The Intelligibility of the World and the Divine Ideas in AquinasAuthor(s): Mark D. JordanSource: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Sep., 1984), pp. 17-32Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20128116Accessed: 17/10/2009 13:39

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THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD AND THE DIVINE IDEAS IN AQUINAS

MARK D. JORDAN

J. here are several answers in Aquinas to the question, what is

the ground of the world's intelligibility. The fullest answer is contained by the account of creation and expressed in the doctrine

of divine Ideas. I would like to trace the lines of that doctrine in

Aquinas's corpus as a means of showing how an account of creation

at once clarifies and inverts the analysis of natural intelligibility. Let me begin, however, by distinguishing several roles played

by the divine Ideas in medieval Latin philosophy. The Ideas may be considered as active either in human knowledge or in divine

knowledge. In human knowledge, the Ideas may appear, first, as

a ground for cognitive certainty. Thus, they can serve as the

objects or the medium or the efficient causes of the highest sorts of human knowing.1 Alternately, second, they may figure as the

referents for certain classes of privileged propositions.2 In divine

knowledge, the Ideas may serve as either the "principles" of God's

knowing or the "exemplars" of His creating.3 These two are,

however, inseparable on Thomas's account and so may be treated

together as a third role for the Ideas.

Aquinas touches on the divine Ideas as exemplars in at least

1 Among Thomas's contemporaries, the obvious example for one of

these views would be Bonaventure, for whom see John F. Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure's Philosophy (Toronto: P.I.M.S.,

1973), pp. 492-498. 2 For the discussion among Thomas's immediate predecessors of the

Ideas in this role, see Steven P. Marrone, William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste: New Ideas of Truth in the Early Thirteenth Century

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 44-45, 126-127, 167, 171, and 194-195. On Grosseteste, compare James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 320-364, especially pp. 324-326, 328, and 345.

3 Compare Summa theologiae I, q.15, a.l, corp.

Review of Metaphysics 38 (September 1984): 17-32. Copyright ? 1984 by the Review of Metaphysics

18 MARK D. JORDAN

ten texts over nearly twenty years, the whole length of his teaching career. The persistence of the topic is good evidence that the

ideas were not mere anachronisms for him, not concessions to an

"Augustinian" tradition.4 The ten works divide rather neatly by date into three separate clusters: those of the final formation and

first regency at Paris; those of the mid-1260s at Rome and Viterbo; and those of the second Parisian regency.5 The chronological

divisions are not matched, however, by any simple "progress" in

doctrine. Indeed, a first reading will show the remarkable consis

tency of Thomas's teaching. The same questions recur, the same

authorities are quoted, the same dialectic is rehearsed from the

writings on the Sentences through a late quodlibetal question. If

there is a progress underneath the textual persistence, it is by

way of Thomas's further appropriation of the position he adopted as a young master. The consequences discovered on reflection

may be radical, but they are not revolutionary. This is but another

case in which Thomas's relation to philosophical and theological traditions proves too subtle to be plotted out as a "progress" or

"development."

For this very reason, Thomas's first treatment of Ideas in the

scriptum on the Sentences needs close attention. In structure, it

resembles treatments in Thomas's immediate precursors and con

temporaries.6 The general context is that of the divine knowledge;

the particular context, how the things that God knows are "in"

4 For the view that the Ideas are extraneous to Aquinas's genuine thought, see Robert J. Henle, St. Thomas and Platonism (The Hague: M.

Nijhoff, 1956), p. 359. L.-B. Geiger considers and rejects similar views on his "Les Id?es divines dans l'oeuvre de S. Thomas," in St. Thomas

Aquinas, 1274-1974: Commemorative Studies (Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1974), I, pp. 175-209, especially pp. 176-180.

5 Throughout this paper I follow the chronology of works in the

revised edition of James A. Weisheipl's Friar Thomas d Aquino (Wash ington: Catholic University of America Press, 1983). 6

For example, Alexander of Hales, Glossa super quatuor libros

Sententiarum, I, dist. 36; (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaven

turae, 1951-57), I, pp. 357-358. Geiger notes the doctrinal parallels between Thomas on the Ideas in the Sentences and Alexander's first set of disputed questions, edited as Quaestiones disputatae uantequam esset

frater" (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1960); see

Geiger, "Les Id?es divines," p. 191, note 42. See also the Summa attributed to Alexander, which is in fact a later Franciscan redaction of

materials from him, p.I, q.23, memb.4, a.l; and Bonaventure, Commentarius in quatuor libros Sententiarum, I, d.35, a.l, qq.l, 2, 4.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 19

