knife’s cutting by the very fact that he applies the sharpness of the knife t6 cutting by moving it to cut. And since the lower nature in acting does not act except through being moved, because these lower bodies are both subject to and cause alteration: whereas the heavenly body causes alteration without being subject to it, and yet it does not cause movement unless it be itself moved, so that we must eventually trace its movement to God, it follows of necessity that God causes the action of every natural thing by moving and applying its power to action. Furthermore we find that the order of effects follows the order of causes, and this must needs be so on account of the likeness of the effect to its cause. Nor can the second cause by its own power have any influence on the effect of the first cause, although it is the instrument of the first cause in regard to that effect: because an instrument is in a manner the cause of the principal cause’s effect, not by its own form or power, but in so far as it participates somewhat in the power of the principal cause through being moved thereby: thus the axe is the cause of the craftsman’s handiwork not by its own form or power, but by the power of the craftsman who moves it so that it participates in his power. Hence, fourthly, one thing causes the action of another, as a principal agent causes the action of its instrument: and in this way again we must say that God causes every action of natural things. For the higher the cause the greater its scope and efficacity: and the more efficacious the cause, the more deeply does it penetrate into its effect, and the more remote the potentiality from which it brings that effect into act. Now in every natural thing we find that it is a being, a natural thing, and of this or that nature. The first is common to all beings, the second to all natural things, the third to all the members of a species, while a fourth, if we take accidents, into account, is proper to this or that individual. Accordingly this or that individual thing cannot by its action produce another individual of the same species except as the instrument of that cause which includes in its scope the whole species and, besides, the whole being of’ the inferior creature. Wherefore no action in these lower bodies attains to the production of a species except through the power of the heavenly body, nor does anything produce being except by the power of God. For being is the most common first effect and more intimate than all other effects: wherefore it is an effect which it belongs to God alone to produce by his own power: and for this reason (De Causis, prop. ix) an intelligence does not give being, except the divine power be therein. Therefore God is the cause of every action, inasmuch as every agent is an instrument of the divine power operating.

If, then, we consider the subsistent agent, every particular agent is immediate to its effect: but if we consider the power whereby the action is done, then the power of the higher cause is more immediate to the effect than the power of the lower cause; since the power of the lower cause is not coupled with its effect save by the power of the higher cause: wherefore it is said in De Causis (prop. i) that the power of the first cause takes the first place in the production of the effect and enters more deeply therein. Accordingly the divine power must needs be present to every acting thing, even as the power of the heavenly body must needs be present to every acting elemental body. Yet there is a difference in that wherever the power of God is there is his essence, whereas the essence of the heavenly body is not wherever its power is: and again God is his own power, whereas the heavenly body is not its own power. Consequently we may say that God works in everything forasmuch as everything needs his power in order that it may act: whereas it cannot properly be said that the heaven always works in an elemental body, although the latter acts by its power. Therefore God is the cause of everything’s action inasmuch as he gives everything the power to act, and preserves it in being and applies it to action, and inasmuch as by his power every other power acts. And if we add to this that God is his own power, and that he is in all things not as part of their essence but as upholding them in their being, we shall conclude that he acts in every agent immediately, without prejudice to the action of the will and of nature.

Reply to the First Objection. The active and passive powers. of a natural thing suffice for action in their own order: yet the divine power is required for the reason given above.

Reply to the Second Objection. Although the action of the forces of nature may be said to depend on God in the same way as that of an elemental body depends on the heavenly body, the comparison does not apply in every respect.

Reply to the Third Objection. In that operation whereby God operates by moving nature, nature itself does not operate: and even the operation of nature is also the operation of the divine power, just as the operation of an instrument is effected by the power of the principal agent. Nor does this prevent nature and God from operating to the same effect, on account of the order between God and nature.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Both God and nature operate immediately, although as already stated there is order between them of priority and posteriority.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. It belongs to the lower power to be a principle of operation in a certain way and in its own order, namely as instrument of a higher power: wherefore, apart from the latter it has no operation.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. God is the cause of nature’s operation not only as upholding the forces of nature in their being, but in other ways also, as stated above.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The natural forces implanted in natural things at their formation are in them by way of fixed and constant forms in nature. But that which God does in a natural thing to make it operate actually, is a mere intention, incomplete in being, as colours in the air and the power of the craftsman in his instrument. Hence even as art can give the axe its sharpness as a permanent form, but not the power of the art as a permanent form, unless it were endowed with intelligence, so it is possible for a natural thing to be given its own proper power as a permanent form within it, but not the power to act so as to cause being as the instrument of the first cause, unless it were given to be the universal principle of being. Nor could it be given to a natural power to cause its own movement, or to preserve its own being. Consequently just as it clearly cannot be given to the craftsman’s instrument to work unless it be moved by him, so neither can it be given to a natural thing to operate without the divine operation.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. The natural necessity whereby heat acts is the result of the order of all the preceding causes: wherefore the power of the first cause is not excluded.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. Although nature and will are disparate in themselves, there is a certain order between them as regards their respective actions. For just as the action of nature precedes the act of our will, so that operations of art which proceed from the will presuppose the operation of nature: even so the will of God which is the origin of all natural movement precedes the operation of nature, so that its operation is presupposed in every operation of nature.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. The creature has a certain likeness to God by sharing in his goodness, in so far as it exists and acts, but not so that it can become equal to him through that likeness being perfected: wherefore as the imperfect needs the perfect, so the forces of nature in acting need the action of God.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. One angel is less distant from another in the degree of nature than God from created nature; and yet in the order of cause and effect God and the creature come together, whereas two angels do not: wherefore God operates in nature, but one angel does not operate in another.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. God is said to have left man in the hand of his counsel not as though he did not operate in the will: but because he gave man’s will dominion over its act, so that it is not bound to this or that alternative: which dominion he did not bestow on nature since by its form it is confined to one determinate effect.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. The will is said to have dominion over its own act not to the exclusion of the first cause, but inasmuch as the first cause does not act in the will so as to determine it of necessity to one thing as it determines nature; wherefore the determination of the act remains in the power of the reason and will.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. Not every cause excludes liberty, but only that which compels: and it is not thus that God causes our operations.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. Forasmuch as the first cause has more influence in the effect than the second cause, whatever there is of perfection in the effect is to be referred chiefly to the first cause: while all defects must be referred to the second cause which does not act as efficaciously as the first cause.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. God acts perfectly as first cause: but the operation of nature as second cause is also necessary. Nevertheless God can produce the natural effect even without nature: but he wishes to act by means of nature in order to preserve order in things.

Does God Work in Nature by Creating?

[Sum. Theol. I, Q. xiv, A. 8.]

THE eighth point of inquiry is whether God works in nature by creating; and this is to ask whether creation is mingled in the works of nature: and seemingly the reply should be in the affirmative.

1. Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 8): “The apostle Paul considering the secret works of God in the creation and formation of things, and the outward works of creatures, takes a comparison from agriculture when he says I have planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase.”

2. To this it may be answered that creation here stands for any kind of making.—On the contrary Augustine (ibid.) intends there to draw from the Apostle’s words the distinction between the creature’s operation and that of God. Now this distinction is not based upon creation taken in a general sense for any kind of making, because thus even nature creates, since it does make something as we have shown above, but not by creation in the strict sense. Therefore the words quoted must be taken as referring to creation properly so called.

3. Augustine adds (ibid.): just as in our life none but God can inform the soul with righteousness, whereas even men can outwardly preach the Gospel, so God inwardly creates the visible world, while he applies to nature in which he creates all things the various external operations of good or bad angels or men or any animals whatsoever; thus to the soil he applies husbandry. Now he informs the soul with righteousness by creating in the strict sense of the word: since grace is effected by creation. Therefore he creates the forms of things in the strict sense of the term.

4. You may say, however, that natural forms have a cause in their subject, whereas grace has not: and this is why grace is created in the proper sense of the word, while natural forms are not.—On the contrary according to a gloss on Genesis i, i, “to create is to make a thing out of (ex) nothing.” Now this preposition ex sometimes connotes efficient causality as in 1 Corinthians viii, 6, “Of (ex) whom are all things,... by whom are all things”: and sometimes it connotes material causality, as in Tobit xiii, 21, “all the walls thereof round about of (ex) precious stones.” Hence when a thing is said to be made out of nothing, it is not the relation of an efficient cause that is denied (since then God would not be the efficient cause of creatures), but that of a material cause. But natural forms have efficient causes in their subjects, and in this they differ from grace: they also have matter in which they are, and this is also competent to grace. Consequently grace is not more capable of being created than natural forms are, since it also has a cause in its subject.

5. Art-forms have no cause in their subject but are entirely effected from without. If, then, grace is said to be created because it has no cause in its subject, for the same reason accidental art-forms must be the result of creation.

6. That which has no matter as a constituent part cannot be made of matter. Now forms have no matter as a constituent part: because form is contradistinguished both from matter and from composite things (De Anima ii, i). Since, then, forms are made since they. have a beginning of existence, it would seem that they are not made out of matter; and consequently are made out of nothing and therefore are created.

7. But it might be said that although natural forms have no matter as a constituent part, they have matter as a subject, and as such are not created.—On the contrary the rational soul is a form in matter like other natural forms. But it is admitted that the rational soul is created. Therefore we must say the same of other natural forms.

8. If you say that the rational soul is not as other natural forms educed from matter.—On the contrary nothing is educed from that in which it is not. Now before generation is complete the form which is the term of generation is not in the matter; otherwise contrary forms would be in matter at the same time. Therefore natural forms are not educed from matter.

9. The form which is the term of generation does not make its appearance before generation is complete. If then it was there it was latent: and the result would be that all kinds of forms are latent in all kinds of matter, an opinion upheld by Anaxagoras and disproved by Aristotle (Phys. i, 4).

10. You will say perhaps, that the natural form does not exist completely as Anaxagoras maintained before generation is complete, but incompletely.—On the contrary if the form is in any way at all in matter before generation’ is complete, it is there as to some part of itself: and if it be not there completely as to some part of itself, it does not pre-exist at all. Hence the form will have several parts, and consequently is not simple: which is contrary to what is laid down at the beginning of the Six Principles [by Gilbert de la Porrée].

11. If the form does not pre-exist completely in matter and is made complete subsequently, this complement must be the result of generation. Now this complement does not pre-exist in matter, because in that case the form would be already complete. Therefore this complement at least would be created.

12. It will be said perhaps that this complement preexisted in matter incompletely, not in respect of a part, but because it existed at first in one way and afterwards in another way: since at first it was potential and afterwards actual.—On the contrary, when a thing is in one way at first and afterwards in another way it is altered and not generated. Hence if the work of nature consists in nothing more than that a form which was previously in potentiality becomes afterwards actual, it follows that nature’s operation does not produce generation but only alteration.

13. In the lower nature there is no active principle that is not an accident: thus fire acts by heat which is an accident, and so on. Now an accident cannot be the active cause of a substantial form, since nothing acts beyond its own species: and an effect cannot transcend its cause, whereas a substantial form transcends an accident. Therefore a substantial form is not produced by the action of a lower nature, and consequently it is the result of creation.

14. The imperfect cannot be the cause of the perfect. Now the soul’s power is not in the semen of the dumb animal except imperfectly. Therefore the soul of a dumb animal is not produced by the natural action of the seminal force: and thus it must needs be produced by creation, and likewise all other natural forms.

15. That which is neither animate nor living cannot be the cause of an animate and living being. Now animals engendered from putrid matter are living animated beings and there are not to be found in nature any living beings from which they receive life. Therefore their souls must be produced by creation by the first living being, and for like reason so also must other natural forms.

16. Again, nature does not produce other than its like. But. we find certain natural things of which there is no previous likeness in their generator: thus a mule is not like in species either a horse or an ass. Therefore the form of the mule is not the result of nature’s action but of creation: and thus the same conclusion follows.

17. Again, Augustine says (De Vera Relig. iii; De Lib. Arb. ii, 17) that natural things would not be informed by their forms, unless there were some first being whereby they are informed. But this is God. Therefore all forms are created by God.

18. Again, Boethius says (De Trin.) that forms which exist in matter are produced by forms which exist without matter. Now a form that exists without matter, so far as the present question is concerned, can only be an idea of a thing, which idea exists in the divine mind: because the angels who may be described as forms existing without matter are not the causes of material forms, according to Augustine (De Trin. iii, 8, 9). Therefore natural forms are not produced by the action of nature but are bestowed by creation.

ig. Being is caused by creation (De Causis, prop. xviii). Now this would not be true unless forms were created, since the form is the principle of being. Therefore forms are r4ade by creation, and God produces something in nature by creation, namely forms.

20. That which is self-subsistent is the cause of that which is not self-subsistent. Now the forms of natural things are not self-subsistent but subsist in matter. Therefore their cause is a self-subsistent form: and consequently must be created by an extrinsic agent. Hence it would seem that God works in nature by creating forms.— On the contrary the work of creation is distinct from the work of government and that of propagation. Now that which is done by the action of nature belongs to the works of government and propagation. Therefore creation is not mingled with the work of nature.

Moreover, God alone can create. Hence if forms are created, they will be the work of God alone, so that all nature’s work, the purpose of which is the form, will be useless.

Moreover, just as matter is not a part of the substantial form so neither is it a part of the accidental form. Hence if the reason why substantial forms must be produced by creation is because they have no matter, the same argument will apply to accidental forms. Now as the thing generated is perfected by the substantial form, so does it receive a certain disposition from the accidental form: and consequently nature would take no part in generating, neither as perfecting nor as disposing, and all natural action would be useless.

Further, nature produces like from like. Now the thing generated is like its generator in species and form. Therefore the form is produced by the action of the generator and not by creation.

Further, the actions of diverse agents do not terminate in one same effect. But matter and form combine to produce that which is one simply. Therefore there cannot be one agent to dispose the matter and another to induce the form. Now it is the natural agent that disposes the matter: therefore it also induces the form. Consequently forms are not produced by creation, and creation is not mingled with the works of nature.

I answer that there have been different opinions on this point, and they all arose seemingly from this one principle that nature cannot make a thing out of nothing. Whence some concluded that nothing is made except in the sense that it is drawn out of another wherein it was latent.

The Philosopher (Phys. i, 4) imputes this opinion to Anaxagoras who apparently was deceived through failing to distinguish potentiality from act: for he thought that whatever is generated must already have been in actual existence: whereas it must have pre-existed potentially and not actually. For if it pre-existed potentially it would become out of nothing: while if it pre-existed actually it would not become at all, since what is does not become.

Since, however, the thing generated is in potentiality through its matter, and in act through its form, others maintained that a thing becomes as regards its form while its matter was already in existence. And seeing that nature cannot operate on nothing, and therefore presupposes something to act on, according to them nature’s operation is confined to disposing matter for its form. While the form which must needs become and cannot be presupposed, must be produced by an agent who does not presuppose anything and can make something out of nothing: and such is the supernatural agent which Plato held to be the giver of forms. Avicenna held this to be the lowest intelligence among separate substances: while more recent followers of this opinion say that it is God.

Now seemingly this is unreasonable. Since everything has a natural tendency to produce its like (because a thing acts forasmuch as it is actual, namely by making actual that which previously was potential) there would be no need of likeness in the substantial form in the natural agent, unless the substantial form of the thing generated were produced by the action of the agent. For which reason that which is to be acquired in the thing generated is found to be actually in the natural generator, and each one acts inasmuch as it is in act: wherefore seemingly there is no reason to seek another generator and pass over this one.

