12. Agents, Ends, Evil, and Good (SCG 3,1–15)
Agents, Ends, Evil, and Good (SCG 3,1–15)
CHAPTER 1 OF SCG 3 amounts to a taking stock and a looking forward. First, Aquinas reminds us that he has previously dealt with God as “possessing the full perfection of the whole of being” and as being “the universal maker of the whole of being.”1 Then Aquinas repeats that God acts with will, and he goes on to note that things produced through the will of an agent are “directed to an end by the agent.”2 So, says Aquinas, God is the “Ruler of all beings” and “as he is perfect in being and causing, so also is he perfect in ruling.”3 Since there are creatures of different kinds, however, Aquinas recognizes that God’s ruling or governance of creatures will be shown forth in different ways: that it will be one thing in creatures with understanding and something else in creatures that lack understanding. God’s governing of creatures, God’s providence, starts from God, however, and it is this governing that Aquinas wishes to focus on in SCG 3. Or, as he puts the point himself:
Since we have treated of the perfection of the divine nature in Book One, and of the perfection of his power inasmuch as he is the Maker and Lord of all things in Book Two, there remains to be treated in this third Book his perfect authority or dignity, inasmuch as he is the End and Ruler of all things. So, this will be our order of procedure: first, we shall treat of God, according as he is the end of all things [see SCG 3,1–63]; second, of his universal rule, according as he governs every creature [see SCG 3,64–110]; third, of his particular rule, according as he governs creatures possessed of understanding [see SCG 3,111–163].4