8. Where will-adtion and physical a<5tion go together, will-adtion repre- sents the higher power and uses the other as an instrument. But the divine power is supreme, and therefore must a6t by will-a<5tion, not under physical necessity.
This truth also divine Scripture teaches us. All things, whatsoever he hath willed, the Lord hath done (Ps. exxxiv, 6): Who Vtorfyth all things according to the counsel of bis will (Eph. i, 1 1).
CHAPTER XXIV- That Qod a&s by His Wisdom* THE will is moved to a6t by some apprehension.f But God adte by willing. Since then in God there is intellectual apprehension only, and He understands nothing otherwise than by understanding Himself, whom to understand is to be wise (B. I, Chap. LIV), it follows that God works out all things according to His wisdom.
2. Every agent a6ts in so far as it has within it something corresponding to the effedt to be produced. But in every voluntary agent, as such, what corresponds to the effe6t to be produced is some intellectual presentation of the same. Were there no more than a mere physical disposition to produce the effeft, the agent could aCt only to one effeCt, because for one physical cause there is only one physical mode of operation {ratio naturalis unius est una tantum). Every voluntary agent therefore produces itseffeCt according to the mode of intellectual operation proper to itself. But God aCts by willing, and therefore it is by the wisdom of His intellect that He brings things into being.
3. The function of wisdom is to set things in order. Now the setting of things in order can be effected only through a knowledge of the relation and proportion of the said things to one another, and to some higher thing which is the end and purpose of them all: for the mutual order of things to one another is founded upon their order to the end which they arc to serve. But it is proper to intelligence alone to know the mutual relations and propor- tions of things. Again, it is proper to wisdom to judge of things as they stand to their highest cause. J Thus every setting of things in order by wisdom must be the work of some intelligence^ But the things produced by God bear an orderly relation to one another, which cannot be attributed to chance, since it (sit, not sint) obtains always or for the most part. Thus it is evident that God, in bringing things into being, intended them in a certain order. Therefore His production of them was a work of wisdom.
All this is confirmed by divine authority, for it is said: Thou hast made * That is to say, not by arbitrary whim or irra- $ A formal logician might quarrel with this argutional wilfulness. The thesis is against the Nominalists, ment: 'All work of intelligence and wisdom is a who denied the intelligible essences (mttlTtgibilia) setting of things in order; therefore all setting of things which are the reasons of things (rations rerum). in order is a work of intelligence and wisdom:' an t The apprehension may be of a sensible objeel, illogical conversion. St Thomas however docs not provoking passion, or it may be an intellectual appre- argue in that way. He gives us to understand that to hension. In God of course there is no passion, and no set things in order is a peculiar work of intelligence, intellect that can present things otherwise than as which cannot be done by chance, least of all when the they are. things ordered are complex and manifold, as are the I The * highest cause' is here taken to be the final endless details of nature. Chance events, as Aristotle cause. Thus the purpose of navigation is the* highest observes, are rareties and exceptions: the course of cause' of the parts of a ship, as such; and to judge of nature, so uniform, or so seldom varied, cannot be the those parts in view of navigation belongs to nautical work of chance. Thus that very uniformity of nature, 'wisdom.' now taken to militate against religion, is taken by St Thomas for an argument of divine contrivance.
all things in wisdom (Ps. ciii, 24); and, the Lord in wisdom founded the earth Hereby is excluded the error of some who said that all things depend on the absolute will of God, independent of any reason.
CHAPTER XXV-In what sense some things are said to be Impossible to the Almighty IN God there is a&ive power, but no potentiality. Now possibility is spoken of both as involving a<5tive power and as involving potentiality. Those things then are impossible to God, the possibility of which would mean in Him potentiality. Examples: God cannot be any material thing: He cannot suffer change, nor defeat, nor fatigue, nor forgetfulness, nor defeat, nor violence, nor repentance, anger, or sadness.