It must be observed, then, that these opinions arose from ignorance of the nature of form, just as the first-mentioned opinions arose from ignorance of the nature of matter. For being is not predicated univocally of the form and the thing generated. A generated natural thing is said to be per se and properly, as having being and subsisting in that being: whereas the form is not thus said to be, for it does not subsist, nor has it being per se; and it is said to exist or be, because something is by it: thus accidents are described as beings, because by them a substance is qualified or quantified, but not as though by them it is simply, as it is by its substantial form. Hence it is more correct to say that an accident is of something rather than that it is something (Metaph. vii, 2). Now that which is made is said to become according to the way in which it is: because its being is the term of its making: so that properly speaking it is the composite that is made per se. Whereas the form properly speaking is not made but is that whereby a thing is made, that is to say it is by acquiring the form that a thing is said to be made.

Accordingly the fact that nature makes nothing out of nothing does not prevent our asserting that substantial forms acquire being through the action of nature: since that which is made is not the form but the composite, which is made from matter and not out of nothing. And it is made from matter, in so far as matter is potentially the composite through having the form potentially.

Consequently it is not correct to say that the form is made in matter, rather should we say that it is educed from the potentiality of matter. And from this principle that the composite and not the form is made the Philosopher (Metaph. vii, 8) proves that forms result from natural agents. Because since the thing made must needs be like its maker, and that which is made is the composite, it follows that the maker must be composite and not a self-subsistent form, as Plato, maintained: so that as the thing made is composite, and that by which it is made is a form in matter made actual, so the generator is composite and not a mere form, while the form is that whereby it generates, a form to, wit existing in that particular matter such as that flesh, those bones and so forth.

Reply to the First Objection. In these words Augustine ascribes creation to God in the works of nature by reason of nature’s forces which at the beginning God implanted in matter by the work of creation, not as though something were created in every work of nature.

Reply to the Second Objection. In these words of, Augustine creation is to be taken in its proper sense, but it is not to be referred to natural effects but to the forces by which nature works; which forces were planted in nature by the work of creation.

Reply to the Third Objection. Since grace is not a subsistent form it cannot properly be said to be or to be made, and consequently properly speaking it is not created in the same way as self-subsistent substances are. Nevertheless the infusion of grace approaches somewhat to the nature of creation in so far as grace has not a cause in its subject—neither an efficient cause nor a material cause wherein it pre-exists potentially in such a way that it can like other natural forms be educed into act by a natural agent.

Hence the reply to the Fourth Objection is clear because when we say that a thing is made out of nothing we deny that it has a material cause: and it somewhat savours of absence of matter that a form cannot be educed from the natural potentiality of matter.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. Although nature contains no effective principle with regard to art-forms, such forms do not surpass the order of nature, as grace does: in fact they are beneath that order, because nature is above art.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. That a form has no matter as part thereof would prove that it is competent to be created, if like a self-subsistent thing it could be, made properly speaking.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. Although the rational soul has matter for its subject, it is not educed from the potentiality of matter, since its nature is raised above the entire material order, as is evidenced by its intellectual operation. Moreover, this form is a self-subsistent thing that remains when the body dies.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. The form which is the term of generation was in matter before generation was complete, not actually but potentially: and there is nothing to prevent two contraries being together in the same subject, one actually and the other potentially.

The reply to the Ninth Objection is thus made clear: since Anaxagoras held that forms pre-exist in matter not actually but in a latent state.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. The form pre-exists in matter imperfectly, not as though a part of it were actually there and another part not, but because it is wholly there in potentiality, and is afterwards educed wholly into actuality.

Whence we may gather the reply to the Eleventh Objection, since the form is not perfected by adding to the matter something extraneous that was not already in the matter potentially.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Actuality and potentiality are not different accidental modes of being, such as go to make alteration: they are substantial modes of being. For even substance is divided by potentiality and act, like any other genus.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. An accidental form acts by virtue of the substantial form whose instrument it is: thus heat is said to be the instrument of the nutritive power (De Anima ii, 4): wherefore it is not unreasonable if the action of an accidental form terminate in a substantial form.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. Again the heat in the semen acts as the instrument of the soul’s power which is in the semen: and though this power has an imperfect being it results from the action of a perfect soul, because the semen derives it from the soul of the generator. Moreover, it acts by virtue of a heavenly body whose instrument it is after a fashion. Hence we do not say that the semen begets, but the soul and the sun.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. Animals engendered from putrid matter are less perfect than other animals: hence in engendering them the power of the heavenly body by acting on inferior matter has the same effect as it has in conjunction with the power of the semen in engendering the bodies of more perfect animals.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. Although a mule is unlike a horse or ass in species, it is like them in the proximate genus: by reason of which likeness one species, a mean species as it were, is engendered from different species.

Reply to the Seventeenth Objection. just as the divine power, the first agent to wit, does not exclude the action of the natural forces, so neither does the prototypal form which is God exclude the derivation of forms from other lower forms whose action terminates in like forms.

Hence we gather the reply to the Eighteenth Objection; for Boethius means to say that forms which are in matter derive from forms which are without matter not as from proximate causes but as from the prototypes.

Reply to the Nineteenth Objection. Being is said to be the result of creation in so far as every second cause when it gives being does so forasmuch as it acts by the power of the first creating cause: since being is the first effect and presupposes nothing else.

Reply to. the Twentieth Objection. A natural form that is in matter cannot be produced by a self-subsistent form of the same species because matter is essential to a natural form: yet it is produced by a self-subsistent form, as we have stated.

Is the Rational Soul Brought into Being by Creation or Is it Transmitted Through the Semen?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. cxviii]

THE ninth point of inquiry is whether the soul be brought into being by creation or by transmission through the semen: and it would seem that it is transmitted through the semen.

1. It is written (Gen. xlvi, 26): All the souls that went with Jacob into Egypt and that came out of his thigh, besides his sons’wives, sixty-six. Now nothing comes from a father’s thigh but what is transmitted through the semen. Therefore the rational soul is transmitted with the semen.

2. It may be replied that the part is taken for the whole, namely the soul for the man.—On the contrary, a man is composed of soul and body, and therefore if the whole man comes out of his father’s thigh, it follows as above that not the body only but also the soul is transmitted with the semen.

3. An accident cannot be transmitted unless its subject be transmitted, since an accident does not pass from one .subject to another. Now the rational soul is the subject of original sin. Therefore seeing that original sin is transmitted from parent to child it would seem that the child’s rational soul is transmitted from its parent.

4. It may be said that although original sin is in the soul as its subject, it is in the flesh as its cause: and consequently is transmitted by the transmission of the flesh.—On the contrary it is written (Rom. v, 12): By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned. The words in quo are expounded by a gloss of Augustine (De Pecc. Mer. et Rem. i, 10) as meaning in which sinner or in which sin. Now all would not have sinned in that sin, unless that same sin had been transmitted to all. Therefore the same sin that was in Adam is transmitted to all men; and consequently the soul that was the subject of that sin.

5. Every agent produces its like. Also every agent acts by virtue of its form. Therefore that which it produces is a form. Now the begetter is an agent. Therefore the form of the begetter is produced by the action of the begetter. Since then a man begets a man, and the rational soul is the form of a man, it would seem that the rational soul is produced by generation and not by creation.

6. According to the Philosopher (Phys. ii, 7) the efficient cause produces its own species in its effect. Now man takes his species from his rational soul. Therefore seemingly the rational soul is caused by the begetter in the begotten.

7. Children are like their parents because they are begotten by their parents. And they are like their parents not only in dispositions of the body but also in those of the soul. Therefore as bodies derive from bodies, so do souls derive from souls.

8. Moses says (Levit. xvii, 14): The soul of all flesh is in the blood. Now blood is transmitted with the semen, especially as the seed of the male is merely blood depurated by heat. Therefore the soul is transmitted with the semen.

9. Moreover the embryo before it is perfected with the rational soul, has certain animate actions, namely growth, nourishment and sensation: and where there is animate action there is life: consequently it lives. Now the soul is the principle of life in a body: consequently it has a soul. But it cannot be said that it receives yet another soul: because then there would be two souls in one body. Therefore the soul which was from the beginning transmitted in the semen is the rational soul.

10. Souls differing in species constitute animals of different species. If, then, before the rational soul there was in the semen a soul that was not rational, there was an animal of a different species from man: which consequently could not become a man since animals do not pass from one species to another.

11. You will say that these actions belong to the embryo not through the soul, but by some power of the soul known as the formative power.—On the contrary, power is rooted in substance; hence it occupies a place between substance and operation according to Dionysius (Coel. Hier. xi). Consequently if the soul’s power is there, its substance is there also.

12. The Philosopher says (De Gener. Anim. ii, 3) that the embryo is a living being before it is an animal, and an animal before it is a human being. Now every animal has a soul. Therefore it has a soul before it has a rational soul whereby it is a human being.

13. According to the Philosopher (De Anima ii, i) a soul is “the act of a living body as such.” Now if the embryo is a living being and has vital functions by means of this formative power, this very power will be its act in so far as it is a living thing. Therefore it will be a soul.

14. According to De Anima i, 2, life comes into all living things by the vegetal soul. Now it is clear that the embryo lives before the infusion of the rational soul, since it gives signs of exercising vital functions. Therefore the vegetal soul is in it before the rational soul.

15. The Philosopher (De Anima ii, 4) disproves the assertion that growth is not the effect of fire as principal agent, but of the vegetal soul. Now the embryo grows before the advent of the rational soul. Therefore it has a vegetal soul.

16. If before the advent of the rational soul there is not a vegetal soul but a formative power, at the advent of the soul this power will be inoperative, since the function it exercised in the embryo will subsequently be sufficiently fulfilled in the animal by the soul. Consequently it would remain superfluous: and this would seem to be unreasonable since nothing is superfluous in. nature.

17. You will say perhaps that this power ceases at the advent of the rational soul.—On the contrary, dispositions do not cease at the advent of the form, but remain, and after a fashion maintain the form in matter. Now this power was a kind of disposition to the soul. Therefore at the advent of the latter, it does not cease.

18. By its action this power conduces to the infusion of the soul. If, then, at the soul’s advent this power is destroyed, seemingly the soul has something to do with its destruction: and this is impossible.

19. A man is a human being by his rational soul. Therefore if the soul is not brought into being by generation, it win not be true that a man is generated: which is clearly false.

20. Further, the human body comes into being by the action of its begetter. If, then, the soul is not brought into being by the begetter, there will be a twofold being in man; corporeal being derived from the begetter, and animate being derived from another source: and consequently soul and body will not form one being simply, since each has its own being.

21. Moreover, it is impossible that the matter be the term of action of one agent, and the form the term of action of another agent: otherwise form and matter would not together make one thing simply, for one thing is made by one action. Now the action of nature in generating terminates in the body. Therefore it, terminates in the soul also, which is the form of the body.

22. Moreover, according to the Philosopher (De Gen. Anim. ii, 3) principles whose actions are not performed independently of the body are produced together with the body. Now the action of the rational soul is not performed independently of the body: since most of all would understanding be independent of the body, and this is clearly not the case, because we cannot understand without images (De Anima iii, 8): and there cannot be images without a body. Therefore the rational soul is transmitted with the body.

23. To this it may be replied that the rational soul when it understands requires images for the acquisition of intelligible species but not after it has acquired them.—On the contrary, after a man has acquired knowledge, his act of intelligence is hindered if the organ of imagination be injured. And this would not be the case if the intellect after acquiring knowledge were no longer in need of images. Consequently it needs them not only in acquiring knowledge but also in applying the knowledge it has acquired.

24. And if it be replied that the impediment to the act of intelligence arising from an injury to the organ of imagination arises not from the fact that the intellect needs images in using the knowledge it has acquired, but from the imagination and intellect being both seated in the one essence of the soul, so that the intellect is hindered accidentally through the imagination being hindered.—On the contrary the conjunction of powers in the one essence of the soul is the reason why if the act of one power be intense the act of the other is remiss: thus a person who is intent on seeing is less intent on hearing. It is also the reason why one power acts with greater strength when another is deprived of its act: thus the blind are often sharp of hearing. Therefore this conjunction of powers is not a reason for the action of the intellect being hindered through an impediment to the imagination, in fact it should rather be strengthened.

25. He who gives the work its final complement is the worker’s chief co-operator. Now if all human souls are created by God and by him infused into bodies, he gives the final complement to a generation that comes of adultery. Therefore he co-operates in adultery: and this is absurd.

26. According to the Philosopher (Meteor. iv, 12; De Anima ii, 4) a perfect thing is one that can make its like: land consequently the more perfect a thing is, the more is it able to make its like. Now the rational soul is more perfect than the material forms of the elements which produce other forms like themselves. Therefore the rational soul has the power by way of generation to produce another rational soul.

27. The rational soul is situated between God and corporeal things: wherefore (De Causis, prop. ii) it is asserted that it is created on the horizon between eternity and time. Now in God there is generation and also in corporeal things. Therefore the soul which is situated between them is produced by generation.

28. The Philosopher (De Gener. Anim. ii, 3) says that the spirit that comes forth with the seed of the male, is a force emanating from the soul, and is a divine thing. Now such a thing is the intellect. Therefore the intellect seemingly is transmitted with the seed.

29. The Philosopher (ibid. 4) says that in generation the female provides the body, and that the soul proceeds from the male: so that seemingly the soul is procreated and not created.

On the contrary it is written (Isa. lvii, 16): Every breathing I have made, and by breathing we are to understand the soul. Therefore seemingly the soul is created by God.

Again, it is written (Ps. xxxii, 15): He maketh the heart of each one of them. Therefore one soul is not engendered by another, but all are created separately by God.

I answer that in times past this question has been answered in various ways by different people. Some said that the soul of the child is procreated from the soul of the parent, even as its body is from the body of the parent. Others said that all souls were created apart from bodies: but they held that they were all created together without bodies, and afterwards each one was united to a body when this was begotten, either by an act of its will according to some, or by God’s command and operation according to others. Others held that souls are created and at the same time infused into bodies. Although formerly these opinions were held and it was doubtful which of them came nearest to the truth, as may be gathered from Augustine (Gen. ad lit. x, 21, 22; De Anima et ejus orig.), afterwards, however, the first two were condemned by the Church and the third approved [Pope Vigilius, Can. i, contra Originem; Council of Braga, Anathem. vi, Contra haeret.; Pope Anastasius II, Epist. ad episc. Galliae]. Hence we read in De Eccles. Dogm. (xiv): “We do not believe in the fiction of Origen that human souls were created at the beginning with other intellectual natures, nor that they are Procreated together with their bodies by coition, as the Luciferians with Cyril, and certain Latin writers have Presumed to maintain. But we affirm that the body alone is begotten by sexual Procreation, and that after the formation of the body the soul is created and infused.”

A careful examination will make it clear that the opinion now under consideration was rightly condemned which held the rational soul to be transmitted with the semen. Three arguments will make this sufficiently evident for the present.

First argument. The rational soul differs from other forms, in that the latter have a being not wherein they subsist but whereby the things informed by them subsist: whereas the rational soul has being in suchwise as to subsist therein: and this is made clear by their respective modes of action. For seeing that only that which exists can act, a thing is referred to operation or action as it is referred to being: so that since the body must of necessity take part in the action of other forms, but not in the action of the rational soul, which is to understand and will: it follows of necessity that being must be ascribed to the rational soul as subsisting, but not to other forms. For this reason the rational soul is the only form that can exist separate from the body. Hence it is clear that the rational soul is brought into being not as other forms are, which properly speaking are not made but are said to be made in the making of this or that thing. That which is made is made properly speaking and per se. And that which is made, is made either of matter or out of nothing. Now that which is made from matter, must needs be made from matter subject to contrariety: since generation is from contraries according to the Philosopher (De Gen. Anim. i, 18). Wherefore since a soul has either no matter at all or at least none that is subject to contrariety it cannot be made out of something. Hence it follows that it comes into being by creation as being made out of nothing. Now to maintain that the soul is made by the generation of the body, is to say that it is not subsistent and consequently that it ceases with the body.

