Introduction
How should one understand Aquinas's Augustinean claim that
God has proper ideas for everything he might have made as well as
exemplars for everything he makes? We have to look at
philosophical issues about possibility and reference and criticse
John Wippel's1 explanation of Aquinas on the status of the
possibles, to stake out a basis in Aquinas's text for the view
that God creates the natures of things and all possibility with
content ad extra2.
When one takes all of Aquinas's explicit qualifications of
Augustinean formulas about divine ideas into account, not only
are possibilia not identical with divine ideas, and instead, the
product of creation, but the Gilson3 and Maurer4reading of divine
ideas as "models" for actual, and even unmade, things, or as
"forms to be received in things," need to be reread.
Voluntarism, the reading of Aquinas under which God creates
the natures of things and thus the content of possibility ad
extra, is not new. In this century it has been urged a number of
times, notably by Gerard Smith, Beatrice Zedler and Aime Forest.5
(I think it is the view Suarez attributes to Aquinas in D.M.
31.12.40-47 too.) But the response of other Aquinas specialists
has been dismissive and disparaging. Part of the fault is that
the "voluntarists" (as I call these interpreters) were not clear
enough about what is being claimed and why the text requires it.
Still, the larger fault is that the establishment interpreters do
not acknowledge any strain between what they say Aquinas said,
and the rest of Aquinas's text. (There are also, of course, the
conflicts to be found in the text itself.)
I. Exemplarism
1. The General Background. Thomas Aquinas said God knows
everything he makes, as well as everything he might have made,
the first by exemplars, and the second by "rationes" ("types"),
ia.14 and 15; D.V. 3, 1-8. How can God have complete and
"proper" knowledge of what he might have made without there being
any reality ante res to what is merely possible ("the
possibles")? Gilson, Maurer, Geiger, and others, read Aquinas on
God's ideas (Ia. 14 and 15, 1-3; D.V. 3, 1-8; C.G. I 47-55) as a
complete exemplarist,6 postulating "an infinity of forms which
will later be the forms of things" [Gilson] and "an infinite
number [of ideas]... each of which is a model... primarily of
individuals" [Maurer]. Taking exemplars and types together, they
say that God has ideas for whatever he makes or might have made.
John Wippel, in harmony with that general approach, says,
"divine ideas or divine rationes obtain even for possibles in the
purest sense, that is, for those that will never be realized in
fact" [Wippel, 1966]. He then identifies the merely possible
with divine ideas: "From the ontological standpoint, one may say
that a possible is identical with its appropriate divine idea",
p. 169; "as we have already seen, for such a thing to exist as a
divine idea is for it to be a possible", p. 173. That
identification has the consequence that the thing which is
possible is something (a divine idea) other than the thing which
might have come to be.
Aquinas has, in effect, been read by Gilson, Maurer and
Wippel (as much as they converge) as a photo-exemplarist,7 as one
who holds that God has ideas, like photographs or blueprints,
"for each thing and each kind, both actual and possible." I have
argued elsewhere (see note 2, above) that photo-exemplarism, is
inconsistent. In a word, that is because a nature cannot be
logically exhausted by individuation, perfection cannot be
logically exhausted by limitation, and being cannot be logically
exhausted by participation--all principles that follow from
Aquinas's general metaphysics. So, there cannot be a domain of
"all possible creatures" or "every possible indivdual of every
possible kind" because there is nothing to "divide" being into
"all possible kinds" or, say, "humanity" into "all possible
humans".
Fr. Wippel's interpretation of Aquinas extends the readings
by Gilson, Maurer, and others by saying that possibilia are the
same as God's ideas. Surprisingly (to me) the reviewers of
Wippel's Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas namely, Norman
Kretzmann9, and Fathers Weisheipl10 and Le Roy11 O.P.,
did not object.
That reading does not allow Aquinas's Aristoteleanism to
transform the neoplatonic surface of his words. Aquinas
modulates the Augustinean theme, "God has proper knowledge of
whatever he might have made." As I will show, (i) Aquinas's
explanation of "proper knowledge" in Ia.14,6c and Ia.15 and
"proper likeness" in C.G. I.54 and (ii) his insistence that God
"does not have knowledge after the manner of enuntiables", that
is, propositional knowledge (D.V. 2,7 ad 3, Ia. 14, a 15.), and
(iii) his saying that there is multimplicity in God's knowledge
only with respect to things known, and (iv) that God's ideas of
other things are by "eminence", yield an account that is vastly
different from the initial verbal appearance. For there is only
one divine idea, the same no matter what God does, and
"possibles" have no status at all prior to creation. (All the
other commentators acknowledge this, of course; but they do not
explain it).
2. Aristotelian Commitments. Aquinas has Aristotelian
commitments that affect these issues. First, his doctrines of
individuation by materia signata quantitate reqrires that there
cannot be individuation exception of actual--and (denominatively)
of proximately potential--things, because individuation is by way
of limitation in being; so there can be no individuated mere
possibilities, no definite "elder brother you might have had."
Secondly, Aquinas's moderate realism about common natures
requires that there are no empty kinds (or real natures without
individuals) and so, there are no merely possible kinds of
natures. God's having ideas FOR whatever might be, "reduces" to
his being the "one sufficing likeness" for all things, Ia.14,
12c; C.G.I. 54, the exemplar for all other things, perfectly
self-knowing.
Aquinas has, in effect, been read by Gilson, Maurer and
Wippel, as a photo-exemplarist,4 as one who holds that God has
ideas, like photographs or blueprints, for each thing and each
kind, both actual and possible. It is as if God has, refracted in
his self-knowledge, holograms for everything actually made and
for whatever might have been made. Of course, the plurality of
divine ideas is acknowledged to "reduce" to the one divine self-
understanding, 168, n. 11, but these interpretations don't offer
us any explanation of what remains of the plurality of ideas, or
how it "got" there in the first place.
Elsewhere I have argued (see note 4, above) that photo-
exemplarism, as such, is formally inconsistent. In brief, that is
because a nature cannot be logically exhausted by individuation,
perfection cannot be logically exhausted by limitation, and being
cannot be logically exhausted by participation--all principles
that follow from Aquinas' general metaphysics. So, there cannot
be such a domain as "all possible creatures" or "every possible
individual of every possible kind" because there is nothing to
"divide," formally to partition, the realm of what might have
been into discrete and replete units. Besides, "all possible
creatures" as a "quantifiable" totality, is formally inconsistent
the way "all sets" or "all numbers" is. Now, I say Aquinas did
not hold such a self-refuting view.
Fr. Wippel's interpretation of Aquinas extends the readings
by Gilson, Maurer, and the others mentioned5 by saying that
possibilia are the same as God's ideas, yet the reviewers of
Wippel's Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas namely, Norman
Kretzmann6, and Fathers Weisheipl7 and Le Roy8 O.P., did not
object to Wippel's thereby, attributing reality ante res to
uncreated mere possibilities. Either they were nodding or they
agreed.
My first objection is that that kind of reading does not
regard Aquinas' Aristoteleanism as transforming the neoplatonic
surface of his words. Aquinas explicitly qualifies and modulates
Augustinean themes, like "God has proper knowledge of whatever he
might have made."; for example, what is the consequence of
Aquinas' explanation of "proper knowledge" in Ia.14,6c, and Ia.15
and "proper likeness" in C.G.I.54, and of his insistence that God
"does not have knowledge after the manner of enuntiables", that
is, propositional knowledge, and of his saying that there is
multiplicity in God's knowledge only with respect to things
known, and that God's ideas of other things are by "eminence"?
