Scholastica commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologicae

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE.

FIRST conclusion: Being is prior in account to good. Second conclusion, to the third: Good is prior to being in causing.

COMMENTARY.

CAJETAN doubts concerning the reason of the first conclusion and argues against it; because either St. Thomas intends to infer that being is prior according to the order of account in itself, or with respect to us; if the first, this is repugnant to what was said in q. 3, art. 5, where it is asserted that nothing is prior to God, neither in itself nor according to the intellect; but if being is the first intelligible in itself, it follows that God is not the first intelligible. If, however, St. Thomas means to infer that it is prior according to the order of account with respect to us, he does not seem to satisfy the title of the article. For the question is whether the account of being, in itself, is prior to the account of good.

To this difficulty Cajetan assigns a twofold solution. The former is that being can be compared to the other formal accounts in two ways: in one way, as it is distinguished from subsisting things, for example it can be compared to life, to wisdom, etc.; in the other way, to the things themselves, subsisting. If the comparison be made in the first way, then being is the first intelligible in itself, and the other accounts are intelligible posteriorly in themselves: but nevertheless among the other accounts is not included the what-it-is of God, because there cannot be an account of God without its being an intrinsically subsisting thing. And the reason is that the quiddity of God does not abstract from existence, since it is essentially to-be itself. Furthermore, if the account of being be compared to the accounts and to subsisting things at once, then being is not without qualification the first intelligible, but rather the Godhead is the first intelligible without qualification; so that intelligibility belongs to God prior to [belonging to] being in common; nay, it belongs to being in common because it belongs to God prior. And the reason is that God is not intelligible by participation, but from His own most singular essence, which is to-be itself, the first [being] and the principle of all being. In this way, therefore, it is true what St. Thomas says in q. 3, art. 5, because there he speaks of God according as He is said absolutely and without qualification to be first according to the intellect; but here being is said to be the first intelligible among the formal accounts of the same order, distinguished from subsisting things.

The other solution of Cajetan is that an amphibology occurs in locutions of this kind, because that particle, with respect to us, can determine either the order of knowing or the intelligibles themselves. If it determine the former, then it is distinguished against the order in itself, and it must be said that St. Thomas is speaking of the order in itself; for the question here is not of the order of cognition with respect to us, namely what is first known by us; but rather of the order of account in itself, namely whose formal account is prior, being's or good's, in the order to the intellect in itself? If, however, the particle, with respect to us, determine the intelligibles, then it distinguishes our intelligibles from things not intelligible by us; and in this way, being is the first intelligible in itself by us; but God is the first intelligible without qualification. And this sense seems consonant with St. Thomas when he says that the account signified by a name is what the intellect conceives of the thing and that is signified by the word: where he insinuates that he is speaking of the priority of the intelligible with respect to us, for it is ours to signify concepts by words. A third solution is assigned by us: that St. Thomas is speaking of being and good as it includes uncreated being and uncreated good: but the comparison is between the account of good and of being of the same order; so, clearly, that in each thing the account of being is prior to that of good, nor is a comparison made between the to-be of God and being in common: thus, therefore, it is verified that in each being the account of being is prior to that of good. But we are speaking of the priority of order which being has from its own nature to the intellect, prior to good: hence the Godhead itself is understood by us to be the object of the divine intellect insofar as it is to-be itself, before it is understood as it is goodness and the object of the divine will. And this order arises in us from the nature of the thing, which, on account of its infinity, can ground the order of these concepts, no less than if there were in the thing itself some order of causality according to prior and posterior.