Article II. Explanation regarding the philosophical mystery in the identification of the absolute perfections of God
This explanation will consist of two parts. Since our opponents, the Nominalistic Agnostics and the Scotists, reject our solution, because both fail to recognize the infinite difference there is between an analogous and a univocal perfection, it is this difference that we will point out first of all, by proving there is no repugnance for the same analogous perfection to be found formally in two analogates which infinitely differ from each other by their mode or manner of being. That is what our opponents fail to see, because they view the absolute perfections univocally.
Secondly, we will show that the different absolute and analogous perfections, in proportion as they are purified from all imperfection, tend to become identified and that they tend to this by their own properties (ex propriis), according to the peculiar exigencies of each and not merely by what they have in common (ex communibus), according to the common exigencies of the divine simplicity. Hence it follows that this mysterious identification to which they thus formally tend, far from destroying them, must constitute them in a pure state, a state which cannot be known by us in this life except in a negative and relative way.
Thirdly, we will point out the difficulties which the Scotist and Suarezian concepts of the divine names leave unsolved.
- There is no repugnance for the same analogous perfection to be found formally in two analogates which differ infinitely from each other by their mode or manner of being.
This proposition is denied by Agnostics, such as Maimonides.
According to them, one and the same perfection cannot be found formally in God and in creatures. If it is found formally in created beings, it can be only virtually in God. Scotus admits that one and the same absolute perfection can exist formally in God and creatures, but he fails to note the infinite diversity of the modes or manners of being, claiming that neither the divine nor the created mode allows of the real and formal identification of the attributes; in God as in creatures, there is an actually formal distinction. The reason for this is because Scotus, as well as Maimonides, assigns to the primary ideas (of being, goodness, etc.) an absolute unity. Being which is common to God and creatures would be absolutely one.
For the Thomists, on the contrary, the mental and the objective concepts? of an absolute and analogous perfection have but a unity of proportionality.” Besides, since this perfection implies no imperfection, there is nothing repugnant in the idea of its existing according to an infinite and sovercignly perfect mode. It follows that this perfection, thanks to its unity of proportionality, can exist formally in two analogates which infinitely differ from each other by their mode of being.
We have proved at length (cf. supra, nn. 29, 45) that it is not repugnant for the absolute perfections to exist according to an infinite mode. What is of importance for us to prove here is that their unity is but a unity of proportionality.
We may symbolize schematically a concept which denotes absolute unity by the figure o, and one which denotes unity of proportion by the figure 8. The three confronting systems may then be represented as follows:12
Nominalistic Agnosticism of Extreme formalism or realism of
Maimonides (equivocation) Scotus (univocation) God pa simple but knowable, but in Him unknowable God actually formal multiplicity
God God concept of Pean concept of | concept of concept of being 7 intelligence | being intelligence creature creature
Moderate realism of St. Thomas (analogy).
Go rd Capai simple and i knowable concept of concept of being intelligence creature
To establish the truth of our proposition, we must show that the concept (either mental or objective) of an absolute and analogous perfection has but # unity of proportion, and this permits these perfections to exist formally according to infinitely diverse modes. We will show this: (a) indirectly, by contrasting it with the unity demanded by univocal perfection; (4) directly for being and its transcendental properties; (¢) for every absolute analogous perfection.
a) Under pain of identifying the nature of the analogous concept with that of univocal concept, we must recognize that the definition is not the same. The univocal concept is essentially that concept which expresses a perfection found in the same way in many beings, a perfection denoting absolute unity, which can be perfectly abstracted (praescindit perfecte) from the beings in which it is realized, such as genus (animality) or a species (humanity). Therefore the analogous concept cannot possess this same absolute unity.
The minor of this argument is self-evident if we consider that a genus (animality) designates absolutely the same thing in many species, because in each it is differentiated by specific differences extrinsic to it and it preserves its unity under these differences superadded to it. Animal denotes, in man as in the dog, a body endowed with sensitive life. It is the same with the species as regards the individualizing conditions; human nature is the same in all men. If the concept of an analogous perfection differs radically from the univocal concept, it could not have this absolute unity.
The Thomists,* using the very terms of St. Thomas (Ia, q. 13, a. 5), express this doctrine as follows: Things that are univocal (cvvevepa) * are those which have the same name and the essence of which signified by this name is simply the same (simpliciter cadem). Thus animality is simply or absolutely the same in the horse and in the lion.
Things that are equivocal (éncévupa) 5 are those which have the same name and the essence of which signified by this name is totally diverse in each of them (totaliter diversa). Thus the dog (a domestic animal), the dog-fish, and the constellation “canis” have only the name in common, this denoting in each of them something entirely different.
Things that are analogous are those which have the same name and the essence of which signified by this name is simply different in each of them, although there is some point of resemblance
2 See John of St. Thomas, Cursus phil., Q. 13, a. 5, and Goudin, Logica major, Part I, disp. Il, q. 1, a. 1.
- Aristotle, Categoriae, ch. i.
between them, according to a certain proportion, xat’ dvadoylav § (simpliciter diversa, secundum quid tamen eadem, id est per aliquam proportionem).
But analogy admits of subdivisions, and we can classify the divisions as given by St. Thomas by the schema on page 208 (cf. De veritate, q. 2, a. 11).
The analogy of attribution, or of proportion, calls for merely a simple attribution or extrinsic denomination; one or several things receive this denomination according to a proportion which they bear to another which is the principal one. Thus the air is said to be healthy as regards the animal in that it can preserve it in health; one’s complexion is said to be healthy in so far as it is a sign of health; but health itself is found really only in the animal. Maimonides would have conceded that God can be called good extrinsically and relatively to the goodness of the creature of which He is the cause.
Analogy of attribution never implies intrinsic denomination in the various analogates, but does not necessarily exclude it. Thus it is that quantity and quality belong to being, because of their dependence upon being which alone subsists in them. Quality and quantity are, however, intrinsically realities in that we find verified in them both the analogy of attribution and the analogy of proper proportionality which we shall now consider. We may say, likewise, that the creature is, because of its dependence upon God.®
The analogy of proportionality, as its name indicates, is based
6 Aristotle, Post Analyt., Bk. Il, chs. xiii, xiv; Metaph., Bk. IV, ch. i; Bk. X, ch. i; Bk. XII, ch. iv; Ethic. ad Nic., Bk. I, ch. vi.
TSt. Thomas, la, q. 13, a. 5. This analogy of attribution is also called analogy of proportion, because it implies a proportion to a principal analogate. Cf. De veritate, Q. 2, a. 11, and the Tabula aurea of the works of St. Thomas under the words “analogia” and “proportio.”
8 Ibid. St. Thomas remarks in this article that God and the creature cannot be analogates relatively to a third reality which would be superior to them, as quantity and quality are analogues relatively to substance upon which they depend. It would be an error to think that universal being is prior to God.
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This analogy is of two kinds: metaphorical and proper. Metaphorically we say that the lion is the king of animals because he is to the wild animals what a king among men is to his subjects. So, too, metaphorically we say of God that He is angry, because when inflicting punishment His attitude is that of an angry man when chastising others. But since anger is a passion of the sensible order, we see quite well that it cannot belong properly to God who is pure spirit. Maimonides and the Agnostics concede that this metaphorical analogy of proportionality is found to prevail between God and creatures; but such analogy amounts to more than a mere symbolism, as St. Thomas points out (De veritate, qQ. 2, a. 11; De potentia, q. 7, 2. 5).
The analogy of proper proportionality presupposes that the analogy is really found, and in its strict sense, in each of the analogates. However, it does not admit of any determinate distance or proportion between the two analogates. For we must carefully distinguish between proportion which denotes a relation (e. g., 2 and proportionality which denotes equality or similarity between two relations (e. g, $ = +).
If there is proportion, as, for instance, between created substance and its proportionate accident, that is not what is considered here, but merely the similarity of the two relations; created substance is to its existence, as proportionate accident is to its existence. Each exists in quite a different manner, since substance exists in itself,
9 There is no need here to mention the primary analogate in the definition of the others; but there is always, nevertheless, a primary analogate. In the analogy of metaphorical proportionality, it is that one to which the analogous term applies in its strict sense. In the analogy of proper proportionality, the primary analogate is that one which is the higher cause of the others. The analogical similarity prevailing in this latter case is always based upon causality. It exists either between the cause and the effect, or between the effects of one and the same cause.
and accident exists in substance. But, after all, accident is still intrinsically being in the strict sense of the word.
Often this analogy of proper proportionality exists between terms which have no distance or determinate proportion between them as, for instance, between sensation and intellection. Analogically, intrinsically, and in the proper sense of the term, both may truly be called knowledge. This analogy is clearly expressed by means of the following proportionality: sensation is to the sensible what intellection is to the intelligible. Likewise, sensible love is to sensible good what rational love is to rational good; analogically and according to the proper sense of the term, both are entitled to be called love.
It is this latter kind of analogy which, as St. Thomas remarks (De veritate, q.2, a.11), characterizes what applies intrinsically and formally to God and creatures.’°
We will show that to attribute being to God is to say that the First Cause is to His existence what the creature is to its existence, just as intellection is to the intelligible what sensation is to the sensible. In this second case we can use the word knowledge in the proper sense, to designate what is common to both analogates; in the preceding case we can, on the same grounds, use the word being in the proper sense.
We see that, under pain of confusion with a univocal perfection, an analogous perfection, which applies intrinsically and formally to several analogates, can have only a unity of proportionality. It is one proportionally, not simply (est una proportionaliter, non simpliciter una). This point will be better understood by examining the unity of the concept of universal being, b) Among the analogous perfections we must put in the firs 10 There is an analogy quite improperly so called, of which St. Thomas nev speaks, for, in reality, it is a univocation, It is that which exists between two univocal perfections of different degrees: two walls differing in degree of white- ness. Scotus admits this so-called analogy of inequality between God and creatures, but by this he does not get away from univocation.
rank being and its transcendental properties: unity, truth, and goodness. These concepts have only unity of proportionality and cannot be abstracted perfectly from their analogates, because the former actually imply the latter.”!
In fact, a common perfection which is differentiated by nonextrinsic differences actually implies these differences, although it does not contain them explicitly. But being and its transcendental properties are differentiated by non-extrinsic differences. Therefore being and the transcendentals actually imply their differences, although they do not contain them explicitly. This means that they imply multiplicity and not an absolute unity like univocal concepts (genera and species), but only a relative unity.
The major of this argument is evident. If the differences of a perfection common to several beings are not extrinsic to this perfection, they are intrinsic. There is no middle course. This perfection does not exclude them, but includes them confusedly, without, however, containing them explicitly or distinctly.
The explanation of the minor will make this clear. The differences of being which constitute substance and accident are not extrinsic to being, for they would be nothing (la, q. 3, a. 5; and Metaph., III, ch. iii, lect.8). Substance as substance, said Aristotle,!? is still being, as it is one and true. It is the same with accident. But we cannot say that rationality in man is animality. Being contains, therefore, actually and implicitly the modes by which it is differentiated, and it is itself implied in them when they exist. Since it implies actually this multiplicity of modes of being, it has not, like a univocal concept, an absolute but only a relative unity, which must be, as we shall see, a unity of proportionality.
This is apparent in the very definition of being, in so far as it
11 See John of St. Thomas, loc. cit.
12 Metaph., Bk. X, ch. i; Bk. IV, ch. i; Bk, XII, ch. iv. Post Anal., Bk. IL ch. xiii, xiv; Nicomachean Ethics, Bk, I, ch, vi.
can be defined. Being is defined in two ways: (1) in what we may call a descriptive way: being is that which exists or at least can exist (nomine entis communiter intelligitur id quod existit aut saltem existere potest); (2) it can be defined in a more formal manner inasmuch as it is abstracted at least imperfectly from its analogates: being is that the act of which is existence (ens est id cujus actus est esse). Both of these definitions of being bring out clearly the multiplicity that it actually and implicitly contains, attributing to it but a relative unity.
In fact, in the first definition of being (“that which exists or at least can exist”), there is clearly seen a duality, that of real being, both actual and possible. If now we wish to conceive of actual real being, we perceive that its actuality is essentially varied, according as it exists by itself (God) or does not so exist (creature). The actuality exists formally in both cases but not at all in the same way. If, finally, we wish to conceive being which does not exist of itself but by reason of another, we perceive that this new mode of being also varies essentially, according as it exists in itself (substance) or in another (accident). The notion of being implies, therefore, a variation which is essential to it. There are not several different ways of being man, but there are several essentially different ways of existing.
by itself (God) fin itself (sub-
._ | that which exists stance) aemeo is l by reason of another- ia another (acor that which (creature) cident) can exist.
It is manifest that there is a distinction between the members of this division not only by reason of their proper difference, but also inasmuch as they are being. Substance differs from accident not only as substance, but as being; it has not the same mode of existing, and this mode is not extrinsic to it. But it is only by reason of his specific difference (rationality) that man differs from the dog, and not by reason of his genus (animality). Animality designates in both the same mode of the same thing: a body endowed with sensitive life. From this we see that the unity concept of being is not an absolute but merely a relative unity, and the second definition of being shows clearly that this relative unity is one of proportionality.
