CHAPTER IX
THE AGE OF BELIEF
hand, is not dependent on anything outside it for its introduction to our minds, for everything that is known is known either as non-being, or as potential being, or actual being.
If, therefore, non-being can be understood only in terms of Being and potential being in terms of actual being, and if Being moreover designates the pure act of that which is, it follows that Being is that which first enters the human mind and this Being is characterized by the qualities of Pure Act.
It cannot be identified with any particular being, for particular beings are limited and potential. Nor yet is it to be equated with analogous being which has no reality since it does not exist. It follows, therefore, that this Being in question is divine.* }
CHAPTER IX
St. Thomas Aquinas
ALTHOUGH ARISTOTLE, SIEVED THROUGH THE CHRISTIAN
minds and comments of Boethius or Abelard, had not proved unacceptable to the Church, Aristotle, flavored by Muslim commentators, though popular (St. Albert the Great publicly discussed Averroés' doctrine of the intellect in 1256) soon encountered official disapproval. Siger of Brabant, the leader of the Averroists at the University of Paris, maintained, as philosophical truth, that there was only one Intellect, present in all intelligence, to whom was the collective return after death; he maintained too that the world was eternal, continuously and necessarily created by God, who could no more stop creating than He could stop existing, and that this same necessity of His nature, that bound Him, bound our several natures to such an extent that there was no possibility of human free-will. When
* Bonaventura, St., The Franciscan Vision (Burns, Oates & Washbourne).
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challenged as to how these doctrines could be reconciled with the Christian revelation, Siger of Brabant and the other Christian Averroists took the line that what is true philosophically bears no relation to what is true theologically. Revealed truths are not concerned with the same problems as is philosophy. This line is often taken today by Christians who find the truths of science at variance with the Christian Revelation: their reply is that there is separate truth for separate subjects. (The Muslim Averroists were actually in exactly the same fix as Siger of Brabant and the Christian Averroists, for the doctrines of the Koran are as remote from Averroés' philosophy as is the Christian truth.) In 1277 Siger of Brabant's theories were condemned by the Church, among them such statements as "There is no more worth-while occupation in this world than the study of philosophy. The only wise men are philosophers." Aristotle himself came under suspicion: for example, as early as 1215, Robert de Courcon, legate of Pope Innocent III in Paris, forbade the reading of "Master
Aristotle on metaphysics and natural science" by the university students. (Later, Dante rehabilitated both Aristotle and Averroés.) In 1231 Pope Gregory IX set up a commission of three theologians to consider what corrections were necessary to include Aristotle in the Christian fold, and although St. Thomas Aquinas himself was to come under a cloud at one point for his omnivorous acceptance of Aristotle, Aristotle was generally taught and accepted by the middle of the thirteenth century.
St. Albert the Great, born on the banks of the Upper Danube in 1193, was the first medieval thinker of note, not only to grasp the intrinsic value of Aristotle's scientific writings, but also to see clearly the enormous importance of his philosophy for the constitution of the Christian dogmatic system. St. Albert was well born and well educated.
He could read and write by the age of seven, then learned Latin, and read Aesop's Fables, the Sentences of Cato,
Seneca, Aristotle, and Virgil. He kept up a lively interest in the classics, and in his comments late in life on the Kyrie of the Mass, he wrote: "The sublimest wisdom of which the world could boast flourished in Greece. Even as the
THE AGE OF BELIEF
Jews knew God by the Scriptures, so the pagan philosophers knew Him by the natural wisdom of reason, and were debtors to Him for it by their homage." Elsewhere he wrote
"though shorn of the lights of the faith they have none the less spoken in a wonderful manner of the Creator and His creatures. Virtue and vice they knew, and a great number of truths which faith as well as reason announce from on high."
