Appendix III to Part II

APPENDIX III Tue Various Forms or PantHEIsM REFUTED BY St. THOMAS

As previously stated by us (Vol. I, pp. 244-245), some Modernists have held that St. Thomas did not refute Pantheism. It would seem that he did not know or chose to ignore it. Certain theologians, on the contrary, have maintained that Thomism exaggerates the divine universal causality to such an extent that it tends toward Occasionalism, that system according to which God alone acts. This ought to lead one to affirm that “God alone exists,” for action follows being, operari sequitur esse.

In this appendix we will examine briefly: (1) What forms of Pantheism were known to St. Thomas; (2) Where and how he refuted them; (3) How the truth, that Pantheism distorts, is contained in the Thomist doctrine of the divine causality.

I. What forms of Pantheism were known to St. Thomas.

We have previously pointed out (I, 244 f.) that St. Thomas knew, through Aristotle, the two opposite types of ancient Pantheism: that of Parmenides which absorbs becoming and the multiple in the sole and motionless Being (Acosmism), and that of Heraclitus which absorbs being in becoming, and must end in Atheistic Evolutionism.

Besides, he knew, at least from St. Augustine and Dionysius, the Pantheism of the Stoics, according to which God is the soul of the world and like an intellectual fire in constant evolution. This doctrine was revived by Heraclitus. From the same source, St. Thomas knew the Emanatistic Pantheism of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, which reminds one more of the doctrine of Parmenides about the One.

Finally St. Thomas could not have been ignorant of the different types of medieval Pantheism: that of Amalric of Bena, according to which God is the formal principle of all things: the materialistic Pantheism of David of Dinant; and the Averroistic doctrine of a single intellect for all men.

Moreover, St. Thomas has classified these different types of Pantheism, adopting the well-known Aristotelian terminology of the four causes. This classification is found in the Theological Summa, Ia, q. 3, a. 8: “Whether God enters into the composition of other things.” It is completed in Ia, q. 19, a. 4: “Whether the will of God is the cause of things, or whether He acts by a necessity of His nature or knowledge.” (See the references to the other works of St. Thomas, indicated in these two articles.)

The division amounts to this: (1) For certain Pantheists, God is the form or soul of the world, at the very least, of the highest heaven. Such is the teaching of the Stoics and of Amalric of Bena, according to whom God is the formal principle of all things. (2) For others, God is the matter of the world; “so David of Dinant, who most absurdly taught that God was primary matter” (Ia, q. 3, a. 8). This is a return to the earliest period of philosophy, to the doctrine of the first Ionian philosophers, to Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander. (3) For others, God is the efficient cause of the world, but He produces it by a necessity of His nature or intellect (necessitas scientiae), so that He would be neither good nor wise if He did not do so. Thus do all those speak who, like the Averroists, deny creation, especially an absolutely free creation, and who admit a certain emanation.

The Pantheistic doctrines known to St. Thomas conceive God, therefore, as the substantial form of the world or as its matter or as its necessary or non-free efficient cause.

We may point out that the modern types of Pantheism can easily be reduced to those of ancient times. In fact, according to the modern Pantheists, either God becomes the world (the doctrine of Spinoza and Schelling, which recalls that of the Neoplatonists and Parmenidies), or else the world becomes God, by an ascendent process of evolution, conceived either from the idealistic (Hegel), or the materialistic point of view (Haeckel), which reminds us of Heraclitus and the Stoics.

There is always a revival of the two opposite types of ancient Pantheism: (1) God absorbs the world, which is the Acosmism of Parmenides; (2) the world in evolution absorbs God, which is the Atheistic Evolutionism of Heraclitus. From this we see that Pantheism is so absurd that it cannot give us a definition of itself. It tends necessarily either to the denial of God or of the world; so evident is this, that God and the world cannot be one and the same reality.

