Ipsum Esse Research Articles

Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt Robert P. Imbelli Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology. Edited by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt. Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2021. Pp. ix + 422 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-932589-85-6. The volume’s attractive cover painting, depicting Thomas Aquinas praying before the Crucified, encourages readers to assume a more meditative mindset as they approach the rich collection of essays within its covers. They originate from a conference held at Ave Maria University in 2020 and proceed from the conviction that “studying the mystery of Christ in dialogue with Aquinas can assist us in today’s crisis of Christology” (3). Thomas thus appears in the essays, not as a repository of answers, but as exemplary “Magister Sacrae Paginae” and speculative genius who probes the Tradition to elucidate something of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church’s Lord who is the Savior of the world. To “dialogue” with him, as several of the essays contend, is also to enter into prayerful dialogue with the Christ who summons not merely to intellectual integrity, but especially to affective charity. What, then, is the nature of the “crisis” that besets us? In many ways it is both ancient and new. The writers recognize a recrudescent Arianism in its protean shapes. There is the ongoing project of “liberal Christology” that celebrates the manifestation of God’s mercy in Jesus of Nazareth but strains to confess this Jesus to be “God Almighty in the Flesh” (the title of Bruce Marshall’s closely argued essay). There are feminist and liberationist variants that stress the moral imperatives arising from Christology but scant the crucial ontological implications. But, as Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., observes in his short, but incisive “Foreword”: “Striking at the very core of uniquely Christian convictions about faith, hope, and salvation, the crisis of Christology is in the end a crisis of faith” (viii). This “crisis of faith” receives further delineation in the book’s final two essays. Marshall marvels at “the remarkable disappearance, in Western Catholic religious life, of the fear of God,” and suggests that many consider Jesus’ mercy “virtually unstoppable,” but allow his justice “to disappear, more or less completely, from view” (350). Daria Spezzano echoes the theme in “Is Jesus Judgmental?” She finds that “one firm tenet of popular Christology is that Jesus does not judge” (368). In salutary contrast she draws on both the Summa and [End Page 339] Thomas’s scriptural commentaries to set forth his teaching on Christ as “eschatological Judge” to show “why we need Christ’s wise judgment, how it reveals the Father’s love, and therefore why it gives the most profound reasons—to those who really will in the end be the friends of Jesus—for gratitude and hope” (369). What unites the essays is their firm adherence to the fundamental “logic” of the New Testament: the confession of the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ and the transformative way of life to which he calls. They find in Thomas a prime proponent and exponent of that “logic” in his own historical context and a sure guide in our present Christological task. They recognize further that, though rooted in the New Testament witness (as his biblical commentaries amply demonstrate), Thomas realizes that the mystery at the heart of the New Testament Good News also promotes “a distinctively metaphysical mode of Christological reflection” (88). Particularly suggestive in that regard are the following essays. Anthony Giambrone’s rich discussion of “Primitive Christology and Ancient Philosophy” persuasively shows that Paul’s writings already open upon ontological claims that the conciliar tradition and Thomas will later pursue. He contends that “No amount of creative agency or even latreia accorded by Christians to Christ can successfully assert his divinity without some idea of divine homo-ousia. And that requires some proto-Dionysian grammar of transcendent being or Thomistic notion of ipsum esse subsistens. Otherwise, the Logos will remain an Arian Artisan and worshipful super-angel: above all things, but merely atop...

Secunda Operatio Respicit Ipsum Esse Rei: An Evaluation of Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and Ralph McInerny on the Relation of Esse to the Intellect's Two Operations

Secunda Operatio Respicit Ipsum Esse Rei:An Evaluation of Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and Ralph McInerny on the Relation of Esse to the Intellect's Two Operations Elliot Polsky Status Quaestionis In his Preface to Metaphysics (1939), Jacques Maritain warns that "it is a radical error to restrict the object of the intellect to the object of the first operation of the mind."1 Thanks to texts such as q. 5, a. 3 of St. Thomas's commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate, the seventh reply in d. 19, q. 5, a. 1 of book I of the Scriptum on the Sentences (hereafter simply Scriptum), and the corpus of Scriptum I, d. 38, q. 1, a. 3, it is the common opinion of the twentieth century's great existential Thomists that, whereas the object of the intellect's first activity (or operation) is the essences of things, the object of the second operation of the intellect is the act of existence or to-be (esse).2 In the texts just cited, Aquinas distinguishes two operations of the intellect, which correspond to two distinct aspects in things: their nature, quiddity, or essence, on the one hand, and their existence [End Page 895] or to-be (esse), on the other. The first operation, says Thomas, "pertains to [respicit] the nature of a thing," or put differently, "apprehends [apprehendit] the quiddities of things." The second, however, "pertains to [respicit] the being [esse] of a thing," or put differently, "comprehends [comprehendit] the being [esse] of a thing." These two operations have traditionally been named "simple apprehension" and "judgment," respectively. The principal authors espousing this existentialist thesis are Maritain3 and Étienne Gilson,4 for whom the cognition of esse in judgment plays an essential role in both epistemology and metaphysics. This paper restricts itself to considering the metaphysical thesis itself that esse is cognized in judgment—that is, that the object of the second operation of the intellect is esse. The standard response to existential Thomism in regard to the cognition of esse was given first by Father Louis-Marie Régis in his 1951 review of Gilson's Being and Some Philosophers.5 It was subsequently developed at considerable length by Ralph McInerny in various places.6 The heart of the [End Page 896] argument made by these two authors against existential Thomism consists in pointing to a text in lecture 5 of Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's Peryermenias (De interpreatione) in which Aquinas appears to say quite plainly that "is" signifies esse, that "is" is a verb, and that verbs signify concepts in the first operation of the intellect, not the second. In response to this objection, existential Thomists could either, as Gilson does, call into question the value of Aquinas's Aristotelian commentaries for revealing Aquinas's own thoughts7 or, more plausibly, point out that none of the existential Thomists deny a concept of existence in the first operation.8 Rather, all they deny is that our understanding of existence originates in the first, rather than the second, operation. So, even if Father Régis and McInerny are right to see in In peryermenias a simple concept of esse, this need not contradict the existential Thomist thesis that esse is properly cognized only in judgment. It is the contention of the present paper that both sides of this dispute are mistaken. For reasons that have not been previously explored, we must deny the existentialist thesis that the object of the second operation is esse. Moreover, we must reject the Régis-McInerny interpretation of In peryermenias in which that text is taken as describing a particular concept of existence cognized in the first operation of the intellect. To reach these two conclusions, we proceed as follows. First, we present a chronological sketch of Maritain's understanding of the relation of esse to judgment, using him as the chief representative of the existential school and only citing Gilson afterward to confirm our previous interpretation of Maritain and to suggest that his view is generally representative of the existential school. Second, using texts in which Aquinas distinguishes the two operations of the intellect, we consider whether it is...