In 1223 St. Albert became a Dominican. "I had already distinguished myself in science when I entered the Order," he wrote. He wrote admirably of animals—spiders, insects, and indeed all animals being especially favorite subjects of study. He taught at Hildesheim, then at Cologne. At that time there were already over 30,000 Dominicans in Europe. In 1244 St. Thomas Aquinas, then aged nineteen, became St. Albert's student, and, when his fellows mocked the "dumb ox" who sat so silent during St. Albert's lectures,
St. Albert prophesied "this dumb ox will fill the world with his bellowing." Sts. Albert and Thomas shared lodgings in the Stolkstrasse in Cologne, and when St. Albert was sent to teach in Paris St. Thomas went with him. In 1248 both were back in Cologne. St. Albert was twice provincial of his order, and was also made Bishop of Ratisbon.
St. Albert taught that the Universal exists in a threefold way: prior to things, in them, and posterior to them. As prior, it is within the divine intelligence; in a thing, as that by which that thing has its own nature; posterior, in the human understanding, which arrives at it by abstraction from things as the necessary and therefore proper object of science. The Universal is of many things in many things, but of all things God is the efficient, formal and final cause.
All earthly things are made of matter and form, and matter is the substratum of all material things. Matter is an entity needing no further determination; it is by reason of its form that a thing is what it is. A thing is educed from matter by the efficient cause, but it never is, and never becomes, that cause. St. Albert thus avoids Siger of Brabant's pantheism, and firmly insists that the substance of any person is his free-will, and that man is wholly responsible for the first movement of sensibility. Against Averroés (for whom mat-
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ter was eternal, tending always to seek the forms it takes, which perish all, while the pure intellect "taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi," like Tennyson's river rolls on for ever), St. Albert maintained that although it could not be philosophically proven or demonstrated that matter was created, it must be accepted as revealed.
The thirteenth century is perhaps, more than any other, the century of outstanding personalities. One of the most outstanding was the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I (lived 1194-1250; emperor 1215-1250) known as the Stupor Mundi, the astonishment of the world, who was himself a scholar, and obtained Aristotle's works from Constantinople.
His correspondence with the Arabic scholar ibn-Sabin has come down to us, and at his court in Sicily there were at least as many Muslims as there were
Christians at the contemporary Moorish and Arabic courts.
Two other great figures of the thirteenth century were St. Francis of Assisi and Pope Innocent III (1161-1216).
The former represented contempt of self and of the earthly city carried to the supreme degree of absolute detachment required by Christian perfection. The latter was the individual, human embodiment of the concept of Christendom, the epitome and the concrete, physical expression of a society, indeed a world, belonging to God and faithful to _ Him. Together they represent the Church penitent and the Church politic. But neither had a philosophic thought in his head. St. Francis and Pope Innocent represent the Church as prayer and as power; St. Bonaventura and St.
Thomas, on the other hand, represent the Church pensive, the Church as thought. St. Bonaventura, moreover, represents the Augustinian tradition within the Church; St.
Thomas the Aristotelian. They complemented each other wonderfully, and were close friends. Both had been asked by the Pope (Gregory X) to compose a Mass for the newly prescribed Feast of Corpus Christi, which is celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. St. Thomas' achievement is well known as one of the most magnificent of all
Masses, filled with exquisite poetry and prayer. When St.
Bonaventura heard it, in his humility he tore up the Mass
THE AGE OF BELIEF
he had himself just composed, judging it unworthy to compete. Some time before he died, St. Thomas himself stopped writing, leaving his greatest work, the Summa Theologica, forever unfinished, because he said it had been granted him to experience such things as made all he had ever written seem to him to be "of straw."
Experience, declared a necessary component of certainty by Roger Bacon, was for Sts. Albert the Great,
Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas a gratuitous gift, obtainable by no effort on our part. The individual could only prepare to receive it, as these three saints did, by a combination of enormous intelligence with hardly less great personal holiness.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of medieval philosophers, and of Catholic theologians, was born in 1225 at the castle of Roccasecca, the son of a Count of Aquino. He studied first at Naples, later, under St. Albert the Great, in Cologne and Paris. In 1256 he became a Master of Theology and taught in Paris and elsewhere from then on, and died on March 7, 1274, at the Abbey of Fossanuova between Naples and Rome. He was on his way to the Council of Lyons.