Him.7 Thomas asks about both what God knows and how He

knows. The divine Ideas answer to the second question as the

chief means of God's knowing. In the specific treatment of the

Ideas, there are three articles. The first explains what is meant

by a divine 'Idea'; the second argues that the Ideas are plural in

some sense; the third shows that there are Ideas for everything known by God. This pattern of inquiry is typical for Aquinas. He will unfold it in De veritate by separating the topics of the third article according to the five sorts of thing known by God.8

Later still, he will return to the original, threefold pattern for the

prima pars of the Summa. Both De veritate and the Summa will

preserve the contextual association of the treatment of the Ideas

with the larger discussion of divine knowledge.9 The basic account in the Sentences depends on the common

notion of the Ideas as "operative forms" according to which God

makes and governs the world. The common notion is expressed

by translating the Greek 'idea? as 'forma' and hearing in both terms the language of human artistry. Every act of intelligent

making requires that the maker have in mind the form of the

thing to be made. According to Thomas, philosophers have often

said that every thing exists "in" the highest being as in the mind of an artisan. Christians specify the common philosophic opinion

by saying that the ideas exist in God as "pre-definitions" or "pre

7 Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, I, d.36 divisio textus; ed.

Mandonnet, I (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929), pp. 828-829. 8 The unfolding follows these equations: Sent. I, d.36, a.3, ad lm

= De verit, q.3, a.4. Q.2, a.3, ad 2m =

q.3, a.5. Q. 2, a.3, ad 3m =

q.3, a.8. Q.2, a.3, ad 4m =

q.3, a.7. De verit, q.3, a.6 is not directly treated

in the earlier text, but can be inferred from that text and such other passages in the Sentences-commentary as d.38, q.l, aa.4-5.

9 The placement of the discussion of the Ideas is perfectly defensible

in Thomas on grounds of traditional arrangement and substantive

connection, but it seems to have misled some modern exegetes to understate the consequences of the Ideas for ontology. So Garrigou Lagrange in his textbook commentary, De Deo Uno (Paris: Aubier, 1938), devotes only three pages to the Question on the Ideas from the prima pars of Thomas's Summa (pp. 373-375). Construing the Question as a corrective concession to Plato through Augustine, he draws a merely epistemological lesson from it: "Sic sanctus Doctor . . . remanet tarnen in via realismi moderati Aristotelis, et omnem excessum idealismi vitat"

(p. 375). Even Gilson, much more the master of contextual nuance, devotes but two paragraphs of Le Thomisme to the Ideas (5th ed. [Paris: J. Vrin, 1944], pp. 180-182).

20 MARK D. JORDAN

determinations" for His production of creatures.10 It follows that

the Ideas are at once speculative and practical. They are the

means for God's knowing and for his making. Still, they are more

properly practical, since they are the "exemplars of things." There are several points to be noted within or under the text

of this article. The first is that Thomas begins the discussion of the Ideas having already taken up the Platonic and Aristotelian

models of artistry into the divine act of creation. The tensions of that appropriation?tensions in a most important and paradoxical of metaphysical analogies?will emerge in a moment. The second

point is that Thomas argues from the common opinion of philosophy to the specific tenets of the Christian teaching about creation.

Indeed, he mentions the quite problematic philosophic doctrine of

Averroes concerning the virtual presence of all forms in the

celestial mover. The harmony of philosophic opinion and Christian

belief is only temporary, however, since Christian faith in provi dence must soon correct the false inferences of philosophy. These

two points?the balance of Platonic to Aristotelian claims and the

ambivalent relation of philosophy to faith?will color the whole discussion of the Ideas.

Thomas continues: Are there many Ideas in God? God does

know singulars?so much was established in an intricate article

of the first question by appeal to direct divine providence.11 Creatures are difform, imperfect imitations of the divine essence.

Idea' means nothing but the divine essence as imitated. There

10 Scriptum d.36, q.2, a.l; ed. Mandonnet, p. 839. Thomas does not

speak of Christian believers; he says, more frankly, "loco nos in Deo dicimus." Compare for example, Summa theoi I, q.15, a.3, ad 3m, where the contrast is also between a philosophic tenet and the faith.

11 Scriptum I, d.36, q.l, a.l. On the importance of providence, recall

these remarks from the solutio: "Sed quia nos ponimus Deum immediate

operantem in rebus omnibus, et ab ipso esse non solum principia formalia, sed etiam materiam rei: ideo per essentiam suam, sicut per causam, totum quod est in re cognoscit, et formalia et materialia . . ."

