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§ 2

THE VISION OF ENTITY IN SAINT THOMAS

Let us repeat it once more. The entity (ón) of Aristotle is viewed from the horizon of motion; things that change and cease to be pose the problem of that, which in one way or another never ceases to be, but is truly always, which in one form or another tries to be always. St. Thomas sees entity from a completely different horizon, since he starts from the perspective that the beings that surround man are created beings. It is not the horizon of motion, it is —if I may be permitted the neologism— the horizon of “creatureliness” (Sp. creaturidad) and this horizon is going to change from top to bottom the internal structure of metaphysics. Because in this horizon of creatureliness things appear as creatures, and therefore, not only do we have a vision of things, but also of God himself. When we take God and his creation at one and the same time we have what might be called a “creational vision”, and it is in this horizon of creatureliness where St. Thomas is going to inscribe his metaphysics. When we indicated above that St. Thomas inscribes the notions of Aristotle within a new horizon, what we tried to say is that he inscribes his idea of entity within the horizon of creatureliness and his whole purpose consists in interpreting entity from the point of view of creatureliness. As we shall see, this is not going to be an easy task.

In this horizon of creatureliness St. Thomas observes, on the one hand, things in the horizon of nothingness, and on the other, a creator God within that horizon.

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I. The entification of the real. The horizon of nothingness and the intrinsic finitude of created entity

Things in the horizon of nothingness are created. For St. Thomas, what the fact of creation, creationality (Sp. creacionalidad), thrusts into first place is the finitude of created things.

This appears to be nothing but a repetition of what the Greek had said, that things are limitations (péras). But, in the end, it is the case of something different. When a Greek mentioned péras, what he understood by this term are the intrinsic determinations that, in its internal delimitation, positively constitute what things are. St. Thomas thinks of something different.

St. Thomas thinks that whatever things may be in the sense we have just mentioned, they have an intrinsic finitude by virtue of which we say they are imperfect. Only God would be the perfect res, and finitude precisely consists in the im-perfection of things that are, insofar as created. From this we obtain the idea of Creation in a first dimension, which is the radical and fundamental. Although he may not mention it directly, St. Thomas is going to understand that, so far, created being consists in being something imperfect. St. Augustine had already put it in a formula with a Platonic resonance. “To be created is not to be God by nature” (Creatam esse est natura Deum non
esse)¹, and insofar as God is a perfect being, this not being God by nature consists in not being perfect by nature, in being an intrinsic imperfection. For this reason, strictly speaking, while for a Greek the ón begins by being something from which we have to extricate the intrinsic reasons that constitute it, for St. Thomas it begins by being “not-nothing”. He is using in this place a term taken from the mystics, not in the sense that it may have no importance, but that in a {101} formal way it constitutes a “not-nothing”. Inasmuch as there is a reference to “nothing”, there is an imperfection; inasmuch as it is “not-nothing” it points to whatever of the positive created things may have. Clearly, this is nothing but talking purely and simply about Creation.

However, in a second level —that from my perspective we must feature in addition to the first level we have just presented— St. Thomas is going to perform a different operation such as the “entifying interpretation” (Sp. “interpretación entitativa”) of this imperfection. And here is where he is going to use two Aristotelian concepts, purified by him and referred to something that never entered the mind of a Greek. What is radical about things, St. Thomas tells us, is that they are beings; this is what I have called the “entification of reality“. For St. Thomas things are synonymous with beings, and he did not question whether the entifying characteristics are actually something as primary and radical as he presumes or if, on the contrary, “to be” is some characteristic founded on a deeper dimension. If we place a subject on the phrase we mentioned earlier —id cujus actus est esse—, one may ask if there is actually an identity between the “id” and the “act of to-be”. If there was none, the radical of things is not to be entities, but that in which the id consists. St. Thomas does not question this, but takes the thing as entity and completely entifies reality. As a result, since it is the case of a radical finiteness, what St. Thomas wants to say when talking about imperfection and the finiteness of things is that what is primarily and formally imperfect is its own act of “to be”. The internal imperfection of the act of “to be”, insofar as act of “to be”, is what would constitute for St. Thomas the intrinsic finiteness of things. Who can possibly not see that this is the entifying interpretation of something anterior and primary, which is the very creatureliness of things?

