Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

A clear title. – In the body there is one conclusion, answering the question affirmatively: Beatitude belongs most of all to God. – It is proved. Beatitude is the perfect good of an intellectual nature; therefore it belongs most of all to God.

The antecedent has two parts: namely, that it be a perfect good; and that it be of an intellectual nature. The first is left as quasi self-evident. The second, however, is proved by an argument from the three conditions of an intellectual nature, namely, sufficiency of cognition, capacity for good or evil, and dominion over one's operations: and indeed the second corresponds to the good, the first perfect, while the third corresponds to both. – The consequence, however, is proved: because each part of the antecedent is found in the highest degree in God.

The title is to be understood formally; that is, the discourse concerns the intellect, as it is formally distinct from the divine substance and will. And since, as is said in the body of the text, the same reasoning applies to the beatitude of the saints, therefore there belongs to this article that common and well-worn question: whether beatitude consists in an act of the intellect or of the will. For the beatitude of others is a certain likeness of the divine beatitude.

II. In the body there is a single conclusion, answering the question affirmatively: Beatitude is to be attributed to God, and to other blessed beings, according to intellect. – This conclusion is both proved and explained. It is proved as follows. Beatitude is the perfect good of intellectual nature: therefore it is what is most perfect in intellectual nature: therefore it consists in understanding: therefore both God and others are blessed according to intellect. – The antecedent is evident from what has been said, and is made manifest by its effect: namely, that intellectual nature naturally desires to be blessed, just as each thing desires its own perfection. – The first consequence is not stated explicitly in the text: but we have added it for the clarity of the doctrine, and it is evident in itself. – The second, however, is proved: because what is most perfect in any intellectual nature is intellectual operation. This is proved: because by means of it it grasps in a certain way all things. – The last, moreover, is evident in itself, and is proved with respect to others: because others are said to be blessed through assimilation to the beatitude of God.

It is made manifest, however, with respect to the intellect in God from this: that although being (esse), willing, and understanding in God are the same, yet because they differ according to reason, therefore fittingly—speaking according to formal reason—beatitude is specially attributed to the intellect of God.

III. Concerning these statements, there is a threefold question. First: whether beatitude is naturally desired. Second: whether the operation of the intellect is the most perfect of all; and how much weight the argument assigned here has for this. Third: whether the conclusion itself is true. For all these things are said in the text, and they have various proponents.

IV. And since the first question will be treated in q. 82¹, let it suffice here to know that the intellectual nature naturally desires beatitude in three ways. First, by a natural appetite, that is, an inclination: and thus it is verified universally. Second, by a natural appetite, that is, an act of desiring, simply: and thus it is verified of God and the blessed. Third, by a natural appetite, that is, an act of desiring, natural with respect to the specification of the act, but free with respect to its exercise: and thus it is verified with respect to human beings. For we experience that with regard to beatitude we cannot will not to have it, although it is within our power freely to will or not to will it actually. But of these things there will then be fuller discussion.

V. The second question²ibidem³ will be treated in its own place, and therefore must be passed over for now. Yet regarding the argument brought forward here, note that it proves the nobility of the act of understanding above the others not from its object, as will be done later, but from its mode. For understanding comes about by grasping the intelligible, which is found to be all things; but love, and willing universally, does not come about by grasping the thing loved, but rather conversely. For the intellect, in understanding, has the understood within itself; whereas the will, in loving, as it were goes forth toward the beloved. And since, other things being equal, it is nobler to have something than to tend toward it, understanding, by the proper mode of its own genus, is nobler than every other operation. Hence, since God has His own essence as the object both of His intellect and of His will, and the act of the intellect is by the mode of its genus nobler, He is deservedly called blessed according to intellect. And the same judgment holds of the other blessed: for on the side of the object there is equality.

VI. Hence, descending to the third question⁴, know that Scotus, in IV, dist. XLIX, qu. IV, holds the opposite, wishing beatitude to consist principally in the act of the will which is not delight but love. And he proves his thesis in three ways. First thus: To will tends immediately to God as to the ultimate end; therefore willing is more immediately related to the ultimate end, and consequently to the first desirable object, than understanding is. – Second: Either willing is for the sake of understanding, or conversely, or neither is for the sake of the other. But the first is perverse, according to Anselm, book II of Cur Deus homo, chapter 1; and the third is impossible, as is evident; therefore there remains the second. Therefore loving is the end of intellection, and consequently more noble. – Third thus: Among intrinsic acts, some act of willing is supremely to be willed; therefore in it beatitude consists. The antecedent is proved both of natural appetite, which is an inclination, and of free appetite rightly ordered: since the will desires the perfection of itself in the ultimate end more than the perfection of the intellect.

Many other arguments are also made against this conclusion, recited by Capreolus at the XLIX distinction of Book IV, question II⁵, which I omit for the sake of brevity: especially because, from what is to be said in question LXXXII, and in the solution of these arguments, everything will in a way become clear.

