Summa I, Q.19, Arts. 3–4: Absolute vs. Suppositional Necessity in God's Will; God's Will as the Cause of Things

Orientation #

He refers back to “the example we had when Aristotle is talking about the first matter” and to “the last reading of the sixth book” of Wisdom, and says “we talked about that before” of the same-knowledge-of-opposites point (prev. lectures, unresolved). At the end he stops before the next article: “we may have better wait … we’ll be meeting next week.” The previous class worked through q.19 aa.1-2 and the next takes aa.5-6.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, objections 1-3: “whatever God wills, He wills for necessity” #

He reads the first three objections and flags what Thomas will hold: God necessarily wills Himself, but in willing Himself does not necessarily will anything else.

• Obj. 1: everything eternal is necessary; whatever God wills He wills from eternity (else His will would be changeable); so He wills it of necessity.
• Obj. 2: God wills other things insofar as He wills His own goodness, which He wills of necessity.
• Obj. 3: whatever is natural to God is necessary, since God is necessary to be through Himself and the beginning of all necessity. He connects this with the third way “shown above”: things able to be and not be have being through something that cannot not be; some necessary things have a cause of their necessity; what is necessary through itself is God. And nothing in God is apart from nature (fifth book of Wisdom), so whatever He wills, He wills naturally, hence necessarily.
• Aside on Aristotle’s word “necessary” (fifth book of Wisdom, first of its three parts) leads to Aristotle’s lost dialogues: Plato’s dialogues survive but his Academy lectures are lost; Aristotle’s lectures survive but his dialogues (Cicero rated them above Plato’s) are lost, so we get an “unbalanced view” of both, like Homer with the comic and Shakespeare with the tragic works lost. The famous fragment: either you ought to philosophize or not; if not, you must philosophize to show why not; so in either case you must philosophize. A scientist’s “my philosophy is to avoid philosophy … it’s a trap.” Applied to the word: is it necessary to understand “necessary”? If you say no, you must think about what it means to show why not, so “in either case you must consider the word necessary.”

2. Objections 4-6 and the danger of likeness (“likeness is a dangerous thing”) #

He reads the remaining objections and stops on the sixth to show how a proportional likeness is misread.

• Obj. 4: not-necessary-to-be and possible-not-to-be are equivalent; so if God does not necessarily will something He wills, He could not will it and could will what He does not will; His will would be contingens ad utrumlibet; everything contingent is imperfect and changeable. He distinguishes this contingency from nature’s: nature produces a man with two arms and legs for the most part and rarely fails, while the will seems equidistant to eating steak or not, candy or not.
• Obj. 5: from what is open to both, no action follows unless something else inclines it to one (the Commentator, Physics II); so God’s will would be determined by a prior cause. Aside: the Commentator is Averroes, who commented on all of Aristotle, with short and long commentaries; “we can seize it from him and say Thomas is the commentator”; students sometimes call him Averroes or commentator.
• Obj. 6: whatever God knows, He knows of necessity; divine knowledge is the divine essence as divine will is; so whatever He wills He wills necessarily. He restates it as a proportion: as God knows other things by knowing Himself, He wills other things by willing Himself; He necessarily knows others in knowing Himself; so He necessarily wills others in willing Himself. This is “overextending the likeness.”
• Plato in the Sophist (“appropriately”): likeness is slippery. You must see in what respect two ratios are alike. First matter : man and dog :: clay : sphere and cube — not that man and dog are accidents or first matter an actual substance, but that as clay can be sphere or cube, not both, and remaining able to be the other while ceasing to be the former, so first matter with man and dog. Math case: 4:6 :: 2:3 does not make 4 and 6 odd-and-even or prime; the likeness is that 4 is the same parts of 6 as 2 is of 3 (two twos of three twos).
• The right likeness here: God wills others in willing Himself as He knows others in knowing Himself; the difference: knowing others is necessary, willing them is not. Part of the reason: knowing is in the knower, willing goes to the thing in itself; if God did not know something there would be ignorance, a defect, in God; if He did not will other things, they simply would not be — no defect in Him, no obligation.
• Do creatures add to God’s goodness? The creature has goodness only by partaking of the divine goodness: Duane Berquist plus the arm of Duane Berquist is no more than Duane Berquist; this book plus page 109 is no more than the book; so God plus creatures is no more than God alone. Another way Thomas “leads us by the hand”: the distance is infinite, so our goodness is to God’s not as a shorter line to a longer (which would add length) but as a point to a line, which adds nothing. Hence how gratuitous creation is — “something to be thankful for.”

3. Sed contra and the body: “necessary in two ways” #

Thomas answers by distinguishing senses of necessary.

