Question 76 – The Union of the Soul with the Body

Why this Question Matters

Aquinas defined the soul to be the first principle of life in living things and devoted Ia.q75 to considering the soul in itself. Now it is time for him to turn to a consideration of how the soul and the body are united. The answer to this question is that the soul is the substantial form of the body; in a way the demonstration of this is simply a matter of definition within the metaphysical system that he has chosen. The challenge in this question is to show that such an approach makes for a coherent whole and that alternative approaches do not. At the time Aquinas was writing and for a period of years after his death, these sorts of questions were highly controversial. In time, Aquinas’s view was seen to be the correct one and later ecumenical councils of the church identified the approach that he took with part of the deposit of faith of the church.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: We’ve already seen that Aquinas claims that the soul is the form of the body; here he turns to a formal consideration of this question. Aquinas’s answer reiterates what he has already said: nothing acts except insofar as it is actually such-and-such, and that by which it is actually such-and such is precisely its form. What distinguishes living things from the inanimate are their vital operations; the soul is the ultimate internal principle of those vital operations. Once one has taken on-board those fundamental compositions of matter/form, potentiality/actuality and being/essence that lie at the heart of Aquinas’s metaphysics, the idea that the soul is the form of the body really becomes a matter of definition: the body must have a form that explains its fundamental operations; the soul is just what we call that form. The real content of an enquiry into the soul becomes an enquiry into what the soul is and does as a form.

Although Aquinas’s direct answer to the question posed by the article is quite short, the article itself is rather long! The reason for this is that Aquinas takes this opportunity to address the faults of a number of alternative theories about the relationship between the soul and the body. He does this in the remainder of the body of his answer and in his replies to the objections.

In pursuing this ambition, Aquinas starts off by inferring that which someone who claims that the soul is not the form of the body would have to concede about the relationship between soul and body. To do this, he makes a turn to the subject of intellectual understanding: intellectual understanding is not just something that happens out there, it’s something that belongs to each individual human. Socrates experiences that it is he himself who understands. There are three possibilities for the way in which intellection can be attributed to an individual human: the whole person can be doing the intellection (ruled out by Ia.q74.a4); per accidens (which is clearly nonsense); and through a part of the human being. This latter is the only feasible option, so if we grant that the soul is the principle of intellectual understanding in each individual, then we must allow that intellection is attributed to a part of that person and hence the soul is part of the person. The question then becomes how that part is united to the body.

Aquinas attributes to Averroes (Ibn Rushd, the Spanish Muslim philosopher known as “the Commentator” in the middle ages) the idea that the union between soul and body is effected by the intelligible species. We recall that these are what the active part of the intellect abstracts from the phantasms of the imagination for impression onto the passive part of the intellect. The idea is that phantasms are inherently bodily (produced by the sense organs), the passive part of the intellect is part of the soul and therefore the intellectual species act as the “glue” between the body and the soul. Aquinas finds fault with this, claiming that this explanation is not sufficient to account for the subjective nature of intellection: it simply doesn’t explain Socrates’s intellection as an action of the person of Socrates. Aquinas makes the analogy with sensation: the intelligible species exist in the passive intellect as visual sensations exist in the visual power. But the existence of visual sensations in the visual power does not explain the subjective experience of seeing; likewise the existence of the intelligible species in the passive intellect does not explain the experience of intellection of those species. As Aquinas puts it, the existence of the intelligible species in the passive intellect explains that the corresponding phantasms are understood, but not that Socrates understands.

Aquinas then turns to the opinion that the soul is united to the body as a mover in such a way that the action of the intellect can be attributed to the union. He finds several faults with this point of view. For example, the intellect does move the body, but it moves the body through an appetite which itself presupposes the action of the intellect. Socrates does not understand because he is moved by the intellect; rather he is moved because he understands. Similarly, Aquinas argues that attribution of the action of the intellect to the union of a part with the rest implies that the union cannot be considered as a unitary whole.

The objections to this article all hinge on a too narrow understanding of form and of how a form may enter into composition with matter. If we think of a natural object like a rock or of an artefact like a house, then when such objects go out of existence, their forms go out of existence as well. But the human soul is subsistent; it does not go out of existence when the body dies. Natural forms give a determinate existence to their matter/form composite, but the human intellect is able to grasp the quiddity of all things, which is something thoroughly indeterminate. For a natural object a form is what gives it esse; it is that by which the object exists. So it seems that esse does not belong to the form itself. These objections are fundamentally to do with what a form can be; in particular, the human soul is both subsistent and communicates the ability to the body to be in a state of indeterminacy as to the actual objects of cognition. Aquinas’s answers to these objections amount to pretty much the same thing: the fact of the existence of the intellect in human beings and the fact that this must have an ultimate internal explanation show that forms can indeed have these sorts of properties. Perhaps Aquinas’s task here has been made easier by the fact that he has already considered the angels; although the existence of the angels is a matter of faith, the fact that their existence is amenable to metaphysical explanation provides the materials to show that the spiritual human soul is also amenable to such explanation.

A2: A powerful idea at the time of Aquinas, and one which went on to have much influence after his death, was the idea of monopsychism; that humans share in one single intellectual soul. A component of what was known as Averroism, it provides a simple explanation for the fact that separate humans appear to have common perception and cognition of external objects. Indeed, this is the basis for the several of the objections supporting monopsychism. In particular, the third objection observes that if there are distinct human intellects, then the intelligible species of an object received in different intellects will themselves be individuals. But what is received in the intellect is a universal; so this appears to be a contradiction. The fourth objection takes this further: these individual intelligible species in the intellects of two separate individuals will have to undergo some process of abstraction in order to arrive as what is common to the two. But this seems to make the intellect of an individual something that is akin to the imagination; that is, something from which abstraction takes place. Again, this seems to be a contradiction, in this case to the nature of the intellect itself. Finally, the fifth objection observes that the understanding in the mind of a student is the same thing as is in the mind of the teacher; if it is numerically equal, then it must be present in something shared by them.

The first objection returns to the question left dangling at the end of the previous question: as we saw in the case of the angels, immaterial substances are not individuated by matter; therefore if they are to differ from one another, they must differ in species.

Aquinas’s response is thoroughly uncompromising: “it is altogether impossible for there to be a single intellect for all men”, “it is altogether impossible and absurd to posit a single intellect for all men”. Clearly this was an important issue, as he takes the trouble to provide a number of answers. The first answer assumes Platonism, the second an Aristotelian framework and the third purports to make no assumptions about how the soul is united to the body!

From a Platonic point of view, identifying a man with his intellect, the answer is clear; the existence of only one intellect would imply that the distinction between two individuals would not be of their essences, an absurd position. Likewise looked at from the position of an Aristotelian, numerically diverse things cannot share in one form.

To attack the problem more generally, Aquinas considers how the intellects of this man may be united with the intellect of that man. They might be united as a single principle agent with two instruments; or as a two different principle agents with a single instrument; or as a single principle agent with a single instrument. Whichever way you look at it, the inevitable consequence is that if there is only a single intellect then there can only be a single knower. We end up with a situation where there can only be a single knower and a single act of understanding. We can be quite happy with the idea that there can be different phantasms of, say, a rock in our hypothetical single intellect and that these could be the phantasms of different people; but the form in the potential intellect is an intelligible species abstracted from the phantasms from which a single universal concept is abstracted. Each person would have the same single universal and there would only be a single act of understanding. This means that the act of understanding could not distinguish this man from that man.

In reply to the third and the fourth objection, Aquinas observes that it is not the individuality of an intellectual soul that would provide a barrier to understanding universals, but rather any materiality associated with the soul. It is the immateriality of the soul that allows for the complete abstraction from material conditions. He also points out that even if there were only one human soul in the universe, it would itself be an individual and the intelligible species through which it derived understanding would itself be an individual. Furthermore, what is understood in the intellect exists in the intellect as an image of the object of perception; however, what is understood by the human is the object of perception itself. It’s perfectly possible for the same thing to be known by different knowers, as what they know is the same thing.

The trap left over from Ia.q75.a7 that is raised in the first objection is dealt with by observing that although the intellective soul has no matter in its make up to individuate it, it still is the form of a certain parcel of matter; it is this latter that serves to individuate it. Lest one should worry that this individuation goes away when the body dies, the reply to the second objection observes that the soul retains its own being (it is, after all, subsistent). It has existed as diverse from other souls; in retaining its being it remains diverse.

A3: We’ve seen that it is the intellective soul that makes a human being to be a human being; but are there separate forms that makes the human to be alive in the first place and then to be sentient? Are the three forms, the nutritive, the sensitive and the intellective “layered” on top of one another in the human being?

Once one has accepted that the human soul is the substantial form of the body, argues Aquinas, then this position really makes no sense. Things do only have one substantial form, the form that makes them to be what they are. In the first place, denying the unity of the substantial form would be to deny the unity of the thing itself; a collection of substantial forms would lead to a collection of beings rather than one unified whole. In the second place, the relationship between substantial forms would either have to be accidental or per se. If it were accidental then we would be saying either that an animal was accidentally a human or that a human was only accidentally an animal, neither of which makes any sense. If it were per se, then we would have to be looking for the definition of each one in the other; and one cannot find the definition of human in the definition of animal. Finally, the operations of the soul work as a unity, sentient and intellective, they do not impede each other as they might if they arose from two separate substantial forms.