The net effect of the qualifications is vastly different from the
initial verbal appearance.
I emphasize Aquinas' Aristotelean commitments. First, his
doctrine of individuation by materia signata quantitate that
requires that there cannot be individuation except of actual (and
[denominatively] of proximately potential things); so there can
be no individuated mere possibilities, no definite "elder brother
you might have had." Secondly, Aquinas' moderate realism about
universals requires that there are no empty kinds or real natures
without individuals and so, there are no empty kinds or merely
possible things. God's having ideas FOR such things "reduces" to
his being the "one sufficing likeness", Ia 14, 12c; C.G.I. 54,
the exemplar for all other things. But what he has ideas for has
to be indentified from what is made. Further, Aquinas opposed,
as Aristotle did, any actual numerical infinity. He would not,
therefore, understand "all men are mortal" to require a domain, a
lange of distinct mere possibilities, say all the men there
might have been but never will be. The "possibles" cannot form
an actual and infinite domain. Neither can the divine ideas;
they cannot even form a genuine plurality. Besides, identity
for Aquinas is a rational relation of an actual thing to itself;
so "mere possibilities" have no identity; so there is no mere
possibility that is the elder brother you might have had!
Altogether, Aquinas' metaphysics requires that no reality ante
res be attributed to mere possibilities.
How then, should we understand things like this, Ia,14,6c,
"Now God could not be said to know himself perfectly unless he
knew all the ways in which his own perfection can be shared by
others". There are other, similar passages elsewhere, for
instance: I Sent. d.35,a.3; C.G. I,50; D.V. 2,4: D.P.6,1;Ia
14,13c. How can God know "all the ways" without there being any
rank and file of "all" the ways? That's the strongest argument
in behalf of the interpretation I reject, and its most explicit
basis in the text.
We can say this, God knows "all the ways" his perfection
might be shared, not by knowing an array of possibilities like
a battle array of tin soldiers spread out on a carpet (another
possible world), but by containing in his self-comprehension,
eminently (as the perfect contains the imperfect) a virtual
plurality of ideas denominated from what is made. (In fact, that
sentence is a ________ of the pieces, a mosaic, of what I
attribute to Aquinas.)
Aquinas says what is never to be made is exemplified in
God's "proper knowledge" (I.14,6), and contained in God's essence
"as effect in the power of the cause" Ia.12,8c, and seen "not in
themselves but in himself" Ia.14,5c, itals. added, that for
Aquinas in "proper knowledge" that the perfect contains the
imperfect without displaying it. For instance, if a brass
triangle is used as a model for students' freehand drawing, their
freehand triangles are contained in the model, not as a fixed
domain whose members are antecedently determined like the
natural numbers, but each of the drawn triangles is
denominatively contained, like copies of the Mona Lisa. The
perfections by which one copy is distinguished from another are
contained in the model "in an excelling manner" I.12,5c.
Besides, some possibilities do depend on what God elects,
contrary to what Wippel and the other interpretors lead one to
think: namely, all possibilities in contingent subjects. That
turns out to be all possibilities with content. Possibilities
for things with real natures depend on their creation: "humans
are rational". Were there never humans, there would be no such
proposition even for angels or God. Nor would there have been a
proposition "no humans exist", anymore than there is a
proposition "Antilichts repel grabertrons," or a proposition
"There are no antlichts". [Nor are there any such "states of
affairs", either, as another kind of platonism would suggest; cf.
R. Chisholm.] All general propositions, propositions with common
names, are referentially rooted in actual things and kinds9
So, possibility by reason of a potency (D.P. 3, 14) in a
contingent subject depends on God's will that the subject
exist.10 All real possibility ad extra with content, all
possibility as ability whether passive or active, is in a
subject, and so, is dependent on the will of God. One cannot
attribute to Aquinas the view that possibility in no way depends
on the will of God, as Wipple does.
In fact, even "absolute possibility" (Aristotle Metaphysics
5,12, and Aquinas D.P.1,3c.) is not prior to the being of finite
subjects. Just the other way around. For absolute possibility is
the consistency of the proposition, as both Aristotle and Aquinas
say. The absolute possibility of wood that thinks in the
consistency of the proposition "there is wood that thinks." Now,
there can be no propositions without names, and no names, proper
or common, without things (supposition). Aquinas is committed to
that; and there is nothing for ______ simple suppositing to
signify if there is nothing for them to stand for in _______
supposition. Platonistic expositions of Aquinas' D.P.1,3c treat
"absolute possibility" as if it were prior to and explanatory of
posssibility in a subject, when the explanatory order is the
reverse. They do that because they implicitly assume the ________
propositions primarily signify divine ideas. But for Aquinas,
they do not. To say the names name divine ideas, in the absence
of real things, is simply to invent a position for Aquinas, one
he could not accept. There are no propositions for empty kinds,
and there are no kinds without cases for Aquinas.
Aquinas says "there are many ideas in God," "ideas for
everything that might have been made". But he qualifies the
generalities so that the plurality is denominative, (vantaged
referentially in finite things known) and the containment is
"eminent". The result differs markedly from the first verbal
appearance.11
Aquinas formulates his general answers in terms acceptable
to Augustineans, then he qualifies and modulates them to fit his
Aristotelian metaphysics. For instance, Aquinas did not think
that from the divine "rationes" alone, propositions, with the
names of all individuals that would have existed had God made
them, can be formed. The divine "rationes" are a virtual
plurality of ideas denominated from finite natures, contained
"in an excelling manner", "as the imperfect is within the
perfect" I.14,6c, so that the proper ratio of each thing is
contained in God according to the diverse ways in which different
creatures participate in and imitate God,I.14,6 ad 3, but as
"incomplete ideas", not the ideas of one making such things
(D.P.1,5,ad 11). The outcome is that the ideas are "many"
because things are many and God is the exempler of all things,
because all perfection is "contained" in God's perfection.
What-might-have-been is contained "as regards what
distinguishes one thing from another" (as forms do), I.14,6c, as
"the perfect acts to imperfect" the way a man is compared to an
animal, and not as "the common to the proper". God knows what
might have been, not distributively, but eminently and virtually,
even though no empty singular or general propositions are
formable, more or less in the way knowing a man is knowing an
animal.
Framing the Problems. One's interpretation can be prejudiced
by the presumptions of one's questions. Let me illustrate
breifly with the three key questions on which Prof. Wippel's
intrepretation rests. When he asked what is "the ontological
status of not-yet-existent possibles, or, for that matter, even
of those that will never enjoy actual existence even though they
could do so" (p.163) the words treat mere possibility as a realm
within which to make references. By saying that "they" could
"enjoy actual existence, though they will never do so", Wippel
implicitly makes "them" objects of reference, an extension. That
invites his question "what are they identical with?", in a
context where "the divine ideas" is the only candidate for an
answer.
He asks, "Do such 'possibles' enjoy any reality, any real
being (ens reale) in themselves?" that employs a reflexive
pronoun, "in themselves", creating an illusion of reference. To
what? (Do witches enjoy any reality in themselves?