Being, inasmuch as it is abstracted, at least imperfectly, from its analogates, is defined thus: that the act of which is existence (id cujus actus est esse). Why? Because all the analogates of being are entitled to be called being inasmuch as they express relation to existence (prout se habent ad esse), and they are all the more entitled to this as they express a more intimate relation to exitene God_ __ created substance _ accident
His being its being its being.
This relation to existence is not univocal, as, for instance, are the relations the equality between which constitutes an arithmetical proportionality, as: $ = £. Four is twice two in the same way as six is twice three. The relative term “twice” is univocal. On the other hand, the relation to existence is not the same in that which exists of itself and that which exists by reason of another. We may, however, call it a proportionality not in an arithmetical but in a metaphysical sense; for that which exists of itself is related to its existence, as that which exists by reason of another is related to its existence. If, therefore, we wish to define being inasmuch as it abstracts at least imperfectly from its analogates, we must express above all in the definition this relation to existence which is found differently verified in the different analogates.
Let us point out, however, with Cajetan** and John of St. Thomas,‘ that the concept of analogous being is not the concept of a relation, as has sometimes been wrongly attributed to
the Thomists; it is the concept of that which is the basis of this relation to existence. We do not say: “Ens est habitudo ad esse: being denotes relation to existence”; but: “ens est id cujus actus est esse: being is that whose act is existence.” And this id expresses in a confused way all the analogates, inasmuch as they are like one another because of the various ways in which they relate to existence. This relation is not accidental, like paternity; it is an essential or transcendental relation. In other words, it is the essence itself in so far as it refers to existence, just as intelligence refers to the intelligible.
The concept of being has truly a certain unity ** and thus we can think of being without thinking explicitly of its analogates: God and creatures, substance and accident. It is in this way, too, that metaphysics, which has pure being as its subject, can be one as a science. But the unity of this concept is not absolute, for actually and implicitly it includes multiplicity. In fact, it is impossible to conceive positively actual being, the actuality of which is essentially varied, without thinking confusedly or implicitly both of self-existing being and of being which is not self-existing. Moreover, that is only an inadequate concept of being. To have
18 We have already said, following Aristotle and St. Thomas (Ia, q. 85, a. 6), that the primary idea of being cannot be false, which means that it cannot be a false expression of the real, because since it is simple it cannot be the union of incompatible elements. This simplicity is not contrary, whatever Scotus may say, to the unity of proportionality of which we are now speaking. It would be contrary only to a unity resulting from a composition of elements which would be incompatible. Cajetan is very clear in what he says in his treatise De analogia nominum, ch, vi: “The analogue, as previously stated, is predicated of the analogates, and it is not only in name common to them, but is only one proportionally so in the uniqueness of its concept . . . ; it is one not accidentally or by aggregation, as a heap of stones, but it is directly evident that the analogue is proportionally one.” Likewise in his De conceptu entis, he says: “That being is also the most simple of concepts agrees with what has been said, for since simplicity is opposed to composition, also that which is one by analogy is not one by any composition.” See also Appendix II; The simplicity of the idea of being; it is the contrary of the divine simplicity as the imperfect is the contrary to the perfect.
an adequate concept of being we must think explicitly of the manifoldness which is essential to it.'® Do we wish to abstract being from its analogates? We define it as that the act of which is to exist. But even then, this relation to existence, since it is essentially varied, cannot be conceived without at least confusedly thinking of the members of the proportionality in which it is realized. On the other hand, we can quite well think of animal without confusedly thinking of the different species of animals; animality, since it is realized in the same way in all these species, can be perfectly abstracted from the specific differences which are extrinsic to it (perfecte praescindit a differentiis specificis).
In order to safeguard the absolute unity of the concept of being, certain Scotists and Suarezians do not consider being positively in itself, but only in that it is opposed to nothingness, as nonnothingness." But it is clear that, since affirmation precedes negation, being is conceived before nothingness, which, too, cannot be thought of except as opposed to being. Moreover, the opposition of being to nothingness is itself essentially varied, according as it is necessary or contingent, and applies either to what is selfexisting or is not so.
Cajetan is of the same mind when, in his treatises De analogia nominum (chs. iv and vi) and De conceptu entis, he keeps on repeating in different ways that “the concept of being, whether mental or objective, has not an absolute but only a secundum quid unity, that is, a unity according to proportionality.” Speaking of the resolution of all other concepts into that of being, he writes: “All things resolve themselves into the objective and mental concepts which are simple and one proportionally.” (De conceptu
16 Cajetan, De conceptu entis, says: “The adequate concept of the analogue demands the representation of all things which constitute the basis of analogy.” 17 Cf. Belmond, “L’univocité scotiste,” in the Revue de philosophie, July 1,
entis.) That is, too, what St. Thomas says many times.'® The principal passage is in De veritate, q.2, a 11.'®
Likewise in De veritate (q.23, a.7 ad gum) St. Thomas says: “As God is to those things which are befitting to Him, so is the creature to its own properties.” The sensitive faculty knows sensible things, the human intelligence knows the reasons of things by a knowledge caused by the things, and the divine intelligence knows all created things by a knowledge which is the cause of things. In these three proportions it is clear that the word “knows” is not taken in the same sense or univocally, as, for instance, animality is attributed to man and dog. Also God
18 See the general index to his works, Tabula aurea (Bergamo edition), under the words “analogia,” n. 4, and “proportio,” n. 3. CÉ. la, q. 12, a. 1 ad gum; IU, d. 1, q. 1, a. 3; IV, d. 49, q. 2, a. 1, q. 1, 6um; De veritate, q. 2, a. 3, 4um; q. 2, 2. 11, & and 6um; q. 3, a. 1, 7um; q. 23, a. 7, 9um. Ouodl., 10, 17, um. See also the Tabula aurea for the exact meaning of the terms “simpliciter” and “secundum quid” according to St. Thomas.
19 De veritate, Q. 2, a. 11 (“Whether knowledge is predicated equivocally of God and us”). “Hence it must be said that the word ‘knowledge’ is predicated of God's knowledge and ours, not altogether univocally, not purely equivocally, but analogically; this is the same as saying that it is predicated proportionally. Conformity according to proportion can be twofold, and thus we have two kinds of analogy. There may be conformity between two terms which are proportionate to each other according to a fixed ratio, as between 2 and 1; 2 is the double of 1. Or again, there may be conformity between two terms not proportionate to each other, but which are proportional, as between 6 and 4, for 6 is to 3 as 4 is to 2. The first kind of conformity is a proportion, the second kind is a proportionality or similarity of proportions. According to the first mode of conformity we may say that being applies analogically both to substance and accident which is proportionate to it. But being could not apply in the same way to creatures and to God; between the two there is but a similarity of proportions or a proportionality, such as exists between our intelligence and the sense of sight: the intelligence is to the intelligible being what sight is to color; and this similarity of proportions can be expressed by the word ‘knows.’
“Hence according to the first mode of conformity we find something analogically predicated of two things which bear a relation to each other, like ens which is predicated of substance and accident, because of the relation which substance bears to accident. And both the urine and the animal are said to be healthy because of some connection which urine has with the health of the animal.
“But sometimes something is predicated analogically according to the second exists by His very essence and creatures exist, but not by their essence. Clearly the word “exist” is not taken in the same sense or univocally, although in the two proportions, it is true, according to the proper meaning of the term. There is in this neither metaphor nor symbolism.
To maintain with the Agnostics that in this similarity of proportions there are always two unknowns, is to reduce knowledge to the univocal kind and declare that God is absolutely unknown, because between Him and us there is nothing univocal. In fact, there are not two unknowns, but two created terms mode of conformity, as secing is predicated of both corporeal and intellectual vision because, as sense perception is in the eye, so intellectual perception is in the mind. Because, therefore, according to the first mode of analogical predication, there must be some determinate relation between those things which have something analogically in common, it is impossible for anything according to this mode to be predicated of God and the creature. But in the second kind of analogy there is no question of a determinate relation between those things which have something in common analogically, and therefore according to that mode there is no reason why a name should not be predicated analogically of God and the creature. But still this happens in two ways: (metaphorically and properly. . . . And properly for those things) which include nothing defective in their definition, and which do not depend upon matter for their existence, such as being, goodness, and others of this kind.” From this text and similar ones to which we have referred, it can be seen that analogy of proportionality as taught by all the Thomists is certainly what St. Thomas himself held.
We may also say that, if the analogy of being is formally an analogy of proportionality, it is virtually an analogy of attribution, in the sense that, if it were possible for being not to be predicated intrinsically of creatures, it could still be attributed extrinsically, inasmuch as it is the effect of the First Being, just as urine is said to be of a healthy color inasmuch as it is a sign of health which belongs intrinsically to the animal. Cf. John of St. Thomas, Cursus phil, qQ. 14, a. 3; and Goudin, Metaph., q. 1, a. 2. In several texts of St. Thomas, for instance, De veritate, q. 23, a. 7 ad gum, there is no deviation from this doctrine. But no one will ever find in his works cither that being is predicated univocally of all things, or that there is any unity of concept other than that of proportionality. For St. Thomas, between being which belongs intrinsically to God and being which belongs intrinsically to creatures there is but a similarity of proportion, like that we find between knowledge which belongs properly to the intellect and that which belongs properly to sense perception. On this point it is evidently impossible to reconcile the Scotist and Suarezian doctrines with that of St. Thomas.
directly known, a term expressing the uncreated analogate indirectly known, from which we infer the fourth term: creature _ First Cause _ creature __ First Cause its being X itsbeing His Being
This point becomes clear if we recall that we have: (1) the very confused concept of being in general, such as the child has in its first intellectual perception; (2) the concept of finite being —we have a positive knowledge of its finite mode, which is nothing else but the essence of things that we see, such as stones, plants, animals; (3) the concept of analogous being, imperfectly abstracted from the finite mode; and this is the concept we have just been discussing. It is a precision of the first very confused concept which the child has, and the metaphysician acquires it in the process of explaining how the formal notion of being does not of itself admit of the first mode as found in creatures; (4) the concept of the divine Being, the cause of created beings. These, indeed, not having in themselves the reason for their existence, require a cause which is self-existing. In this concept of the divine Being, the divine mode is expressed only in a negative and relative way, for instance, by saying that He is the non-finite, the supreme Being. What positive element there is in this analogical knowledge of God is that which it has proportionally in common with the creature.
The Agnostics insist with the objection that, if the similarity of analogy is to be found only between the two relations
God — creature hen the E anal being i Puba eog concept of analogous being is no more than that of a relation, and how are we then to avoid the Agnostic schema z = + which means a =% ? Are there not always two unknowns in the proportionality? At least it seems we have but a purely negative and relative knowledge. Nominalism has to say the same. The answer of moderate realism is that the concept of being is not first of all one of relation like the concept of paternity. Paternity is the purely accidental relation of a man to his son. There are, on the contrary, non-accidental but essential relations which are implied in a determinate essence or in one of its faculties. The concept expressing this essence, expresses at the same time the relation that it contains. Thus being designates that which bears a relation to existence, and this relation is implied in the very nature of that which exists, and it is essentially varied according as it is necessary or contingent. Created essence in its inmost entity is entirely relative to its contingent existence, which it can lose; the uncreated essence is conceived only as relating to necessary existence with which it is identified. So also the concept of intelligence does not denote purely a relation; in us it signifies a faculty essentially related to intelligible being; in God it denotes the eternal and subsistent intellection of being always actually known.
These analogous perfections are not, therefore, pure relations. They are perfections which in created beings imply the compositions of two correlative elements: potentiality and act, which in God are pure act. Our intelligence conceives them as being all the more realized in proportion as they are purified of all potentiality. In God, therefore, they exist in the pure state.
From this we see that there are not two unknowns in the proportionalities established by theological science. In these equations God is appropriately designated by the term First Cause, since it is by this concept relative to contingent beings that we attain to Him in the first place, and afterwards we write down the perfections in their necessary order, whether or not they relate to creatures:
contingent being __ First Cause its being ~~ His being immaterial creature __ First immaterial Cause its intelligence His intelligence intelligent creature __ First intelligent Cause ote; — SSS ae ee its will His will
In these equations there are two terms directly known, one uncreated term which is indirectly known by appealing to the principle of causality, and we infer the fourth term which is indirectly known in a positive way from what it has analogically in common with creatures in a negative and relative way as regards its proper divine mode.
Such is the radical difference between an absolute analogous perfection and one that is univocal. The former implies actually an essential variety. Being as such is in this sense essentially varied (actu implicite: implicitly in act). Scotus failed to perceive this radical difference. For him the concept of being has not only a proportional but an absolute unity, and is entitled to be called univocal, though it is not a genus. This univocation is defended by his disciples, at least from the logical? point of view, in so far as being is conceived as non-nothingness. We have seen that there is no foundation for this distinction. Suarez does not go so far as to say that being is univocal, but with Scotus he maintains the absolute unity of the concept, and looks upon analogy as doubtful.?? Hence we do not see, according to the Thomist teaching, how being differs from a genus. If being as such is not essentially varied, the danger of falling into Pantheism is not at all imaginary. We shall have to return to this subject.
2° Yet it is from the logical point of view that being is analogous as applied to God and creatures. What constitutes the metaphysical basis of this analogy is that in the creature essence is not existence, whereas God is existence itself.
