In De ente et essentia D. Thomae Aquinatis commentaria

Whether, according to the mind of Aristotle and the Commentator, intelligences were effectively produced by God.

The question is whether intelligences were effectively produced by God. The negative argument is this: every agent acts through motion; no cause of immaterial substances acts through motion; therefore no cause of them produces them. Aristotle’s major is in I On Generation, text XLV. Further, every production requires that from which, that out of which, and that toward which; these cannot be found in immaterial substances. Nothing comes from nothing; but, if intelligences are effectively from God, they are from nothing. Again, nothing eternal has a true efficient cause except as form and end; and in things separated from matter there is no true acting. Finally, nothing possible in itself is necessary from another except motion; but intelligences, if effectively from God, are possible in themselves; therefore they are corruptible. Since it is not disputed here that God created intelligences, but whether this accords with Aristotle and the Commentator, we shall briefly show that all intelligences are effectively from God according to the Commentator and consequently Aristotle. We shall also explain the manner of this production. That which is being and truth to the highest degree is the cause of being and truth in other things. God is being and truth to the highest degree; therefore He is the cause of being in other things. If He is said to be only a final cause, the Commentator says that whatever separated thing has a final principle also has an efficient principle. Thus, wherever immateriality and final causality are found, effective causality is found as well. He expressly says that heaven needs an intelligence not only moving it, but granting eternal permanence to its substance; the same reasoning applies to intelligences. Averroes also gives the mode of production. He reproves Avicenna, not for saying that intelligences are produced by God, but for saying that God causes being naturally, so that from one only one proceeds. Avicenna held that God, pure actuality, by understanding Himself produces the first intelligence; that intelligence, by understanding God, produces the second; by understanding itself according to actuality it produces the soul of the first sphere, and according to potentiality the first sphere, and so on to the last intelligence. Averroes objects that only one thing proceeds immediately from God. He then says that there is only cause and caused, as the intellect is the cause of the intelligent. Albert explains that intelligences must be contemplated as operative, not merely speculative: they are essentially makers, as their instruments, the celestial bodies, show. A common and principal art causes subordinate arts both exemplarily and effectively; military art, for example, causes equestrian and bridle-making arts. God is the first and most common art, imitable in many ways by the special arts, namely the intelligences. Thus the divine art causes the arts of the several celestial movers, not merely exemplarily but effectively and totally. Human universal art causes special arts only partially because it requires the light of the agent intellect; divine art, being subsistent and supremely effective, requires no co-agent. Since these arts are not received in anything, they are subsistent and intelligent, for every subsistent immaterial thing is intelligent. Therefore God immediately produces several intelligences, which are essentially arts. Hence there is only cause and caused: the understood common art is the cause of the intelligent subordinate craftsman. The Commentator likewise compares the relation of the other intelligences to the first with that of special arts to the common art: as the latter perfects and causes the former, so the first intelligence perfects and causes the others. The first objection is answered by distinguishing “agent.” Properly, it is that which by its action produces a passion opposed to the patient; more commonly, it is anything that causes in the genus of efficient cause, and so is more common than mover. The confirmations concern physical production, through motion and change, or Avicenna’s doctrine that one proceeds from one. To the second argument, the major is granted and the minor denied: something may be effectively from another and nevertheless be necessary in itself. Four propositions establish this. First, what is possible in itself has in itself a potentiality not to be. Second, only that has such potentiality whose something has potentiality to be otherwise; no potentiality first desires non-being, but desires another being, and consequently non-being when its present form cannot remain. Third, what lacks potentiality to be and not to be is necessary in itself. Fourth, neither intelligences nor celestial bodies have anything of their own in potentiality to another being: intelligences are simple forms; celestial bodies are simple substances according to Averroes, and according to St. Thomas their matter can receive no form other than the one they have. Thus intelligences and celestial bodies are necessary in themselves. Yet they may be effectively from another necessary thing. They are necessary in themselves formally and intrinsically, and from another effectively and extrinsically. The Commentator denied only that something is precisely necessary from another except motion, not that it can be necessary both in itself and from another.

Everything that receives something from another is in potentiality with respect to it, and what is received is its act. Therefore an intelligence’s form or quiddity is in potentiality with respect to the being it receives from God, and act and potentiality are found in intelligences, though form and matter only equivocally. To suffer, receive, and be a subject therefore belong equivocally to intellectual and bodily substances. Intelligences are composed of act and potentiality, or of “that whereby it is” and “that which it is”: whatever effectively receives something is composed of a potential recipient and a received act; intelligences receive being from God; therefore they are so composed. Nevertheless they do not have form and matter, since act and potentiality are broader than form and matter. Their receiving occurs without motion or material conditions, unlike the receiving of lower things. Since an intelligence’s quiddity is the intelligence itself, its essence is what it is, while its being received from God is that whereby it subsists in nature. Hence, as Boethius says, such substances are composed of “that whereby it is” and “that which it is,” or of “that which it is” and essence.