Again, since the obje<5t and effe<5t of a<5tive power is some produced reality, it must be said to be impossible for God to make or produce anything incon- sistent with the notion of •reality/ or 'being/ as such, or inconsistent with the notion of a reality that is 'made/ or 'produced/ inasmuch as it is 'made/ or 'produced.' Examples: God cannot make one and the same thing together to be and not to be. He cannot make opposite attributes to be in the same subje<5t in the same respe<5t. He cannot make a thing wanting in any of its essential constituents, while the thing itself remains: for instance, a man with- out a soul.* Since the principles of some sciences, as logic, geometry, and arithmetic, rest on the formal, or abstraft, constituents on which the essence of a thing depends, it follows that God cannot effect anything contrary to these principles, as that genus should not be predicable of species, or that lines drawn from the centre of a circle to the circumference should not be equal. God cannot make the past not to have been. Some things also God cannot make, because they would be inconsistent with the notion of a creature, as such: thus He cannot create a God, or make anything equal to Himself, or anything that shall maintain itself in being, independently of Him. He cannot do what He cannot will: He cannot make Himself cease to be, or cease to be good or happy; nor can He will anything evil, or sin. Nor can His will be changeable: He cannot therefore cause what He has once willed not to be fulfilled.! There is however this difference between this last impossibility on God's part and all others that have been enumerated. The others are absolute impossibilities for God either to will or do: but the things now spoken of God might will and do if His will or power be considered absolutely, but not if it be considered under the presupposition of His will to the contrary. And therefore all such phrases as, 'God cannot a<5t contrary to what He hasarranged to do/ are to be understood in sensu composito; but, understood in sensu diviso9 they are false, for in that sense they regard the power and will of God con- sidered absolutely.!
# God taketh away the spirit of princes (Ps. lxxv), but will such things absolutely; and St Thomas here speab then they cease to be princes. of absolute will, e.g., of God's promises to Messiah t God would do certain things, apart from pe- and His Church, temporary appearances notwithnance or prayer, which He foresees will be interposed, standing (Ps. lxxxviii, 3 3-38)- as the destruction of Ninive (Jon. iii, 10), or of the X For this distinction and doctrine see B.I, Chap.
Israelites in the desert (Exod. xxxiix 10). He does not lxxxiii, with notes.
92 CHAPTER XXNl-Thatthe Divine Understanding is not limited to certain fixed Effects NOW that it has been shown (Chap. XXIII) that the divine power does not a<5t of physical necessity, but by understanding and will, lest any one should think that God's understanding or knowledge extends only to certain fixed effefts, and that thus God a<5ts under stress of ignorance, though not under stress of physical constraint, it remains to show that His knowledge or understanding is bounded by no limits in its view of effedts.
2. We have shown above (B. I, Chap. XLIII) the infinity of the divine essence. Now the plane of the infinite can never be reached by any piling up of finite quantities, because the infinite infinitely transcends any finite quanti- ties however many, even though they were infinite in number.* But no other being than God is infinite in essence: all others are essentially included under limited genera and species, t Howsoever then and to whatsoever extent the effects of divine production are comprehended, it is ever within the compass of the divine essence to reach beyond them and to be the foundation of more. The divine understanding then, in perfectly knowing the divine essence (B. I, Chap. XLVII), transcends any infinity of adtual effects of divine power, and therefore is not necessarily limited to these or those effects.
4. If the causality of the divine understanding were limited, as a neces- sary agent, to any effects, it would be to those elTedls which God actually brings into being. But it has been shown above (B. I, Chap. LX VI) that God under- stands even things that neither are nor shall be nor have been.
5. The divine knowledge stands to the things produced by God as the knowledge of an artist to the knowledge of his art. But every art extends to all that can possibly be contained under the kind of things subject to that art, as the art of building to all houses. But the kind of thing subjeCt to the divine art is 'being' (genus subje&um dhirnst artis est ens), since God by His under- standing is the universal principal of being (Chapp. XXI, XXIV). Therefore the divine understanding extends its causality to all things that are not incon- sistent with the notion of 'being/ and is not limited to certain fixed effe&s.
Hence it is said: Great is our Lord, and great his power \ and of bis wisdom there is no reckoning by number (Ps. cxlvi, 5).
Hereby is excluded the position of some philosophers who said that from God's understanding of Himself there emanates a certain arrangementof things in the universe, as though He did not deal with creatures at His discretion, fixing the limits of each creature and arranging the whole universe, as the Catholic faith professes. It is to be observed however that, though the divine understanding is not limited to certain efledts,God nevertheless has determined to flimself fixed efledts to be produced in due order by His wisdom, as it is said: Thou hast disposed all things in measure, number and weight (Wisd. xi, 21). J • Any quantitative infinite, — allowing its possibi- world is necessary to God, and the whole arrangement lity, — still is infinite only in a certain category. But of the universe likewise an a priori necessity, nothing God transcends all the categories. An infinite number else being possible: in fact that the term 'actual being' would not, be intelligent, or just, or beautiful. There- includes at once all that is and all that ever could be; fore it would fall infinitely short of God. while the terms 'possible,' 'necessary,* 'contingent,* t It is said, I think, by Aristotle, that only na- express nothing whatever but certain limitations of tural objects fall into genera and species, not artificial our field of view. Neither Hegel, nor any sane man things. It is no concern of St Thomas here to deny who believes in a God at all, could ever suppose that that. Artificial things may anyhow be classified, though there were things, producible in themselves, which it be not by generic and specific differences. To classify could not be produced because God did not know of is to limit. God is above all classification. them. One wonders what opponents St Thomas could I This common Hegelian position is that the have met guilty of this absurdity. Ex hypothesi, God is 93 CHAPTER XXVIII- That God has not brought things into being in discharge of any Debt of Justice JUSTICE is to another, rendering him his due. But, antecedently to the universal production of all things, nothing can be presupposed to which any thing, is due.