Il. Where and how St. Thomas refuted these different types of Pantheism,

It is found: (1) in his Commentaries on the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle, who himself refutes Heraclitus and Parmenides by the division of being into potentiality and act and by the principle of causality, that nothing can be reduced from potentiality to act except by a being already in act, and in the final analysis by the pure Act which, by its absolute simplicity and immutability, is essentially distinct from the world which itself is composite and changing. (See Physics, Bk. I, ch. viii, lect. 14; Met., Bk. IV, ch. iii ad fin.; Bks. IX and XII.) (2) In his Theological Summa, Ia, q. 3, a. 8, in which it is shown that God is neither the form nor the matter of the world; in Ta, q. 19, a. 4, in which it is proved that God does not act externally by a necessity of His nature or of His knowledge, but by His sovereignly free will. This doctrine is especially developed when, in the Contra Gentes, he is refuting the Averroists. See Bk. II, ch. xxiii: “That God does not act of natural necessity;” ch. xxvi: “That the divine will is not confined to certain determined effects”; ch. xxx: “How there can be absolute necessity in created things”; ch. xxxi ff.: “That it is not necessary for creatures to have been always.” See also, for the refutation of Emanatistic Pantheism, the Theological Summa, Ia, q. 90, a. 1: “Does the human soul come from the substance of God?” “Ts there one intellect in all men?” Ia, q. 76, a. 2; and see also q. 79, a. 5, as well as the treatise entitled De unitate intellectus, for the refutation of Averroism.

This refutation is reduced to the following points:

1. God is not the matter of the world; for matter cannot be moved by itself, but only by a cause that brings it out of its inertia, and, in the final analysis, by a cause which is Being itself and Activity itself, the prime mover of bodies and spirits. (See the first three Thomistic proofs for the existence of God, Vol. I, pp. 261-293.)

2. God is not the substantial form of the world, for it would be something participated and less perfect than the composite of which it would be a part. Now everything composite requires a cause. There fore God must be an absolutely simple cause, superior to everything composite. (See the fourth Thomistic proof for the existence of God, Vol. I, pp. 302-345.)

3. God does not act externally by a necessity of His nature. The fifth Thomistic proof of His existence has already shown this. St. Thomas proves it more clearly in Ia, q. 19 a. 4. He says that every natural agent acts for an end, and needs to be directed to the end by a first intelligent cause. Therefore the first cause acts by intellect and will, and not by a necessity of nature like the plant or the animal.

Moreover, if it acted by a necessity of its nature, it would produce an effect specifically like itself, as the ox generates the ox, and the lion generates the lion. This would not explain the variety of its effects, all of which are necessarily inferior to it since there cannot be two Gods, two Infinites. (There can be only generation ad intra that is without multiplication of the divine nature, as revelation teaches us.)

Neither does God act by a necessity of His intellect, for there is no necessitating motive for Him that would urge Him to create: “As He is already of Himself infinite perfection and happiness, by creation He can acquire no additional perfection” (Ia, q. 19, a. 3); and, however perfect the beings may be that He has created, He can always create others more perfect (Ia, q. 25, a. 6). We have already proved this is at length (supra pp. 341-350).

Neither can we claim, with Spinoza, that we are only modes or accidents of the divine substance; for, since God is required as pure Act, He cannot be further determined and there can be no accidents in Him (Ia, q. 3, a. 6).

Finally, Pantheistic Emanation is also inadmissible; for, if we proceeded from the substance of God, He would be the material cause, and something would be transmitted from Him to us. This would presuppose a divisibility and imperfection in Him which are irreconcilable with pure Act. (Cf. Ia, q. 90, a. 1; q. 2, a. 3, fourth proof.)

We see that all these refutations of Pantheism proceed from the five Thomistic proofs for the existence of God, and they can be reduced to this proposition defined by the Vatican Council (Denzinger, n. 1782): “God, as being one, sole, absolutely simple and immutable spiritual substance, is to be declared as really and essentially distinct from the world . . . and ineffably exalted above all things.”

God is really and essentially distinct from the world, for He is required as the absolutely immutable First Cause (first, second, and third proofs), and is absolutely simple (fourth and fifth proofs), whereas the world is essentially composite and changing.