{102} After all, at least taken as creation ex nihilo, it is not written anywhere that this may be a truth of reason, but indeed many theologians have suggested it is only a truth of faith. Be that as it may, upon this previous stratum of the creatureliness of things St. Thomas projects his entifying interpretation of reality. He turns the imperfection of things, insofar as they are not God, into an internal imperfection of their own act of being. But this is an interpretation; the most obvious and plausible you may will, but still an “interpretation”. Because of this, St. Thomas, when conceptivizing the transcendental characteristics of being through a purification of the concepts of Aristotle, says that these transcendental characteristics are “the most common in all things” (magis communia). This has a very precise meaning. These transcendental characteristics are the most common in all created things, insofar as created.

This completely changes the meaning and perspective of the interpretation of entity. What is common to every created entity, insofar as created, is what the transcendental characteristics express. Having seen the entities of created things in themselves, St. Thomas does not stop there and refers that entity to its first causes. Then, it is necessary to ask, how does St. Thomas view those first causes (or ultimate) of entity as such?

Since what is the most radical of things is to be entity, what God causes primarily and formally is precisely the entity. In a particular passage St. Thomas tells us, “Being itself is the most common and most intimate effect of all the other effects” (Ipsum enim esse est communissimus effectus primus et intimior omnibus aliis effectibus)². Probably, {103} this communissimus reaches St. Thomas from the Neo-Platonists; Proclus had already said that “the first of all created things is being”. St. Thomas would never admit this, but he does admit that the entifying aspect of things is the primary term —formal and radical— of Creation as such.

This point of view leads to an entifying interpretation of the creative action. In the same paragraph St. Thomas tells us two things that seem to be equal, but perhaps they are not so equal after all. On the one hand, he tells us that Creation is “the emanation of every entity with respect to the universal first cause, which God is”³. We shall not insist now on this “emanation” because St. Thomas is not an emanationist like Plotinus and here he understands “emanation” as being an effect of divine causality. Here St. Thomas already takes Creation from the point of view of the entification of reality; he takes reality as entifyingly considered. It is no longer the case, as in St. Augustine, of not being God by nature (natura Deum non esse), but we are told something more concrete. With things considered as entities, Creation formally consists in every entity emanating from the first and universal cause that God is.

In the second place, at the end of this same paragraph he tells us, “Just as the generation of man is from non-entity, which is not man, in the same manner Creation, which is emanation of the whole of being, is such from non-being, which is nothingness”⁴. Of course, if the primary effect is the very entity of {104} things and is created, the entity of things proceeds from that which is not previously, that is to say, ex nihilo sui et subjecti. St. Thomas, therefore, has accepted an entifying (Sp. entitativa) interpretation of created reality; has taken Creation (that as such is not in solidarity with this complex system of metaphysical concepts) and gives us an entifying interpretation of Creation. What is primary and radical is that created things are created by God. And for St. Thomas the creative action consists in every entity proceeding from God and precisely because of that this entity is produced ex nihilo, ex non ente. It is, therefore, an interpretation of the creatureliness of things from the entifying point of view.

We must insist that they are two distinct moments: naked Creation and Creation interpreted entifyingly. Many⁵ will think that in the third versicle of Genesis it is said, “God said, let there be light and light was made”, where the verb “to be” appears. But the Hebrew verb hâyâh means “to be” in the substantive sense, in the sense of existing or having reality, which renders the literal translation of this passage of Genesis as, “And God said, let there be light and there was light”. This indeed is the Creation of things. But that the “having” —and the “saying”— may have entifying characteristics is precisely the second of the moments that St. Thomas couples to the first. This is the entifying interpretation of the creative act. Because of that, when referring to a different problem such as human freedom, St. Thomas can say, “God is a cause that trans-fundaments every entity and all its differences” (Deus est causa quaedam profundens totum ens ac omnes ejus differentias)⁶. That the “differences” in this case are freedom and {105} necessity does not change the basic point. This trans-fundamenting idea that St. Thomas has of the creative causality is indeed quite explicitly enunciated. It is an entifying interpretation of the creative causality.

Therefore, we have in the first place that everything created, by the mere fact of being created, has a finite being. This is an entifying definition.

In the second place, Creation consists in the fact that the entity is produced and proceeds from non-entity.

In the third place, in this characteristic of produced from non-entity is where the very finitude of reality formally resides.

Consequently, the two definitions of metaphysics that Aristotle gave us acquire in St. Thomas a much deeper relief. On the one hand the “theology” and on the other the science of entity as such. St. Thomas has understood reality as entified. In that case metaphysics is at the same time the science of entity as such viewed from the horizon of nothingness as created, and referred to the creative cause also interpreted entifyingly. In other words, it is at the same time theology and the science of entity as such. As we shall see, basically the metaphysics of St. Thomas is the entifying theory of Creation, as obvious as it may possibly seem, but in the end a “theory”. Indeed, St. Thomas gives us more than just a vision of created things in themselves and in their first cause. The difficulty, even more important if possible begins for St. Thomas when he sees God from this horizon of creationality.


