11. Intellectual Creatures (SCG 2,46–101)
Intellectual Creatures (SCG 2,46–101)
AS WE SAW in chapter 9, Aquinas says that in SCG 2 he is going to consider “first, the bringing forth of things into being; second, their distinction; third, the nature of these same things, brought forth and distinct from one another.”1 In SCG 2,6–29 Aquinas deals with the bringing forth of things into being, and in SCG 2,30–45 he deals with distinctions among them. So it remains for him to consider the nature of created things, which is what he starts to do in SCG 2,46–101.
You might think that this stated aim would lead Aquinas immediately to embark on an enormous treatise on the natures of all creatures. You might think, for example, that his readers can now expect extensive discussions from him on geology, chemistry, anatomy, physics, geography, botany, zoology, and so on. Yet in SCG 2,46–101 all that Aquinas talks about is intellective creatures (creaturae intellectuales).2
Why so? For one thing, Aquinas was not a natural scientist, so he was in no position to put on a scientific hat and lecture us in encyclopedic fashion on the business of natural scientists.
Then again, the subject matter of SCC 2 is theological. So in SCG 2,5 Aquinas speaks of himself as dealing with the nature of created things “so far as it is relevant to the truth of faith.”3 Nice though it might be to have an account of the workings of the kidneys of zebras or the structure of the spines and eyes of iguanas, such an account would not, in Aquinas’s view, be relevant to the truth of Christian faith as proclaimed in texts like the Apostles’ Creed. He thinks that the Christian faith proclaims truths to be believed. He also thinks that knowledge in its most advanced form can only be attributed to what has understanding or intelligence.
When turning to things that God has created, therefore, he finds it natural to focus on creatures that have understanding or intelligence. Indeed, he finds it natural to focus on what is involved in being a creature with understanding or intelligence just insofar as it has understanding or intelligence. On the assumption that we are physical human beings with intellectual abilities, an account of what we are could, of course, easily include an account of our various anatomical features and their ways of working. Yet in SCG 2, Aquinas, who certainly accepts that people are intellective beings, is not interested in things like the structure of the human heart or pancreas. He is interested in people as things with understanding or intelligence, things able to know God and to react to him, things produced by God for a special purpose, things that might be thought to reflect God and to be united with God in a particular way.
Yet, I should now note, Aquinas did not believe that people are the only creatures of God with intellect. He believed in the existence of angels, whom he took to be purely immaterial. Hence it is that Aquinas provides a long discussion of angels in Summa Theologiae 1a,50–64. In this he refers to biblical texts that refer to them. He also says that angels lack composition of form and matter; that they can act freely; that each angel amounts to a species in itself; that angels are immortal since, being incorporeal, they cannot die; and that angels can have effects in the physical world. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas presents an account of angels according to which they are more like God than any other creature. As you would expect, he affirms that no angel is such that there is no difference between its existence (esse) and its nature. But he does say that there is no distinction in an angel between individuality (suppositum) and nature. He also says that the knowledge of angels far exceeds that of human beings, that it exists in each angel “all at once” and does not arise from a process of reasoning, that it is not derived from sensory experience, and that it is not something on which angels draw from time to time having formerly come to learn.
So, to repeat, Aquinas thinks that not all intellectual creatures are human beings. In SCG 2,46–101, therefore, he has things to say about angels as well as about people. To start with, however, his discussion of intellectual creatures is highly general and proceeds independently of the belief that, as well as there being people with understanding, there are also angels with understanding. Having raised the question “Why should there be any creatures with intellect?” he goes on to ask “What is it to be something with intellect?” and the discussion draws on what Aquinas thinks we can say about people considered as having intellect.