CHAPTER XVIII: QUESTION 44 THE FIRST CAUSE OF ALL BEING


INTRODUCTION

This question is divided according to the four kinds of causes, since God is the efficient, exemplary, and final cause of all things, and since He is the efficient cause of matter itself, the causality of which is entirely imperfect and cannot be attributed to the supreme principle. We treat here especially of the efficient cause and in the following question of its mode. Final causality, or God as the ultimate end, is considered at length in the first part of the second part of the Summa, while exemplary causality was considered in the first part under the divine ideas.[713]