II. The entification of God

From this horizon, to conceive God rationally through pure reason (let us leave aside Revelation, since it does not enter into {106} metaphysics), is simply to understand God as creator; some other things like the Trinitarian processions is something that has nothing to do with metaphysics.

God is infinitely perfect and that infinite perfection can be expressed with just one term and concept, the transcendence of God. But the problem resides in telling us exactly what is understood by that transcendence of God. The transcendence of God has, in my estimation, three moments that we must distinguish. They are important because they are different and furthermore each one of them leans on the previous; just to take them as a mixture means to consider as obvious something that is not at all obvious in metaphysics.

In the first place, we have what we have just mentioned, the moment of God as creator of everything, not of all entities, but of all things. Here is the radical difference with Aristotle, for whom his theós has not produced things out of nothing; he is not even the efficient mechanism by which they may be in motion. He is simply a télos, and besides, he is extrinsic to things, something that provokes motion. On the other hand, for St. Thomas, God, as perfect infinite res is the cause that produces all things out of nothing. It is what we might call the stratum of the transcendence of God as creative transcendence, the basic and radical stratum upon which the other two are founded, as they are more problematic than the first.

Because, in the second place, if created things as such are beings —this is the entification of reality—, then the creative transcendence of God is something that is also the object of an entifying interpretation on the part of St. Thomas. Indeed, created things are primarily beings, and then, the creative causality of God, when producing {107} things, what it has produced is entity outside of Him. In this sense, transcendence has received a second different determination —at least in some measure— with respect to the first (the mere creative transcendence). Here there is something more, since God appears as the one that entifies reality, this is the entifying transcendence. Against all appearances, St. Thomas will never prove the existence of Creation starting from the concept of entity, but the other way around, he will interpret the entifying transcendence of God, starting precisely from the fact that things are created. Let us not indulge in wishful thinking, anything else would be a false perspective based on a conceptist (Sp. conceptista, Zubiri neologism) order. Therefore, the transcendent God appears not only as creator, but also as entifier and in that sense God is beyond all creatures. Cajetan, who obviously does not stand in opposition to St. Thomas, says, “The divine res is prior to entity and all its differences because, actually, it is above the entity, above the one, above truth, etc.”⁷. God is not only creator of things, but even of their own transcendental order. As entifier of reality and in his entifying transcendence, God is not only origin of things, but origin of that which in them constitutes for St. Thomas their own transcendental order, their entity with all its characteristics. However, up to now God appears to us only as cause that produces this order, and then the question is inevitable, What about God in himself?

This is the third stratum we have to consider. {108} What is this first cause in itself? The matter appears simple, but is quite far from being so, even including the entifying suppositions we have been dealing with up to now. In order to answer this question, it is possible to take two completely different ways, which have had effective representation in the history of metaphysics and the very medieval theology.

The first starts from the time of Marius Victorinus and would consist in saying that precisely because God is transcendent in the sense of entifying, He is beyond entity; in himself He is not entity. Marius Victorinus tells us that God is not “entity” (ón), but “ante-entity” (pro-ón)⁸, is not “being” (Sp. ser), but pre-being (Sp. pre-ser). Even towards the end of the XIII century and the beginnings of the XIV —therefore, right after St. Thomas— the great master of speculative mysticism, Meister Eckhart, will literally say “Being is not formally found in God; nothing of what is in God can be reasoned as entity”⁹. From this would follow that as far as metaphysics is concerned, entity as such is intrinsically finite. Also, that God would act as creator of this finite entity, but never as something that may be attributed the concepts concerning entities.

St. Thomas does not take this first way and only makes a slight concession, if we call “entities” the things that are, inasmuch as they do not intrinsically resemble God, God would be non-entity. But this is nothing but a slight concession {109} of the many St. Thomas makes to reassume the thought of those who preceded him, because despite having called David of Dinant “stupid” —stultissime posuit...—, St. Thomas does not easily lose his balance.

