Thomism: Creator & Creation
By considering being and essence, together with conceptualization and judgment, we come to know the most important truth, namely, that 'God is' and that 'reality is a relation of Creator and creation.'
In my first essay on fundamental Thomistic teachings I outlined the two most foundational principles of the Thomistic worldview, those of being (esse) and essence (essentia), together with their close correlation in the composition of each and every finite being (ens). Simply stated, being actualizes and essence determines, so that we have actual dogs and their dogginess, actual cats and their catness, actual humans and their humanness. The whole of reality emerges from the conjunction of these two principles and everything can be reduced to them as to their final ground, for all beings, precisely as actual and determinate, are upheld, embraced, and permeated by being and essence.
It was important to begin here, for as Aquinas notes in On Being and Essence,
Since a slight error in the beginning becomes a great error in the end, and since being (ens) and essence (essentia) are the primary conceptions of the intellect, we must make clear what is meant by the terms essence and being already at the outset so that we will not err from ignorance of them.[1]
One could think of this insight by way of a geographical analogy: If I were to set out for a distant city as the crow flies, and if I were only one degree off in my initial orientation, should I travel the correct distance to my destination I would miss my goal by a great length. But this is true of all ventures, not only those geographical. Therefore, should I wish to bring any venture to completion, including the venture of knowing and understanding, I must begin at the right point of departure and I must depart from this place in a rightly orientated way—that is, if I am to reach my destination.
In the knowing and understanding endeavor, that starting point is found in the first conceptions of the intellect, in being and essence, where ‘being’ represents the conception we form of an actual existent, and ‘essence’ that of the intelligible determination of this same existent. Then, together with these first conceptions comes another kind of intellectual operation central to understanding reality in light of these conceptions, and this is intellectual judgment. Judgment has two dimensions since it is both explicit and implicit. It is explicit inasmuch as it involves positing the existence of an essence as something actual (and thus a being), and implicit in the correlated positing of the act of being that actualizes that essence (as the co-constituting principles of the being). This act of judgment is then also that which renders the distinction between the two first conceptions by showing how being and essence are actually distinct from one another, as well as from the finite being they co-constitute. Now, we can summarize all this by correlating the two most foundational principles of Thomistic metaphysics with the two most basic cognitive acts of Thomistic epistemology: Whereas essence is grasped by conceptualization, being is grasped by judgment, so that only with both together can we come to understand any particular being and the whole order of finite beings.
With these foundational teachings in place, those both metaphysical and epistemological, we have a solid basis upon which to consider other foundational teachings of the Thomistic conceptual schema, including those of act and potency, form and matter, substance and accidents, etc. Yet, before we do so (in several further essays in the coming weeks), we already have enough in place to consider the most important teaching of the whole schema, that of the Thomistic understanding of God—who for Aquinas is philosophically describable as First Cause (causa prima) and Pure Being (esse tantum).[2] Now, to see how Aquinas comes to this conclusion we need look only a little later in that same short work, On Being and Essence, where in chapter four he writes the following (which I have here abstracted from its context and ever so slightly reformulated in order to clarify it for our purposes):
Everything that belongs to a thing is either caused by the principles of its own essence, as the capacity for laughter in man, or comes to it from an extrinsic principle, as light in the air from the sun’s influence. Yet it is not possible that being itself be caused by the essence of a thing (I mean as by an efficient cause), because then that thing would be its own cause and bring itself into being, which is impossible. Therefore, it is necessary that everything whose being is other than its essence has being from another. And since everything that is through another is reduced to that which is through itself as to its first cause, it is necessary that there be some thing that is the cause of being for all things, because it is itself pure being (esse tantum). Otherwise, we would go on to infinity in causes, since everything that is not pure being has a cause of its being. It is therefore clear that [each and every thing] holds its being from the first being, which is pure being. And this is the first cause (causa prima), which is God.[2]
It would be hard to simplify this argument any further, since it is already remarkably succinct and exceptionally clear—at least for an argument that gives us the existence of God. Nonetheless, let us unpack it somewhat more so that we can both take a better hold of its force, and come to hold its conclusion with greater conviction: Every thing we have ever encountered possesses actuality—as is manifest in its imposing reality—and every single one of these things is determinate as to its being—as is manifest in its nature. But when we explore the ‘what,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why’ of these things, the dogs, cats, and humans of the world, when we search out their essences in order to understand them, we do not find being to be a feature of their natural determination. Indeed, if we did find something in which being was an essential feature then we would have discovered something necessary, something existent by essence and thus something that could not not be. But we do not find such things. Everything we’ve ever encountered has come into being at some moment in time, is in possession of being at the moment of our encounter, and is on a path toward perishing at some future moment. And that is to say that we have never encountered any thing that must be, any thing that could not not be, any thing that could not be otherwise than it is. But, again, we do not find such things. Therefore, to account for the many actual things we daily encounter—things that do not possesses being by essence—we must search for an explanation for their actuality in something that lies beyond the essential. Simply stated, we need to ask from whence their being comes.