Impossibilities?) Wippel also asks, "Before any man actually
existed, did the essence of man, or of any particular man, enjoy
some kind of reality?" Wippel is contemplating an affirmative
answer, "identity with a divine idea", when I think Aquinas'
answer is an unqualified negative both as to the individual and
as to the essence.12 Wippel asked, "Can God do or make
certain things only because they are possible in themselves?" He
thinks the answer is "yes". The key point of my examination of
possibility, below, is that "things possible in themselves" have
possibility consequent upon being, not the other way around. The
thing God creates is, of course, "possible in itself". But not
"before" God makes it, because it has no being at all prior to
creation. (See D.P. 3,5 ad 2.)13
Aquinas says there is possibility "in potency", in a thing
able to do or make something (say, to think for a man, to make a
house for a builder), or in a thing able to undergo something,
(wood to be burned). That sort of possibility is in the ability
of a subject. It requires an existing or, perhaps, potential
thing with a real, perhaps, created nature (See D.P. 3,14). Such
finite subjects have to be created.
Something is also possible, "unqualifiedly" or
"absoultely", when, says Wippel, "the terms in which it is
expressed are not self-contradictory or incompatible" (italics
added, W. p.164). What exactly is the "it"? What is possible
is, I say, de__________ for the thing made. In D.P. 1,3c Aquinas
speaks this way: " A thing is said to be impossible not in
respect of any power, but in itself by reason of the mutual
exclusion of terms". Both formulations suppose there are non-
empty terms to express the situation. Before creation the world
was possible in that God was able to create it (citing,D.P.3,1 ad
2;3,17 ad 10;C.G. II,37;Ia.46,1 ad 1). The world "was"
"absolutely" possible, too, in the sense that no contradiction
would have been entailed by "the world exists". However, to
keep that non-contradiction from being trivial and vacuous, as in
the case of 'antilichts repel grobitrons', we have to suppose
that "the world" designates, that is, that the object designated
does or will exist. So as St. Thomas says D.P. 3,17 ad 10,
"before the world was made" (suitably understood), God was able
to make the world. But, "the world" (as an indexical designator)
could have no referent prior to the being of the world. Such a
proposition was not formable (among those "quae formari possunt",
D.V. 2, 7; Ia.14, 14), except in reference to what God actually
makes, and, thus, only denominatively. Thus the non-
contradictoriness of the expression, "the world might exist,"
does not explain the possibility but assumes it, because there is
such a possibility with content only from the vantage,
referentially, of the world actually made.
About 'humans are animals' Wippel says, "prior to the
creation of men, or at least of angels, such truths did not
exist, maintains Thomas, except in the divine intellect" (p.166).
That is because there is no truth outside thought. But besides,
the truth, 'humans are animals', depends on the creation of
humans, because Aquinas says, with Avicenna and Aristotle, the
nature comes into being with the individuals and perishes with
the individuals. Thus, the names name only if the natures are to
be. So, there are no eternal truths14 about empty kinds.
Aquinas thinks that strictly there is only one eternal truth,
conforming to God's being ,I Sent.19,5,3;I 17,7. Eternity is the
duration of God's being( I.46,1), interminabilis vitae tota simul
et perfecta possessio. God cannot give eternal being to any
creature; Maurer15, says "there is no room in St. Thomas' thought
for created eternal truth" (p.105). Similarly, there is no
genuine necessity in creatures either, because the natures of
things have being with the individuals and perish with the
individuals: "nulla veritas est necessaria in creaturis", I Sent.
19,5,3. Nothing is necessary outside God.
Augustine's saying, De Lib Arbit.11,8 "there is nothing more
eternal than the nature of a circle, and two added to three makes
five" is understood by Aquinas as "perpetual", without beginning
or end "in the mind of God" I 16,7 ad 1, and not as involving any
compliant reality other than God. If we understand eternity as
"perpetuity in the mind of God", then, every truth, even about
the most fleeting event, is eternal because God knows everything
forever.16 Overall, Aquinas does not talk as if there are
everlasting objective relationships of platonic forms to which
the divine thought conforms, so that the eternity of the truth is
from the perpetuity (and independent reality) of the situation it
conforms to. For Aquinas the eternity of truth is from the being
of the thinker, hence without God there is no eternal truth at
all, and for God all truth is eternal.
The key difference on this matter between Aquinas and later
scholastic thinkers like Scotus and Henry of Ghent is that (i)
Aquinas did not commit himself to the reality of any mathematical
or geometric objects, or to the unmade reality of necessities of
nature ("humans are animals", "iron rusts"); and (ii) Aquinas
explicitly denied that that there are any uncreated natures to
constitute unbegun and everlasting "realities" (like 'to be human
is to be sentient') to which eternal truths (God's perpetual
thought) must conform. Rather, because God thinks "that way,"
things are to be "that way": cognitio dei causa rerum.
Wippel says "prior to the actual creation of a given entity
there is a divine idea to which the creature will correspond if
it is ever brought into actual being." This is exactly what I
think Aquinas did not say. The possibility prior to being is
God's ability to make the things, like the possibility of a blow
in the strength of an arm. The "priority" of divine ideas is
descriptively situated in what is made, since nothing else can
distinguish ideas from one another that are contained by
eminence. Absolute possibility aimed at a particular thing is
logically consequent on the real existence of the thing.
Is the relation among divine ideas supposed to be the
truthmaker for the necessities of nature (e.g., 'men are
sentient' 'magnets attract iron')? Certainly not.17 Aquinas
rejects an alien truthmaker18 for the necessities of nature. When
God knows forever that men are sentient, what he knows is not a
relation among divine ideas, but rather something about things of
a real nature: that to be human is to be sentient. Yet there is
no real nature unless there are individuals.19
The "eternal" truth, God's thought, is made true (formally)
by the coincidence of being human and being sentient in actual
humans, though the efficient cause of truth (God's understanding)
is eternal and immutable.
A. Maurer, loc.cit.106, says "if essences perish with the
existence of things--if they have no essential being of their own
and distinct from their existential being--so too do necessary
propositions in which essential predicates are attributed to a
subject. . .These propostions, then, are not eternal or necessary
but contingent truths."
Plurality from the Ideated The plurality of divine ideas is
by extrinsic denomination from the things understood. That means,
to say there are many ideas in God is to talk referentially from
a vantage where names point to what God made, the creatures.20
Aquinas says that in several places: "there are as many divine
ideas as there are things understood," and the things that might
have been are "seen not in the ______ but in _________" Ia, 14,
52. In D.P. 1,5 ad 11, Aquinas says:
The question is whether there is in God
an idea of those things that neither exist nor
will exist, nor have existed and that
nevertheless God is able to make. Seemingly
the reply should be, if we take an idea in its
complete signification, namely as signifying
the art-form [the working-idea] not only as
conceived by the intellect but also as
directed to execution by the will, then of
such things God has no idea. On the other
hand, if we take an idea in its incomplete
state,as the mere conception of the worker,
then God has an idea of those things. For it
is clear that the created craftsman conceives
works that he has no intention of executing.
Now whatever God knows is in him as something
thought out, since in him actual and habitual
knowledge do not differ: for he knows his
whole power and whatsoever he is able to do;
hence in him are thought out as it were, the
ideas of whatsoever things he is able to
make.
