Summa Contra Gentiles

Book Two: Creation

St. Thomas Aquinas, James F. Anderson

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 1976
• Print ISBN: 9780268016807, 9780268016791
• eBook ISBN: 9780268158880
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Medieval & Renaissance Philosophy

Book Two of the Summa Contra Gentiles series examines God's freedom in creation, his power as creator of all things, and the nature of man, particularly the unity of soul and body within man.

The Summa Contra Gentiles is not merely the only complete summary of Christian doctrine that St. Thomas has written, but also a creative and even revolutionary work of Christian apologetics composed at the precise moment when Christian thought needed to be intellectually creative in order to master and assimilate the intelligence and wisdom of the Greeks and the Arabs. In the Summa Aquinas works to save and purify the thought of the Greeks and the Arabs in the higher light of Christian Revelation, confident that all that had been rational in the ancient philosophers and their followers would become more rational within Christianity.

Book 1 of the Summa deals with God; Book 3, Providence; and Book 4, Salvation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Bibliography
• 1. The connection between the following considerations and the preceding ones
• 2. That the consideration of creatures is useful for instruction of faith
• 3. That knowledge of the nature of creatures serves to destroy errors concerning God
• 4. That the philosopher and the theologian consider creatures in different ways
• 5. Order of procedure
• 6. That it is proper to God to be the source of the being of other things
• 7. That active power exists in God
• 8. That God’s power is His substance
• 9. That God’s power is His action
• 10. How power is attributed to God
• 11. That something is said of God in relation to creatures
• 12. That relations predicated of God in reference to creatures do not really exist in Him
• 13–14. How the aforesaid relations are predicated of God
• 15. That God is to all things the cause of being
• 16. That God brought things into being from nothing
• 17. That creation is neither motion nor change
• 18. How objections against creation are solved
• 19. That in creation no succession exists
• 20. That no body is capable of creative action
• 21. That the act of creating belongs to God alone
• 22. That God is omnipotent
• 23. That God does not act by natural necessity
• 24. That God acts conformably to His wisdom
• 25. How the omnipotent God is said to be incapable of certain things
• 26. That the divine intellect is not confined to limited effects
• 27. That the divine will is not restricted to certain effects
• 28–29. How dueness is entailed in the production of things
• 30. How absolute necessity can exist in created things
• 31. That it is not necessary for creatures to have always existed
• 32. Arguments of those who wish to demonstrate the world’s eternity from the point of view of God
• 33. Arguments of those who wish to prove the eternity of the world from the standpoint of creatures
• 34. Arguments to prove the eternity of the world from the point of view of the making of things
• 35. Solution of the foregoing arguments, and first of those taken from the standpoint of God
• 36. Solution of the arguments proposed from the point of view of the things made
• 37. Solution of the arguments taken from the point of view of the making of things
• 38. Arguments by which some try to show that the world is not eternal
• 39. That the distinction of things is not the result of chance
• 40. That matter is not the first cause of the distinction of things
• 41. That a contrariety of agents does not account for the distinction of things
• 42. That the first cause of the distinction of things is not the world of secondary agents
• 43. That the distinction of things is not caused by some secondary agent introducing diverse forms into matter
• 44. That the distinction of things does not have its source in the diversity of merits or demerits
• 45. The true first cause of the distinction of things
• 46. That the perfection of the universe required the existence of some intellectual creatures
• 47. That intellectual substances are endowed with will
• 48. That intellectual substances have freedom of choice in acting
• 49. That the intellectual substance is not a body
• 50. That intellectual substances are immaterial
• 51. That the intellectual substance is not a material form
• 52. That in created intellectual substances, being and what is differ
• 53. That in created intellectual substances there is act and potentiality
• 54. That the composition of substance and being is not the same as the composition of matter and form
• 55. That intellectual substances are incorruptible
• 56. In what way an intellectual substance can be united to the body
• 57. The position of Plato concerning the union of the intellectual soul with the body
• 58. That in man there are not three souls, nutritive, sensitive, and intellective
• 59. That man’s possible intellect is not a separate substance
• 60. That man derives his specific nature, not from the passive, but from the possible, intellect
• 61. That this theory is contrary to the teaching of Aristotle
• 62. Against Alexander’s opinion concerning the possible intellect
• 63. That the soul is not a temperament, as Galen maintained
• 64. That the soul is not a harmony
• 65. That the soul is not a body
• 66. Against those who maintain that intellect and sense are the same
• 67. Against those who hold that the possible intellect is the imagination
• 68. How an intellectual substance can be the form of the body
• 69. Solution of the arguments advanced above in order to show that an intellectual substance cannot be united to the body as its form
• 70. That according to the words of Aristotle the intellect must be said to be united to the body as its form
• 71. That the soul is united to the body without intermediation
• 72. That the whole soul is in the whole body and in each of its parts
• 73. That there is not one possible intellect in all men
• 74. Concerning the theory of Avicenna, who said that intelligible forms are not preserved in the possible intellect
• 75. Solution of the seemingly demonstrative arguments for the unity of the possible intellect
• 76. That the agent intellect is not a separate substance, but part of the soul
• 77. That it is not impossible for the possible and agent intellect to exist together in the one substance of the soul
• 78. That Aristotle held not that the agent intellect is a separate substance, but that it is a part of the soul
• 79. That the human soul does not perish when the body is corrupted
• 80–81. Arguments to prove that the corruption of the body entails that of the soul [and their solution]
• 82. That the souls of brute animals are not immortal
• 83. That the human soul begins to exist when the body does
• 84. Solution of the preceding arguments
• 85. That the soul is not made of God’s substance
• 86. That the human soul is not transmitted with the semen
• 87. That the human soul is brought into being through the creative action of God
• 88. Arguments designed to prove that the human soul is formed from the semen
• 89 Solution of the preceding arguments
• 90. That an intellectual substance is united only to a human body as its form
• 91. That there are some intellectual substances which are not united to bodies
• 92. Concerning the great number of separate substances
• 93. Of the non-existence of a plurality of separate substances of one species
• 94. That the separate substance and the soul are not of the same species
• 95. How in separate substances genus and species are to be taken
• 96. That separate substances do not receive their knowledge from sensible things
• 97. That the intellect of a separate substance is always in act of understanding
• 98. How one separate substance understands another
• 99. That separate substances know material things
• 100. That separate substances know singulars
• 101. Whether separate substances have natural knowledge of all things at the same time
• Subject Index
• Index of Proper Names