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By the Motu Proprio of June 29, 1914, Pius X prescribed
that all courses in philosophy should teach "the principles and the
major doctrines of St. Thomas," and that in the centers of
theological studies the Summa theologiae should be the textbook.
Origin Of The Twenty-Four Theses
The state of things which Pius X intended to remedy has been well
described above (p. 343 ff. ) by Cardinal Villeneuve. We
repeat here briefly the Cardinal's contentions:
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a) Authors try to make St. Thomas the mouthpiece of their own pet
theories.
b) Hence contradictory presentations by teachers and writers,
confusion and disgust among students.
c) Hence, Thomism reduced to the minimum on which all Catholic
thinkers can agree, hence to a blunted traditionalism and an implicit
fideism.
d) Hence, carelessness in the presence of extremely improbable new
doctrines, abdication of thought in the domain of piety, practical
skepticism in philosophy, mysticism based on emotion.
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Against this withered and confused Thomism, Pius X prescribes
return to the major doctrines of St. Thomas. What are these major
doctrines? The Congregation of Sacred Studies, having examined the
twenty-four fundamental theses presented by Thomistic professors of
various institutions, replied, with the approval of the Holy
Father, that these same twenty-four theses contain the principles and
major doctrines of St. Thomas. [1335]
What shall be the binding force of these theses? They are safe norms
of intellectual guidance. [1336] This decision of the
Congregation, confirmed by Benedict XV, was published March 7,
1916.
The next year, 1917, saw the promulgation of the New Code,
which [1337] makes the method, the principles, and the
teaching of St. Thomas binding on the professors and students both in
philosophy and in theology. Among the sources of this canon the Code
cites the decree of March 7, 1916.
Pope Benedict XV, on various occasions, expressed his mind on this
point. He approved, for instance, in a special audience, the
intention of P. E. Hugon, O. P.: to write a book
[1338] on the twenty-four theses. The author of the book
[1339] reports that the Pontiff said that he did not intend to
impose the twenty-four theses as compelling internal assent, but as
the doctrine preferred by the Church. [1340]
It gradually became known that these twenty-four theses had been
formulated by two Thomists of great competence who, throughout their
long teaching career, had been teaching these theses in juxtaposition
with their respective counter-theses.
Is the real distinction of potency from act a mere hypothesis? Some
historians of great name, who in special works have expounded the
teaching of St. Thomas, saw in the real distinction of potency from
act a mere postulate. And an excellent review has, for forty years,
carried a series of learned articles which culminate in this
conclusion: the doctrine of real distinction between potency and act is
an admirable hypothesis, most fertile in results.
Now if this distinction were but a postulate or a hypothesis, then,
however strongly suggested it might be by the facts, it would still not
compel the mind's assent. What becomes then of the proofs for God's
existence, which are based on that distinction?
Those who formulated these theses, on the contrary, saw in the
distinction of potency from act not a mere postulate or hypothesis, but
the very first principle, the necessary foundation for all the other
theses. In truth, if we study the commentaries of St. Thomas on
the first two books of Aristotle's Physica and books three and four
of his Metaphysica, we see that real distinction of potency from act
imposes itself necessarily on the mind which attempts to harmonize the
principle of contradiction or identity [1341] with that of
becoming or multiplicity. [1342]
"That which is, is, and that which is not, is not. That's a
sentence we cannot escape from." This is the formula of Parmenides,
which makes of the principle of identity not merely a necessary and
universal law of reality, but a law which governs all processes of
becoming. A thing supposed to be in process of becoming cannot arise
either from being or from non-being. Not from being, which already
is: the statue cannot come from a statue which already is. Not from
non-being: out of nothing comes nothing. Hence all becoming is an
impossibility, an illusion. If you set yourself to walking, to
disprove Parmenides, he retorts: Walking is a mere appearance, a
sense phenomenon, whereas the principle of identity is a primordial law
both of the mind and of reality.
For the same reason Parmenides concludes the impossibility of more
than one being. Being cannot be diversified by itself, nor by
something different from itself, which could only be non-being, i.
e.: nothing. Hence being is one and immutable. Parmenides here,
like Spinoza later, confounds being in general with divine being.
With Parmenides, Aristotle too, against Heraclitus, defends the
principle of contradiction, which is the negative form of the principle
of identity: being is being, non-being is non-being, we cannot
confound the two.