The third objection raises the important issue of human development. In his answer, Aquinas acknowledges that in the development of the embryo it would seem that there is first a sentient soul that is later replaced by an intellective soul. He will return to this issue in more detail latter (Ia.q118.a2). In brief, the reasoning behind this lies in the fact that a form can only be received in matter that is fitted for the reception of that form. The science of the day suggested that the matter of the early embryo was not suitable for the reception of an intellective soul and hence ensoulment was thought to happen at some time after physical conception. In is interesting to speculate that Aquinas would probably be of a different opinion in the light of modern embryology.

In his reply to the fourth objection, Aquinas makes an important point about how we perceive and categorize the world. The substance of the objection is that when we think about the genus animal and the difference rational that characterizes humans there would seem to be a correspondence between matter that determines the genus and form that characterizes the difference. This suggests that a body animated by a sentient form should be considered as the “matter” that is informed by the soul. Aquinas answers that, in the world, there is no need for a real diversity corresponding to how we understand the world: “reason can apprehend one and the same entity in diverse ways”. The idea of a genus is one of our conceptual ways of organising our thinking about the world: we abstract the idea of the genus animal from our observations of the commonality between humans and other animals and arrive at the difference rational from the same observations. This genus/difference classification is how our mind thinks about the world, but it need not correspond exactly to the actual way that the world is put together.

A4: At first sight, the existence of this article may seem a puzzle; hasn’t Aquinas already answered the question of whether there are other substantial forms in man than the soul? Indeed the first objection appears to be a rehash of the fourth objection of the previous article. The point is that in the third article Aquinas was dealing with the specific idea of nutritive, sentient and intellective substantial forms as the formal structure of humans. Here, as the sed contra suggests, he is dealing with full generality: a being has a single substantial being; the substantial form of a being is what gives being to the being; the soul is the substantial form of the human; end of argument. The body of the article is really just a swift reiteration of what substantial and accidental forms are and how they differ; a revision exercise for those students who may have nodded off earlier in the course at a vital moment. A substantial form is what gives being absolutely to something; an accidental form gives being in-a-certain-sort-of-way to something. The intellective soul is the substantial form of man and the fact that a human being is also an animal and a living thing merely reflects that the nutritive and sentient elements of humans are subsumed under the intellective soul. Aquinas uses the (slightly misleading) terminology that the intellective soul virtually contains the nutritive and sentient souls. This doesn’t mean that the latter are actually present as forms in the intellective soul; rather, the intellective soul includes everything that would be contained in the nutritive and sentient souls.

The fourth objection gives Aquinas the opportunity to talk about mixtures: it would seem more reasonable to consider that the basic elements that make up the human body maintain their substantial existence, therefore each element in the body has its own substantial form and the body is really a mixture of these elements. Against Averroes and Avicenna, Aquinas argues that in a mixture there is not really something new created but rather that if one looks close enough one will see the individual elements in place. The substantial forms of these individual elements in the mixture do not remain actually in existence but exist virtually in the substantial form of the whole mixture. The substantial form of a whole “takes over” everything to do with the substantial forms of the parts that go to make up the whole.

A5: Given that the intellective soul is such a remarkable thing, it doesn’t really seem fitting that it is united with such a pathetic body. On the one hand the body is incorruptible whereas the soul is not, on the other hand the human body, compared to animal bodies, seems rather lacking in physical attributes.

Aquinas answers that because matter exists for the sake of form, rather than form for the sake of matter, the reason matter is the way it is entirely due to the form itself. The intellective human soul, on the bottom rung of intellective substances, has to possess the power of sensing as it does not have the sort of immediate access to knowledge that the higher intellective substances do. Therefore the soul has to be united to the sort of body that is suitable for this purpose. The human body, Aquinas claims, is the most balanced with regard to its sensory equipment amongst the animal kingdom. Would this claim stand up to modern scrutiny? The human body certainly does not have the most acute of senses in the animal kingdom, but Aquinas might respond that this is not the point: what matters is how they work together such that the common sense (the internal sense that integrates the input of the external senses) can make a better model of the world for the intellect to ponder upon than can other animals.

The reply to the fourth objection (that other animals have much better built in tools and defences) is interesting: the intellective soul is ordered towards the comprehension of everything, therefore giving it determinate natural defences or weaponry would be futile. What humans are equipped with is the means by which they can fashion what they need for their particular circumstances. The hands, for example, are the “instrument of instruments”.

A6: When a new thing comes into existence a new substantial form replaces the form(s) out of which the new thing is made. It’s a fundamental principle that the matter out of which a new thing is made must be suitable to the reception of the new substantial form. But surely this means that there must be a number of accidents present (such as size and shape) that make the matter suitable for the reception of the new substantial form and therefore the union of substantial form to matter (and therefore of intellective soul to body) must be mediated by some accidents? It seems that these accidents are prior to the substantial form in the new thing.

This confusion arises from failing to understand how certain things exist virtually in a substantial form. The matter out of which something new is made does have to have certain accidental properties that allow for the new substantial form to take its place. But these accidents are also contained virtually in the new substantial form, so that when the new substantial form is in place they are proper accidents contained virtually in the substantial form rather than being added to or mediating the substantial form. The substantial form takes over, as it were, what was formally attributed to the accidents.

A7: The sixth article asked whether the union of the soul and the body is mediated by accidents. This article poses the further question: if not mediated by accidents, could the union be mediated by some body or bodies? The answer is straightforward, being simply a reiteration of what has gone before: the union of a substantial form with matter is not mediated by anything; to think so is simply to misunderstand how it all works.

That Aquinas makes the point about the union of a substantial form with matter over and over again shows that he was either dealing with some rather dense students, which is unlikely, or that the issue was a live one at his time. There were a number of opinions on the union of soul and body around at the time and much heat was generated in their discussion. Ultimately, Aquinas’s opinion won the day; mostly because it was difficult to fit the other theories into any sort of systematic metaphysics. Indeed these alternative ideas tended to last longest amongst those who were not particularly systematically minded!

A8: If one, by accident I hope, cuts an earthworm in two then often the two halves continue to thrive. This suggests that the form of the earthworm, its sentient soul, is not strongly localised to any part of the body. Is the same true of the intellective soul of the human? After all, cutting a human in two doesn’t usually end as well as it does for the earthworm.

The soul is the substantial form of the body; it is the thing that makes the being what it is. So, in particular, the soul must inform all parts of the body, making them to be what they are and making them to work together as a whole. So, the soul must be present in the whole of the body and in all its parts. What is less clear, perhaps, is whether the soul as a whole must be present in all parts of the body.

In order to answer this more specific question, Aquinas asks us to consider what we mean by wholeness and its relation to parts. He claims that there are three types of wholeness and related division into parts: one can divide a material object into quantitative parts; one can divide something into rational and essential parts, like the parts of a definition or the form and matter of a whole; one can divide a power into its virtual parts.

If we think about a patch of surface that is coloured white, then we observe that if the surface is broken up then each bit of surface will still be white; whiteness is both in the surface as a whole and in each of the parts individually. But this first quantitative type of wholeness in the parts only happens in certain circumstances where the whiteness is uniformly spread about the surface. For something like a soul that is informing different types of parts it simply cannot happen; there is a different relation to the whole and to the parts. On the other hand, the second and third types of wholeness can be applied to substantial forms. The soul does exist as a whole in each part of the body from the point of view of its essence but it does not exist in each part of the body with respect to its powers. For example, it is in the eye with respect to seeing and in the ear with respect to hearing but not vice versa. What is more, it does not exist in the whole body in the same way that it exists in the parts: it is primarily in the whole and secondarily in the parts insofar as they are ordered to the whole.


Handy Concepts

• The definition of the Council of Vienne, that the soul is the form of the body, was reiterated as a definition of the faith in the eighth session of the fifth Lateran Council (1512-17). One might infer from this that there had been some resistance to the idea! One should note that the Lateran definition went further, confirming the teaching of the second article.
• The fifth objection to the first article and its answer might be seen as a faint parallel to the question of whether there is one act of being in the hypostatic union of the God-man Jesus Christ.
• The fifth objection to the second article should be dedicated to teachers the world over.
• The seventh article makes mention of quintessence (or fifth essence). This was considered to be the form of matter that filled the universe above the terrestrial sphere. Funnily enough, the term has returned to modern physics attached to a hypothetical form of dark energy.

Difficulties

• The process of intellection abstracts a universal of the object of cognition from the phantasms present in the imagination. For each individual this results in an individual act of understanding, that is, each individual has a universal present as the expressed species corresponding to the intelligible species. If the object of perception is the same for two individuals, in what way do they share the universal that they abstract from their phantasms? In what way are the universals of “rock” different in each individual?
• The doctrine of the unity of substantial form (article 3) was highly contested during the Middle Ages. The doctrine was even condemned by two archbishops of Canterbury, Kilwardby and Peckham.
• A strict materialist might argue that human animals are accidentally human (article 3).
• At what point in the formation of a mixture (objection 4 to article 4) do the forms of the elements disappear and the form of the mixture appear?

