Scholastica commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologicae

COMMENTARY.

CONCERNING this whole question it is to be noted first that the principal intention of St. Thomas is to teach that life most properly belongs to God; and that whatever is in God, as understood by him, is life in him, according to that [word] of John 1: What was made, in him was life. But to conclude this he investigates and defines in art. 1 in what it consists that a thing have life, saying that it consists in this, that things have in themselves an active principle of their own motion or immanent operation, and this is what we signify when we say that living things move themselves.

For motion is not taken as naming only the act of the imperfect and of a being in potency, but also for the operation which is the act of the perfect, as understanding, willing.

Note second, that although the name life is imposed from the vital operation, it nevertheless signifies that principle from which the vital operation proceeds. Hence, in art. 2 St. Thomas defines that life is not an accident, nor is living an accidental predicate, but a substantial one. And thus Aristotle is understood, 2 On the Soul, text 37, when he says, to live is to be for living things. Nevertheless, life or to live is customarily taken for the operations of life, from which the name is imposed, as Aristotle took it, 9 Ethics, chap. 1, when he says that to live is principally to sense or to understand.

Hence St. Thomas gathers in art. 3 that life most properly belongs to God.

First, because God most of all operates from himself through intellect and will, not moved by any other.

Second also, because the vital action of God is his life and essence, perfections which are found in no other living thing, according as they are in themselves and live. For the other living things, even if they move themselves, yet dependently on another, and no vital operation of theirs is their essential life. But God is essentially life itself and the fount of all vital to-be, to such an extent that all creatures, even those which in themselves do not participate life, nevertheless according as they have to-be understood in God, are life itself in God, as St. Thomas excellently explains in art. 4: and in this way that [word] of John 1 is to be understood: What was made, in him was life, according to the explanation of St. Augustine and Cyril.

Although St. Chrysostom, Homily 4 on John, says that that period is to be punctuated otherwise, namely: Without him was made nothing that was made: and there he places the full stop. Then follows, In him was life, etc. And Chrysostom reads it thus in order to resist the error of certain heretics asserting that it is gathered from that place, if it be read as we read it, that the Holy Spirit is a creature: for thus, they said, it follows also concerning the Holy Spirit, and the sense is: What was made in him, namely, in the Word, was life, that is, was the Holy Spirit. Chrysostom therefore rejected this error by punctuating otherwise, and Theophylact and Euthymius agree with him. But that manner of terminating the clause which Augustine and very many others follow is more genuine. And it is confirmed; because it is thus had in the trilingual Complutensian exemplar, and in our exemplars of the Vulgate Edition. Likewise this is also shown from the other preceding clauses: for one always begins from some part of the preceding clause, according to the rhetorical figure. But the absurdity of that error which Chrysostom confutes is sufficiently convicted from the context, for there immediately follows, And the life was the light of men. And again: It was the true light, which enlightens etc.: which are indeed attributed to the Word himself; for of that light it is said that it came into the world; and that John the Baptist bore testimony of it. Here that difficulty could be treated, whether heavy and light things move themselves, or are rather moved by the generator, on the occasion of the doctrine which St. Thomas teaches in art. 1 and in the solution to the second; but this is a physical question: see Master Soto, 2 Physics.