This passage is easily confusing, I take it that Aquinas
wants to underline the activity of God's self-understanding: so
his knowledge of what might have been is not potential; it is not
actual; yet such knowledge is "incomplete", not because something
is left out, but because it is not operative (the knowing of one
making).
Aquinas says of actual individuals (Ia, 14, 11c) that God's
knowledge extends as far as his causation, which includes
individualizing matter. But the causation of what might have been
is virtual, I.14, 16 ad 1; so, too, the practical knowledge for
such things is virtual,I.15,3 ad 2 and I 14,16c. "Mere possibles"
can have no individualizing matter and cannot be termini of
divine causation.21
In Ia.15,2c he says,
[S]o far as God knows his essence as
capable of such imitation by any creature, he
knows it as the particular type and idea of
that creature: and in like manner as regards
other creatures. So it is clear that God
understands many particular types of many
things and these are many ideas.
And in 15,2 ad 2 he says "an idea {is} that which God
understands."
So there are as many ideas as there are many things which
God understands; but there is only one self-understanding by
which he understands the many things. Is that consistent? Only
if there are two ways of counting ideas. One way is by counting
the acts of the thinker, God; so there is only one idea. The
other way is by counting the things understood. That is why the
plurality of ideas is denominative from the things made. It is
the same as saying you saw many things: a house, a ___, the sky,
etc; so there are many seeings.
To say God has "proper" concepts for all things, even merely
possible singulars, is not to say God has Leibnizian "complete
concepts". Aquinas is explicit, D.P.1,5 ad 11 that God has ideas
"in the incomplete form", the mere conceptions of a worker for
things not to be made. And that comes to this:
The divine essence excells all creatures.
Hence it can be taken as the proper ratio of
each thing according to the diverse ways in
which diverse creatures participate in and
instantiate it. Ia,14,6 ad 3.
That's what Aquinas' explanation comes to.
We would mislead ourselves to say "a possible is identical
with its appropriate divine idea "(Wippel,p.168). Aquinas'
exemplarist commitment in Ia.14 and 15 and in D.V. 2,7-8-9, is
limited by his denying, I.15,2c,that God has ideas "as images
which he understands", "an understanding formed by many images".
Even with actual things, God's ideas are not like images; all the
more so, there are no images of things that never are. Rather,
"ideas are said to be many in as much as many types are
underestood through the self-same essence." I.15,3 ad 1. God's
knowledge of what might have been is speculative, knowledge of
simple understanding the way I know Fields inpersonations,
whereas his knowledge of the actual is practical knowledge "of
vision", "of what has being outside the seer". It's like the
difference between my knowledge of what gestures I am able to
make, but do not, and my knowledge of the gesture I did make.
Why then does Aquinas so systematically "save" Augustine's
claims that God has many ideas and that God knows what might
happen? I think it is because he feels that traditional
explanation of the faith demands it and because he can give
harmless analysis of such statements that makes their literal
sense accord with the scientific truth. There is doubt, though,
that the outcome is different from what the Augustineans meant.
Empty Names. For a platonist, "antilichts repel chronons"
is truth-valued just in case the general terms "antilichts" and
"chronons" name (or can be analysed into names for) eternally
existing Forms. Neoplatonists, like Augustine, relocated the
forms as divine ideas. But for Aquinas, if there never is
anything that is an antilicht or a chronon, then there is no
formable ennuntiation (no "expressable thought", no proposition).
No possibility with content is picked out by such collections of
words.
That means that "absolute " possibilities (D.P.3,14) cannot
be expressed with empty names. So our capacity to say what is
possible outside God is dependent on what is actually made and
restricted to what we can "reach" from it. Even though there is
no contradiction in "antilichts repel chronons", nothing
possible "in itself" is picked out. That is a consequence of
Aquinas' theory that real esences cannot be apart from existing
things. As a result, "absolute" possibility with determinate
content is consequent on finite being, and is a result of, rather
than an explanation of "possibility in the capacity of a
subject".22 That reverses the explanatory ______ commentators
like Wipple ______ to Aquinas.
If there were never any humans, what could "human" in
"Humans are sentient" have named? Nothing at all. To say "the
nature", is just what Aquinas' moderate realism requires him to
deny, for there would have been no such nature when there were no
humans.
To say "human" names the divine idea FOR humans, is to
substitute Augustine's position for that of Aquinas. It is to
reinterpret the utterance, not as a statement about humans, but
as a statement about the overlap of divine ideas. Aquinas does
not regard relations of divine ideas as an alien23 truthmaker for
necessities of nature .
The common names in propositions designate (supposit for)
things, and sometimes the natures of things and sometimes the
forms and materials of things, depending on how the names are
used.24 For example, Aquinas thought the reason "animals are
self-moving" is true, and thought by God, even "before" there
were animals in nature, is that "animals" supposits for the real
animals that come to be. Otherwise, there would be nothing
expressible. The compliant reality for "men are sentient" is not
a relation among divine ideas, but the real coincidence of being
human and being sentient in humans; see Suarez for the same
interpretation of Aquinas, D.M.. 31,12.40-41. In fact, Aquinas
does not say there is an overlap of divine ideas, or describe any
truth-making relations of divine ideas (except, perhaps, for
arithmetic and geometry--a matter I have not inquired into). That
is why Suarez says the truth-maker for the proposition, for
Aquinas, is the reality that is going to be, "id quod futurum
esse", the actual coincidence of being human with being sentient
in the humans that are to be. Suarez disparages that answer in
favor of his own view (which seems to be either a "creation of
truth-making divine ideas" view, or something like Scotus' common
nature realism.)24
Aquinas reshaped the "going" vocabulary, by describing God's
cognition of what might have been as a virtual and denominative
plurality, relatively to things made, entirely contained in God's
slef-understanding. The possibility that there might have been
men is founded in the undifferentiated perfection of God; as a
differentiated possibility, it is rooted in the actual things
made. The possibiity is not based in reality the way Suarez may
have thought (D.M.31,12,10) in esse essentiae, in uncreated
essences that are like dents in the saranwrap of pure
possibility. Rather, the essences come to be with the things.
D.P. 3,5 ad 2 "ipsa quidditas creari dicitur," see Maurer, op.
cit. p.106.
The idea behind Aquinas' "nulla veritas est necessaria in
creaturis" I Sent.16,5 3, is that "iron rusts" is in nature the
way "the queen moves any open distance in any direction" is in
chess, a condition for the order of things, and so necessary to
the being there is, but such that there need not have been such
an order, it being derived entirely from the will of the creator.
[Descartes carried that further with his "king's laws" account
that did not require any antecedent or consequent real natures,
except for res cogitans and res extensa.] Aquinas explains
at length, D.P.3,16, that how the world is ordered is entirely
from the divine will. Some features of things are necessitated
from the choice of others. "Thus we might say, for instance,
supposing God intends to make a man, that it is necessary and due
that he give him a rational soul and an organic body, without
which there is no such thing as a man" D.P. 3.16c. Furthermore,
he says, "Even as the divine goodness is made manifest through
the things that are and through this order of things, so it could
be made manifest through other creatures and another order." D.P.
1,5c.