 

Question 75 – The Essence of the Human Soul

Preamble

Having considered God and then spiritual creatures, Aquinas now turns to the consideration of human beings. He is going to spend a lot of time considering humanity (the whole of the second part of the summa is about human beings) before turning to the God-man Jesus Christ in part three. For the moment, we will be looking at the so-called Treatise on Human Nature that stretches from question 75 to question 102 of the first part of the summa. In his introduction to question 75, Aquinas tells us that he will consider the nature of humanity first (in questions 75-89) and then the production of humans (in questions 90-102). In thinking about the nature of human beings, he will consider the nature of the soul (questions 75-76), the powers or capacities of the soul (questions 77-83) and the operations of the soul (questions 84-89).

It’s always important to try not to interpret Aquinas in terms that apply to later philosophical ideas; this is especially true in the field of philosophical psychology covered by this treatise. For example, although Aquinas identifies the soul as a subsistent form, he is not a substance dualist in the sense of Descartes. Aquinas believes that the soul is the form of the body and that although the soul is subsistent, one should not interpret the soul and the body as being substances with an independent existence. Likewise it’s important to note that Aquinas uses terms such as intellect, mind, imagination, appetite with precise meanings that slot into his particular psychology. One should not read into his thinking elements derived from modern use of similar terminology.


Why this Question Matters.

In this question, Aquinas is going to discuss the nature of the soul considered in itself, turning to the way in which the soul is united to the body in the next question. Aquinas is aiming for the position that, in living things, the soul is the form of the body. Moreover, in human beings, the intellective nature of the soul implies that it is immaterial, subsistent and incorruptible. However, as is so often the case in the summa, he is going to work up to that position incrementally. He first considers whether the soul is a material body and then turns to the difference between the souls of human beings and non-human animals. The former possess an intellective soul, whereas the latter do not. This has the extraordinary consequence that the human soul is subsistent and, in fact, is a subsistent form. As a consequence of this, the human soul is incorruptible. Even while describing the extraordinary nature of the human soul, he is careful to emphasize the bodily nature of the human being as well; the soul is not the human person, only the soul/body composite is that.

All this, of course, tallies well with Christian doctrine concerning the soul; but Aquinas’s approach here is philosophical and not directly theological, firmly based on the teaching of Aristotle’s de anima.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: Aquinas starts his enquiry into the nature of the soul by asking whether the soul is a body. If we think in terms of the modern philosophy of mind, what he is considering here is part of the argument of whether the soul has a material explanation; can we, even if only in principle, reduce the explanation of the soul to an explanation of the behaviours of some material substances? In particular for this question, can we identify the soul itself with some material body? In order to answer this question Aquinas is careful to give a definition of the soul: it is “the first principle of life in those things around us that are alive”. In other words, a soul is the type of thing that explains the difference between something that is animated and something that is inanimate. It’s worth noting that Aquinas is using the term principle as a very general description of that part of a subject which explains something about the subject. He is looking for something about the subject itself which explains its mode of being.

In answer to those who would argue that the soul is a material body, Aquinas’ argument is disarmingly simple. We can see that living things can do certain things that non-living things cannot; we call these vital operations. It is clear that some vital operations at least can have principles that are material: a principle of seeing is the eye, for example. But what Aquinas is concerned with here is the first principle of these vital operations; being such a first principle of life or being alive cannot belong to a body simply by reason of it being a body. If the latter were the case, then every body would be a soul or every body would be alive. Therefore, there must be something added to a material body that is alive that makes it to be alive; it is a body of a certain sort and the soul is what distinguishes it from inanimate bodies.

The second objection raises a subject that is going to be important in the sequel, that of cognition. The objection itself doesn’t seem to be all that coherent, but argues that the soul must be a body if it is to be able to have cognition of material objects. The objection appears to be coming from the point of view that in order to have cognition of material objects, some likeness of these objects must exist in actuality in some way in the body; like must be like in order for cognition to occur and therefore such likenesses must occur in the nature of the body. Aquinas argues that the cognition of something involves the body in passing from potentiality to actuality; the body is in potentiality to form a likeness of a material object. But this does not mean that the body need have the likeness of the material object in its nature, only that the potentiality to form such likenesses exists in its nature. In the sequel, Aquinas will say much more about how the body passes from potentiality to actuality in the process of cognition.

A2: Just as the first article of this question may disappoint for its limited scope, so this second article may take the breath away for its audacity. The human soul is subsistent; that is, it has some sort of existence apart from the body.

That the human soul continues in existence after the death of the body is, of course, a matter of divine revelation. But here, Aquinas is intent on arguing for part of this position on purely philosophical grounds. One immediately gets a sense of the direction of Aquinas’s argument from the first line of his response; he identifies the human soul as being the principle of the intellectual operations in humans. These intellectual operations allow us to operate on our perceptions of material objects in order to have cognition of their natures. What is more, we can have cognition of all material natures. Aquinas then argues that since this is the case, a human intellect cannot have within itself the nature of any particular material body, because such a presence would inhibit the cognition of that particular material nature. Likewise, intellectual understanding is not gained through a bodily organ, since the determinate nature of that organ would prevent us having cognition of the nature of that organ. (N.B. Aquinas does not argue that bodily organs are not involved in the total process by which we arrive at an intellectual understanding of a material nature; simply that they cannot be involved in the final intellectual cognition of such a nature.)

This means that the mind or intellect has operations (the intellectual operations) of its own that do not involve a material body. But in order to have its own operations it must be subsistent, as only those things that are actual can have operations. Therefore the intellect is both immaterial and subsistent.

The replies to the objections contain some important principles. The common teaching of the time was that the soul is the form of the body; therefore it seems to make no sense to speak of the soul as being subsistent, a this-something (hoc aliquid) since it is the form-matter composite that is the this-something, not the soul on its own. Aquinas answers that we can think of something like a hand as a subsistent thing, a this-something, that is a part of something that is a complete subsistent thing. The human soul is subsistent in the sense that the hand is subsistent as a distinguishable part of some greater whole; but it is not subsistent in the sense of being complete in itself. Likewise, when we think of how the operations of a part of the body (such the eye seeing) relate to the operations of the whole we should think in terms of the whole operating by means of the operations of the parts. The human sees by means of the eye; the human understands by means of his soul.

A3: Aquinas has argued in the second article that the human soul is immaterial and subsistent. What about non-human animals; are their souls subsistent too? Aquinas takes it as foundational that what distinguishes the human being from the non-human animal is that the former is in possession of an intellect whereas the latter is not. Non-human animals are sentient (and therefore in possession of a sentient soul) but they are not intellective; they cannot extract and abstract the quiddity of things from their sensations of things.

Aquinas acknowledges that Plato considered non-human animals to have subsistent souls, on the basis that although intellective activity is distinguishable from sentient activity, they both arise from immaterial principles. Aristotle, against Plato, argued that only intellective understanding is incorporeal and that sentient activity is completely associated with bodily change. Aquinas aligns himself with this position, arguing that sentient activity arises entirely from the activity of the conjoined body and soul. The sentient soul has no activity in and of itself and therefore cannot be considered to be subsistent. Again, it is important to note that Aquinas is quite willing to admit that bodily change occurs as part of the complete process by which humans arrive at an intellectual understanding of some object; it is the final step of intellection that is entirely immaterial in human beings.

A4: If one is a substance dualist, there is a danger that one may believe the body to be only a sort of container for what is really me; my soul. Similarly, an overemphasised spirituality will tend to downplay the role of the body in the human person. Having shown that the human soul is subsistent, one might also think that Aquinas would lean this way. But he will have none of this; I am not my soul, I am the composite of soul and body.

Aquinas offers two arguments in support of this position. For the first he looks at how one would understand the definition of human. For all natural things, the definition refers to both the form and the matter. One might refer to the definition of human in general (in which case one sees that man comprises soul and flesh and bone) or to a human (in which case one sees that this human comprises this soul and this flesh and bone). Either way, body is irreducibly part of the definition of human. For the second argument, Aquinas turns to what has been argued in the third article; the sentient operations of an animal are irreducibly performed by the soul/body composite. This much applies to humans as much as it does to non-human animals. Therefore one cannot understand the operations of a human (and therefore the human himself) without the notion of the soul/body composite.

A5: Is it possible that the soul is itself composed of matter and form? Aquinas offers two arguments against this. In the first argument he comes out and states explicitly that the soul is the form of the body. If there were some part of the soul that was material then we could simply ignore that part and take the immaterial formal part as being the form of all the rest and call that the soul.