• Sed contra: Ephesians 1, He “does all things according to the counsel of His will” — counsel in God is almost metaphorical; what we do from counsel we do not will of necessity.
• Absolutely necessary vs. necessary by supposition: absolute necessity comes from the relation of the terms — predicate in the definition of the subject (a man is an animal) or subject in the definition of the predicate (a number is odd or even). Socrates sitting is not absolutely necessary but, supposing he sits, it is necessary that he sit while he sits: “I’m necessarily sitting when I’m sitting; I’m not absolutely necessarily sitting.”
• The divine will has a necessary relation to its own goodness, its object, so God wills His goodness of necessity — as our will necessarily wills beatitude. One does not choose to be happy rather than miserable; Thomas: virtue is the road to happiness, vice to misery, and the newspaper shows people miserable through vice, but strictly one chooses what leads to misery, not misery. As any power has a necessary relation to its object, sight to colour, since that is its definition.
• “Now this is the key thing”: God wills other things as ordered to His goodness as to an end. In willing an end we do not of necessity will what is for the end, except things without which the end cannot be: food for conserving life, the boat for crossing; not the horse for the journey, since without it we can still go. Since God’s goodness is perfect and can be without other things, nothing of perfection being added, He wills them but not by absolute necessity.
• Yet they are necessary by supposition: supposing He wills them, He cannot not will them, since His will is one act and cannot change; “He can’t will me not to be now.” Having chosen me — “I don’t know why”: parents could have married others and other people been born; to think oneself more deserving or a better user of gifts would be presumptuous; “it’s very free on His part.” A later article on whether God’s will is changeable is noted.

4. Replies 1-5: “the voluntary is something different from the natural” #

• Ad 1: true in one sense — some things by absolute necessity (the divine goodness), others by necessity of supposition.
• Ad 2: God necessarily wills His goodness but not what He wills on account of it, because His goodness can be without them — a simple principle visible in our own will.
• Ad 3: willing other things is not natural to God, but not unnatural or against nature either: it is voluntary. Nature and will are different causes (Aristotle); Shakespeare: “nature cannot choose its origin.”
• Ad 4: a necessary cause may lack a necessary relation to an effect through the defect of the effect, not the cause: the sun’s power has no necessary relation to what happens contingently, by the defect of the effect. So God’s not necessarily willing things comes from the defect belonging to the thing willed — it is such that God’s perfect goodness can be without it, a defect following every created good. Aside: when we see God as He is we will realize how superfluous we are; “how could one be satisfied with something superfluous?”
• Ad 5: a cause contingent of itself must be determined from outside; the divine will, necessary of itself, determines itself to what it has a non-necessary relation to.

5. Reply 6: “knowledge is had about things according as they are in the knower” #

The heart of the article: why the likeness of knowing and willing breaks.

• Divine being, knowing and willing are all necessary in themselves; but divine knowing has a necessary relation to things known, divine willing not to things willed other than Himself, because knowledge is of things as in the knower, will is compared to things as in themselves. Aristotle, sixth book of Wisdom, last reading, very brief: true and false primarily in the mind, good and bad in things — “a very important distinction.”
• One result, treated before: same knowledge of opposites (Socrates in the Symposium): knowing virtue you know vice better; black and white are used because opposites are better known together; normal and abnormal blood pressure. But not the same love of opposites: loving health excludes loving sickness, beauty ugliness. “I know your ignorance better than you know it yourself,” so knowledge and ignorance, sight and blindness, are known together; but loving knowledge excludes loving ignorance. Reason: in things one opposite excludes the other; in knowing, one helps the other; knowing gets the known into the mind where opposites can be together, will goes out to things where they exclude each other.
• De Anima proemium: all knowledge as such is good; is all love good? Knowledge of the bad is good, love of the bad is bad, since love attaches you to the bad in itself; Boethius: you must know the bad to avoid it, as logic studies mistakes to avoid them.
• The first act of the mind is called simplex apprehensio, simple grasping: what is grasped by the hand is contained in it, so with the mind; love is not grasping in that sense (think of the ambitious man).
• Hence other things have necessary being as they are in God, not absolute necessity as in themselves; so whatever God knows He knows of absolute necessity, not whatever He wills. Not knowing others would make Him necessarily ignorant, not knowledge itself; not willing others adds no defect, since willing them adds nothing to His goodness — “a very important difference.”
• Link to the eternity of the world: by natural reason one cannot determine whether the universe always was; by faith it had a beginning; Thomas gives as one reason that this manifests divine independence of the world — otherwise one might think it follows from God as Spinoza says, as the angle-sum follows from a triangle. God is “a very independent person. Or persons.” Break.