But Aristotle shows too that the process of becoming, which is an
evident fact of experience, is to be harmonized with the principle of
identity and contradiction by the real distinction between potency and
act. This distinction, accepted, however confusedly, by natural
reason, by the common sense of mankind, is indispensable in solving
the arguments of Parmenides against the reality of generation and
multiplicity.
That which is generated, which comes into existence, cannot come from
an actually existing thing: a statue does not arise from something
which is already a statue. Nor can it come from that which is simply
nothing. [1343] But that which comes into existence comes from
indeterminate potential being, which is nothing but a real capacity to
receive an actual perfection. The statue comes from the wood, yes,
yet not from wood as wood, but from wood as capable of being carved.
Movement supposes a subject really capable of undergoing motion. The
plant, the animal, comes from a germ capable of definite evolution.
Knowledge comes from the infant's intelligence capable of grasping
principle and consequences.
That there are many statues, say, of Apollo, supposes that the form
of Apollo can be received in diverse portions of matter, each capable
of receiving that form. That there are many animals of one specific
kind supposes that their specific form can be received in diverse parts
of matter, each capable of being thus determined and actualized.
Potency, then, is not act, not even the most imperfect act
conceivable. Potency is not yet initial movement. Potency,
therefore, since it cannot be act, is really distinct from act, and
hence remains under the act it has received, as a containing capacity
of that act which it receives and limits. Matter is not the form which
it receives but remains distinct under that form. If potency were
imperfect act, [1344] it would not be really distinct even from
the perfect act which it receives.
In the eyes of Aristotle, and of Aquinas who deepened Aristotle,
real potency, as receiving capacity, is a necessary medium between
actual being and mere nothing. Without real potency there is no answer
to Parmenides, no possible way to harmonize becoming and multiplicity
with the principle of identity, the primordial law of thought and of
reality. Becoming and multiplicity involve a certain absence of
identity, an absence which can be explained only by something other
than act, and this other something can only be a real capacity, either
to receive the act if the capacity is passive potency, or to produce
the act, if the potency is active. But active potency is still
potency, and hence presupposes an actual mover to actualize that
potency. Hence arise the four causes, matter, form, agent, and
end, with their correlative principles, in particular that of
efficient causality, of finality, of mutation. Thus, in his first
proof of God's existence, St. Thomas writes: [1345]
"Nothing can be moved except it be in potency. The thing which moves
it from potency to act must be actual, not potential. Nothing can be
reduced from potency to act except by being which is not potential, but
actual." This proof, it is evident, rests on the real distinction
of potency from act. If that principle is not necessarily true, the
proof loses its demonstrative power. The same holds good for his
following proofs.
This truth was clearly seen by those who formulated the twenty-four
theses.
Derivative Propositions
In the Thomistic Congress, held in Rome (1925): we
illustrated the inner unity of the twenty-four theses by showing the
far-reaching consequences of the distinction between potency and act.
The points made in that paper we here summarize.
In the order of being we note ten consequences of the principle that
potency is really and objectively distinct from act.
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I. Matter is not form, but really distinct from form. Prime matter
is pure potency, mere receiving capacity. Without form, it can
simply not exist.
2. Finite essence is not its own existence, but really distinct from
that existence.
3. God alone, pure act, is His own existence. He is existence
itself, unreceived and irreceivable. "Sum qui sum. "
4. In all created person, personality is really distinct from
existence. [1346]
5. God alone, existence itself, can have no accidents. Hence, by
opposition, no created substance is immediately operative; it needs,
in order to act, a super-added operative potency.
6. Form can be multiplied only by being received into matter. The
principle of individuation is matter as preordained to this particular
quantity.
7. The human soul is the sole form of the human body, since
otherwise it would be, not substantial form, but accidental, and
would not make the body one natural unity.
8. Matter, of itself, has neither existence nor cognoscibility.
It becomes intelligible only by its relation to form.
9. The specific form of sense objects, since it is not matter, is
potentially intelligible.
10. Immateriality is the root both of intelligibility and of
intellectuality. [1347] The objectivity of our intellectual
knowledge implies that there is in sense objects an intelligible
element, distinct from matter, and the immateriality of the spirit is
the source of intellectuality, the level of intellectuality
corresponding to the level of immateriality.
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In the order of operation, we note six consequences.
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1. The operative potencies, the faculties, are distinguished
specifically by the formal object and act to which each is
proportioned.
2. Hence each faculty is really distinct, first, from the soul
itself, second, from all other faculties.