Of his death his biographer wrote that he was "rather ravished to heaven by the force of his greater love than by that of his illness." Of his achievement a present day
Dominican philosopher, Father Thomas Gilby, has written: "Christian thought henceforth was never to lose the temper of science, nor science the sensibility of matter.
. The entire universe is all of a piece, the most fugitive phenomenon is not a metaphysical outcast: there are tensions, but not contradictions, in the order of being.
Contrasts are struck for the harmony of extremes in a higher principle, not as a prelude to the rejection of one or the blurring of both.
. The systematic exploration of different branches of knowledge is called science, their arrangement into a unity is the work of wisdom, the knowledge of things by their ultimate cause. There are two wisdoms, St. Thomas held, natural and supernatural, the acquired knowledge of things in their highest rational
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causes, and the infused knowledge of things in the revelation of the divine mysteries."
ST. THOMAS WAS AN ARISTOTELIAN, WHOSE ATTITUDE
to truth, however, compelled him to accept also much, in fact most, of the Neo-Platonic and Augustinian tradition. Three years after his death, when the Latin Averroists were condemned in 1277, some of St. Thomas' conclusions, e.g., that the spiritual soul is primarily the substantial form of the body, and that creation does not necessarily require a beginning in time, were also attacked, and St. Albert the Great rushed back from Cologne to Paris once more, this time to defend his pupil. Two
Archbishops of Canterbury, one a Franciscan, John Peckham, the other a Dominican, Robert Kilwardby, also attacked St. Thomas' writings, but these soon won a preeminent place in the Church and all attacks ceased in 1323 when St. Thomas was canonized by the Church. His writings have been regarded as outstandingly orthodox ever since. St. Thomas died before he was fifty; sixty of his authentic books have survived.
St. Thomas' philosophy is based on the premise that knowledge and being are correlative. "In so far as a thing is, it is knowable, and in this resides its ontological truth."
But he is not interested in the problem of whether we are - capable of objective knowledge, or whether, as the idealists would contend, we produce all ideas out of ourselves, and they bear little or no relation to fact. As D. J. B. Hawkins points out in his admirable A Sketch of Medieval
Philosophy, "St. Thomas is completely Aristotelian in finding the whole material of thought in sense-experience.
Thomism is, therefore, a philosophy of experience, but it is not a mere empiricism, which stops short at sense-experience, and refuses to see in the development of thought anything but an elaboration of sensations and images."
When the philosophers William James and Henri Bergson met, on May 28, 1905, there were several instants of silence and then James asked Bergson straightway how he envisaged the problem of religion. It is good to believe, but is the experience of God or of oneself? Is the revela-
THE AGE OF BELIEF
tion, James asked, our own revelation of God to ourselves, or is it the revelation of God to us? This most central of all questions—did God make us or we Him?—-worried St.
Thomas not at all. He presented the Aristotelian view as a mean between two extremes. One is the theory of Democritus, which reduces all knowledge to sensation and imagination, the other is the Platonic outlook, according to which sensation provides no more than the occasion upon which the understanding climbs to contemplate the spiritual world of forms. Aristotle, Aquinas says, finds the happy mean by recognizing that all knowledge is derived from sense experience, but at the same time he asserts that thought has its proper activity, by which it can draw from sense experience the materials of a knowledge which extends beyond the bounds of the world of sense. It is thinking that penetrates through the particular to the universal.
Particulars are, in fact, instances of universals. "In sense experience we are acquainted with red things; by thinking we come to isolate the redness which these things manifest."
