Thomas Aquinas, Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas: The Principles of Nature, On Being and Essence, On the Virtues in General, and On Free Choice, trans. Robert P. Goodwin
The Library of Liberal Arts Press, Inc, 1965, 162 pgs.
Summary: Four basic, short, and fundamental works of Thomas of Aquinas (c. 1225-1274). Thomas in many ways developed the current Roman Catholic explanation of their practice and continues to frame conservative and moderate papal theologians’ thought. Thomas’ influence on Protestant and Reformed thought remains significant.
Thomas’ main effort was to bring the defense of current religious practice within the forms of Aristotelian insight. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, and a natural and speculative philosopher. His work influenced all subsequent academic theology and philosophy in the West.
The translator and editor Robert P. Goodwin provides a competent introduction to Thomas’ life and thought. Further, he reduced the complexity of On the Virtues in General and On Free Choice by removing Thomas’ collection and discussion of past authorities, including I assume Scripture references. The Principles of Nature and On Being and Essence are monographs on the stated topic.
Goodwin summarizes what he finds as the most fundamental aspect of Thomas’ thought on page xv.
Under the influence of some earlier thinkers, especially the Arabian Avincenna (980-1037) and William of Auvergne (1180-1249), and under the suggestion of God’s “description” of Himself—“I am who am [sic]” (Exodus 3:14)—St. Thomas contended that the key factor of any reality as a reality was its existence. . . . For him every being possesses a real principle in virtue of which it is. By contrast to so many others, St. Thomas maintained that a being is not a being in virtue of its matter, or a being in virtue of what it is, that is its essence. The principle in virtue of which something is a being was called esse, the act of existing.
He also notes that by moving the fundamental of existence to the act he modifies Aristotle who places it in form.
The Principles of Nature
Thomas collates Aristotle’s different comments and work into a single monograph on the principles and causes. He notes the commentaries of Avverroes (1126-1198) and Avicenna (980-1037) on Aristotle. There are citations to On Animals, Metaphysics, Physics, On Generation and Corruption, and On the Soul. Thomas does not interact with Scripture.
Thomas here argues that there are two kinds of being—being in potency and being in act. Being in act exists without qualification while potency’s existence is qualified.
Things that are in potency can exist in two ways: accidentally as a subject of matter (the white in a man) called matter in which and substantially matter from which (sperm combined with an oocyte becomes a man).
The type of matter that is only potency is prime matter, because it can become anything. Prime matter differentiated with a form is the substance of a thing. Those things which are not necessary to the thing as accidents are the subject. Without form the thing does not exist, but subject does not control the existence of the substance.
A form is defined as the action of particular existence; so that the form of the substance is the substantial form (ex. soul of man). While the form of the accident is accidental form (the man is white).
Generation of thing is a movement of form. And so the potency of sperm and the oocyte generate a man. We may also speak of the generation of an accident, but in a qualified way as the man becomes white does not generate the man, but whiteness in the man.
Conversely corruption corresponds with generation: simple corruption is the destruction of the substance. Qualified corruption is the destruction of the accident.
For generation to occur, matter with potency, privation, and form are needed. A lump of bronze has within it both the potential to be a statue and the privation of the statue form. By adding the form the bronze becomes the statue and the privation is removed.
The bronze has the substantial form of bronzness, but it is generated into a statue by the additional form of statue which is an artificial form. “[F]or art works only on what is already constituted as existing by nature” (10).
Nature then has three principles: “matter, form, and privation” (Ibid). Privation is an accident, because it does not belong to matter or form, but is rather a lack.
Accidents are then necessary and non-necessary: risibility [ability to laugh] is necessary to man while whiteness is not. Privation is a necessary accident, because all matter can exist in a different form, and thus privation is necessary for generation.
Because negation can be attributed to anything even non-entities, negation is not a thing or principle; the principle is privation and privation is a lack of perfection in a thing intended to have it. So blindness is negation in rocks, but a privation in man.
The only matter that exists without form but with privation is prime matter.
Knowledge comes to humanity only through the form as attached to matter, and so our knowledge of prime matter then comes from extracting a universal from the observed composite. Properly speaking all differentiated things exist fundamentally as prime matter. Yet prime matter “does not exist in act, since existing in act occurs only in forms, but exists only in potency. Hence whatever exists in act cannot be called prime matter” (14).
The three principles—matter, privation, and form—cannot generate; the form of statue does not create an act of generation, nor can matter itself. The agent of generation is then a cause, specifically the efficient or moving cause.