2. An a<5t of justice must be preceded by some a<5t, whereby something is made another's own; and that a6t, whereby first something is made another's own, cannot be an a<5t of justice.* But by creation a created thing first begins to have anything of its own. Creation then cannot proceed from any debt of justice.
3. No man owes anything to another, except inasmuch as he in some way depends on him, receiving something from him. Thus every man is in his neighbour's debt on God's account; from whom we have received all things. But God depends on none, and needs nothing of any.
5. Though nothing created precedes the universal produ<5tion of all things, something uncreated does precede it: for the divine goodness precedes as the end and prime motive of creation, according to Augustine, who says: " Because God is good, we exist" (De Verb. A post. Serm. 13). But the divine goodness needs nothing external for its perfeftion. Nor is it necessary, for all that God wills His own goodness, that He should will the produ6tion of things other than Himself. God wills His own goodness necessarily, but He does not neces- sarily will other things. Therefore the production of creatures is not a debt of necessity to the divine goodness. But, taking justice in the wider sense of the term, there may be said to be justice in the creation of the world, inas- much as it befits the divine goodness.
7. But if we consider the divine plan, according as God has planned it in His understanding and will to bring things into being, from that point of view the produftion of things does proceed from the necessity of the divine plan (B. I, Chap. LXXXIII): for it is impossible for God to have planned the doing of anything, and afterwards not to do it. Thus fulfilment is neces- sarily due to His every plan. But this debt is not sufficient to constitute a claim of justice, properly so called, in the a<5tion of God creating the world: for justice, properly so called, is not of self to self.
Hence it is said: Who hath first ghen to him, and recompense shall be made him? (Rom. xi, 35.) Who hath first given to me, that I may repay him? Job xli, 2.)
a Being whose mental vision extends everywhere; so dial, may be really possible at all. The range of that what God has no idea of, must be blank non- intrinsic impossibilities may extend considerably, be- sense, and impossible as nonsensical. To Hegelians, yond the abstract regions of logic and mathematics, however, God is exhausted in the production, or evo- into the land of concrete physical realities, one reality, lution of the universe: He gives being, and that of ne- if existent, necessarily involving, or necessarily barring, cessity, to all things whatsoever to which He possibly the existence of some other reality. Such necessity, if can give being: nothing realisable, or actualisable, re- such there be, is no limitation of divine power or mains behind, nothing potential. St Thomas meets divine intelligence. God still discerns endless possi- this by insisting that God is infinite, and therefore bilities,and can do whatever He discerns as possible; but inexhaustible; ten thousand such worlds as this would much (hat men take for possibility is rendered on this not exhaust His capacity of production; and over them hypothesis sheer absurdity, — as impossible, let us say, all He would still remain, immeasurably exalted, dis- as a ' spiritual elephant.' We wonder why God does tinct, independent, supreme. not mend matters, as we would mend them, had we There is however something, — we cannot call it His power. Had we His power, we should also have a limitation, but we may call it a condition of divine His intelligence, and discern that there is no riding intelligence and creative power, — a condition less re- out of our troubles on the bacb of spiritual elephants, garded by St Thomas, but forcibly commending itself There is some hint of the matter of this note in to us, upon six centuries longer experience of the Chapp. XXIX, XXX following, prevalence of evil on earth. Fewer combinations, far * Justice does not provide the first occupation, fewer perhaps, than St Thomas thought possible, and but is conversant with the maintenance or trans- our short-sighted impatience might crave for as reme- ference of titles already existent.
94 ogle GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES Hereby is shut out the error of some who have tried to prove that God can do no otherwise than as He does, because He can do no otherwise than as He owes, or ought.