This beginning St. Thomas owes to Abelard. But he goes beyond Abelard when he sees the intellect both as active and passive. As passive when it receives its material from sense experience; as active when through the impressions it receives it penetrates "through the unanalyzed superficiality of sensation." St. Thomas did not accept that the active intellect was God, or even a direct manifestation of God. It is a real part of man, an essential part of his make-up, and, once created, although it is sustained by God, and continually assisted by the presence in the soul of God himself, the active intellect, from the moment of its creation, is on its own. It "drees its own weird" as the Scots say, and has all it takes to fulfill of itself and by itself the purpose for which it was created.
The soul is the form of the body, the principle of "bodily structure and organic life, of sensation and thought." But in thinking, the human soul transcends its form and is intrinsically independent of matter.
St. Thomas distinguishes between the notion of being as
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
a principle of identity and as a principle of difference:
{ Being is in itself an identity in difference, while a genuine universal concept is merely an identity which connotes a difference.
That is why there is so close a connection between the notion of being and that of individuality. An excessive realism in the solution of the problem of universals falls before the Aristotelian principle that the individual alone exists in the proper sense of the term. We may now go farther and say that what in the individual corresponds with the universals which it verifies is not the intrinsic ground of its individuality; it is because it is an existent, and precisely through its substantial existence or subsistence, that it is this individual thing. While the principle of individuation of corporeal species is matter, the general principle of individuality is substantial existence or subsistence.
In this way we are led to distinguish between the order of essence and the order of existence. The order of essence represents in abstraction the ramification and interrelation of universal concepts; the order of existence runs parallel with it and lends to it individuality and reality. Existence, therefore, is proportional to essence, to that which exists.
Existence is not a closed generic concept which is specified by the differences of essences; it is in itself different, and must be regarded as greater or less, according to the nature of that which it makes to exist. Here lies the fundamental significance of the analogy of being. Analogy, after all, means proportion, and the analogy of being means that the existence of each thing is proportionate to its essence.
If essence and existence are thus proportionate, there is in every finite thing between its essence and its existence a certain metaphysical tension, which in scholastic language is described as metaphysical composition. While existence realizes essence, essence provides the limits within which existence is circumscribed.* }
'* 4 Sketch of Medieval Philosophy, by D. J. B. Hawkins, copytight 1947 by Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York.
THE AGE OF BELIEF
SINCE THE PRIMARY OBJECT OF THE HUMAN INTELLECT IS
the being of sensible things, St. Thomas insists that we have no direct knowledge of God. He rejects St. Anselm's ontological proof out of hand, and proceeds to demonstrate the existence of God by his Five Ways (the first three of which, as we have seen, he got from Maimonides).
In the Summa Theologica he writes:
{ Third Article: Whether God Exists?
Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word "God" means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world.
Therefore God does not exist.
Obj. 2. Further, it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing
God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature; and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will.
Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: I am Who am (Exod. iti. 14).
I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act.
For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects.
For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand.
Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be
God.
The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause.
In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.
Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is
.the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or one only. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false.
Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.
_ The third way is taken from possibility and necessity, and runs thus. We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, since they are found to be generated, and to corrupt, and consequently, they are possible to be and
THE AGE OF BELIEF
not to be. But it is impossible for these always to exist, for that which is possible not to be at some time is not. Therefore, if everything is possible not to be, then at one time there could have been nothing in existence. Now if this were true, even now there would be nothing in existence, because that which does not exist only begins to exist by something already existing. Therefore, if at one time nothing was in existence, it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist; and thus even now nothing would be in existence—which is absurd. Therefore, not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity. This all men speak of as God.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest, and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum of heat, is the cause of all hot things.
Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so
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as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.* }
SO ST. THOMAS CONCLUDES THAT THE ONE NECESSARY
being is being itself and pure act: ipsum esse, actus purus.
And all finite beings derive from Him, but whether they derive eternally or temporally is known only to Him.