(ed. Mandonnet, I, p. 832). In that first article, Maimonides appears as an authority for God's knowledge of singulars, but is then faulted for

treating human knowledge as only equivocally related to the divine. The reference is to the Guide of the Perplexed, III, chapters 17-20; the same

passage will be used by Thomas again in his own argument for providence in Contra Gentiles III, c.71, n.ll. In these pages, Maimonides contrasts the philosophic denial of particular divine knowledge with the Scriptual affirmation of it.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 21

are, then, Ideas corresponding to the multitude of singulars. More

loosely, there are many "idea-like notions" according to which

God understands His essence to be imitable in a certain mode.

Indeed, the plurality of the ways in which God can be imitated is the cause for the plurality of things and not conversely.12 Thomas

is concerned, however, that a loose way of speaking not betray the

unity of the divine essence. Thus he prefers to speak of a

"plurality of Ideas" rather than "many Ideas."13

It follows quite easily that there are Ideas for everything

which God knows, since everything that exists is produced by God

according to some productive form. Here one sees the insepara

bility in God of the Idea as "exemplar" and as "principle of

knowing." But distinctions are needed. Evil, for example, is

known only as a privation, since it is only a privation. Again,

speaking strictly, prime matter has no separate Idea, but is

comprehended within the Idea of the composite being, which has

complete being, esse perfectum.14 Each particular being, having esse perfectum, also has a corresponding Idea in God. Let me

repeat: every concrete singular, every singular substance, answers

to a distinct divine Idea.15 Thomas seems to qualify this extraor

dinary conclusion by adding that there is a more intelligible distinction between two forms than between two enmattered

individuals. Individuation is according to matter, which does not

perfectly have an Idea.16 Thomas finds a related gradation with

regard to accidents: they have incomplete being and so fall short

of the distinctness of an Idea. Since they have being by imitation of the divine essence, however, that essence is their Idea.17

So far, I have re-told the treatment of Ideas in the Sentences

commentary. There are textual and dialectical points in it which

need now to be drawn out. The textual points concern the

authorities which guide the argument. The chief explicit aucto

ritates are Augustine from the Book of Eighty-three Questions and

Pseudo-Dionysius from the Divine Names. The passage from

12 Scriptum I, d.36, q.2, a.2, ad 3m; ed., Mandonnet, I, pp. 842-843.

13 Scriptum I, d.36, q.2, a.2, ad 4m; ed., Mandonnet, I, pp. 843.

14 Scriptum I, d.36, q.2, a.3, ad 2m; ed., Mandonnet, I pp. 844-845.

15 Scriptum I, d.36, q.2, a.3, ad 3m; ed., Mandonnet, I, pp. 845.

16 Scriptum I, d.36, q.2, a.3, ad 3m; compare the ad 2m.

17 Scriptum I, d.36, q.2, a.3, ad 4m; ed., Mandonnet, I, p. 845.

22 MARK D. JORDAN

Augustine provides Aquinas with historical matter on the Platonic

Ideas, with etymology, and with the claim that the Ideas are the "stable and unmoving forms or reasons" of things.18 Augustine ends with a remark which Aquinas does not take up?at least not

immediately. The pure soul's vision of the Ideas, Augustine

concludes, makes it most blessed.19 This authoritative text thus

presents Aquinas with a concrete case of the relation between

philosophy and revelation. It also seems to imagine an episte

mological reification of the Ideas which threatens divine simplicity. The authority of Dionysius helps correct the reification by

stressing the absolute singularity of the divine exemplar. Diony sius calls the exemplars "substantifying reasons" pre-existing

"uniformly" in God.20 By means of these exemplars, God "pre defines" and "produces" all things. Dionysius attacks a certain

philosopher, one Clement, who wished to diminish the role of the Ideas by making exemplarity hierarchical. Thomas likes the

example of Clement and repeats it regularly.21 More importantly, he adopts the general Dionysian principles which emphasize both divine exemplarity and divine unity.

