Summa Theologiae I, Q.3, Articles 5–6: God is in no genus and has no accidents

Orientation #

He begins with “before we begin the fifth article,” recalling that “we said something about before” Aristotle’s four senses of whole and part in Metaphysics V (prev. lecture), and refers back to the previous articles (3 and 4) on nature and existence in God. He closes: “I’m going to be looking at Article Seven next time,” where God is shown “omnino, altogether simple.” The previous class treated aa. 3-4 (essence, existence and God identical); the next treats a. 7 (whether God is altogether simple).

The class, in order #

1. Composed whole vs. universal whole, and the order of the articles (“distinguishes four senses of whole and part”) #

Point: the first five articles eliminate the three kinds of composed whole Aristotle distinguishes in Metaphysics V; the sixth treats something that is not strictly a whole at all.

• Composed whole vs. universal whole: the composed whole is put together from its parts but not said of them (chair from legs, seat, back — but the seat is not a chair; a statement from noun and verb, but a noun is not a statement); the universal whole is said of its parts but not put together from them (animal is said of dog, cat, horse, elephant, but not composed of them — otherwise “a dog is an animal” would mean a dog is composed of cat, horse, elephant, “like John Locke speaking” of the universal triangle).
• Why no article “whether God is a universal whole”? In the Sentences the two questions sit side by side; in the Summa, the question on simplicity eliminates every composed whole, while “God is one” (not Father-Son-Spirit as species of a genus, nor many gods) does the work of eliminating the universal whole.
• Three composed wholes: (1) quantitative, above all the continuous, parts at a common boundary, “a whole is more than one of its parts”; all parts are to the whole as ability to act; (2) essential whole, matter and form, where one part is to the other as ability to act; (3) definition, more on the side of the mind, genus taken from what is material, difference from form.
• Mapping: a. 1 (God not a body) eliminates the quantitative whole; a. 2 matter and form; aa. 3-4 are “like” the second — nature to individual is something like form to matter, “related” but not the same; existence to nature as act to ability, and the third is more like the second than the fourth is, since nature is more like form than existence is. He recalls that in the Summa Contra Gentiles, after showing composition of nature and existence in angels, Thomas devotes a chapter to showing this is not matter and form, because both involve act and ability. A. 5 eliminates genus and difference; SCG has several chapters on this.
• A. 6 is different: even in creatures substance and accident “strictly speaking don’t form a whole” — “healthy man,” “logical man,” “geometrical man,” “white man” (“I don’t want to say I’m a wise man”) is an unum per accidens, one thing happening to another; so it comes after the five.

2. A. 5, the objections (“It seems that God is in some genus”) #

• Reminder of the logic definition of genus: a name said with one meaning of many things differing in kind, in answer to “what is it?”
• Obj. 1: substance is a being subsisting by itself (opposed to accident, which exists in another and cannot exist apart); this belongs most of all to God; so God is in the genus substance. He flags in advance that “ens per se” is not the fully adequate account of the genus substance and promises to bring in the SCG definition if Thomas does not.
• Obj. 2: each thing is measured by something of its own genus (lengths by lengths, number by number); God is the measure of all substances “as is clear through the Commentator.” The Commentator = Averroes, who commented on all Aristotle’s major works, named by custom as Aristotle is “the Philosopher” and Paul “the Apostle” (“I think Thomas deserves the title more”). The reference is to Averroes on Metaphysics X, the book on the one and the many: one as beginning of number is measure of every number, and the idea is carried to the other genera. Aside: he has wondered why Thomas has no question “God is the measure of all things” after “God is one.”
• Language aside: English “kind” serves for genus (sui generis = “one of a kind”) and for species; “kin” may share the etymology of generation.
• Sed contra: the genus is before what is in it according to understanding; nothing is before God, secundum rem nor in understanding.