Aristotle argued then that the fourth principle must be what “was intended by the agent” (15) and this is the end. Agents are divided into two categories—determined and voluntary. Voluntary agents function as both determined agents (displacing air) and voluntary agents (clapping). The intention of natural agents is “their inclination toward something.”
A “cause is said to be that from whose existing another follows” (17). And there are four causes or elements—material, efficient, formal, and final.
Material—[change in the material of the thing]
Efficient/moving—[things apart from the thing being changed or moved]
Formal—[change in the shape, arrangement, appearance of the thing]
Final—[the end towards which change is directed]
The cause effects the elements of the thing which is “an immanent, specifically irreducible entity of which a thing is primarily composed” (17). Elemental matter cannot be destroyed. So consuming bread does not put bread into the blood, but the elements are placed in the blood while the bread is destroyed.
A single object or event may have multiple causes, and cause may also function as contraries. A pilot can both be the cause of the sinking and safety of his ship.
The complexity of causation also includes the same thing being a cause and being caused: “Hence the end is the cause of the causality of the efficient cause. Similarly, it makes the matter be matter, and form be form, since matter receives a form only for some end, and a form prefects matter only for an end” (19)
Causes exist prior to the thing caused. And yet the priority of the cause takes two forms. “a thing can be called prior and posterior, and a cause can be called caused, with respect to the same thing. For thing can be called prior to another in generation and in time, or in substance and completeness” (20).
Necessity can be absolute or conditional. Necessity is linked to efficient and material causes in generation requiring the outcome. Thus, “death stems from matter—that is, from the disposition of composing contraries; therefore it is said to be absolute because there is no impediment to it” (21). The conception of a man is necessary for the birth of a man and yet this is conditional.
Ends are of two types—generation and “the end of the thing generated.” So the knife is generated and generation is an end, but the purpose of the knife is cutting.
“Being is not a genus, however, since it is predicated, not univocally, but analogously” (26). To understand how this relates to the “unity and diversity within causes,” we must note that “something can be predicated of many things in three ways: univocally, equivocally, and analogously” (Ibid).
When something has the same name and nature as in animal in reference to man and dog, it is univocal. It is equivocal in reference to two things of disparate nature: the dog (animal) and the Dog (constellation)
“An analogous predication occurs when something is predicated of several things which have diverse natures, but which are related to some one thing” (27). So we speak of a healthy diet, a healthy horse, healthy urine. “For healthy is predicated of urine as a sign of health; of a body, as of its subject; or medicine, as of its cause. Nevertheless, each of these is related to the one end, health” (Ibid).
On Being and Essence
Thomas brings together his modification to Aristotle’s understanding of being into a single monograph. He interacts again with Avicenna and Averroes, but also Boethius (cf. review) on universals. He comments on Aristotle’s, Posterior Analytics, Metaphysics, On the Heavens, Physics, Topics, On the Soul, History of Animals, and Parts of Animals.
The vocabulary is foreign enough to require some outside help:
Richard Muller shall assists us in defining our terms:
Genus: genus; viz., either a number of individuals things identified as a group by means of a common concept or universal, or the universal itself as predicated of a group of individual things. In the former view, the universal is merely an abstraction; in the latter, it exists either in the thing or prior to the thing. The ideas of genus must be further clarified as indicating a universal that does not exhaustively express or describe the essence, or quidditas [whatness of a thing] of the individuals in the group. Thus, human beings, horses, and snails all belong to the genus of animal. By way of contrast, species refers to individuals in a group or to the universal predicated of the group in such a way as to express the essence of those individuals fully or exhaustively. The “man” as a species indicates all humans beings as rational, intellectual animals and therefore distinct from horses and snails. (s.v. genus, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms).
Being can be spoken of in two senses according to Aristotle: those things divided up into the ten genera and the truth of a proposition.
The truth of a proposition or that about which an “affirmative proposition can be formed, even if it posits nothing in reality.” In this sense we can speak of privations and negations as things—blindness, zero, darkness. These things have no positive essence.
The ten genera [substance, quantity, quality, relatives, somewhere, sometime, being in a position, having, acting, and being acted upon] make up the essence of the thing. And “‘essence’ is used inasmuch as it designates that through which and in which a being has the act of existing” (36).
Accidents have essences in a qualified way, but particularly simple substances have the clearest essence. Composite substances are less noble and have essences but they are divisible. “For simple substances are the cause of composite ones—at least the first substance, God, is” (36).
Matter and form as separate things cannot be the essence, because “a thing is so determined by that by which it is in act.”
He then notes as an aside that “the definition of natural substances contains not only form, but also matter; otherwise there would be no difference between definitions in physics and mathematics” (37).
