10.4 Distinction among Creatures (SCG 2,39–45)
10.4 Distinction among Creatures (SCG 2,39–45)
I have now shown Aquinas arguing at length that God exists and that God wills all creatures into being. For Aquinas, God is the answer to the question “How come something rather than nothing?” Yet Aquinas obviously recognizes that God has not just created one thing. The universe is full of different things—not only things that are different numerically within a kind (there are, for example, many different cats) but things that are different with respect to kinds (there are, for example, dogs as well as cats). In short, the created order contains many different things of many different kinds. It contains numerous individuals and numerous kinds of individuals. In that case, however, one might reasonably ask not just “How come something rather than nothing?” but “How come numerical differences and differences in the kinds of things that there are?” After all, if, as Aquinas thinks, God is free to will whatever can be, why is there a world with diversity and difference rather than a world containing no diversity and difference?
This question is partly what Aquinas is concerned with in SCG 2,39–45. In these chapters he honors his promise in SCG 2,5 to consider distinction among creatures once he has spoken about the bringing of creatures into being. Yet in SCG 2,39–45 Aquinas is also concerned to work to the conclusion that it is God alone who is the true first cause of differences between creatures. Aquinas defends this conclusion in SCG 2,45, which I take to be the most important chapter in the section of the SCG I am now discussing.
Before he gets to that chapter, however, Aquinas spends time denying that distinctions between things can be properly accounted for in terms of theories that do not invoke God. So let us see what he has to say on this front.
10.4.1 Distinction Is Not the Result of Chance (SCG 2,39)
You might think that chance or randomness accounts for all variety in the world, and evolutionary biologists certainly invoke the notion of chance or randomness when talking about the evolution of species. That chance accounts for all variety seems hardly plausible since some things come about in predictable ways. It is not, for example, an accident that baby tigers spring from adult ones.27 So it is not a matter of chance that there are more than two tigers. As I say, though, evolutionary theories, which do not claim that all variety arises from chance, do assign a serious role to chance.
That said, however, you will look in vain for any discussion of evolution in SCG 2,39. Aquinas has no notion of evolution in the senses that people have construed it since the time of Charles Darwin (1809–1882). On the other hand one might wonder whether he would be an antievolutionist were he writing today, if only because his philosophical view of God as the creator of everything is neutral when it comes to the value of particular scientific theories. For Aquinas, God makes everything to exist as what it is. How things in the world derive from other things in the world, or how events in the world connect with other events, is not the subject matter of his natural theology. This fundamentally maintains that God operates in every operation and is not one more thing for scientists to get their hands on. More important, though, Aquinas’s discussion of chance in SCG 2,39 is not intended as a prescient refutation of theories of evolution by natural selection. Its aim is to deny that diversity is derived from chance. And one reason Aquinas thinks that it does not so derive is that he takes all creatures to spring from God’s eternal will, which he certainly does not believe to be a random process or something coming about by chance. As he writes in SCG 2,39:
The form of any thing proceeding from an intellectual and voluntary agent is intended by that agent. But, as we have seen [see SCG 2,23 and 24], the universe of creatures has as its author God, who is a voluntary and intellectual agent. Nor can there be any defect in his power so that he might fail in accomplishing his intention; for, as we proved in Book 1 of this work, his power is infinite [see SCG 1,43]. It therefore follows of necessity that the form of the universe is intended and willed by God, and, for that reason it is not the result of chance. For it is things outside the scope of the agent’s intention that we say are fortuitous. Now the form of the universe consists in the distinction and order of its parts. The distinction of things, therefore, is not the result of chance.28
10.4.2 Is Matter the First Cause of the Distinction of Things? (SCG 2,40)
As I have said, Aquinas has a notion of matter that takes it to be the potentiality for change that things in the world have. Matter, for Aquinas, is what things that can change must have, though it is not a substance and lacks form (since it is open to receiving different forms). But could matter, in this sense, be the first cause of distinction between things? Aquinas thinks that it cannot since it is form, not matter, that accounts for distinction. Diverse things in the world have matter, he agrees. But, he says, what they are, as the different kinds of things that they are, is not what they are because they have matter. Their “whatness” is due to their form or forms, and it is also, in some cases, due to the forms of agents who act on things. Or, as Aquinas says, “It is by their forms that things are distinguished into species. Therefore, it is not in the diversity of matter that the first cause of the distinction of things is to be found.”29
10.4.3 Does Diversity Derive from Different Agents? (SCG 2,41)
Could it be that diversity in the world is primarily caused by a diversity of things? In SCG 2,41 Aquinas argues that it cannot. Among other things, he makes the obvious point that we cannot account for diversity in things by noting that there are things that are themselves diverse. He writes:
The first cause of the distinction of things cannot be things whose distinction from one another itself is caused. Yet, if we consider several agents of the same order, their distinction from one another must necessarily have a cause; for their being itself is caused, since, as we have shown [see SCG 2,15], all beings are from one first being. But we have just proved that the cause of a thing’s being, and of its distinction from other things, is the same [see SCG 2,24]. Diversity of agents, therefore, cannot possibly be the first cause of the distinction among things.30
In SCG 2,41, however, Aquinas has some fairly precise targets at which he aims when denying that differences in the created order derive from different things. For he knows that some have claimed that there is a good cause for good things and a bad cause for bad things. He is aware that it has been said that “all good things proceed from a good principle and evils from an evil principle.”31 Aquinas takes this line of thinking to have been defended by certain ancient philosophers. He alludes, for example, to Empedocles (c. 495–430 B.C.), who taught that all things in nature are moved by two opposing causes: Love and Strife. Aquinas also thinks that, since the rise of Christianity, the notion of there being two opposing principles behind things in the world was especially championed by the Manicheans.32 So in SCG 2,41 Aquinas comments critically on there being a good principle (first cause) of what is good and a bad principle of what is bad.