The second argument is perhaps more interesting in the sequel and refers in particular to the human soul rather than to souls in general. The human soul is intellective and as such has the cognition of the quiddity of things. In order to have this cognition of a thing (such as a rock), the form of that thing has to exist in some manner in the soul of the person having the cognition. What is more, the cognition of that rock is a cognition of the universal, the what-ness of it, abstracted away from the particular rock. Now, we recall that matter is the principle of the individuation of things (this rock is different from that rock because it is composed of a different lump of designated matter). If the intellective soul contained matter, then the forms it receives in cognition would inform the matter of the soul and we would only receive those forms as individuals. Therefore since we know that the intellective soul has cognition of universals, it must be immaterial.

Aquinas emphasizes this latter position in the reply to the first objection, which involves a rather intricate argument about the connection between the neo-Platonic idea of procession and the Aristotelian ideas of actuality and potentiality. The soul moves from potentiality to actuality in cognition and therefore it seems that it would have to participate in pure potentiality (that is, prime matter) in order to do this. But the intellective soul does not receive individual forms in the way that prime matter receives individual forms. Rather the intellect receives absolute forms (that is, universals) and these are not individuated in matter. The receptive potentialities of prime matter and of the intellective soul differ from one another in this mode of reception.

The fourth objection raises the possibility that we might have too elevated a notion of human soul. A subsistent, immaterial form begins to sound a bit too much like God himself. Fortunately Aquinas has already gone through this problem in the case of the angels (Ia.q50.a1); in parallel with that argument, one must look to the composition of actuality and potentiality as being more primary that the composition of matter and form.

A6: One of the consequences of the human soul being a subsistent form (article 2) is that it must be incorruptible. Once having been created, the only way that a human soul ceases to exist is for God to remove its participation in being; it does not naturally die or degenerate or decompose with the death of the body.

To show this, Aquinas first distinguishes between per se and per accidens generation and corruption. When one considers the components of something composite, where the components do not subsist on their own, such as accidents or the forms of material objects, they are generated and corrupted per accidens. That is, they come into being and go out of being because the composite itself has come into or gone out of being. On the other hand, things that subsist per se can only come into being and go out of being per se. Their generation and corruption do not depend on some composite apart from the composition of actuality and potentiality; in particular, they only go out of being if their actuality, their esse, is withdrawn.

As the human soul is a subsistent form, it can only be corrupted per se, in common with any subsistent form. But being belongs to a subsistent form by its very nature; so in the natural order of things, it cannot cease to exist. The only way that a subsistent form can cease to exist is if God withdraws esse from it.

Aquinas goes on to offer two more arguments in favour of the incorruptibility of the human soul. The first covers the situation where one might take a wider definition of the soul to include some composition of matter and form (as in article 5). In this case, Aquinas argues that in order to corrupt, some form of contrary is required (one might think of a pathogenic attack within the body as being such a contrary). But although the human soul is able to form concepts of contraries, contraries themselves do not exist within the soul. Finally, Aquinas offers the heuristic argument that the intellect apprehends being in an absolute sense and that consequent upon that apprehension is a natural desire for that being. On the principle that a natural desire cannot be in vain, this would imply that the desire for being is never naturally frustrated for the human soul.

The third objection to this article argues that nothing can exist without its proper operation and that the proper operation of the human soul is intellective understanding using phantasms. But after death, there are no phantasms and therefore there can be no intellectual operations. In his reply to this objection, Aquinas grants that intellectual understanding in conjunction with phantasms is proper to the soul as it is united with the body. But he argues that when separated from the body it will have another mode of intellective understanding. He leaves the question of what this latter mode of understanding might be for Ia.q89.a1.

A7: The fourth objection to the fifth article of this question has already raised the spectre that the human soul as subsistent form might be too elevated a notion. The day was saved there by pointing out that a subsistent form can still be a composition of actuality and potentiality rather than having to be pure actuality. But we now recall that angels are pure forms that are compositions of actuality and potentiality; so are human souls simply some sort of species of angel? They are, after all, very similar to one another in nature in many respects. The particular question that Aquinas asks under this theme is whether the human soul belongs in some species of angel.

In answer, Aquinas reiterates the argument of Ia.q50.a4 where he showed that each angel inhabits a species of its own. Angels are immaterial and since matter is the principle of individuation within species there cannot be more than one individual angel within a species. The same argument extends to show that the human soul cannot inhabit a species already inhabited by an angel, as the human soul and an angel are clearly different (they have different intellectual operations, for example). Aquinas even goes so far as to extend the argument to the case where the human soul is considered to have some matter in it (as in article 5).

Notice that Aquinas seems to have laid a trap for himself. Surely the reasoning of this article means that distinct human souls must inhabit distinct species? Aquinas will address this problem in Ia.q76.a2.


Handy Concepts

• The Latin word that is translated in English as soul is anima. We can see the etymological connection to words such as animated and animal. The fundamental idea is that the soul is what distinguishes animate objects from inanimate objects.
• The reply to the first objection of the second article amounts to Aquinas’s denial of substance dualism.
• In this question, Aquinas uses a lot of terminology to which he doesn’t give strict definitions. He will go into much greater depth as he proceeds through this treatise and things should become clearer! For the moment, we’ll give some elementary introductions. Phantasms are introduced as things that the soul uses in its act of understanding. A phantasm is the image (composed of all sensory components) that the imagination calls to mind when thinking about an object. Similarly, Aquinas introduces the idea of the intellect which is that power of the soul that enables humans to have cognition of the what-ness (quiddity) of things. In the third article we see that Aquinas believes that non-human animals are sentient (in the sense of being able to sense things and to react to those sensations) but do not possess intellect; they are unable to abstract the what-ness of things from their sensations in the way that humans can. From a phantasm, the active part of the intellect (the active or agent intellect) extracts the quiddity of the object of perception. What results from this process of extraction is an intelligible species that is impressed upon the passive part of the intellect (the passive or possible intellect). From such an intelligible species, the intellect forms a concept of the object of perception.
• Not long after Aquinas died, the ecumenical Council of Vienne (1311-12) defined as a doctrine of the faith that the human soul is the form of the body. “…we reject as erroneous and contrary to the truth of the catholic faith every doctrine or proposition rashly asserting that the substance of the rational or intellectual soul is not of itself or essentially the form of the human body, or casting doubt on this matter”. (Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol 1, tr. Tanner, p 361. See also DS902).
• As non-human animals do not possess subsistent souls, they do not accompany us to heaven (or hell).
• In thinking about the fourth article, we might call to mind that Aquinas wrote, rather poetically, in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 (lecture 2, para. 924) “…but the soul, since it is part of man’s body, is not an entire man, and my soul is not I”.
• The idea that the soul itself might be a composition of form and some type of matter (article 5) is associated with Ibn Gebirol (Avicebron, 1021-70). The idea gathered some momentum in the Franciscan school after Aquinas’s death.
• Aquinas wrote much about human psychology in Book 2 of the summa contra gentiles; in many ways this material is more systematically arranged than that of the summa theologiae. In addition, he wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s de anima and there is a collection of Aquinas’s disputed questions de anima.
• By the end of this question we know that the human soul is an immaterial, subsistent and incorruptible form; the intellective nature of the human soul is what differentiates it from the non-human animals.

Difficulties

• As we have seen, Aquinas takes for granted quite a lot of terminology to do with the way that the human soul works, even as he is explaining it. We will provide some background in each question sufficient to understand the question and will provide a summary of how everything fits together once we have reached the end of the treatise. For the time being, a useful but compact reference for understanding Aquinas’s approach to the human soul is Chapter 4 of Wallace’s The Elements of Philosophy. A useful reference for placing Aquinas’s approach to human psychology in a wider context is Maslin’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. One may, of course, also wish to dive into Aristotle’s de anima!
• In the first article, Aquinas’s argument that the soul is not a body appears to amount to nothing more than an emphasis of his definition; the soul is that which differentiates between living and non-living things. Aquinas takes it as self-evident that there is a fundamental qualitative difference between things that are alive and things which are not. It’s important to note that Aquinas’s ambitions in this article are very limited; he is not arguing for the immateriality of the soul (he will do that later). Rather, he is arguing that some material bodies possess vital operations and that such operations cannot be explained simply by the fact that a body is a body.
• The line of reasoning that Aquinas takes in the second article may disappoint, given all the avenues that he could have taken (such as the argument from intentionality, the argument advanced in the fifth article, or the arguments presented in the second part of the summa contra gentiles) and even given that he could have bolstered the argument that he has used. Perhaps we are seeing a consequence of the order that Aquinas has chosen to present the material on human nature; in order to present a more convincing argument he would have had to develop more sophisticated preliminaries; perhaps he felt this not suitable to the grade of student he was writing for!

Back on the Road Again

Hello everyone! We're finally under way again with posting commentaries on the summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. It's been a long break - for which I apologize - but the last year has been quite difficult and busy. I thank all of you who have held my family in your thoughts and prayers.

I've just had a very refreshing week in the Peak District of Derbyshire. A glass of wine in one hand and the Treatise on Human Nature in the other; I feel it is time to get going again!