Thomas then goes on to explain the relationship between matter and genus; this is related to abstracting to or from an individual to the universal with precision: when we think of Obama as a human being we are thinking of him with precision, but when we think him as a skinny, tall, African-American, we are thinking of him in less and less precise abstraction.
The basic issue, as I understand it is: if we think of Obama as he is different from all other men, he has a specific Obama essence different than other men; yet if we think of him as similar to all other men he has an essence that is universally shared.
Thus we can think of form as human—shared by all men, and form as differentiated Obama as Obama. And it’s the same with essence and differentiated matter (differentiated in genus and species).
Thus there appears to be an animal form, an animal-donkey form, and an animal-donkey-owned by Balaam form. A precise essence has the greatest abstraction and the least abstract is therefore the most unique essence—animal-man-Obama.
Thomas then moves on to consider if genus, species, etc. exits in individuals. And this he rejects. He also rejects that these ideas exist independently apart from the individual as Plato held. And instead argues that the categories exist within the mind but have references to real things abstracted from individual examples.
Thomas’ view comes to be called the conceptualist; because the thing conceptualized—form, genus, species—is real but it does not exist independently of the observed in the individual example.
Or as he writes, “Predication is something which is accomplished by the action of the intellect composing and dividing and has for its foundation in the real thing itself the unity of those things one of which is said of the other” (50).
He now moves on to consider how “essence is found in separated substances, namely, the soul, the intelligences [angels], and the First Cause” (51).
“Hence, [the soul’s] possible intellect is related to intelligible form as prime matter, which holds the lowest grade among sensible things, is related to sensible forms, as the Commentator say in his commentary on the third book of the De Animia. Accordingly, the Philosopher compares it to a writing tablet on which nothing is written, because it has a greater degree of potency than other intelligible substances. The human soul, then, is so near to material things that the material things is drawn to participate in its act of existing; thus from the body and soul there results one act of existing in one composite, although the act of existing, insofar as it is the soul’s does not depend upon the body” (57).
There are three modes of existence which have been discussed—in things without life, things with life, and things with intelligence (men corporeal, angels incorporeal). Thomas now turns to God and suggests that God is “Whose essence is its very act of existing” (59). . . . “The act of existing which God is is such that no addition can be made to it. Hence, by its purity, His act of existing is distinct from every other of existing” (Ibid). . . . “Indeed, God possesses the perfections which are in all genera, because of which He is said to be perfect without qualification, as the Philosopher and the Commentator state in the fifth book of the Metaphysics [v. 16, 1021b30].
On the Virtues in General
Thomas defines virtue: “The name ‘virtue’ indicates the perfection of a power, and hence the Philosopher [Aristotle] states in the first book of On Heaven and Earth that virtue is the ultimate perfection of potency” (75)
Virtue then is the use of an active potency within a human being for some perfection. It is not a passive capacity in the sense that paper has the capacity to take ink, but it is an active use of an existing potency.
Potency “are passive only which act only when moved by others” (76). So the eye is a passive potency because it cannot operate for its end without light and an object. The reasonable potencies must cooperate actively in their perfection or they are not reasonable (77).
Further, these potencies to be perfected must reach three aspects described by Aristotle: “uniformity in operation,” “preformed readily,” and “operation must be completed pleasurably” (77-78). Thus completed action is a virtuous habit.
This leads to difficulty of contradicting a portion of Augustine’s definition of virtue: “virtue is a good quality of the mind by which one lives rightly, which no one uses badly, and God produces in us without us” (78).
Augustine has essentially defined all virtue as passive in that they are caused by the work of God within us making us the secondary cause of our action.
Thomas handles this by carving out distinctions among the virtues--moral, intellectual, theological, and acquired—are all active virtues, but there is “infused virtue” which is passive as described by Augustine.
Infused virtues are necessary because humanity has two ends: “man’s good is twofold: one good is proportioned to his nature, and another exceeds the faculty of his nature” (100).
Thus, we have virtues which are perfected to make us more natural, and then we have supernatural good or end that requires God’s activity: “the rational soul, which is caused immediately by God, so exceeds the capacity of matter that corporal matter is not totally capable of confining it” (Ibid). “This occurs with none of the other forms, which are caused by natural agents” (101).
Thomas later must turn and explain why Augustine is wrong and he has two essential disagreements with him: the first, on the issue of anthropology.
They hold that forms are capable of change just as substances are. [Note to Augustine, De Genesis ad Litteram, 6.6]. Wherefore, not finding that whence forms are generated, they posit them either as created or as pre-existing in matter.