31 Cf, Suarez, Disp. Metaph., Il, sec. 2, n. 34: “Now I merely assert that every thing which has been said concerning the unity of the concept of being, appears to be clearer and more certain than that being is analogous. Therefore, in order to defend analogy, it is not right to deny the unity of the concept; but if one of the two must be denied, it is analogy, which is uncertain, that is to be denied rather than wnity of concept, which seems to be demonstrated by sound arguments.”
Unity of proportionality which we have just shown to apply to being, is found to exist on the same grounds in the transcendental properties of being; these are unity, truth, and goodness, which accompany being in all the categories and, like it, are also expressed proportionally. Thus beings are more or less one or undivided, more or less true or in conformity with the First Intelligence, more or less good or perfect. For instance, a fruit is good in its way, physically so; a virtuous man is good in his way, morally so; these various ways are not extrinsic to goodness, they are in themselves good, just as the different ways of being one are not extrinsic to unity, each in itself being one. The transcendental properties of being are not differentiated by extrinsic differences, but they imply these differences, as Aristotle saw very clearly.2? The unity of their concept is therefore only a unity of proportionality. Hence there is only a similarity of proportion between the divine unity and that of our soul, for this latter is rich with a virtually infinite multiplicity. Divine truth is not only the conformity of intelligence with being or of being with intelligence, it is their identification, Divine goodness is not, like our virtues, a perfection superadded to and inhering in the essence, it is the very plenitude of divine Being.
c) What has just been said about abstract being and its properties is true of all the analogous perfections which common sense attributes to God, such as intelligence, wisdom, providence, free will, love, mercy, and justice.
It is manifestly an error for Agnostic symbolism to admit in these perfections only metaphorical analogies after the manner of that which enables us to say that God is angry. Anger is formally a passion of the sensible order which cannot be found
22 Aristotle, Metaph., Bk. IV, ch, i; Bk. X, ch. i; Bk. XII, ch. i; Ethic. ad Nic., Bk. I, ch. vi; Post Analyt., Bk. II, chs. xiii, xiv.
formally in God, who is pure spirit. On the other hand, intelligence, will, and their virtues are absolute perfections without any trace of imperfection.
Agnostic symbolism is again mistaken when all that it cares to see in the expression “God is intelligent” is an analogy of simple extrinsic attribution which has reference to creatures. It is as if this proposition merely meant that God can produce intelligence in us and may rightly be called intelligent, just as the air which is favorable to health is called healthy. For this reason God, who can produce corporeal beings, could be said to be corporeal. Here, too, symbolism forgets to distinguish between the absolute and the mixed perfections.
On the other hand, to think that intelligence, liberty, love, and justice denote in God and in us a perfection which is absolutely one, would end in anthropomorphism. In fact, these perfections, like being as such and its properties, have but a unity of proportionality.
The proof of this is, that they are immediately specified by being or by some property of being; they have, therefore, the same unity as it has.
This is easily explained for the intellect, the formal object of which is being; for the will, the formal object of which is goodness; for action, the formal object of which is realized being. The same is to be said of the perfections of the intellect: wisdom, providence (or prudence) ; and of the perfections of the will: love, mercy, and justice.
These notions, like that of being, have merely a unity of proportionality. Just as being is that which exists or can exist, that which exists of itself (God) or by reason of another (creature), so intelligence is either the ever actual knowledge of the self-subsisting Being (the divine intelligence), or it is simply the faculty which can know being (created intelligence). The will is either the ever actual love of the supreme Good (the divine will), or it is simply the faculty capable of loving the good. Action is either the production and the preservation of being, precisely as being, of created things (creative action), or it is simply the production of a finite modality by the transformation of a pre-existing subject. Knowledge is caused in us by things; in God it is the cause of things. Love presupposes the amiability of the object loved; God’s love causes this amiability in creatures. Human liberty is the dominating indifference of a power or faculty; in God it is the dominating indifference of pure act, etc. The analogy of proportionality, when fully understood, will enable us to solve the various antinomies relating to the divine perfections, antinomies which are the result of conceiving these perfections as univocal. We may write, for instance:
divine ; object : divine essence intelligences angelic; “ — : angelic “ BEING human; : essence of sensible things
If, then, the unity of concept (mental or objective) of absolute analogous perfections is only a unity of proportionality, it is not a contradiction for one and the same absolute analogous perfection to exist formally in two analogates, in spite of the infinite diversity of the modes according to which it is realized in each of them. This was really what Maimonides and Scotus failed to see. They considered the unity of concept of these perfections as absolute; hence there were only two possible conclusions:3
Scotus, from which Suarez escapes only by means of an inconsistency, having previously admitted the absolute unity of the concepts of the perfections common to God and creatures.
If, on the contrary, we properly understand unity of proportionality,?* as just explained, there is no contradiction in the same analogous perfection existing formally according to infinitely diverse modes. Indeed, even in the created order, knowledge is formally present both in sensation and intellection, although between the two there is no determinate distance. It is not a contradiction for the absolute perfections, which imply no imperfection, to exist in an infinite mode; in other words, they are not repugnant to the infinitely perfect Being. Therefore they can exist formally in the two analogates, infinitely different from each other by their mode of being.
It remains for us to show how the eminent mode in which the different absolute perfections apply to God, allows of their being formally identified in the Deity without being destructive of one another. We have to explain this, not in a positive manner, for
23 Belmond (Revue de philosophie, July and August, 1912, “L’Univocité scotiste”), in his defense of the Scotist doctrine, considers that the problem has not been stated fairly by the adversaries of the Subtle Doctor.
“The opponents of univocation,” he says, “could have labored more effectively if they had expressed the question raised by Scotus by the following formula: Is it possible by means of abstraction so to denature the concept of being that it becomes the pure exclusion of absolute nothingness, without designating precisely either this or that, an affirmation in globo of all that in some way is outside of nothingness?”
“It is not for me,” he adds, “to pass a premature judgment on their attitude as regards the Scotist question. I even conceive that they could have undertaken to prove that it is a false theory, that they might have rejected the idea of univocal being, as of no use, an extreme subtlety.” Revue de phil., July 1912, pP. 43.
But it is just in this way that the great Thomists whom we have followed, especially Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, have stated the question and, as Belmond foresees, solved it. Being, they said, cannot be perfectly abstracted (non perfecte praescindit) from its analogates, for it contains them actually though implicitly (actu implicite). It cannot be so denatured that there is only one meaning left for it. Even reduced to denote non-nothingness, being is not invariably the same. Non-nothingness is essentially varied, for God is not non-nothingness in the same way that the creature is, as was previously explained by us.
that would be proving the mystery to be intrinsically evident, but in a negative and relative way.
- It is no contradiction for the absolute perfections to become really identical in the Deity and to be present there, however, formally and in the pure state; for, in proportion as they are purified from all imperfection, they tend, each according to its proper exigencies, in some way to become identical.
In other words, if they are identified in the eminence of the formal notion of the Deity, it is not only in virtue of the general exigencies of the divine simplicity (ex communibus) that this is so, but also in virtue of the proper exigency of each of the perfections (ex propriis). Now nothing tends of itself to its own destruction, but on the contrary everything tends to its complete realization. Hence this identification, to which these perfections thus formally tend, instead of destroying them, must be the means of constituting them in the pure state, a state which can be known only negatively and relatively by us here on earth.
To understand this fully, we must condense into a few pages what St. Thomas and his school teach concerning the mutual relations between the divine attributes and the distinction between them.
We know that, according to St. Thomas, the plurality of the notions we form of God are due both to the debility of our intellect, which is incapable of comprehending the simplicity of the Deity, and to the sovereign perfection of God, in whom all the absolute perfections are contained eminently.**
24 St. Thomas, on I Sent., 1, 2, q. 1, a. 3, writes: "That God exceeds our intellect, is due to the plenitude of God’s perfection and to the deficiency of our intellect in comprehending it. Hence it is evident that the plurality of these concepts finds its explanation not only in our intellect, but also in God Himself, inasmuch as His perfection exceeds any concept whatsoever of our intellect, And therefore to the plurality of these concepts there corresponds something objective, which is God, not indeed a plurality of the object, but full perfection, the result of which is that all these concepts are applied to Him.”
But there are some distinctions which are solely the outcome of the imperfection of our knowledge. It is not between two specifically different attributes that we introduce distinctions in God, but between potentiality and act which have the same specification; for instance, between the divine intelligence and intellection, or between God’s omnipotence and His act. This is what makes St. Thomas say that: “In God the idea of power is retained, inasmuch as it is the principle of an effect; not, however, as it is a principle of action, for this is the divine essence itself; except, perchance, after our manner of understanding ...” (Ia, q. 25, a. 1 ad 3um). There is no potentiality in God, and therefore no foundation for a virtual distinction between potentiality and act. If we happen to make this distinction, the only basis for doing so is in creatures, which serve us as a means for knowing God, but not in God Himself.
Starting from this principle, it is easy for us to arrange the divine perfections in three groups. Those who have studied the treatise on God as given in the Theological Summa of St. Thomas, and in the commentaries which the great Thomists, such as Cajetan, Bannez, and John of St. Thomas, have left us and also in the summary of their writings by Billuart, will not be surprised at this classification which the schema on the next page, as previously explained (n. 45), will enable us the better to understand.
Three groups of divine perfections can easily be discerned:
a) The perfections which are not virtually distinct from one another, according to a distinction which has its basis in God.?5 These are, on the one hand: being, essence, existence, operative power, intellection, and truth. They are written on the same curve in the schema diagrammed below. On the other hand: being,
25 If we speak here of a virtual distinction, this can be only one that is quite extrinsic, for which there is no foundation ia God but only in creatures, as will be explained.
De ss
Being
Essence 9 Existeuce S a ON 3 2 | 3 J 8 2 S Goodness Will 4 ove Wisdom Free Will
/ N beige a Providence Justice frercy
Visinu essence, existence, operative power, will, goodness, which are also written on the same curve.
b) The perfections which are virtually distinct from one another solely because of the diverse relations they bear to creatures either actual or possible. These are, for the divine intelligence: knowledge of simple intelligence or knowledge of possible things, knowledge of vision or knowledge of actual things, and providence which ordains and directs these things to the ultimate end of the whole universe. In the divine will, such perfections are: the free love of God for creatures whom He could have willed not to create; mercy or the will to come to the assistance of creatures in their misery; justice or the will to give creatures what is necessary for them to attain their end, and to reward them according to their merits or to punish them according to their demerits.
c) The perfections which are virtually distinct from one another independently *® of a relation to creatures either actual or possible. These are: intellection and volition,” which would exist in God even if no creature were possible, much less realized. In the foregoing schema they are written on two distinct curves. For these last perfections it is more difficult to show how they can, without destroying each other, become really identical in the eminence of the Deity.
We single out here merely the positive attributes which are the only ones the identification of which in God presents a diffculty. Negative perfections are merely the negation of an imperfection (Ia, q. 13, a.2). With regard to infinity and immutability, these are negatively expressed perfections which accompany the
26 The word “independently” applies to these perfections and not to our imperfect knowledge of them.
27 Divine truth and divine goodness are not virtually distinct on the part of the divine essence, but according as they are differently related to the divine intelligence and to the divine will.
various attributes. Thus we say: infinite being, infinite goodness, infinite power, infinite intelligence, infinite mercy, etc. Also immutability is fittingly predicated of the being of God, of His knowledge, providence, will, justice, etc. This immutability, moreover, like eternity, has its origin in absolute simplicity with which it is our effort to conciliate all the attributes. As for life, this is implied in intellection and volition.
Let us see how the attributes of each of the three groups just distinguished are identified in God.
a) The perfections not virtually distinct from one another are easily identified, even according to our mode of knowing them. What are these perfections? They are those which in creatures are distinguished not formally but only potentially; in other words they are those which have the same formal object and are in the same rank. For instance, essence is distinct from existence in the creature only because essence is potentiality with regard to existence. The same condition prevails between essence and operative power and equally so between this latter and operation, as also btween intelligence and intellection, or again between will and volition. Clearly these perfections are not virtually distinct in God; they become identical in Him, even according to our way of knowing them.” If they were virtually distinct in God, or, in other words, according to a distinction reasoned out by the mind which has its foundation in the divine reality, it would follow that there would be a foundation for conceiving in God something potential or imperfect; there would be, for instance, a
28 In this case, however, we can concede an extrinsic virtual distinction, inasmuch as the pure actuality of God is equivalent eminently to potentiality and act which are distinct in the created order. But then we see that the foundation for this distinction is entirely extrinsic to God; it has not its raison d'étre in the formal notions of the perfections so distinguished, but in their created mode which could not be found as such in God. Cf, Ia, q. 25, a. 1 ad 3um, and Gredt, Metaphysica, p. 196 É, foundation for conceiving His essence as potentiality with regard to His existence, His intelligence as potentiality with regard to His intellection. Hence God would no longer be pure Act. As He is supreme Actuality, free from all potentiality, from all imperfection, there are no grounds in Him for our conceiving His essence as in potentiality for existence, operation, or anything else whatever.