This treatise, among other things, describes a systematic human psychology. However, one has to work quite hard to extract it from the format that Aquinas uses for the summa. I'll try to extract bits of it question by question in the "Handy Hints" and "Difficulties" sections of each question commentary and will write a systematic exposition (rather like the Introduction to Metaphysics linked off the sidebar) when we get to the end of the treatise.

Question 74 - The Seven Days as a Whole

Why this Question Matters.

Aquinas has given us an account of the individual days of creation; all that remains for him to do in this question is to wrap up a number of issues that do not naturally fall into the account of any one particular day of creation. Here we get an account of the sufficiency of the days of creation and of the language used to describe the creation events. Also, we get a final examination of the account of St Augustine compared to what may be called the majority view of the other Fathers of the Church.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: The first article is dedicated to the question of whether seven days were sufficient for the creation of the world. In a structure unusual for the summa, a first group of objections are made for the seven days not being enough time followed by a second group of objections that suggest that seven days was far too long!

The first set of objections are all based on assertions that, frankly, God should have spent much longer on various components of creation because the time allotted to these components was unbalanced relative to the other things mentioned in the creation account. Against this position arguments are then put that some of the seven days were a bit superfluous.

In answer, Aquinas reiterates his description of the structure of the creation story. From an initial undifferentiated creation two groups of three days are identified wherein the basic structures of the world are formed and populated. Quoting Aristotle quoting the Pythagoreans, a perfect harmony is found in having a beginning, middle and end.

Augustine’s position on the creation in their causes of some elements of the world is revisited as well as his observation about the nature of the number six. (Six is a perfect number, being equal to the sum of its divisors).

A2: Aquinas has paid careful attention throughout this treatise to the differences between the interpretations of the Genesis account of creation according to St Augustine on the one hand and the majority of the Church Fathers on the other. This article is devoted specifically to a critical examination of Augustine’s position; are all the “days” referred to in the Genesis account really referring to temporal succession or are they rather a cipher for the structural organization of a world fully created in one instant?

In favour of instantaneous creation, Aquinas quotes a passage from Genesis immediately following the account of the seven days that appears to support such an interpretation: “These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth: And every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew”. Here it appears that the preceding seven days are subsumed under “the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth”. Similarly, Ecclesiasticus 18:1 states that “He that lives forever, created all things together.” Another point in favour of instantaneous creation is the fact that the creation event on each “day” appears to be instantaneous: what purpose then would the rest of each day serve? There seems to be no point in God inserting any time between the creation events.

Against these objections, however, the sed contra points out that the text of Genesis appears to be very clear in establishing some sort of temporal succession in the events of creation.

Aquinas does not attempt to adjudicate between Augustine’s interpretation and that of the other Church Fathers. His intention appears to be to show that both interpretations are consistent with the literal meaning of the text; in so doing, he is content to give a brief exposition of these different approaches. According to Aquinas, Augustine interprets each of the “days” of the creation account as corresponding to some angelic knowledge. So, for example, the first “day” of creation corresponds to angelic knowledge of the (ontologically) first creation event. In this way, the seven days of creation correspond to seven “layers” of angelic knowledge about the structure of creation. The other Church Fathers, however, take the view that the Genesis account is relating a real succession in time of the events of creation.

Aquinas makes the following curious observation. He claims that when these two accounts are compared as interpretations of the text, they differ considerably from one another; but when they are interpreted according to the manner in which things were produced, there is no great difference between them. What he has in mind here appears to be that, although Augustine takes the Genesis account to be describing the structure of an instantaneous creation and the other Church Fathers take it to describe the temporal unfolding of that creation, what actually happens in the development of those things is the same. So, for Augustine, the Genesis account describes the forms of matter as a structural layer upon its unformed state and the creation of certain beings in their causes rather than actually; what will happen next (i.e. after the events related in Genesis) will be a development of this world that corresponds to the account given by the other Church Fathers.

Even with this attempt at a harmonization of the different accounts, Aquinas admits that there are differences between them that cannot be reconciled in this way. He is content to merely list those differences and to reply to the objections without prejudice to either account.

A3: The final article of this treatise is devoted to the way in which scripture expresses the work of the creation. Its structure is unusual in that it is composed of a number of objections to the language used in scripture together with their replies; there is no master’s determination of the answer. It gives the appearance of Aquinas tidying up a number of loose ends not previously dealt with. There are seven objections; most of them take the form of objections to things omitted (where is the creative Word of God so familiar from the opening of John’s Gospel, for example), or to expressions used.

The answers to these objections are mostly straightforward. We will only illustrate with the answer to the third objection: there appears to be no reason for omitting the refrain “God saw that it was good” from the work of the second day. The answer allows Aquinas to discuss the Trinitarian aspects of creation; although the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned in the Genesis account, Aquinas argues that strong hints are dropped. For example, the person of the Father is implied by God creating, the person of the Son is implied by the beginning in which He creation (remember the opening of John’s gospel); and the Holy Spirit is the spirit that moves over the face of the waters. “God saw that it was good” is omitted from the account of the second day because the work of differentiating the waters is completed on the third day; the refrain for that day should be taken as applying to the work of the second day too.


Handy Concepts

• The description of the days of creation in the Genesis account are sufficient for what the author wished to communicate and show a fitting balance and coherence.
• Six is a perfect number, being the sum of its divisors. In Aquinas’s text, an aliquot part of a number is a number that divides it leaving no remainder (i.e. an exact divisor).
• In Augustine’s account, the days of creation correspond to layers of angelic knowledge about the structure of the world.
• To a certain extent what will happen to the world after the events of the creation story (according to Augustine) will correspond to what happens during that story (according to the other Fathers of the Church).
• Although the Trinity is not explicitly mention in the creation account, its Trinitarian structure is clear.

Difficulties

• The second article appears to have four objections but five answers to objections. What is happening here is that Aquinas is not so much replying to objections as showing that the objections and their contraries are consistent with scripture. So the fifth reply to objections is actually a reply to the sed contra.
• It may appear surprising that Aquinas is not willing to come to a decision about whether St Augustine is correct in his interpretation of Genesis. After all, we may be used to the idea of the scholastic approach as one that grinds out correct answers. This example is a good illustration that such a view is a parody. In like manner, the magisterium of the Church has always been loath to determine a particular meaning of individual scriptural passages; such teaching has been restricted to the exclusion of incorrect interpretations in times of doctrinal crisis.
• Likewise, having set up a critical examination of St Augustine’s account, it seems that Aquinas doesn’t really go into the question to the depth it deserves. Perhaps his intention is to get his readers to read De Genesi ad litteram for themselves!
• This last question of the treatise on the hexaemeron seems a bit of an anti-climax. Instead of a culminating survey of all creation we get a loose collection of issues not dealt with in the questions about the individual days of creation.

Question 73 - The Work of the Seventh Day

Why this Question Matters.

“So the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the furniture of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”

The events of the seventh day of creation were always considered something of an enigma in the commentaries. Did God really just give everything a blessing, sit back and take it easy? Such a picture is too anthropomorphic, of course. St Augustine famously differed from the other Church Fathers in his account of the seven days of creation, but some aspects of his thought – the creation of things in their causes, for example – did enter the common tradition. If we think of the last day of creation as the first day of the unfolding of the potentiality of the newly created world, we will get closer to how the medieval commentators saw the meaning of this day. Aquinas’s task in this question, therefore, is to explain the function of the last day of the Genesis creation account keeping close to the letter of the text whilst avoiding anything too simple minded.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: How are we to understand the claim that the universe was complete by the end of the Genesis creation account? Aquinas points out that completion of something can be interpreted in a number of ways. In particular, one can talk about the initial completion of something wherein it is brought to be what it is. But one can also talk about its final completion insofar as it achieves its final end. One might talk about completing a house after one has finished building it; but equally one might prefer to consider it complete after it has served its function as the home for many generations of families. This second form of completion is, in a sense, caused by the first because it is in the first that the thing concerned receives its form; this latter is what gives it the power to be what it is.

When considering the universe as a whole, its ultimate completion lies in the perfect beatitude of the blessed at the very end of the world; however, its initial completion was realized on the seventh day. Perfect beatitude requires both nature and grace; the initial completion of nature occurred on the seventh day and the initial completion of grace lay in the incarnation of Christ. The consummation of nature and grace at the end of the world pre-existed causally in these two events.

One might object to the account of the seventh day given in Genesis because it is unclear in that account that God actually does anything; after all, He simply stops and rests! But Aquinas claims that although God did not create any new things after the sixth day, He set the completed creation on its course with its proper operations. The work of the final day of creation is to set the world on its course towards its final completion. This also accounts for the fact that God did not cease creating thing after the seven days of creation; for example, He creates new souls daily. Those things that are made by God after the seven days of creation are not so new that they do not in some sense pre-exist in the work of the seven days. As Augustine observed, many things are created in their causes and we can also observe that many things pre-exist materially in the sense that they come to be naturally out of the matter created in the first seven days. The creation of new souls may seem an exception to this pattern, but Aquinas argues that they are not new as a kind of thing. Similarly, the incarnation is rightly seen as a unique event but the components out of which it comes to be already exist either in God Himself or in the work of the sixth day.

