CHAPTER XXXVIII: MAN


PROLOGUE

In its consideration of the nature of man theology treats only of I man's soul, and of his body only with regard to the relationship of the body to the soul. Therefore St. Thomas considers the human soul in its essence, in its union with the body, and then he considers the faculties of the soul. In this treatise he considers acts of the intellective faculty, leaving the acts and habits of the appetitive faculty to moral theology. Finally St. Thomas considers the first production of man and the state of the first man.

Today many of the questions of the first part of this treatise are dealt with in rational psychology, and therefore we select only the more important questions that pertain to dogmatic theology and present them in two sections.

I. The human soul. 1. The spirituality and immortality of the human soul (q. 75). 2. The union of the soul with the body (q. 76). 3. The faculties of the soul (q. 77-83). 4. The manner in which the soul knows itself (q. 87). 5. The separated soul (q. 89).

II. The first production of man (q. 90-102). 1. The origin of man. 2. The elevation of man to the supernatural state. 3. The fall of man.

The theological character of this treatise. St. Thomas does not here follow the ascending order of the philosophical treatise "De anima". The philosopher ascends progressively from sensible things to the spiritual and the divine, from vegetative life to sensitive life and then to the intellective life, whose acts reveal the spirituality and immortality of the soul. Theology, on the other hand, having God in His intimate life as its proper object, first considers man as God's creature. Therefore, after the treatise on God, on creation in general, on the angels, theology treats of the human soul. This begins with the soul's spirituality and immortality, proceeding then to the soul's union with the body, the soul's faculties and acts, the separated soul, the production of the first man, and the state of the first man.

Besides this, in these questions St. Thomas follows the doctrinal method, which is a departure from the methods of the Averroistic philosophers and the Augustinian theologians, who preceded him.

Averroes held that the human intellect was the lowest of the intellects, but that it was an immaterial form, eternal, separate from individuals, and numerically one.[1267] In his view this human intelligence was at the same time the intellectus agens and the intellectus possibilis, and human reason was impersonal but it illumined individual souls. Hence Averroes denied the personal immortality of individual souls and their liberty. This doctrine was taught in the thirteenth century by the Latin Averroists, Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia, against whom St. Thomas wrote his treatise, "De unitate intellectus" contra averroistas.

On the other hand, the Augustinian theologians who preceded St. Thomas, among them Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, admitted a plurality of substantial forms in man and held that there was spiritual matter in the human soul. They insisted on this conclusion because the intellective soul is independent of the body and because they were unable to explain the natural unity of the human composite.

In opposition to these mutually opposing theories, St. Thomas sought to prove that the rational soul is purely spiritual, without any matter, that it is therefore incorruptible, but that it is nevertheless the one and only form of the human body, intrinsically independent of matter in its intellective and voluntary operations, and therefore after its separation from the body it is individuated in its being by its natural relation to one body rather than to another.

Scotus and Suarez, however, sought to retain certain propositions taught by the older, pre-Thomistic Scholasticism.