Augustine and Dionysius are authorities cited in Aquinas's text. An unmentioned "authority" is Albert's commentary on

Dionysius's Divine Names. It is well known that Thomas copied out Albert's commentary in his own "unintelligible" hand while a

student in Cologne.22 But there are more connections than the

biographical. The one quaestio which Albert determines at the

end of chapter 5 in the commentary is reflected in Thomas's first

article on the Ideas.23 Some particular objections and replies

18 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, ed. Helmut

Mutzenbecher (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 44A, p. 71, 1. 27: "formae vel rationes rerum stabiles atque

incommutabiles." 19

Augustine, De diversis questionibus, p. 73, 11. 65-71. 20

(Ps-)Dionysius the Areopagite, De divinis nominibus, in Dionysiaca, ed. Philippe Chevalier (Tournai: Descl?e de Brouwer, 1937), I, p. 360. Thomas seems mainly to follow the version of John the Saracen ("S"), as did Albert in his commentary on the Divine Names.

21 See Scriptum I, d.36, q.3, a.2 sol; De verit, q.3, a.7; Contra Gentiles

I, c.54, ed. Marc (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1961), II, p. 66, #454. 22 See James A. Weisheipl, Thomas d Aquino and Albert His Teacher

(Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1980), Etienne Gilson Series 2, pp. 5, 7. 23

Albert the Great, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, cap.5, nn.26-39; ed. Paul Simon (Munster: Aschendorff, 1972), Opera Omnia 27/

1, pp. 324-326.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 23

appear in both texts.24 More substantively, Albert also provides

seeds for arguments even where he does not provide an exact

formulation. Most importantly, Albert's commentary reconciles

the plurality of Ideas with divine simplicity and underscores the fact of Ideas for concrete singulars.25

Within the circle of these authorities, Thomas's achievement

is to secure the principle of direct exemplarity for the disposition of beings within providence. This is the upshot of the principle that entities with esse completum have a corresponding Idea. The

principle reminds the reader of the double exemplarity of God,

with respect both to esse and to essence. The exemplarity of esse

is primary: God is first imitated by beings as they are beings. How could it be otherwise, since the Ideas are perspectives on a

divine essence which is the essence of ipsum esse subsistens, of the

perfect act of being? The principle is also secured by seeing that an Idea is the operative form for creation, which is the giving of

being. Even things with something less than complete being are

related to the Ideas in two ways. First, they seem to have a

corresponding Idea in some loose sense. Second, and significantly,

they can be said to imitate the divine essence, to have it as their

Idea, so far as they can be said to exist in any sense. The single

existing thing, the particular composite of form and matter with

its accidents, stands in relation to the Ideas as a direct effect of

divine creation and as a subject of divine providence. Behind the

qualifications and the parsings of authority, this is the conclusion

of Thomas's treatment of the Ideas.

It is a startling conclusion for Aristotelian ears on at least

two counts. First, it would seem that knowledge of an individual,

24 Albert's fourth objection (pp. 324-325,11. 62-64) becomes Thomas's second (p. 838). Albert's third objection from operation (p. 324, 11. 56

61) is transposed into Thomas's third objection from the specific operation of knowledge (p. 839).

^Albert, Super Dionysium, p. 325, the replies to the second and fifth objections (11. 28-37 and 51-56 respectively). Something of the medieval dialectic provoked by the teaching that the one God creates

many creatures directly is narrated by Bernard J. Muller-Thyme, The Establishment of the University of Being in the Doctrine of Meister Eckhart of Hochheim (New York and London: Sheed & Ward, 1939), especially pp. 94-102. The same dialectic is treated with little reference to the particular features of the medieval texts in Vincent P. Branick, "The Unity of the Divine Ideas," The New Scholasticism 42 (1968): 171 201.

24 MARK D. JORDAN

partial similitude would be something like knowledge of an acci

dental image; it would depend on a prior understanding of the

original, the positive term. That is partly why there is no science

of accidents or privations in Aristotle.26 Second, the Aristotelian

paradigm for intelligibility, so far as it is an account of definition

by class-inclusion, seems incompatible with the account of the

divine Ideas. Thomas does concede that formal distinctions are

more intelligible than material ones because the latter are less

complete in being. But this concession is only a parenthesis in an

argument which moves towards the radical intelligibility of the

singular. Moreover, Thomas's talk of immaterial beings refers

not to abstract forms but rather to particular angelic substances.