A2: In what sense can it be said that God rested on the seventh day? After all, God is not a corporeal body capable of hard labour in the ways that humans or animals are. Aquinas identifies rest as the opposite of movement; but we still have to identify what movement means in the context of a spiritual being such as God. The word movement can be applied in a transferred sense to spiritual beings in two ways: on the one hand it can refer to any sort of operation; on the other it can refer to the tendency towards the fulfilment of a desire. So rest refers to either the cessation of operation or to the fulfilment of a desire.

Both of these two possibilities can be applied to God’s resting on the seventh day. The operation of creating new beings has ceased by the seventh day; in addition, God has completed what He willed the creation to be.

Aquinas also makes the important point that God has no need for creation, being complete in and of Himself. This is the reason, he claims, for the text reading that “He rested from them” rather than “He rested in them”; God gains nothing from creation and therefore would be wrong to visualize Him resting amongst what He has created deriving pleasure from it.

A3: As we have seen in the second article, God’s rest on the second day can be taken in two senses: ceasing to create new things; and in having completed what He willed. Corresponding to these two modes of resting there are two ways in which God’s blessing of creation on the seventh day can be taken. Reference to Genesis 1:22 suggests that the blessing is associated with their governance whereby they “increase and multiply”. On the seventh day God is turning to the governance of what He has created in the first six days; therefore we can understand the blessing of the seventh day in the sense of this governance. The second sense of blessing can be seen when we consider that the things created by God themselves rest in God; to bless is to make holy which is precisely to be dedicated to God, to rest in Him.

The objections to the idea that this blessing is appropriate to the seventh day suggest that in creating each thing God is already diffusing His goodness and that the act of creation in itself provides an individual blessing on each created thing. The seventh day seems to be a time when nothing like this should be done, as it has already been done. Aquinas’s answer has indicated the ways in which the blessing of the seventh day should be understood. From this answer it is clear that the blessing of the seventh day is associated with the divine providence whereby things that are either created, or created in their causes, unfold their being.


Handy Concepts

• The work of creation is complete by the seventh day in the sense that all the components that make the world what it is are in place. This does not exclude the evolution of the universe or the addition of new things later on; nothing radically new, however, is added to the world after its initial creation.
• God’s resting on the seventh day can be understood in two ways: God has ceased his operation of creating new beings by the seventh day; in addition, God has completed what He willed the creation to be.
• God’s blessing of creation on the seventh day can be understood in two ways: His blessing is expressed through His governance whereby things increase and multiply; and those things created by Him rest in Him.

Difficulties

• Aquinas makes no effort in the third article to connect God resting on the last day of creation with the requirement that man should rest on the seventh day. This seems a little odd, but he returns to this theme in IIaIIae.q122.a4.

Question 72 - The Work of the Sixth Day

Why this Question Matters.

“And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle, and everything that creeps on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.

And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon. And it was so done.

And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And the evening and morning were the sixth day.”

As with Ia.q70 this question comprises only one article which asks whether the work of the sixth day has been adequately described in scripture. Perhaps the most noticeable thing about this article is that it omits any discussion of the creation of mankind. This, however, was quite conventional; accounts of the hexaemeron left out the creation of man so that it could be discussed in a separate treatise. In the case of the summa, this discussion will appear in Ia.q90-q102.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: The first four objections that criticize the adequacy of the account of the sixth day may strike one as extraordinarily pedantic. Only the fifth and sixth objections appear to contain any barbs. The fifth objection is founded on the fact that medieval science asserted the possibility of some animals arising from putrefying matter, which seems quite out of place in the primordial stages of creation. The sixth objection finds it strange that dangerous and poisonous animals, those that can be harmful to man, should arise before the entry of sin into the world.

Aquinas’s reply continues the pattern set by the answer to the last question: the account of the sixth day is perfectly apposite as it describes the third day of adornment paralleling the third day of diversification. Again, Augustine’s opinion is stated in contrast to the other Church Fathers: the animals created on the sixth day are created in their causes rather than actually.

Aquinas meets the fifth objection by agreeing with the objection that animals that are produced from the putrefaction of other animals could not have happened actually at this stage of creation; such animals would only have been created in their causes. However, animals produced from the putrefaction of lower created (inanimate objects or plants, for example) were produced at this stage of creation. The answer to the sixth objection is a largely made up from a delicious quotation from St Augustine: someone entering the workshop of an artisan would find many dangerous tools there; the artisan knows how to put them to their proper use even if the visitor does not. Aquinas adds that before sin came into the world man would have used the things of the world in an appropriate fashion and none of the dangerous animals would actually have posed a threat to him.


Handy Concepts

• The sixth day corresponds to the third day of adornment which in turn is parallel to the third day of diversification.
• Oddities in the creation account may sometimes be explained by our lack of comprehension of the purposes for which things were created.

Difficulties

• The idea that some animals are produced from the putrefaction of other animals is not one retained in modern science. This knowledge would actually have made Aquinas’s task of commentary easier.

Question 71 - The Work of the Fifth Day

Why this Question Matters.

“And God created the great whales, and every living and moving creature, which the waters brought forth, according to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And he blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea: and let the birds be multiplied upon the earth. And the evening and morning were the fifth day.”

This question and the next are unusual in that there is only one article in each of the questions. In this question the topic under consideration is whether the account of the fifth day given in Genesis is consistent with medieval science. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this question from a modern point of view is to see where the medieval understanding of the generation of life agrees with modern understanding and where it disagrees.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: The objections state the case that the account of the fifth day is inconsistent with the scientific understanding of life processes of the middle ages.

In his answer, Aquinas returns to the theme of the division of the structure of the Genesis account into a fundamental creation, the work of diversification and the work of adornment. Here he concentrates attention on the parallel accounts of the work of diversification and the work of adornment: for each day during the work of diversification in which the basic structures of the world came to take their final form there corresponds a day of adornment in which each of these structures receives its mobile contents. The fifth day is the second day of adornment, corresponding to the second day of diversification in which the waters came to take their final form. Therefore the Genesis account is quite consistent when taken in terms of what the author intended to communicate.

As a coda, Aquinas mentions that Augustine, having believed that the luminous heavenly bodies were actually created on the first day of adornment, returns to the idea that the creatures created on the second day of adornment were created in their causes rather than actually.

Turning his attention to the first of the objections, Aquinas points out that as far as nature is concerned, any generation involves the interaction of an active and a passive principle. The passive principle is matter and the active principle is either semen or the power of the sun (the latter in the case of spontaneous generation arising from putrefaction). However, the natural scientific understanding of the matter is, as far as the creation account is concerned, beside the point. In creation, the active power involved is the Word of God; it is the second Person of the Trinity that is bringing things to be by acts of supernatural creation. The rest of the objections are dealt with by careful attention to the possible meanings of the text of the creation account.


Handy Concepts

• The account of creation in Genesis parallels the days of the work of diversification and the days of the work of adornment. The creation of animals on the second day of adornment parallels the second day of diversification in which the waters are given their final form.
• Objections to the creation account of Genesis based on an understanding of natural science have to beware of the fact that the active principle in creation is the Word of God.

Question 70 - The Work of the Fourth Day

Preamble

In the patristic and medieval understanding of the days of creation, the days that we’ve seen so far were considered as devoted to the creation of the basic structures of the universe. In this question and the next three we see an account of how those basic structures were filled out in the work of adornment, before the final questions of this section of the summa that consider the seventh day, God’s day of rest, and the six days of creation as a whole.


Why this Question Matters.

“And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: to shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. And it was so done. And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars. And he set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth; and to rule the day and the night, and to divide the light and the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and morning were the fourth day.”

In this question Aquinas discusses the work of the fourth day of creation, the creation of the luminous heavenly bodies (that is, the sun the moon and the stars). As before, he argues that the place allotted to this act of creation in the general scheme is commensurate with that general scheme. He also discusses what these luminous heavenly bodies were created for and touches upon a medieval debate concerning whether they are animated.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: Following the pattern of earlier questions, Aquinas asks about the appropriateness of allotting the creation of the luminous heavenly bodies to the fourth day. The first four objections find arguments against this that are based on thinking about the general temporal order of what must have been produced before what. The fifth objection attacks the idea that the Sun and the Moon should be described as “two great lights”, on the grounds that medieval astronomers already considered other stars to be larger than the Sun and Moon.

Aquinas answers by giving a summary of the general structure of the account of creation given in Genesis. This structure is threefold: a work of creation in which an unfinished heaven and earth are produced; a work of distinction in which heaven and earth are completed in themselves; and a work of adornment in which things are put into heaven and earth. In particular, Aquinas identifies the second three day period of creation as describing the filling of the earth and heavens with moveable things. First among these moveable objects are the heavenly bodies that produce light: the sun, the moon and the stars. Aquinas pays special attention to the account of Augustine. In many ways Augustine’s account differs from the majority of the other Fathers of the Church; but here he is in accord with them. Augustine holds that the Sun, moon and stars are actually produced on the fourth day, not merely produced in their causes.