3. Each cognoscitive faculty becomes, intentionaliter, i. e.: in
a supramaterial order, the object known, whereas matter cannot become
form.
4. Whatever is in motion has that motion from something higher than
itself. Now, in a series of actually and necessarily subordinated
causes regression to infinity is impossible: the sea is upheld by the
earth, the earth by the sun, the sun by some higher source, but
somewhere there must be a first upholding source. Any cause, which is
not its own activity, can have that activity ultimately only from a
first and supreme cause which is its own activity, and hence its own
existence, because mode of activity follows mode of being. Hence the
objective necessity of admitting God's existence.
5. Since every created faculty is specifically constituted by its own
proper object, it follows evidently that no created intellect can be
specifically proportioned to the proper object of divine intelligence.
Hence the divinity as it is in itself, being inaccessible to created
intelligence, constitutes an order essentially supernatural, an order
of truth and life which transcends even the order of miracles, which
are indeed divine deeds, but can be known naturally.
6. The obediential potency, by which the creature is capable of
elevation to the supernatural order, is passive, not active. Were it
otherwise, this potency would be both essentially natural, as a
property of nature, and simultaneously supernatural, as specifically
constituted by a supernatural object, to which it would be essentially
proportioned. The word "obediential" relates this potency to the
agent which alone can raise it to a supernatural object, to which,
without that elevation, it can never be related and proportioned.
Here lies the distinction between the two orders. The theological
virtues are per se infused only because they are specifically
constituted by a supernatural object which, without grace, is inaccessible.
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Revelation admitted, the real distinction of potency from act, of
finite essence from existence, leads us to admit, further, that in
Christ, just as there is one person for the two natures, so there is
likewise one existence for those two natures. The Word communicates
His own existence to his human nature, as, to illustrate, the
separated soul, when it resumes its body, gives to that body its own
existence. Similarly, in the Trinity, there is for the three
persons one sole uncreated existence, namely, existence itself,
identified with the divine nature. [1348]
Such are the consequences of the distinction between potency and act,
first in the natural order, then in the supernatural order. The brief
analysis just given shows what the Congregation of Studies had in mind
when it declared that the twenty-four theses are safe norms of
intellectual direction. The supreme authority [1349] does not
intend these theses to be definitions of faith, but declarations of the
doctrine preferred by the Church.
Forgetting The Twenty-Four Theses
We have noted above the state of things that led to the formation of
the twenty-four theses. Now, thirty years later, the same
conditions seem to have returned. Lip-service to St. Thomas is
universal, but the theses defended under his name are often worlds
apart, and even contradict the holy doctor. Can a man be called
Thomist by the mere fact that he admits the dogmas defined by the
Church, even while he follows Descartes in his teachings on the
spiritual life, or denies the evident principle of causality, and
hence the validity of proof for the existence of God.
A small error in principle is a great error in conclusion. This is
the word of St. Thomas, repeated by Pius X. To reject the first
of the twenty-four theses is to reject them all. This reflection led
the Church to approve the twenty-four.
But are not the truths of common sense a sufficient foundation for
Catholic philosophers and theologians? They are, but not when they
are distorted by individualistic interpretations. If these truths are
to be defended today, against phenomenalists, idealists, and absolute
evolutionists, we must penetrate to their philosophic depths. Without
this penetration we lose all consistency, even in fundamentals, and
fall prey to a skepticism, if not in thought, at least in life and
action, to a fideism which is the dethronement of reason and of all
serious intellectual life. And if it be said that sincerity in the
search for truth remains, then we must retort that a sincerity which
refuses to recognize the value of the greatest doctors whom God gave to
His Church is surely a doubtful sincerity, destined never to reach
its goal. Common sense is a term to conjure with. But let it be
genuine common sense, fortified by deep analysis of man's first
notions and man's first principles. Otherwise, deserting Thomas of
Aquin, we may find ourselves in the poor encampment of Thomas Reid.
Here we may well listen to Pierre Charles, S. J.: "In favor
of the history of dogma, and in discredit of metaphysics, an extremely
virulent relativism had been, almost without notice, introduced into
the teaching of doctrine. Psychology replaced ontology. Subjectivism
was substituted for revelation. History inherited the place of dogma.
The difference between Catholics and Protestants seemed reduced to a
mere practical attitude in regard to the papacy. To arrest and correct
this baneful and slippery attitude, Pius X had the proper gesture,
brusk and definitive. Anglican modernism today shows all too well the
frightening consequences to which, without the intervention of the
Holy See, doctrinal relativism might have led us.