Underneath the play of authorities, then, there is a more

decisive dialectic of Platonic and Arisotelian tenets. On the one

hand, Thomas wishes to dissociate himself from the Platonic

understanding of the Idea. To it, he opposes both Aristotle's

critique and the convictions shared by Christian believers. On

the other hand, Thomas wants to subordinate the assumptions

about abstractive intelligibility in the Aristotelian model of science to an intelligibility of individual substances with esse completum. Of course, the intelligibility of the concrete substance depends on

its relation to God in creation and providence. Those relations

are deeply obscure. Each relation ties the intelligible character

of the world to God's self-understanding. In divine knowing there

is neither predication, nor abstraction, nor judgment. Human

understanding, by contrast, begins by collation of sensibly perceived

particulars, making meaning out of them by subsuming them

under logically manipulable classes. If the intelligibility of the

world depends upon the direct exemplarity of the divine essence

in particulars, then abstractive knowing is at best a distant and

refracted acquaintance with reality. Thomas says, in a common

place, that truth exists in the human mind properly but second

arily.27 The commonplace is now seen to imply that the mode of

truth in the human mind is entirely different from the mode of

the original truth in divinity. I do not think that Thomas shies away from these consequences

of his doctrine. On the contrary, he states them more and more

26 For example, Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I, 6, 75al8-27.

27 De veril, q.l, a.2; Summa theol I, q.16, a.l.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 25

clearly in subsequent texts. There is no time to go through every

text with care, but a few salient passages can be taken in

chronological order. I begin with the two other texts of the first

group. In De veritate, written only a few years after the Sentences

commentary, Thomas covers the same ground in more detail.

After rehearsing the Platonic rejection of Ideas for accidents

(using the authority of Dionysius and the story of Clement), he advances the Christian belief in God's role as the immediate cause

of every particular thing, including accidents.28 He then distin

guishes a hierarchy of complete and incomplete entities with

regard to the Ideas and further separates proper from occasional

accidents. Proper accidents are comprehended in the divine Idea

of their subjects; occasional accidents are known by a distinct

Idea. Under the loose sense of Idea', every accident can be said

to have a distinct Idea in God. In the next article of De veritate, Thomas turns to the question

of Ideas for individual physical things.29 He narrates Plato's

refusal to posit Ideas for singulars; he gives as Plato's reasons the

role of matter in individuation and the intention of nature in the

species. Thomas opposes to the Platonic view the belief in the universal providence of God. This belief in providence implies

divine Ideas for singulars. The relation of these particular Ideas

to species and genus is taken up in the reply to the second

objection. Strictly speaking, genus and species are comprehended

within the being of the singular. There is one Idea of Socrates within which his genus and his species are contained. More

loosely, when 'Idea' means no more than similitude, the various

considerations of Socrates as being in a genus or a species can be

said to have distinct ideas.

Here again, however much Thomas's intention has been to

disentangle himself from the Platonic notion of Idea, the doctrine

of Ideas in Thomas stands as much in opposition to parts of the

alternative Aristotelian account of knowledge. So Thomas con

cedes, at the end of the contemporaneous treatment of Ideas in

the Contra Gentiles, that the doctrine of Ideas is a certain vindi

28 De veritate, q.3, a.7; Leonine ed., 22/1 (Rome: Editori di San

Tommaso, 1975), p. 114: "Sed quia nos ponimus Deum immediatam causam uniuscuiusque rei . . ."

29 De veritate, q.3, a.8; Leonine ed., pp. 115-116.

26 MARK D. JORDAN

cation of Plato.30 The concession follows upon a technical eluci

dation of the relationship between the plurality of Ideas and the

unity of the divine substance. The elucidation contains an arith

metical analogy that Thomas takes from Book Eta of Aristotle's

Metaphysics.31 The occasion for Aristotle's digression is the Pla

tonic doctrine of eidetic numbers; his point seems to be to make

some sense of what is, on its face, a difficult doctrine. Both in the

Contra Gentiles and in his commentary on the Metaphysics, however,

Thomas takes the positive side and accepts the analogy between

forms and numbers as reasonable.32 For the Ideas, the arithmetical

analogy provides a precise and even elegant means for describing

the generation of the Ideas as serial subtractions or privations

with regard to the divine substance.

Creatures are privative imitations of God by being subtractive

versions of His essence, arranged as in a numerical series; the

addition or subtraction of a single unit changes the definition of

the species.33 Now the use of a mathematical analogue could have

been suggested to Aquinas by Augustine, who uses a geometrical

example in his discussion with Nebridius of the question about divine exemplars for singular beings.34 Augustine admits that it

is a "great question" for which no similitude can be found as an

answer. He proposes, however, a geometrical example of parts

30 Contra Gentiles I, c.54; ed. Marc II, p. 66, #454: "In quo etiam

aliqualiter salvatur Platonis opinio ponentis Ideas . . ." The text in this

part of the Contra Gentiles shows an unusual history of revision. The

autograph contains two prior versions of Chapter 53 and shows that the

present text was settled on only at an even later stage of review (Leonine ed., vol. 13, pp. 20*-21*). At the end of the present Chapter 54, there are also three false starts on Chapter 55 (Leonine, p. 22*). The reasons for the revisions seem to vary. The first try at Chapter 53, for example, is rightly rejected as more prolix and diffuse than the final version. It

may also show Thomas extricating himself from his own mention of the

practical/theoretical distinction in the correlative passage of the Sen tences?and perhaps from Maimonides' concern with sense and imagi nation in the Guide, III, cc. 19-20. I cannot find in the deleted passages any abandoned doctrine substantially different from that in the final text.