_ But if God is real, is He not the only reality? If I am Who am, as given in Exodus iii. 14, is God's own authentic description of Himself and the most reliable one we have, is true, is not all other reality but the image of His? Are we not, as the Red Queen told Alice in Lewis Carroll's
Through the Looking-Glass, only figures in the Red King's dream, dissolved when he wakes? St. Thomas denies emphatically this position, and dubs Platonist all who "remove from natural things their own actions." Aristotle maintained, and Aquinas cleaves to him here, that although
God can of Himself produce all natural effects, yet by His goodness He willed to give to creatures His resemblance, to the extent that in their turn they can be, and are, causes.
"To deny to creatures creativity is to misunderstand the creator." As M. Etienne Gilson has put it, "a world of secondary efficacious causes alone is worthy of a God whose causality is essentially goodness." God's generosity has endowed the creature with the power to co-operate with Him, in creation as in Redemption. The generosity of the Creator is total, and human history is the "working out of the plan of the creative mind of God," while time is the measure of the duration of that particular plan and the law of the universe is the divine wisdom as it develops its own plan. In man, reason is the faculty by which man apprehends that plan. "In relation to human nature an ac- * Aquinas, Summa Theologica Q. 2 (Reprinted with the permission of Benziger Brothers, Inc. publishers and copyright owners).
THE AGE OF BELIEF
tion is right because it is reasonable," and the highest activity of man's intellect is philosophy, which is wholly ordered to God as its final end.
When St. Thomas speaks as a philosopher, M. Gilson points out, he is careful to proceed only by demonstrations.
"It does not matter if the thesis he is defending appears in the context given it by faith, for he never brings faith, nor expects it brought, into any proof which he considers rationally demonstrable." Where reason is, faith has no place; it is impossible to know and to believe a thing at the same time.
{ Fifth Article: Whether Those Things that Are of Faith Can Be an Object of Science?
Objection 1. It would seem that those things that are of faith can be an object of science. For where science is lacking there is ignorance, since ignorance is the opposite of science. Now we are not in ignorance of those things we have to believe, since ignorance of such things belongs to unbelief, according to I Tim. i. 13: I did it ignorantly in unbelief. Therefore things that are of faith can be an object of science.
Obj. 2. Further, Science is acquired by arguments. Now sacred writers employ arguments to inculcate things that are of faith. Therefore such things can be an object of science.
Obj. 3. Further, Things which are demonstrated are an object of science, since a demonstration is a syllogism that produces science. Now certain matters of faith have been demonstrated by the philosophers, such as the existence and unity of God, and so forth. Therefore things that are of faith can be an object of science.
Obj. 4. Further, Opinion is further from science than faith is, since faith is said to stand between opinion and science. Now opinion and science can, in a way, be about the same object, as is stated in Posterior Analytics i.
Therefore faith and science can be about the same object also.
On the contrary, Gregory says that when a thing is manifest, it is the object, not of faith, but of perception. There=
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
fore things that are of faith are not the object of perception, whereas what is an object of science is the object of perception. Therefore there can be no faith about things which are an object of science.
I answer that, All science is derived from self-evident and therefore seen principles; and so all objects of science must needs be, in a fashion, seen.
Now, as was stated above, it is impossible that one and the same thing should be believed and seen by the same person. Hence it is equally impossible for one and the same thing to be an object of science and of belief for the same person. It may happen, however, that a thing which is an object of vision or science for one, is believed by another; for we hope to see some day what we now believe about the Trinity, according to I Cor. xiii. 12: We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face.
And this vision the angels possess already, so that what we believe, they see. In like manner, it may also happen that what is an object of vision or scientific knowledge for one man, even in the state of a wayfarer, is, for another man, an object of faith, because he does not know it by demonstration. Nevertheless, that which is proposed to be believed equally by all is equally unknown by all as an object of science .
. Consequently, faith and science are not about the same things.
