Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

In the title, note that the thing asked is one thing, and the occasion of asking is another. For what is asked is indefinite: whether any likeness concurs in the divine vision, in whatever way it may concur. But the occasion of asking is this: it is doubted whether God can be seen through some likeness on the side of the thing seen, that is, one which is representative of God Himself as the ratio of seeing, just as the visible species represents the colored object to bodily sight.

II. In the body he does three things: first, he explains the nature of vision, insofar as it requires a likeness; second, he answers the question raised, at: It is clear, however¹; third, he draws a conclusion, making certain points more explicit².

III. As to the first point, three things are stated, from which a fourth is opportunely suggested. – The first is the number of requirements for vision. And it is said that there are two: namely, the visual power, and the union of the thing seen with the one seeing. And it is proved: Vision does not occur in act unless the thing seen be in some way in the one seeing: therefore. – The second is the mode of union. And it is said that it is twofold: namely, by the essence of the thing seen itself, and by its likeness. And this is made clear in bodily things, for the stone is not in the eye, but the species of the stone: each mode, indeed, was expressed, although one was denied of bodily things, as if by this he hinted that in spiritual things it would not be impossible. – The third is the mode of likeness. And it is said that it is twofold: namely, on the part of the thing seen, and on the part of the visual power. And it is explained according to that member by the force of that true conditional: if the visual power has its esse from the thing seen, the visual power would not only be itself, but also the likeness of the thing seen, as is evident, because the effect is like its cause. – From these, however, you have the fourth, namely, that vision can occur in three ways: first, by the essence of the thing seen; second, by the essence of the visual power; third, by an intermediate likeness representing the thing seen to the visual power. For, as is evident from what has been said, the union of the thing seen with the one seeing can vary in just so many ways. Yet, that we may agree with the text, under the name of the essence of the visual power you should understand not only the visual faculty itself; but whatever belongs to its side, namely whatever strengthening or elevating etc. of the visual power itself; whether that be the light of grace or of glory. For all of this is called by another name the likeness on the part of the one seeing, as is clear from what follows in the text.

IV. As to the second³, two conclusions answering the question are laid down. The first is affirmative: In order to see God, some likeness is required on the part of the visual power. – The second is negative: In order to see God, it is impossible for any intermediate likeness to intervene on the part of the thing seen.

First conclusion is proved. God is the author of the created intellect capable of seeing Him: therefore the created intellect is a participated likeness of His divine essence: therefore for the vision of God, etc. – The antecedent is evident, as is the first consequence, which is nevertheless confirmed by the argument from division: because it is not the divine substance itself. The consequent too is confirmed by a sign: because the intelligible power is called light, etc. All things are clear.

V. The second conclusion is proved in three ways. First thus: A superior being is not seen through a likeness of an inferior order; therefore God is not seen through any created likeness. The antecedent is proved by the authority of Dionysius, and is explained by the example of a bodily likeness. The consequence is evident by the argument a minori ad maius. – Second: No created being is its own esse; therefore God cannot be seen through any created thing. The antecedent is assumed as granted. The consequent is proved: because God is his own esse. – Third thus: Every created being is determined to some genus; therefore none is infinite; therefore God cannot be seen through any of them. The last consequence is proved: because God is infinite, exceeding every mode of being and of understanding.

VI. Against these arguments, although Aureol, as reported by Capreolus, in Book IV, distinction 49, question 5⁴, argues in many ways; nevertheless the whole force of the arguments against this consists in the fact that all the arguments brought forward err by not distinguishing, but by making one and the same judgment about the species in its being and in its representing: even though it is evident that there is a very great difference between them. Hence a species, he says, of an inferior order in its being, and having an esse distinct from the essence, and finite in its being, is of the supreme order in its representing, and having an esse identical with the essence, and infinite: for these belong to it objectively, those formally. Nor does this involve any greater absurdity than that the species of a stone should be an accident formally and a substance objectively, etc.

VII. For the evidence of these points, know that the failure to distinguish between per se and per accidens provides an occasion for error. For the species of things of which the discussion speaks do not, indeed, have of themselves that they are substances or accidents; rather, this is accidental to them. But such a species does of itself require that it be representative of another, not in the manner of a sign (since anything whatsoever can signify anything whatsoever), but in the manner of a likeness⁵. Hence the philosophers, as is said in I de Anima⁶, agreed on this, that cognition comes about through assimilation. And if cognition ought to be quidditative, the species must be similar not only according to genus, but according to the most specific species, formally or eminently. For our soul never knows a house quidditatively unless it has within itself a species of the house that is the quod quid est of the house. Therefore the species by which a thing is to be seen must be the quod quid est of that very thing; not according to the natural mode of being of the thing seen, but in another mode of being. And this mode, taken formally, abstracts from substantial and accidental being, as is clear of itself; and it requires that it be nobler, or at least equally noble, as is the nobility of the mode of being of the thing seen; as is clear inductively and is proved by reason: because the knower as such has a nobler mode of being than the thing known in itself, insofar as it terminates cognition.

