Summa I, Q.19, Arts. 1–2: Light and Life in St. John; Whether There Is Will in God and Whether He Wills Other Things

Orientation #

He opens by adding “another thing” to what was said before about the coupling of truth and life in the Lord’s words and about Thomas placing the life of God with the consideration of His understanding (prev. lecture). He points forward to “the next article” (a.3) on whether God necessarily wills anything besides Himself. The previous class treated God’s life and knowledge (q.18) and outlined the structure of the treatise to follow; the next takes up q.19 aa.3–4.

The class, in order #

1. Light and life in the Gospel of John (“in him zoe en there was life”) #

Point: John couples light with life as the Lord couples truth with life, and Thomas accordingly puts the life of God with His understanding.

• John 1:4, read in Greek: “in him there was life, and the life was the light of men.” Light belongs to the knowing power, so this is the same coupling as truth-and-life.
• Thomas’s division of the Gospel, “following rule of two or three”: ch. 1 shows Christ’s divinity; 2–21 manifest it by His life (2–11) and by His death and resurrection (12–21). Ch. 2: superiority to nature (water into wine); 3–11: spiritual power, divided into spiritual generation (3: Nicodemus and baptism; 4: extended to non-Jews, the Samaritan woman) and gifts bestowed on the spiritually generated (5: spiritual life; 6: spiritual food, the Eucharist; 7–11: spiritual teaching). Ch. 7: origin of His teaching; 8–9: its enlightening character; 10–11: its life-giving character; in each pair the first chapter gives words, the second a deed (8 “I am the light of the world,” 9 the blind man cured; 10 eternal life promised, 11 Lazarus raised).
• John 8 read in Greek: the one following Him “will have the light of life” (to phos tes zoes): light and life joined again.
• Student (unclear) raises that life is the Word: he replies this is appropriation; life is also in the Holy Spirit, in another way appropriated to Him, but here to the Son.
• Aristotle’s zoe: Greek names the animal (zoon) from life, Latin names animal from soul, the first cause of life in the living body. Plants have a soul but life in them is “hidden” (three books on the soul), so they are not named from soul or life as animals are.
• De Anima I, after the proemium: predecessors investigated the soul from local motion (a dog or cat moving about) or from sensation, i.e., from life where it is most known to us, in animals.

2. The plan of the treatise on the will and the twelve articles (“Now about the will, he says twelve things”) #

Point: the consideration of the divine will has three parts: q.19 itself; the next two questions, on what pertains absolutely to the will; and q.22, on what pertains to understanding in order to the will (“kind of both”). The twelve articles as he lists them: (1) whether there is will in God; (2) whether He wills things beside Himself; (3) whether whatever He wills He wills from necessity; (4) whether His will is the cause of things; (5) whether some cause can be assigned for the divine will (“why did He choose you to be”); (6) whether it is always fulfilled; (7) whether it is changeable; (8) whether it imposes necessity on what it wills; (9) whether there is in God will of bad things; (10) whether God has free judgment (“we’d say free will”); (11) whether one should distinguish the will of the sign, “what the hell does that mean”; (12) whether five signs of the divine will are conveniently posited, “that strange doctrine.”

3. Article 1, the objections: does wanting imply lack? (“Therefore, the philosopher must be lacking wisdom”) #

Point: the three objections against will in God, with the second drawing a long treatment of love, wanting and joy.

• Obj. 1: the object of will is the end and the good; no end can be assigned for God; so no will.
• Obj. 2: will is a desire; desire, being of a thing not had, designates imperfection; so no will in God.
  • Parallel: Socrates in the Symposium: the philosopher loves wisdom; to love is to want; to want is to lack; so the philosopher lacks wisdom. He puts to students: “God is love” (St John); if love, then want; if want, then lack; so God lacks: “something wrong with this.”
  • English “want” means both desire and lack (“the students are sadly wanting”).
  • Student: is it that they have wisdom in a way, not fully? He answers: can you love what you don’t lack? Yes. Love is more basic than wanting or joy: love a thing you lack and you want it; love it and have it and you rejoice. So “what you love you want” is only probable, because common in our case. In God there is love and joy but no wanting, strictly speaking.
  • Why this power is called appetitus (wanting) though not limited to wanting: Shakespeare, “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs”; reasoning (a kind of motion) names reason, seeking names appetite, as the irascible is named from ira, anger, which stands out.
• Obj. 3: per On the Soul III, the will is a moved mover; the good is the unmoved mover; God is the first unmoved mover (Physics VIII, “Natural Hearing”); so no will in God.
• Sed contra, “against all this nonsense”: Romans 12, that you may prove what is the will of God. (Aside: he asks the name of the figure of speech “the apostle” for Paul, “terrible word”; not resolved.)