“Parvus error in principio magnus est in fine”: Thomas Aquinas’s Reinterpretation of the Understanding of Being and Essence as the Basis for the Discovery of the First Cause as Ipsum Esse

In this article, the author notes that Thomas Aquinas, in his brief work entitled De Ente et Essentia, proved that at the base of understanding the world, the human being, and God in particular, there is our understanding of being and its essence. When we make a small mistake at the beginning (parvus error in principio) in our understanding of being and its essence, it will turn to be a big one in the end (magnus in fine). And what is “at the end” of our knowledge is the discovery of the First and Ultimate Cause of all things, known as: Ipsum Esse, God, the Absolute, The Most Perfect Substance, on whom everything depends, and who depends not on anything else. These present inquiries about the proper understanding of being and its essence are aimed at formulating proof of the necessity of existence of a Being that is the First Cause, and which, existing as Ipsum Esse, is the source and reason of existence of all beings. Without these inquiries, the proof itself would be incomprehensible, and more importantly it would be a purely a priori one (i.e., ontological). Furthermore, without the existential conception of being, which Thomas first formulated, one could not discover the First Cause which, as Ipsum Esse, is the source of the existence of every being. This issue seems to have escaped the attention of the author of the book Aquinas’s Way to God. The Proof in “De Ente et Essentia.”

On the Final Definition of the Sophist: Sophist 265A10–268D5

Aquinas's doctrine of creatures as participants of esse in relation to God as ipsum esse is structurally parallel to Proclus's triadic schema of participating, participated, and unparticipated terms. For Proclus, a multiplicity of participated terms are diminished relative to their unparticipated monad in that each is confined to its participant. Since all things exist by participating one, unparticipated one itself is the first principle of all things. For Aquinas, all things exist by participating esse, and the esse of each is contracted to its participant. Hence unparticipated esse itself is the first principle. In both Proclus and Aquinas, therefore, we must "take away" all things, as participants of one or esse, from the first principle, leaving no thought whatever that grasps the first itself. Aquinas's understanding of creation as the posteriority of all things as participants of esse to God as ipsum esse is thus altogether Platonic and Procline in character.

Lessened by Addition: Procession by Diminution in Proclus and Aquinas

Aquinas's doctrine of creatures as participants of esse in relation to God as ipsum esse is structurally parallel to Proclus's triadic schema of participating, participated, and unparticipated terms. For Proclus, a multiplicity of participated terms are diminished relative to their unparticipated monad in that each is confined to its participant. Since all things exist by participating one, unparticipated one itself is the first principle of all things. For Aquinas, all things exist by participating esse, and the esse of each is contracted to its participant. Hence unparticipated esse itself is the first principle. In both Proclus and Aquinas, therefore, we must "take away" all things, as participants of one or esse, from the first principle, leaving no thought whatever that grasps the first itself. Aquinas's understanding of creation as the posteriority of all things as participants of esse to God as ipsum esse is thus altogether Platonic and Procline in character.

Is the Thomistic Doctrine of God as "Ipsum Esse Subsistens" Consistent?

The aims of my paper are (i) to set out Aquinas’s arguments in favour of the thesis of God as Subsistent Being itself; (ii) set out the arguments against; and (iii) propose a fresh reading of that thesis that takes into account both Thomistic doctrine and the criticisms of it. In this way, I shall proceed as in a medieval quaestio, with arguments in favour, sed contra and respondeo.

The Formal Constituent of the Divine Nature: In Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent Contenson