If I grasp this correctly, Augustine thought that a radical shift had occurred at the Fall changing what Thomas refers to as the form of humanity. Thomas doesn’t think the form can change because it springs from the soul. Augustine sees a change to the actual potency of man as he is then Thomas does. (The citation to Genesis ad Litteram is to an extremely obscure section of Augustine on a staggered creation of humanity and is provided by the editor. But it does point to Augustine seeing humanity as participating in multiple creations and not a single creational act.)
For Augustine, a sinner can love himself and to some degree his neighbor but hate God. For him to love God requires that God add love to him or provide him the potency to love. And to this Thomas responds:
The Philosopher disproves this, however, in Book Four of the Physics. For when something becomes more curved, something does not become curved which was previously not curved. Rather, the whole thing becomes more curved. It is impossible to suppose this in regard to spiritual qualities whose subject is the soul, or part of the soul. (104).
A man loves God and in loving God increases his activity of love, so that the whole is more “curved.” So man must not merely have the internal structures necessary for loving—will, memory, appetites, intellect—but he must have the actual power.
Thomas steps further away from the historical position of the church by removing the necessity of the indwelling Spirit of God for Godward love to exist:
This position would indeed have some merit, if charity were a certain substance having an act of existing apart from substance. Hence, the author of Sentence, [Peter Lombard, cf. review] thinking charity to be a certain substance, namely, the Holy Spirit Himself, seems, not unreasonably, to have held this type of increase” (Ibid).
Humanity then has a natural love for God. This love is insufficient for salvation, and so God comes and infuses those who are naturally loving him with greater charity:
For a man doing what he can prepares himself to receive charity from God. Our later acts can be meritorious with respect to the growth of charity because they presuppose charity, which is the principle of merit. But no one can merit without obtaining charity from the beginning, because merit cannot exist without charity. Therefore we say that charity grows with intensity (107).
On Free Choice
Thomas holds to a conditional libertarian free. By libertarian is meant choosing between good and evil without prior influence. The condition is the current state of “goodness” caused by embodiment. (See below)
The Reformed understanding is that the will can always make choices between perceived goods, but these goods may or may not be good according to God. Regeneration and cooperation with the Spirit of God are necessary elements of the potency to choose between good and evil after the fall.
Thomas clearly rejects the doctrine of total depravity by his doctrine of natural goods and supernatural goods:
Nevertheless, because some attempts [toward goodness] do occur, these can be a way of preparing for grace.
The reason why a man in this state of life is incapable of being so obstinate in evil that he cannot cooperate in his liberation is evident from these facts: passion dissipates and is repressible; habit does not totally corrupt the soul; and reason does not adhere so pertinaciously to falsity that it is incapable of being changed by contrary reason.
But after this state of life the separated soul will not understand by receiving from the senses, nor will its appetitive powers of sense be in act. Thus the separated soul is similar to an angel with respect to the mode of understanding, and with the respect to the indivisibility of its appetite, which were the causes of obstinacy in a fallen angel. Hence, for the same reason, the separated soul will be obstinate.
Finally, in the resurrection the body will follow the condition of the soul. The soul, therefore, will not return to the state in which it presently is, wherein it must learn through the body, although it will use bodily instruments. Hence, the same cause for obstinacy will remain (144).
Essentially, Thomas believes and teaches that human beings must be able to do some good in their current—pre-mortem and pre-resurrection—state. The good exists because the physical body and the soul interacting require goodness so that the senses can accept and interpret data.
When the soul is separated from the body without grace, then the soul will be obstinate and lack the power to choose good. At the resurrection the body will be converted by the soul to total depravity.
Benefits/Detriments: The collection is an extremely helpful introduction to Thomas’ thought.
Thomas’ understanding of the Fall and its effects is essentially that supernatural good was removed from man leaving him only with natural good. Nature remains fundamentally the same and remains open to its supernatural end through cooperative elevation. Thomas’ insights are fundamental to the current Roman system which I anathematize in the strongest terms.
Such a view allows someone like Aristotle to make authoritative statements on what can only be revealed truths. Thus his work is sprinkled with statements like:
Accordingly, the Philosopher compares [the soul] to a writing tablet on which nothing is written. . . . (57)
Angels are incapable of a sin of passion because, according to the Philosopher in Book Seven of the Ethics, a passion is found only in a soul’s sensible part, which angels do not possess (142).
Aristotle then provides the most fundamental tools for interpreting the Bible, and the Bible it seems plays a very secondary role in correcting Aristotle.
Recommended for philosophy students and academically minded pastors. Please note Goodwin’s editing when reading.