4. Article 1, the body: will follows understanding (“in God there is will, just as in him there is understanding”) #

Point: wherever there is understanding there is will, as wherever there is sense there is animal desire.

1. A natural thing has existence and act through its form; the understanding in act has it through an understandable form.
2. Each thing has a relation to its natural form and to every natural perfection (the good of nature): when it lacks it, it tends toward it; when it has it, it rests in it. In things without knowledge this is natural desire. Example: at the nursery one says this plant “wants” a lot of sun or water, broccoli is “a big feeder.”
3. The intellectual nature has the same twofold relation to the good grasped by the understandable form: rests in it when had, seeks it when not; both pertain to will.
4. So in everything with understanding there is will, as in everything with sense there is the animal desire (emotions); hence will is in God, since understanding is.
5. His willing is His being, as His understanding is: no accidents in God (seen before); otherwise He would be in potency to His understanding and willing and not pure act. “Thomas is very brief there.”

5. Article 1, the replies: God as end; love and joy without wanting; self-mover (“only the first, love or liking, and joy”) #

• Ad 1: nothing other than God is His end, yet He is end of everything that comes from Him, through His very substance, since through His substance He is good; and the end has the notion (ratio) of good. Student asks whether ratio here could be translated “character”: he allows it. The good is sometimes defined through the end: “perfective of another by way of an end”; so God still pertains to the idea of end as end of other things.
• Ad 2: will in us belongs to the desiring part, named from desire, but its acts are also to love what it has and to delight in it. Greek divides the emotions into epithumia and thumos, Latin concupiscible and irascible: named from the emotion that stands out (hunger, thirst, anger), as reason is named from reasoning though it also understands. Three acts: like/love candy; lacking it, want it; having and eating it, joy. Only love (amare) and delight (delectari) belong to God; wanting cannot, since He lacks no good: to Abraham, “I’ll show you every good,” meaning Himself. He always has the good that is His object, in no way different from His substance.
  • Back to Socrates: Plato and Aristotle both say philosophy begins in wonder, a desire to know the unknown cause (an eclipse); but the philosopher is named from love of wisdom, not from wonder. Student: wisdom is the end, not the beginning. His answer: love of wisdom can be there without wisdom and after it, and (Augustine) one loves it more once one knows what it is; wonder, a hunger or thirst for knowledge, diminishes once one sees why. Same reason charity remains in heaven and hope and faith disappear. So God has no desire for wisdom: “what’s wrong with him?” He is wisdom itself, loves it and rejoices in it: that is His happiness.
• Ad 3: a will whose chief object is a good outside it must be moved by that; the object of the divine will is His own goodness, His nature, so it is moved by nothing else but by Himself, and not in the strict sense of motion, only as understanding and willing are called motions. So Plato says the first mover moves itself: Thomas “is very nice to Plato.”

6. Article 2, the objections and sed contra (“it seems that God does not will things other than himself”) #

• Obj. 1: His act of will is His being; He is not other than Himself; so He wills nothing other, “a strange argument.”
• Obj. 2: the thing willed moves the will as the desirable does desire (On the Soul III); if God willed another, He would be moved by another.
• Obj. 3: a will to which one willed thing suffices seeks nothing outside; His goodness suffices and satiates His will.
• Obj. 4: acts of will are multiplied by the things willed; one act for His goodness, another for yours; so His being would be multiplied and composed.
• Sed contra: the apostle, 1 Thessalonians 4, “This is the will of God, your sanctification.”

7. Article 2, the body: the good diffuses itself (“makes something like itself”) #

Point: God wills other things, shown by the same likeness as before.

1. A natural thing not only inclines to its own good (seeks it, rests in it) but also spreads its good to others as far as possible: every agent, insofar as it is in act and perfect, makes something like itself.
2. So it pertains to the notion of will to communicate the good one has, and especially to the divine will, from which every perfection is derived through a likeness. (Student notes the text has “will” where he expected bonitas; he confirms “will” is in the first part, then derivatur omnis perfectio; the connection of perfection and good was seen in the earlier articles.)
3. Hence He wills Himself to be and other things to be, but Himself as end, other things as toward the end, insofar as it befits His goodness that others partake of it. Compared to the Lord’s “If you who are evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more.”