The Formal Constituent of the Divine NatureIn Peter Ledesma, John of St. Thomas, and Vincent Contenson Brian T. Carl THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, St. Thomas Aquinas appeals to Zechariah 14:9 in order to contrast the knowledge of God's essence in statu viae with the knowledge of that essence enjoyed by the blessed: "In that day, the Lord will be one, and His name will be one."1 For Aquinas, the multiplicity of the divine names is a necessary feature of human knowledge of God in this life, to be contrasted with the unified vision of the divine essence in the life to come. God is named as he is known, and he is known to us in this life through the created perfections that are his effects. Likeness of the simple, infinite divine perfection cannot be communicated to finite creatures except in multiplicity, and so to the multiplicity of created perfections there corresponds a necessary multiplicity of divine names. And yet, among the names given to God in this life, Aquinas privileges the name revealed in Exodus 3:14, identifying qui est as the most proper name of God. The propriety of qui est as a divine name within Aquinas's theology is linked to the centrality of esse within his metaphysics: qui est is the most proper divine name, Aquinas explains, because it signifies existence, and in [End Page 59] God alone essence and existence are identical.2 But what is the relationship between qui est (or ipsum esse) and other divine names, which are all in some way less proper? Among Thomists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there is a frequently held position about how to understand the centrality of being in our conception of the divine essence. Many Thomists of this period hold that there is a single "formal constituent of the divine essence in our understanding" or "metaphysical essence of God." By this, these Thomists mean that there is a single notion that functions, in our understanding of the divine essence, in the way that a specific difference functions in our understanding of a created essence: this notion both (1) distinguishes God from all other things and (2) serves as the root (radix) from which all of his other attributes are derived, as properties are derived from a specific difference. There is, according to this view, some single notion or concept that radically unifies our knowledge of God in this life, in the way that a difference or definition radically unifies the knowledge of a created essence. There is general agreement among Thomists of this period that this formal constituent or metaphysical essence of God is ens a se (sometimes formulated negatively only as aseitas), ipsum esse subsistens, actus purus, or some similar notion associated with being or act.3 The general consensus on this point was reflected and reinforced by the twenty-third of the Twenty-Four Thomistic [End Page 60] Theses promulgated by the Sacred Congregation of Studies in 1914.4 The doctrine and the terminology of a formal constituent or metaphysical essence of God has its origins in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Scholasticism. A full historical account of the development of this notion is beyond the scope of the present inquiry. This study primarily concerns the theories of the formal constituent of the divine essence or nature articulated by three Dominicans: Peter Ledesma (1544-1616), John of St. Thomas (1589-1644), and Vincent Contenson (1641-74). With respect to the many other authors who contribute to the development of this topic, I will limit myself to offering some comparative references, without advancing definite claims about lines of influence or originality. Although I cannot claim that he is the originator of this view, Contenson is the earliest Thomist I have discovered who explicitly holds the position adopted by many late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Thomists that ipsum esse or ens a se is the single notion (i) that distinguishes God from all things, (ii) from which all the divine attributes can be derived.5 [End Page 61] Contenson's position on the formal constituent of the divine essence represents a great simplification relative to the complex discussions of...

Aquinas on esse commune and the First Mode of Participation

Aquinas on esse commune and the First Mode of Participation Jason A. Mitchell THOMAS AQUINAS’S commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus divides participation into three modes and provides examples for each mode. The first mode of participation concerns something particular or less universal participating in a more universal notion, like an individual participating in a species or a species in a genus. The second mode involves a subject participating in a form or act, which is determined to the subject. Examples include a subject participating in its accidents and matter in form. The third mode regards an effect participating in its cause, especially when the effect is not equal to the power of its cause. This is exemplified by air participating in the light of the sun.1 Aquinas makes the threefold distinction while expounding Boethius’s axioms on the diversity of that-which-is (id quod est) and being (esse) and the participation of that-which-is in being. In another work, Aquinas holds that the relation between finite being (ens) and being (esse) is one of participation: being (ens), the participant, is that which finitely participates in esse, the participatum.2 Aquinas goes on to say in his Boethian exposition that esse does not participate in something according to the first two modes. He explicitly states that ens, which he clarifies as most common, [End Page 543] does not participate in esse, which is also most common, as the less common participates in the more common, but rather that it (ens communissimum) participates in being itself (ipsum esse) in the way that a concretum participates in an abstractum.3 Interpreters have struggled to understand exactly what Aquinas means by this type of participation between concrete and abstract and to determine which of the three modes of participation corresponds to the relation of participation between finite ens and esse. With regard to participated esse, John Wippel has noted that Aquinas speaks of participation in esse in three different ways: as participation in esse commune (the act of being considered in general), as participation in actus essendi, and as participation in esse subsistens (God).4 In the end, Wippel holds that all three of these participations are cases of the third mode to the exclusion of the other two modes.5 For Leo Elders, participation in esse is through the second and third modes.6 Tomas Tyn also holds that ens participates in esse [End Page 544] according to the second mode.7 For Rudi te Velde, Aquinas has tacitly introduced a fourth mode to account for the participation between ens and esse.8 Ralph McInerny seems to hold two different positions: participation of ens in esse is either according to the second mode9 or is irreducible to any of the three modes.10 Even the modes of participation themselves have been interpreted in different ways. Louis-Bertrand Geiger sees the first two modes as examples of his distinction between participation by similitude (which concerns the essence) and participation by composition (which concerns being).11 Cornelio Fabro, on the other hand, sees the first two modes—which he calls “formal-notional” (first mode) and “real” (second mode)—as cases of static-structural participation, while the third mode is interpreted as a dynamic-causal participation.12 At the same time, Fabro holds that the first and most fundamental division of participation is between univocal-predicamental participation [End Page 545] and analogical-transcendental participation.13 Univocalpredicamental participations include those between an individual and its species, a species and its genus, a substance and its accidents, and matter and form. Analogical-transcendental participation concerns the participation of a substance in its act of being (actus essendi) and the participation between the creature (ens per participationem) and God the Creator (esse per essentiam).14 It should be noted that Aquinas provides at least two other divisions of participation in his works. One occurs in his commentary on the Letter to the Colossians in the context of distinguishing the first three orders of angels—seraphim, cherubim, and thrones. There Aquinas writes, For one thing can participate in another in three ways: one way, receiving the property of its nature; another way, insofar...

Metafizyczna koncepcja złożeń wewnątrzbytowych i jej rola w wykładzie angelologii św. Tomasza z Akwinu

St Thomas Aquinas’s angeology is a perfect example of use of philosophical instruments for the purposes of rationalisation of contents manifested. It includes, among others, a concept of compositions of intra-being as developed within realistic metaphysics. The Aristotelian hylomorphism makes it possible to indicate a significant difference between a human being and simple spiritual substances, which are not composed of matter and form. Owing to this differentiation, it becomes possible to avoid blurring of the border, which results in either reductionism in perception of a human nature limiting the human nature to spiritual context or ascribing any type of material form to angels.The existential context of being developed by St Thomas Aquinas allows, on the other hand, for resolving an apparent incompatibility, which, as some thinkers thought, was to have been a result of ascribing the attribute of immateriality to angels (and which, as they thought, meant acceptance of polytheism). Within the meaning of this concept, deity is not associated with immateriality of pure spiritual substances (i.e. being a pure act in the sense of being a pure form without any share of matter), as the thinkers tended to think, but it is associated with being a pure act in the sense of having full existence (ipsum esse), which belongs to the very essence of being and, thus, there is no real difference between essence and existence.

