The Summa of Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas volume 1
Since intellection is an operation of the living, we must, after the study of science and intelligence in God, study his life.
1. Whose responsibility is it to live?
2. What is life?
3. Is life suitable for God?
4. Are all things life in God?
Article 1 — Whose responsibility is it to live?
Objections:
1. It seems that living is common to all natural things. Indeed, Aristotle says that “movement is like life for all beings in nature”. But all natural things are endowed with movement. So they all participate in life.
2 . Plants are said to live, for the reason that there is a principle in them which makes them grow and decrease. But local movement is more perfect than the movement of growth and decay, and it is prior by nature, as Aristotle proves. Therefore, since all bodies in nature have within them a certain principle of local movement, it seems that all of them live.
3. Among natural bodies, the most imperfect are the elements. But life is attributed to them, because we speak of living waters. Therefore, even more, other natural bodies have life.
On the contrary , Dionysius writes “It is in plants that we hear the last rustlings of life”, from which we can infer that plants occupy the last degree in the order of the living. But inanimate bodies are inferior to plants. So they don't have life.
Answer :
It is in those in whom life is manifest that we can grasp to whom life belongs and to whom does not. But life is especially visible in animals; This is what Aristotle remarks, saying that “in animals life is manifest”. We must therefore distinguish the living from the non-living according to what makes us say that animals live, what life first reveals itself and thanks to what it ultimately persists. Now, we say that an animal lives from the moment it moves itself, and we judge that it lives as long as this movement appears in it. As soon as he has only a foreign motion, we say that he is dead for lack of life, it is therefore clear that those are alive, strictly speaking, who move themselves with some kind of movement. ; either we take the movement in the literal sense, as an act of the imperfect, that is to say of potential being; or we take it in a more general sense, also applying to the act of the perfect, in the sense in which intelligence and sensation are called movements, according to Aristotle. We will therefore call living all beings which determine themselves to any movement or operation. Those who do not have the natural capacity to carry out some movement or operation of their own accord will only be said to be alive by metaphor.
Solutions:
1. This word of the Philosopher can be understood either from the primary movement, that of the celestial bodies, or from the movement in general. But in both cases the movement is called a kind of life of natural bodies by metaphor and not by ownership of terms. The movement of the sky, in fact, is with regard to all corporeal natures what the movement of the heart is in the animal, by which life is preserved. Likewise, every natural movement in natural things is a simulacrum of a vital operation. So that, if the entire corporeal universe were only one living thing, and if the movement of which we speak was the fact of an internal agent, as some have claimed, it would follow that movement would be the life of all bodies in nature.
2. Heavy bodies and light bodies are only endowed with movement if they are outside their natural disposition, namely when they are outside their proper place; in their proper and natural place they remain at rest. On the contrary, plants and other living things move with a vital movement because of what they are in their natural disposition, and not by moving into it and leaving it. Much better, it is when they withdraw from this movement that they move away from their natural disposition. Furthermore, heavy or light bodies are moved from the outside, either by the generating cause which gives them form, or by a cause which removes from them what opposes the movement, according to Aristotle's Physics, and so they do not move themselves, like living bodies.
3 . As for living waters, they are so called because they have a continuous flow. Still or stagnant waters, such as those in cisterns or ponds, are called dead because they are not connected to a perpetually gushing source. This is said metaphorically; for by appearing to move, the waters have the appearance of life; but they do not therefore have life in the literal sense, because this movement does not come from them; it comes from the cause which generates them, as happens with other heavy or light bodies.
Article 2 — What is life?
Objections:
1. It seems that life is an operation. Indeed, nothing is divided other than into parts belonging to the same genus. But life includes, according to the Philosopher, four operations: feeding, feeling, moving locally and thinking. Life itself is therefore something of the same kind, that is to say an operation.
2 . We distinguish between active life and contemplative life. But contemplatives are only distinguished from active ones in consideration of certain operations. So life is an operation.
3. Knowing God is an operation. But such is life, according to this word in St. John (17, 3): “This is eternal life, that they know you, God. ”
On the contrary , the Philosopher writes that “for the living, to live is to be”.
Answer :
According to what we said above, our intelligence, which is formally the faculty of knowing the quiddity of things as its proper object, holds this object from the senses, whose proper objects are external accidents. Hence it is from the apparent characteristics of the thing that we come to the knowledge of its essence. And because we name according to our way of knowing, as we recalled above, it happens that most often the names intended to signify the essences of things are taken from their external properties. Consequently, these names sometimes designate, according to their own meaning, the very essences of things, which they are mainly intended to signify, sometimes the properties from which they were taken, and this less properly. This is how the word “body” was intended to signify a certain type of substances, from the fact that we find three dimensions in them; because of this the word body is sometimes used to mean the dimensions themselves, the body then becoming a species of quantity.