That does not say anything about how the nature of man
('human') came to be determined. Nor does the logical division of
categorical substance by differentiae determine the nature of
"man"; for instance, in the broad sense of "animal", rational
birds would do as well to make species. We also know that we
often determine the natures of things, both causally and
cognitively, inventing hands in cards, pieces of furniture,
kitchen appliances, tools, machines, processes, materials, even
plants (sugar and cream corn), procedures (indictment), status
(corporations), and outcomes (cooked). The sorts of things can
not be determined in some platonic heaven or from God's
understanding alone. God makes the natures of things. (See below)
Moreover, God can, compatably with creation, act above, against
and beside the present order of things.25
Maximum degree of reality? Wippel says,
before the actual creation of a given entity,
however, and before the actual creation of the
universe, its divine idea is the maximum
degree of reality enjoyed by any possible
entity, whether or not it will eventually come
into existence.
The "maximum degree of reality" for a thing before its
creation is none at all, D.P. 3,5 ad 2. Possibility "before
creation" is not a kind of reality for me, but for God. God sees
what might be "not in themselves but in himself", I.14,5c. The
possibility for the unmade IS the power of God. There is no "in
itself" except relatively to a proposition, which logically
requires real kinds, already existent in cases or potential
cases, and thus requires the actual existence of discursive
created minds as well as of the things designated. "Absolute
possibility" is not explan_____ prior to possibility as capacity
in a subject.
God's "Sufficing Likeness" and "Proper Knowledge". Wippel's
phrase (169) "insofar as it [the divine being] is viewed as
capable of being imitated in a given way", is constrained so that
the reference to an imitation is logically prior to the
decription of the respect in which God is imitated. The phrase
applies no more than metaphorically to what is never to be
because no such reference is possible.
The positive claim "God knows all the ways he might be
imitated", and "etiam intelligit se intelligere multa per
essentiam suam", Ia.15,2 ad 2, follows from the impossibility of
its contradictory, "God is ignorant of some way he might be
finitely imitated", and so, is without commitment to a
decomposite domain of how God might be imitated.
God's essence "has therefore the nature of an idea with
respect to other things" Ia.15,1 ad 2, and "the species of the
divine intellect, which is God's essence, suffices to represent
all things; hence by understanding his essence, God knows the
essences of all things, and also what can be accidental to them"
Ia.14,14c (Italics added). Similarly, we recognize the W.C.
Fields-impersonations from knowing the exemplar, not by a prior
image of each imitation. Ia. 14,13 c, "The divine essence,
whereby the divine intellect understands, is a sufficing likeness
of all things that that are or can be, not only as regards their
universal principles, but also as regards the principles proper
to each one, as shown above."(italics added).
That "sufficing likeness" is not itself "broken up" into
individual likenesses, any more than the Mona Lisa is broken up
into the elements captured by each copy. Rather, all
distinguishing forms "by which each thing is constitued in its
own species" are said to pre-exist in God eminently, I.14,6c.
And In D.P. 3,16 ad 5, he explains that "Accordingly, God is the
proper cause of each creature in as much as he understands each
creature and wills it to be. The statement that the same thing
cannot be proper to many applies to a relation of equality and
not to the case in point." Rather, God's understanding "contains"
all essences "as perfect acts to imperfect", as if I were to
compare 'man' to 'animal' or six, a perfect number, to the
imperfect numbers contained under it" I. 14,6c.
When he says, "whoever knows the number six, knows the
number three by proper knowledge", I.14.6c. and, "whoever knows a
man knows an animal by proper knowledge", this is not, as you
might think, knowledge by logical containment, or by the
containment of something that is common to many, "as unity is to
numbers, or as a center to [radiating] lines." I. 14.6c. Rather,
this is the way the perfect contains the imperfect. "Proper
knowledge" is the very opposite of decomposite knowledge. It is
more like the way the Standard meter contains the distances on a
surveyor's tape, and the potential divisions of the length of a
road.26.
Aquinas, Ia. 15,2 c, denies that God understands "as it
were by a plurality of images". He saves the Augustinean notion
that "each thing was created by God according to the idea proper
to it" (quoted at I.15,2c,and said to involve the forms required
for difference of species,at I. 14,6c) by making clear that the
plurality of ideas is the plurality of the ideated, because there
is one thing, the divine essence, that has "the nature of an
idea", as I explained above. That is, of course, what the
simplicity doctrine demands as well; I.15,2c says that
understanding many things is "not repugnant to the simplicity of
the divine mind. . . though it would be repugnant to its
simplicity were his understanding to be formed by a plurality of
images." Further, I.44,3c, "ideas, though multiplied by their
relations to things, in reality are not apart from the divine
essence, according as the likeness to that essence can be shared
diversely by different things." The one "sufficing likeness" of
all things IS the "idea proper to it" according to which each
thing is made. (See, too, D.P. 3, 16 ad 5, quoted above). Also,
C.G. I 54.4:
Thus, by understanding his essence as
imitable in the mode of life and not
knowledge, God has the proper form of a plant;
and if he knows his essence as imitable in the
mode of knowledge and not of intellect, God
has the proper form of animal, and so forth.
Every participation is properly known as the imperfect is
understood in the perfect, that does not require that "each" be
somehow replicated, rather, each is contained "eminently". "Now
all the things that are in the divine knowledge must fall under
one intention...God by seeing his essence, sees all things
together." C.G.I 55.5.
Identity? I disagree with this: "From the ontological
standpoint, one may say that a possible is identical with its
appropriate divine idea." (p. 168) And: "from the ontological
standpoint a divine idea and a possible are one and the same"
(p.168). That cannot be true.27 No finite temporal being could be
"a possible" in that case. Finite things are creatures; the
divine self-knowedge is not. Divine ideas exist necessarily
(loosly speaking); creatures do not. Divine ideas are actual;
what "God can do" is "not actual", I.14,9c. Moreover, the
knowledge of vision, I.14,9c, "so-called because the things we
see around us have distinct being outside the seer, "contrasts
with the knowledge of what is merely possible, which is contained
in God's knowledge of his own power: "Whatever he himself can do,
all are known to God, although they are not actual. And in so far
it can be said that he has knowledge even of things that are not"
(I.114,9c, itals. added). Could it be more clear that
possibilities are not identical with divine ideas?
Aquinas' exemplarism should not be understood as the "models
for everything" interpretations propose. Instead, Aquinas'
theory of divine ideas comes to this: whatever is possible is
understood in God's self-comprehension by eminent containment of
a virtual and denominative plurality, with knowledge of vision
for things that are made, and by simple understanding of his
own ability, without reference to anything else, for things that
are never made. The plurality of ideas is plurality of the
ideated.
I kept the footnotes as they are numbered here and in your text,
rather than making them consecutive with the former section
VOLUNTARISM. Whence, then, come the content of possibility
ad extra? Say, that humans are possible but rational electrons
are not. What makes it true, when there are no humans yet, that
humans are animals? Most interpreters of Aquinas are resolutely
anti-voluntarist. They regard the natures of things as fixed and
pre-given by divine ideas. But they do not get all the elements
of Aquinas' metaphysics into one story. In particular, they do
not accomodate; (i) that there are no genuine necessities in
creatures, (ii) that the natures of things are made with the
things and cease with the things, until the cessation of things,
the names and definite _________________, (iii) that "necessities
of nature" (like "humans are organic", "magnets attract iron"
[Aquinas' example]) are made true by real natures that are solid
with the things that come to be, and cease with them; and so,
(iv) there are no such truths for empty natures, (like "antichos
repel gravitons" or "________ absorbs ________") and there are no
empty natures or individuals, (v) nor is there identity or
individuation for anything that is not actual (or potential); so
there are no more possibles (possibilia) for Aquinas at all,
hence the supposition of _________ interpretation is mistaken.