Second argument. It is impossible for the action of a material force to rise to the production of a force that is wholly spiritual and immaterial: because nothing acts beyond its species, in fact the agent must needs be more perfect than the patient as Augustine asserts (Gen. ad lit. xii, 16). Now the begetting of a man is effected by the generative power which is exercised through organs of the body: moreover, the seminal force acts only by means of, heat (De Gen. Anim. ii, 3): wherefore since the rational soul is a wholly spiritual form, neither dependent on the body nor exercising its action in common with the body, it can by no means be produced through the procreation of the body, nor be brought into being by an energy residing in the seed.

Third argument. Every form that comes into being by generation or the forces of nature is educed from the potentiality of matter (Metaph. vii, 7). Now the rational soul cannot be educed from the potentiality of matter: because a form whose operation is independent of matter cannot be produced from corporeal matter. It follows, then, that the rational soul is not evolved by the generative power. This argument is given by Aristotle (De Gen. Animal. ii, 3).

Reply to the First Objection. In the passage quoted the part stands for the whole, namely the soul for the whole man, by the figure of synecdoche: and this because the soul is the chief part of man, and a whole is considered as though it were identified with its most important part: so that the soul or intellect is considered as constituting to whole man (Ethic. ix, 4).

Reply to the Second Objection. The whole man comes from the thigh of the begetter,—in so far as the force in the semen coming from the thigh conduces to the union of soul and body, by giving the matter its ultimate disposition which calls for the introduction of the form: by reason of which union man is a man:—but not as though each part of man were caused by that seminal force.

Reply to the Third Objection. Original sin is said to be the sin of the entire nature just as actual sin is said to be the sin of the individual: wherefore the comparison between actual sin and the one individual person is the same as that between original sin and the entire human nature transmitted by our first parent in whom was the beginning of sin and by whose voluntary act original sin is imputed as voluntary to all men. Hence original sin is in the soul in so far as it is the sin of human nature. Now human nature is transmitted from parent to child by procreation of the flesh into which subsequently the soul is infused: and the soul contracts the infection because together with the transmitted flesh it forms one nature: for were it not united thereto so as to form one nature it would not contract the infection, as neither does an angel by assuming a human body.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. As in Adam’s nature the nature of us all originated, so original sin which is in us originated in that original sin: because nature, as already stated, is the direct recipient of original sin, while the soul is its consequent recipient.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. A man begets his like in species by virtue of his form, namely his rational soul: not that this is the immediate active principle in human generation, but because the generative force and the active principles of the semen do not dispose the matter so as to make it a body fit to be perfected by a rational soul, except in so far as they act as instruments of a rational soul. Nevertheless this action does not go so far as to produce a rational soul, for the reasons already given.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The generator begets his like in species in so far as the begotten is produced by the action of the generator in order that it may share in his species: and this comes to pass by the begotten receiving a form like that of the generator. If, then, that, form be non-subsistent, and its being consist merely in that it is united to its subject, it will be necessary for the generator to be cause of that form; as is the case with all material forms. If on the other hand it be a subsistent form, so that its being is not entirely dependent on its union with matter, as in the case of the rational soul, then it suffices that the generator be the cause of the union of such a form with matter by merely disposing the matter for the form: nor need it be the cause of the form.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The disposition of the rational soul is in keeping with the disposition of the body: both because it receives something from the body, and because forms are diversified according to the diversity of their matter. Hence it is that children are like their parents even in things pertaining to the soul, and not because one soul is evolved from another.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. Because properly speaking a soul is the act of a living body, and life is conditional upon heat and humidity which are preserved in an animal by means of its blood: therefore it is stated that the soul is in the blood, thus indicating the proper disposition of the body as matter perfected by the soul.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. There are several opinions about the life of the embryo. According to some in human generation the soul, like the human body, is subject to stages of progression, so that as the human body is virtually in the semen, yet has not actually the perfection of a human body by having distinct members, but gradually reaches this perfection through the force of the semen, so at the beginning of the generation the soul is there having virtually all the perfection which subsequently is to be seen in the perfect human being, yet it has not this perfection actually, since there is no sign of the soul’s activity, but attains thereto by degrees: so that at first there are indications of the action of the vegetal soul, then of the sensitive soul, and lastly of the rational soul. Gregory of Nyssa mentions this opinion (De Homine): but it cannot be admitted. It means either that the soul in its species is in the semen from the very . outset, deprived however of its perfect activity through lack of organs, or that from the beginning there is in the semen some energy or form not having as yet the species of a soul (just as the semen has not as yet the appearance of a human body) but by the action of nature gradually transformed into a soul at first vegetal, then sensitive and lastly rational. The former alternative is rebutted first by the authority of the Philosopher. He says, in fact (De Anima ii, i), that when we say that the soul is the act of a physico-organic body which has life potentially we do not exclude the soul, as we exclude it from the semen and the fruit. Hence we gather that the semen is animated potentially in that the soul is not therein. Secondly, because as the semen has no definite likeness to the members of the human body (else its resolution would be a kind of corruption) but is the residue of the final digestion (De Gener. Anim. i, 19), it was not yet while in the body of the begetter perfected by the soul, so that in the first instant of its separation it could not have a soul. Thirdly, granted that it was animated when it was separated, this cannot refer to the rational soul: because since it is not the act of a particular part of the body, it cannot be sundered when the body is sundered.

The second alternative is also clearly false. For seeing that a substantial form is brought into act not continuously or by degrees but instantaneously (else movement would needs be in the genus of substance just as it is in that of quality) the force which from the outset is in the semen cannot by degrees advance to the various degrees of soul. Thus the form of fire is not produced in the air so as gradually to advance from imperfection to perfection, since no substantial form is subject to increase and decrease, but it is the matter alone that is changed by the previous alteration so as to be more or less disposed to receive the form: and the form does not begin to be in the matter until the last instant of this alteration.

Others say that in the semen there is at first the vegetal soul and that afterwards while this remains the sensitive soul is introduced by the power of the generator, and that lastly the rational soul is introduced by creation. So that they posit in man three essentially different souls. Against this, however, is the authority of the book De Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus (xv): “Nor do we say that there are two souls in one man as James and other Syrians write; one, animal, by which the body is animated and which is mingled with the blood, the other spiritual, which obeys the reason.” Moreover, it is impossible for one and the same thing to have several substantial forms ! because, since the substantial form makes a thing to be, not in this or that way, but simply, and establishes this or that thing in the genus of substance; if the first form, does this, the second form at its advent will find the subject already established with substantial being and consequently win accrue to it accidentally: and thus it would follow that the sensitive and rational souls in man would be united accidentally to the body, Nor can it be said that the vegetal soul which is the substantial form in a plant is not the substantial form in a man, but a mere disposition to the form, since that which is in the genus of substance cannot be an accident of anything.

Hence others say that the vegetative soul is potentially sensitive and that the sensitive soul is its act: so that the vegetative soul which at first is in the semen is raised to the perfection of the sensitive soul by the action of nature; and further that the rational soul is the act and perfection of the sensitive soul, so that the sensitive soul is brought to its perfection consisting in the rational soul, not by the action of the generator but by that of the Creator. Hence they hold that the rational soul is in man partly from within, namely as regards its intellectual nature, and partly from without as regards its vegetative and sensitive nature. Now this is altogether impossible, because either it means that the intellectual nature is distinct from the vegetal and sensitive souls, and thus we return to the second opinion, or it means that these three natures constitute the substance of the soul wherein the intellectual nature will be the form as it were, and the sensitive and vegetative natures, matter. From, this it would follow, as the sensitive and vegetative natures are corruptible through being educed from matter, that the substance of the rational soul would not be immortal. Moreover, this opinion is involved in the same impossibility as we have shown to be implicated in the first opinion, namely that a substantial form be brought into act by degrees.

Others say that there is no soul in the embryo until it is perfected by the rational soul, and that the vital functions to be observed therein proceed from the soul of the mother. But this also is impossible: because living and non-living things differ in that living things are self-moving in respect of vital functions, whereas non-living things are not. Wherefore nutrition and growth which are the functions proper to a living being cannot result in the embryo from an extrinsic principle such as the mother’s soul. Moreover, the mother’s nutritive power would assimilate food to the mother’s body and not to the body of the embryo: ‘since nutrition serves the individual just as generation serves the species. Further, sensation cannot be caused in the embryo by the mother’s soul. Wherefore others say that there is no soul in the embryo before the infusion of the rational soul, but that there is a formative force that exercises these vital f~nctions in the embryo. This again is impossible, because before the embryo attains to its ultimate complement it shows signs of various vital functions; and these cannot be exercised by one power: so that there must needs be a soul there having various powers.

We must therefore say differently that from the moment of its severance the semen contains not a soul but a soul power: and this power is based on the spirit contained in the semen which by nature is spumy and consequently contains corporeal spirit. Now this spirit acts by disposing matter and forming it for the reception of the soul. And we must observe a difference between the process of generation in men and animals and in air or water. The generation of air is simple, since therein only two substantial forms appear, one that is voided and one that is induced, and all this takes place together in one instant, so that the form of water remains during the whole period preceding the induction of the form of air; without any previous dispositions to the form of air. On the other hand in the generation of an animal various substantial forms appear: first the semen, then blood and so on until we find the form of an animal or of a man. Consequently this kind of generation is not simple, but consists of a series of generations and corruptions: for it is not possible, as we have proved above, that one and the same substantial form be educed into act by degrees. Thus, then, by the formative force that is in the semen from the beginning, the form of the semen is set aside and another form induced, and when this has been set aside yet another comes on the scene, and thus the vegetal form makes its first appearance: and this being set aside, a soul both vegetal and sensitive is induced; and this being set aside a soul at once vegetal, sensitive and rational is induced, not by the aforesaid force but by the Creator. According to this opinion the embryo before having a rational soul is a living being having a soul, which being set aside, a rational soul is induced: so that it does not follow that two souls are together in the same body, nor that the rational soul is transmitted together with the body.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. Before the advent of the rational soul the embryo is not a perfect being but is on the way to perfection: and therefore it is not in a genus or species save by reduction, just as the incomplete is reduced to the genus or species of the complete.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. Although the soul is not in the semen from the beginning, the soul-force is there, as stated above, which force is based on the spirit contained in the semen; and is called a soul-force because it comes from the soul of the generator.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Before the advent of the rational soul the semen is a living and animate being, as stated above; wherefore we grant this argument.

The same answer applies to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Objections.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. The formative force that is from the outset in the semen remains even after the advent of the rational soul; just as the animal spirits remain into which nearly the whole substance of the semen is changed. This force, which at first served to form the body, afterwards regulates the body. Thus heat which at first disposes matter to the form of fire remains after the advent of the form of fire as an instrument of the latter’s activity.

This answer applies to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Objections.

Reply to the Nineteenth Objection. Although the rational soul is not evolved from the generator, its union with the body is in a manner from the generator, as stated above. Consequently we say that a man is begotten.

Reply to the Twentieth Objection. There is not a twofold being in man for the simple reason that when it is said that man’s body is from his begetter and his soul from his Creator we are not to understand that the being acquired by the body from its begetter is distinct from that which the soul acquires from its Creator, but that the Creator gives being to the soul in the body, while Ae begetter disposes the body to participate in this being through the soul united to it.

Reply to the Twenty-first Objection. Two agents that are altogether disparate cannot combine so that the one’s action terminate in the matter and the other’s in the form, but this is possible in the case of two co-ordinate agents one of which is the instrument of the other: because the action of the principal agent sometimes extends to something that is beyond the range of the instrument. Now nature is a kind of instrument of the, divine power as we have shown above (A. 8, rep. 14; A. 7). Hence it is not impossible that the divine power alone produce the rational soul, while the action of nature extends no further than to giving the body the requisite disposition.

Reply to the Twenty-second Objection. An intelligence existing in a body, in order to understand, needs nothing corporeal as a co-principle of intellectual action, in the same way as the sight in order to see: for the principle of vision is not the sense of sight only, but the eye consisting of pupil and the faculty of seeing. But it needs a body objectively, as the sight needs the wall on which is the colour: because images are compared to the intellect as colours to sight (De Anima iii, 5). This is why the intellect is prevented from, understanding when the organ of the imagination is injured: since so long as it is in the body it needs images, not only as receiving from the images when it is acquiring knowledge; but also as referring the intelligible species to the images when it applies knowledge already acquired. For this reason science makes use of examples.

From this we gather how to reply to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Objections.

Reply to the Twenty-fifth Objection. This was the argument of Apollinaris according to Gregory of Nyssa (De Homine vi). He was deceived, however, in failing to distinguish the action of nature which is the procreation of the child, to which action God gives the complement, from the deliberate act of adultery wherein the sin consists.

Reply to the Twenty-sixth Objection. The soul being more perfect than material forms would be able to produce its like if a rational soul could be produced otherwise than by creation, which is impossible. And this is owing to its perfection as may be gathered from what has been said.

Reply to the Twenty-seventh Objection. In God alone can there be one nature in several supposites, wherefore in him alone can there be generation without the imperfection of change and division. Hence the higher creatures which are indivisible and unchangeable in substance such as the rational soul and the angels are not generated: whereas the lower creatures are, being divisible and corruptible.

Reply to the Twenty-eighth Objection. The force that is in the semen is called intellect by the Philosopher according to the Commentator (in Metaph. vii, 9) on account of a certain likeness: inasmuch as like the intellect its action, is exercised without an organ.

Reply to the Twenty-ninth Objection. This saying of the Philosopher refers to the sensitive but not the rational soul.

Is the Rational Soul Created in the Body?

[Sum. Th. 1, Q. xc, A. 4.]

THE tenth point of inquiry is whether the rational soul be created in or apart from the body. Seemingly it is created apart from the body.

1. Things belonging to the same species come into being in the same way. Now our souls belong to the same species as Adam’s: and Adam’s soul was created apart from his body and at the same time as the angels, according to Augustine (Gen. ad lit. vii, 25,27). Therefore other human souls are also created apart from their bodies.

2. A whole is imperfect if it lacks one of the parts required for its perfection. Now rational souls belong to the perfection of the universe more than corporeal substances, since an intellectual substance excels a corporeal substance. If, then, rational souls were not all created from the beginning, but created day by day when their bodies are begotten, it follows that the universe is imperfect through lacking its most excellent parts: and this seemingly is unreasonable. Therefore rational souls were created from the beginning apart from their bodies.

3. It savours of a theatrical display that the universe should be destroyed when it attains to its ultimate perfection. Now the world will come to an end when the begetting of men ceases, and then the universe will have reached the utmost height of its perfection, if souls are created at the same time as their bodies are begotten: wherefore in that case the divine government will be like a play: which is surely absurd.

4. You will say perhaps that there is no reason why the perfection of the universe should not lack something in point of numbers, seeing that it is complete in respect of all its species.—On the contrary, as the species of things, considered in themselves enjoy a certain perpetuity, they belong to the essential perfection of the universe, in that they are per se intended by the Author of the universe. Individuals, however, which have not perpetuity belong to a certain accidental perfection of the universe, in that they are intended not per se but for the conservation of the species. Now rational souls not only in their species but also in each individual enjoy perpetuity. Therefore if rational souls were all lacking at the beginning, the universe was imperfect even as it would have been had some of the species of the universe been wanting.

5. Macrobius (Super Somn. Scip. i) assigned two gates to heaven, one for the gods, and one for souls, in Cancer namely and in Capricorn, through one of which souls came down to earth. But it would not be so unless souls were created in heaven apart from their bodies. Therefore souls were created independently of bodies.