Such is the doctrine of St. Thomas. It can be explained from his Theological Summa in which he devotes some special articles to the absolute identification, even according to our manner of knowing, of certain divine perfections, but not all of them. He proves that in God, who is pure Act, essence and existence are identical, and he also proves the identity of existing essence (subject) with intelligence, of intellection with essence which is the divine object of this intellection, and of existing essence also with will and volition. Essence and existence are the same (la, q- 3, a.4). “Since God has no potentiality in Him, but is pure Act, His intellect and its object must be altogether the same” (Ia, q.14, a.2) and His act of understanding is His essence and His existence (subject-object). Ia, q. 14, a. 43 q. 54, a. 1, 2. And as His intellect is His own existence, so is His will (la, q. 19, a. 1). “In God the idea of power is retained, inasmuch as it is the principle of an effect; not, however, as it is a principle of action, for this is the divine essence itself” (la, q. 25, a. 1 ad 2um and ad 3um). Contrary to this, St. Thomas never wrote any article in order to identify the divine intellection and will. He acknowledges an intrinsic virtual distinction between them, which he does not admit between the above mentioned perfections.
Several Thomists have condensed this doctrine in the following proposition: “In God there is a virtual distinction between those perfections only which are distinguished in creatures not potentially (as essence and existence, or intelligence and intellection), but because of their formal concept or formal object, and which therefore belong to different orders (as intellect and will).” 29
It is upon the real and formal identification of the perfections of this first group that the attributes of the two following groups depend. But we now find the solution of the two so-called antinomies: (1) The duality of subject and object essential to all knowledge cannot be reconciled with the divine simplicity; (2) Absolute immutability is contrary to divine life which presupposes, like all life, a becoming.
- The first of these two antinomies was formulated by Plotinus and taken up again by Fichte. Plotinus declared that the one is superior to intelligence, because intelligence implies duality of subject and object. For the same reason Fichte refused to admit the existence of a personal and conscious God. Spencer acknowledges that we must attribute knowledge to God, but at the same time refuse it to Him because it implies a duality which is contrary to the divine simplicity. St. Thomas considers this difficulty in Ia, q. 14, a. 2, obj. 1 and 2. He replies: “Let us not seek in God for a duality of intelligent subject and intelligible object, for this proceeds only from the potentiality of both. So
29 See John of St. Thomas, on Ia, q. 14, disp. 16, a. 2, nn. 19, 20, 28, 33, and Billuart, De Deo, dissert. Il, a. 1; and dissert. V, a. 1, dico 2. In n. 49 we showed that this is the conclusion of the Salmanticenses and of Gonet. Contenson, De Deo, Bk. I, diss. II, ch. ii, spec. 2, admits that there is no virtual distinction between divine intelligence and intellection, but, contrary to several Thomists, he believes that we must admit one between divine intelligence and its primary object, the divine essence. Billuart, De Deo, diss. II, a. 1, sec. 4, obj. 3, sums up the more common teaching of the Thomists. He says: “The object in every act of understanding seeks to be united with the intellect, and the more perfect is the intellection the more perfect is the union. Hence the divine intellection by reason of its infinity and supreme actuality, reaches such a degree of eminent and simple perfection that it becomes identical with its object, without any virtual distinetion for which thre is a real foundation.” This is precisely what St. Thomas teaches in Ia, q. 14, a. 2, when he says: “Since God has nothing in Him of potentiality, but is pure act, His intellect and its object must be altogether the same,” and therefore are not virtually distinct. This thesis does not oblige us, moreover, to maintain that the divine intellection is what formally constitutes the essence of God.
also in us the sensible (or rather the object perceived) in act is sense in act, and the intelligible (or rather the object understood) in act is intellect in act. Our intellect is identified (intentionally or representatively) with its object in so far as it is actually known; if it is distinct from its object as an entity (entitative), this is because both are in potentiality and not pure act; because of this only, it follows that sense or intellect is distinct from the sensible or intelligible object, since both are in potentiality” (Ia, q. 14, a. 2).
In fact, man is intelligent in proportion as he is immaterial (Ia, q. 14, a. 1), in proportion as his form, his soul, dominates matter, space, and time, and enables him to know not only such being as is particular and contingent, existing Aere and now, but being as such. And as man is not being, intelligence in him is only a power or faculty in relation to being which is intentional, capable of representing it to itself. It is an accident belonging to the category of quality, and human intellection is merely an accidental act of this power.
Likewise, the object of the human intellect is intelligible only potentially in sensible things. We must also form for ourselves an idea, an intellectual image, which makes it actually intelligible. From this two-fold potentiality of our intellect and of the intelligible which is proportionate to it, arises the duality of subject and of being. Our intellect becomes identified in its act with its object in so far as it is known, but it is distinct from it in so far as it is being. And truth is the conformity of judgment with being which is judged, in so far precisely as it is distinct from judgment. “Truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is” (Ia, q. 16, a. 5).°
80 This prevents us from admitting the thesis maintained by Sertillanges in his Saint Thomas d'Aquin, II, 182, which is as follows: “Truth is not, directly,-a relation that we bear to things. It is a relation that we bear to ourselves which is in corresponding equation with things. The subject of truth is judgment, and
God, who is the self-subsisting Being, must also be intelligent, according to the degree of His immateriality (la, q. 14, a. 1); and as He is, according to His definition, independent not only of all material and spatial limitation, but also of all limitation on the part of essence and potentiality, He is supremely intelligent, and His intelligence cannot be a faculty or power in relation to being, but it is intellection itself (self-subsisting intelligence).
As, moreover, God is intelligible also according to the degree of His immateriality, He is being in a state of supreme intelligibility. He has no need of having recourse to an expressed concept of Himself so as to render Himself intelligible in act; He is of Himself and always has been, not only actually knowable but actually known, otherwise He would not be pure Act in the intelligible order. Hence the-divine intellection is identical with the divine essence, not only in so far as it is known (intentionaliter), but in so far as it is being (entitative). Without the least antinomy, the divine intelligence becomes identical with the divine essence in an eternally subsisting intellectual luminousness. Consequently, there could not be a virtual distinction in God between being and truth, since the divine being is not only in conformity with the divine intelligence, but is simply one with it.*? judgment is entirely within us, whereas one of the terms of simple apprehension is within us, the other being external to us. Truth is therefore purely an internal relation.” “This conception of truth is little known,” says the author, “even by those who profess to be Thomists. It is, however, of great consequence, for it implies, with regard to intellectual knowledge, a dose of subjectivity capable of counteracting the tendencies toward subjectivism.”
On the contrary, we think that it favors these tendencies, that it tends to make one overlook the essential duality of subject and object in created intelligence, a duality which disappears only when we come to God.”
31 See St. Thomas, Ia, q. 16, a. 5: “Truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is; and in things according as they have being conformable to an intellect. This is to the greatest degree found in God. For Hts being is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect;
and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect, and He Himself is His own existence and act of under-
There is, therefore, absolute identity without virtual distinction è? between the existing divine essence (thinking subject) and intelligence (operative power), the idea (cognitive determinant), intellection (act of knowledge), and the divine essence known or first truth (object). To admit here a virtual distinction would mean that it is possible for one of these perfections to be conceived as potential, for which there is a real foundation in the divine reality itself.
Is there a virtual distinction between willing or the act of love by which God necessarily loves Himself, and the divine essence which is both subject and object of this love? The answer is, no. The same holds good between willing and intellection. The divine will cannot be conceived as a power or faculty; it is identical with the divine essence (subject) and its act of love.* Besides, the object of this act is the sovereign Good which is of itself and always has been, not only lovable but actually loved.’* If it were otherwise, then something would be wanting to Him as pure act in what pertains to goodness. Finally, this primary object of the divine love is not virtually distinct from the divine essence (subject), for this essence is of itself plenitude of being, and this plenitude is the very definition of goodness. We also say that God is good or essentially goodness. “Deus est bonus per suam essentiam, God is essentially good” (Ia, q. 6, a. 3).
- The second antinomy, which can be solved by explaining this first group of perfections, relates to the divine life, which is standing. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and first truth.”
22 If we can say there is a virtual distinction here, it is only an extrinsic virtual distinction which has its foundation, not in God, but in creatures,
83 St. Thomas (la, q. 19, a. r) says: “And as His intellect is His own existence, so is His will.” “For each,” as Cajetan points out, “is a second and immanent act.”
34 St, Thomas, Ia, q. 19, a. r ad 2um, says: “Will in us... not only seeks what it does not possess, but also loves what it does possess and delights in it. In this respect will is said to be in God, as having always good which is its object, since, as already said, it is not distinct from His essence.”
declared to be contrary to absolute immutability. All life seems, indeed, to imply a becoming. St. Thomas did not fail to consider this objection in the question treating of the divine life (Ia, q. 18, a.3, obj. 1 and 2). He replies as follows: “As God is His very own existence and understanding, so is He His own life; and therefore He so lives that He has no principle of life.” The act of intellection represents the highest degree of life, since we distinguish btween the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual in life. Intellectual life in creatures implies a certain becoming because their intelligence is only a faculty which is in relation to being, and which must seek its object outside itself, ab extrinseco. Nevertheless, it is an imperfect life, for what characterizes life is immanence (motus ab intrinseco). If, on the contrary, pure intellection is identical in God with pure being always known, it follows that the divine life is pre-eminently, absolutely immanent life on the part of both subject and object, and consequently is absolutely immobile and simple, measured by eternity and not by time, which is but the measure of motion. Becoming is in life only an imperfection, the imperfection of changeable being which is either tending toward that which as yet it has not become, or losing that which it had. Life which implies a becoming, is a life which is but a birth with a blending also of death. Life free from all imperfection is eternal, one, indivisible, immutable with an immutability that is not a privation of motion, like inertia, but which is the negation of motion or of instability. It is the absolute stability of a subsistent knowledge and love which are of themselves and from all eternity all that they can be, without any possibility of increase or decrease. On the contrary, it would be truly an antinomy to posit in God an increase, for this essentially implies imperfection, the privation of that which one is seeking to acquire.
Our conclusion is established therefore without difficulty for the perfections of this first group. In proportion as they are puri- fied of all potentiality or imperfection they tend to become really identical, not only according to the general exigencies of the divine simplicity (ex communibus), but also according to the proper exigencies of each of them (ex propriis). Hence this identification to which they thus formally tend, far from destroying them, must be the means of constituting them in the pure state. Being and intelligence, therefore, are contained formally in God, becoming absolutely identical in Him. It is this which most readily appeals to us in this mystery since for this first group, according to our manner of knowing, identification becomes peremptory because of the impossibility of admitting here an intrinsic virtual distinction, as this would involve potentiality in God.
b) The perfections of the second group are those between which there is a virtual distinction solely on account of the diverse relations ® they bear to creatures either actual or possible. These are the intellectual virtues, some of them with regard to the others, and likewise the virtues of the will.
In God there is only one act of intellection, unum intelligere subsistens (one subsistent act of understanding), which has for its primary object the divine essence, the first truth. In this unique act we cannot introduce any virtual distinction on the part of God; but according to His various relations with created things, we virtually distinguish between His knowledge of possible things (or that of simple intelligence), His knowledge of actual things, which in time have been, are, or will be (knowledge of vision which presupposes the free decree calling these creatures into existence), and His providence or divine prudence which ordains or directs all things to the final end of the universe.
It is clear that a virtual distinction of this kind, since it is based
26 This is an abridged form of speech, for it would be better to say: on account of the diverse relations of creatures to God, since there is a real relation of creatures to God, and only a logical relation of God to creatures, Cf. Ia, q. 13, a. 7; De veritate, q. 3, a. 2 ad 8.
solely upon the various relations to creatures, could not be contrary to the absolute simplicity of God. As John of St. Thomas says: ®® “Wisdom, knowledge, are sometimes taken to mean the act itself of the intellect in the universality of its extent, and thus wisdom is the same in God as His act of understanding and His existence. Sometimes they are taken to mean a special manner of understanding, and in this way wisdom denotes cognition by means of the highest causes, knowledge a cognition by means of inferior causes, prudence a cognition in directing things; and thus they are distinguished after the manner of certain intellectual virtues and the divine attributes (D. Thom. in I dist. 39, q. 2, a. 1). Hence they are distinguished not because of the different formal grounds of knowledge, for the grounds are one and the same, in divine cognition; but because of a different connotation and reference to the objects ultimately known.” Likewise Billuart, De Deo, dissert. V, art. 2, sec. 3.
It must be said that there are as many virtual distinctions in the divine volition or love between the necessary and free volition, as in this latter between mercy and justice. These virtual distinctions cannot be contrary to God’s absolute simplicity since they are based solely upon the diverse relations which they bear to creatures.
In fact, as St. Thomas says (Contra Gentes, Bk. I, ch. Ixxxii): “The divine will by one and the same act, wills Himself and other things. Now His relation to Himself is necessary and natural; whereas His relation to other things is by way of a kind of fittingness, not necessary and natural, not violent and unnatural, but free.” 87
We shall later (n. 63) examine the antinomy which Agnosticism
87 “Voluntas Dei uno et eodem actu vult se et alia, sed habitudo ejus ad se est necessaria et naturalis, habitudo ejus ad alia est secundum convenientiam quam- dam, non quidem necessaria et naturalis, neque violenta aut innaturalis, sed voluntaria.” Contra Gentes, Bk, I, ch. lxxxii.
claims to discover between divine liberty and immutability, as if the divine free act added to God something contingent and defectible.
It suffices for the present to note St. Thomas’ reply to this objection (Ia, q. 19, a. 3 ad gum). “That God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed, namely, that the perfect goodness of God can be without it; and such defect accompanies all created good.”