The same thing must be said about life. The word life is taken from an apparent phenomenon which is autonomous movement; but this is not what is meant by this name, it is the substance to which it is appropriate, according to its nature, to move itself, or to carry itself in some way to its operation. According to this, to live is nothing other than to be in such a nature, and life means this very thing, but in an abstract form, just as the word “running” abstractly means the act of running. “Living” is therefore not an accidental predicate, but a substantial one. Nevertheless, the word life is sometimes taken, less properly, to designate the vital operations from which this name was taken. This is how the Philosopher writes: “To live is mainly to feel and think. ”
Solutions:
1. In the text cited in the objection, the Philosopher takes the word live precisely in the sense of the vital operation. We can also say, and better, that feeling, understanding and other activities of this kind are sometimes taken as operations, sometimes of the being of those who exercise them. Thus, in the passage from the Ethics cited just now, Aristotle writes that for us “to be is to feel or understand”, that is to say to have a nature capable of feeling or understanding. And it is in this sense that the Philosopher divides life into four activities. Because in this lower world, there are four kinds of living things. Some are limited to nutrition and its effects, which are increase and generation; others extend to sensation, like immobile animals, oysters for example; still others add local movement, like perfect animals: quadrupeds, birds, etc. ; finally some attain intelligence, and this is the case with men.
2.We call vital operations those whose principle is in the operants, such that they can begin to exercise them themselves. Now it happens that with regard to certain operations there are in men not only natural principles, like natural faculties, but also superadded principles of action, such as habitus, inclined, as naturally, to actions determined, thus made delectable. For this reason, and using metaphor, we say of an action pleasant to a man, of an action to which he feels inclined, to which he is mainly occupied and towards which he directs his life, that this action is his life. One, for example, will be said to lead a voluptuous life, another an honorable life. This is the way of speaking that we use when we distinguish active life from contemplative life, and also when we say that knowing God constitutes eternal life.
3. This resolves the third objection.
Article 3 — Is life suitable for God?
Objections:
1. It seems not, because life is attributed to that which moves of itself; but God does not move in any way and therefore cannot live.
2 . In everything that lives there must be a principle of life, and this is how in Aristotle the soul is called “the cause and principle of the body”. But God has no principles. So it is not suitable for him to live.
3 . The initial principle of life, in everything that lives around us, is the vegetative soul, which is found only in corporeal beings. So life is not suitable for intangible things.
On the contrary , it is said in Psalm (84, 3): “My heart and my flesh tremble toward the living God. ”
Answer:
Life is in God in the highest sense of the term. To be convinced of this, we must observe that life being attributed to certain beings because they are moved by themselves, and not by others, the more perfectly it will suit someone, the more perfectly it will also be. find life in him. Now, in the series of engines and mobiles, we distinguish in order a triple element. First of all, the end moves the agent; the principal agent is the one who acts by his form, and it happens that he acts by means of an instrument, which therefore does not act by the virtue of his form, but by that of the principal agent, his own role is only to execute the action.
We therefore find certain things which themselves move, not with regard to the form which is in them by nature, or with regard to the end, but with regard to the execution of the movement; the form by which they act, and the end towards which they tend are assigned to them by nature. These are the plants which grow and decline according to the form they take from nature.
Others go beyond and move not only in terms of the execution of the movement, but in terms of the form which is the principle of this movement, a form which they acquire of themselves. And such are the animals, whose principle of action is a form not imposed by nature, but acquired by sense. 5 It follows that, the more perfect is their faculty of feeling, the more perfectly also they move -themselves. Thus those who are only gifted with touch have only contractility as their only movement, like oysters, whose capacity to move hardly exceeds that of plants. On the contrary, those who are endowed with a complete faculty of feeling, that is to say capable of knowing not only what is conjoined to them or which touches them, but also what is far away, these move progressing towards what is far from them.
But, although animals of this kind receive from the senses the form which is the principle of their movement, nevertheless they do not fix for themselves the end of their operation or their movement; this end is inscribed in them by nature, which pushes them to move by virtue of their form to do this or that action. Therefore above all other animals are those who move themselves, furthermore, as to the finality of their movement ordered to an end, which they set for themselves. And this is done by reasoning and by intelligence, the faculty to which it belongs to know the relationship between the end and the means, and to order one to the other. The way in which those who are endowed with intelligence live is therefore more perfect, because they themselves move more perfectly. The sign of this is that in one and the same man, intelligence moves the sensitive faculties, which command and move the organs, which in turn execute the movement. Thus we see in the practical disciplines that the art of the navigator, to whom it is up to govern the ship, commands the art of the builder who determines its form, and the latter commands the simple executive agents, whose role is to arrange the material.
But although our intelligence is thus determined by certain things, certain others are fixed to it by nature, such as the first principles, which it cannot avoid recognizing, and the ultimate end which it is impossible for it not to want.