6. An efficient cause precedes its effect in point of time. Now the soul is the efficient cause of the body (De Anima ii, 4). Therefore it exists before the body and is not created in the body.

7. It is stated in De Spiritu et Anima (xiii) that before its union with the body the soul has the irascible and concupiscible appetite. But these cannot be in the soul before it exists. Therefore the soul exists before its union with the body, and consequently is not created in the body.

8. The substance of the rational soul is not measured by time, since it is above time (De Causis ii): nor is it measured by eternity, because this belongs to God alone. Again it is stated (De Causis, l.c.) that the soul is beneath eternity, therefore like the angels it is measured by eviternity, so that the duration of angels and souls has the same unit of measurement. Consequently as the angels were created at the beginning of the world, seemingly souls were created then also and not in their respective bodies.

9. In eviternity there is no before and after, else it would not differ from time, as some think. Now if angels were created before souls, or one soul before another, there would be before and after in eviternity, since this is the measurement of the soul’s duration, as stated above. Therefore souls must all have been created together with the angels.

10. Unity of place indicates unity of nature: wherefore different places are assigned to bodies differing in nature. But angels and souls agree in nature, since they are spiritual and intellectual substances. Therefore souls like the angels were created in the empyrean and not in bodies.

11. The more subtle a substance is the higher place it requires: thus the place of fire is higher than that of air or water. Now the soul is a much more subtle substance than a body. Therefore seemingly it was created above all bodies. and not in the body.

12. A thing reaches its ultimate perfection forasmuch as it occupies its proper place, for it cannot be outside its proper place except through violence. Now the ultimate perfection of the soul is’a heavenly home. Therefore this is the place befitting its nature, and so it would seem that it was created there.

13. It is written (Gen. ii, 2): God rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had done: whereby we are given to understand that God ceased then from creating anything new. Therefore souls are not created in their respective bodies, but were created independently at the beginning.

14. The work of creation preceded the work of increase. But this would not be, if souls be created as bodies increase in number. Therefore they were created before bodies.

15. God does all things according to justice. Now justice requires that diverse and unequal awards should not be made save to those who are found to be unequal in merit. Now we find that men from their birth are subject to many inequalities of soul: in some cases the body to which a soul is united is well adapted to the soul’s actions, in others the body is ill-adapted to them: some are born of unbelievers, others are born of believers and are saved through receiving the sacraments. Therefore it would seem that there preceded in souls an inequality of merits, and consequently that souls were created before bodies.

16. Things that are united in their beginning would seem to depend on each other as to their being. But the soul is independent of the body as to its being: which is shown by the fact that it remains when the body has ceased to be. Therefore it does not begin to exist together with the body.

17. Things that hinder each other are not naturally united. Now the soul is hindered in its action by the body, for the corruptible body is a load upon the soul (Wis. ix, 15). Therefore the soul is not naturally united to the body, and thus it would seem that before its union with the body it existed apart therefrom.

On the contrary it is stated (Eccles. Dogm. xiv) that souls were not created together with other intellectual creatures.

Further, Gregory of Nyssa says (De Creat. Hom. xxix) that it is reprehensible “to hold either opinion, whether of those who foolishly assert a previous existence of souls in a certain state and order becoming to them, or of those who maintain that our souls are created after our bodies.”

Further, Jerome says (Symb. Fid. ii): “We condemn the error of those who hold that souls sinned or lived in heaven before being united to bodies.”

Further, the proper act is evolved in its proper matter. Now the soul is the proper act of the body. Therefore it is created in the body.

I answer that as we have stated (A. 9) some held the opinion that our souls were all created together apart from our bodies: and that this is false we shall now proceed to show by four arguments.

First argument. Things when created by God were in a state of natural perfection: for the perfect naturally precedes the imperfect according to the Philosopher (De Coelo i, 2): and Boethius says (De Consol. x, pros. 10) that nature originates in perfect things. Now the soul apart from the body has not the perfection of its nature, because by itself it is not the complete species of a nature, but a part of human nature: otherwise soul and body would not together form one thing save accidentally. Hence the human soul was not created before its body. Now all those who held that souls exist outside bodies before being united to them, supposed them to be perfect natures, and that the natural perfection of the soul is not that it be united to its body, and that it is united to it accidentally as a man to his clothes: thus Plato said that a man is not made of soul and body, but is a soul making use of a body. Wherefore all those who held souls to be created apart from bodies, believed in the transmigration of souls, namely that a soul after casting off one body is united to another body, even as a man changes from one suit of clothes to another.

The second argument is given by Avicenna. Seeing that the soul is not composed of matter and form—for it is distinct both from matter and from the composite (De Anima ii, i)—there could be no distinction between one soul and another except that which arises from a difference of forms, supposing that souls differ from one another by themselves. Now difference of form implies difference of species. And numerical distinction within the same species arises from distinction of matter: and this cannot apply to the soul as regards the matter of which a thing is made but only as regards the matter in which the soul comes into being. Consequently there cannot be many human souls of the same species and distinct individually unless from their very beginning they be united to bodies, so that their mutual distinction arises from their union to bodies, as from a material principle in a manner of speaking, although that distinction comes from God as their efficient cause. Now if souls were created apart from their bodies, as there would have been no material principle to distinguish them they would have differed in species like all separate substances which according to the philosophers differ specifically.

Third argument. We have already shown that man’s rational soul is not in substance distinct from the sensible and vegetal soul: moreover the vegetal and sensible soul ,cannot originate except from the body since they are acts of certain parts of the body. Wherefore neither can the rational soul, so far as is becoming to its nature, be created apart from the body; without prejudice, however, to the divine power.

Fourth argument. If the rational soul were created apart from the body, and in that state were possessed of the perfection of its natural being, no reasonable cause can be assigned for its union with the body. It cannot be said that it united itself to a body of its own accord, for clearly it is not in the soul’s power to abandon the body, which it could do were it united to the body by its own choice. Moreover, if souls were created wholly apart from bodies, it cannot be explained why the soul thus separated desired to be united to a body. Nor can it be said that after an interval of years the soul acquired a natural desire for union with a body, and that nature brought about this union: because things that happen at certain intervals of time, are referred to the celestial movement as their cause, since that movement is the measure of the spaces of time: and souls separate from bodies cannot be subject to the movements of heavenly bodies. Again it cannot be said that they were united to bodies by God, if they were previously created by him without bodies. For if it be alleged that he did so to perfect them, why did he create them at first without bodies? On the other hand if he did this to punish them for their sins so that the soul was thrust into a body as into a prison, as Origen asserted, it would follow that the format;.on, of natures composed of spiritual and corporal substances was accidental and not according to God’s original intention: and this is contrary to the statement of Genesis i, 31: God saw all the things that he had made and they were very good, whence we gather that it was through God’s goodness and not on account of the wickedness of any creature whatsoever that those good works were done.

Reply to the First Objection. Augustine in De Genesi ad literam and especially in his work De Origine Animae speaks as inquiring rather than asserting, as he himself declares.

Reply to the Second Objection. The universe in its beginning was perfect as regards the species of things, but not as regards all individuals: or as regards nature’s causes from which afterwards other things could be propagated, but not as regards all their effects. And though rational souls are not evolved by natural causes, the bodies into which as being connatural to them they are infused by God are produced by the action of nature.

Reply to the Third Objection. The object of the play is the play itself. But in the movement whereby God moves corporeal creatures the object in view is something beside the movement, namely the complete number of the elect, and when that is reached the movement, but not the substance, of the world will cease.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. The multitude of souls belongs to the ultimate, not the initial essential perfection of the universe, since the entire transformation of mundane bodies is ordered somewhat to the multiplication of souls, which requires a multiplication of bodies as we have proved above.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. The Platonists maintained that the soul’s nature is complete in itself, and that the soul is united to the body accidentally, wherefore they affirmed the transmigration of souls from one body to another. Especially were they led to hold this opinion because they held that souls are immortal and that generation never fails. Hence in order to avoid an infinite number of souls they imagined a kind of circle so that a soul after leaving a body was subsequently reunited to it. Macrobius expresses himself in accordance with this opinion which is false: and consequently on this point his authority cannot be admitted.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The Philosopher (De Anima ii, l.c.) does not state that the soul is the efficient cause of the body, but as he explains (ibid.) the cause whence the body’s movements originate, in so far as it is the principle of locomotion, growth and other like movements in the body.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The meaning of the authority quoted is that the irascible and concupiscible appetite is in the soul before its union with the body by a priority of nature, not of time: because the soul does not derive it from the body, but rather the body from the soul.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. The soul is measured by time. in so far as it has being in union with the body: although considered as a spiritual substance it is measured by eviternity. But it does not follow that it began together with the angels to be measured by eviternity.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. Although there is no before and after in eviternity as regards the things it measures, nothing forbids one thing from having before another a part in eviternity.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. Although the angel and Jhe soul agree in intellectual nature, they differ in that the angel is a nature complete in itself, so that he could be created in himself: whereas the soul through having the perfection of its nature by union with the body, required to be created, not in heaven but in that body whose perfection it is.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. Although the soul is in itself more simple than any body, it is nevertheless the form and perfection of a body composed of elements, and to which a middle place is due: and together with this body it must needs be created here below.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. The initial perfection of the soul regards its natural being, and consists in the soul’s union with the body: wherefore in its beginning it required to be created in the place occupied by the body. But its ultimate perfection regards that which it has in common with other Intellectual substances, and this it will receive in heaven.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Souls that are created now are new creatures indeed in point of number, but are old in point of species: since they already existed in the works of the six days, in those who were like them in species, namely in the souls of our first parents.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. It behoved the work of creation whereby the principles of nature were established to precede the work of propagation: but the creation of souls is not a work of that kind.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. It belongs to justice to render what is due; wherefore it is contrary to justice to treat equal persons unequally if they are being paid what is due to them, but not if they are receiving gratis, as when souls are created. We may also reply that this diversity does not arise from a diversity of merit in souls, but from a diversity of dispositions in bodies: wherefore Plato said (Dial. de Legibus) that forms are infused according to the deserts of matter.

I Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. Although the soul depends on the body for its beginning, in order to begin its existence in the perfection of its nature, nevertheless it does not, depend on the body for its end, because it exists in the body as a subsistent being, so that when the body ceases to exist the soul remains in its own being, though not in the perfection of its nature that it receives from its union with the body.

Reply to the Seventeenth Objection. It is not the nature of the body but its corruption that is a load upon the soul, as the text itself declares.

Is the Sensible and Vegetal Soul Created or Is it Transmitted Through the Semen?

[Sum. Th. 1, Q. cxviii, A. i.]

THE eleventh point of inquiry is whether the sensible soul be created or transmitted through the semen: and it would seem that it is created.

1. Things of the same kind come into being in the same manner. Now the sensible and vegetal soul in man is of the same species or kind as in dumb animals and plants: and in man it is created since it is substantially one with the rational soul, which is created, as proved above (A. 9). Therefore the sensitive and vegetal souls in animals and plants are created.

2. It might be said that the sensible and vegetal souls in animals and plants are perfections, whereas in man they are dispositions.—On the contrary the more excellent a thing is the more excellent is the manner of its coming into being. Now it is more excellent to be a form and perfection than to be a disposition: and consequently if the sensible and vegetal souls in man, in whom they are mere dispositions, come into being by creation which is the most excellent way of coming into being, since the highest creatures originate in this manner, seemingly a fortiori are they created in plants and animals.

3. The Philosopher says (Phys. i, 3): “That which really exists, substance to wit, is not accidental to anything”. If, then, the sensible and vegetal souls are substantial forms in animals and plants, they cannot be accidental dispositions in man.

4. In living things the generative power is effective through the force residing in the semen. Now the sensible and vegetal souls are not actually in the semen. Since then nothing acts except inasmuch as it is in act, seemingly the sensible and vegetal souls cannot be produced by the force in the semen, and thus they are produced not by generation but by creation.

5. You will say perhaps that though the force in the semen is not actually the sensitive soul, yet it acts by virtue of the sensitive soul of the father from whom it issues.—On the contrary, that which acts by virtue of another acts as its instrument. Now an instrument moves not unless it be moved: while mover and moved must be together (Phys. vii, 2). Since then the force that is in the semen is not in contact with the sensible soul of the generator, seemingly it cannot act as its instrument or by virtue thereof.

6. An instrument is compared to the principal agent as a moved and commanded power to a moving and commanding power which is an appetitive and moving force. Now a power that is commanded and moved does not move anything if it be severed from the power that moves and commands it, as may be seen in the severed limbs of an animal. Neither then can the force in the separated semen act by virtue of the generator.

7. When an effect falls short of the perfection of its cause it cannot compass the action proper to that cause: since diversity of action argues diversity of nature. Now the force in the semen although an effect of the sensible soul of the generator falls short of its perfection. Therefore, it cannot accomplish the action that belongs properly to the sensible soul, namely the production of another soul like to it in species.

8. Corruption of their subject leads to corruption of form and power. Now in the process of generation the semen, according to Avicenna, is corrupted and receives another form. Therefore the power that was in the semen is also corrupted, and consequently a sensible soul cannot be produced by it.

9. Lower natures function only by means of heat and other active and passive qualities. Now heat cannot give being to the sensible soul, because nothing acts outside its own species: nor can the effect surpass its cause. Therefore the sensible or vegetal soul cannot be brought into being by a natural agent, and consequently it is created.

10. A natural agent acts not by informing but by transmuting matter. Now transmutation of matter can only lead to an accidental form. Therefore a natural agent cannot produce a sensible and vegetal soul which is a substantial form.

11. Sensible and vegetal souls have a certain quiddity, and this quiddity is brought into being by something else: moreover it did not exist before being evolved except in so far as it was possible for matter to have it. Hence it must needs be produced by an agent that produces something out of no matter: and this is no other but God creating.

12. Animals produced from seed rank higher than those engendered from corrupt matter, for they are more perfect and reproduce their like. Now the souls of animals engendered from corrupt matter are created, since no agent of like species can be assigned by which they can be produced. Therefore it would seem that there is much more reason for the souls of animals produced from seed to be created.

13. But you will say that the souls of animals engendered from corrupt matter are produced by the power of a heavenly body, just as they are produced in other animals by the formative force in the semen —On the contrary, according to Augustine (De Vera Relig. lv), a living substance surpasses all inanimate substances. Now a heavenly body is not a living substance, for it is inanimate. Therefore a sensible soul being a principle of life cannot be produced by its power.

14. But you will say that a heavenly body can be the cause of a sensible soul, inasmuch as it acts by virtue of ,an intellectual substance that moves it.—On the contrary that which is received into another, is received according to the mode of the recipient, and not according to its own mode. Wherefore if the power of an intellectual substance is received by an inanimate heavenly body, it will not be there as a vital force that can be a principle of life.

15. An intellectual substance is not only a living but also an intelligent being. If, then, by its power a heavenly body can be so moved by it as to give life it will be able likewise to give intelligence, so that the rational soul will be produced by the begetter: which is false.

16. If the sensible soul is produced by a natural agent and not by creation, it must be produced either by the body or by the soul. It is not produced by the body, because then a body would act beyond its species. Nor is it produced by the soul, because then either the whole soul of the father would be transmitted to his child, and thus the father would remain without a soul; or part of it would be transmitted, and thus the whole soul would not remain in the father: and either alternative is false. Therefore the sensible soul is not produced by the begetter but by the Creator.

17. The Commentator (De Anima iii) says that no cognitive power is evolved by the action of mixed elements. Now the sensible soul is a cognitive power. Therefore it is not evolved by the elements, and consequently not by the action of nature, inasmuch as here below no action of nature is independent of the action of the elements.