Reply. Obj. 4. As the Philosopher says, science and opinion about the same object can certainly be in different men: yet it is possible for one and the same man to have science and faith about the same thing relatively, i.e., in relation to the object, but not in the same respect. For it is possible for the same person, about one and the same object, to know one thing and to have an opinion about another. On the other hand, in one and the same man, about the same object, and in the same respect, science is incompatible with either opinion or faith, but for different reasons. For science is incompatible with opinion about the same object absolutely, for the reason that science demands that its object should be deemed impossible to be otherwise, whereas it is essential to opinion that its object should be deemed possible to be otherwise. But that
THE AGE OF BELIEF
which is the object of faith, because of the certainty of faith, is also deemed impossible to be otherwise, and the reason why science and faith cannot be about the same object, and in the same respect, is because the object of science is something seen, whereas the object of faith is the unseen.* } IN THE Questiones Disputatae
ST. THOMAS DISCUSSES
both the Trinity and the Creation in order to give the complete Christian answer to the emanationism of Avicenna, who saw creation as the necessitated flux of the many from the one through a series of intermediaries. The Christian answer is creation and procession. In twenty-nine of his texts St. Thomas mentions Avicenna and frequently agrees with him. "As Avicenna said," he often quotes approvingly. For example, he saw no philosophic incompatibility between the eternity of the world and the creation ex nihilo, nor, said St. Thomas, can the noneternity of the world be proved. But where St. Thomas and Avicenna most emphatically part is that St. Thomas absolutely denies necessity in God. For Avicenna, God must create, as a stone must fall, or boiling water evaporate into steam. St.
Thomas, on the contrary, said that though God is a necessary being it by no means followed that what proceeded from Him proceeded of necessity.
"God does not produce creatures from natural necessity as though the power of God were determined to the existence of the creature. God does not act through natural necessity but through will, whence he can make simple things and composite things, things mutable and things immutable. So therefore it should be said from the One first thing the multitude and diversity of creatures proceeds, not on account of the necessity of matter, not on account of a limitation of His power, not on account of goodness, not on account of an obligation of goodness, but from the order of wisdom so that the perfection of the universe might be realized in the diversity of creatures." In other words, God is like a woman knitting a patterned sweater—
* Summa Theologica, Q. 1; from Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2, ed. Anton C. Pegis (Random House). Copyright, 1945, by Random House, Inc.
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she could make the sweater any way she chose, or not make it at all, but she has freely chosen a certain pattern, designed by herself, and she chooses to make her sweater that way and no other, to follow through her own pattern and design.
Another way Avicenna put the question was: Can God do what He does not do? Avicenna held that what God does is the only possible order and that the only order must be the best possible (centuries later, Voltaire in his Candide, a satire, written in 1759, on the optimism of Leibniz, mocked this view and disagreed with Avicenna on this point). Avicenna held, moreover, that everything except
God had in itself a possibility of being and of not being.
As Father G. Smith puts it, "Everything else is stiff and spiky with reality; the possible is thus set over against God, for God wills the possible necessarily." God's action is not limited by any agent, replies St. Thomas, nor is it limited by any recipient. "If we regard the possible as waiting in a sort of pen of possibility ready to be turned out into the pastures of existence, then the only pen is God; and the pen is the uncreated power of God to create, it is not the potency of creatures to be created," Father Smith concludes. In final analysis, it would appear that Avicenna's
God is causative, Aquinas' God is creative. St. Thomas ' denied that this is the best of all possible worlds, even if he agreed with Candide that it was the best of all actual worlds. God is always able to do otherwise, although this universe is the best with respect to things which actually exist. With respect to others which God can think up, this universe is not the best possible.
St. Thomas wrote many purely philosophic books, the commentaries on Boethius, for example, and on the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (On the Divine Names) and on Aristotle. He kept much closer to the latter's text than other commentators had done, and got his friend William of Moerbeke (flourished 1240) to devote himself to revising existing translations and making new ones. He used the Neo-Platonist writer Proclus (410-485) too, in William of Moerbeke's translation, and Avicenna, Avencebrol, Maimonides and Averroés. He was an outstanding
THE AGE OF BELIEF
teacher, and the Summa contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologica both were composed for the benefit of students.