The difficulty of the Agnostics comes from this, that they consider the free act in God to be like the free act in human beings, not going beyond this to consider the analogous notion of liberty which is common to God and intellectual creatures. Our liberty is but the dominating indifference of a power or faculty as regards particular good, and that because our will is not goodness itself, but only a faculty which relates to good. Hence the free act in human beings is a defectible accident which is superadded to the volitional faculty. Contrary to this, the divine free act is the dominating indifference, not of a power, but of a pure act of subsisting love. Hence the difficulty belongs only to particular good or to creatures that God can will or not will, since He already possesses, without them, supreme Goodness which is identical with his ever actual and eternally subsisting love.
The virtual distinction which we admit in the divine will between necessary and free love is not, therefore, irreconcilable with God’s absolute simplicity. This distinction is based solely upon its various relations to creatures, and we see that the necessary and the free act of the will, if they are purified of all potentiality or imperfection, tend, according to their proper exigencies, to become identified in one and the same act. Liberty, far from being destroyed, exists, therefore, formally and in a pure state in this identification.
The same is to be said of mercy and justice. In the free act of love they are virtually distinguished according as they are variously related to created beings. Mercy is, in fact, the will to help others in their misery (Ia, q. 21, a. 3); justice is the will to give them what is necessary for the attainment of their end, and also to reward them according to their merits or punish them according to their demerits. Avenging justice, which seems for the Agnostics to be incompatible with mercy, like it, proceeds from one and the same love of the sovereign Good, as St. Thomas explains in Ia, q. 23, a. 5 ad 3um. In fact, the sovereign Good has two essential and subordinate properties: (1) He is supremely diffusive of Himself, this being the principle of mercy; (2) He has an imperative and inalienable right to be loved above all things, this being the principle of avenging justice. This latter manifests itself against those who have deliberately despised the goodness and love of God whose demands are as sweet as they are absolute. Dante would have us see written on the gates of hell, that the holy hatred of evil which created this place of punishment is only an aspect of supreme Love for supreme Good.?* And however obscure and terrible this mystery may be, we have sufficient insight into it to say that this hatred is not incompatible with mercy, but with that culpable license or liberalism which springs from indifference toward God, and which is nothing else than a want of love.
Mercy, moreover, always prevails over justice, for God owes nothing to the creature except on account of what pre-exists in it; and in the last analysis what pre-exists in it comes from God and
88 “Justice incited my sublime Creator, Created me divine omnipotence, The highest Wisdom and the prima! Love.” Canto III, Longfellow's translation, has been given to it out of pure kindness, by an act of absolutely gratuitous love. The influence of mercy is thus more intense than that of justice. It manifests itself toward the damned, mitigating their punishments; if justice alone were meted out to the reprobates according to their deserts, their sufferings would be far greater (Ia, q.21, a. 4 and ad rum).
In order that this mystery of the reconciliation of justice with mercy be not a scandal for us, of His own accord God has willed to show how these two perfections, far from destroying each other in being united, find only in this union the realization of their supreme demands. By the death on the cross of the Word made flesh, “mercy and truth have met each other; justice and peace have kissed” (Ps. 84: 12).
God the Father, in demanding of Jesus Christ, by reason of His justice, an infinite satisfaction, as the offence was infinite, required of Him the most heroic act of love. And in consigning Him thus for our salvation to the glorious ignominy of death on the cross, He showed His own infinite love for the sovereign Good, for Christ, and for us. What is the sublimity of the cross, if not the harmony of perfections seemingly in opposition, the union of the supreme demands of justice and love?
“The standard of our King comes forth, Bright shines the mystery of the Cross, Through which as man the Creator of man, On the gibbet was suspended.”
Liberal Protestants who refuse to see anything more in the Passion of our Lord than a manifestation of God’s love for us and not a demand of His justice, outrage this love which they claim they want to safeguard. They do not understand that, in proportion as love is purified of all imperfection, it becomes identical with mercy and justice. It is as absolute, imperative, and strong as it is sweet and compassionate. This sweetness and mercy would be false and would no longer have anything divine about them, if they were not identical in God ®° with the holy demands expressed by justice. We are far from believing in that “good-natured God whom the world delights in creating for itself, and whom Bossuet, somewhere in his works, calls an idol.” *°
“Love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell. The lamps thereof are fire and flames. Many waters cannot quench charity, neither can the floods drown it” (Cant. 8:6). Love is strong as death; its holy hatred of evil is as inflexible as hell, its intensity is that of fire, a flame of Jehovah. High floods could not extinguish love nor could rivers submerge it. St. Thomas, in his commentary on this passage, writes: “Love is strong as death, because it separates the soul from the body, as is the case with one who dies from love as Christ did. Excess of love is hard as hell, because the pains that it caused Christ to endure were like those of hell. The torrent of tribulations and afflictions cannot extinguish love.” In this eminent degree, as known by certain souls, victims of expiation, who are in union with the Crucified, mercy and justice are simply one; and in this life it is the highest degree of participation in the infinitely holy love that is in God.
As for the permission of evil, this could not be incompatible with sovereign Goodness and Omnipotence, for, as St. Augustine says: “God has permitted evil because He is good enough and powerful enough to draw good out of the very evil.” 4? “This is
39 We say “in God,” because in Him this identification is necessary, whereas ad extra it is in a sense free. Of His own accord God willed to redeem us by the death of our Lord, He could have saved us by forgiving us our offences without demanding satisfaction, but the manifestation of His love would not have been so striking for us: “God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son” (John 3: 16).
40 Bishop Gay, Vertus chrétiennes, chapter on “faith,” apropos of God's sanctity,
41 Enchiridion, ch. xi: “Since God is in the highest degree good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.”
the part of the infinite goodness of God,” says St. Thomas,? “that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good,” the heroism of the martyrs for instance (Ia, q. 2, a. 3 ad 1um). Besides, “creatures are by their nature, liable to fail, and it belongs to nature that what may fail should sometimes fail.” ** Among the good things for which the permission of evil is the condition we must include the manifestation of justice, splendor justitiae, the triumph of truth over error, of wisdom over false science, and of good over evil.* God is not bound to prevent, though He may, the perversity of false philosophers; He can even permit the wilful hardening of their hearts, but even that must contribute to His glory. If the vengeance of mercy cannot be His, in souls that no longer have the least wish to be reinstated and that are confirmed in evil, there is still left to Him the vengeance of justice. However mysterious it may be, this permission of evil, far from being opposed to the love of the sovereign Good, is manifestly subordinate to it and to the glory of God.
Thus are solved the so-called antinomies which concern the attributes of this second group, between which there is a virtual distinction according to the various ways in which they are related to creatures. These perfections, in proportion as they are purified of all potentiality or imperfection, tend ex propriis, according to the proper exigencies of each of them, to become identical. Hence
42 See Ia, q. 2, a. 3 ad 1um: “Hoe ergo ad infinitam bonitatem pertinet ut esse permittat mala, et ex eis eliciat bona.”
#3 See la, q. 48, a. 2 ad 3um: “Ipsa natura rerum hoc habet, ut quae deficere possunt, quandoque deficiant.”
The permission of evil is thus explained by the four causes: (1) by the final cause; for the purpose of a greater good; (2) by the efficient cause; God's power is such that He can bring good even out of evil; (3) by the material cause; it is natural that what may fail should sometimes fail; (4) the formal cause in the permission of evil is thus seen to be quite different from what formally constitutes the culpable gratification in letting one do the wrong which ought to be prevented. God is not bound to prevent the defection of the creature which by its nature is liable to fail, a defection from which He will effect a greater good,
#4 See Illa, q. 59, On Christ’s judiciary power.
this identification does not destroy them or prevent them from existing formally in God, but constitutes them in a pure state.
c) The third group presents a greater difficulty. It includes the perfections between which there is a virtual distinction, independently of all relation to creatures. These are intellection and volition, which would exist in God even if no created being were possible.
In intellectual creatures, these perfections are distinguished not only by potentiality as, for instance, is the case between intelligence and its act which is intellection, but also because they belong formally to two distinct orders. We must therefore admit a virtual distinction between them. Moreover, this distinction is independent of any relation to creatures either actual or possible. God, by the very fact that He is immaterial, pure spirit, and at the same time the first Truth and the sovereign Good, necessarily knows and loves Himself before knowing and loving anything else. How, then, can these two perfections be formally in God and nevertheless become identical in the eminent formal concept of the Deity which is absolutely simple?
Particularly in this case the Agnostic will say that, if God is absolutely simple, intellection and volition can be said to belong to Him only virtually. On the contrary, Scotus insists that we should introduce into the divine reality his actual-formal distinction previous to the consideration of our mind, so as to be able to attribute formally to God intellection and volition. Scotus claims that if his distinction is rejected, then it is right to say that God knows by His will, and wills by His intellect.
The Thomists reply that *® what is formally implied by Deity is so eminent that it can identify in itself intellection and love without destroying them. It is superior to these two perfections, yet it is still formally intellection and love, according to an alldivine eminent mode which only the blessed in heaven know in a positive way.
However mysterious the real identification of the perfections of this third group may be for us, we can explain them in a negative and relative way. Intellection and love, in proportion as they are purified of all potentiality or imperfection, likewise tend to become identical, not only according to the general exigencies of the divine simplicity (ex communibus), but also according to their proper exigencies (ex propriis). In fact, as was shown when speaking of the first group of perfections, divine intellection and love are not virtually distinct from the divine essence which is their common subject and object.*® The divine intellection is identical with its object, the divine essence or the first truth, without virtual distinction between them; the divine love is likewise identical with the divine essence taken in the sense of sovereign good. Besides, they are both identical with the divine essence as subject in thinking and loving. Are we not thus induced to say that two perfections which are virtually distinct from each other, but not from a third which is their common object and subject, tend to become really identical in this same third? #7 And as they tend toward it according to their proper exigencies, objective and subjective, this identification cannot destroy them. They subsist in it, therefore, formally and explicitly in a mysterious way, the posi-
46 If we speak here at times of a virtual distinction, this can only be a virtual distinction which is entirely extrinsic. The foundation for it is not in God, since He is pure act, but in the creature, which is composed of potentiality and act. Therefore, in the above diagram, we have marked on one curve the divine intellection and the divine essence which is its subject and object; on another curve, which partly coincides with the first, are placed the divine will and the divine essence which is its subject and object.
47 There is identification of divine intellection and volition in the divine essence, not such as we conceive it, as the self-subsisting Being, but such as it is in itself, according to the eminent and most intimate notion of Deity. That is why the Thomists, and the majority of theologians with them, say: “The essence of God, if taken as it is objectively, contains all attributes formally and explicitly. But if taken for what constitutes it essentially as such according to our mode of conceiving it, it contains them formally but only implicitly, and in a confused manner.” Billuart, De Deo, diss. Il, a. 2.
tive knowledge of which is unattainable for us in this world. Only an opposition of relation could prevent this identification of intellection and love; but this opposition exists only between the divine Persons, and it is only revelation that can make this known to us. “In God all things are one and the same where there is no opposition of relation.”—Council of Florence (Denzinger, n. 703).
In this life, however, supernatural contemplation which proceeds from the highest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gift of wisdom, is a savory knowledge (sapida sapientia) of God, vivified by charity, a simple glance filled with admiration and love (Ila lae, q. 45). From this we surmise what may be the nature of this identification of thought and love in God. In thus uniting, they are not at all mutually destructive, but they reinforce each other, and it is only there they are found in their pure state, free from all imperfection. In God intelligence is vital and loving; His love is always penetrated by wisdom, as free as He wishes it to be.
Thus is verified for the three groups of divine perfections the principle stated against the Agnosticism of Maimonides and the formalism of Scotus, namely, that there is no repugnance in the absolute perfections being really identical in the eminence of the formal notion of Deity and existing there, however, not only virtually but formally, and in a pure state. We have not the intrinsic evidence of this mystery which the blessed in heaven possess. Here on earth it is the object of a natural desire which is conditional and inefficacious, and also of a supernatural desire which is efficacious and absolute. But, although we do not have this intrinsic evidence, we have shown at least: (1) that there is in this identification of the divine attributes not an antinomy, but a mystery; (2) that we can explain this mystery in a negative and relative way. Thus we avoid Agnosticism without impairing, as the formalism of Scotus seems to do, the absolute simplicity of God. Our thesis is that of moderate realism (or of realistic conceptualism) ; the two others represent the old established opposition of Nominalism and extreme Realism.*8
Such is the solution of the fundamental antinomy brought against us, and it is the principle upon which the solution of the other antinomies rests. In conclusion, let us point out the difficulties (which the Thomists say cannot be solved) that are inherent in the formalism of Scotus and in the rather similar theory held by Suarez regarding the unity required for analogy.
- The difficulties inherent in the Scotist and Suarezian conceptions of the divine names.
It is with regret that we here insist upon the differences between the theological schools. We are averse to entering into the theological controversies; they have been too long, too violent, at times too human. Have we not in these days enough common enemies against whom we must unite for the defence of the faith and the good of souls? We introduce this subject here because St. Thomas’ sublime teaching on the divine names has sometimes been misunderstood and more or less confused with the formalism of Scotus who took the opposite view, or with the attempts proposed by Suarez. We must note these differences so as to set forth the true meaning and import of the mind of the Angelic Doctor.