VIII. But descending from these considerations to the reason of the letter⁷, it is said that the species of a lower order can be understood in two ways: namely per se, or per accidens. The species of a lower order is taken per accidens when that which is per accidens is considered in its esse; but per se, when what is considered is that it is more or less articulated or elevated, as we see the species in the proper senses to be of a lower order with respect to the species of phantasy, and these with respect to the species of our intellect. And it is evident that through the species of sense the imaginables cannot be seen, nor through images can the intelligibles be understood. And according to this sense the first argument holds, as is clear from the example of the letter. For God is of so elevated a nature that every species however articulated, such as any created thing must be, is of a lower order per se, inasmuch, namely, as it is a species. Nor does the distinction stand in the way, that of being in essendo or in repraesentando⁸. For it has already been shown that, speaking of the esse of a species formally and per se as such, it makes no difference to say "in essendo" and "in repraesentando": since the species must be, according to its proper esse, the quod quid est of the thing seen, and consequently of the same order as the thing; and according to its mode of being, to be related per accidens to substantial or accidental being, since in one case it is a substance, and in another an accident. If therefore the species is of a lower order per se, it is impossible that it be quidditatively similar to a thing of a higher order. – And note, that it is not said that the lower species cannot effect the vision of a higher one (since an inferior angel perhaps sees a superior naturally): but we say that a species of a lower order cannot do this. For it is evident that God is not only superior to created intellect, but of a higher order, even among the philosophers, as appears in XII Metaphys., comment. XLIV.

IX. The second argument also assumes, and rightly, that just as the species of a house in the mind must be the form of a house, so the species of God, whose form is esse itself, must be esse itself, and upon this its likeness to God is founded. Nor does this argument intend that the species of God be esse itself in natural esse, as God is; but that it be esse itself in some mode of being; otherwise the species would not be like the divine quiddity. But it is repugnant for anything to be, in reality, esse itself in any created or creatable mode of being; for however a thing is posited to be in any real mode, it is always a being by participation in that mode of being. Therefore.

X. The third argument proceeds from the same root. For the quidditative species of God must be not this or that, but infinite being (ens), whether according to natural esse or according to some other real esse: otherwise a real likeness, and one adequate—such as knowledge requires—is not had. But it is impossible that, under any created esse whatsoever, there be given one thing adequately similar to infinitely many perfections. Therefore.

XI. Hence it is clear that the distinction between being and being represented⁹, when restricted to representation by way of likeness, is nothing other than a distinction between different conditions of being. And therefore, what is universally denied of the being of things is sufficiently proven to be denied of being in representing by way of likeness. And for this reason the divine genius of St. Thomas disdained to descend to such a distinction: he considered it puerile to adapt to this or that created condition of being what he had clearly proven by denial concerning created being itself. But others were deceived, as has been said¹⁰, through failing to distinguish between per se and per accidens.

XII. As to the third point¹¹, he concludes by way of summary two things: that a likeness of the thing is required on the part of the power to be elevated; and that there is no likeness on the part of God, namely a representative one. And the first is confirmed by the authority of Scripture.

Note that, although to one considering only superficially it appears that the likeness contributes accidentally on the part of the seer to the vision of God, insofar as it is a likeness—since it is posited not so as to assimilate but so as to strengthen and elevate the intellect—yet to one probing more deeply it will appear that it is required per se insofar as it is a likeness: not so as to have the act of representing, but so as to constitute the intellect in an esse like God's own, as being of the same intelligible character. For the one seeing God must be God in a certain way, a sharer in the divine nature. Now what constitutes the created intellect in divine esse is the very light of glory. And therefore this likeness is rightly exalted and sought after by the saints.

XIII. Note here that from this it follows that the blessed cannot form a word of God as clearly seen as such, although they can form a word of those things that are seen in God. For since a word is an expressed likeness, presenting the thing conceived more clearly than does the impressed species, if it is impossible for any impressed created species to be found with respect to something, on account of the eminence of the thing known, much more impossible is it for an expressed species to be found. For all the arguments against the latter are against the former, and against every other species. They will therefore see all things in the Word of God, which in the beginning was with God, and not in any created word: for otherwise they would not see, as the text says.