Aquinas against spiritual matter

Nature of angels have been the object of interest of Christian thinkers since the times of the Fathers of the Church when the teaching of Holy Scriptures was confronted with Late Ancient Philosophy. The teaching on the intellectual beings in noetic realm was very important especially for Neoplatonic philosophers. It was Plotinus who first used Aristotelian concept of hyle noete (intellectual mater) to describe the distinctions between spiritual beings. His opinions evolved at ancient Neoplatonic systems and found its place in Arabic and Jewish philosophy. Idea of intellectual matter took its fully developed form in the writings of Avicebron (Solomon ibn Gabirol). His work Fons vitae was early translated to Latin in twelve century and was widely read. Through this work much of Neoplatonic philosophy was transferred to Latin Europe along with the teaching on spiritual beings and spiritual matter. St Thomas Aquinas, who confronted his ideas building systematic angelology, also knew work of Avicebron. The main problem of Christian angelology at his time was to show the difference between the nature of angels and God. This distinction did not played the key role in pre-christian systems, because there was no Scripture like concept of the one God as the only creator who transcends all beings. For the medieval Christian thinkers the idea of spiritual mater seemed to be very helpful in resolving this issue. It allowed them to claim that angels as creatures had spiritual matter in their essences while God was pure form and pure act. St Thomas Aquinas explained this difference in unique way using his new metaphysics. He argues that God is subsistent act of being (ispum esse substitens) and angels do not have their own essence identical with their being. Spiritual beings (often called by him „separated substances”) are composed of act of being (ipsum esse) and essence, which is form (forma). Thanks to such explanation there is no need to claim that there is a spiritual matter in nature of angels and Aquinas formulates arguments refuting this idea. In De substantis separatis he shows that such solution allows to reject spiritual matter and helps to demonstrate that angels have purely spiritual nature. His approach to the problem also preserves the claim of fundamental difference between God and spiritual creatures.

Buddhologie Und Christologie: Unterwegs Zu Einer Kol-Laborativen Theologie by John D’Arcy May

Reviewed by: Buddhologie Und Christologie: Unterwegs Zu Einer Kol-Laborativen Theologie by John D’Arcy May Paul F. Knitter BUDDHOLOGIE UND CHRISTOLOGIE: UNTERWEGS ZU EINER KOLLABORATIVEN THEOLOGIE. By John D’Arcy May. Salzburger Theologische Studien: Interkulturell 14. Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 2014. 159 pp. The brevity of this book belies its ambition and its achievement. May wants to further the cause of what he calls “collaborative theology.” He does so by carefully examining the recently born and ever growing body of Christian-Buddhist interchange and then by showing how this interchange bears the characteristics, especially for Christians, of a collaborative theology. His book is both a review of what has been going on in the Buddhist-Christian conversation over the last fifteen or so years and a signaling of where it is going. May first makes clear what he means by collaborative theology. He does this mainly by marking how it differs from the broadly popular comparative theology. Like the comparativists, collaborative theologians recognize the abiding, sometimes contradictory, differences between the religions, but at the same time they affirm the promise of bringing those differences into conversation (p. 30). There is also agreement as to the symbolic nature of all religious language and the central role that narrative plays in religious teachings. But for May, collaborative theology addresses what he identifies as a certain timidity in comparativists like Francis Clooney and James Fredericks; they offer “rich” comparisons between Christianity and Hinduism or Buddhism, but when it comes to drawing conclusions from these comparisons, they evince a theological “distance” or even “untouchability” (Berührungslosigkeit) (pp. 20, 12). For May, comparative theologians are strong on comparison but fail to deliver on theology. Not so collaborative theology. It seeks, May tells us, to gather the fruits of the dialogical comparison—fruits that will often call for real changes in theology and in the community’s self-understanding (p. 108). One hears echoes of John B. Cobb Jr. from back in the early 1980s when he reminded us that to engage in dialogue is to be called to transformation.1 For May collaboration leads to transformation. And this requires another step that comparative theologians appear hesitant to make—a step beyond the “absolutism” that is contained in the so-called Christian (or Buddhist) exclusivist or inclusivist theologies of religions (p. 29). May’s table of contents reads like a checklist of the complex but rich topics on the Christian-Buddhist agenda: “Trikaya and Trinity,” “Bodhisattva and Christ,” “History, Time, Hope,” “Bodies and Nature,” “Meditation and Prayer.” For each of them, he offers a selective, critical survey of the state of the conversation between Christian and Buddhist scholars. As expected, Christian voices dominate. And May, Christian scholar and long-time (but now retired) director of the Irish School of Ecumenics, is understandably more comfortable in highlighting the transformative possibilities that a collaborative theology offers to Christians rather than for Buddhists. May shows why “a deeper understanding of God should be one of the most fruitful [End Page 245] results of a Buddhist-Christian . . . collaborative theology” (p. 113). The axis of this collaborative dialogue on Ultimacy is the Mahayana teachings on the nondual reality of Emptiness/Form. By laying out how various Christian and Buddhist scholars are using the hermeneutical light of sunyata to challenge, clarify, or deepen Christian language of God as ipsum esse subsistens (subsistent being itself), as uncaused cause, as mystery that is both present and absent, as Love and Spirit, or as the source of a “supernatural existential” in which “grace” pervades “nature” (Rahner), May and the scholars he reviews illumine the nondual depths or potential of such Christian symbols. But he also challenges Buddhists and suggests that they can recognize an implicit affirmation of ongoing creation if they see the analogies between dependent co-origination and the love-energy that Christians call the creative Spirit (pp. 52–53). His efforts to draw similar analogies, however, become complex if not strained when he suggests that the Buddha bodies of the Trikaya doctrine and the persons of the Trinity perform similar mediating roles for encountering transcendence (pp. 38–39). May recognizes the tensions if not contradictions in this collaborative Buddhist Christian conversation about Emptiness...