Now, that's a lot of pieces not to fit. And it is not all. That
does not include the ________ with supposition theory, the
existential presumption of the syllogims or Aquinas' view on
naming and _________.
To avoid leaving Aquinas' metaphysics clashing with his
exemplarism, we will have to acknowledge that whatever God makes
is "contained eminently" in "one sufficing likeness", and that
possibility ad extra with content is created .42 Aquinas in S.T.
Q14, D.V. and S.G. 54 has interpreted away to multiplicity of
divine ideas and their particularity; and he has not identified
the "ratioentis" for _______ with God's self-knowledge.
Wippel says, "It is difficult to see how his [Aquinas'] God
could fail to view himself as imitable in any given way, or in
other words, how any possible could be freely rather than
necessarily such from eternity." Gilson shares that general
stance too.46
Now if there were determinate extensions of all the "ways"
of imitating God, like pickets on a fence, Wippel would be right.
God would know each of its elements. But such an extension
(_________ domain of possibility) is inconsistent.43 cp 12. [The
main reason for that is that being cannot be exhausted by kinds
or kinds by causes.] Sometimes Aquinas does use extensionalist
phrasing; for instance, in D.P.1,7c he says God's power "extends
to whatever is possible in itself".44 p. 12 And he says "unless
God understands however his perfection can be shared by other
things, nor would he understand the nature of perfect being
unless he know every kind of being." But "the ways" God can be
imitated cannot be logically distinguished except by reference to
what God makes, and God does not make everything he is able to
make.44 Put simply, Wippel understands "God's not understanding
all the ways he might be imitated" as equivalent to "God's
failing to understand some ways he might be imitated", when there
is no such equivalence because there is no such domain. This
___________ point is central to interpreting Aquinas. The
underlying mistake of the interpretation I am opposing is to
suppose there is a domain, or range, a determinate extension of
________ possibilities that is somehow refracted, like a rainbow,
through the prism of God's self-understanding.
Instead, think of construals of a landscape, or of table-
settings (of glasses, dishes and silverware). There is no range
of "all settings", because settings are not like rearrangments of
pickets on a fence or combinations of cards; there is no domain
of "all" combinations because the leements to be construed are
not ________. There are "other settings" only by reference to a
putative (actual) setting. Nevertheless, there could be "one
sufficing likeness" for every one, say a picture in an etiquette
book. Settings can be made by reference to the exemplar. They are
good or bad as they realize, or fail to, the perfections, the
principle, of the exemplar.
Furthermore, what might have been is logically determinate
only as far as it is anchored by reference in the actual and
_______, "picked out" by the actual. And even anchored
possibilities are never fully individual. In fact, they are far
vaguer than one tends to think. Thus, my having been a doctor is
possible; but the condition, "my having been a doctor", is not
determinate the way my being a philosopher is. That is because
only the actual is individual. The "rest"--what is logically and
physically unsettled about by my being a doctor--say, where the
office is, how long it was rented or owned, what color its
furniture is--is cognitively inaccessible. (Aquinas says God's
conception of what is not made is "incomplete", like an artist's
marked out conception of something he is not going to make.
D.P.000). The accessible "otherwise", the parts we can pick out
from what is so (say, ____________) is an infinitesmal part of
what might have been. (Of course, the statable actual is an
infinitesmal part of what is so, too.)
The outcome of these considerations is that God's will has
a role in what is possible. All possibility with content ad
extra is created. Thus, there are four points to be corrected
now.
(1) Possibilities in a subject (like my having been a
physician) logically depend on the actual being of the subject,
which is created.
(2) Other possibilities in a subject--e.g. whether rational
animals can swim but not fly--are the result of God's choice
designing the sorts in nature, rather than other sorts. In D.P.
3,1 ad 3; 3,17c Aquinas says, why a creature is such and such can
be found in some other creature, up to a point, or at least "from
the order of the universe"; but the form of the whole universe
has no other reason that that "their maker willed it so". Aquinas
does not think the form of the whole is simply the aggregate of
the parts, but that the explanatory ______ goes ______ from the
whole (which is ______ from God's will) to the parts to the lot
of creatures to one another. Similarly he says, "For no reason
can be given for the distance of this star from that one, or any
other disposition we see in the heavens save the ordinance of
divine wisdom," D.P. 3,17 c; also, "no other reason can be given
except that their maker willed it". Nowadays the analogue would
be the values of the _______ contents, rather than star
distances.
(3) Absolute possibility is grounded in God's being (I. 25;
so too, Wippel, p.168-9); "not contradictory" is a marker for
"what is possible in itself" (D.P.1,5 ad 4;1,7c) but is not what
makes something possible.44 Possibility is explained not by the
absence of contradiction, but by ratio entis. "Ratio entis",
"quod non implicat ens et non ens simul" is FROM God for
anything ad extra. God can make a thing, because it has rationes
entis, because it is possible, is not to be understood to imply
that there is a logical subset of being prior to God's making.
No, it is Aquinas' way of making clear that creating possibility
is not, formally, for God`s power but from God's exemplary being
sketches of an artistic model are grounded by content in the
model, but in the power of the artist is however powerful, his
skills. Yet the model is not "----" into all sketches of it,
they depend on creative power.
(4) The fact that I cannot detect radio waves and convert
them to sounds or visual appearances (without instruments) is
from a decision of the creator as to what traits rational
animals are to have; see D.P. 3, 17c.46 Still, that is not to be
misunderstood to imply that I might have been able to detect
radio waves, or to fly. No particular thing or kind could have
been essentially different; but there might have been different
kinds, perhaps "radio-wave dectector terminals." [I give that
description as an example, but not claiming to pick out a real,
but empty kind.]
Might God have made rational birds or aquatic persons, or
wood that thinks? (Cf.John Locke, Essay,III.1v.6,p.540 f; Second
Reply, p.460 f). Most theists say God can make them, it being
supposed that such things are possible because no contradiction
is contained in the descriptions.47 Thus, they presuppose that
(i) whatever is consistent lies within God's power and (ii)
belongs to some divine idea for a finite imitation of God.
Did St. Thomas say that consistency of description is
sufficient for the real possibiility of what is described? He did
not. He did say tht God's power "extends to what is possible in
itself." He said not requiring "esse et non esse simul" is
sufficient. "Not implying a contradiction" is necessary.
Contradiction is a semantic or syntactic register of what _______
"ens et ens simul," but they are obviously not the same because
there was not always human language to supply the formulation for
contradiction. Even given that the terms are not empty,
consistency is not equivalent to possibility because there might
be conflicting "overflow" universals that make impossible what
is otherwise consistent: "rational birds". Consistency of a
description can neither assure that the terms are not empty,
"groms are croms", nor assure that the overflow universals,
"rational birds", are not repugnant, like "indetectable masses".
It is not that other kinds are not possible, rather we cannot
pick them out by recombining terms for real kinds because we have
no way of telling whether the result is repugnant or what the
overflow necessities would be.
insert p. 14 of TP for notes. . . what does that mean?
