Summa I, q.2, a.3: The Third, Fourth and Fifth Ways, the Most Universals, and Replies on Evil and Enough Causes

Orientation #

He opens mid-question (“And the third way…”), continuing the article on whether God exists; he ends: “Next time we can start to study the substance of God.” He refers back to what “we saw before when he looked at the second book” of the Metaphysics (verified source: Aquinas’s commentary on Metaphysics II, lectio 2, read from his handout “Note for Readings Two through Four”), and to his earlier explanation “today” of reason as looking before and after and the senses of before. The previous class worked through the objections and the first way; the next opens Question 3 on the simplicity of God.

The class, in order #

1. Two senses of “able” before the third way (“two different meanings of the word able”) #

Point: “possible” in the third way means “able to be and not be,” which must be separated from the logical sense of able that includes the necessary.

• Puzzle: is what is necessary to be able to be? If not, it is impossible, so it would not be; if it is, and able to be means able not to be, contradiction again. So “able” has two meanings.
• Fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V] distinguishes two groups: the ability spoken of in geometry and logic vs. the ability of natural philosophy. The ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX] is mainly about the second kind, ability as beginning of motion, change, operation: active (fire able to burn the paper) or passive (the paper burnable).
• The other sense (“power” in mathematics, “to the second power”; in logic, of the statement): subject and predicate are compatible. Triangle able to be green (contingent, no contradiction) vs. triangle able to be a figure, two able to be a number (compatible and necessary). This “able” includes necessary and contingent; it is not an ability to act or be acted upon.
• Thomas uses “possibile” here for what is able to be and not be; “able” is the more colloquial English.

2. The third way: from things able to be and not be (“some things which are able to be and not be”) #

Point: since not all things can be able to be and not be, there must be something necessary.

1. We find things able to be and not be (this table, you and I, the trees): most known to us. Unfolded: some things are generated and corrupted, hence able to be and not be.
2. Impossible that all such things be always, “because what is possible not to be at some time is not.” He cautions: Aristotle treats this in the first book on the universe [ed.: On the Heavens I], and Thomas in the last six lectios of his commentary goes into it much more; a full understanding needs that book. Part of the reason: if something never did not exist, it would have the ability to be forever, and what is able to be forever will be forever, since things naturally want to be as long as they can. So what is able to be and not be lacks that ability and at some time is not.
3. If all things are able not to be, at some time there was nothing.

• Objection (people’s difficulty): can’t generation go on forever, father before father? Answer (Aristotle, On the Heavens and On Generation and Corruption): granting perpetual generation, its cause cannot be one member of the series (that member is not forever) nor all of them (they are not together); so something outside the series causes the perpetuity.

4. What is not cannot begin to be except through something that is; nothing from nothing. So if ever nothing was, now nothing would be, which is clearly false. Conclusion: not all beings are “possible”; something necessary exists in things.

• Summa Contra Gentiles gives it a bit differently (from memory): these things are able to be and not be, so why are they one rather than the other? Something makes them be rather than not be, and you reach the necessary. So there may be more than one way to reason to something necessary.

3. Aside: perseverance and grace (“only perseverance is crowned”) #

Point: the same form of argument appears in the treatise on grace, on why special divine help is needed to persevere.

• Can my choosing today to be good the rest of my life be the cause of my persevering? No: that wanting ends when I fall asleep; it does not continue. Renewed acts? A succession of acts do not exist together, so cannot cause anything. So the cause is outside me: God watching over me. Hence pray for perseverance.
• Anima Christi imitates the Our Father’s petitions: after “Passio Christi, conforta me,” strength is still not enough; the next part asks for perseverance, “ne permittas me separari a te.” “Thy kingdom come” also asks for perseverance in part (Thomas). Anima Christi goes back to John XXII, not Ignatius, who popularized it (the Catholic Encyclopedia article; unsure whether he wrote or approved it). Student: St Peter walking on water, “if it is you, command me to come,” then “save me”: an example of the need for special help. In the prima secundae treatise on grace, perseverance is something special, beyond the theological virtues: special divine providence.