The esse-essentia distinction in the Summa Contra Gentiles, II 52-54

The article analyzes Aquinas?s arguments for real distinction between essence and being (esse) as presented in the chapters 52-54 of the second book of the Summa contra gentiles, in the wider context of his metapyhsics. First, the paper analyzes the determinations of God on the basis of real distinction (Ipsum esse subsistens, creator, infinite perfection), and after that it analyzes the role of the act and potency, priority of act, separation of the act from the form in Aquinas?s understanding of esse, as well as the concept of existential participation; in doing so, the difference among those concepts in Plato and Aristotle and in Aquinas is accentuated. At the end, the paper analyzes the role of two kinds of causality, efficient and formal in real distinction.

El debate actual entre aristotélicos y tomistas sobre el Esse ipsum / The Recent Debate Between Aristotelians and Thomists About Esse ipsum

This article first presents the aristotelian criticism of the conception of God as Esse ipsum subsistens in Thomas Aquinas, through one of the most important aristotelian philosophers today, Enrico Berti. Then the answer offered by the thomist Stephen L. Brock in his defense of the ipsum esse is set forth, with reference to the recent disputes regarding this issue in the so-called «analytical thomism». The aim is to determine the status of the recent debate between aristotelians and thomists regarding the question of God as Esse ipsum subsistens, in order to ascertain whether the historical incompatibility between the two metaphysical conceptions is to be considered definitive.

Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (review)

Reviewed by: Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes Antoine Côté Gregory T. Doolan. Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008. Pp. xviii + 277. Cloth, $74.95. The author’s purpose is to understand the role divine ideas play as causal principles in Aquinas’s philosophy. His contention is that, although Thomas’s doctrine of ideas is perhaps not the key to an understanding of his metaphysics, it is certainly “a key to such an understanding” (xiv). The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter seeks to provide a general definition of divine ideas according to Aquinas. Divine ideas are exemplar causes in the likeness of which God produces creatures. Ideas in the strict sense belong to God’s practical or actually practical knowledge. The causality exercised by exemplars is that of formal causality, but because they are productive of things, they entail efficient and final causality, as well. In chapter 2, Doolan examines Thomas’s arguments in favor of the existence of divine ideas. Chapter 3 deals with the question of the multiplicity of divine ideas. Doolan first establishes, against Gilson and others, that Aquinas did indeed hold that there was a multiplicity of divine ideas. He then shows how Aquinas was able to reconcile the diversity of ideas with God’s simplicity. The gist of the solution involves viewing ideas as nonbeings relative to God, who is, of course, ipsum esse. Now the only way non-beings can enter into God is in the form of entia rationis. “It is for this reason,” Doolan concludes, “that the ideas exist simply as known beings rather than as real ones and, moreover, that there can be many of them” (110). Chapter 4 is devoted to identifying the divine ideas. Although Aquinas does hold that God has the ideas of matter, possibles, and evil, Doolan argues that “according to the strictest meaning of the term ‘exemplar’ as Thomas comes to employ it, only those divine ideas that are of individual things made by God at some point in time can truly be called exemplars” (155). Doolan then turns, in chapter 5, to an examination of the manner in which divine ideas exercise their causality. He considers two questions in this regard: first, whether the causality of divine ideas is limited to the production of form, and second, whether exemplar causality, to the extent that it is productive of the forms of creatures, leaves any room for the causality of creatures. Doolan examines the well known passages in Thomas’s works relating to the articulation of divine and secondary causes in the production of effects, and concludes that “it is through the combined agencies of God and the natural agent that a natural effect comes to be” (189). Finally, because the resemblance things have with their exemplars has often been accounted for by Platonically-minded philosophers by saying that the former participate in the latter, Doolan devotes the last chapter to clarifying the relation between exemplarity and participation in Aquinas. After examining several central texts as well as the most influential interpretations of the doctrine, he concludes that individuals do not participate in their exemplars, according to Aquinas. The author’s ultimate conclusion is that the doctrine of divine ideas is essential to Thomas’s philosophy for two reasons. First, it plays an important epistemological role by providing a theoretical expression for a central tenet of theism, namely that God must possess a proper knowledge of the beings he creates. Second, it provides an ontological foundation for the directedness of nature and the determinacy of form, showing that creation results from the divine intellect and will. While Doolan does a convincing job of arguing for the importance of divine ideas in Aquinas’s philosophy, his interpretation of specific texts is sometimes a little strained. For [End Page 624] instance, he argues in chapter 4 that divine ideas for Thomas are properly only of individuals, but the only evidence he can muster for this view in the text that he sees as most clearly supporting it—De ver., q. 3, a. 8—is a sed contra! At a more...