St. Thomas commented in several of his books on the problem of the nunc fluens (now flowing) of time (a modern art critic, Roger Fry, has called it the "only now") and the tunc simul, or tota simul (then simultaneous) of eternity. Here is what he included in the Summa Theologica (Q. 10) on the subject:
{ Obj. 4. Many days cannot occur together, nor can many times exist all at once. But in eternity days and times are in the plural, for it is said, His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity (Mic. v. 2); and also it is said, According to the revelation of the mystery hidden from eternity (Rom. xvi. 25). Therefore eternity is not omnisimultaneous.
Obj. 5. Further, the whole and the perfect are the same thing. Supposing, therefore, that it is whole, it is superfluously described as perfect.
Obj. 6. Further, duration does not imply possession.
But eternity is a kind of duration. Therefore eternity is not possession.
I answer that, As we attain to the knowledge of simple things by way of compound things, so we must reach to the knowledge of eternity by means of time, which is nothing but the numbering of movement by before and after.
For since succession occurs in every movement, and one part comes after another, the fact that we reckon before and after in movement, makes us apprehend time, which is nothing else but the measure of before and after in movement. Now in a thing bereft of movement, which is always the same, there is no before and after. As therefore the idea of time consists in the numbering of before and after in movement, so likewise in the apprehension of the uniformity of what is outside of movement, consists the idea of eternity.
Further, those things are said to be measured by time which have a beginning and an end in time, because in everything which is moved there is a beginning, and there
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
is an end. But as whatever is wholly immutable can have no succession, so it has no beginning, and no end.
Thus eternity is known from two sources: first, because what is eternal is interminable—that is, has no beginning nor end (that is, no term either way); secondly, because eternity has no succession, being simultaneously whole.
Reply Obj. 1. Simple things are usually defined by way of negation; as "a point is that which has no parts."
Yet this is not to be taken as if the negation belonged to their essence, but because our intellect which first apprehends compound things, cannot attain to the knowlege of simple things except by removing the composite.
Reply Obj. 2. What is truly eternal, is not only being, but also living; and life extends to operation, which is not true of being. Now the protraction of duration seems to belong to operation rather than to being; hence time is the numbering of movement.
Reply Obj. 3. Eternity is called whole, not because it has parts, but because it is wanting in nothing.
Reply Obj. 4. As God, although incorporeal, is named in Scripture metaphorically by corporeal names, so eternity though simultaneously whole, is called by names implying time and succession.
Reply Obj. 5. Two things are to be considered in time: time itself, which is successive; and the now of time, which . is imperfect. Hence the expression simultaneously-whole is used to remove the idea of time, and the word perfect is used to exclude the now of time.
Reply Obj. 6. Whatever is possessed, is held firmly and quietly; therefore to designate the immutability and permanence of eternity, we use the word possession. }
BUT, GIVEN TIME AND ETERNITY, IS GOD ETERNAL? ST.
Thomas discusses the problem:
{ Second Article: Whether God Is Eternal?
Objection I. It seems that God is not eternal. For nothing made can be predicated of God. But eternity is a thing made; for Boethius says (De Trin. iv.) that, The now that
THE AGE OF BELIEF
flows away makes time, the now that stands still makes eternity; and Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quast. qu. 28) that God is the author of eternity. Therefore God is not eternal.
Obj. 2. Further, what is before eternity, and after eternity, is not measured by eternity. But, as Aristotle says
(De Caus.), God is before eternity and He is after eternity: for it is written that the Lord shall reign for eternity, and beyond* (Exod. xv. 18). Therefore to be eternal does not belong to God.
Obj. 3. Further, eternity is a kind of measure. But to be measured belongs not to God. Therefore it does not belong to Him to be eternal.
Obj. 4. Further, in eternity there is no present, past, nor future, since it is simultaneously whole; as was said in the preceding article. But words denoting present, past, and future time are applied to God in Scripture. Therefore God is not eternal.