3. Two ways of being in a genus: as species, or by reduction (“something is in a genus in two ways”) #

• Simply and properly, as a species under the genus; vs. by being led back (reduction), as principles and privations. Students: the soul — a part or principle of substance, brought back to substance; blindness — the lack of a quality, reduced to quality. So things that are not species can still be ordered by the categories.
• Point and unity reduced to quantity as beginnings: the point begins the line (a species of continuous quantity) but is not a quantity; the one begins number but is not a number — “one of these mixed-up moderns” thinks it is. Shakespeare in The Phoenix and the Turtle knows it: love made the lover and the loved one, and so “murdered number.” “I don’t have a number of wives… a number of heads”; two is the first number.
• One is closer to being a number than a point to being a quantity: (a) a number is composed of ones, a line not of points; (b) one can have to a number the ratio a number has to a number (1:2 as 2:4 as 3:6), but a point is not to a line as line to line.
• Footnote: a theorem in Euclid’s number books (the least numbers in a ratio measure all others in that ratio) only holds if one is counted a number — 2:4 does not measure 3:6, so you go down to 1:2 — an analogous, not purely equivocal, extension of “number.”
• Thomas uses the point/line fact: are God and creatures better than God alone? No — creature’s goodness is to God’s not as shorter to longer line but as point to line, which added to the line makes it no longer. Or: the creature partakes of God’s goodness, and Duane Berquist plus the arm of Duane Berquist is no more than Duane Berquist alone. “That helps me understand how gratuitous is God’s making us.”
• Privations reduced to the genus of their habit: ignorance in quality, not in genere proprie but by reduction.
• In neither way is God in a genus: three arguments against species, one separate reason against principle.

4. Three ways God is not a species (“shown in three ways”) #

Aside first: Porphyry’s Isagoge (“introduction,” to Aristotle’s Categories, and to logic, which is before all sciences) is essential here; most philosophers he meets have not read it, some not heard of it — like the Acts of the Apostles, “we’ve not even heard of the Holy Spirit.” Species: name of a particular kind placed under a genus, of which the genus is said in answer to “what is it” (dog under animal, virtue under habit, justice under virtue).

1. Species is constituted from genus and differences; that from which the difference is taken is to that whence the genus is taken as act to potency (Porphyry: genus to differences as matter to form). Anaxagoras’s trouble with matter — putting all it can be actually in it — is like Locke’s trouble with the genus: triangle in general is “all, none of these.” Triangle in general is open to equilateral, isosceles, scalene but none actually, as wood is able to be chair, table, door but is none until it gets a form. Animal is taken from sensitive nature by concretion (animal = what has a sensing nature), rational from intellectual nature; intellectual is to sensitive as act to ability. In God potency is not joined to act (pure act, a. 1; SCG has a whole chapter on it, “the foundation for the whole consideration of the substance of God”); so no species.
2. God’s being is his essence (a. 4); if in a genus, the genus would be being, since genus signifies the essence; but Metaphysics III shows being cannot be a genus: every genus has differences outside it, and no difference is outside being, since non-being cannot be a difference. In English: “something” cannot be a genus, since you would divide something by something.
3. All in one genus agree in the what-it-is predicated of them but differ in their being (not the same being of man and horse, or this man and that); so whatever is in a genus has essence and being distinct; not so in God. Second and third are both from God being being itself, “I am who am”; the first from pure act. Corollary: God has no genus, no differences, no definition (a kind of whole, from genus and difference), no demonstration of him (the middle term of demonstration is a definition — Posterior Analytics).

5. Not in a genus by reduction (“Don’t fence me in”) #

• Aside: praedicamentum, the Latin for the categories, became English “predicament”: once in one you cannot get out — man cannot become a quality, geometry a substance. “God is not in a predicament.”
• Argument: a beginning reduced to a genus does not extend beyond it — the point begins nothing but continuous quantity, the unit nothing but number; God is the beginning of the whole of being (to be shown below); so he is not contained in any genus as a beginning.
• Summary: no genus, differences, definition — the three composed wholes eliminated, with the two things similar to the second.

6. Back to the replies of a. 5 (“We didn’t do the reply to the objection”) #

He starts a. 6 obj. 1, then breaks off to do the a. 5 replies.

