Ordinatio

[To the Arguments from the First Way] – To the first argument of the first question [n.125] I say that the authority states that the matter of this science, not the first and formal subject of this science, is things and signs and the like.

To the second [n.126] I say that whatever sense is not literal in one part of Scripture, is literal in another part of Scripture; therefore, although some part of Scripture have diverse senses, yet the whole Scripture has all those senses on behalf of the literal sense.

To the third [n.127] I say that the argument is to the opposite, in two ways. First, because man is posited to be the subject of moral science or medicine as that which contains virtually all the truths of the science. For the human body contains the idea of health virtually; for that is why the health of man is the sort it is, because the human body is complexioned as it is. Likewise, the soul of man contains the idea of natural felicity virtually, as is plain in Ethics 1.9.1097b22-98a20, where the idea of the natural felicity of man is concluded from the soul, or from the idea of the soul. Not so does man contain the idea of the end of this science (of theology), because supernatural felicity or the object of it is not included in the idea of man; and, therefore, man cannot be the first object of this science; therefore etc.

Second thus: man is the ultimate end of these sciences, and to this end both health and natural felicity are ordered. My proof is that all love of concupiscence presupposes love of friendship [2 d.6 q.2 n.3]; but health or felicity is loved with love of concupiscence; therefore, what is loved with love of friendship by him who has love of concupiscence is a further end beyond any of these. Such a further end is the body, on one side, and the soul, on the other. Therefore, if man in his body or soul is the subject of this science, it follows that his end is the subject of this science.

To the fourth [n.128] I say that the first proposition is false, because the end of a science is nothing other than to attain by its act the proper object of the science -- not to induce by its act some form in an object, because science is not a manufacturing quality.

[To the Arguments from the Second Way] – To Boethius [n.129] I say that he is speaking of a subject of an accident, not of a subject of study. To the text from the Physics [n.130] I say that it means ‘matter from which’, because this matter and the efficient cause do not coincide, and not that it means ‘matter of which’ or ‘about which’. Or better, one should say that the subject of a science as to truth does not belong to the genus of material cause but to the genus of efficient cause; however the subject of a science is said to be its matter by a certain likeness to the act of making, where the idea of object ‘about which’ and the idea of susceptive matter run together, because the act of it is a making that passes beyond to what is outside it. Not so in the case of the proper act of a science; however, a science is understood to pass beyond, because it does not terminate in itself but in that about which it is, although it is not received into the ‘about-which’ but remains in the knower. And on account of this one property of matter, namely ‘to be that about which’, the object is said to be matter in relation to the science and its act.¹

To the text from the Posterior Analytics [n.131] I say that the object of any science naturally discovered is something universal; therefore, the subject of such a science should have subjective parts. But of this science [of theology] the object is this essence [sc. God] as a singular, because it is a mark of imperfection in universal created nature that it is divided among many singulars; once this imperfection has been removed, the result is that this essence is knowable without divisibility of it into subjective parts. Yet it could be said that the divine persons are quasi subjective parts of the divine essence itself; but the essence itself is not numerically multiplied in them as it is in other imperfect things, where the subject is divisible into many.

As to what is added about properties [n.131], some say the attributes are quasi properties of the essence itself. But this is not valid, because any attribute as a ‘this’ can properly be known theologically of God, though anything as known confusedly is known metaphysically of him. For just as God in this way and that, that is, as a ‘this’ and as confusedly known, pertains to the theologian and to the metaphysician, so too does any attribute taken in this way and in that.² Now as to the added point that a property is outside the essence of the subject [n.131], this is true when the property is really caused by the object; but in divine reality that which has the idea of a property is not caused, because it passes into essence by way of identity; however, as to its knowability, it is known through the idea of the essence as if it were really distinct from the essence.

As to what, third, is said about the principle of the subject [n.131], I say that it is not necessary that the principles of what is knowable be principles of the subject as it is in itself, because in the case of being qua being, which is set down as the subject of metaphysics, there are no principles, because then they would be principles of any being whatever; but it is necessary that of any subject whatever there be principles by which its properties are demonstrated of it, and from these principles, as from the middle terms of demonstration, propositional principles are formed, just as self-evident principles are. In this way, of any subject at all, however much it is not a principle with respect to its properties, there can be principles.³