"Papal condemnation has brought to light, in many Catholic
theologians, a gaping void: the lack of philosophy. They shared the
positivistic disdain for metaphysical speculation. Sometimes they
proclaimed a highly questionable fideism. Fashion led them to ridicule
philosophy, to jeer at its vocabulary, to contrast its infatuated
audacity with the modesty of scientific hypotheses. The pope, by
describing and synthesizing the modernistic error, compelled theology
to re-examine, not so much particular problems, but rather
fundamental religious notions, so skillfully distorted by the school of
innovators. The philosophic bone-structure began to reappear ever
more clearly as indispensable for the entire theological organism."
[1350]
We admonish professors, Pius X [1351] had said, to bear
well in mind, that the smallest departure from Aquinas, especially in
metaphysics, brings in its wake great harm.
An historian of medieval philosophy has recently said that Cajetan,
instead of limiting himself to an excellent commentary of the Summa,
was rather bound to follow the intellectual movement of his time. The
truth is that Cajetan did not feel himself thus called by Him who
guides the intellectual life of the Church on a higher level than that
of petty combinations, presumptions, and other deviations of our
limited intelligences. Cajetan's glory lies in his recognition of the
true grandeur of St. Thomas, of whom he willed to be the faithful
commentator. This recognition was lacking in Suarez, who deserted
the master lines of Thomistic metaphysics to follow his own personal
thought.
Many a theologian, on reaching the next world, will realize that here
below he failed to appreciate the grace which God bestowed on His
Church when He gave her the Doctor Communis.
In these late years one such theologian has said that speculative
theology, after giving beautiful systems to the Middle Ages, does
not today know what it wants, or whither it is going, and that there
is no longer serious work except in positive theology. He is but
repeating what was said during the epoch of modernism. In point of
truth, theology, if it disregarded the principles of the Thomistic
synthesis, would resemble a geometry which, disregarding Euclidean
principles, would not know whither it is going.
Another theologian of our own time proposes to change the order among
the chief dogmatic treatises, to put the treatise on the Trinity
before that of De Deo uno, which he would notably reduce. Further,
on the fundamental problems relative to nature and grace, he invites us
to return to what he holds to be the true position of many Greek
Fathers anterior to St. Augustine. The labors of Aquinas, the
labors of seven centuries of Thomists, are either of no value or of
very little value.
Alongside these extreme and idle views, we find an eclectic
opportunism, which strives to reach a higher level between positions
which it regards as extreme. But it is destined to perpetual
oscillation between two sides, since it can not recognize, or then
cannot appreciate, that higher truth, which, amid fruitless
tentatives, the Church unswervingly upholds and opportunely repeats,
as she has done in our own time by approving the twenty-four theses.
We must grant that the problems of the present hour grow continually
graver. But this situation is an added reason for returning to the
doctrine of St. Thomas on being, truth, and goodness, on the
objective validity of first principles, which alone can lead to
certitude on God's existence, which is the foundation of all duty,
and to attentive examination of those prime notions which are involved
in the very enunciation of the fundamental dogmas. This necessity has
been recently reinculcated by the Right Reverend St. M. Gillet,
general of the Dominicans in a letter to all professors in the order.
Msgr. Olgiati urges the same necessity in a forthcoming book on
"Law according to St. Thomas." By this road alone can we reach
the goal, thus indicated by the Vatican Council:
"Reason, illumined by faith, if it seeks sedulously, piously, and
soberly, can attain a most fruitful understanding of revealed
mysteries, both by analogy with natural knowledge and by the interwoven
union of these mysteries with one another and with man's last end. "
Who more surely than St. Thomas can lead us to this goal? Let us
not forget the word of Leo XIII, on the certainty, profundity,
and sublimity of the saint's teaching.
In the life of the priest, above all in the life of a professor,
whether of philosophy or not, it is a great grace to have been
fashioned by the principles of St. Thomas. How much floundering and
fluctuation does he thereby escape: on the validity of reason, on God
one and triune, on the redemptive Incarnation, the sacraments, on
the last end, on human acts, on sin, grace, virtues, and gifts!
These directing principles of thought and life become ever more
necessary as the conditions of existence grow ever more difficult,
demanding a certitude more firm, a faith more immovable, a love of
God more pure and strong.
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