He argues that there cannot be one first principle of all evils since such a thing would be evil by essence and since nothing can be evil by essence because evil amounts to privation of some kind in what is good to start with (see SCG 1,39). He writes: “Everything that is must necessarily be good in so far as it is a being. … It is, therefore, impossible for the distinction among things to proceed from two contrary principles, the one good, the other evil.”33 Aquinas does not mean that everything that exists is entirely good. Indeed, he thinks that many things are bad or defective in various ways. Yet he also thinks that, in order to be a bad such and such or a defective such and such, something has to succeed in being what it takes to exist as the kind of thing that it is. It is in this sense that he holds that everything is good insofar as it has being. So he maintains that the very being of something (what it is essentially) cannot consist only of badness.
In SCG 2,41 Aquinas goes on to make these points:
1. If agents act insofar as they have goodness to some extent, something evil of itself could never be an agent. So, “every agent, as such, is good,” and nothing can be the first principle of evils if it is evil of itself or by nature.34
2. Since evil amounts to nonbeing, and since efficient causes produce what reflects them, there cannot be an efficient cause of nonbeing. “No cause that is of itself active in character can be assigned to evil as such. Evils cannot, then, be referred to one first cause that is of itself the cause of all evils.”35
3. Something that comes about without being aimed at by anyone or anything comes about accidentally. Since all agents aim at what is good, therefore, evil can only arise in their effects without being aimed at. “Evil, therefore, has no essential cause, but occurs accidentally in the effects of causes. Hence, there is no question of maintaining the existence of one first principle of all evils.”36
4. We have no reason to explain the difference between good and evil in things with reference to contrary agents (agents that, though different, might both exist) since contrary agents have contrary actions and since “contrary principles are not to be attributed to things produced by one action.”37 Yet good and evil are produced by the same action.38
5. Something lacking being entirely is neither good nor evil, while whatever has being is somehow good. So “a thing must be evil so far as it is a non-being.”39 Therefore, what is evil as such is deprived of being and cannot be an active agent cause in the coming about of what is evil or bad.
10.4.4 The First Cause of the Distinction in Things Is Not the World of Secondary Agents (SCG 2,42)
In SCG 2,42 Aquinas rejects a line of thinking that can be represented as follows.
1. Since God is one and simple, he produces just one effect.
2. This effect is not equal to God when it comes to simplicity, but it can produce differences of some kind.
3. From this scenario a series of causes results that represents degrees of falling away from divine simplicity, and diversity in things derives from the activity of causes other than God.
Aquinas seems to think that something like this was the view of Avicenna.40 Whether it was or was not, however, Aquinas rejects it for several reasons.
For example, he says, God’s power is not limited to producing only one effect (see SCG 2,22), and this conclusion does not contradict the teaching that God is entirely simple. So “it is not necessary to say that because God is one and absolutely simple, no multiplicity can proceed from him unless it be through the mediation of certain things lacking in the simplicity proper to himself.”41 Again, says Aquinas: “It was shown above [see SCG 2,21] that God alone can create” and that all that is not God has to derive from God and not anything else.42
With SCG 2,43 and 44 we find Aquinas rejecting some rather arcane and implausible views over which I do not intend to linger. Just for the record, though, these views are (1) that God created matter, but an angel gave it different forms, and (2) that God made all spiritual and rational creatures equal; some of these fell away from God; this led God, out of justice, to establish divergent grades of spiritual substances and different grades among corporeal substances.43 With respect to the first view, Aquinas, among other things, argues (1) that there are beings that cannot have been formed out of matter (here he is thinking of heavenly bodies), and (2) that to be is to have form, implying that, as cause of all that has being, God is the first cause of all forms. With respect to the second view, Aquinas maintains that diversity among creatures has to derive not from choices made by creatures but from the intention of the first cause willing the great good of a universe consisting of different things. Aquinas recognizes that Origen’s theory, as reported in SCG 2,44, was offered by him since he thought that diversity in things must, if justice is to be preserved, be connected, somehow, to diversity of merit. But he goes on to say:
Origen seems not to have taken into consideration the fact that when we give something, not in payment of a debt, but as a free gift, it is not contrary to justice if we give unequal things, without having weighed the difference of merits; although payment is due to those who merit. But, as we have shown above [see SCG 2,28], God brought things into being, not because He was in any way obliged to do so, but out of pure generosity. Therefore, the diversity of creatures does not presuppose diversity of merit.44
10.4.6 The True First Cause of the Distinction of Things (SCG 2,45)
So what is the true first cause of the distinction among things? Obviously, Aquinas thinks that this is God, and he argues to this effect in SCG 2,45, to which I referred above. He concludes the chapter by saying: “The diversity and inequality in created things are not the result of chance, nor of a diversity of matter, nor of the intervention of certain causes or merits, but of the intention of God himself, who wills to give the creature such perfection as it is possible to have.”45 Given his view of God as developed previously in SCG 1 and 2, Aquinas surely has to reach such a conclusion.