Scholastica commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologicae

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE.

The CONCLUSION is: In God there cannot be an accident; this he proves by a threefold reason, as is clear.

COMMENTARY.

The conclusion of this article is of faith, as is clear from the Lateran Council, where it is defined that God is altogether simple; therefore in him there is no composition of accident and subject. This is also the common opinion of the Saints. See St. Aug., at the places cited in the preceding article; and 5 On the Trinity, ch. 4 and 5; and especially ch. 16, where St. Aug. solves the arguments which could be made against the truth of the conclusion from the denominations which accrue to God from time, namely that he is Creator, that he is Lord, Governor, etc. Since, therefore, the creature is not from eternity, therefore God was not Lord from eternity. Augustine answers that these are certain relative and extrinsic denominations, not positing anything real in God himself, but a certain respect of reason in order to creatures, of which we shall say more below, q. 13, art. 7; see Cajetan there, art. 7. But against this it is argued. God is creating, and apart from the corruption of the subject he can be not-creating; therefore to create is an accident of God. The consequence is proved from the definition of accident. It is answered that a thing which is a substance can be predicated by the predication of the fifth predicable. Hence to create is not an accident as it is distinguished against substance, yet it is an accident, the fifth predicable.

Concerning the second reason, in which St. Thomas says that to-be itself can have nothing else joined to it, as heat does, note from Cajetan's doctrine here that as between the abstract and the concrete made by the intellect there is this difference, that the abstract admits nothing with itself, as whiteness as such excludes all things other than itself (for whiteness is that by which the white is white, and this is nothing other than whiteness), but the concrete also admits to-be, as the white is understood also to be sweet, and sometimes is so: so also, speaking of the things themselves, between the abstract according to reality and the composite according to reality there is this distinction, that what is abstract according to reality is itself alone. Hence if there is given to-be itself according to reality abstracted from everything in which it is receivable, that is, from every nature determined according to genus and difference, it admits nothing else with itself, and consequently no accident is found with it; but the composite according to reality from to-be and nature admits something else besides itself. And this is what St. Thomas most elegantly embraced in the second reason. See St. Aug., book V and VI On the Trinity, where he establishes the truth of the conclusion of the article, saying that whatever is said of God is not a quality, but the essence. Where note how badly Gabriel speaks in 1, d. 32, q. 1, saying that divine wisdom is placed in the predicament of quality.