Since every other feature of reality reveals itself to be understandable, it would be unreasonable to posit the actuality of things as a brute fact without seeking further explanation—for why should this particular feature, the existential actuality of things, a most important feature, be any different than every other feature? When we ask ‘what,’ things answer with their essences, when we ask ‘how,’ they answer with their essentially determined actions, but when we ask ‘why,’ they can no longer answer with what is essential in them. But this ‘why’ is a most natural question, perhaps the most natural question, for in a very real sense it is the ultimate question, the question that needs to be answered above and beyond all questioning. Therefore, this fact—the existential actuality of things—simply must be explained, by reasoning that all things that do not have their explanation in themselves—which is everything I’ve ever encountered—necessarily point beyond themselves toward something that explains their existence by being the cause of their being. But only something that possesses being by essence could be the source of such an explanation, because—and this is key—only something that need not receive being could explain the existence of things that must receive being. Therefore, Aquinas reasons that there must be some being that does not require a cause but rather exists essentially and by necessity—these are the same in the end—and thus that the question ‘Why?’ is finally answered only by concluding to a being that is being by essence.[3]
And just so, we come to the most important Thomistic teaching, namely, that ‘God is,’ and moreover that ‘God cannot not be,’ and finally that ‘God is the cause of everything not God.’ And with this we also come to a most foundational truth coordinating our experience of the whole of reality, namely, that reality is a relation of Creator and creation. Since God is Being Itself Subsisting and creatures are being itself depending, creatures depend upon God in an absolute and radical way—for all that they are, all that they have, and all that they do. This collection of truths, the existence of God and the relation of creation, is then the very core of Aquinas’ philosophical framework, and it is this philosophical core that inwardly reverberates throughout the whole of his theological system, as a foundational preamble naturally securing his theological interpretation and grounding his further theological synthesis.
At the end, let us restate everything again but now in a much more basic form: Reality is knowable; it answers our questions. Whereas the essences of things answer most of our questions, they do not answer all of our questions, for they do not answer the most important question of all, the question of their own actuality. But we naturally want an answer to this question; we reasonably expect reality to answer all of our questions. Therefore, to answer this ultimate question, we must look deeper into the structures of reality, for we must, so to speak, look ‘through’ and ‘beyond’ the essential to the grounding cause of the essential. We simply must look for the cause of the ‘to be (esse)’ of things. But the only possible response to this looking is found in a being that just is, and thus is causa prima precisely as esse tantum. Therefore, God is.
Now, of course, more can be said about all this, much more, but that will have to do for now.
[1] Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, prologue.
[2] Aquinas, De ente, 4.7.
[3] This is a necessary (not probable) conclusion, for it is a necessity of thought that follows a corresponding necessity of being. It is a conclusion we must make if we are to account for what we actually experience, and thus rationally satisfy our questioning of reality.
