Scholastica commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologicae

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE.

The FIRST conclusion is affirmative. The ground is that God's knowledge stands to all things as the knowledge of the craftsman stands to crafted things.

The second conclusion: God's knowledge is the cause of things, yet with the will of God himself joined to it. The ground is: for the intelligible form stands to opposites, since the knowledge of opposites is one and the same: therefore God's knowledge would not produce a determinate effect unless it were determined to one thing through the will.

The third conclusion: This divine knowledge, which is the cause of things, is customarily called by theologians the knowledge of approbation.

COMMENTARY.

IN this article it is to be noted that the first and second conclusions are certain according to faith. It is proved from that text of Ps. 103: «Thou hast made all things in wisdom.» And indeed it is most common in Sacred Scripture that God created all things, that he disposes and governs them in his wisdom. Moreover, at Eph. 1 it is said that God made all things according to the counsel of his will. Behold where St. Paul joins both together in the account of the cause of creatures: both the counsel, which belongs to the intellect, and the good pleasure of the will.

There is a doubt concerning the second conclusion: whether knowledge is a nearer principle in the production of creatures than the will of God? To this it is answered affirmatively, according to the mode of our cognition. For the will itself and God's knowledge are in no way distinguished. This conclusion is first proved. God's knowledge has the account of art with respect to producing creatures; but in a crafted effect the nearer principle is not the will of the craftsman but art itself: therefore. And it is confirmed: God produces creatures immediately through command, as is gathered from that text of Gen. 1: «Let there be light, and light was made». But command is the work of practical knowledge: therefore. But someone argues: the nearer principle of the produced effect is the power that executes the command, and not the command itself; but the executive power in God is not the intellect but the will: therefore the will is the nearer principle of creatures. The major is clear; the minor is proved. The intellect, as intellect, is not a motive or executive power, but only directive; but the will by its own account is a motive power: therefore. To this it is answered that, as is said in 2-2, q. 27, the command of practical reason has motive force insofar as it shares in the determination of the will. And so that very command moves efficaciously and immediately to use: so in the present case I say that, although the divine will is formally the executive and as it were motive power, nevertheless the execution and motion itself takes place immediately through the divine command, insofar as God's practical knowledge is determined through the will to such a command. And so the command moves and executes itself in virtue of the divine will. In this sense St. Thomas is to be understood below in q. 25, art. 1, ad 4; see Ferrara, book 2 Against the Gentiles, chap. 1. From this it follows that God's knowledge, simply speaking, concurs toward the effect both more nearly and more principally than the divine will. And that it concurs more nearly is established from what has been said. But that it concurs more principally is proved: for the art of the craftsman concurs more principally toward the crafted effect than his will. For the form and account of the produced effect does not correspond, formally speaking, to the will of the craftsman but to his art; but God's knowledge, as we have said, has the account of art with respect to the effects produced: therefore.

CONCERNING the argument of this article, it is first to be noted that the whole of it consists in this: the divine understanding is the divine to-be; therefore God works all things through his intellect. Secondly it is to be noted that this argument presupposes two things. The first is that God works immediately through his essence and through his to-be. In this he differs very greatly from the creature, which works immediately not through its essence but through an accidental power. The second is that the operation which takes place in the mode of intellect is more excellent than all other operations. With these presuppositions, the whole argument of St. Thomas is reduced to this: that God works through his essence insofar as it is the divine intellect and the divine intelligible.

CONCERNING this proposition, which St. Thomas often repeats in this question and elsewhere, namely that the divine understanding is the divine to-be, the things we said in art. 4 of this question are presupposed. It is to be noted that the divine understanding can be compared to the essence of God, which embraces the whole to-be, both entitative and intelligible; and it can be compared precisely to the divine entitative to-be: if it is compared to the whole essence of God, this proposition is most formal, and formal in our mode of understanding, beyond these propositions, Justice in God is the divine to-be, Mercy is the divine to-be, and the like. The ground is: for justice and mercy and the other attributes of God belong to the divine essence as certain particular quidditative predicates. But understanding imports a certain account of being, namely the whole genus of intelligible being, which account belongs immediately to the divine essence. For the divine essence, since it is most formally the whole of being, is as it were immediately integrated from this twofold account of being, namely the entitative and the intelligible. But if understanding is compared to the entitative to-be, this predication, the divine understanding is the divine to-be, is in our mode of understanding not as formal and quidditative as this one, God's justice is the divine to-be. The ground is: for justice and the other attributes are as it were certain essential parts of the divine entitative to-be. But understanding stands as it were as a property of the divine entitative to-be; for as immutability in God is the ground of eternity, and thus, in our mode of understanding, eternity is compared to immutability as its property, so the divine entitative to-be is in God the ground of the divine intelligible to-be; and thus, in our mode of understanding, the whole genus of intelligible being in God is as it were a property of the genus of entitative being. The proposition of St. Thomas, therefore, is to be taken in the first sense.