CHAPTER XXIX-How in the Produ&ion of a Creature there may be found a debt of Justice in respeSl of the necessary Sequence of something posterior upon something prior 1 SPEAK here of what is prior, not in order of time merely, but by nature. The debt is not absolute, but conditional, of the form: 4 If this is to be, this must go before/ According to this necessity a triple debt is found in thepro- dudtion of creatures. First, when the conditional proceeds from the whole universe of things to some particular part requisite for the perfe&ion of the universe. Thus, if God willed the universe to be such as it is, it was due that He should make the sun and water and the like, without which the universe cannot be.* Second, when the conditional proceeds from one creature to another. Thus, if God willed man to be, He was obliged to make plants and animals and such like, which man needs to his perfect being: though God has made both the one and the other out of His mere will. Third, when the conditional proceeds from the existence of the individual creature to its parts and properties and accidents, on which the creature depends for its being or perfection. Thus, supposing that God wished to make man, it was due, on this supposition, that He should unite in him soul and body, senses, and other appurtenances, intrinsic and extrinsic. In all these matters, rightly considered, God is not said to be a debtor to the creature, but a debtor to the fulfilment of His own plan.
On these explanations of the meaning of the term 'debt* and 'due,' natural justice is found in the universe both in respect of the creation of things and in respect of their propagation; and therefore God is said to have established and to govern all things justly and reasonably. Thus then is shut out a two- fold error: on the one hand of those who would limit the divine power, saying that God can do only as He does, because so He is bound to do; on the other, of those who say that all things follow on His sheer will, and that no other reason is to be sought or assigned in creation than that God wills it so.
CHAPTER XXX-How Absolute Necessity may have place in Qreation ALTHOUGH all things depend on the will of God as their first cause, and this first cause is not necessitated in its operation except on the supposition of its own purpose, not for that however is absolute neces- sity excluded from creation, nor need we aver that all things are contingent.
i. There are things in creation which simply and absolutely must be. Those things simply and absolutely must be, in which there is no possibility of their not being. Some things are so brought into being by God that there is in their nature a potentiality of not being: which happens from this, that the matter in them is in potentiality to receive another form. Those things then in which either there is no matter, or, if there is any, it is not open to receive another form, have no potentiality of not being: such things then simply and absolutely must be. If it be said that things which are of nothing, # True, but how differently one thinks and speaks, miss it. Still, counting the sun a cosmically little when one has come to regard the Sun as a small star thing, "these little things are great to little man." in the Milky Way! The stellar universe would not 95 95 of themselves tend to nothingness, and thus there is in all creatures a potenti- ality of not being, — it is manifest that such a conclusion does not follow. For things created by God are said to tend to nothingness only in the way in which they are from nothing; and that is only in respe6t of the power of the agent who has created them. Thus then creatures have no potentiality of not being: but there is in the Creator a power of giving them being or of stopping the influx of being to them.* 4. The further a thing is distant from the self-existent, that is, from God, the nigher it is to not being; and the nigher it is to God, the further it is withdrawn from not being. Those things therefore which are nighest to God, and therefore furthest removed from not being, — in order that the hierarchy of being ( ordo rerum ) may be complete, — must be such as to have in them- selves no potentiality of not being, or in other words, their being must be absolutely necessary.
We observe therefore that, considering the universe of creatures as they depend on the first principles of all things, we find that they depend on the will (of God), — not as necessarily arising therefrom, except by an hypothetical, or consequent necessity, as has been explained (Chap. XXVIII). But, com- pared with proximate and created principles,f we find some things having an absolute necessity. There is no absurdity in causes being originally brought into being without any necessity, and yet, once they are posited in being, having such and such an effe6t necessarily following from them. That such natures were produced by God, was voluntary on His part: but that, once established, a certain effeft proceeds from them, is a matter of absolute neces- sity. \ What belongs to a thing by reason of its essential principles, must obtain by absolute necessity in all things.§ CHAPTER XXXI- That it is not necessary for Creatures to have existed from Eternity^ IF either the entire universe or any single creature necessarily exists, this necessity must arise either from the being itself or from some other being. From the being itself it cannot arise: for every being must be from the first being; and what has not being of itself, cannot necessarily exist of itself.