6. Article 4, objections: “comparison between the sun and God” #

Whether the will of God is the cause of things; four objections.

• Obj. 1 (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4): as the sun, without reasoning or choosing, enlightens all things by its being, so the divine good sends rays of goodness to all; but what acts by will reasons and chooses one thing before another; so God does not act by will. He grants a likeness: Christ as light of the world in John and as Sun (S-U-N) of Justice; the sun causes light and life; the Fathers: the sun enlightens before it warms, so God enlightens the mind with faith before warming the heart with charity (Augustine: by believing we come to hope, by hoping to love). But not to be overextended: faith and charity are gifts, not naturally bestowed as the sun gives light. Likeness is the cause of deception, which is why imagination is, being taken up with likenesses; Shelley: reason likes differences, imagination likenesses; the poet makes a likeness and his favourite figure is metaphor. Among Aristotle’s four tools of dialectic, difference comes before likeness — his own observation: likeness without difference deceives.
• Obj. 2: what is so through its essence is first in each order (fire); God, first agent, acts through His essence, i.e. nature, not will. The principle: what is so through itself is before and the cause of what is so through another — sugar sweet through itself is before and cause of the coffee’s sweetness; reason is reasonable without emotions, emotions only by partaking of reason, habituated to follow it.
• Obj. 3: what causes because it is such causes by nature (fire heats because hot), unlike the artist who wants to make the house; Augustine, On Christian Doctrine I: because God is good, we are.
• Obj. 4: of one thing one cause; God’s knowledge is the cause of created things.

7. Body: three ways God acts “through will and not by the necessity of nature” #

Sed contra: Wisdom 11:26, how could anything remain unless you willed it.

1. Order of agent causes: both understanding and nature act for an end (Physics II); a natural agent needs its end and means predetermined by a superior understanding, as the arrow by the archer; nature does not know the end; so the agent by understanding and will precedes the agent by nature; God, first agent, acts by understanding and will.
2. Notion of a natural agent, which produces one effect: Aristotle, ninth book of Wisdom, distinguishes active from passive ability and, among active, nature (determined to one, acting through one natural form) from reason or will (open to opposites, acting through knowledge, which is of opposites): the doctor knows how to save your life and to end it, “nobody better.” Shakespeare in Coriolanus: nature cannot be more than one thing; custom is like nature, determining to one thing, hence dangerous — aside on the custom of modern science, from a chemist friend: every thought is a hypothesis to be tested by consequences, and (Einstein) every hypothesis is free to imagine, so nothing is naturally known. Nature acts in one way unless impeded, since it acts as it is; everything acting by nature has determined being; the divine being is undetermined, containing the whole perfection of being, so it cannot act by necessity of nature unless it caused something infinite in being, which is impossible; determined effects proceed from its infinite perfection by the determination of its will and understanding.
3. Relation of effects to cause: effects preexist in the agent in the cause’s way, since every agent makes its like; divine being is divine understanding, so effects preexist intelligibly and proceed intelligibly, hence by will, since inclination to act on what is conceived belongs to will. Aristotle in Metaphysics IX: with the same knowledge of opposites an effect cannot proceed naturally from knowledge, or the doctor would make you healthy and sick at once; he wants to heal, or hates you “in the pay of the KGB” — will determines; fire in the presence of paper can only burn, the doctor’s knowledge is open to both.

8. Replies: “does not intend to exclude choice from God simply” #

• Ad 1: Dionysius excludes choice not simpliciter but secundum quid — “I’m surprised he’s making that distinction here” — insofar as God communicates goodness not to some alone but to all; choice implies discretion. Rain on the just and unjust, Christ on praying for enemies: “divine indiscretion,” with the last judgment perhaps different. Still a metaphor: God is in some way even like a stone, but with considerable difference.
• Ad 2: God’s essence is His understanding and willing, so acting through His essence He acts by understanding and will. Light from the Trinity: the Son proceeds from the Father by way of nature, not choice — God does not choose to generate; the Holy Spirit per modum naturae, since God naturally wills His goodness; so something natural precedes the voluntary in the sense of chosen. Care with the nature/will distinction: there is something of nature in reason and in will — things naturally understood and naturally willed; the Son proceeds by what God naturally understands, the Spirit by what He naturally wills, but we by what He freely wills.
• Ad 3: good is the object of will; “because God is good, we are” insofar as His goodness is His reason for willing all things — not the divine goodness naturally breaking out or overflowing into creatures, but in loving His goodness He chooses to spread it “so far as possible.”
• Ad 4: of one effect, even in us, knowledge is cause as directing (the form of the work is conceived in it) and will as commanding; Aristotle on choice — deliberative will or willing deliberation, it involves both (De Anima); the good is the first cause, known by reason or sense, and moves the will. The form in the understanding is not determined to being or not being in the effect except through will — same knowledge of opposites again: grammar lets him say “you are my students” or “you is my students,” teach or deceive. On logic exams he uses it to catch students: “every mother is a woman; no man is a mother; therefore no man is a woman” — true premises, true conclusion, not following, and he knows they will accept it, whereas the same form with dog/cat/animal would not deceive them. Mozart’s A Musical Joke (in the five hundreds of the catalogue) with obvious and subtle mistakes shows how not to write music; Shakespeare mocks amateur actors — the artist knows the bad as well as the good. Speculative understanding says nothing about doing; the power carries out as immediate principle of operation. In God all these are one; in us, many, but causes of one effect through their order (De Anima III on the moving powers, united around the good known which moves desire which moves the limbs). So the will of God is the cause of things. Next article deferred to next week.