Finally, if we wish to reduce this refutation of Pantheism to a still simpler proposition, we must say that God is really and essentially distinct from the world of bodies and spirits, because in Him alone are essence and existence identical, because He alone is the selfsubsisting Being. Such is the a priori reason for saying that He is sovereignly simple and immutable.

The very first truth of philosophy is the principle of contradiction or identity: “Being is being, not-being is not-being; is means is, no means no.” The supreme truth of Christian philosophy is the identity in God of essence and existence. It is a truth which was revealed to Moses, when God said: “J am who am.”

This refutation of Pantheism finds its confirmation in the deduction of the attributes of the self-subsisting Being or of pure Act. His immutability, for instance, merits the name of eternity which is “the simultaneously whole and perfect possession of interminable life, interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio” (Ia, q. 10, a. 1). God possesses completely and all at once, both intellectual and volitional life which with us passes away in a succession of thoughts and volitions. He is Thought itself that is omniscient, the eternally subsisting intellectual Light and the substantial Love of the sovereign Good. All these proofs are deduced from the principle of identity which, since it is the fundamental law of being, must be verified in the most absolute and purest manner in the First Being.

Il. The truth, that Pantheism distorts, is to be found in the Thomist doctrine of Divine Causality.

This is first of all apparent in the natural order, from the following propositions which we have already demonstrated with the help of St. Thomas:

1. There is nothing external to God that is not, as to the whole of its being, caused by Him (Ia, q. 45).

2. Nothing subsists external to God that is not preserved by Him; for being as such is the proper effect of God. Just as becoming ceases if its cause ceases to act, just as the light in the air disappears when the sun ceases to give us its light, so everything would be annihilated if the divine preservative action were to cease (Ia, q. 104).

3. God is intimately present to all created beings by the divine action which keeps them in existence. Now this preservative action is identical with the very essence of God which is in closest contact with everything that is, with what is innermost in us, and that God knows infinitely better than we do ourselves (Ia, q. 8, a. 1).

4. God operates interiorly (ab intus) in every created agent, not so as to dispense it from acting, as the Occasionalists think, but to cause it to act, to apply it to action. “God works in every agent” (Ia, q- 105, a. 5).

5. God, as first Intellect, moves every created intellect (ibid., a. 3).

6. God moves the created will, “interius eam inclinando, by an interior inclination of the will” (ibid., a. 4). He does no violence to it; He does not force it, since He does not move it against its natural inclination, but He has given it this natural inclination for universal good; He preserves it in being and applies it to its act. Under this divine motion, the will wills the end, then moves itself, determines itself to will the means. Still it moves itself, determines itself, only as a secondary cause can so do, which is premoved by the First Cause. Thus God moves the will to universal good, then to a particular good that it deliberately chooses; or even He permits sin, and then He is the cause only of the physical entity of this act, and not of its defect, for which only a deficient cause is needed. As Bossuet says,’ “to cause liberty of action in us, is to cause us to act freely; and to do so, is to will that it be so; for with God, to do is to will. . . . But He does not merely will us to have the power to be free, He wills us to be actually free; and He does not will that merely in a general way we should have the use of our freedom, but He wills that we should have the use of it in this or that particular act... . His knowledge and His will include always the least detail of things . . . that is to say what more peculiarly belongs to them, and all that is comprised in His decrees.” God willed from all eternity that Paul be converted at such a time, in such circumstances, on his way to Damascus, and Paul was converted.

From all this doctrine, we see that God is Himself immediately present in all things (immediatione suppositi), by a virtual contact which is profound and hidden: “God, powerful sustainer of all things, Thou who dost remain permanently unmoved,” are the words of the liturgical hymn. God, indeed, since He is a pure spirit, is not in a place by His own being, but merely by His action on bodies, He does not have to pass through space to come to us. Even when we say: “He¹ acts externally (ad extra),” this expression, taken from the idea of space, is metaphorical, and signifies only that the effect produced by God is really distinct from Him, without being separated from Him by space. If God had created only the angels, there would be no location; reality as applied to pure spirits is superior to space.