31 Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII, 3, 1043b32-1044al4; ed. Ross (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1924), II, with commentary pp. 233-234. 32

For the commentary on the Metaphysics, see lib.8 lect.3; ed. Cathala (Rome and Turin: Marietti, 1977), p. 412, ##1722-1727.

33 Contra Gentiles I, c.54; ed. Marc, II, p. 65, #448.

34 Augustine, Ep?stola XIV, PL 33:80.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 27

and wholes. Although there is one notion (ratio) of an angle

which governs all angles, nonetheless one cannot have the notion

of a square without having at once the notion of four angles.

Thus each man can be made according to the single notion of man;

but the notion of a crowd requires the notion of many men. So

too Nebridius, who is a part of the universe, is known as a part

through the God's knowledge of the whole. If Thomas garnered the suggestion for a mathematical ana

logue from Augustine, he does not follow Augustine's reasoning.

The logic of the part-whole relation is not sufficiently precise for

Thomas's use in explaining how an indefinite series of distinct

forms can be generated by imitation of a single substance. His

problem is not one of a comprehensive vision of embracing parts

but rather of precise, formal distinctions among the parts. Thus,

he abandons the spatial characteristics of the geometric example

for the numerical example in Aristotle. In so doing, he also gives

particular prominence to the privative or substractive features of

the Aristotelian/Platonic eidetic arithmetic. His application of the Aristotelian analogy is characterized by words for subtraction

and negation.35 It is in virtue of such subtraction or negation

that the divine essence may be taken as the "proper reason for

singulars."36 It is the privative description of the ideas that

secures the direct relation to singulars. In the textual motion

from the Sentences commentary to the Contra Gentiles, the treat

ment of the Ideas becomes at once briefer and more explicit. Far

from softening the difficulties of his first position, Thomas presses

forward to its consequences.

The same motion continues through the first ten questions

anthologized as De potentia; through the response to the Master

General on propositions from Peter of Tarentaise;37 through the

35 It is interesting to note that Aquinas did go on, in the first false

start after Chapter 54 (see note 30, above), to return to the part/whole analogy in arguing for the simultaneity of God's knowledge of all creatures. Of course, in such a context the notions of spatial inclusion are fused with those of temporal sequence, which are considerably more useful.

36 Contra Gentiles I, c. 54; ed. Marc, II, p. 66, #451: "Sic igitur patet quod essentia divina, inquantum est absolute perfecta, potest accipi ut

propria ratio singulorum" (emphasis added). 37 Responsio ad Ioannem Vercellensem de articulis 108, ##66-67;

Leonine edition, 42 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1979), p. 289,11. 776

28 MARK D. JORDAN

commentary on the Divine Names; and into the prima pars of the

Summa of theology. The De potentia dwells on the Ideas in relation to the possibilities for the divine will.38 The commentary on the Divine Names secures Thomas's reading of Dionysius

directly.39 The Summa brings together and clarifies the various

points of the previous teaching.40 One finds in it the tenets of divine unity, of the artistic analogy, of the divine will, and

especially of divine providence. Each tenet serves to revalue the

Platonic notion of Idea' and the Aristotelian emphasis on the

intelligibility of species. After the Summa, there are only three other texts in which

Thomas discusses the Ideas. Each of these is worth separate

consideration. The fourth set of quodlibetal questions, disputed according to the received chronology during the Easter season of

1271 in Paris, begins with the question, whether there is a plurality of Ideas in God.41 Here, surprisingly, the structure of the deter

mination would seem to suggest that Thomas gives a negative answer. Arguments and authorities which had earlier appeared

in support of Thomas's view now figure as objections. The deter

mination of the question hinges on a distinction between two sorts

of plurality. The first is a plurality of things. There is no such reified plurality in God. The second plurality is a plurality "according to the reason of understanding." There is a plurality

of ideas in this second sense, which plurality is had in God's self

understanding. Indeed, 'idea' means "a certain form understood

by the agent, in the likeness of which he intends to produce an

exterior work." The conclusion is the same as before. Why does

Thomas reverse the rhetoric? The answer is not difficult, I think.