• Reply 1: “substance” signifies not merely to-be-by-itself (being cannot be a genus, Metaphysics III) but an essence to which it belongs to be thus, i.e. per se, whose being is nevertheless not its essence; so God is not in the genus of substance. SCG says it “a little more clear”: substance is res cui conveniat esse non in alio (accident: res cui conveniat esse in alio); “thing” is taken from having a nature; cui conveniat marks that the existence is not the nature. Distinction: God as “substance” in the loose sense (something existing by itself — Aristotle calls God a substance so, and we speak of “the substance of God”) vs. substance as the first of the ten categories; in any genus the common nature and the distinct existences of its members differ, so God cannot be in any genus.
• Reply 2: the objection holds of a proportioned measure, homogeneous with the measured; God is not proportioned to anything, yet is called the measure of all in that each thing has being as it approaches him.
• Aside on measure: Plato — the perfect is the measure of the imperfect, so the good itself measures our goodness; Aristotle — the measure must be known, so the virtuous man is the measure. Aristotle sees the truth in Plato, and there is no way to resolve the tension. Thomas, following Augustine, on the reasons for the incarnation: God should be followed but is not seen; man is seen but is no perfect model; solved by God becoming man — a perfect model that is known. “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Sermon on the Mount) takes the one lacking in nothing (perfect as in Metaphysics V), but the Father is not well known to us; the virtuous man is known but has defects — “no man is a hero to his valet,” as his politician friends say.

7. A. 6, the objections (“It seems that in God there are some accidents”) #

• Obj. 1: substance is not an accident to anything (Physics I, “Natural Hearing”); what is an accident in one thing cannot be substance in another — “think of his predicament” — as heat is not the substantial form of fire because in other things it is an accident (third species of quality); wisdom, virtue and such, accidents in us, are attributed to God; so accidents in God. “Pretty convincing.”
• Obj. 2: in each genus there is one first thing; the genera of accidents are many; if their firsts are not in God, many first things outside God — “inconvenient, to say the least.”
• Sed contra: every accident is in a subject; God cannot be a subject, since a simple form cannot be a subject (Boethius, De Trinitate: divina substantia forma est).
• Aside on Boethius: “a magnificent book”; Msgr. Dionne noted it seems above his other works; “the greatest mind between Augustine and Thomas” in the Church, roughly 480-525, after Augustine; saw that relation multiplies in eternity; source of the definitions of person and eternity; the Consolation translated by Chaucer and worked on by Elizabeth I, mentioned by Washington Irving; in it he balances Platonist and Aristotelian speech.

8. A. 6, the body: three arguments (“in God there is no accident”) #

Preface: hold on to pure act from Metaphysics IX — act is simply before ability, even in time, since what goes from ability to act does so through something already in act; so the first being, first cause, is pure act.

1. Subject is to accident as ability to act, since the subject is in act by the accident (I am healthy by health, a geometer by geometry, a logician by logic, just by justice); to be in potency is altogether removed from God (Metaphysics IV). Second-figure syllogism: what has an accident is in ability; God is not in ability (passively); so no accident.
2. God is his own existence; Boethius, De Hebdomadibus: what is can have something else adjoined, but to ipsum esse nothing can be adjoined — what is hot can have whiteness, heat itself nothing but heat. Worked with the class: the healthy can be white, a magician; health itself is that by which the healthy is healthy, and can contain no geometry or whiteness, else geometry would be that by which the healthy is healthy, “which is laughable.” Likewise the wise vs. wisdom. So what exists can be something besides existing; existence itself, which God is, can have nothing extraneous. “That’s a very subtle argument.”
3. What is through itself is before what is by happening; God is simply the first being, so nothing accidental in him. Nor per se accidents (as the ability to laugh is a property of man), since these are caused from the principles of the subject, and nothing in God is caused, he being first cause. So: nothing ever happens to God, from outside or from his nature. “Very dull life.”

• Aside: in Hebrew, “the word of the Lord came to the prophet” means the word happened to the prophet.

9. A. 6, the replies (“virtue and wisdom… have the same meaning”) #

• Reply 1: wisdom and virtue said of God do not keep the meaning they have of us; shown in qq. 12 (our knowledge of God) and 13 (our naming him — we name as we know, hence that order): nothing is said univocally of God and us. Link to the Isagoge: the five names (genus, difference, species, property, accident) are a complete division of names said univocally of many; an SCG argument shows no name of God is any of the five, so nothing is univocal; the genus especially drops out when a name is carried over to God.
• Reply 2: substance is before accidents, so the beginnings of accidents are reduced to the beginnings of substance; God is not the first thing contained in the genus of substance but first outside every genus with respect to the whole of being.