4. Necessary through itself; simplicity and “before” (“something that is necessary to itself”) #

Point: necessary things may have a cause of their necessity, so one must reach something necessary through itself.

• Democritus: if something is necessary, ask no reason for it. Aristotle, father of logic, shows otherwise: geometrical conclusions are necessary, yet true because of the premises; so necessary things can have a cause of their necessity. That is what angels are.
• Everything necessary either has a cause of its necessity or not; no infinite regress in necessary things with a cause of necessity, “just as neither in movers”; so something necessary to itself, cause of the necessity of others, “and this all call God.”
• SCG uses this as middle term: what exists necessarily to itself must be existence itself. “Very simple.” Teresa of Avila: God is altogether simple, and the closer one gets to God the simpler one becomes. De Koninck: get back to the simple understanding of Thomas, profound but not naive, yet with great appreciation of the difficulty (his seminar).
• Interviewing at the college: people cannot say things simply as Thomas would. “Priorities” is an abstraction from prior, the Latin for “before,” less familiar; it is really getting your “before” straight, and there are many senses of before: sometimes this before that because you cannot do that without this first, sometimes because this is better.
• Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost: the pseudo-intellectual says “let us meet in the posteriors of the day,” which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
• A college kid asking “what do you mean by first principles?”: beginnings. Bad effect of custom: big words impede one’s own understanding and the understanding of those one explains to.

5. The fourth way: grades in things (“taken from the grades which are found in things”) #

Point: more and less imply something most, which is cause of the rest.

• Found in things more and less good, true, noble; bonum and verum are transcendentals, the most universals, perhaps deliberately emphasized. Thomas is briefer as he goes on.
• More and less are said as things approach in diverse ways what is most of all so: more hot what more approaches what is most hot. Fireplace example: things get warmer as you approach; the fire is the warmest in the room, but also the cause of the others being warm, so there is cause and effect too, which Thomas states later.
• Therefore something most true, an optimum (superlative of bonum), most noble (“he was no democrat”), and consequently most being (maxime ens).

6. Digression: first distinctions and the six most universals (“What are the first distinctions?”) #

Point: since reason (Shakespeare: “large discourse, looking before and after”) must see a distinction before it sees before and after, and the general distinction precedes the particular, the distinction of the most universals comes first.

• Order among distinctions: animal/plant before dog/cat (students agree). Moral/intellectual virtue distinguished at the end of one book of the Nicomachean Ethics, justice/fortitude/temperance only in the next; virtues of reason (art, foresight, reasoned-out knowledge, wisdom) in the sixth book.
• De Veritate q.1 a.1: Thomas, following Avicenna (who does not fully understand all of them), distinguishes six most universals, all following on being: some upon being in itself, some upon being in comparison to another.
  • In itself, affirmative: the only affirmative thing every being has is what it is: res, thing, “something.” Daily life half-distinguishes “does a cat exist?” from “what is a cat?”, yet for a cat to be is to be a cat: being and thing very close. Opposites: non-being and nothing seem the same. English “is that really so?” from res; Greek ontos from on. Natural Hearing I [ed.: Physics I]: nothing from nothing is the same as no being from non-being.
  • In itself, negative: one, adding indivision, a being of reason only. Plato and Avicenna both confuse the one that begins number (limited to quantity, even a part of it) with the one convertible with being: hence Avicenna’s view that one adds something real, Plato’s that substances are numbers. “That’s a very important distinction.”
  • In comparison to another: aliquid, which he translates “another thing” (not “something”; Thomas takes it as aliud quid): one thing is not another, distinction, again a negation. Sometimes Thomas lets “one” cover both: undivided in itself and distinct from others (one chair: parts united, distinct from all other chairs).
  • The other two involve a relation of reason to something that is in some way all things: the soul (De Anima); the universality of the mind gives the true, of the will the good.
• Thomas treats these as convertible in various articles; that is what he has in mind with verissimum and optimum here (what verissimum means exactly is not clear). If good and being are the same, what is most good is most being.

7. Metaphysics II and the principle of the most in a genus (“propter quod unum quodque tale et illud magis”) #

Point: what belongs to two things but to one because of the other belongs more to the cause; hence the first cause is most true and most being, and the most in a genus causes the rest.

