11.1 Why Intellectual Creatures? (SCG 2,46)
11.1 Why Intellectual Creatures? (SCG 2,46)
From what I have shown him saying so far in the SCG, Aquinas cannot possibly think that God is compelled to create creatures with intellect. But he does think that there being such creatures would allow God to show forth his goodness more than he would have been able to do had he not created things with understanding. For one thing, he believes, if knowledge and will exist in God, then a created order containing things with knowledge and will is bound to reflect what God is more than a universe containing nothing with knowledge and will. Again, for Aquinas, God’s act of creating, though uncompelled, is, so to speak, revelatory; it declares what God is (as Psalm 19:1 puts it). Yet for there to be anything you might call “revelation,” there has to be something able to recognize it for what it is, which would seem to suggest that if God is to show himself forth or to declare himself to best effect, then there will have to be intellects able to recognize that he is doing this.
So Aquinas thinks that God’s showing forth of his goodness to best effect requires that there should be creatures with intellect. He writes:
The only thing that moves God to produce creatures is his own goodness, which he wished to communicate to other things by likening them to himself, as was shown in Book 1 of this work. Now the likeness of one thing is found in another thing in two ways: first, as regards natural being—the likeness of heat produced by fire is in the thing heated by fire; second, cognitively, as the likeness of fire is in sight or touch. Hence, that the likeness of God might exist in things perfectly, in the ways possible, it was necessary that the divine goodness be communicated to things by likeness not only in existing, but also knowing. But only an intellect is capable of knowing the divine goodness. Accordingly, it was necessary that there should be intellectual creatures.4
Aquinas cannot here mean that intellectual creatures cannot but exist absolutely speaking, for he has already denied that God wills any creatures to exist by absolute necessity (see SCG 2,23). What he is saying is that if God’s likeness is to exist in created things as perfectly as is possible, then it will exist in what has intellect since likeness “only in existing” is less perfect than likeness in understanding. Or, as Aquinas also writes:
It is according to the form of the effect pre-existing in the agent that the effect attains likeness to the agent, for an agent produces its like with respect to the form by which it acts. Now, in some cases the form of the agent is received in the effect according to the same mode of being that it has in the agent; for the form of fire has the same mode of being as the form of the generating fire. But in other cases the form of the agent is received in the effect according to another mode of being; the form of the house that exists in an intelligible manner in the builder’s mind is received, in a material mode, in the house that exists outside the mind. And the former likeness clearly is more perfect than the latter. Now, the perfection of the universe of creatures consists in its likeness to God, just as the perfection of any effect whatever consists in its likeness to its efficient cause. Therefore, the highest perfection of the universe requires not only the second mode in which the creature is likened to God, but also the first, as far as possible. But the form through which God produces the creature is an intelligible form in Him, since, as we have shown above [see SCG 2,23 and 24], God is an intellectual agent. Therefore, the highest perfection of the universe demands the existence of some creatures in which the form of the divine intellect is represented according to intelligible being; that is to say, it requires the existence of creatures of an intellectual nature.5
The two arguments I have just quoted from SCG 2,46 are distinct arguments. Yet they are bound together by the idea that God cannot show himself forth in the created order, or be reflected in it as well as is possible, unless he creates creatures with intellect. In this sense, Aquinas thinks of creation as an act of revelation requiring things able to receive it as such.6