* By " beings in which there is no matter," St as it has my consent to its being. Whatever is bound Thomas meant pure spirits. By " beings in which the and put together may indeed be loosened: but it were matter is not open to receive another form," he meant ill done to undo a work fairly compacted and well the heavenly bodies: if he had written in our time, made. Therefore, made as ye are, ye are not absolutely he might be well taken to mean those primitive atoms beyond death and dissolution: still ye shall never be or molecules, which have been termed " the building dissolved nor meet the doom of death, finding in my stones of the universe." He has in his eye the whole will a tie greater even and more potent than the ties class of natural objects, animate and inanimate, that wherewith your being was originally bound together."
can neither destroy themselves nor ever be destroyed t That is, with physical causes, and broken up by any of the ordinary processes of X Unless the effedt be neutralised by some further nature, but are permanent from age to age, whether effedt, which God may produce either by direction of existing apart or in composition. In the physical order, some natural agency or by special interposition (or of which St Thomas here speaks, the existence of these perhaps abstention) of His own.
beings is "absolutely necessary"; no physical force § Or the thing must cease to be. Sint ut sunt, aut can destroy them. One might say the same of the total non //»/,as was said in another connexion. The interest store of energy in the universe, according to the prin- of this chapter lies in the spectacle of a thirteenth ciple of the 4 conservation of energy.' century writer cautiously and tentatively dealing with St Thomas's acquaintance with Plato was through principles so familiar to us as the permanence of matter theNeo-Platonists; and their favourite Dialogue was and the uniformity of nature. I have omitted much the Tim<tusy the following passage of which {Tim. 41) that brings in mediaeval physics to little profit for our well illustrates his meaning. The Platonic Demiurge time.
is addressing the minor deities whom he has com- II St Thomas's position in these eight chapters, pounded, them and their offspring: "Ye gods, god- XXXI-XXXVIII, is that the existence of creatures born, works of my fatherhood and constructive power, from eternity can neither be proved nor disproved by what has been made by me is indissoluble, so long philosophy. He considers it certain from revelation, 96 GOD THE ORIGIN OF CREATURES But if this supposed necessity arises from another being, that is, from some extrinsic cause, then, we observe, an extrinsic cause is either efficient or final. Now an effe<5t necessarily arising from an efficient cause means that the agent a<5ts of necessity: when the agent-does not aft of necessity, neither is it abso- lutely necessary for the effe6t to arise. But God does not adt under any necessity in the production of creatures (Chap. XXIII). So far therefore as the efficient cause is concerned, there is not any absolute necessity for any creature to be. Neither is there any such necessity in connexion with the final cause. For means to an end receive necessity from their end only in so far as without them the end either cannot be at all, or cannot well be. Now the end proposed to the divine will in the production of things can be no other than God's own goodness, as has been shown (B. I, Chap. LXXV): which goodness depends on creatures neither for its being nor for its well-being (B. I, Chapp. XIII, XXVIII). There is then no absolute necessity for the being of any creature: nor is it necessary to suppose creation always to have existed.* 3. It is not necessary for God to will creation to be at all (B. I, Chap. LXXXI): therefore it is not necessary for God to will creation always to have been.f CHAPTERS XXXII, XXXV-Reasons alleged for the Eternity of the World on the part of God, with Answers to the same ARG. 1. Every agent that is not always in aftion, suffers some change when it comes to a<5t. But God suffers no change, but is ever in a6t in the same way; and from His adtion created things come to be: therefore they always have been.
Reply (Chap. XXXV). There is no need of God suffering any change for fresh effe6ts of His power coming to be. Novelty of cffedt can only indicate change in the agent in so far as it shows novelty of a£tion. Any new adtion in the agent implies some change in the same, at least a change from rest to adtivity. But a fresh effe<St of God's power does not indicate any new adtion in God, since His adtion is His essence (B. I, Chap. XLV).
Arg. 2. The adtion of God is eternal: therefore the things created by God have been from eternity.
Reply. That does not follow. For, as shown above (Chap. XXIII), though God adts voluntarily in creation, yet it does not follow that there need be any adtion on His part intermediate between the adt of His will and the cffedt of the same, as in us the adtion of our motor adtivities is so intermediate. With God to understand and will is to produce; and the effedt produced follows and from revelation only, that creation has not been there is no matter, neither is there ray place, nor any from eternity. This excited the surprise and indigna- marked out extension: but there is an unfulfilled externtion of some, who were confident that their a priori sibility, or absolute space, which is founded upon the arguments, which see in Chap. XXXVIII, proved to immensity of God. In like manner, when as yet creaa demonstration the impossibility of any creation from tures were not, there was no time, as there was no eternity. Against them St Thomas directed one of his motion, nor any body to move. There was only a poten- OpuscuIa,n. xxiii, De MternitateMundi, contra Murmu- tiality of time, founded upon the eternity of God.