The Absent Foundation

Nihil est sine ratione, "nothing is without reason." For everything that is, there is an answer to the question why it is just so and not otherwise-and, ultimately, there is a reason (ratio) grounding the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Reality as a whole is thus "rational" or "reasonable," in the sense that everything is based on something and has a "why" or a "how come" that grounds it, rendering it comprehensible and meaningful and thus letting it be part of meaningful reality. Nothing is without something that lets it be what it is. This is the famous "principle of reason" (principium rationis)-in a slightly different formulation, the "principle of the restoration of sufficient reason" (principium reddendae rationis sufficientis)-which was first explicitly formulated in these words by G. W. Leibniz, although not as a doctrine of his own but as a fundamental and generally accepted philosophical principle. There is in Nature a reason [ratio] why something should exist rather than nothing. This is a consequence of the great principle that nothing comes to be without reason, just as there also must be a reason why this exists, rather than something else.1 Indeed, in one form or another, the principle of reason has been an integral part of Occidental metaphysics ever since antiquity. The central issue of Aristotle's Metaphysics-the question which Heidegger names the leading question (Leitfrage) of Occidental metaphysics as a whole-concerns that-which-is, beings.2 What is a being as such? What is a being insofar as it is a being? Or, as Aristotle reformulates the question, what is the being-ness (ousia), the fundamental being-character, of beings as such? For Aristotle, the first essential characteristic of being-ness is fundamentality, foundationality.3 What truly is must be a hypokeimenon (in Latin substantia, "substance," or subiectum, "subject")-literally, something that "lies beneath" as an ontological basis or foundation, letting other, dependent beings be while itself remaining ontologically independent. The most being of all beings is that on which all other beings are dependent but which is itself absolutely independent of anything beyond itself. The ontological investigation of Books Zeta, Eta, and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics thus finds its culmination in the theology of Book Lambda-a discussion of God as the absolute, the most fundamental and necessary being-ness and principle. The Aristotelian notion of God as absolute self-awareness, as perfect being in-itself and for-itself, was then taken over by medieval Scholasticism-for St. Thomas, God as the uncreated creator and the ultimate cause of things is not only the most being of beings (maxime ens) but subsistence and permanence, that is, being-ness, as such (ipsum esse subsistens).4 Heidegger's famous genealogy of modernity shows how, since Descartes, the self-conscious I, now interpreted with regard to the absolute and immediate self-certainty of the cogito, gradually replaces God as the fundamental subject of reality. As modern metaphysics unfolds, human subjectivity as the basis of meaningfulness becomes more and more absolute, and self-sufficient; this "subjectivization" culminates in Nietzsche's idea of the "superhuman" subject who no longer simply apprehends given objectivity but instead gives itself its own "truths" as fuel for its essence, i.e., the ceaseless will to self-enhancement.5 In asking its leading question concerning the being-ness of beings, the metaphysical tradition has, according to Heidegger, constantly sought a supreme, ideal form of being-ness which all beings could be referred back to and founded upon. Yet from Plato to Nietzsche, metaphysics has been unable to radically pose what Heidegger calls the "basic question" or "fundamental question" (Grundfrage) of philosophy;6 it has never really inquired into the origin of its own "rationality." What are the experience of ideal being-ness as something foundational and the subsequent metaphysical demand for foundations in themselves based on? …

Der Begriff der praktischen Vernunft nach Johannes Buridanus (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 613 contrary to many modern exegetes. It seems quite correct to interpret Anselm's argument as showing, from the (real) possibility of god's existence, God's real existence (lO5). The possibility in question is not logical, linguistic, or mental, but fully objective and real. The author's own evaluation of Anselm's argument seems quite unconvincing, perhaps because of some basic defects in this work. First, it lacks a sound foundation in the history of medieval philosophy, and in the technical terminology of the period. Some of Brecher's few historical observations are excellent, as when he points out the generally "Platonic" metaphysics of degrees of being used by St. Anselm, and derived chiefly via Augustine (1 l). But he offers little insight into the epistemology and metaphysics of Anselm himself, which alone make it possible to understand the argument. 'Being' in Anselm always means being in the sense of essence; it was not until the late twelfth century that existence, as an act of being distinct from essence, first enters the Latin philosophic tradition. The very translation of est or essein Anselm as "existence" is thus an anachronism. Brecher's few comments on St. Thomas are wholly in error; Aquinas does not maintain that God "is not knowable at all" (55), and Thomas's notion that God is the very act of existing, ipsum esse, makes excellent sense, although of course it is not the only possible way of understanding the metaphysical difference between God and creatures. Nor does Thomas ascribe any real being whatever to nonexistent things (155, n. 55). Second, this modest work shows little interest in or understanding of Greek or Latin metaphysics. One is amazed to read that "what one's view is of the concept of existence matters not at all for an assessment of Anselm's argument" 04), when surely the whole validity of the argument turns on Anselm's view that being means essence, not a distinct act of existing. That essence which lacks no greatness cannot fail to be really. Brecher's well-presented work is, as the subtitle indicates, a contribution more to the logic than to the metaphysics of Anselm's disclosure of God. PAUL J. W. MILLER Williamstown, Massachusetts Gerhard Krieger, Der Begriff der praktischen Vernunfl nachJohannes Buridanus. Beitr~ge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelahers. Neue Folge, Band 28. Mfinster: Verlag Aschendorff MUnster, 1986. Pp. vi + 317 . DM 88. After Pierre Duhem's astonishing effort to predate the origins of the scientific revolution , fourteenth-century philosophy has been generally portrayed in a way typical of an apparently transitional stage in intellectual history. Because so much of fourteenthcentury philosophy belongs to the Aristotelian tradition, it invites comparison with Aristotelian philosophy; on the other hand, it is often seen as foreshadowing developments in modern philosophy. The field of ethics has not been immune to this general tendency. No intelligent and responsible study can ignore historical tradition altogether , hence Gerhard Krieger's work interprets Buridan's commentaries while confronting the past scholarship on Buridan's ethics. 614 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:4 OCTOBER 1989 Aside from the introduction, the study is divided into six chapters: the distinction between prudence and art (1); the distinction between prudence and science (2); the relations of prudence to the appetites or desires and to the moral virtues, especially the grounding of natural law through practical reason (3); the freedom of the will (4); the relation of prudence to the intellectual virtues, and the primacy of practical reason (5); and the relation of prudence to moral science (6). In his introductory first chapter and throughout the work, Krieger distances himself from inteUectualist interpretations of Buridan's ethics as well as from efforts to see Buridan's account of will as reconciling the views of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham with those of Thomas Aquinas (e.g., 15a-53). Krieger sees Buridan as following Scotus's account of will, but the important contributions of this study are Krieger's arguments showing how Buridan made the Scotist concept of will, and especially of practical reason as a function of will, fruitful for practical philosophy. Seen from a...