Thomas is moving away from the term 'idea' and towards a

greater emphasis on the unity of the divine essence as variously

795. For a discussion of the divine Ideas in this expert opinion and in the Sentences-commentaries of Thomas, Bonaventure, and Peter of Tar

entaise, see Kent Emery, Jr., "The 'Sentences' Abbreviation of William de Rothwell, O. P., University of Pennsylvania, Lat. MS. 32," forthcoming in Recherches de Th?ologie Ancienne et M?di?vale (1984). 38

De potentia Dei, q.3, a.16, ad 12m and ad 14m; ed. Pession in

Quaestiones Disputatae, II (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1965), pp. 89-90. 39

Expositio super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, cap.5, lect. 3. 40

Summa theol I, q.15, aa. 1-3. 41

Quodlibetales IV, q.l, art. unicus; ed. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome:

Marietti, 1956), p. 71.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 29

imitated. Since each particular thing has an Idea so far as it is

an imitation of God, there is no longer much need to speak of

exemplars or Ideas. In the direct imitation of God by creatures,

Ideas are otiose: "so then the divine essence, in so far as it is

imitable in this way by this creature, is the proper reason or idea

of this creature." There is no need for a middle step.

The next text which discusses the Ideas, the commentary on

the Liber de causis, poses many exegetical difficulties. It is easy

to find several passages, nonetheless, in which Thomas follows

Dionysius and the Liber in correcting the Platonists with regard to a plurality of Ideas apart from God.42 God is the absolute

unity in which all perfections are contained and from which all lesser beings are imitated.43 The whole discussion is in terms of

exemplary qualities, of course, since it follows the rhetoric of the

Liber itself. Despite such rhetoric, Thomas looks to the plurality of concrete substances, both sensible and intelligible. Universality becomes a property of spiritual individuals, who participate as

particular substances the various qualities eminently contained in

God.44 God is the sufficient source of all because of His simplicity; His power reaches down to all things. Their participation in Him

is their relation to the Ideas. In the Liber de causis, then, as in

the fourth quodlibet, Thomas seems willing to vary the terminology if he can secure the essential logic of his position. The qualifica

tions and the authorities have dropped away; what remains is the

bare teaching that the divine essence is the sufficient and direct

exemplar of all created being as particular and particularly

disposed.

If the bare teaching remains, so do the quandaries. It would

seem that the doctrine of creation would secure the intelligibility of the world by providing it with a purely intelligible ground. The doctrine does secure intelligibility?for the divine mind. If created

essences are substractive views of the divine essence, their full

comprehension still requires a reference to the divine essence,

along the lines both of essence and existence. In so far as the

divine essence is known to itself in a manner which is in principle

42 Expostitio super librum De catcsis, lect.3, 4; ed. Pera (Turin and

Rome: Marietti, 1955), ##65-75, 120-121, respectively. 43 Super De causis, lect.3, Pera ##73-74; lect.4, Pera #121.

44 Super De causis, lect.3, Pera ##73-74, lect.4, Pera #121.

30 MARK D. JORDAN

inaccessible to unaided human knowing, the divine Ideas explain

intelligibility only to remove it from human power. This was the

difficulty latent in Augustine's mention of the vision of the Ideas and in Dionysius' program of apophatic ascent. The intelligibility is surely there, but not for human minds as naturally active.

The dialectical inversion, by which the assertion of a supreme

intelligibility becomes the denial of final understanding for unaided human minds, is not unusual in Thomas. Indeed, it is suggested

whenever he distinguishes the intelligible "in itself" from the

intelligible "for us." But the dialectical inversion is particularly important in the case of the Ideas because it there affects the

whole account of created intelligence. The particular inversion

becomes, after and beyond Thomas, the radical basis of the critique

of human knowing in a writer such as Nicholas of Cusa.45 Thomas

does not go so far, of course, but the rudimentary dialectic is

present in him.