In answering the objections Aquinas identifies that in Augustine’s account the problems associated with temporal succession simply do not arise; Augustine considers the creation account as describing the natural structure of the world, not the temporal order of its coming to be. In the account of the other Church Fathers the objections are met by recognising the split between the work of creation and the work of distinction; things that might seem to be created too late in the Genesis account are actually created in inchoate form earlier on. Aquinas also makes mention of the teaching of John Chrysostom and of Basil the Great to the effect that some of the creation account takes into consideration the weakness of man in his propensity to fall into idolatry. If Moses had described certain things like the luminous heavenly bodies very early in the account of creation, this would have risked providing motivation for them to be considered as divine.

Finally, although other heavenly bodies might actually be larger than the sun and the moon, the sun and the moon have much greater influence on earthy things and they subtend a greater angle in the sky; it is quite appropriate for them to be described as the “two great lights”.

A2: What were the luminous heavenly bodies created for? The Genesis account gives a number of reasons for their creation, but the objections raise difficulties with each of these. Aquinas explains this passage by turning to a passage from Deuteronomy 4:19 where Moses warns of the danger of idolatry that may arise from an over-estimation of the role of these heavenly bodies. We recall from Ia.q65.a2 that there are four fundamental types of reason for any corporeal body: for its own proper activity; for the benefit of another creature; for the good of the cosmos as a whole; and for the glory of God. Aquinas explains that Moses only touches upon the benefits that accrue to the creature man from the luminous heavenly bodies in the Genesis passage, precisely to draw people away from the danger of idolatry.

When considered from the point of view of the benefit of humanity, the account given in Genesis is seen to be coherent. The heavenly bodies aid the sight of humans and guide their work; they drive the changing seasons; and they forecast favourable and unfavourable times for certain human occupations.

A3: The subject of the third article, whether the luminous heavenly bodies are animated, would seem to be fantastical to modern sensibilities. Why ever is Aquinas even asking this question? The reason for this question is that the idea that the heavenly bodies were in some sense alive or that they participated in some sort of world soul had a long history in platonic and neo-platonic thought; the reception of Arabic writings into the West renewed interest in the question.

Aquinas presents five objections that support the notion that the heavenly bodies are animated. The first three of these objections are based on various ways in which the heavenly bodies should be considered more noble than inanimate bodies: the luminous heavenly bodies adorn the heavens rather than the earth; the forms of the luminous heavenly bodies are clearly more noble than those of plants and animals; the sun and the moon are the causes of life on earth and a cause is more noble than its effects. This position in the hierarchy of nobility should be reflected by a corresponding position in the hierarchy of forms. The final two objections are based on the heavenly bodies as moving bodies: the movement of the heavenly bodies is a natural movement coming from within; they are in some sense self-moving. Therefore, as it is only living things that are self-moving, the heavenly bodies should be considered as associated with a living body.

After a very swift historical review of pre-Christian and Christian opinions on the matter, Aquinas attacks the thesis that the heavenly bodies are alive by analysing the reason for the union of soul with body in living things. The union of the soul with the body is for the benefit of the soul, not for that of the body in the same way that, more generally, form and matter unite for the benefit of form rather than matter. We must also recall that the nature of a soul is discovered through its activities; these are what it is for. The soul requires a body in order that the body may carry out some of the activities of the soul. So the nutritive soul requires a body to gain nourishment; a sensitive soul requires a body in order to sense. Similarly, a body provides the sensory images which lie at the foundation of intellective activity in the human being.

But these activities are simply not appropriate to a heavenly body. A heavenly body does not undergo growth through nourishment, so it makes no sense to claim that it has a nutritive soul. Similarly, there is no reason to associate a sensitive soul with a heavenly body (especially if, as Aquinas points out, it is formed from the fifth element that has nothing sensible in common with the earthly four elements). The only two operations of a soul that could be associated with a heavenly body are movement and understanding. Aquinas easily rules out the latter, so only the former, that of movement, is a possibility.

Having shown that movement is the only property of a soul that can be associated with the heavenly bodies, Aquinas argues that movement does not require the composition of a soul with a body. All that is required is some contact of power between an intellective soul and the heavenly body. What Aquinas is thinking here is that the heavenly bodies should be considered as the object of the prime mover; the unmoved first mover moves the heavenly bodies but there is no reason that these movements require that the first mover be united with the heavenly bodies as form is to matter. The apparent self-moving nature of the heavenly bodies should only be associated with the notion of a living body in an equivocal sense; Aquinas is willing to assert that the disagreements between those who assert that the heavenly bodies are living and those that do not is actually only a verbal disagreement due to this equivocation.


Handy Concepts

• The work of creation is threefold: the creation of the universe leads to the completion of its basic structures in the work of diversification and this in turn is followed by the work of adornment in which the universe is filled with moveable things.
• Augustine agrees with the other Fathers of the Church in that the luminous heavenly bodies are actually created on the fourth day rather than just being created in their causes.
• Some of the features of the creation account in Genesis may be explained by the author’s wish to avoid accidentally leading his readers into idolatry.
• The account of the creation of the luminous heavenly bodies in Genesis focusses on the benefits that accrue to mankind from them.
• Aquinas rules out the animation of heavenly bodies by arguing that out of all the things that an animating soul is for, the heavenly bodies only display movement. Furthermore, movement does not require the union of a soul, as form, with matter, as movement can be explained by some contact of power.

Question 69 - The Work of the Third Day

Why this Question Matters.

“God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered together into one place; and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And he said: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And it was so done. And the earth brought forth the green herb, and such as yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that bears fruit, having seed each one according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.”

The work of the third day sits at the boundary between the formation of the fundamental structures of the universe and the population of the universe with things. The two articles in this question address problems that might seem to arise from the text itself or from the interpretation of the text in the light of the scientific understanding of the time. However, one might better see this question as allowing Aquinas to give an extended description of the interpretation of the creation account due to St Augustine in the context of the majority interpretations of the other Church Fathers. St Augustine sees the creation account as an account of something that occurs instantaneously; the procession of events is a literary device that really refers to the internal structuring of reality. The other Church Fathers see the account as being temporal. These two interpretative threads offer different (and possibly complementary) ways of approaching the difficulties in the text.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: The work of the creation was conventionally divided into the work of diversification and the work of adornment. In the first, the universe came into being and its inchoate matter was formed into the basic parts of the world we know. In the second, the world is filled with content. The gathering of the waters described in this section of Genesis stands at the division of these two periods of creation; the question set in this article as to whether the scriptural account is a fitting description of the gathering of the waters reflects this division.

The objections to the scriptural account divide into two sorts: on the one hand there are two objections based on features of the text and on the other there are three objections based on medieval science. The first textual objection observes that up to now the work of creation has been described in terms of making whereas here we have a gathering of what has already been made. This appears to break the pattern set by the other works of diversification. Next, the earth is named as being made at the beginning of the creation account; but here we have it mentioned as resulting from the gathering of the waters.

In his answer, Aquinas distinguishes between two major exegetical approaches to the creation account. The first is the approach of St Augustine who saw the creation account of Genesis as describing an instantaneous creation of everything. In this account the succession of events described is not a temporal succession but an account of the ordering of nature from its most fundamental structures upwards. In such a hierarchical but non-temporal account, what is being described is the meaning and structure of creation. In this account the gathering of the waters is seen to refer to the distinction between the substantial forms of water and of earth in distinction to the inchoate form of matter in general that ontologically precedes these forms.

The other major approach to the Genesis account does see it as an account of the temporal succession of events. Here, matter is created in an inchoate form and exists as such for a time before it receives diversification into its particular forms. Particular pairings of words in scripture can be seen as specifying how different parts of primeval creation lacked their eventual forms: so heaven is paired with darkness; water is paired with deep; and earth is paired with invisible or void. In this approach the work of the third day is seen as an imposition of form on the inchoate earth and water, bringing them to a state where they can be distinguished.

Aquinas now turns to the objections, answering each from both the points of view of Augustine and of the other Church Fathers. That the term “gathering” is appropriately used here instead of “making” follows on the one account from the descent down the hierarchy of being from the more noble to the less and on the other account from the simple fact that the stuff involved has already been made by the third day. Likewise the double reference to the creation of the earth can be understood as referring to the creation of the inchoate earth and to its later (either in time or in meaning) specification or even as a type of equivocation.

Likewise, having put these clarifications in place, Aquinas can deal with the science based objections. For example, the fourth objection states that “gathering” involves a change of place that is natural to a substance like water; what need is there for a divine precept to get the waters to gather? Aquinas answers that it is by the divine precept that water comes to have its natural properties.

A2: Why is it that the creation of plants is allotted to the third day? After all, plants are not the only form of life and it might seem more appropriate to mention the most primitive forms first. Also one might have thought that mentioning basic structures of the earth such as stones and metals would take priority. Similarly, why mention the adornment of the earth by plants in a part of the creation account that is dedicated to diversification?