18. No form except it be subsistent can cause movement wherefore according to the Philosopher (Phys. viii, 4) movement is not caused by the forms of elements but only by the generator and that which removes an obstacle. But the sensible soul is a cause of movement, since every animal is moved by its soul. Therefore the sensible soul is not a mere form but a self-subsistent substance. It is also clear that it is not composed of matter and form. Now all such substances are brought into being by creation and not otherwise. Therefore the sensible soul comes into being by creation.

19. You will say, perhaps, that the sensible soul does not by itself move the body, but that the animated body moves itself.—On the contrary the Philosopher proves (Phys. viii, 5) that in everything which puts itself in motion there must be one part that is mover only, and another that is moved. Now the body cannot be mover only, because no body moves except it be moved. Wherefore the soul is mover only, so that the sensible soul will have a function in which the body has no share, and consequently will be a subsistent substance.

20. But you will say that the sensible soul moves according to the command of the appetitive power, whose act is shared by both soul and body.—On the contrary in an animal there is not only a power commanding but also a power executing movement: and the function of this latter power cannot for the reasons already given be shared by both soul and body: and consequently the sensible soul must operate by itself, and therefore is a self-subsistent substance, and is brought into being by creation and not by natural generation.

On the contrary it is written (Gen. i, 20): Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having a living soul; so that seemingly the sensible souls of reptiles and of other animals are produced by the action of corporal elements.

Further, as the father’s body is in relation to his soul, so is the son’s body in relation to his soul. Therefore reciprocally as the son’s body is to his father’s, so is the son’s soul to his father’s. Now the son’s body is evolved from his father’s. Therefore the son’s soul is evolved from his father’s.

I answer that philosophers are divided in their opinions about the production of substantial forms. Some maintain that the natural agent only disposes the matter and that the form which is the ultimate perfection is produced by supernatural agency. This opinion is shown to be false chiefly on two counts. First, because seeing that the being of natural and corporal forms consists solely in their union with matter, it would seem that it belongs to the same agent to produce them and to transmute matter. Secondly, inasmuch as these forms do not surpass the power, order and faculty of the active principles of nature, there would seem to be no need to refer their origin to higher principles: wherefore the Philosopher (Metaph. vii, 8) says that flesh and bone are engendered by the form that is in this or that flesh and bone: and in his opinion the natural agent not only disposes the matter, but educes the form into act, which is contrary to the above opinion.

Nevertheless we must exclude the rational soul from this generality of forms: because it is a subsistent substance, wherefore its being does not consist solely in its union with the body. Otherwise it could not exist apart from the body: the possibility of which is shown by its operation, which belongs to the soul in entire independence of the body. And the mode of its operation indicates the mode of its coming into existence: since that which is not per se does not operate per se. Again the intellectual nature transcends the entire order and faculty of material and corporal principles, since by its act of intelligence the intellect is able to rise above all corporal nature, which would not be the case if its nature were confined within the limits of corporal nature.

Now neither of these things can be said of the sensible and vegetal souls. That the being of these souls cannot consist otherwise than in union with the body is shown by their functions, which cannot be exercised without a bodily organ, wherefore absolutely speaking they have no being independently of the body. For this reason they cannot exist apart from the body, nor be brought into being except in so far as the body is brought into being. Consequently these souls, like the body, are produced by the natural agency of the generator. To maintain that they are created separately would appear to be in agreement with the opinion of those who held that these souls survived their bodies, whereas both these opinions are condemned in De Eccl. Dogmat. Again these souls do not transcend the order of natural causes. This will be made evident if we consider their operations. The order of actions follows the order of natures. Now we find some forms whose scope of action does not go further than what can be done by material principles: thus the forms of elements and of mixed bodies do not go beyond the action of heat and cold: wherefore they are wholly immersed in matter. On the other hand although the vegetal soul does not function except by means of the qualities aforesaid, its action attains to something that is beyond the scope of these qualities, to the production, namely, of flesh and bone, to the fixation of the term of growth and the like, so that it remains within the order of material principles; though not so much as the forms in question. But the sensible soul does not of necessity function by means of heat and cold, as evidenced by the functions of the sight, imagination and so forth: yet for the exercise of these functions, the organs require to be equipped with a certain degree of heat and cold, without which the aforesaid actions cannot be performed. Hence the sensible soul does not wholly transcend the order of material principles, although it is not lowered to their level as much as the above-mentioned forms. The rational soul, however, also exercises a function that surpasses that of heat and cold, nor does it exercise it by means of heat and cold, nor by means of a bodily organ: wherefore it alone transcends the order of natural principles, whereas the sensible soul in dumb animals and the vegetal soul in plants do not.

Reply to the First Objection. Although the sensible soul in man and dumb animals is of the same genus it does not belong to the same species: thus a man and a dumb animal are not of the same species: consequently the functions of the sensible soul are far more excellent in man than in dumb animals, as evidenced by the touch and the interior powers of apprehension. Nor is it true that things generically but not specifically the same must needs come into being in the same manner, as evidenced in the case of animals engendered from seed and from corrupt matter: since these agree I in genus but not in species.

Reply to the Second Objection. In man the sensible soul is said to be a disposition, not as though it differed in substance from the rational soul, and were a disposition thereto, but because the sensitive faculty in man is not distinct from the rational, save as one power from another. On the other hand in dumb animals the sensible soul differs from the rational soul in man as one substantial form from another. Nevertheless as the sensitive and vegetal powers in man flow from the essence of the soul, so do they in dumb animals and plants: but with this difference that in plants there flow only vegetal forces from the essence of the soul, in dumb animals not only vegetal but also sensitive powers whence their soul is denominated, while in man besides the above the intellectual powers flow whence he is denominated.

Reply to the Third Objection. The substance whence the sensitive faculty flows both in dumb animals and in man is the substantial form: while in both cases the power is an accident.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. The sensible soul is not actually in the semen as to its own species but as in an active force: thus a house is actually in the mind of the builder as in an active force; and thus are bodily forms in the heavenly powers.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. An instrument is understood to be moved by the principal agent so long as it retains the power communicated to it by the principal agent; thus the arrow is moved by the archer as long as it retains the force wherewith it was shot by him. Thus in heavy and light things that which is generated is moved by the generator as long as it retains the form transmitted thereby: so that the semen also is understood to be moved by the soul of the begetter, as long as it retains the force communicated by that soul, although it is in body separated from it. And the mover and the thing moved must be together at the commencement of but not throughout the whole movement, as is evident in the case of projectiles.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The soul’s appetitive power has no command except on the body united to it, wherefore the separated part does not obey the behest of the soul’s appetitive faculty. Nor is the semen moved by the begetter’s soul through being commanded but through the transfusion of a kind of energy which remains in the semen even after its separation.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The sensible and vegetal souls are evolved from the potentiality of matter like other material forms for the production of which a power is needed that transforms matter. Now the force that is in the semen has this power although it falls short of the other functions of the soul. For just as by the function of the nutritive force the soul transforms matter so as to change it into the whole body, so by the aforesaid force in the semen matter is transformed so as to result in conception. Consequently nothing hinders this. same force from accomplishing the action of the sensitive soul and by virtue thereof.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. This same force has its root in the animal spirit enclosed within the semen as its subject. Now according to Avicenna nearly all the semen is changed into animal spirit. Hence although the corpulent matter whence the embryo is formed undergoes many changes in the process of generation, the subject of that force is not destroyed.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. As heat acts as the instrument of the substantial form of fire, so there is nothing to prevent it from acting as the instrument of the sensible soul in bringing a sensible soul into being, though it does not do so by its own power.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. Matter is transmuted hot only by an accidental but also by a substantial change: for both forms pre-exist in the potentiality of matter. Hence a natural agent which transmutes matter is the cause not only of the accidental but also of the substantial form.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. The sensible soul since it is not subsistent is not a quiddity, as neither are other material forms, but is part of a quiddity; and its being consists in its forming one substance together with matter: wherefore to say that the sensible soul is produced means nothing more than that the matter is transmuted from potentiality to act.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. The more imperfect a thing is the fewer the requisites for its making. Wherefore since animals engendered from corrupt matter are more imperfect than those engendered from seed, in the former the sole power of a heavenly body is sufficient, which power is operative also in the semen, although it does not suffice without the power of the soul for the production of animals from seed. For the power of a heavenly body remains in the lower bodies in so far as they are transmuted by it as by the first cause of alteration. For this reason the Philosopher says (De Animal.) that all these lower bodies are full of a soul’s energy. But the heaven, though not alike in species to the animals engendered from corrupt matter, is like them in so far as an effect virtually persists in its efficient cause.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Although the heavenly body is not a living thing, it acts by virtue of a living substance by whom it is moved, whether this be an angel or God. In the opinion of the Philosopher, however, heavenly bodies are animate and living.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. The power of the heavenly body which causes movement remains in the heavenly body and its movement, not as a form having complete natural being, but after the manner of an intention, as power is in the craftsman’s tool.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. As stated above, the rational soul surpasses the entire order of corporal principles, wherefore no body can act even instrumentally in its production.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. The sensible soul is produced in the embryo neither by the action of the body, nor by a transmission of the soul, but by the action of the formative energy that is in the semen from the soul of the begetter, as stated above.

Reply to the Seventeenth Objection. It is denied that a cognitive faculty can be produced by the action of the elements forasmuch as the forces contained in the elements are unable to produce such a power in the same way as they suffice to cause hardness or softness. But it is not denied that they may be competent to co-operate in some way instrumentally.

Reply to the Eighteenth Objection. The sensible soul causes movement by its appetite. Now the function of the sensitive appetite is seated not in the soul alone but in the composite; hence this power has a fixed organ. Therefore we cannot conclude that the sensible soul has an operation independent of the body.

Reply to the Nineteenth Objection. A body can cause a movement without being itself moved with the same kind of movement as that which it causes: thus the heavenly body which is moved locally causes alteration without itself being altered: and in like manner the organ of the appetitive power causes local movement, whereas itself is not moved but only altered somewhat locally. For the sensitive appetite does not function without alteration in the body, as evidenced in cases of anger and like passions.

Reply to the Twentieth Objection. The motive force that executes a movement does not of itself cause movement, but is rather a disposition of the thing movable whereby it has a natural aptness to be moved by this or that mover.

Is the Sensible or Vegetal Soul in the Semen from the Beginning of the Latter’s Separation?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. cxix]

THE twelfth point of inquiry is whether the sensible or vegetal soul be in the semen as soon as this is separated

and seemingly the reply should be in the affirmative.

1. Gregory of Nyssa (De Creat. Hom. xxvi) says that “it is reprehensible to hold either opinion, whether of those who foolishly assert a previous existence of souls in a certain state and order becoming to them, or of those who maintain that our souls are created after our bodies.” Now if the soul was not in the semen from the beginning it must be created after the body. Therefore it was in the semen from the beginning.

2. If the sensitive like the rational soul was not in the semen from the beginning, the same rule will apply to the one as to the other. Now the rational soul comes by creation. Therefore the sensible soul is also created: whereas we have proved the contrary to be the case.

3. The Philosopher says (De Gener. Animal. ii, 4) that the force residing in the semen is like the son going forth from his father’s house. Now the son is of the same species as his father. Therefore the force in the semen is of the same species as the sensible soul whence it derives.

4. The Philosopher says (ibid.) that this same force is like art which, were it in matter, would perfect the work of the craftsman. Now the species of the work done is in the art. Therefore the species of the sensible soul produced through the semen is in the seminal force.

5. The sundering of the semen is natural, whereas the sundering of an annulose animal is unnatural. Now according to the Philosopher the soul is in the sundered part of an annulose animal. Much more then is it in the sundered semen.

6. The Philosopher says (ibid.) that in the generation of an animal the male provides the soul. Now nothing issues from the father except the semen. Therefore the soul is in the semen.

7. An accident is not transmitted unless its subject be transmitted. Now certain diseases are transmitted from parents to their children, such as leprosy, gout and so on. Consequently the subject of these diseases is transmitted: which subject cannot be soulless. Therefore the soul is in the semen from the beginning.

8. Hippocrates says that generation is prevented by the excision of a vein in the neighbourhood of the ear. Now this would not be, unless the semen as already actually existing were taken fro& the whole body. Since then the soul is in whatever is actually part of an animal, it would seem that the soul is in the semen from the beginning.

9. He also says that a certain horse on account of too frequent coition was found to have no brains. But this would not be unless the semen were taken from that which is an actual part of the body. Therefore the same conclusion follows.

10. The superfluous is not part of the substance of a thing. Accordingly if the semen is superfluous it will not belong to the substance of the generator: and thus the child that results from the semen will not be of his father’s substance: which is unreasonable. Therefore the semen is part of the generator’s substance, and consequently the soul is therein actually.

11. That which has no soul is inanimate. If, then, the semen has no soul it will be inanimate. Consequently an inanimate body will be transformed and become animate: and this would seem absurd. Therefore the soul is in the semen from the beginning.

On the contrary the Philosopher says (De Anim. ii, 2) that the semen and the fruit are potentially animate but actually inanimate.

Again, it would seem impossible for the semen to be animate from the first except in two ways, either by the transmission of the generator’s entire soul into the semen, or by the transmission of part thereof. Now, apparently either of these alternatives is impossible, since from the former it would follow that the soul does not remain in the father, and from the latter, that not the entire soul remains. Therefore the soul is not in the semen from the beginning.

I answer that some held the opinion that the soul is in the semen from the moment of its separation, so that they would have the soul procreated by the soul at the same time as the body (of the semen) is cut off from the body, and the part severed from the body would at once become animate. But this opinion is apparently false: because as the Philosopher proves (De Gener. Anim. i, 18, 19) the semen is not severed from what was an actual part, but from the surplus remaining after the final digestion, and not definitely assimilated. Now no part of the body is actually perfected by the soul, unless it be finally assimilated; wherefore the semen before being separated was not perfected by the soul so as to be informed by it: but there was in the semen a certain energy in respect of which by the action of the soul it was altered and brought to the final disposition required for definite assimilation: so that after separation it was not animate but contained a certain energy derived from the soul. For this reason the Philosopher (De Gener. Animal. ii, 3) says that in the semen there is a power that emanates from the soul. Moreover if the soul were in the semen from the beginning, it would be either there in its species as a soul actually; or not, but as a kind of energy to be transformed afterwards into a soul. The former is impossible, because since the soul is the act of an organic body, the body cannot receive the soul before it is in any way whatever provided with organs. Moreover it would follow that all that the soul does in the semen, is to dispose the matter, so that consequently there would be no generation, since generation does not follow but precedes the substantial form: —unless one were to say that besides the soul there is another substantial form in the body, the result being that the soul would not be substantially united to the body, seeing that it would be added to the body after the latter had already become an individual thing by reason of this other form. It would follow moreover that the generation of a living being would not be generation but a kind of separation, just as timber cut off from timber is actually timber.

The second alternative is also impossible, since in that case it would follow that the substantial form is not at once but by degrees acquired by matter, so that there would be movement in substance as there is in quantity and quality, which is contrary to the teaching of the Philosopher (Phys. v, 2). It would also follow that substantial forms are subject to increase and decrease, which is impossible. It follows then that there is not a soul in the semen, but a certain energy derived from the soul, which prepares the way for the soul’s advent.

Reply to the First Objection. Before the advent of the soul and the force that prepares the way for the soul, the body of a living being, e.g. a lion or an olive, is not animate but is merely the seed of a body: for the seed is related to this force as the body is to the soul.

Reply to the Second Objection. There is this difference between the rational and other souls, that the rational soul is not evolved from the energy in the seed as the other souls are; although no soul is in the seed from the beginning.