The dialectic points to a late text?perhaps Thomas's last text

on the Ideas. It is the reportatio of Thomas's commentary on the

Gospel of John, a text written just before or at the same time as

the fourth quodlibet and the exposition of Liber. The reportatio brings forward the suggestion which Thomas has been making

from the beginning in a line of texts which runs parallel to the

metaphysical treatment of the Ideas considered thus far. Within

Trinitarian theology, it is possible to specify the "locus" of the

divine Ideas as the person of the Son. "Whoever makes something

must pre-conceive it in his wisdom, which is the form and reason

of the thing made, just as the form preconceived in the mind of the artist is the reason of the art to be made. So therefore God

makes nothing except according to what is conceived in his

intellect, which is the wisdom conceived from eternity, namely the

Word and Son of God. And so it is impossible that He should

45 For example, Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia, lib.2, cap.3;

ed. R. Klibansky (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1977), pp. 110-111. For Thomas's mixed relation to Cusanus on the Ideas, see Kurt Flasch, Die Metaphysik des Einen bei Nikolaus von Kues (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), p. 272; Willi

Schwarz, Das Problem der Seinsvermittlung bei Nikolaus von Kues (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), pp. 16-25, 27, 38. For Cusanus as a reader of Thomas, see Rudolf Haubst, "Nikolaus von Kues auf Spuren des Thomas von

Aquin," Mitteilungen und Forschungen der Cusanus-Gesellschafl, 5 (1965), pp. 15-62.

THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF THE WORLD 31

make anything except by the Son."46 It is the Son who acts as

exemplar in the act of the creation; it is the Son who can be said to contain the Ideas. As Thomas had written much earlier in

Book IV of the Contra Gentiles, the Word of God is the "perfect existing intelligibility of all things that are made."47

The Contra Gentiles explains the assertion in some detail.

Everything that God makes He makes through the Word; the Word is like a subsistent artist's model, the living plan of things made by God.48 Unlike the models and forms of human art, the

Word itself co-operates in creation.49 The "content" of the Word

is the divine essence. The Word is to creatures as exemplar, but

to the Father as image.50 Again, the Word is the likeness and utterance of the Father, so that the creation is the likeness of a

likeness, the Word's word.51 As exemplar to creation, the Word

contains all the essences of things "before" they exist in their

proper natures.52 Of course, these things pre-exist in the Word

according to the Word's manner of being?pre-exist, that is,

without composition, eternally, immaterially. They pre-exist in

the Word's own essence, as the Word Himself. Creatures are,

then, the "real expression and representation of those things

which are comprehended in the conception of the divine Word."53

The Christian belief in direct divine providence had appeared several times in Thomas's arguments against the Platonists. It

now becomes clear that the Ideas are fully understood only when

they are placed in the Trinitarian person of the Son and His

46 Lectura super Ioannem, Reportatio, lect.l, c.2; ed. R. Busa in Opera

omnia (Stuttgard-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1981), VI, 232, col. 1. If the first five chapters are not a reportatio but an expositio, then this section would have been written by Thomas himself. In any event, the whole reportatio was corrected by Thomas; see Weisheipl,

Friar Thomas, p. 372, #33. 47

Contra Gentiles IV, c.13; ed. Marc, III, p. 272, #3491. 48

Contra Gentiles IV, c.13; ed. Marc, III, p. 272, #3493. 49

Contra Gentiles II, c.76; ed. Marc, II, p. 225, #1578. 50

Contra Gentiles IV, ell, ed. Marc, III, p. 268, #3474. 51

Contra Gentiles IV, cell and 13; ed. Marc, III, p. 268, #3477, and

p. 271, #3489, respectively. 52 Contra Gentiles IV, c.13; ed. Marc, III, p. 272-273, #3494.

53 Contra Gentiles IV, c.42; ed. Marc, III, p. 332, #3803: "Sic igitur

omnes creaturae nihil aliud sunt quam realis quaedam expressio et

repraesentatio eorum quae in conceptione divine Verbi comprehenden tur . . ."

32 MARK D. JORDAN

activity in creation. These two theological doctrines appear at

just the points where the doctrine of the Ideas affirms an absolute

intelligibility for singulars which is not accessible to abstractive

human knowing. Their appearance at the limit of a philosophical

inquiry marks that inquiry's discovery of an inversion in its logical

development. The doctrine of creation by intelligible exemplars

would seem to secure the intelligibility of the created world. In

fact, the doctrine by itself places any final intelligibility beyond the reach of human powers.

This consequence may very well have salutary effects in the

moral order: it may check vanity and aid in a theological protreptic aimed at philosophers. Within philosophy, however, the conse

quence raises a question about the question of intelligibility: What

sort of ground is required to support an adequate human knowledge

of natural things? For Thomas, as the doctrine of Ideas makes

clear, philosophy may know nature adequately without being able

to reach the ground of natural intelligibility at all.

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