VII. Know, therefore, that it differs greatly to compare the intellection and love of the blessed with one another, and those of the wayfarer: and again, whether simply, or in a certain respect, that is, according to this genus. For both simply, and in the blessed, intellection is better, and the end of volition. In the wayfarer, however, love excels: because it tends toward God in Himself. And likewise in a certain respect, that is, under the aspect of agent or mover, it holds first place. And from this it follows that we are said to be good or evil simply by reason of the will; and consequently that its act is called worst and best; and that it tends toward God according to the noblest genus of cause, namely as end (for it belongs to the agent as mover to move); and that it is mistress, and formally free, etc. For all these things pertain to nobility in a certain respect.

VIII. Hence the answer to the first argument of Scotus is clear⁶: for it sins by taking the non-cause as a cause. For what is more immediately joined must be joined to the best beingabsolutely, and not as to an end, if beatitude is to be concluded, which consists in that which is most perfect simply speaking.

To the second objection, it is now clear that Anselm must be interpreted as speaking of the love of the wayfarer.

To the third, however, nothing at all holds. First, because just as the will by natural appetite wills volition more, so the intellect understands intellection: for every power by such an appetite tends first toward its own act. – Second, because it is false that, by free will, the will would will itself more than the intellect. Since the elicited act was given by the institutor of nature to the animal appetite for this purpose, that it may first desire the supposit. And therefore, if intellection is a greater perfection of the supposit than volition, a right will prefers intellection to volition.

In the title, the word beatitudo must not be restricted to God's beatitude: rather, it is to be interpreted simply and absolutely, with respect to every blessed one.

II. In the body there are two twofold distinctions, with three conclusions. The first distinction is: Beatitude is twofold: namely objective; and formal, which is the very act itself. The second is that of the blessed: namely of God, and of blessed creatures. – The first conclusion is: God is the objective beatitude of all the blessed. And for this an authority of Augustine is adduced. – The second is: God is not the formal beatitude of blessed creatures. The third is: God is the formal beatitude of himself. Nor are they proved on any other ground than because the act of understanding of a creature is something created, but in God uncreated.

III. Concerning the second conclusion, know that certain authors, cited by Capreolus in II, dist. III, qu. II¹, attack it, moved both by the perpetuity and infinity of the beatific vision; and by the natural impossibility of infinitely many most intense species in the same created intellect; and by the possibility of the affirmative part of the question, namely that the divine intellection itself can be equally present and intimate to any created intellect as created intellection is; and by the authority of Augustine and of the philosophers.

IV. But these considerations carry little weight. The beatific vision of the saints is indeed a created thing, of finite perfection simply speaking, but infinite in a certain respect, that is, objectively. It is also incorruptible in every way, speaking according to natural power: since on the side of the subject, of the object, and of the union of both, there is no power toward corruption. – Nor does it follow from this that the soul cannot receive as many intense species at once as it can receive many. The beatific vision, in the first place, is not ranked in number with other intellections: since it is of the most common kind, and of a higher order. Then, too, there is a state in the species to which the natural power extends, and especially when they are simultaneously in act, as will be made clearer in the treatise on the Angels² – It is also impossible that my vital operation not be from my own intrinsic principle, since in this consists the very reason of my life: otherwise it would be vital and not vital. And therefore, since beatitude is the vital operation of the blessed, it implies that the divine essence is that operation. And either the antecedent is false, or it is a sophism of the Figure of Speech, from equal presence to manner. – The authorities, too, are to be understood objectively, if they are truly adduced.

In the title, all blessedness is distributed over every species of felicity. But the "ly" in his blessedness does not signify substantial, or simply first, beatitude, of which there was discussion in the two preceding articles: but rather the beatific state, of which the first article treated. So that the sense of the question is: Whether God is in such a state of blessedness that He has every species and perfection of felicity.

II. In the body there is a single responsive conclusion to the question: In divine beatitude there preexists in a more eminent way whatever is desirable in any beatitude, whether true or false. – And it is proven inductively in three kinds of felicity, namely the contemplative, the active, and the earthly, which consists in five things; so that all these are clearly evident in the text.

III. Concerning contemplative happiness, note that certain persons, from the words of Aristotle in Book III On the Soul¹, where he says that the speculative intellect says nothing about what is to be fled or pursued, cut off from contemplative happiness all delight and love, glossing as best they could the admirable delights of the tenth book of the Ethics² But in truth they seem to have erred. For, speaking generally, intellectual delight follows upon the contemplation of excellent things by way of natural resultance: since upon the best operation, one that unites us with what is most natural to us as its object, delight necessarily follows, as is clear from the definition of delight in Book I of the Rhetoric³ Nor does the authority of Book III of the On the Soul militate against this, for it speaks of pursuit in the animal, not the natural, mode: that is, of an act of appetite as of something chosen, not as something naturally concomitant, as happens here. – Descending, however, to the matter at hand, this ambiguity has no place: since the beatific vision is neither practical nor speculative, but of a higher order, containing both eminently.

IV. Concerning active happiness, note here that certain thinkers, penetrating less deeply into the perfections of things, and therefore not attending to the fact that the perfection of the active part consists in acting, said that practical happiness consists in an act of the will. The text, however, for the reason given, places it in executive action—yet universal action, namely, in the governance of the universe. And rightly so: since the end of the practical is to operate.