10. Looking back over aa. 1-6 and ahead to a. 7 (“what Thomas has been doing up to this point”) #

• The six articles eliminate the compositions found in creatures: parts (legs, liver, heart), body and soul, what I am and myself, what I am and my existence, me and my accidents. A. 7 can then argue inductively that all kinds are eliminated, then give universal arguments.
• The order is the reverse of SCG, which shows no composition in general and then descends; the Summa leads from less universal to more — manuductio, “proposiciones minus universales,” as he cites q. 117 a. 1 [ed.: his reference as spoken]. So the Summa is more proportioned to a student; SCG’s thirteen arguments in one chapter (he read one this morning) are more than a beginner needs — “three good arguments is more than enough.” Comparing the Summas and the disputed questions shows the same arguments recurring, occasionally a new one, and differences of order.
• Order of simple before unchanging: Physics I shows whatever changes is composed; here you learn God is not composed; “put two and two together” and God cannot change — his “theological footnote” when teaching Physics I. SCG proves unchanging before simple, “so you lose something.” The Compendium of theology has yet another order of these five, but all three central works have them.

His words #

• composed whole: put together from its parts, not said of them; universal whole: said of its parts, not put together from them
• ability / act [ed.: potency / act]
• fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V]; third, fourth, ninth, tenth book of wisdom likewise
• unum per accidens: healthy man, white man — one thing happening to another, not strictly a whole
• genus: name said with one meaning of many things differing in kind, answering “what is it”
• species: name of a particular kind placed under a genus, of which the genus is said as what it is
• ens per se: being by itself — the objector’s inadequate account of substance
• the Commentator: Averroes
• sui generis: “one of a kind”
• simpliciter et proprie vs. by reduction (led back): species vs. principles and privations
• in genere proprie: properly in the genus
• praedicamentum: category; “predicament” — no way out
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• Isagoge: “introduction,” Porphyry’s; the five names genus, difference, species, property, accident
• res cui conveniat esse non in alio (SCG): substance as a category; res cui conveniat esse in alio: accident
• significat essentiam cui competit sic esse, id est per se esse: the reply’s definition of substance
• divina substantia forma est (Boethius)
• ipsum esse: existence itself, to which nothing can be adjoined
• manuductio: leading by the hand from less universal propositions
• omnino: altogether (simple)

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (four senses of whole and part; three composed wholes; “perfect”); III (being not a genus); IV (potency removed from God); IX (act before ability); X (one and many, with Averroes’ commentary)
• Aristotle, Physics I (substance not an accident; whatever changes is composed); Posterior Analytics (middle term is definition)
• Porphyry, Isagoge
• Thomas, Sentences (two adjacent articles on God as composed and as universal whole)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (angels’ nature and existence vs. matter and form; God not in a genus; God pure act; nothing univocal of God and creatures; chapter of thirteen arguments)
• Thomas, Compendium of Theology (a different order of the same five)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, qq. 12-13; q. 117, a. 1 (as cited); the question on God’s oneness; God and creatures not better than God alone (locus not given)
• Boethius, De Trinitate; De Hebdomadibus; Consolation of Philosophy
• Euclid, theorem on least numbers in a ratio (locus not given)
• Shakespeare, The Phoenix and the Turtle
• Scripture: Acts of the Apostles (not heard of the Holy Spirit); Sermon on the Mount (“be perfect”); Exodus “I am who am”; “the word of the Lord came to the prophet”

His questions #

• Why doesn’t Thomas have an article that God is not a universal whole? The Sentences has one; in the Summa it is done by showing God is one.
• Where would you put the soul? and blindness? Substance, as a part or principle; quality, as a privation — both by reduction.
• Is the point a quantity? Is the one a number? No; both are beginnings reduced to quantity; two is the first number.
• Is God and creatures better than God alone? No — a point added to a line makes it no longer; the arm of Duane Berquist adds nothing to Duane Berquist.
• Can something be a genus? No; its differences would have to be something.
• What is the difference between healthy and health itself? Health is that by which the healthy is healthy, so nothing extraneous can be in it — likewise existence itself.
• Why doesn’t Thomas have a question “God is the measure of all things”? left open — he notes Thomas says it elsewhere but has no question here.
• Why does the Summa show God simple before unchanging? Because Physics I shows whatever changes is composed; the two together yield unchanging.