With Scotus, there is a close connection between his two doctrines of the univocation of being and the actual-formal distinction between the divine attributes.
He contends that being is universal: (1) because we can be certain there is being, and yet doubt regarding the distinction between God and the world; in this case it is a determinate concept
48In Sertillanges, S. Thomas d'Aquin (Vol. I, ch. i), in the consideration of the analogical knowledge of God, we regret not to find an explanation of the doctrine of St. Thomas, and the way in which it differs radically from the Agnosticism of Maimonides so often attacked by him. Not enough is said as to how the absolute perfections are found to exist in God not only eminently but also formally.
that we have of being, but not of God or creature. He thinks, therefore, that we abstract being perfectly from either the created or divine being, and that this concept thus abstracted is absolutely one; (2) the demonstrations of the existence of God and His attributes, so as not to admit of four terms, presuppose a middle term which is predicated univocally of God and creatures; (3) if it were not so, there would be no way of knowing God by means of a simple concept abstracted from sensible things. Maimonides would be right.*®
According to Scotus there is an actual-formal distinction, previ-
49 Such are, in brief, Scotus’ arguments as given in I, dist. 3, q. 1, 3; and dist. 8, q. 3. Cajetan has refuted them in his commentary on Ia, q. 13, a. 5, and more at length in his De analogia nominum, and in his commentary on De ente et essentia, q. 3: (1) Inasmuch as the analogical concept of being does not contain explicitly, but only actually and implicitly and in a confused way, the concepts of God and the creature, it can be determined, though the others are not. (2) In a syllogism the middle term can be analogous; unity of proportionality is sufficient; as Aristotle explained in his Post. Anal., chs. xiii and xiv (St. Thomas’ commentary, lect. 17, 18). In fact, the syllogism is based upon the principle of contradiction, and contradiction consists in affirming and denying one and the same predicate of one and the same subject, and not in affirming and denying one and the same univocal predicate of one and the same univocal subject. Identity includes identity of proportionality. (3) We can have a positive knowledge of God inasmuch as there is analogical resemblance to Him on the part of creatures (by participation or by imitation), See also the refutation of Scotus’ objections in Goudin, Metaphysica, Q. 1, a. 2; and John of St. Thomas, Logica, q. 13, a. 5. Still the Scotists object: “If subordinate modes were included in the concept of being, even implicitly and in a confused manner, then, if being were predicated of anything whatsoever, the subordinate modes would be predicated, to wit, God and the creature, substance and accident, The consequence is false: for every being would be God, creature, etc. . . . Therefore the antecedent is also false.”
Goudin replies: “I distinguish the major. If being included subordinate modes determinately and as it were copulatively, concedo; indeterminately and as it were disjunctively, nego. Being, however, does not include the subordinate modes determinately and conjunctively, but only indeterminately and as it were disjunctively, inasmuch as it denotes some mode of being, whatever that may be. But when it descends to the subordinate modes, that mode of being which was indeterminate becomes determinate, the one in God, the other in the creature, the one in accident, the other in substance.” To put it more briefly: “The many others correspond to the concept of being as proportionately alike, but each one in its own way.”
Thus, when we say, “God is being,” being attributed to God contains eminently ous to the mind’s consideration, between the metaphysical degrees of one and the same being; as, for instance, in Socrates, between being, substantiality, corporeity, animality, and rationality. We must, then, bear well in mind that univocation of being, thus distinguished from the other formalities, is not only a logical but also a metaphysical univocation, and not unjustly has it been generally criticized by Thomists, such as Capreolus, Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, and others.
Thus on the supposition that the concept of being is univocal, it must designate in God, as in creatures, a perfection formally distinct from the other absolute perfections, from wisdom for instance. The distinction in God, as in creatures, must be previous to the consideration of our mind. Hence, according to Scotus, the virtual distinction of the Thomists is insufficient, like the purely mental one of the Nominalists; for, in the divine reality, justice would be the same as mercy, and we should have to say that God punishes sinners by His mercy and pardons them by His justice. Contradictories would be verified in God. The Subtle Doctor does not accept, however, the real distinction admitted by the extreme realists and condemned by the Church. He maintains, therefore, the existence of an actual-formal distinction which is neither real nor formal (I, dist. 8, q. 4). Univocation of being seems, indeed, to require this conclusion.
This Scotist view has many difficulties to contend with. Vacant remarks; *° “When we study the controversies concerning this created being which is a participated resemblance of it. When we say, “the creaa is,” being attributed to the creature is a participated resemblance of God's
Tt would seem that the purpose of this last objection of the Scotists is to show that analogy of being must end in Pantheism; on the contrary, it is univocation that leads to it. The apparent force of the objection comes from the fact that being, after the manner of Rosmini, is still conceived to be univocal. If it is univocal and also contains actually and implicitly its differences (which, moreover, is a contradiction), the Pantheistic contradiction must follow as a necessary consequence.
50 Vacant, Etudes comparées sur la philosophie de Saint Thomas et sur celle de Duns Scot, p. 22.
subject on a certain point, they seem in most cases to amount to a question of words of no significance. But it is a different matter when these words are viewed in their philosophical setting.” We will point out three principal difficulties.
The actual-formal distinction seems to be absolutely incompatible with the divine simplicity. This distinction is the one which, according to Scotus, exists between the soul and its faculties and between the faculties themselves. How are we to reconcile with the absolute simplicity of God a distinction of the same kind as that we find to exist between the faculties of the soul? What is, in fact, this actual-formal distinction? If it is not a logical distinction, it must bea real distinction. As Vacant says,** along with all the Thomists, “a formal distinction which is neither real nor logical seems to be a contradiction. It must be that what our mind distinguishes formally, is distinguished or not distinguished really in the object which we are considering and which exists outside our mind. There is no other choice.” To avoid the real distinction, we should have to reduce to a mere question of words the arguments of Scotus against St. Thomas. Now, the real distinction of the divine attributes is manifestly incompatible with the absolute simplicity of the divine nature. It is only between the divine Persons that there can be a real distinction, and this because of the relations of opposition between them, which can be made known to us only by revelation. “In God all things are one and the same where there is no relation of opposition.”—Council of Florence (Denzinger, n. 703).
Univocation of being paves the way for Pantheism. Equally with the actual-formal distinction between the divine attributes, with which it is closely connected, the doctrine of the univocation of being is of the essence of Scotism. Scotus claims to prove this fully, at the same time maintaining that being is not a genus. This, in the opinion of the Thomists, is an inconsistency; for, if being
is univocal, the modes which differentiate it are necessarily extrinsic to it, just as the specific differences are to the genus.
Strange to say, Scotus, on certain occasions, without abandoning univocation, maintains analogy of being. He writes, for instance, in his De rerum principio (q. 1, a. 3, n. 20) : 5? “Concerning the nature of being it must be understood that unity of being, when the term ‘being’ is taken in its broad sense as including the Creator and the creature, this unity is not generic but analogical.” Father Mariano Fernandez Garcia, in his recent edition of this work (1910), explains in a footnote that this analogy is quite compatible with Scotist univocation which implies only that unity necessary for the verification of the principle of contradiction which forbids one to affirm and deny the same univocal predicate of the same subject. To that the Thomists have always replied, that contradiction consists in affirming and denying one and the same predicate of one and the same subject, and not one and the same univocal predicate of one and the same univocal subject. Identity includes identity of proportionality, as explained by Aristotle in his Post, Anal. Bk. II, chs. xiii and xiv (Comm. of St. Thomas, lect. 17 and 19).°%
Several Scotists, such as Belmond,®* maintain that the Scotist univocation is not in opposition to the analogy of St. Thomas. We ask for nothing more, and this effort to moderate this univocation is for us another indication of the truth of the Thomistic doc-
58 Aristotle after speaking, apropos of demonstration, of the univocal middle term, says: “We can also choose as middle term an analogue, one according to proportion.” St. Thomas explains this by saying: “But from this common analogue certain results follow because of the unity of proportion, as when things are the same generic or specific nature. For instance, the term ‘principle’ is analogous; the resulting syllogism, however, is rigorously conclusive, the principle having priority over what follows from it. Now the spring is the principle of the river; therefore it comes before it, Thus we can say that in the creature immateriality is the reason for intelligence, from which result the will and liberty. It will be she same in God, though not univocally but proportionately.
54 Revue de philosophie, August 1, 1912, “L'univocité scotiste.”
trine which we are defending. It is no less true that, even if the difference between the two were reduced to a question of words, the term univocation can only serve to bring about a great confusion of concepts, as Father Petazzi, S.J.. has shown in his interesting articles on this subject.°> However moderated it may be, univocation seems to us to be absolutely incompatible with analogy, as we have already shown. For, after all, once univocation is admitted, being as being is no longer essentially varied; it no longer implies essential variety. Hence how can we avoid the danger of confusing God's being with that of creatures? Concerning the absolute Monism of Parmenides, who declared all multiplicity to be an illusion, St. Thomas says: “Parmenides mistake was in conceiving being to be univocal like a genus.” 58 The Eleatic philosopher started from this principle that being is one, and, observing that besides being there is nothing (praeter ens nihil est), he concluded that being can be diversified neither by itself nor by anything else. The modes by which it would be differentiated, since they are extrinsic to it, would be nothing. It is the most condemned form of extreme realism. The universal as such exists outside the mind; universal being and the divine being are identical. Spinoza, not to be illogical, ought to return to the theory of Parmenides and deny the existence of the world, or else declare its absorption in God. Capreolus,*” having declared this Scotist doctrine to be false, “to wit, that being is predicated univocally of God and creatures,” at once points out the conclusion which, in his opinion, follows from it, in these words: “It follows from this that if God creates or simply annihilates the ass, He creates or annihilates Himself or some formality which is God, to wit, the formality of being 55 Rivista de filosofia neo-scolastica, February 1912, “Univocita od analogia,” 56 St. Thomas, in Metaph., I, ch. v, lect. 9: “In this Parmenides was deceived, in that he used the term ‘being’ as if it were one in meaning and nature, as genus is. But this is impossible.” 57 In IlI Sent., dist. V, q. 3, sec. 1, ad 11um.
and of substance.” Vacant likewise says: “If we seek to interpret the mind of Scotus, we find ourselves confronted with the alternative either of looking upon the controversy as a question of words or else of accusing him of paving the way for Pantheism.” 53 Schwane expresses himself in the same way in his Histoire des dogmes, IV, 205 £. He sees in the theory of Scotus “a point of view diametrically opposed to that of St. Thomas.”
That we may see the connection between univocation of being and Monism, it is enough for us to consider carefully the first sixteen propositions of Rosmini condemned in 1887 (cf. Denzinger, nn. 1891-1930). As a matter of fact, Rosmini, too, sought to discover at least a minimum of univocation between God and creatures. It is the basic error of these first sixteen propositions. We need only quote the sixth: “In being that prescinds from creatures and from God, which is indeterminate being, and in God which is not indeterminate but absolute being, the essence is the same.” The fifth proposition is deduced from this: “Being which man acquires by intuition, must be something of the necessary and eternal being, of the creative, determining, and final cause of all contingent beings: and this is God.” Moreover, if being is univocal, the modes by which it is differentiated (¢.e., created essences) must be extrinsic to it as the specific difference is to the genus; hence these modes are no longer being but a simple negation. This brings us to the twelfth proposition of Rosmini; “Finite reality does not exist, but God causes it to exist by adding limitation to infinite reality. Being which actualizes finite natures, united with them, is an exciston from God.” According to the way Rosmini views things, it is as if creatures were to God as colors are to light, and even since their differentiating modes are nothing, the logical end of this must be the absolute Monism of Parmenides.
- From this arises a third difficulty: univocation of being
seems absolutely to comprise the essential and necessary distinction between the natural and the supernatural order, and Scotus is led to consider this to be a contingent distinction, dependent upon the free will of God.
In fact, if being is analogous, it is certain that a created intellect cannot know, by its natural powers alone, the divine essence such as it is in itself. The created intellect has created being which is proportionate to it, for its proper and natural object; and the human intellect united with a body has the essence of sensible things for its proper and natural object. Therefore the only natural knowledge of God that we can have is by means of the analogical likeness of Himself which God has imprinted upon creatures. The immediate knowledge of the divine essence can be only supernatural; it exceeds our proper and natural object, and if there is no repugnance in this, that is because it does not exceed our adequate object which is universal being. This is proved by St. Thomas in Ia, q. 12, a. 4. God is God, the creature is a creature. For a creature to see God naturally as He sees Himself, it would need to have God’s nature; it would be at the same time created and uncreated, which is absurd. Cf. III, Contra Gentes, ch. lii.