Reply to the Third Objection. This force is likened to a son going forth from his father’s house not in the point of specific completion, but with regard to the acquisition of some particular complement that is lacking. For a first perfection often takes on the likeness of a second perfection.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. The likeness between this force’and art consists in this that as the thing made by the craftsman pre-exists in his art as in an active force, so before it is generated a living being pre-exists in the formative energy.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. The reason why the dissection of an annulose animal is violent and unnatural is that the severed part was actually a part of the animal and perfected by its soul: so that by the dissection of the matter the soul remains in either part, which soul was actually one in the whole body, and potentially several. This is because in animals of this kind the whole body is composed of almost homogeneous parts, and their souls being of a lower degree of perfection than others, require but little diversity of organs.

Hence it is that when a part is severed it can be a subject of the soul, as having sufficient organs for the purpose: as happens in the case of other like bodies such as wood, stone, water and air. The Philosopher proves (De Gener. Animal. i, 18) that the semen was not actually a part before its separation, for the reason that its separation would not have been natural, but a kind of corruption: wherefore it. does not follow that the soul remains in the semen after its separation.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. The male is said to provide the soul inasmuch as the seed of the male contains a force that prepares the way for the soul.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. The diseases mentioned in the objection are not transmitted together with the semen as though they were actually in the semen, but because their germs are in the semen, thus causing a certain indisposition therein.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. Seeing that the semen is a surplus, it has certain outlets like other superfluities: and if these outlets be cut off, generation is prevented, and not because something of what was an actual part of the body has been destroyed.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. It is the same with the immoderate emission of the semen as with the immoderate discharge of other superfluities which destroys that which has already been converted into bodily tissue, a destruction that is violent and unnatural. But things that happen contrary to nature, must not be ascribed to the action of nature.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. The semen is a surplus in the sense that although it is not actually a part of the father’s substance, it is potentially the whole thereof; and for this reason the child is said to be of his father’s substance.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. Although the semen is not actually animate it is so virtually, whereupon it is not simply inanimate.

Can That Which Proceeds from Another Be Eternal?

THE thirteenth point of inquiry is whether that which is from another can be eternal: and seemingly it cannot.

1. Nothing that always is needs something that it may be Therefore nothing that is from another is always.

2. Nothing receives what it has already. Now that which always is always has being; and hence that which is always does not receive being. But that which is from another receives its beirg from that whence it is. Therefore nothing that is from another is always.

3. That which is already is not generated or made or in a way brought into being. Because whatsoever is in a state of becoming is not yet. Consequently whatsoever is generated, made or brought into being must at one time not have been. Now such is whatsoever is from another. Therefore whatsoever is from another at some time is not. But that which at some time is not, is not always. Therefore nothing that is from another, is eternal.

4. That which has not being save from another, considered in itself is not: and such a thing must needs not be at some time or other. Therefore whatsoever is from another must needs at some time have not been: and thus it is not eternal.

5. Every effect is posterior to its cause. Now that which is from another is the effect of that from which it is. Therefore it is posterior to that from which it is, and thus it cannot be eternal.

On the contrary according to Hilary (De Trin. xii) that which was born of the eternal Father has eternal being from his birth. Now the Son of God was born of the eternal Father. Therefore he has eternal being from his birth and consequently he is eternal.

I answer that since we affirm that the Son of God proceeds from the Father naturally, it follows that he must proceed from the Father in suchwise as to be co-eternal with him. This may be made clear as follows.

There is this difference between will and nature, that nature is determined to one thing both as regards what is produced by the power of nature and as regards producing or not producing: whereas the will is not determined in either respect. Thus a man is enabled by his will to do this or that, for instance a carpenter can make a bench or a box; and again make, and cease from making them: whereas fire cannot but heat if the subject-matter of its action be present nor can it produce in matter any effect other than its like. Consequently although it may be said of creatures which. proceed from God by his will, that he could make a creature of this or that fashion, and at this or that time, this cannot be said of the Son who proceeds naturally. For the Son proceeding naturally could not be of a fashion different from the nature of the Father. Nor could the Son be sooner or later in relation to the Father’s nature. For it cannot be said that the divine nature was ever lacking in natural perfection, on the advent of which by virtue of the nature God’s Son was begotten: since the divine nature is simple and unchangeable. Nor can it be said that this begetting was delayed through lack or indisposition of matter, seeing that it is altogether void of change. It follows then that since the Father’s nature is eternal, that the Son was begotten of the Father from eternity and that he is coeternal with the Father.

The Arians through holding that the Son does not proceed naturally from the Father, said that like other things that proceed from God according to the decree of his will he was neither co-equal nor co-eternal with the Father. The difficulty of regarding the begetting of the Son as co-eternal with the Father arose from the fact that in our human observation of nature’s works one thing proceeds from another by movement: and a thing brought into being by movement begins to be at the beginning sooner than at the end of the movement. And since the beginning of a movement must needs in point of time precede the end on account of movement implying succession, and again since movement cannot have a beginning without a moving cause to produce it: it follows that the moving cause in the production of anything must precede in point of duration that which it produces. Consequently that which proceeds from another without movement is in point of duration co-existent with that whence it proceeds: such is the flash of the fire or the sun, because the flash of light proceeds from the body of light suddenly and not gradually, for illumination is not a movement but the term of a movement. It follows then that in God in whom there is absolutely no movement, the proceeding one is co-existent with him from whom he proceeds: and thus since the Father is eternal, the Son and the Holy Spirit who proceed from him are co-eternal with him.

Reply to the First Objection. If need denotes a defect or lack of what is needed, then that which is always, needs not another in order that it may exist. But if it denotes nothing more than the order of origin in reference to that whence a thing is, nothing hinders a thing that always is from needing another in order that it may exist, in so far as it has being not from itself but from another.

Reply to the Second Objection. Before receiving it the recipient has not what he receives, but he has it when he has received it: consequently if he received it from eternity he had it from eternity.

Reply to the Third Objection. This argument applies to generation in which there is movement, since that which is being moved to existence does not exist yet: which is true in the sense that what is being generated is not, whereas what has been generated, is. Consequently where there is no distinction between being generated and having been generated, it does not follow that what is generated is from another.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. It is true that what has its being from another is nothing considered in itself, if it be distinct from the being that it receives from another: but if it be the very same being that it receives from another, then considered in itself it cannot be nothing: for it is not possible to consider non-being in being itself, although it is possible to consider something besides being in that which is. Because that which is may have a mixed being: but being itself cannot, according to Boethius (De Hebdom.). The first part of this distinction applies to creatures, the second to the Son of God.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. The Son of God cannot be called an effect, because he is not made but begotten: since that is said to be made whose being is distinct from its maker. Wherefore neither can the Father be called the cause of the Son properly speaking, but his principle. Nor is it necessary for every cause to precede its effect in point of duration, but only by priority of nature, as in the case of the sun and its shining.

Is it Possible for That Which Differs from God Essentially to Have Always Existed?

THE fourteenth point of inquiry is whether it is possible for that which differs essentially from God to have existed always: and it would seem possible.

1. The cause that produces the whole substance of a thing has not less power over its effect than the cause which produces the form alone. Now if the cause which produces the form alone be eternal it can produce it from eternity: thus the light produced and diffused by fire is co-existent with it and would be co-eternal if the fire were eternal, according to Augustine (De Trin.). Much more reason then is there why God who produces the whole substance of a thing, should be able to produce a co-eternal effect.

2. It will be said perhaps that this is impossible because it leads to the false position of equalling a creature to God in point of duration.—On the contrary, a duration that is not wholly simultaneous but successive cannot be equalled to one that is ‘wholly simultaneous. Now if the world had always been, its duration would not have been wholly simultaneous, since it would have been measured by time according to Boethius (De Consol. v). Therefore a creature would not be equalled to God in point of duration.

3. As a divine person proceeds from God without movement, so does a creature. Now a divine person can be co-eternal with God from whom he proceeds. Therefore a creature can be likewise.

4. That which is unchangeable in its being can always do the same thing. Now God is unchangeable from eternity. Therefore from eternity he can do the same thing: and consequently if he produced a creature at any time he could do so from eternity.

5. You will say perhaps that the above argument applies to a natural but not to a voluntary agent.—On the contrary, God’s power is not nullified by his will. Now if he did not work by his will it would follow that he produced the creature from eternity, Therefore even given that he works by his will, it does not remove the possibility of his having created from eternity.

6. If God produced a creature at a certain time or instant, and if his power does not increase, he could have produced the creature at a previous time or instant, and for the same reason, before that, and so on indefinitely. Therefore he could have produced it from eternity.

7. God can do more than the human intellect can understand, wherefore it is said (Luke i, 37): No word shall be impossible with God. Now the Platonists understood God to have made something that had always existed. Thus Augustine says (De Civ. Dei x, 31): “Plato writing about the world and of the gods made by God in the world, asserts most explicitly that they came into existence and had a beginning; yet they will not have an end, and he states that through the all-powerful will of their maker they will live for ever. In explaining, however, what he meant by beginning, the Platonists affirm that he meant the beginning not of time but of their formation. For, say they, even as, if a foot had pressed on the dust from eternity, there would always have been the footprint underneath, which no one would doubt to have been made by the walker, so the world always existed and he who made it always existed, and yet it was made.” Therefore God could make something that always was.

8. God can do in the creature whatever is not inconsistent with the notion of a created thing: else he were not omnipotent. Now it is not inconsistent with the notion of a created thing, considered as made, that it should always have existed, otherwise to say that creatures always existed would be the same as to say that they were not made, which is clearly false. For Augustine (De Civ. Dei xi, 4; x, 31) distinguishes two opinions, one asserting that the world always existed in suchwise that it was not made by God; the other stating that the world always was and that nevertheless God made it. Therefore God can do this so that something made by him should always have been.

9. just as nature can produce its effect in an instant, so also can a voluntary agent if unhindered. Now God is a voluntary agent that cannot be hindered. Therefore the creatures brought into being by his will, could be produced from eternity, even as the Son who proceeds from the Father naturally.

1. On the contrary, Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. viii, 23): “Seeing that the nature of the Trinity is altogether uncommunicable, it is so exclusively eternal that nothing can be co-eternal with it.”

2. Damascene says (De Fide Orthod. i): That which is brought into being from nothingness by its very nature is incapable of being co-eternal with one who has no beginning and is eternal. Now the creature is brought from nothingness into being. Therefore it cannot have been always.

3. Whatsoever is eternal is unchangeable. But a creature cannot be unchangeable, because were it left to itself it would fall back into nothingness. Therefore it cannot be eternal.

4. Nothing that depends on another is necessary, nor consequently eternal: since all that is eternal is necessary. Now that which is made depends on another. Therefore nothing made can be eternal.

5. If God could make a creature from eternity, he did; because according to the Philosopher, (Phys. iii, 4) in eternal things there is no difference between what can be and what is. Now it is against faith to say that creatures were made from eternity. Therefore it is also against faith to say that they could be.

6. A wise man’s will does not delay to do what he intends except for some reason. But no reason can be given why God made the world then and not before or from eternity, if it could be made from eternity. Therefore seemingly it could not.

7. If creatures were made, they were made either from nothing or from something. They were not made from something: since this would either be part of the divine essence, which is impossible, or it would be something else, and if this were not made, there would be something besides God not made by him, and this has been proved to be false: and if it were made from something else, we should either go on indefinitely, which is impossible, or we should come to something made from nothing. Now it is impossible for that which is made from nothing to have always been. Therefore it is impossible for a creature to ‘have been always.

8. It is essential to the eternal not to have a beginning, whereas it is essential to the notion of a creature to have a beginning. Therefore no creature can be eternal.

9. A creature is measured either by time or by eviternity. But time and eviternity differ from eternity. Therefore a creature cannot be eternal.

10. If a thing be created it must be possible to assign an instant wherein it was created. Now before that instant it did not exist. Therefore we must conclude that creatures, were not always.

I answer that according to the Philosopher (Metaph. v, 12) a thing is said to be possible, sometimes in reference to a power, sometimes in reference to no power. If in reference to a power, this power may be active or passive. In reference to an active power, as when we say that to a builder it is possible to build; in reference to a passive power, as when we say that it is possible for the wood to burn. Sometimes, however, a thing is said to be possible, not in reference to a power, but either figuratively, as in geometry a line is said to be potentially rational—this we may pass over for the present; or absolutely, that is when the terms of a proposition are in no way mutually contradictory: whereas we have the impossible when they exclude each other. Thus it is said to be impossible for a thing to be and not to be at the same time, not in reference to an agent or patient, but because it is impossible in itself, as being self-contradictory. If, then, we consider the statement that something substantially distinct from God has always existed, it cannot be described as impossible in itself as though it contained a contradiction in the terms: because to be from another is not inconsistent with being from eternity, as we have proved above; except when the one proceeds from the other by movement, of which there can be no question in the procession of things from God. And when we add substantially distinct, this again involves no contradiction absolutely speaking with the fact of having always been.

If we refer the possibility to an active power, then God does not lack the power to produce from eternity an essence distinct from himself.

On the other hand if we refer the possibility to a passive power, then given the truth of the Catholic faith, it cannot be said that something substantially distinct from God can proceed from him and yet have always existed. For the Catholic faith supposes that all things other than God at some time existed not. Now as it is impossible for a thing never to have existed, if it be granted that at some time it has been, so is it impossible for a thing to have been always, if it be granted that at some time it did not exist. Wherefore some say that this is possible on the part of God creating, but not on the part of an essence proceeding from God because our faith teaches the contrary.

Reply to the First Objection. This argument considers the question from the point of view of the power of the maker, but not of the thing made, which is supposed not to have existed at some time.

Reply to the Second Objection. Even if creatures had always existed they would not be equalled to God simply but in so far as they imitate him. There is nothing unreasonable in this, and so the objection has but little force.

Reply to the Third Objection. In the divine person there is nothing that is supposed not to have existed at some time, as there is in every essence other than God.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. This argument considers the power of the maker, which indeed is not diminished by his will, except in so far as it was by the decree of the divine will that creatures did not always exist.

This suffices for the reply to the Fifth Objection.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. If it be stated that creatures existed before any given time, the position of faith is safeguarded because it is stated that nothing except God existed always: but it is not safeguarded if we say that creatures have always existed: hence the comparison fails. It must also be noted that the argument is lacking in form. For God is able to make any creature better, yet he cannot make a creature of infinite goodness: because infinite goodness is incompatible with the notion of being created, whereas determinate goodness is not, however great it be.

It must also be observed that when we say that God could have made the world sooner than he did, if this priority be referred to the power of the maker, the statement is undoubtedly true, because he had from eternity the power to do this; and eternity precedes the time of the creation. if, however, it be referred to the being of the thing made, as though before the instant wherein the world was created there were a real time wherein the world could have been made, it is evident, that then the statement is false, since before the world there was no movement and consequently no time. Yet it is possible to imagine a time anterior to the world, just as we can imagine altitudes and dimensions outside the heavens: and forasmuch we can say that God could make the heavens higher, and that he could have created them sooner, since he could have made time longer and altitude higher.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. It is true that the Platonists understood this: but they were not guided by faith, since it was unknown to them.

Reply to the Eighth Objection. This argument proves nothing more than that to be made and to be always are not. incompatible considered in themselves: so that it considers that which is possible absolutely.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. This argument considers possibility in reference to an active power.

Whereas the arguments on the contrary side would seem to conclude that it is impossible from every point of view, we must now proceed to answer them.

Solution of the First Argument. According to Boethius (De Consol. v), even if the world had always existed it would not be co-eternal with God, because its duration would not be wholly simultaneous, which is essential to eternity. For eternity is the “perfect possession of endless life without succession” (ibid.). Now the succession of time results from movement according to the Philosopher (Phys. iv, ii). Hence whatsoever is subject to change, even if it be always, cannot be eternal: wherefore Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. viii, 23) that no creature can be co-eternal with the unchangeable nature of the Trinity.