8. Article 2, the replies: same thing, different thought; nothing moves Him but His goodness (“as he understands things other than Himself”) #

• Ad 1: the divine willing is His being in the thing, but they differ in definition. Goes back to Peri Hermeneias: words signify things through thoughts; the many words said of God signify the same thing but not through the same thought, so they are not synonyms; “God is” implies no relation to another, “God wills” does. “That’s a very important distinction that we met before, but it comes up again again.” So He wills, as He understands, something other than Himself.
• Ad 2: in what we will for an end, the whole reason of moving is the end. Bitter medicine: nothing in it moves you except health; a sweet potion is willed also for its own sake. Since God wills other things only for His goodness, nothing else moves His will; as He understands others in understanding His nature, He wills others in willing His goodness. We can will something without directing it to God; He cannot will except in willing Himself, or He would be moved by another and have multiple acts.
  • Asides: the cinnamon-flavoured red pills of his youth he swallowed expecting a bad taste; medicine should not taste too good; the orange vitamin C pills he takes “since I don’t get much candy nowadays.”
• Ad 3: that His goodness suffices does not mean He wills nothing else, only that He wills nothing except by reason of His goodness. Against the picture of a bored God making a universe to play with, “nonsense.” Our case: the American consumer, happiness “always one more purchase away”; Thackeray’s last page of Vanity Fair, who ever gets what he wants, or having got it is satisfied. God’s complete satisfaction is a sign He wills other things only as suitable to His goodness.
• Ad 4, “beautiful proportionality”: as the divine understanding is one act, seeing many in one, so the divine willing is one and simple, willing many through one, His goodness.
• Caution on the proportion, pointing to the next article: God in understanding Himself necessarily understands everything else, made or possible; in willing Himself He does not necessarily will anything else. “Extremely important to see” for thankfulness: He chose you to be, not for desert; if your parents had not met, or among the thousands that could have come from them, your chances were “practically nil”; so it is free and gratuitous, which should make one humble and thankful. “Thinking and thanking… are actually related.”

His words #

• zoe / zoon; Greek animal named from life; Latin animal from soul.
• appropriation; life attributed to the Son though in the Holy Spirit too.
• rule of two or three; Thomas’s way of dividing a text.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• want; both desire and lack in English.
• appetitus; the desiring part, named from wanting though not limited to it.
• natural desire; the relation of a thing lacking knowledge to its natural form or perfection.
• epithumia / thumos; concupiscible / irascible, named from the standout emotion.
• ratio; “notion,” possibly “character” (student’s suggestion, allowed).
• amare, delectari; love and delight, the two acts of will in God.
• free judgment [ed.: liberum arbitrium]; “we’d say free will.”
• will of the sign; a.11, left unexplained here.
• differ in definition; same thing in reality, different thought and meaning, not synonyms.

Texts #

Read in class

• John 1:4 (Greek); Thomas’s division of the Gospel of John, chapters 1–21.
• John 8, “I am the light of the world… the light of life” (Greek).
• Summa Theologiae I q.19, prologue and twelve articles.
• Summa Theologiae I q.19 a.1, objections, sed contra (Romans 12), body, replies.
• Summa Theologiae I q.19 a.2, objections, sed contra (1 Thessalonians 4), body, replies.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, On the Soul I (predecessors, after the proemium) and III (will as moved mover, desirable moves desire).
• Aristotle, Physics VIII (first unmoved mover).
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias (words signify through thoughts).
• Plato, Symposium (Socrates on the lover of wisdom); Plato on the first mover moving itself.
• Augustine on loving wisdom more once known (locus not given).
• Shakespeare, “things in motion sooner catch the eye.”
• Thackeray, Vanity Fair, last page.
• Genesis, God to Abraham “I’ll show you every good” (inferred); Luke/Matthew “if you who are evil” (inferred).

His questions #

• Can you love something that you don’t lack? Yes; love is more basic than wanting or joy; lacking, you want; having, you rejoice.
• What’s the defect in Socrates’ argument? That what you love you want is only probable; God has love and joy, no wanting.
• Why is the philosopher named from love of wisdom rather than from wonder? Love of wisdom remains, and grows, once wisdom is had; wonder is satisfied and diminishes.
• Would it be proper sometimes to translate ratio as “character”? (student) “You would say that, I suppose.”
• Does God, in necessarily willing Himself, necessarily will anything else? No; contrast with understanding, where He necessarily understands all He could make.
• What moves you to take the bitter potion? Health alone, nothing in the medicine.
• Did you ever thank God for choosing you to be? Rhetorical; choosing you was gratuitous, not for desert; be humble and thankful.