Aquinas distinguishes between two types of lack of form for the earth that are remedied on the third day of creation. The first type of lack corresponds to it being described as void or invisible and the second type corresponds to it being described as empty or shapeless. The first type of lack is remedied by the gathering of the waters that distinguishes between earth and water and the second type of lack is remedied by the creation of plants. So the account of the third day should be seen as a type of completion making up for a lack, rather than as part of the adornment of what is already complete in itself.

Here again, Aquinas distinguishes between the opinion of St Augustine and the opinions of the other Church Fathers. In St Augustine’s reading of Genesis as an account of the structure of nature as instantaneously created, the creation of plants on the third day is taken as referring to the powers to bring forth vegetative life that are given to nature. These powers are examples of what St Augustine calls seminal reasons in nature and which Aquinas describes here as examples of things that are formed in their causes.  Part of the structure of nature is such that it not only exists in itself but it has powers or causal potentials to evolve new forms, especially involving forms of life.

Other writers interpret the account of the third day as referring to the actual creation of concrete individual plants within species but that such creation does not involve the coming to be of all plants species. Within the plants that are created on the third day lies the power to create not only like from like but new species.

As for the objections, Aquinas argues that plants can be seen as a primitive form of life in that they do not have locomotion or sensation. Their fixedness within the earth makes it appropriate that they are described along with the creation of the earth. Similarly, Moses does not describe everything in the creation account, favouring those things obvious to the senses; rocks and minerals deep in the earth are occult and so are not described.


Handy Concepts

• St Augustine explains the creation account as an account of the structure of nature from the foundations upwards. The majority of other Church Fathers read it as a temporal account of the coming to be of the universe. Aquinas leaves both options open.
• Using St Augustine’s approach to the creation account, the gathering of the waters can be seen as identifying the structure of nature that distinguishes dry land from wet water.
• Using the other account, the gathering of the waters can be seen as the imposition of a more specifying form on inchoate matter.
• In St Augustine’s account the third day of creation is taken as referring to the seminal reasons within nature.
• Other Church Fathers take the third day of creation as referring to the creation of actual plants; though not the complete range of plant species, some of which remain in potentiality within those that are created.

Difficulties

• In the second article Aquinas alludes to the opening verses of Genesis describing the earth as “invisible or void” and “shapeless or empty”. The “invisible” and “shapeless” appear to be textual variants known to Aquinas.

Question 68 - The Work of the Second Day

Why this Question Matters.

“And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament from those that were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and morning were the second day.

On the second day of creation God creates a firmament that divides the waters above from the waters below. But what is this firmament and what is the nature of the waters that it divides? Engaging with pre-Christian cosmology and patristic tradition, Aquinas sorts through various understandings of this passage, discarding some but leaving others open to consideration.


The Thread of the Argument

A1: The text of Genesis relating to the second day of creation is troubling. We are told that a firmament is created that divides the waters and that this firmament is called Heaven; but according to the opening verses of Genesis, Heaven was created before there were days at all. When was this firmament created, and what is a firmament anyway?

In preparing to answer this seeming contradiction Aquinas makes his own the two principles of Augustine on the interpretation of such questions. The first principle is that scripture is true; one cannot resolve such paradoxes simply by claiming error in the scriptural account. The second principle is that if there are a number of possible explanations for the scriptural passage, one should not maintain as definitive any that are patently falsifiable. Faith and reason are co-principles for the interpretation of obscure passages of scripture.

Having said this, Aquinas has cleared to the way for a discussion of some possible meanings for this passage. He divides the interpretations according to what they take the scientific explanation of the firmament to be. In the first case, the firmament is taken as referring to where the stars are located; in the second, to being the part of the atmosphere where clouds undergo condensation. The first set of possibilities is then further divided into interpretations that depend upon what the firmament is made of. Aquinas runs through these possibilities showing that some of them are consistent with the scriptural account whereas some are not. When he turns to the second group of interpretations, he is able to argue that these don’t suffer from the problems of the first group and that therefore they are preferable from the point of view of the harmony between faith and reason.

In answering the apparent contradiction between Heaven being created before the beginning of days and the firmament (called Heaven) on the second day, Aquinas turns to St John Chrysostom. The latter argued that opening of Genesis is a summary of what comes later; somewhat like “the builder built the house; he did this by digging the foundations and then building the walls…”

In addition to Chrysostom’s resolution of the contradiction, Aquinas recalls alternative explanations that differentiate between the Heaven of the opening verse of Genesis and that of the second day. In these explanations, Heaven is being used in an extensive sense, much as we are willing to describe the vista of the stars as “the heavens” whilst still calling the domain of the blessed “Heaven”.

A2: The waters appear to be divided into those below and those above the firmament. But how can there be waters above the firmament? Water is a liquid that has weight and would therefore tend to fall downwards; similarly as a liquid it would not be stable on the sphere of the firmament posited by medieval cosmology. What would the purpose of water be above the firmament? It would seem that water’s natural purpose is fulfilled here on Earth, below the firmament.

Aquinas reiterates Augustine: the placing of waters above the firmament may sound odd, but scripture has greater weight than human opinion. We cannot doubt that they are there; what we can inquire into is what they are.

Aquinas immediately rejects Origen’s opinion that the waters referred to here are purely spiritual substances; these waters are material. Exactly what material form they take can be the object of speculation that will depend upon the prior explanation of what the firmament is taken to be. Although Aquinas favours the opinion that the firmament is the place of the clouds over the opinion that it is the place of the stars, he still leaves those parts of that explanation consistent with the scriptural text open here. He offers various explanations of what the waters above the firmament are based on these accounts of the firmament. Turning to the idea that the firmament is the place of the clouds, he claims that the waters above the firmament are those that are evaporated from the Earth and taken up to be the source of rain.

The objections are met by a number of arguments relating to the different explanations of the nature of the waters above the firmament. Aquinas follows Augustine in rejecting miraculous explanations that would answer these objections. God has created Heaven and Earth such that their regular functioning flows from their natures; it is into these that we should inquire. Whatever the waters above the firmament are, we must admit the possibility that they exist in a form different from the waters below the firmament even if they are essentially the same sort of stuff. For example, the waters above the firmament may exist as vapour (and thus would not fall to Earth) or as ice (and thus could be crystalized around the sphere of the heavens). As for the purpose of the waters above the firmament, in the favoured view of the firmament they are there to provide rain; but there are corresponding explanations for the other views of the firmament too.

A3: Continuing the enquiry into what the firmament is and what it does, Aquinas asks about how the firmament can be said to separate the waters above and below. If we look at things from our point of view, it seems patently obvious that the waters do not stretch up to the firmament, whichever of the views one takes on the nature of the firmament. How then can we say that it is actually the firmament that divides?

The main concern in this article appears to be to banish certain ancient theories about what the waters are. Aquinas argues that the scriptural text has to be interpreted in the light of the ignorance of Moses’ original readers: Moses writes in terms of things directly perceptible to the senses, so that those readers could understand what was written (to a limited extent). Many false explanations of scripture have resulted from failing to take into account this principle. Whether we take the firmament to refer to the place of the stars or to the place of the clouds, and if we understand the term “water” to have some latitude (i.e. referring to unformed matter or any transparent body), then the scriptural text raises no problems and the objections melt away.

A4: In Ia.q66.a3 we have already seen that the word “heaven” is rather overloaded with different meanings. If we further consider the fact that the Latin word that Aquinas is using is “caelum” and the ambiguity of the words used in various languages to talk about the sky or the heavens, one soon sees there is ample scope for confusion. Asking whether there is only one heaven allows Aquinas to put some order into this chaos.

Aquinas identifies three different fundamental uses of the word “heaven” in scripture. The first usage corresponds to that already referred to in Ia.q66.a3: the heavens as understood through scientific cosmology. In this understanding the heavens are divided into the empyrean heaven, the aqueous (or crystalline) heaven and the sidereal heaven; we recall that some authors identify the empyrean heaven as the place of the blessed. The second usage associates heaven with some property of the heavenly bodies (something we still do when we use the word “heavenly”). The third usage is a metaphorical one where spiritual goods or even God Himself is referred to as heaven.

The answer to the question as to whether there is only one heaven then depends upon which of these uses is in view. Differentiating between different facets of heavenly creation leads to a multiplicity, but considering the created universe in its unity (as heaven and earth) leads to singularity.


Handy Concepts

• Scripture must always be taken as true. However, interpretations of scripture that are patently falsifiable by means of reason should be rejected.
• Aquinas identifies two main lines of interpretation for what the firmament is: on the one hand we have the firmament as the place of the stars, on the other the firmament as the place of the clouds. Aquinas favours the second without ruling out the possibility of the first.
• In the same way that we might be flexible in our understanding of the firmament, we might also be flexible in understanding what the waters referred to by scripture might be.
• In the answer of the second article Aquinas identifies the fundamental physical principle that “a natural body cannot be divided or rarefied without limit, but only up to a point”.
• The author of scripture was writing for the unlearned and condescended to his audience by restricting his descriptions in the creation account to those things directly perceptible to the senses.
• The word “heaven” has many meanings in scripture; care is needed to understand which is being used where.