God Beyond Knowledge by Arthur Herbert Hodges

BOOK REVIEWS 499 process. It was, in fact, the belief in God and the soul which Buddhism so vehemently argued against in its early days. The attribution of a transcendent dimension to Buddhism is not the only thing which proves so fatal to de Silva's argument, however, but the overvalued ethico-social dimension as well. To be sure, the communal element is there in both traditions , but to argue that anattii, for instance, is an ethical concept or that the goal of early Buddhism was a communal eschaton with primarily social implications is to recast the original material into unrecognizable form. While de Silva's book is a thought-provoking introduction to BuddhistChristian conversation, its reworking of the original material is on most accounts inauthentic. ELLISON FINDLAY Trinity College Hartford, Connecticut God Beyond Knowledge. By ARTHUR HERBERT HODGES. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979. Pp. xii + 181. $22.50. In his posthumously published God Beyond Knowledge, Herbert Arthur Hodges (1905-1976), late Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, undertakes to examine the origin of the ' God ' concept, to explore the standard several dimensions of man's reputed knowledge of God, and, perhaps most importantly, to answer the question of our ability to know Him metaphysically. Although this position is not always argued consistently, the author's conclusion about natural theology is basically negative. Given Hodges's presumably early exposure to the British Empirical tradition and his ready acceptance (albeit a pragmatic one) of the scientific model of knowledge, this conclusion would not be surprising except for the fact that Hodges himself was a devout Anglo-Catholic, a lay theologian, and the author of several apologetic works on the Christian religion. Consequently, while he will employ the traditional philosophical concept of God throughout much of the discussion in this book and even make use at times of the Thomistic doctrine of analogy, ostensibley to counter religious anthropomorphism and agnosticism, his true philosophical position finally unmasked is a form of Pyrrhonian scepticism. Consistent with this scepticism, he will embrace Hume's analysis of cause and thus deny the possibility of any a posteriori proof of God's existence. For Hodges, then, one's acceptance of God's existence and of a particular religious creed are both equally choices of the will-the standard Protestant view-not intellectual assents with a foundation in reason. In reviewing this book I will focus upon those chapters in which philosophical material particularly is dominant. In describing the origin of the' God' concept (Chapter 5, "The Genesis 500 BOOK REVIEWS of ' God ' ") Hodges seems primarily concerned with the one prevalent in Western philosophy and theology and in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, although he sees his remarks as applying, mutatis mutandis, to Hinduism as well. This concept, according to Hodges, is that of an "All-Agent" and arises because we tend to view being as essentially connected with activity or agency and to think that the mind-unified reality we call " the world " depends upon a superior being. Why we think it is (1) caused by a single (2) Personal Agent (3) Who transcends finitude Hodges explains respectively through our desire for a unity of pattern or design, our recognition of the perfection of person, and our impatience with limitations and consequent need to find the absolute realized. Thus, " We form the concept of God as being which is wholly self-sufficient and whose activities amount to nothing less than creating and sustaining all that is. God, so conceived, is being in an unqualified sense. He is not something as distinct from something else-that would be limitation-he is without qualification, he is That Which Is, ipsum esse subsistens" (p. 54). Yet Hodges recognizes that such a concept must also be supported by proof of God's existence if it is not to be only a fantasy, "valuable perhaps as poetry or drama but still not a cognition of reality." Consequently, he finds it necessary to re-examine, " but in the light of the present situation," the traditional natural theology's arguments for God's existence. In Chapter 6 (" Metaphysical Arguments for God's Existence ") Hodges considers four traditional arguments for God's existence (to the...

Actualitas Omnium Actuum: Man’s Beatific Vision of God as Apprehended by Thomas Aquinas by William J. Hoye