• Aristotle’s statement in Thomas’s abbreviated Latin; his own unfolding: hot is said of fire and the air around it, but of the air because of the fire, so the fire is hotter; sweet of sugar and coffee, but of the coffee because of the sugar; end and means both good, the means because of the end, so the end is better.
• Applied: the effect is and is true because the cause is and is true, so the cause is more true and more being; the very first cause most true and most being. Aristotle introduced to the Bible would have seen “I am who am” as truth itself, a mode of credibility for him.
• Thomas’s principle: what is said most of all to be such in a genus is cause of all in that genus, e.g. fire, most hot, cause of all hot things. The sensible example (old science) is a crutch; do not belabor it (is sugar sweet through itself, or a compound?).
• Albert the Great: first thing considered in logic is the universal; he prefers “name said of many things,” more sensible, closer to the senses, and lets the student decide.
• Geometry: later theorems less known; premises more known than the conclusion, else why use them to prove it; so more known is tied to being a cause (of knowing). Back to axioms and postulates, most known and cause of all the rest. Same for the good: good of health and of medicine, of the medicine because of the end; the end better and cause of the goodness of the means; a means to a means is less good, further from the cause, but still depends on it.
• Train: what moves it most is the engine, not the caboose or the cars, though they pull something.
• Through itself: if something belongs to a thing in a diminished way, it does not belong through itself; some statements less known, so not known through themselves, known through something more known, back to the most known, cause of the rest. So there is something that is cause of the being, goodness and every perfection of all beings: if perfection belonged to you through yourself, you would be its cause, and why would the cause have it in a diminished way?

8. First cause or first being? (“in what sense of before is God the first cause”) #

Point: the third and fourth ways bring one closer to God as first being than as first cause.

• Puzzle: does “first cause” and “first being” in the SCG mean the same? First cause is before in the crowning sense (cause before effect). Student: God is always first being but not necessarily first cause, since He need not have created.
• The second sense of before (can be without the other, not vice versa): God can be without creatures, they not without Him; SCG II shows God does not produce the universe by natural necessity, creation is free. This differs from being cause in them.
• In this context “first being” seems to mean better, more perfect: the last sentence says something before all things is cause of their being, goodness and every perfection: the fourth sense. Summary: God is before other things in the second, fourth and crowning senses; not in the third (discourse of reason: we know Him from effects); the first (time) needs heavy qualification (duration, not time).
• The first two ways give first mover, first maker, first cause; the third stresses necessary to itself, the fourth the most perfect, so nearer “first being,” though cause appears in both and “necessary” is taken up with the words for cause in the fifth book of wisdom. He admits he is “kind of rambling,” puzzling over Thomas’s words.

9. The fifth way: the governance of things (“taken from the governance of things”) #

Point: things lacking knowledge act for an end, so they are directed by an intelligence.

• Natural bodies act for an end, evident because they act always or for the most part in the same way to achieve what is best: Aristotle’s first argument for nature acting for an end, not by chance but by intention.
• What lacks knowledge cannot tend to an end unless directed by one knowing: the arrow tends to the target because of the archer. So there is an intelligence by whom natural things are ordered to an end, “and this we call God.” Thomas sometimes refers to John Damascene here; in some way it goes back to Anaxagoras.
• Aside on “arcus”: bow, rainbow.

10. Replies to the objections (“The first objection was about the good and the bad”) #

Point: evil and the sufficiency of nature and reason do not exclude God.