I answer that, The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement, as appears from the preceding article. Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence, as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.
Reply Obj. 1. The now that stands still, is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. As the apprehension of time is caused in us by the fact that we apprehend the flow of the now; so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending the now standing still.
When Augustine says that God is the author of eternity, this is to be understood of participated eternity. For God communicates His eternity to some in the same way as He communicates His immutability. }
AND IS ANYTHING BESIDES GOD ETERNAL? ASKS ST. THOMAS,
and answers:
* Douay,—for ever and ever.
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
{ Necessary means a certain mode of truth: and truth, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. vi), is in the mind.
Therefore in this sense the true and necessary are eternal, because they are in the eternal mind, which is the divine intellect alone; hence it does not follow that anything beside
God is eternal. }
ST. THOMAS THEN PROCEEDS TO THE FOURTH ARTICLE:
{ Whether Eternity Differs from Time?
Objection 1. It seems that eternity does not differ from time. For two measures of duration cannot exist together, unless one is part of the other; for instance two days or two hours cannot be together; nevertheless, we may say that a day and an hour are together, considering an hour as part of a day. But eternity and time occur together, each of which imports a certain measure of duration. Since therefore eternity is not a part of time, forasmuch as eternity exceeds time, and includes it, it seems that time is a part of eternity, and is not a different thing from eternity.
Obj. 2. Further, according to the Philosopher (Physic. iv.), the now of time remains the same in the whole of time.
But the nature of eternity seems to be that it is the same indivisible thing in the whole space of time. Therefore eternity is the now of time. But the now of time is not substantially different from time.
Therefore eternity is not substantially different from time.
Obj. 3. Further, as the measure of the first movement is the measure of every movement, as said in Physic. iv., it thus appears that the measure of the first being is that of every being. But eternity is the measure of the first being— that is, of the divine being. Therefore eternity is the measure of every being. But the being of things corruptible is measured by time. Time therefore is either eternity, or is a part of eternity.
On the contrary, Eternity is simultaneously whole. But time has a before and an after. Therefore time and eternity are not the same thing.
I answer that, It is manifest that time and eternity are not the same. Some have founded this difference on the fact
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that eternity has neither beginning nor an end; whereas time has a beginning and an end. This, however, makes a merely accidental, and not an absolute difference; because, granted that time always was and always will be, according to the idea of those who think the movement of the heavens goes on forever, there would yet remain a difference between eternity and time, as Boethius says (De Consol. v.), arising from the fact that eternity is simultaneously whole; which cannot be applied to time: for eternity is the measure of a permanent being; while time is the measure of movement. Supposing, however, that the aforesaid difference be considered on the part of the things measured, and not as regards the measures, then there is some reason for it, inasmuch as that alone is measured by time which has beginning and end in time. Hence, if the movement of the heavens lasted always, time would not be its measure as regards the whole of its duration, since the infinite is not measurable; but it would be the measure of that part of its revolution which has beginning and end in time.
Another reason for the same can be taken from these measures in themselves, if we consider the end and the beginning as potentialities; because, granted also that time always goes on, yet it is possible to note in time both the beginning and the end, by considering its parts: thus we speak of the beginning and the end of a day, or of a year; which cannot be applied to eternity. Still these differences follow upon the essential and primary differences, that eternity is simultaneously whole, but that time is not so.
Reply Obj. 1. Such a reason would be a valid one if time and eternity were the same kind of measure; but this is seen not to be the case when we consider those things of which the respective measures are time and eternity.
Reply Obj. 2. The now of time is the same as regards its subject in the whole course of time, but it differs in aspect; for inasmuch as time corresponds to movement, its now corresponds to what is movable; and the thing movable has the same one subject in all time, but differs in aspect as being here and there; and such alternation is movement.
Likewise the flow of the now as alternating in aspect, is time. But eternity remains the same according to both sub-