Solution of the Second Argument. Damascene speaks on the supposition of the Catholic faith: this is clear from his saying: “That which is brought into being from nothingness, etc.”

Solution of the Third Argument. Changeableness by its very nature excludes eternity but not indefinite duration.

Solution of the Fourth Argument. It is true that what depends on another can never exist unless it be upheld by that whence it proceeds: yet if the latter always existed the former also existed always.

Solution of the Fifth Argument. From the fact that God was able to do a thing it does not follow that he did it, because he acts by his will and not by natural necessity. And where it is said that in eternal things there is no difference between what can be and what is, this refers to passive and not to active power: because a passive power that is not perfected by its act is a principle of corruption and therefore repugnant to eternity: whereas it casts no reflection on an active power that its effect be not actually in existence, especially if the active power be a voluntary cause: because the effect is not the perfection of an active power in the same way as the form is of a passive power.

Solution of the Sixth Argument. Our intelligence is unable to fathom the production of the first creatures, because it cannot grasp that Art which is the sole reason why the creatures in question were such as they were. Hence just as no man can explain why the heavens are so great and not greater, so neither can we tell why the world was not made sooner, although both came within the scope of the divine power.

Solution of the Seventh Argument. The first creatures were produced not from something but from nothing. Not, however, from the mode of their production but from the teaching of faith do we gather that they were non-existent before they were brought into being. For the statement that a creatikre is made from nothing may mean according to Anselm (Monolog. viii) that it is not made from something, so that the negation includes the preposition and is not included by it, and thus denies the order implied by the preposition; while the preposition itself does not imply order to nothing. I If on the other hand order to nothing is affirmed, and the preposition includes the negation, it still does not follow that at some time the creature was non-existent. For one might say with Avicenna that nonexistence preceded the existence of a thing not by duration but by nature: since, to wit, were it left to itself it would have no existence, and it has existence solely from another: because that which a thing is competent to have of itself is naturally prior to that which it is not adapted to have save from another.

Solution of the Eighth Argument. It belongs to the notion of eternity to have no beginning of duration: while it belongs to the notion of a created thing to have a beginning of its origin but not of duration: unless we take creation according to the teaching of faith.

Solution of the Ninth Argument. Eviternity and time differ from eternity, not only in the point of a principle of duration but also in the point of succession. Time in itself implies succession; while succession is annexed to eviternity, inasmuch as eviternal substances are in a way changeable, though they are unchangeable as measured by eviternity. On the other hand eternity has no succession nor is succession annexed to it.

Solution of the Tenth Argument. God’s work whereby he brings things into being must not be taken as the work of a craftsman who makes a box and then leaves it: because God continues to give being, as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 12; viii, 12). Hence it does not follow that we must assign an instant wherein things were brought into being, before which they existed not, except on account of the teaching of faith.

Did Things Proceed from God of Natural Necessity or by the Decree of His Will?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xix, A. 4]

THE fifteenth point of inquiry is whether things proceeded from God of natural necessity or by a decree of his will: and it would seem that they proceeded of natural necessity.

1. Dionysius (De Div. Nom. iv) says: “As our sun neither “by reason nor by Pre-election, but by its very being enlightens all things that can participate its light, so the divine good by its very essence pours the rays of its goodness upon all things according to their capacity.” Seeing then that the sun enlightens without reason or pre-election, it does so of natural necessity. Therefore God also produces creatures by communicating his goodness to them of natural necessity.

2. Every perfection of a lower nature derives from the perfection of the divine nature. Now it belongs to the perfection of a lower nature by its own power to produce its like in some effect. A fortiori therefore God naturally and not voluntarily communicates the likeness of his goodness to creatures.

3. Every agent produces its like; wherefore the effect proceeds from its active cause in so far as it bears a likeness thereto. Now the creature bears a likeness to God as regards those things which belong to God by nature, namely being, goodness, unity and so forth; and not as regards things willed or understood, as the product of his art bears a likeness to the craftsman as regards the art-given form and not as regards his nature, for which reason he produces it voluntarily and not naturally. Therefore things proceed from God by virtue of his nature and not by his will.

4. It may be replied that the divine will communicates the likeness of the natural attributes.—On the contrary, a likeness of nature cannot be communicated otherwise than by the power of nature. Now the power of nature is nowhere subject to the will: wherefore in God, since the Father begets the Son naturally he does not beget him by his will: and in man the forces of the vegetal soul which are called natural forces are not subject to his will. Therefore it is no’tpossible for a likeness of the divine attributes to be communicated to creatures by the divine will.

5. Augustine says (De Doct. Christ. i, 32) that “we exist because God is good,” so that seemingly God’s goodness is the cause of the production of creatures. Now goodness is natural to God. Therefore the emanation of things from God is natural.

6. In God nature and will are the same: and consequently if he produces things willingly it would seem that he produces them naturally.

7. Natural necessity results from the fact that nature invariably acts in the same way, unless prevented. Now God is more unchangeable than the lower nature. Therefore God produces his effects more of necessity than the lower nature.

8. God’s operation is his essence: and his essence is natural to him. Therefore whatever he does he does naturally.

9. Again, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iii, 2) the end is what is willed, the means are what we choose. But God has no end since he is infinite. Therefore he acts not willingly but rather of natural necessity.

10. God operates inasmuch as he is good, according to Augustine (De Doct. Christ. i, 32). Now he is the necessary good. Therefore he works of necessity.

11. Whatsoever exists is either contingent or necessary. Now a thing is necessary in three ways, by coercion, by supposition and absolutely. It cannot be said that in God anything is potential or contingent: since this argues mutability according to the Philosopher (Metaph. xi, 5), because what is contingent may happen not to be. Again, nothing. in God is necessary by coercion because in him nothing is violent or contrary to nature (Metaph. v, 5). Nor is ~there anything necessary by suppositeion, because this depends on certain things being presupposed, and God is not dependent on anything. It remains then that all in God is absolutely necessary, and it would seem consequently that he produced things necessarily.

12. It is written (2 Tim. ii, 13) that God continueth faithful, he cannot deny himself. Now seeing that he is his own goodness he would deny himself were he to deny his own goodness. But he would deny his own goodness were he not to pour it out by communicating it to others, for this is proper to goodness. Consequently God cannot but produce creatures by communicating his own goodness to them: and therefore he produces them of necessity: because that which cannot but be is convertible with that which is necessary (Perihermen. ii, 3).

13. According to Augustine the Father in begetting the Son expressed himself by his word. Now Anselm says (Monolog. lii) that by the same word the Father expresses himself and the creature. Seeing then that the Father begot the Son naturally and not by the command of his will, it would seem that thus also did he produce creatures, since in God to speak and to make do not differ according to the words of Scripture (Ps. xxxi, 1, 9): He spake and they were made.

14. Every voluntary agent wills of necessity his ultimate end; thus man of necessity wills to be happy. Now the ultimate end of the divine will is the communication of his goodness: since to this end did he make creatures that he might communicate his goodness to them. Therefore God wills this of necessity, and thus of necessity does he produce them.

15. just as God is good by his essence so is he necessary by his essence. Now because God is good by his essence there is nothing in God but what is good. Therefore in like manner there is nothing in him but what is necessary: and consequently he produces things necessarily.

16. God’s will is determined to one thing, namely the good. Now nature through being determined to one works necessarily. Therefore God’s will produces creatures necessarily.

17. The Father by virtue of his nature is the principle of the Son and the Holy Spirit, as Hilary says (De Synod.). Now the same nature that is in the Father and Son is also in the Holy Spirit. Therefore likewise the Holy Spirit is a principle by his nature. But he is not a principle except of creatures. Therefore creatures proceed from God naturally.

18. The effect proceeds from its cause in action: wherefore a cause is not related to its effect except as related to its action or operation. Now the relation of God’s action or operation to himself is natural, since God’s action is his essence. Therefore the relation of God to his effect is also natural so that he produces it naturally.

19. By that which is essentially good nothing is made but what is good and well made. Therefore by that which is essentially necessary, nothing is made but what is necessary and necessarily. made. Now such is God. Therefore all things proceed from him of necessity.

20. Since what exists of itself is prior to that which exists by another, it follows that the first agent acts by his essence. Now his essence and his nature are the same. Therefore he acts by his nature: and thus creatures proceed from him naturally.

On the contrary Hilary says (De Synod.): “The will of God gave all things their substance: and (ibid.): Such are creatures as God willed them to be.” Therefore God produced creatures by his will and not by natural necessity.

Moreover Augustine addressing God says (Confess. xii, 7): “Lord, thou didst make two things, one nigh to thyself,” the angel, to wit, “the other nigh to nothing,” namely matter. “Yet neither is of thy nature, since neither is what thou art.” Now the Son proceeds from the Father naturally inasmuch as he has the same nature as the Father, as Augustine says (De Trin. xv, 14). Therefore the creature does not proceed naturally from God.

I answer that without any doubt we must hold that God by the decree of his will and by no natural necessity brought creatures into being. This may for the present be made clear by four arguments.

First argument. The universe must needs be directed to an end, otherwise all things in the universe would befall by chance. Unless one were to say that the first creatures were not directed to an end but produced by natural necessity; and that subsequent creatures are directed to an end. This was the opinion of Democritus who maintained that the heavenly bodies were produced by chance, but lower bodies by determinate causes; and is refuted (Phys. ii, 4) for the reason that more exalted beings cannot be less ordinate than those of lower dignity. We must therefore hold that in producing creatures God had some end in view. Now both will and nature act for an end, but not in the same way. Nature has no knowledge of the purpose for which it acts, nor does it view it in the fight of an end, nor is it aware of the connection between the means and the end; so that it cannot propose an end to itself, nor move order or direct itself towards the end, whereas this is within the competency of a voluntary agent that can understand the end and all those other things. Wherefore the voluntary agent acts for the end in suchwise that he proposes the end to himself, and to a certain extent moves himself towards the end by directing his actions thereto. On the other hand nature tends to its end as a thing that is moved and directed by an intelligent and voluntary agent, even as an arrow flies towards a certain mark through the aim of the archer: and in this sense philosophers say that the work of nature is the work of an intelligence. Now that which is by another is always preceded by that which is of itself. Consequently the first director to an end must direct by his will: and thus God brought creatures into being by his will and not naturally. Nor may it be objected that the Son was naturally begotten by the Father, and yet his birth preceded creation: because the Son proceeds not as one ordained to an end, but as the end of all.

Second argument. Nature is determined to one thing: and since every agent produces its like, it follows that nature must tend to produce a likeness that is determinately in one subject. Now seeing that equality is caused by unity, whereas inequality is caused by multitude which is manifold (wherefore equality exists between things in only one way, but inequalit~ in many various degrees), nature always produces its equal unless it be hindered by a defect either in the active force or in the recipient or patient. But God is not hindered by a defect in the patient, since he needs not matter: nor is his power defective, but infinite. Wherefore nothing proceeds from him naturally but what is his equal, namely the Son. On the other hand creatures, being unequal, are produced not naturally but voluntarily, for there are many degrees of inequality. Nor may it be said that the divine power is determined to one only, seeing that it is infinite. Wherefore since the power of God extends to the production of various degrees of inequality among creatures, it was by the decree of his. will and not of natural necessity that he fashioned this or that creature in this or that particular degree.

Third argument. Since every agent in some way produces its like, the effect must in some way pre-exist in its cause. Now whatsoever is contained in another is therein according to the mode of the container: wherefore as God himself is intelligence it follows that creatures pre-exist in him intelligibly, in which sense it is written (Jo. i, 3): That which was made was life in him. But that which is in an intelligence does not proceed therefrom except by means of the will for the will is the executor of the intellect, and the intelligible moves the will. Consequently creatures must have proceeded from God by his will.

Fourth argument. According to the Philosopher (Metaph. ix, text 16) action is twofold: one that remains in the agent, of which it is the perfection and act; such as to understand, to will and the like: the other issues from the agent into an extrinsic patient which it perfects and actuates, such as to heat, to move and the like. Now God’s action cannot be taken as belonging to this latter kind of action, because his action is his very essence, and consequently does not issue outside him. Hence it must be taken as belonging to the former kind of action which is only to be found in one possessed of intelligence and will, or also of the faculty of sense, which latter again does not apply to God, because sensation, though it does not issue into an external object, is caused by the action of an external object. Therefore whatsoever God does outside himself he does it as understanding and willing it. Nor does this argument belie the naturalness of the Son’s begetting, the term of which was not something outside the divine essence. We must therefore hold that all creatures proceeded from God by his will and not of natural necessity.

Reply to the First Objection. The comparison of Dionysius must be understood to refer to the universality of diffusion: as the sun sheds its rays on all bodies without differentiating one from another, so likewise is it with God’s goodness: but it does not apply to the absence of will.

Reply to the Second Objection. It is owing to the perfection of the divine nature that by virtue thereof its likeness is communicated to creatures: yet this communication was made not of natural necessity but voluntarily.

This suffices for the reply to the Third Objection.

Reply to the Fourth Objection. Nature is not subject to will from within: but in externals nothing prevents nature from being subject to the will. Thus in the local movements of animals nature in their muscles and sinews is subject to the command of their appetite. Consequently it is not unreasonable if by virtue of the divine nature creatures be brought into existence according to the behest of the divine will.

Reply to the Fifth Objection. The good is the proper object of the will: hence the goodness of God as willed and loved by him is the cause of things through his will.

Reply to the Sixth Objection. Although will, and nature are identically the same in God, they differ logically, in so far as they express respect to creatures in different ways: thus nature denotes a respect to some one thing determinately, whereas will does not.

Reply to the Seventh Objection. It is owing not merely to the unchangeableness of nature that it produces a particular effect of necessity, but to its being determined to one: this does not apply to the divine will although it is supremely unchangeable.

Reply to the Eighth, Objection. Although God’s operation belongs to him naturally seeing that it is his very nature or essence, the created effect follows the operation of his nature which, in our way of understanding, is considered as the principle of his will, even as the effect that is heating follows according to the mode of the heat.

Reply to the Ninth Objection. Although God is infinite he is the end of all things. He is not infinite as though he were deprived of finiteness in the same way as there may be an infinite in quantity, although quantity by nature is finite, for in this way an end is neither finite nor infinite. But he is infinite in a negative sense, because be is altogether without an end.

Reply to the Tenth Objection. It is true that God operates inasmuch as he is good, and that goodness is in him of necessity, but it does not follow that he works of necessity. Because his goodness works through his will in so far as it is the object or end of his will. Now the will is not inclined of necessity to the means, although it is necessitated in respect of the last end.

Reply to the Eleventh Objection. As regards the things which are in God himself, nothing can be described as potential: all is naturally and absolutely necessary. But in respect of creatures we can call certain things potential not in regard to passive potentiality, but in regard to an active power which is not limited to one effect.

Reply to the Twelfth Objection. Were God to deny his own goodness by doing something contrary thereto or wherein his goodness were not expressed, we should arrive at the impossible conclusion that he denied himself. But this would not follow if he were not to communicate his goodness to anything since it would suffer nothing by not being communicated.

Reply to the Thirteenth Objection. Although the Word of God. proceeds from the Father naturally, it does not follow that creatures proceed from God naturally. The Father by his words speaks his creatures according as they ate in him: and in him they are as producible not necessarily but voluntarily.

Reply to the Fourteenth Objection. The last end is not the communication of the divine goodness, but that goodness itself for love of which God wills to communicate it. He works for his goodness’ sake not as desiring to have what he has not, but as wishing to communicate what he has: for he acts not from desire, but from love, of the end.