Either Aquinas was basically wrong about the role of
"posssibility in itself" or he has been understood wrongly.
Either he took consistency of propositions ("absolute
possibility") to be the basis, the explanation of possibility, or
he has been ______ that way, and wrongly. It is the latter;
"absolute" possibility has been given priority over being, a
priority that it does not have in his metaphysics.
Whether there is such a real nature as a rational bird
depends on whether God makes such things (see qualifications,
below); whether a bird (something of the same nature as a
sparrow, an eagle and a buzzard) could be cerebrally complex
enough to be rational depends on the order of natural repugnancy
God sets up; not everything can be produced from everything else,
St. Thomas says, "it does not thereby follow that a being of one
kind can be produced from one of another kind, for instance, a
shape from a color", D.P. 3,2c. So there is an order of
obediential potency in nature; it is ________ true, as Locke
supposed, that God can add any power he likes to any sort of
thing.
Aquinas says: "Ideo enim deus aliquid facit quia vult; non
tamen ideo potest quia vult, sed quia talis est in sua natura."
I.25,5 ad 1. This can be made to give the wrong impression,
(see Wippel, note 18 at p.171). Aquinas is not saying here,
"things are not possible because God wills them, but willed on
condition that they are possible in themselves", as Wippell says,
000. Instead, Aquinas says that God can make anything he wants
to; not that he is able to know he wants to, rather be one, he is
able to from his nature.
The rest of Q.25 and of D.P.1, do not say how intentional
objects get the status of "implying" (or not) a contradiction,
("God's power considered in itself, extends to all such objects
as do not imply a contradiction" D.P. 1, 7c.) Does "wood that
thinks" imply a contradiction? "Rational birds?" "Conscious
electrons?" "Stone moving faster than light"? "Perpetual
motion"? (of the universe? Of part of the universe?) Wippel is
right that things are not possible because God can make them.
But that does not mean there is a realm of the possible, say
divine ideas "given" by the divine nature, from which the creator
selects, as from a catalogue, of what can be. That is the wrong
picture for Aquinas entirely.
Overflow Significations and Incorporation. Take a common
name, say "water". The conditions a liquid has to meet in order
for the common name to apply EXCEED the conditions laid down by
its linguistic meaning. A luquid has to be "potable, colorless,
tasteless, and odorless", and more to be water. These are de re
necessities incorporated into the signification [the conditions
of applicability] by reference [by use of the term to refer to a
paradigm case, say a resevoir]. Water has to be made of H2O.
Another example, "human" applies only to rational animals;
furthermore, only to things that are made of organic compounds;
'being of an organic compound' is a condition of applicability
incorporated by the reference of "human" to paradigms necessarily
made of organic compounds. Now Saint Thomas is explicit that this
is so. D.P. 9,4c, and 9,4 ad 6, he distinguishes the meaning
conditions from the additional conditions, explaining that use of
a term with a difference of (what I call) "overflow" conditions
(but the same linguistic conditions) is not equivocation. He not
only makes the distinction I mention, he relies upon it, as John
of St. Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus also indicates,
Pt.I, Bk 2, Ch10, p.29. Now this is very important because
whether something purportedly designated by a nominal or
descriptive phrase is really possible depends not only on the
consistency of the name but on the non-repugnancy of the
"overflow" conditions. So Aquinas is NOT committed to holding
that consistency of description is by itself sufficient for the
real possibility of what is described.
Thus, some decriptive combinations, like 'rational bird' or
'wood that thinks' may be semantically (linguistically)
consistent and yet the designata may be de re impossible
because the universals incorporated by reference may be naturally
repugnant. 'Being wood' and 'thinking' are semantically
compatible but the overflow natural necessities repel one
another. Whatever is really wood cannot think.48 What things are
naturally repugnant is the result of the will of God.48 Whether
God's power to bring about what is "above" nature involved
unlimited obediential capacity in matter is not settled here.
The active power of things are limited. Those limits come from
God.
A Treasury of Traits? Aquinas does not postulate a
treasury of logically independent traits (like "flying",
"rational", "walking", "aquatic", "animal") whose intersections
or combinations can be "instanced" by divine choice. That's the
way contemporary neoplatonists, like modal actualists, talk.49
(15 of notes)
So whether there might have been rational birds is not
settled by some infinite list of logically independent traits
given to God by his nature, that God can combine at will. God
makes the natural order of things. "Given that he wished to make
the universe such as it is, it was necessary that he should
produce such and such creatures whence such and such form of
universe would arise." "Accordingly we must conclude that the
multitude and diversity of creatures proceeded from one
principle. . . from the order of wisdom." D.P.3,16c; also
I.47,1;C.G. II,34 ff.
Had God made animals and angels but not men, it would have
been a "necessity of nature" (not Aquinas' term) that no animal
is rational. Yet, rational animals would have been within God's
power to make. That is, it would have been naturally impossible
for there to be rational animals, in the same sense in which it
is impossible for a man to fly (D.P. 1, 3,C.) though, absolutely,
that is within God's power. So something can be beyond the power
of nature to produce and still within God's power.50
Anything is within God's power that does not have to
be and not be at the same time; see Ia. 25, 3c; D.P. 1, 3; I
Sent. 42, 2, 2. Whether a proposed thing requires both being
and non-being at the same time may depend on what else God makes
(Cf.I.47,3c) because a complete making (a universe) involves
inventing universals (real natures51) arranged into patterns of
natural repugnancy, for which the final reason is the divine will
alone,D.P.3,17c. See also I.44 and C.G. II 34ff.
Aquinas never says that "perfect being" can be
exhausted by kinds (natures) or that any kind can be exhausted by
individuation, or that a nature can exist without individual
cases. In fact, the opposite; see Suarez,D.M.31,12,4047. So I
find nothing to justify the confidence of so many imterpreters
that real natures are representationally prefigured, rather than
just eminenced, by the nature of God, especially given that
Aquinas says the reason for creatures' being the ways they are
(and that presumably, includes not just the accidental ways
alone) is "to an extent" to be found in the fit of things to one
another, but that the reason for it all is found only in the
divine will.
The issue of voluntarism in Aquinas has been misconstrued.
Some disputants discount the dependence of possibility in
contingent subjects on God's will, thinking that "absolute
possibility" is somehow independent of contingent subjects and
independent of God's will. But it is not. There is no platonic
realm of "all propositions"; Aquinas' view of propositions as
linguistically expressive contents of thought (what he called
enu_________) preclude such a domain. Propositions are not
"formable" without things designated; there can be no things
without creation. So, there is no "locus" for absolute
propositional possibility without creation. Further, being-as-
such (ens ut ens) places no limitation on what can be made. The
limits, from natural repugnancy, come from God's will and
coincide with what is made, having no basis in being outside
created things.52
As indicated by his explicit acknowledgment of "overflow"
conditions by reference, Aquinas knew that descriptive
consistency (absence of contradiction) is not enough to guarantee
that a "thing" does not require "esse et non esse simul". Whether
it does depends on the divine arrangement of nature in general.
Not everything is describable by us; for what God might have
done, entirely other than what was made, lies beyond our ability
to describe. Aquinas remarded that not just anything in God's
power can be expressed propositionally. Further, he did not say
that whatever has a consistent description is possible, but
rather that whatever does not require "ens et non ens simul" is
within God's power. Whether "esse et non esse simul" is impicated
("implicat") is determined by God's essence;cf.Ia.25. But how
God's essence determines the ratio entis for things has been
construed platonistically. That was a mistake.