Scotus, we know, strives to invalidate this demonstration of St. Thomas (cf. Scotus on I, dist. 3, q. 3; IV, dist. 49, q. 11; and Cajetan on Ia, q. 12, a. 4). For the Subtle Doctor, the object of our intellect is simply being. Does he not consider being to be univocal? He refuses to assign to the human intellect a naturally proportionate object, which is the essence of sensible things. And if the Thomists object against him that we ought then to have immediate knowledge of all beings, God Himself included, Scotus replies: “In our present state it is true that our understanding has no conception of anything except by means of concepts derived from material things and with the help of sensible images; but that may be either a punishment of original sin, or the result of an agreement between the faculties which prevents our intel- lect from having any conception of anything, unless at the same moment there is formed in the imagination a sensible image of the object. But this agreement which persists in the present state has nothing to do with the nature of our understanding, either in so far as it is understanding, or in so far as it is united with a body, inasmuch as it will no longer be in existence when our body shall have risen again glorified.5® Consequently, whatever may be the cause of our present condition, whether it be purely the will of God or a just punishment or a mental infirmity . . . or something else, the object of our understanding as a faculty is not only the essence of sensible things, but also something which is common to all intelligible things.” °°
Scotus is thus led to admit that there is in us a natural and innate desire (and not only elicited) ? of seeing God. This desire is the very tendency of our nature.® Hence we can no more see how this desire is not efficacious and does not constitute an exigency.
We conceive that a natural and elicited desire which results from knowledge is inefficacious, if this knowledge is conditional: it would be good for us to see God, if it pleased Him to elevate us gratuitously to this vision. We thus avoid the heresy of Baius (Denzinger, n. 1021). How can a natural and innate desire which precedes all knowledge be merely a velleity; why does it not constitute an exigency? It is the very tendency of our nature. If it was possible for God, as Author of our nature, to give us this desire,
69 As if that could not be a gratuitous privilege of the glorious state.
80 Scotus (I Sent., dist. 3, q. 3, nn. 24, 25) says: “Whatever then may be the cause of this condition, whether it be the will of God or a just punishment or an infirmity which Augustine hints at (De Trinitate, Bk. XV, last chapter) when he says: “What is the reason, if it is not, indeed, because of a weakness that you cannot with fixed gaze behold this light? And was not sin truly the cause of this? Whether, I say, this be the total cause, or there are some other causes, at least the primary object of the intellect, as a faculty, is not the quiddity of a material thing.” Cf. Vacant, op. cit., pp. 17 £.
61 “Elicited” means that it is the result of a cognitive act.
62 Scotus, Prolog, Sent., q. 1; see John of St. Thomas, Cursus theol., disp. 12, a. 3.
He ought, in so far as He is our final end in the natural order, to be able to satisfy it, for the order of agents corresponds to the order of ends. Consequently our natural end would have to be confused with the supernatural end. Thus we can explain why Scotus denied the necessity of the light of glory for the beatific vision °° and the necessity of the infused moral virtues,°* and why he reduces the supernatural nature of faith to that of a mode which exalts natural faith.®*
As Vacant observes (op. cit., p. 15), the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is therefore for Scotus contingent and free. “It depends upon God’s arbitrary determination.” This is tantamount to saying that it is not repugnant for a creature to know God naturally, as God naturally knows Himself. In other words, it is not repugnant for God to create a supernatural substance; but this substance would and would not have the same nature as God; it would thus be a created, a contingent God, which is an absurdity. God’s liberty cannot be extended to the
68 Cf. Cajetan, on Ia, q. 12, a. 5, n. 9: “And note well that Scotus can no longer be upheld on this subject.” And in n. 12 we read: “But from these statements it is evident that the opinion of Scotus is false; he would have it that the natural and supernatural do not distinguish between entities, but between their relations to their active causes.”
84 Scotus, IH, dist. 36 (Vives ed. XV, 701). Cf. Cajetan, on Ia Ilae, q. 63, a. 3.
65 Scotus, HI, dist. 23: As the will is made perfect by charity, so is the intellect by faith; “although the will can love God clearly seen objectively, yet it cannot do so in that way without charity and with charity . .. as charity makes the second act more perfect, so also does faith.” Cf. art. “Duns Scotus” in the Dictionnaire de théol. cathol., col. 1906, n. 3. We know that Molina follows Scotus on this point. Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. 7, 8. For them, faith is not entitatively but modally supernatural. Cf. Billuart, De gratia, diss. III, a, 2, sec. 2. We have explained the Thomistic doctrine on this point in another work, De revelatione, 1, 458-514.
Suarez does not follow Scotus on this point, but admits that the obediential power is active and not passive, which is the teaching of St. Thomas, Cf. John of St. Thomas (on la, q. 12, disp. 14, a. 2, n. 11), who considers the active obediential power of Suarez to be a contradiction. It would be essentially natural, as being a property of the nature, and at the same time essentially supernatural, as being specified by a supernatural object. From this arise many differences between Suarez and the Thomists concerning the questions of grace.
realization of contradictories. God is God, the creature is a creature; this is one of the formulas by which the principle of identity or of non-contradiction is expressed. The theologians also generally maintain, against Ripalda, that a created supernatural substance is an evident contradiction. (Cf. Billuart, De Deo, diss. IV, sec. 4.)
From this contingency, which does away with the necessity of finite essences, Scotus concludes that only our duties toward God are necessary, but those toward ourselves and our neighbors are contingent. God could have willed them to be other than they are (III, d. 37). This necessity of the natural law is thus reduced to a religious morality. In virtue of the same contingent principle, Scotus declares that the immortality of the soul cannot be proved, for it may be, he says, that the soul is immortal not by its nature, but miraculously. (Jdem., q. 2, n. 23.)
This doctrine of contingency is in perfect agreement with the voluntarism of Scotus and with many of his Nominalistic tendencies; ®* but it seems to establish a trend of thought which is opposed to the realistic formalism of the univocation of being, for this latter view, if the truth were admitted, would lead rather to Pantheism and eventually to Determinism.®* It is difficult to say
66 Scotus takes the view of absolute Realism when he substitutes his formalactual distinction for the mental distinction of St. Thomas, but he takes the view of Agnostic Nominalism when he substitutes it for real distinctions, for instance, when he denies a real distinction between the faculties of the soul. If there is no real distinction between intellect and sight, it ought to follow that intellect is the same thing as sight, and that the distinction between the two is only mental. Cf. Vacant, op. cit., p. 23.
61 Truly this opposition is the result of extreme Realism and shows the falsity of it. This is clearly seen in the case of absolute and Pantheistic Realism which is in itself inevitably a contradiction. In fact, absolute Realism, applied to the notion of being, confuses the universal with the divine being, and the necessary consequence of this is that the subordinate notions of genera and species become involved in Nominalism. This is very clearly seen in the writings of Parmenides and Spinoza; genera and species are nothing but vain abstractions, flatus vocis (vocal sounds), and so are created substances and the faculties. There is nothing truly real left except unique substance. The two extremes meet: Absolute Realism which of these two trends of thought predominates. We therefore think that Scotism is not really a system; it is not sufficiently connected, coherent, unified, to be called a system. This should not surprise us, since Scotus declares that theology is not a speculative but only a practical science.®* From this it would follow that theology cannot claim organization into a system, into a Summa in the scientific sense of the term; it can be only a collection of sentences and maxims.
Whatever the dominant trend of thought with Scotus, as regards the question which here concerns us, we must conclude with Scheeben ê? that: “Compared with the profound explanation of God's invisibility given by St. Thomas, that of Scotus, who attacks it, seems to be very superficial and mechanical. Scotus merely says that God is naturally invisible to creatures, because His absolute independence requires that He should not distribute His light around Him except wher He wills to do so out of condescension to creatures. To reason thus, is not only no explanation, but is a notable weakening of the essential point to be explained, which is that God, in consequence of His being naturally invisible, can make Himself visible not simply by an act of His will, but by a supernatural influence which transfigures the perception of the created mind.”
The danger of confounding the natural with the supernatural appears also in the case of Rosmini, as a consequence of his maintaining that being in univocal. See Rosminian propositions 36, 37, 38. The thirty-sixth reads: “The supernatural order consists in and Nominalism. We find something similar to this in the modern philosophy of action; on the one hand it tends to confound the natural with the supernatural, and such a view would lead to Pantheism; on the other hand it is given up to a criticism of intellectualism which ends in more or less Agnostic Nominalism. And, of course, the philosophy of action is incomparably more removed from Thomism than the doctrine of Scotus is. In this philosophy of action, the dangers we have just pointed out are considerably increased.
the manifestation of being in the plenitude of its real form.” The thirty-eighth is: “God is the object of the beatific vision inasmuch as He is the author of ad extra works.” (Denzinger, nn. 1926, 1928.) It is true that Rosmini, in order to safeguard the distinction between the two orders, does not have recourse to the divine liberty, as Scotus does.
But, as we have seen, this recourse is illogical. To distinguish, as the Subtle Doctor does, between natural and supernatural knowledge solely with reference to the agent upon whom they depend and not with reference to the object by which they are specified, does not sufficiently take into account the doctrine as formulated by the Vatican Council in the following words: “The Catholic Church, with one consent has also ever held and does hold that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct both in principle and also in object: in principle, because our knowledge in the one is by natural reason, and in the other by divine faith; in object, because, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in God, which unless divinely revealed cannot be known.” (Denzinger, n. 1795.)
If it is thought that we have exaggerated the consequences of extreme Realism, let anyone read the twenty-eight propositions of Master Eckhard which were condemned after his death. It will be seen how he returned at certain times, at least in the form of his teaching, to a doctrine peculiarly like that of Parmenides, who said that either creatures are nothing or else they are God.??
Such are the principal difficulties which remain in the Scotist
10 Cf. Denzinger, n. 526: “All creatures are one pure nothing: I do not say that they are a modicum of quiddity or anything, but that they are one pure nothing.” Rosmini says: “There is no finite reality: quiddity of finite being is constituted by the limits of finite being, and is negative.” Denzinger, nn. 1901, 1902, Eckhard also said: “There is something in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable” (n. 527). And Rosmini said: “Being which actualizes finite natures united with them, is an excision from God" (n. 1902).
concept of the divine names. The divine simplicity seems to be compromised, and with it the necessary distinction between the natural and the supernatural.
However, a slight falsification of the first notion of the mind upon which all others depend, is not without very serious consequences. As St. Thomas says, following Aristotle, at the end of his De ente et essentia, “a slight error in the beginning assumes considerable proportions toward the end.” Now Scotus, as Cajetan says,"* takes the opposite view to St. Thomas on almost all the great questions of general metaphysics. Should we be surprised at the consequences which we have just pointed out?
Ti See Cajetan in the prefatory letter to his Commentary on Pars prima (Leonine edition), addressed to Cardinal Caraffa: “But John Scotus made it his point on this subject, beyond all others, with pronounced subtlety and copiousness of words, to endeavor to rob almost the whole of this passage of its force.” John of St. Thomas (Cursus theol., Approbatio doctrinae D. Thomae, disp. 1, a. 3), seeking to show what was the authority of St. Thomas at this time, said however: “Scotus on many points attacked the teaching of St. Thomas, but he did so with much modesty and with no disrespect.”
Father Michael de Maria, S.J., in his Ontologia, tract. 1, q. 1, a. 5, points out, as well as Capreolus and many historians, such as Vacant, the consequences of the Scotist notion of being, inasmuch as it is opposed to that of St. Thomas: “Certainly the Angelic Doctor, starting from the truth that created beings are really composed of essence and existence, explains the proper concept of being, formed by our intellect, from this that being denotes that which has existence, or that which is. . . . From this St. Thomas infers that God is not in any genus, because being, predicated of God, does not denote quiddity having extstence, but existence itself identified with quiddity. . . . To this most distinguished doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, which concerns the very fundamentals of metaphysics, and which consequently extends further and fully pervades the whole of philosophy, the findings of Scotistic philosophy are diametrically opposed. Scotus, indeed, starts from the identity of essence and existence in created beings, and from this he concludes that being denotes mediately the praedicamenta and that being is predicated univocally of God and creatures, of substance and accident. Which of these two contradictory teachings of St. Thomas and Scotus better and more assuredly corresponds with the truth, each one can sincerely judge for himself, especially if he considers that the subverters of the Christian and Peripatetic- Scholastic Philosophy very seldom appealed to the teachings of Scotus on the univocation of being; on potentiality and act, and on the distinction between beings, But contrary to this, they always held in abhorrence the principles of philosophizing handed down by St. Thomas.” We must also say the same of Suarez: “he starts from the identity of essence and existence in created beings.”
One understands how Pope Pius X of saintly memory could have written in his encyclical Pascendi: “But we warn teachers to bear this well in mind, that great harm is done in deviating ever so little from Aquinas, especially in Metaphysics. A slight error in the beginning, to quote the words of Aquinas, is great in the end,”
All this has been said without the least animosity and with the respect due to the venerable Duns Scotus. He would obviously be the first to reject the Pantheistic and Naturalistic consequences which seem to us to follow as a necessity from his doctrine of univocation if this univocation is not merely a question of words. Let us say with him, when without irreverence he departed from the teachings of St. Thomas, that, “in choosing or shunning an opinion one must not be influenced by love or hatred for the person holding such an opinion, but rather by the truth itself. Therefore we must love both, i. e., those whose opinion we follow and those whose opinion we shun, because both are of use in the search for truth. Therefore it is right to say: Thanks.” 72
Contemporary Scotists avoid, moreover, the inconveniences we have just mentioned in proportion as they reconcile—and they are doing so more and more—the univocation of Scotus with the analogy of St. Thomas.
