Chapter 8. God’s Will, Life, and Blessedness (SCG 1,72–102)
CHAPTER 8. GOD’S WILL, LIFE, AND BLESSEDNESS (SCG 1,72–102)
1. Herbert McCabe, On Aquinas (London: Continuum, 2008), 79.
2. Aquinas distinguishes between what he refers to as actus hominis (an act of a human being) and actus humanus (a human action). By the latter he means an action deliberately intended and based on reflection of some kind, such as feeding one’s cat because one knows that it is hungry. By the former he means a bit of bodily behavior that we go through without thinking it out, such as stroking one’s chin when engrossed in conversation. If I engage in actus humanus, thinks Aquinas, then I can explain why I did what I did. But, Aquinas holds, I might not even have noticed that I have engaged in actus hominis. The distinction seems to be a reasonable one. See Summa Theologiae 1a2ae,1,1.
3. As I have noted, Aquinas thinks that nonthinking things can be said to desire or tend to certain goods, but he does not think of them as desiring or tending on the basis of knowledge or reflection on knowledge.
4. I quote from Aquinas: “Summa Theologiae,” Questions on God, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 208. For Aristotle on life, see De Anima 3,7,431a6 and 1,4,408b6.
5. A classic text of Aquinas discussing the beatific vision is Summa Theologiae 1a,12, which consists of thirteen articles.
6. ND, 1, 239 [2].
7. ND, 1, 240 [3].
8. ND, 1, 241 [4].
9. I take it that, when Aquinas speaks of powers as related to and measured by their principal objects, he is thinking that, for example, the power of sight is related to visible objects and is judged to be weak or strong in relation to them. What he goes on to say indicates that he thinks that will in God, which he takes to be a power in God, has to be principally directed to the being and goodness of God.
10. ND, 1, 247 [7].
11. ND, 1, 250 [1].
12. ND, 1, 250 [3].
13. ND, 1, 251 [5]. Here Aquinas seems to mean that the many numbers that there are stand in relation to being one or indivisible.
14. ND, 1, 257 [2].
15. ND, 1, 258 [4].
16. ND, 1, 259 [7].
17. ND, 1, 265 [3].
18. ND, 1, 266 [2].
19. ND, 1, 268 [2].
20. ND, 1, 269 [4].
21. ND, 1, 270 [3].
22. Aquinas distinguishes between delight, as possession of a present good, and joy as a resting of the will when it comes to good that is not presently possessed. He draws attention to this distinction toward the end of SCG 1,90 while saying that God delights in the goodness that he is, but takes joy “both in himself and in other things” (ND, 1, 277 [7]). In SCG 1,90, as well as in SCG 1,91, Aquinas sometimes seems to treat “joy” and “delight” as virtually synonymous.
23. ND, 1, 276 [4].
24. ND, 1, 276 [6].
25. ND, 1, 277 [2 and 3].
26. ND, 1, 280 [12]. Aquinas thinks that when we experience passion we are literally moved by what is different from us, and, as I have shown, he does not think that God is literally moved by anything different from himself.
27. See Summa Theologiae 1a2ae,49–67.
28. ND, 1, 282 [1].
29. See ND, 1, 285 [1].
30. ND, 1, 287 [8]. Curiously, in SCG 1,93 Aquinas does not spell out why God can be said to have the virtue of magnificence. I presume that this is because he takes magnificence to be a kind of liberality, for which he does give reason for attributing to God in SCG 1,93. For Aquinas on magnificence, see Summa Theologiae 2a2ae,134,1–3.
31. ND, 1, 290 [1].
32. ND, 1, 292 [2].
33. ND, 1, 292 [3].
34. ND, 1, 293 [8].
35. ND, 1, 294 [3].
36. ND, 1, 294 [3].
37. ND, 1, 295 [4].
38. ND, 1, 296 [2].
39. ND, 1, 297 [5].
40. ND, 1, 301 [2].
41. ND, 1, 304 [9].
42. For a defense of this line of argument, see chapter 7 of Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in “Summa Contra Gentiles” 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). For a polite and cogent criticism of Kretzmann, see John F. Wippel, “Norman Kretzmann on Aquinas’s Attribution of Will and of Freedom to Create to God,” Religious Studies 39 (2003).
43. ND, 1, 152 [5].
44. ND, 2, 30 [5].