His words #

• fifth book of Wisdom; sixth book of Wisdom; ninth book of Wisdom — Aristotle’s Metaphysics V, VI, IX [ed.: Metaphysics]
• second book of natural / the Physics — Physics II
• contingens ad utrumlibet — contingent to both sides, as our will is, vs. the for-the-most-part contingency of nature
• the Commentator — Averroes; “we can seize it from him and say Thomas is the commentator”
• likeness of ratios, proportional likeness — must be seen “in what way they are alike”
• necessary absolutely vs. from a supposition — from the relation of terms vs. supposing the fact
• beatitude or happiness — what our will necessarily wills
• virtue is the road to happiness, vice the road to misery (Thomas)
• voluntary — neither natural nor unnatural
• true and false primarily in the mind, good and bad in things
• same knowledge of opposites; not the same love of opposites
• simplex apprehensio — simple grasping, the first act of the mind
• Sun of Justice — Christ, S-U-N
• four tools of dialectic — difference before likeness
• what is so essentially is before what is so by partaking
• active ability vs. passive ability [ed.: potency]; nature determined to one, reason or will open to opposites
• simpliciter vs. secundum quid — simply vs. in a certain respect
• per modum naturae — by way of nature (the Son, the Spirit)
• knowledge as directing, will as commanding
• divine indiscretion — his phrase for God’s goodness given to just and unjust alike

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, all six replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, four replies)
• Ephesians 1 (sed contra of a. 3); Wisdom 11:26 (sed contra of a. 4)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 (in obj. 1 of a. 4)
• handout “Note for Book One, Reading Thirteen”, p. 5 (per verified sources; not named in the transcript)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (on “necessary”, first of three parts); VI, last reading; IX (active/passive ability); Physics II; De Anima, proemium and book III; the four tools of dialectic; Aristotle’s lost dialogues and the fragment on philosophizing
• Plato, Sophist (likeness); Symposium (same knowledge of opposites); the Academy lectures
• Augustine, On Christian Doctrine I (obj. 3 of a. 4); “by believing … hope … love”
• Averroes, commentary on Physics II (obj. 5 of a. 3)
• Boethius (know the bad to avoid it); Cicero on Aristotle’s dialogues
• Shakespeare, “nature cannot choose its origin”; Coriolanus; Shelley on reason and imagination
• Mozart, A Musical Joke; Spinoza on the world following from God; Einstein; Thomas on the eternity of the world (locus not given); John, “light of the world”
• DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 365 (per verified sources)

His questions #

• Is it necessary to understand the word necessary? Either way you must consider it; “in either case you must consider the word necessary.”
• In what way is four to six like two to three? Four is the same parts of six that two is of three, not that both are even/odd or prime.
• Do these other things add something to God’s goodness? No: God and creatures are no more than God alone, as a point adds nothing to a line.
• Does one choose to be miserable? No; one chooses something that leads to misery; happiness is willed necessarily and naturally.
• Necessary from supposition — what does that mean? Supposing He wills them, He cannot not will them, since His will is one unchangeable act.
• Is there the same love of opposites as there is the same knowledge of opposites? No: loving health excludes loving sickness, because in things one opposite excludes the other, in the mind it does not.
• Why is all knowledge as such good but not all love? Love of the bad attaches you to the bad itself; knowledge of the bad does not, and is needed to avoid it.
• Who is the Commentator? Averroes.
• Is Dionysius saying God’s goodness is indiscreet? In a sense — He gives to all, just and unjust — but the last judgment “may be a little bit different”; left as a joke.
• Is “every mother is a woman; no man is a mother; therefore no man is a woman” a good argument? No: true premises and conclusion, but it does not follow.