Suarez, as he does in most other instances, seeks a middle course between St. Thomas and Scotus, Like the good eclectic that he is, he applies in philosophy and theology the maxim that in medio stat virtus (virtue is the golden mean). He determines this mean, guided perhaps less by speculative principles than by the opposite opinions which practically are taught in the Schools. Is there not some element of truth in these two contrary opinions, since they are held and impressed upon us as facts? We must complete the one by the other and find an intermediate one, unless we are
12 Exposition in Metaph. Arist, Bk. XII, sec. 2, n. 56, quoted in the preface to Garcia, De rerum principio, p. xcv.
willing to risk displeasing all those whom we wish to conciliate. At times Suarezian wisdom seems less concerned with the rigor of metaphysics than with the flexibility of prudence, seeming to forget at certain moments that the mean of speculative intellectual virtues consists in conformity with objective reality and not in conformity with our intention, however upright this may be.78 Theological eclecticism takes its good where it finds it. It entails the vast labor of bringing together the diverse Scholastic doctrines and striking a sort of mean between the conflicting opinions. This made it possible for Bossuet to say of Suarez that “he voices the opinion of every School.” But, in wishing always to find the just mean between the rival systems, he seems to have gone to excess, by sometimes making this mean to be, as it were, the criterion of truth. For this reason, because error is constantly opposed to truth, we would have to seek for a just mean between the two; and because evil is the perpetual foe of good, we would be obliged, as a certain Liberalism wishes, to stick to the mediocre. There is nothing farther from the thought of the celebrated Jesuit. But is it disparaging for St. Thomas to have found in Scotus someone to contradict him, and is his doctrine false or incomplete because it was attacked by another system? Suarez was not less esteemed, as even his adversaries admit, for he, too, encountered a very penetrating theologian. If he did not find a via media, firm, secure, and certain, between Thomism and Scotism, that is because there is no such way.
In his Disputationes metaphysicae (disp. 2, sec. 2), Suarez treats of the unity of the notion of being; of the analogy between divine
78 Cf. St. Thomas, Ia Iac, q. 64, a. 3: Whether the intellectual virtues observe the mean, “The good of an intellectual virtue is the true; in the case of contemplative virtue, it is the true taken absolutely; in the case of practical virtue, it is the true in conformity with a right appetite... . Accordingly, the good of speculative intellectual virtue consists in a certain mean, by way of conformity with things themselves, in so far as the intellect expresses them as being what they are, or as not being what they are not.”
and created being (disp. 28, sec. 3); of being common to substance and accident (disp. 32, sec. 2). We cannot give here a full explanation of the opposition between the Suarezian and the Thomist notions of being. This has been well done by A. Martin (art. “Suarez métaphysicien et théologien” in Science catholique, July and September, 1898); ™ finally, Del Prado devotes more than fifty pages to this question in his fine work entitled, De veritate fundamentali philosophiae christianae.
In conclusion, Suarez strives to refute Scotism by Thomism, and Thomism by Scotism; then, when he himself seeks to find a middle way, he is continually buffeted between these two systems.
First of all, he rejects the Scotist univocation because, as the Thomists say, being would be a genus, and because God and creatures would not differ as beings (cf. disp. 2, sec. 5, nn. 5, 10; disp. 28, sec. 3, n. 7).
Besides, Suarez is not satisfied with the analogy of proportionality, for the reason that Scotus gives, in that the notion of being would not have sufficient unity (cf. disp. 28, sec. 3, nn. 9, 11). In his opinion, the objective concept of being cannot contain actually and implicitly the various modes of being (disp. 2, sec. 2, n. 20).75
14 The views of A. Martin as set forth in this work reappeared in the author's article entitled “Essence,” written for the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, under the name of “Michel.”
15 Father Delmas, S.J., who usually follows Suarez, thus defines his position: “Suarez with many others teaches that the concept of being purely prescinds from the peculiar modes of being of other beings; so that such a concept, in what is properly implied by such being, actually contains none of its subordinates, although it represents indeterminately all subordinates and all their modes, in so far as they agree in the common notion of being, in a word, in so far as they are beings.” Delmas, Metaphysica, p. 61, Also Frick, S.J., Ontologia, n. 23.
According to the Suarezians, we should have to define analogues as follows: Analogues are such as have a common name, but the meaning signified by the name is relatively speaking different and absolutely speaking the same. But according to this, the genus animal would be an analogue, for in man and the worm it is absolutely speaking the same and relatively speaking different,
On the contrary, the Thomists say: “Analogues are such as have a common
Are we not thus brought back to univocation which from the very first was rejected? How can being still be essentially varied? Suarez perceives the difficulty and goes so far as to write (disp. 2, sec. 2, n. 34) as follows: “What I have just said of the unity of the concept of being is far clearer and more certain than the analogy of being; in defending analogy one must not deny the unity of the concept; but if anything had to be denied, it would be rather analogy which is uncertain, than the untiy of the concept which is a demonstrated fact.” 18
However, Suarez maintains an intrinsic analogy of attribution between the divine Being and created beings (disp. 28, sec. 3, n. 16) ; the creature is being by participation, and God is essentially being; the creature merely participates in being inasmuch as it is dependent upon God and is subordinate to Him. Very good; but how then can anyone maintain the absolute unity of the concept of being? 77 It is clear that being by participation differs from what is essentially being, by reason of its very actuality, and therefore, in so far precisely as tt is being and even in so far as it és opposed to nothingness, it is in a way contingent and not necessary. They do not both exist in the same way. The actuality of the two is essentially different. Can there be in this difference any other similarity than that of proportion, which is the only one admitted by St. Thomas? Cf. De veritate, q. 2, a. 11.
In order to safeguard the absolute unity of the notion of being, does Suarez admit with Scotus that in God being is formally name, but the meaning signified by the name is absolutely speaking different in them, though relatively speaking the same, that is, according to some proportion,” Goudin, Logica major, Part l, disp. 1, q. 1, a. 1.
76 “Now I merely assert that everything which has been said concerning the unity of the concept of being, appears to be clearer and more certain than that being is analogous. Therefore, in order to defend analogy, it is not right to deny the unity of the concept; but if one of the two must be denied, it is analogy which is uncertain that is to be denied, rather than unity of concept, which seems to be demonstrated by sound arguments.” Disp, 2, sec. 2, a. 34.
17 This is how we translate praescindit simpliciter, which sums up the view of Suarez. Cf. Delmas, loc. cit.
and actually distinct from other absolute perfections? No; on this point he follows St. Thomas. But, although he does not posit in God a real distinction, he denies a real distinction between essence and existence in creatures.” Does not this in a way tend to destroy the distinction between the created and the uncreated? Scotus brings God nearer to the creature; Suarez, the creature nearer to God. Whatever he may say, we cannot but maintain that what primarily distinguishes created from uncreated being is the relation of dependence of the former upon the latter. This relation of dependence necessarily arises from the very nature of created being whose essence is not existence. Because it is not self-existent, it depends upon another. This relation of dependence does not constitute its nature, its entity.’ It is even impossible to conceive of being by participation, of which Suarez speaks, without distinguishing in it what participates and what is participated, what limits and what is limited, essence and existence. (See Del Prado, op. cit., pp. 170-178.) On all these fundamental points Suarez manifestly abandons St. Thomas,®® and is more on the side of Scotus. The
78 How could a well-known controversialist write in these latter days that “we must be very careful not to confound with legitimate and necessary Thomism this distinction defended by Cajetan and his school?” How can he see in it “the danger of this theory being connected with the idealism of Le Roy?”
One might as well say that this real distinction leads to modernist Panthcism, when it is a positive refutation of it. Long before Cajetan, St. Thomas expressly said (Ia, q. 7, a. 1 ad 3um): “The fact that the being of God is self-subsisting, not received in any other, and is thus called infinite, shows Him to be distinguished from all other beings, and all others to be apart from Him.” In the De potentia, q. 3, a. 3 ad 17, he says: “God in giving a thing its essence produces that which the essence receives.” And in the De veritate (q. 27, a. 1 ad 8um) he says: “Everything which is in the genus of substance is composite, being a real composite at least of essence and existence.” These same expressions constantly recur in the works of St. Thomas. See Del Prado’s work on this subject and also that of Father Mattiussi, S.J., entitled, Distinzione fra l'essenza e l'essere.
79 Cf. St. Thomas, Ia, q. 44, a. 1 ad rum: “Though the relation to its cause is not part of the definition of a thing caused, still it follows as a consequence on what belongs to its essence; because from the fact that a thing has being by Participation, it follows that it is caused.”
80 As Martin, op. cit., says: “Suarez in this completely contradicts, if not himself, at least most certainly St. Thomas. , . . In short, on the theory of universal identity of essence and existence in creatures always brings him back to univocation of being admitted by the Subtle Doctor, “and perhaps without suspecting it, he reproduces his theories.” (Cf. Martin, op. cit.) We have already pointed out the dangers of this univocation. It compromises the infinite distinction prevailing between the natural and the supernatural.
Suarez seems to escape these difficulties only by continually wavering between Scotus and St. Thomas. This movement to and fro does not seem to conform sufficiently to the rules of logic to permit us to look upon the Suarezian doctrine as a system.
Everything conspires, then, to make us say that there is here no possibility of a via media between Scotus and St. Thomas. Being as such either does or does not actually imply essential variety; in this it ts (actu implicite) or is not essentially varied. If it is not, the differential modes of being are not being; they are nothing. Hence being cannot be diversified, and we must come logically to the absolute Monism of Parmenides and declare that all multiplicity is an illusion. This is what St. Thomas said with great depth of thought in refuting this primitive form of Pantheism. Cf. Metaphysica, 1, ch. v, lect. 9: “In this Parmenides was deceived, in that he used the term ‘being’ as if tt were ONE IN MEANING AND NATURE, as genus is. But this is impossible. For being is not a genus, but és predicated in various ways of diverse things.” If, then, the notion of being were absolutely one, we should have to accept the conclusion of Parmenides, because, as St. Thomas says here, “We cannot conceive of anything which accrues to the notion of being by which it would be diversified; for that which accrues being he seems to have preferred the subtleties of Scotus to the clear and simple doctrine of St. Thomas... . If, then, the metaphysics of Suarez separates on this point from that of St. Thomas, totally differing from it on the main topics, it stands to reason that we shall be astonished to see Suarez proposed to us as a sure and faithful commentator of St. Thomas.”
Suarez seems even to forget here what the Fourth Lateran Council said: “The similarity between the Creator and the creature cannot be so great as not to find a greater dissimilarity between them.” Denzinger, 432.
to being is extraneous to it. But what is of this kind is nothing.”
This solution of St. Thomas appears so necessary that it seems the disciples of Scotus and also those of Suarez are more and more inclined to accept it. So it is that several Suarezians, such as Father Frick, S.J. (Ontologia, nn. 6, 7), and Father Delmas, S.J. (Metaphysica generalis, n. 49), demand for the concept of being only an imperfect unity, and it is not impossible to find texts of Suarez in support of this interpretation.
There would no longer be any differences on this question if it were not necessarily connected with the problem of the real distinction between essence and existence in creatures.
Since Scotus and Suarez did not perceive the radical difference between the analogue and the univocal, and since they did not realize that the unity of the concept of being is only one of proportionality, they could admit only that essence still belongs to being if it is but a real potentiality which receives and limits exist ence. On the contrary, this presents no difficulty if we grasp well the fact that being is analogous and applies in quite a different way to potentiality and act.
Both Scotus and Suarez, since they do not admit a real distinction between essence and existence in creatures, deprived themselves of the most typical example of analogy of proportionality between God and creatures. It is clear, indeed, that there can be only similarity of proportions between the being of creatures composed of potentiality and act, and the being of God who is pure Act.’
Thus is verified what we affirmed at the beginning of the second part of this work, when treating of what formally consti-
81 St. Thomas (De potentia, q. 7, a. 7) says: “The various ways in which things are related to existence prevent one from predicating being of them univocally. But God's relation to existence is different from that of any creature; for He is His own existence, which applies to no creature. Hence in no way is being predicated univocally of God and the creature; and consequently neither is any of the predicables, among which is the very first being.”
tutes the divine nature (n. 44), which is that there is an intimate connection between the two fundamental theses of Thomistic ontology: (1) That being is analogous with reference to God and creatures, according to an analogy of proportionality; (2) That God alone is Being itself, and that in creatures there is a real distinction between essence and existence.
The unity of the primary notions common to God and creatures is therefore only a unity of proportionality. Hence the perfections expressed by them can exist formally in God and are identical in Him. Thus is safeguarded the knowability of God and also His ineffability which results from His transcendence and absolute simplicity.
By the light of this general doctrine of the identification of the divine attributes it will be possible for us to solve the special antinomies relative to liberty. The difficulties which they present oblige us to discuss them somewhat at length.
Footnotes
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The objective concept is the object which corresponds to our mental concept. ↩
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Cf. Cajetan, De analogia nominum, chs. iv and vi; John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus, Q. 13, a. 5; De potentia, q. 7, a. 7; Ia, q. 13, a 5, both of St. Thomas. Also De veritate, q. 2, a. 11. Consult the general index of the works of St. Thomas under the words “analogia” and “proportio.” We will quote, however, the principal texts of St. Thomas. ↩
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If God is absolutely simple, these perfections are not contained in Him formally, for that would be to introduce into the divine reality a distinction as in created being; this is the conclusion of Maimonides. (2) If these perfections are contained formally in God, they introduce in Him a formal distinction actual on the part of the thing and previous to the consideration of our mind; this is the conclusion of the formalism of ↩
Chapter 13 of 19