Chapter XVIII. Question 18 tue lire or God

SINCE to understand belongs to living beings, after consideration of the divine intellect comes the question of the divine life.

The first article concludes that the difference between living and lifeless things is, that living things move themselves to their actions. We already see that such is the case with plants, which nourish or renew, and reproduce themselves; whereas, on the other hand, lifeless things are merely moved by another, such as stones, which do not move themselves, but are moved and drawn by another.

The second article shows that life is not an accidental but a substantial predicate in living things, although it manifests itself to us by vital operations, and these are accidents. Thus the substance of a plant, an animal, a man, is life in first actuality, although it is only in their operations that they have life in second actuality.

The third article concludes that life in the highest degree and essentially so is in God, because He is subsistent Intellection, so that He is not determined or moved by another; for in so far as a thing is lower in the scale of beings, or is less endowed with life, just so is it in need of being moved or determined by another, so that it move itself. Thus there is no creatéd living being that is so completely endowed with life as to be absolutely the principle of its own action, and not need to be moved by another. Even the higher creatures, those of the intellectual order, need to be moved efficiently by God, the supreme agent, and to be drawn to Him as their ultimate end.

God alone is essentially Life, just as He is Wisdom itself, and subsistent Intellection. Hence Christ affirmed His divinity when He said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”(1) Creatures of the higher order have life, but they are not life itself.

In this article St. Thomas has depicted for us the beautiful gradation in being, from the plant life to essential life, showing that the nobler the life, the more it is immanent and immobile.

Plants live by nutrition, increase, and reproduction; but the form by which they act and the end for which they act are determined for them by nature. Animals move themselves, moreover, to their objects apprehended through the senses. Man, however, prescribes for himself the end for which he acts, and yet he must be moved by a higher efficient Cause and be drawn to Him as his ultimate end. Only God, who is subsistent Intellection, is essential life that is absolutely immanent and immobile. But this immobility of supreme life is fundamentally the very opposite of the immobility of inertia or death. This latter means the absence of operation or privation of movement, whereas the operation of God's intellect and will is most perfect, and is always in act. His life is always in second actuality, and is not a transitive action, but an immanent and most perfect action.* .

The fourth article shows that all things that proceed from God have their life in Him, according to the ideal being they have in His act of understanding, in His divine idea. Thus all things live in God, as Holy Scripture says in the following text: “Without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was life.” 3¹

Footnotes

1. Cf. ad 1um. 3 John 1:8, 4. ↩