XIV. In response to the third, note that here the divine essence is posited as constituting the blessed intellect in act in place of the intelligible species. How this is possible can be explained in two ways. First, according to the common manner of judging about the intellect and the intelligible species, as about two partial agents. For on this way it is said that the intelligible species can be taken in two ways: first, as it is an inhering form; second, as it plays the role of the intelligible; and that the first concurs accidentally in understanding, but the second per se, since from this it has the role of co-principiating intellection. And therefore, if an object is found that of itself can co-principiate intellection with such an intellect, it is said to unite itself to the intellect of itself and to make it actual, without giving esse formally to the intellect itself.

And although I have sometimes followed and taught this way, and perhaps written of it, yet when I raise the eyes of my mind, the cognitive nature seems to me all too lowly, if it is judged as though among natural agents. For if the soul is above nature—as the vegetative soul, which is the lowest, testifies, since it moves all the differences of position at once—how much more so the intellect!

XV. It must therefore be said that, although the intellect and the intelligible species stand to each other as two partial agents, one of which supplies the substance and the other the species to intellection, this relation is not the primary one; rather, prior to it is the fact that they stand to each other as matter and form—and this, properly speaking. And therefore, although the secondary relation is preserved by what has been said, the primary one is not: especially since from intellect and species there results a greater unity than from matter and form, as Averroes rightly taught in III de Anima¹² It is necessary, therefore, to maintain that the intellect seeing God is, prior in nature, God, and yet no understood intention is in it, and only afterward does it see God.

But as is said in III Cont. Gent., chapter 51, the divine essence, although it cannot be the form of anything in the genus of beings, that is, in being (in essendo), can nevertheless be the form of a created intellect in the genus of intelligibles. And there indeed the reason given for this is that it is actuality itself in the genus of intelligibles; because it is truth itself, which is the proper form of an intellect in the genus of intelligibles, as you have at length there. Here, however, the reason assigned is that it is esse itself. And he intends, in my judgment, that from the fact that some nature is not its own esse it follows that it is not all of its own esse: and conversely, from the fact that some nature is esse itself it follows that it is all of its own esse: by its own I mean, that is, of its own order. For from these things (with that greatest principle declared in the text understood, namely, quidditative knowledge does not occur except through the esse of the same or of a higher order with respect to the thing known) it manifestly follows that the divine essence has this singular property, that it is that intelligible esse which would be thought to give itself to the intellect, if it were united to it through a species. And hence, precisely because it is esse itself, it has both that it is, and that it is the intelligible form of itself, with respect to the intellect seeing it.

But still the mind does not rest. For we must say what this means, namely that the divine essence makes itself formally understood in act within the genus of intelligibles¹³.

XVI. For the clarification of this, know that, speaking generally, for the intelligible species to be united perfectly to the intellect is not for it to inhere in the intellect (since that union constitutes the intellect not in act, but in habit): rather, it is for the species to constitute the intellect in second act. For the intelligible species is posited as such precisely so that the one understanding may be understanding in complete act. But to constitute it in second act is for it, not to be a second act, but to have itself toward second act as form toward esse. For just as form is the principle of the being of matter, so that the esse of matter and of form is one and the same in different ways, as is clear in the case of light in the diaphanous, and of heat in water, etc.; so the intelligible species, if it is in act in the intelligible genus, is the principle of understanding, such that understanding is as its esse. And therefore, although the species is in some way active with respect to intellection, its formal proportion is nevertheless better and more excellent than its active one. Therefore, for the species to be united in act to the intellect is to constitute the intellect in that which is to be actually understanding. But to be actually understanding is nothing other than for the thing understood to be perfectly in the intellect as cognized: for to know something, as will be shown below¹⁴, is nothing other than for that thing also to be in complete act.

From these things, then, ascending to the divine while stammering, we say that for the divine essence to be united to the intellect through itself, and to constitute it formally in act in the genus of intelligible being, is for that essence itself to make the intellect formally to be in ultimate act, intelligibly God himself, with all that pertains to imperfection removed. Now this is sufficiently accomplished by the divine substance itself concurring immediately in the beatific vision both as object and as formal principle of the vision. – I said, however, with imperfections removed: because the beatific vision is not the act and esse of the divine substance (for this would pertain to imperfection), just as it would not be so of a created intelligible species, if such were posited.