• Reply 1 (Augustine, Enchiridion): God, most good, would allow no bad in His works unless so omnipotent and good as to bring good even out of evil; it pertains to His infinite goodness. Some goods cannot be without evil: the martyr without the persecutor; Augustine, heretics needed for theology to develop; the person who annoys you helps you gain patience; the good man uses even bad things well, the bad man good things badly. Brief here; SCG III and De Malo treat the bad at length.
• Boethius turns the tables: not “if evil, no God” but “if evil, God exists,” since there is no evil without the good order it transgresses, which needs a cause.
• Boethius, Albert and Thomas all hold Plato and Aristotle the chief philosophers (principes philosophi); Augustine speaks of the Platonists but does not know Aristotle much; Boethius studied in Alexandria. Thomas puts Aristotle above Plato where they disagree yet names both.
• Reply 2: nature acts determined by a superior agent, so natural things are led back to God as first cause (the fifth way); what happens from choice must be reduced to a cause above human reason and will, which are mutable and defectible, to something unchangeable and necessary to itself, as shown.
• Aristotle in the Ethics: the beginning of our thinking and willing is from God. Reason: I can will to understand and understand in order to will; before every understanding a willing, before every willing an understanding: same infinite regress, so the beginning comes from outside. An argument for the unmoved mover from our understanding and will, not only natural motion.
• Waking with a good thought: did I will to think it? (a frustrating dream about a government form).

His words #

• able / possible: two senses; able to be and not be (natural) vs. compatibility of subject and predicate (logic), which includes the necessary
• fifth / ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V, IX]
• first book on the universe [ed.: On the Heavens I]
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• necessary to itself: has no cause of its necessity, causes the necessity of others
• perseverance: “only perseverance is crowned” (Augustine and Thomas)
• Anima Christi: “Passio Christi, conforta me”; “ne permittas me separari a te”
• priorities / prior: abstraction from before; many senses of before
• transcendentals: the most universals (bonum, verum)
• verissimum, optimum, maxime ens: most true, best, most being
• reason: “large discourse, looking before and after” (Shakespeare)
• res / thing / something: what a being is
• one: adds indivision, a being of reason; distinct from the one that begins number
• aliquid: “another thing” (aliud quid), not “something”
• ontos, on: Greek “really,” “being”
• “propter quod unumquodque tale et illud magis”: what belongs to two, but to one because of the other, belongs more to the cause
• through itself: what belongs in a diminished way does not belong through itself
• five senses of before: time, being (can be without), discourse of reason, better, cause (crowning)
• primum ens: first being, tied to perfection
• principes philosophi: the chief philosophers, Plato and Aristotle
• arcus: bow, rainbow

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q.2 a.3, third, fourth and fifth ways; replies to objections 1 and 2
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II, via Aquinas’s commentary lectio 2 and his handout “Note for Readings Two through Four” (verified source): the principle “propter quod unumquodque…”

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (senses of able; necessary and cause) and IX
• Aristotle, On the Heavens I with Thomas’s commentary (last six lectios); On Generation and Corruption
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I (third way, God is His existence, first cause/first being), II (creation not by necessity), III (the bad)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II treatise on grace (perseverance); De Veritate q.1 a.1; De Malo
• Avicenna, Metaphysics
• Aristotle, De Anima (soul in some way all things); Physics I; Nicomachean Ethics (moral/intellectual virtue, book VI, beginning of thinking from God)
• Augustine, Enchiridion; Boethius; Albert the Great; John Damascene; Anaxagoras; Democritus; Teresa of Avila
• Anima Christi; Our Father; Gospel, Peter walking on water
• Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost; Shakespeare’s definition of reason
• Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Anima Christi

His questions #

• Is what is necessary to be able to be? Yes in the logical sense (subject and predicate compatible), not in the sense of able to be and not be.
• Can my choice today be the cause of my persevering the rest of my life? No: it ends when I sleep; renewed acts do not exist together; the cause is God.
• Couldn’t generation go on forever, father before father? Even so, the cause of the perpetuity is outside the series, neither one member nor all together.
• What’s the order between the distinction dog/cat and animal/plant? Animal/plant first: the general distinction before the particular.
• What’s the opposite of being? of thing? Non-being; nothing: and these seem the same, as being and thing are almost the same.
• Which is better, the end or the means? The end, since the means is good because of the end.
• Would the premises of a syllogism be more or less known than the conclusion? More; otherwise why use them to prove it.
• What’s moving the train most of all? The engine, not the caboose or the cars.
• In what sense of before is God the first cause, and in what sense the first being? First cause: cause before effect; first being: can be without others, and better than all; left partly open (“not altogether sure”).
• Do I will to have the good thought I wake up with? The beginning of our understanding and willing is from outside us, from God.