Moreover, God operates immediately (immediatione virtutis: by His immediate power) in every created agent, for no active created power can pass over to act without the divine motion. This is what makes St. Thomas say (De potentia, q. 3, a. 7): “If we consider subsisting agencies, anyone whatsoever in particular is the immediate cause of its effect. But if we consider the power from which the action results, thus it is that the power of the higher cause will be more immediate to its effect than that of the lower; for the lower is not united with its effect except in virtue of higher; hence it is said (De causis, prop. 1) that the power of the first cause acts first upon the thing caused and more vehemently controls it,”

In the same article of the De potentia, St. Thomas points out in conclusion what truth is distorted by Pantheism. He says: “Thus God is the cause of every action of created agents, in so far as He gives them the power to act, maintains it in them and applies it to its act, and by His divine power every other power to act is exercized. If we add to this the fact that God is His very power—for the divine essence, His omnipotence and His action are identical—and that He is in all things (intra quamlibet rem), not as forming part of their essence, but as preserving them in being, it follows that He Himself operates in every created agent, even to the performance of our natural and spontaneous acts as well as to that of our free acts.”

Such is the truth that Determinism and Pantheism distort. The latter conceives God as being either the material or the formal or the necessary efficient cause of the world. God is the sovereignly free and transcendent cause, but intimately present in all things by His preservative and motive action. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even the free determination of our will, escapes God’s universal causality.

It is not in limiting the principle of causality that we refute Determinism, which is based on this principle. It is by insisting upon the transcendent efficacy of the divine causality which is inferior neither to His absolute universality nor to the profundity and suavity of His action in us.

Moreover, through our elevation to the supernatural order the intimacy of our union with God is exceedingly increased. Sanctifying grace is a participation of the divine nature, or of the intimate life of God. Already in the natural order, creatures are like to God in so far as they participate in being, life, and intelligence; by grace they are like to God. in so far as they participate in the Deity, or the intimate life of God, in that which makes God to be God (la Iae, q. 112, a. r). Every soul in a state of grace is thus a spiritual temple which is the abode of the Holy Trinity, a temple that is still obscure on this earth, but one that is perfectly luminous in heaven (Ia, q- 43, a. 3).

Finally, in our Lord Jesus Christ, the union of the divine and human natures is as intimate as can be. They are united in one and the same Person, that of the Word made flesh, in such a manner that there is only one Ego, only one existence in Jesus Christ, although the two natures, the divine and the human, are, as natures, infinitely distant from each other. It is a doctrine which presupposes that there is a real distinction between created essence and existence (IIIa, q. 17, a. 2). Without any Pantheistic confusion between the divine essence and a created essence, it is the most intimate of unions, a sublime harmony between two infinitely distant extremes, that God alone was able thus to unite.

There is no doctrine that brings out more clearly than does that of St. Thomas, the infinite distinction between God and the creature, the divine transcendence and, what at first sight is astonishing, there is no doctrine that insists more upon the intimacy of the divine presence in us and of the divine influx that penetrates even to the determination of our free will.

The first of these two theses is impaired by those who, like Scotus and Suarez, reconcile by univocation the analogy of being common to God and creatures. The second is impaired by Molinism and Congruism which fear that the divine motion will destroy human liberty, if this motion profoundly and most intimately penetrates it.

For St. Thomas, on the contrary, it is precisely because the divine causality is an absolutely transcendent efficacy that it can attain to the intimacy of our free will without disturbing it. The saints understand this. One of them, perceiving how incapable he was of giving himself fully to God, said to Him: “Lord, take me from myself and give me to Thyself.” We must say of the grace of God, what St. Paul said of His word: “The word of God is living and effectual and more piercing

‘ than any two-edged sword and reaching unto the division af the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow; and is a discerner af the thoughts and the intents of the heart” (Heb. 4: 12). God's action in us is no less penetrating than His word and His sight, accondiag to Isaias, 26: 12: “Thou hast wrought all onr works fer ws”

It is the purpose of the following study t demonstrate this clearly, by solving a few dithculties,

Footnotes

1. Traité du libre arbitre, ch. viii. ↩