BOOK REVIEWS Actualitas Omnium Actuum: Man's Beatific Vision of ·God as Apprehended :by Tlwmus Aquinas. By WILLIAM J. HoYE. Meisenheim am Giilin: Verlag Anion Hain, 1975. Pp. 363. 79 DM. If God is .subsistent esse and creatures are modes of participation in esse, wha:t can we thence conclude concerning man's beatific vision of God? William J. Hoye has posed this problem and worked out an answer. Actualitas Omnium Aofoum represents his effort to apply " existential " Thomism, especially as developed by Gilson, Fabro, and the late William E. Carlo, to eschatology, an enterprise, surely, of interest and importance even in the eyes of those who might question his " existential " exegesis of St. Thomas Aquinas. The big question for the reviewer, then, is how well Hoye has carnied out his chosen task. In the opinion of the present reviewer his work in certain respects deserves praise but at the same time suffers from grave shortcomings. Adopting the more gracious sequence, I shall speak first of the virtues, then of the deficiencies. First of all, Hoye has massively researched almost all facets of his problem , and his book shows admirable zeal in the pursuit of pertinent materials. A quick run-through of his bibliography (from Adamczyk to Zychlinski), a casual riffiing to see how high on the average page lies the division between text and footnotes, will verify this judgment. One notices immediately , also, that this is a decidedly multilingual book: English, Latin (mostly St. Thomas's), French (especially Gilson's and Fabro's-the latter's Italian writings are almost totally ignored) , and German· greet the eye not only in the footnotes but also in the text, which is studded with quotations, sometimes quite lengthy, so that one might well expect even the reader who is competent in all these tongues to weary of the constant switching. The author has read .far and wide in later and particularly in present day literature (though I should perhaps mention that Hoye's research for this 19.75 book stopped, as he tells us on page 307, in early 1970 and that no works published in the seventies are listed in his bibliography); yet he has kept close at all times to the works of Thomas himself, whose doctrine he is trying throughout to expound. His special table of citations to texts of Thomas shows how complete his coverage has been. Furthermore, the general path followed in the book is one that touches all the bases and touches them in the right order, or at least in a good order. There are two main parts, of roughly equal length: one," Uncreated Beatitude," concerned with God as ipsum esse and with the relation of creatures to ipsum esse; the other, "Created Beatitude," treating of man 484 BOOK REVIEWS 485 as subject of beatification. In the first part are chapters on God as unknowable , on God as ipsum esse, on esse commune, on participation (the Fabro influence is here much to the fore), and on God as object of the beatific vision. The second part offers chapters on man as subject of the beatific vision (introductory to the succeeding chapters), on the fulfillment of all desires, ·on the actualization of all potencies in the resurrection , ·on sex in Heaven (an eyebrow-raiser), on the "anthropological factor "'--man's unchangeable nature as perduring in the beatific vision (with a good deal of recourse to Rahner) , on the act of vision (especially the lumen gloriae), and, finally, on life in the world as predetermining life in God. On the whole, the first part seems superior to the second, which is more affected by certain failures-soon to be discussed~to maintain crucial distinctions. Hoye's chapter on the uriknowableness of God is quite good, a weaving together of a rich assortment of texts, a fine startingpoint for reflection. Hoye, at least in this segment of his book, accepts, as not all purported. Thomists really do, the position of Thomas, that we simply do not know the essence of God, that our striving in this life to know God culminates in "learned ignorance." Hoye, in the later chapters, is excessively anxious to establish a kind of extensional...

Ipsum Esse as God-Surrogate

Ipsum Esse as God-Surrogate

In Defense of Étienne Gilson: Concerning a Recent Book about Thomistic Metaphysics

REVIEW ARTICLE IN DEFENSE OF ETIENNE GILSON: CONCERNING A RECENT BOOK ABOUT THOMISTIC METAPHYSICS 1 H THE attempt to proceed 'existentially' in the Gilsonian sense, is based upon a doctrinaire transformation of metaphysics into theology, a transformation which is applied by assuming knowledge concerning God in order to present the dubious interpretations of the quinquae viae as discoveries of His existence." Such is the conclusion of a contemporary critic of Gilson's concept of St. Thomas' philosophy.2 What is this "Gilsonian concept" so far as metaphysics and God are concerned? It is, according to this critic, the notion that Godipsum esse-is" the true object of metaphysics." 3 Does Gilson hold this? Yes, if "object" be taken in the sense of end, definitely not if taken in the sense of subject. For Gilson expressly acknowledges "the distinction between natural theology, in which God is considered as cause of the subject of metaphysics (viz., being), and revealed theology (viz., Scripture), in which God Himself is the 1 Thomas C. O'Brien, 0. P., Ph. D., Metaphysics and the Existence of God: A Reflexion on the Question of God's Existence in Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics , Washington 17, D. C., The Thomist Press, 2nd printing, 1960. This book has been reviewed briefly by Fr. Joseph Owens, C. Ss. R., in The New Scholasticism, Vol. XXXVI, no. 2, April, 1962, pp. 2.50-253. More about this review later. (Also see note 2, below.) 2 Fr. O'Brien, op. cit., p. 262. In this paper I am primarily concerned with Section II of this book, entitled " The Question of God's Existence Among Contemporary Thomists," and, within this Section, I deal only with what I take to be the crux of the criticism that the author levels against the position of Etienne Gilson (and other Thomistic " existentialists ") as to the fundamental nature of the relationship between metaphysics and the existence of God. Fr. Owens' review has been objected to by Fr. William A. Wallace, 0. P. (The New Scholasticism, Vol. XXXVI, no. 4, Oct., 1962, pp. 529-531) as "misrepresenting Fr. O'Brien's teaching," and as "obscuring the basic issue at stake in the controversy," viz., the so-called Gilsonian School's misinterpretation of St. Thomas. Fr. Wallace's allegations are substantially the same as those of Fr. O'Brien. It is the object of this paper to assess their validity objectively. 3 Op. cit., p. 94. 378 874 JAMES F. ANDERSON very subject of that science." 4 And Gilson here cites St. Thomas' Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate (V, 4), where this wellknown distinction is made by the Angelic Doctor himself. True, Gilson does speak 5 of the "inner reordering of metaphysics by the final causality of its ultimate object" so that it becomes necessarily and by full right scientia divina. But he nowhere says that God becomes the very subject of metaphysics or of philosophical theology. It is perfectly true, as Fr. O'Brien remarks,6 that since God is attained as principle of the subject of metaphysics, viz., being-incommon , metaphysical knowledge concerning Him is formally and exclusively knowledge about Him as this principle. On this point, repeatedly stressed by the author, there should be no disagreement among Thomists. Indeed I know of no Thomist who does not subscribe to this doctrine. Nor do I see how one could call himself a " Thomist " without doing so. (It is true that Gilson, and likeminded Thomists, do not stress the point because of their interest in the "inner reordering " of the whole of first philosophy to the knowledge of God-the emphasis is expressly upon final causality). While Gilson maintains this teaching, he nevertheless forcefully underscores the simple Thomistic point that God could not be the primary principle of being-in-common were He not Being itself. Of course this is not only Gilson's point, it is St. Thomas'. The Angelic Doctor says, for example: "that which is said by essence is the cause of all things that are said by participation. . . . But God is a being-by-essence because He is Being itself (ipsum esse). Every other being, however, is a being-by-participation.... Therefore God is the cause...