Aquinas holds, as Wippel says, that things are not
possible because God can make them but makeable because possible,
cf.Ia,15,2 ad 2 and Ia,25,3c, "Nihil autem opponitur rationi
entis, nisi non ens. Hoc igitur repugnat rationi possibilis
absoluti, quod subditur divinae omnipotentiae, quod implicat in
se esse et non esse simul." Also, D.P.1,3 where Aquinas says
inconsistency is sufficient for impossibility, and I Sent. 42,2
ad 2, and Ia,24,5 ad 1;Ia.25,3, "whatever can have "ratione
entis" is included in the absolutely possible, with respect to
which God is called all powerful."
Now that might look as if it settles the matter. But those
statements are neutral to what is at issue. Even the instructions
that it is better to say about a contradiciton, "such things
can't be made" than to say "God can't make them", and to say,
Ia.25, 4 ad 2, that a thing is not subject to God's power
because it lacks possibility, are neutral to whether
possibility ad extra "absolute possibility," has any priority
over actual being or any reality apart from God's power. Of
course, it does not. Variations on a theme are made
possible by the perfections of the theme; so too,the possibility
for creatures is determined by the "one sufficing likeness",
without its thereby blueprinting the variation so that the
composer just fills in the note-shapes with the ink of
contingent being. No, the exemplar delineates what counts, but
not by preempting invention (creation). The content of
possibility ad extra is created. The essences of things are
created; the necessities of nature ( "iron rusts") are made; they
are not from the divine intelligence as from an ALIEN truthmaker.
(see Maurer, "Aquinas on the Eternal Truths", cit. supra).
Proponents of voluntarist readings of Aquinas, like G.
Smith, B. Zedler and A. Forest (all cited by Wippel) don't work
things out in enough detail to carry the day: (a) sometimes they
do not distinguish the explanation of mathematical and pure
formal truth from the explanations of the "regularities of
nature", like "humans have free will" and "spiders have eight
legs", truths Aquinas says are contingent (I. Sent.); (b)
sometimes they do not distinguish what MAKES (formally and
efficiently) the formal truths true (like "for all _______ there
are __________) from what (efficiently) makes "iron rusts", true
(God's will), and (c) sometimes they do not draw heavily enough
on Aquinas' commitment that in order for common names to be in
personal supposition in propositions expressing "necessities of
nature", (for instance, "elephants are herbivorous"), there have
to be actual (or proximately potential) things of the common
natures and the natures themselves have to be real (not just
ideas). With those additional resources, any notion that the
content of possibility ad extra is determined item-by-item by the
divine exemplar becomes simply fanciful.
Fr. Norris Clarke55 offered a reading I approve of God's
self-understanding is said to be the "supreme anlogical mode or
norm" for whatever is or might be. That is what I suggest, too,
using analogies like a theme and variations, model and
construals, paradigms and renderings, conceptions and paintings,
and original (W.C. Fields) and the mere imitations (W.C. Fields-
impersonations). The possibility is delimited by the norm, but
the content of the realization has to be created.
Besides, the options to explain "the regularities of
nature" (the per se predicates of things, cf. Aquinas, Comm in
Post Anal, 1, less. 10) are limited to the one I suggest (and
think Fr. Clarke had in mind), and the one I think Wippel is
committed to. But the latter, ikonic neoplatonism (the treasury
of articulate exemplars), is logically inconsistent, as I have
repeatedly sketched (and see note 4); furthermore it is
incompatible with Aquinas' metaphysics and with his explicit
qualifications, mentioned above. Nor can we say the common
terms, "humans" and "horses ", etc., are in simple supposition
for the real natures in such propositions as "horses are
herbivores" and "humans are sentient." For then, the propositions
would be different from what we are supposed to be explaining--
that horses are herbivores and humans are sentient, and yet would
still be about the real natures which have no being apart from
things. Propositional "necessities of nature" ("iron rusts") are
not, of course,about divine ideas; nor are they made true or
false by relations among divine ideas.54 That is why Aquinas is
commited to the view that the reality-to-be, not divine ideas, is
what makes the "necessities of nature" true, when there are no
humans (yet). (Suarez attributes that to him, D.M. 31,12,40.) So
only the first option is left.
Natural necessity is a necessity that is not absolute but
hypothetical (and as Aquinas says in I. Sent. ), not really
necessary at all) is from God's will, as is all created being.
Fr. Maurer says, "if essences perish with the existences of
things--if they have no essential being of their own, distinct
from their existential being--so too do necessary propositions,
in which essential predicates are attributed to a subject".
(loc.cit. p.106) He says, "From the perspective of the being of
things, then, there is no necessary truth in _______________" See
I. Sent. d.19, q5, a.3. p. 496) Thus, "humans are animals" might
have been otherwise, not because there might have been non-animal
humans, but because there might have been no humans at all,
something else instead. That precludes ikonic neoplatonism as a
position for Aquinas.
Created Natures. Aquinas' moderate realism and his
supposition theory allow neither empty kinds nor empty
individuals, nor empty names, nor ideas (full in all particulars,
that require prime matter) for "them". Nor can universal
propositions be formed with empty names ("phlogiston outweighs
caloric"), as the existential presupposition of the syllogism
indicates. So it would seem that possibility (and necessity) with
content ad extra (like"animals with hearts have livers" and
"pressure applied to an enclosed liquid is equally distributed
over the entire container" and "silicon-based life is capable of
intelligent forms"), has to be created with actual things. God
designs the kinds and the things that are to be (D.P.3,17c).
The "silicon based life" example should make obvious that
real possiblility is not a simple consequence of descriptive
consistency. We do not actually know whether silicon based life
is possible. What is possible is relative to what else is actual,
to what universals55 there are in nature. So, silicon-based
intelligent life is or is not possible depending on the natural
repugnancies among real naturess.56 God makes the repugnancies
in nature.
So, God makes the kinds, the natures and the universals.
What is possible is "freely constituted by the divine will in
accord with its wisdom",57 cf. D.P. 3,16c;I,47,1;C.G.II 34 ff.
Whether there might have been rational birds is not settled by
some infinite list of freely combinable independent traits. It
could not be.
Conclusion. The assumptions needed to maintain the old
interpretation, bolstered by what was thought also to be the
philosophical truth, are not to be found in the text, conflict
with Aquinas' own commitments (on real natures, supposition, and
individuation) and grind against what seems to be the obvious
truth about naming now.
There is not enough explicit text to settle the voluntarist
issue without appeal to the truth about names and the commitments
about natures. What some others took to be obvious is not even
true and was not held by Aquinas. So my argument has to be seen
in two parts. First, mainly negative, that the text is enough to
show that Aquinas did not hold the "identity" of possibility with
divine ideas, that Wippel attributes to him and that Aquinas did
not hold an ikonic neoplatonism about divine ideas, and held a
different view, that mere possibilities have no reality "in
themselves" at all. Secondly, that careful speculation based on
what Aquinas said, despite his sketchy views on possibility,
particularly his somewhat divergent comments about "absolute"
possibility, the consistency of propositions, settles it that
the natures of things are created, and not by combinations of
independent traits given by God's nature as ikons.