Thus, although it moves for some end, yet for other ends it must be moved by another. This is why he whose nature is his very intellection and in whom the natural is not fixed by another, holds the supreme form of life. And such is God. In God therefore there is life to the highest degree. Also the Philosopher, in book XII of Metaphysics having shown that God is intelligence itself, concludes that he has perfect and eternal life, because his intelligence is sovereignly perfect and always in action.
Solutions:
1. As Aristotle shows, there are two kinds of actions. One passes into an external matter, like heating or sawing; the other remains in the agent, such as conceiving, feeling or willing. There is this difference between the two that the first action is not the perfection of the agent, who moves, but of the subject who is moved. The second, on the contrary, is the perfection of the agent. From this it follows, the movement being the act of the mobile, that the second action, insofar as it is the act of the operant, is called its movement and this because of this resemblance: just as the movement is the act of the motive, thus the action of which we speak is the act of the agent; yet movement is an act of the imperfect, that is to say of what is in potential, while immanent action is an act of the perfect, namely of what is in act, as it is said in treatise On the Soul. So in the sense that intelligence is thus called a movement, the being who knows itself by intelligence is said to move. And this is what made Plato say that God moves himself, but not with a movement which is an act of the imperfect.
2. As God is his existence and intellection, so is his act of life. For this reason he lives but there is no principle in him.
3. In our lower world life is received in a corruptible nature, which needs both generation for the survival of the species and nutrition for the preservation of the individual. This is why, in lower beings, we do not find life without there being a vegetative soul. But this has no place in incorruptible realities.
Article 4 — Are all things life in God? ?
Objections:
1. It seems not; for in the Acts of the Apostles (17:28) it is said of God: “In him we have life and movement and being. ” But all things are not movement in God. So not all of them are life in God.
2 . All things are in God as in their first model. However, the images must conform to their model. Therefore, since not all things have life in themselves, it seems that not all things have life in God.
3. S. Augustine affirms that the living substance is superior to all non-living substances. Therefore, if that which does not live in itself is life in God, it seems to follow that things are more truly in God than in themselves. Now this seems false; for in themselves things are in act, and in God only in potentiality.
4. Just as good things are known to God, and also those which are fulfilled at a certain moment of time, so are evil things and those which God can do, but which are never fulfilled. Therefore, if all things are life in God as he knows them, it seems that evil things also, and those which are never realized, are life in God as he knows them. This seems absurd.
In the opposite sense , S. John writes (1, 3): “What was made was life in him. "Now all things, apart from God, were made. Therefore all things are life in God.
Answer:
As has been explained, God's “living” is his “knowing”. Now in God the intellect, the known, even intellection, are one and the same thing. Therefore everything that is found in God as known is his “living”, his very life. And as all the things that God has made are in him as known, we must. to say that all things, in God, are the divine life itself
Solutions:
1. Creatures are said in God in a double way: first of all as contained and preserved by the divine power, in the sense in which we say, of what is in our power, that it is in us. In this sense, things are said in God, even as to the being that they have in themselves. We must understand the words of the Apostle when he says: “In him we have life and movement and being” (Acts 17:28) For it is for us to live, to be and to move. caused by God. But in another way things are said to be in God, as the known in the knower. And then they are in God by their own reasons, which are nothing other in God than the divine essence. And since the divine essence is life, but not movement, we understand that according to this way of speaking things are not movement in God, but life.
2. It is said that images must be similar to their model according to form, not according to mode of being. For it happens that the same form has being in a different way in the image and in the model; thus the form of the house, in the mind of the architect, has an immaterial and intelligible being; in the house itself, outside the mind, it has a material and sensible existence. This is how the formal reasons for things which in themselves do not live, are alive in the divine mind because in the divine mind they have divine being.
3. If matter did not enter into the formal reason of things in nature, but only form, natural things would be in the divine mind through their ideas more truly than in themselves, in every way. This is why for Plato separate man was true man, material man was man by participation. But because matter enters into the formal reason for corporeal things, we must say purely and simply that these things have being in the divine spirit more truly than in themselves, because the being which they have in God is uncreated, that which they have in themselves is created. But to be this or that, to be man or horse, they have it more truly in their own nature than in the divine spirit; because material being belongs to the truth of man, while they do not have this being in the divine spirit. This is how the house has a more noble being in the spirit of the architect than in the material; yet we say house with more truth that which is in the matter than that which is in the mind of the architect, because the first is a house in act, the other only a house in potential.
4. Although evil things are in the science of God, as understood in it, they are not in God as created or preserved by him nor as having in him their formal reason: for God knows them by formal reason good things. For these reasons we cannot therefore say that evil things are life in God. As for things which are not at any moment of time, they can be said to be life in God in the sense that living designates only knowing, insofar as they are known by God, not in the sense that living is also a principle of 'action.