Reply to the Fifteenth Objection. As in God there is naught but good, so is there naught but what is necessary. But it does not follow that whatsoever proceeds from him does so of necessity.

Reply to the Sixteenth Objection. As stated above God’s will inclines naturally to his goodness: so that he cannot will but what is becoming to him, namely the good. Yet he is not determined to this or that good: wherefore it does not follow that the goods which exist proceed from him necessarily.

Reply to the Seventeenth Objection. Though the same nature is in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit it has not the same mode of existence in each one of the three, and when I say mode of existence I mean in respect of the relations. In the Father nature is considered as not received from another: in the Son, as received from another. Consequently we must not infer that whatsoever belongs to the Father by virtue of his nature, belongs also to the Son or the Holy Spirit.

Reply to the Eighteenth Objection. The effect follows from the action according to the mode of the principle of the action: wherefore since the divine will which has no necessary connection with creatures is considered, in our way of thinking, to be the principle of the divine action in regard to creatures, it does not follow that the creature proceeds from God by natural necessity, although the action itself is God’s, essence or nature.

Reply to the Nineteenth Objection. The creature is like God as regards general conditions, but not as to the mode of participation: thus being is in God otherwise than in creatures, and so too is goodness. Hence although from the first good all goods derive, and all beings from the first being, yet all do not derive supreme goodness from the sovereign good, nor from the necessary being do all things proceed of necessity.

Reply to the Twentieth Objection. God’s will is his essence: wherefore his working by his will does not prevent his working by his essence. God’s will is not an intention in addition to his essence, but is his very essence.

Can a Multitude of Things Proceed from One First Thing?

[Sum. Th. I, Q. xlvii, A. i; C.G. II, xxxix-xlv: III, xcvii]

THE Sixteenth point of inquiry is whether many things can proceed from one: and seemingly the answer should be in the negative.

1. As God is essentially good and consequently the sovereign good, so is he essentially and supremely one. Now inasmuch as he is good nothing can proceed from him but what is good. Therefore inasmuch as he is one, only one thing can proceed from him.

2. As good is convertible with being, so also is one. Now the creature is like God in that it has being, as stated above. Therefore as it is like God in goodness, so must it be like him in unity, and thus from the one God one creature should proceed.

3. As good and evil taken in general are mutually opposed by way of privation, although they are contraries considered as differentiating habits; so one and many are opposed to each other by way of privation (Metaph. x, 3). Now by no means do we say that wickedness proceeds from God, but from a defect in second causes. Neither therefore should we say that God is the cause of multitude.

4. Cause and effect should be proportionate to each ,other, forasmuch as single things cause single things and universal things cause universal, according to the Philosopher (Phys. ii, 3). Now God is the most universal of all causes. Therefore his proper effect is the most universal of all, namely being. Now it is not because things have being that there is not multitude, since diversity and distinction are the cause of multitude, and all things agree in point of being. Therefore multitude is not from God, but from second causes whence each thing derives its particular condition of being, whereby it is differentiated from others.

5. Every effect has its proper cause. But one cannot be proper to many. Therefore one cannot be the cause of many.

6. You will say perhaps that this is true of natural but not of voluntary causes.—On the contrary the craftsman is the cause of his work by his will. But that work comes from the craftsman in accordance with the proper form thereof existing in the mind of the craftsman. Therefore even in voluntary effects each one requires its proper cause.

7. There ought to be conformity between cause and effect. God is altogether one and simple. Therefore there should be neither multitude nor composition in the creature which is his effect.

8. One effect cannot proceed immediately from a diversity of agents. Now as the cause is appropriate to the effect, so is the effect to its cause. Therefore from one same cause there cannot proceed many immediate effects: and thus the same conclusion follows.

9. In God it is the same power that begets, spirates and creates. Now the power to beget terminates in one only, and likewise the power to spirate: because in the Trinity there can be but one Son and one Holy Spirit. Therefore the creative power also terminates in one only.

10. But you will ‘say that the universe of creatures is somewhat one with regard to order.—On the contrary the effect should be like its cause. But the unity of God is not a unity of order, since in God there is no before and after nor higher and lower. Consequently unity of order does not suffice to make it possible that many things be made by one God.

11. One simple thing has but one action. Now one action has but one effect. Therefore one simple thing can produce but one effect.

12. The creature proceeds from God not only as the effect from its effective cause, but also as the exemplate from its exemplar. Now one exemplar has but one proper exemplate. Therefore only one creature can proceed from God.

13. God is cause of things by his intellect. Now an agent by intellect acts by the form in his intellect. Wherefore since there is but one form in the divine intellect, it would seem that only one creature can proceed from it.

14. But you will say that although the form in the divine intellect is one in substance since it is the divine essence, we may nevertheless consider therein a certain plurality by reason of various respects to various creatures, so that there is a logical plurality.—On the contrary these several respects are either in the divine intellect or solely in our mind. In the first case it will follow that there is plurality and not supreme simplicity in the divine intellect. In the second case, it will follow that God does not produce a variety of creatures except by means of our reason’ and consequently that he produces a variety of creatures through various respects to creatures, which respects exist only in our reason. This is what we are endeavouring to show, namely that multitude does not proceed from God immediately.

15. God brings things into being through his intellect apprehending them. Now in him there is but one apprehension: since his act of intelligence is his essence which is one. Therefore he produces but one creature.

16. That which has no being save in the mind is not a creature of God, for such things would seem to be vanity, a’s chimeras and the like. Now multitude is only in the reason, because it signifies an abstraction that does not exist in reality. Therefore God is not the cause of multitude.

17. According to Plato (Tim.) the best produces the best. Now the best can only be one. Since then God is best of all things, only one thing can be produced by him.

18. Every agent that acts for an end produces an effect as, near to the end as possible. Now God in producing the creature ordains it to an end. Therefore he makes it as near to the end as possible. But this can be done only in one way. Therefore he produces only one creature.

19. It is unjust to deal unequally to various recipients, unless these be already unequal either in merit or in some other diversity of condition. Now no diversity precedes God’s work, otherwise he would not be the first cause of all. Therefore when he first created things he did not bestow unequal gifts on his creatures. But diversity and multitude of creatures are in respect of their receiving more or less of the divine gifts (Coel. Hier. iv). Therefore when God first created things he did not produce a multitude.

20. God communicates his goodness to creatures according to, their capacity. Now the nature of higher creatures was capable of such perfection and dignity as to be the causes of lower creatures: because the more perfect things can act on those which are less perfect and communicate their perfection to them. Therefore seemingly God produced the lower creatures by means of the higher, and thus he did not produce immediately more than one creature, whatever it be, higher than the others.

21. The more immaterial a form the more active it is, as being more remote from potentiality: since a thing acts forasmuch as it is in act and not as in potentiality. Now in an angel’s mind there are forms of things and these forms are more immaterial than the forms that are in natural things. Now seeing that natural forms are causes of like forms, it would seem that a fortiori the forms in an angel’s mind produce like forms of natural things. But diversity and consequently multitude of things result from the form. Therefore seemingly multitude did not proceed from God except by means of the higher creatures.

22. Whatsoever God makes is one thing. Therefore only one thing proceeds from him: and thus he is not the cause of multitude.

23. God understands but one thing, because he understands nothing outside himself (Metaph. xii, 9). Now he is cause of things by his intellect. Therefore he causes but one thing.

24. Anselm says (Monolog. viii) that in God the creature is the creative essence. Now the creative essence is but one. Consequently in God the creature is one only. But the creature is produced by God according to the same way as it pre-existed in God. Therefore only one creature proceeds from God and consequently multitude is not from him.

On the contrary it is written (Wis. xi, 21): Lord, thou hast disposed all things in number, weight and measure. But there is no number without multitude. Therefore multitude is from God.

Again, God’s power surpasses that of any other thing. Now one point can be the beginning of many lines. Thus then can God, though he is one, be the beginning of many creatures.

Again, that which is proper to unity as such is most appropriate to that which is supremely one. Now it is proper to unity to be the principle of multitude. Therefore it is most appropriate to God who is supremely one to be the cause of multitude.

Again, Boethius says (Arith.) that God brought things into being according to a numerical exemplar. Now the exemplate is like the exemplar. Therefore he produced things in multitude and number.

Again it is written (PS. ciii, 24): Thou hast done all things in wisdom. Now seeing that it belongs to a wise man to set things in order, it follows that there must be order and consequently multitude in all the things done by wisdom. Therefore the multitude of things is from God.

I answer that the impossibility of many things proceeding from one immediate and proper principle would seem to arise from the cause being determined to its effect, so that it would seem due and necessary that from such and such a cause such and such an effect should proceed. Now there are four causes two of which, the material and the effective cause to wit, precede the effect as to intrinsic being; while the end precedes it if not in being yet in intention; and the form precedes it in neither way considered as form, since the effect has its being by the form and consequently its being is simultaneous with that of the effect. But in so far as the form is the end it precedes the effect in the intention of the agent. And although the form is the end of the operation, being the end that terminates the operation of the agent, nevertheless every end is not a form. For there is in the intention an end that is not the end of the operation, as in the case of a house. The form of the house is the end terminating the operation of the builder: but his intention does not terminate there but in a further end, namely a dwelling-place, so that the end of the operation is the form of a house, that of the intention, a dwelling-place. Accordingly the necessity of such and such effects coming into being cannot arise from the form as such, since thus it is simultaneous with the effect, but it must arise either from the power of the effective cause, or from the matter, or from the end whether of the intention or of the operation. Now it cannot be said that the effect of God’s action is necessitated by matter: because seeing that he is the author. of all being, nothing in any way whatsoever having being is presupposed to his action, so that one be bound to say that owing to the disposition of matter his action must produce this or that effect. Likewise neither can it arise from the effective power: because seeing that his active power is infinite, it is not determined to one effect save to that which were equal to him, and this cannot be competent to any effect. Wherefore if it be necessary that he produce an effect beneath himself, his power considered in itself is not determined to any particular distant degree, so that it be necessary for such and such an effect to be produced by his active power. Likewise neither can it arise from the end of the intention. For this end is the divine goodness, which gains nothing from the production of the effects.

Again it cannot be wholly represented by those effects nor be wholly communicated to them, so that one be able to say that it were necessary for an effect of God to be such and such in order wholly to’participate of God’s goodness, since it is possible for an effect to participate thereof in many ways, so that no effect is rendered necessary by the end. Necessity arises from the end when the intention of the end cannot be fulfilled, either not at all or not conveniently, without this or that thing. It remains therefore that necessity in God’s works cannot arise except from the form which is the end of operation. For seeing that the form is not infinite it has determined principles without which it cannot exiAt, and a determined mode of existence; thus we might say, for instance, supposing that God intends to make a man, that it is necessary and due that he give him a rational soul and an organic body, without which there is no such thing as a man. It is the same with the universe. That God wished to make the universe such as it,is, was not made necessary or due, either by the end or by the power of the effective cause, or by the potentiality of matter, as we have proved. But given that he wished to make the universe such as it is, it was necesssary that he should produce such and such creatures whence such and such a form of universe would arise. And seeing that the perfection of the universe requires both diversity and multitude in things, inasmuch as it cannot be found in one thing on account of the latter’s remoteness from the perfection of the first good, it was necessary on the supposition of that intended form that God should produce many and diverse creatures; some simple, some compound, some corruptible, some incorruptible.

Through failing to note this some philosophers wandered from the truth. Because they did not understand that God is the author of the universe, some of them maintained that matter was self-existent and that matter itself necessitated diversity among the things evolved therefrom. Some of them would make things to differ according to the rarity or density of matter, like the early physicists who could not see further than the material cause.—Others traced this diversity to the action of some effective cause, whereby different effects were produced according to a difference of matter. Thus Anaxagoras held that a divine intelligence produced a diversity of things by freeing them from the commixture of matter. Thus also Empedocles explained by attraction and repulsion the various differences and affinities arising from diversity of matter. That these were in error is shown for two reasons. First, because they did not hold that all being flows from the first and supreme being, as we proved above (A. 5). Secondly, because according to them it would follow that the order and distinction of the parts of the universe arose from chance, since they were necessitated by the requirements of matter.—Others, like Avicenna and his school (Metaph. ix, 4), ascribed the plurality and diversity of things to a necessity arising from the effective cause. He said that the first being by understanding himself produced one effect only, namely the first intelligence which of necessity fell short of the simplicity of the first being, since potentiality began to be united to act, and that which receives being from another is not its own being, but a potentiality as it were in respect thereof. And so from this first intelligence, in as far as it understands the first being, another and lower intelligence proceeds, and inasmuch as it understands its own potentiality it produced the heavenly body which it moves, and inasmuch as it understands its act it produces the soul of the first heaven. Thus through a number of intermediate causes there arose in consequence diversity among things. This opinion also cannot stand. First, because it would have the divine power limited to one effect which is the first intelligence. Secondly, because it makes other substances besides God to be the creators of other creatures, and we have shown this to be impossible (A. 4). Moreover this opinion like those already mentioned would imply that the beauty arising from the order of the universe is the result of chance, since it ascribes the diversity of things not to the intention of an end, but to the determination of active causes in respect of their effects.

Others, like Plato and his followers, erred regarding the necessity imposed by the final cause. For he said that the universe as to its actual conformation was the necessary outcome of the divine goodness as understood and loved by God, so that the sovereign good produced the very good. This indeed may be true if we look only at what is and not at what might be. This universe consisting of the things that actually exist is very good, and it is due to the sovereign goodness of God that it is very good. Nevertheless God’s goodness is not so tied to this universe that it could not have produced a better or one that is less good.

Others again erred through failing to note the necessity resulting from the formal cause, but only that which is due to the divine goodness. Thus the Manicheans considering that God is suptemely good, thought that only those creatures proceed from God that are the best of creatures, those, namely, which are spiritual and incorruptible: and they ascribed corporeal and corruptible beings to another principle. The error of Origen although contrary to this comes from the same source (Peri Archon i, 7, 8). He considered God as supremely good and just, and for this reason he believed that at first he created only the best, i.e. rational creatures all equal to one another: and that these by their free-will acted in various ways well or ill, and he maintained that from this resulted the various degrees of things in the universe. He held that those rational creatures which turned to God were promoted to the ranks of the angels, and to the various orders according to the degree of their merits: while on the other hand the remaining rational creatures who by their free-will sinned, were in his opinion cast into the ranks of the lower world and bound to bodies: some which sinned less grievously were bound to the sun, moon and stars, some to human bodies, some transformed into demons. Both of these errors apparently disregard the order of the universe and confine their observation to its individual parts. For the very order of the universe is sufficient proof that from: one principle, without any previous difference of merits, originated various degrees among creatures for the perfection of the universe, which by its multiplicity and variety of creatures reproduces that which in the divine goodness pre-existed without composition or distinction. Even so the perfection of a house or of the human body requires diversity of parts, since neither would be complete if all its parts were of the same condition, for instance, if every part of the human body were an eye, since the functions of the other parts would be wanting: or if every part of the house were the roof, the house would be imperfect and fail of its purpose which is to shelter from rain and disaster. Accordingly we must conclude that the multitude and diversity of creatures proceeded from one principle, not on account of a necessity imposed by matter, not on account of a limitation in power, not on account of goodness or a necessity imposed by goodness, but from the order of wisdom, in order that the perfection of the universe might be realised in the diversity of creatures.

Reply to the First Objection. Inasmuch as God is one, that which he produced is one, not only because each thing is one in itself, but because all things taken together are in a sense one perfect thing, and this kind of unity requires diversity of parts, as we have already shown.

Reply to the Second Objection. The creature is like God in unity, inasmuch as each creature is