But there is a completely different second way, which is the one St. Thomas follows. It consists in saying that God, as cause of the transcendental order, is beyond this transcendental order, but as something that primarily and radically produces the entity of things. In an eminent manner —we shall have to explain in what this eminence consists— He is also something that is (Sp. ser) and the very subsisting being, Ipsum esse subsistens. Here, the transcendence of God is not simply as creator, not even —as in the second stratum— as entifyer; it is a transcendence I might call “hyper-entifying”, according to which God is the “hyper-being” (Sp. “hiper-ser”) par excellence, through the way of eminence. This is the hyper-entified entity of God. The entity of God insofar as subsistent makes that He may be an entity through Himself (a se), while all the other things are entities through another (ab alio), that is to say, through God (a Deo).

Certainly St. Thomas will tell us that this concept of entity, which on the one hand aims towards creatures and, on the other aims towards God, is nothing but analogical. The way things are entities, which have their entity in Creation, is not the same as the way God is an entity, who is the Creator; in other words, this concept is realized in a different way in things and in God. If it were the case of a mere conceptual difference, Duns Scotus, who immediately followed after St. Thomas, will say that we can prescind from whether entity may be finite or infinite, since we understand what the term “to be” means, and apply it univocally to God and creatures. But here we are not facing the problem of the concept {110} “to be” (Sp. ser), but the problem of the real and effective entity of things, and Scotus does recognize without a doubt that the entity of what we call entity is simply analogous in God and in creatures.

What does analogy mean in that case? Does it mean that all things are entities referred to God? Without doubt, but it is a curious reversal of the analogy. This analogy of attribution always supposes there is a first analogue, which is clearly perceived. Let us remember the example Aristotle presented. Above all, “healthy” is the man who has health; medicine is healthy referred to him because it restores health; the stroll is healthy because it preserves health; color is healthy because it expresses health, etc. In other words, they are healthy referred to that first analogue. And in the case of God? No one has seen God! How can we say that things have nothing but analogy of attribution with respect to God? Cajetan will say that it is a case of analogy of proportionality, that what entity is with respect to creatures, is what we call the Ipsum esse subsistens with respect to God. This amounts to confessing we remain completely in the dark.

Things are ab alio insofar as entities. This is what I would call the “ab-alio-ness” (Sp. ab-aliedad)¹⁰ of created entity as such. In this conception of St. Thomas, entity as such is not finite as in the conception of Marius Victorinus or Eckhart and all the Neoplatonists, entity is only finite in the case of created entity insofar as created. But God is precisely the hyper-entity. St. Thomas has accomplished this gigantic enterprise of the entification of the very divine reality, an operation full of problems, regardless of the great enthusiasm it has elicited throughout history. This, as we shall see, is not accomplished without risks.

Nevertheless, we here encounter three different dimensions {111} of the transcendence of God: the creative transcendence, the entifying transcendence, and the hyper-entifying transcendence. Each one of the three presupposes the previous one. The entifying transcendence is possible because there is a creation of things, because God is Creator. A hyper-entifying interpretation is possible because God, as first cause in the conception of St. Thomas would be the hyper-entity, and because of that entifies everything He is not. The three dimensions are completely different, but in addition to being different, each one is founded on the previous one.

The slowness of this analysis should be forgiven. But I think it is absolutely necessary in order not to accept in a global and routine manner —as it has occurred many times in history— concepts that from the conceptive point of view are very different. Therefore, it is necessary that we outline them carefully.

To deny the entifying interpretation of things is not to deny Creation. God as creator of things is one thing, and the entifying interpretation of things and Creation quite another. And we still have a further one that is different, such as the very entifying interpretation of God.

This conception of St. Thomas presupposes, above all, that there is an entification of things. Only starting from it can the very creative causality be entified. If there had been no start from this primary and radical entification of things —to consider that what is radical in things is that they are entities—, St. Thomas would have never arrived to this entifying conception of creative causality. As a matter of fact, this interpretation does not exist at all in any of the pages of the New Testament or in the first theologians. It only appears when the appeal to Platonism has been able to influence the interpretations of some Apologists and Greek Fathers. Be that as it may, {112} all this is an interpretation, perhaps obvious and rather fruitful, but as “interpretation” it leaves the door open to other conceptivations. As we have seen, even in medieval theology it led to the interpretation of God as pre-entity, and to the above quoted concept of Meister Eckhart that denied God had any formal reason for entity, which is far from contradicting the idea of Creation. Let us not think that with the metaphysics of St. Thomas and on the basis of his rational theology the problem of things, Creation, and God has been exhausted forever. Just the opposite, the door has just been opened.

This is the way entity has been seen on the horizon of creationality, a horizon completely alien and different from the Greek world. Of this entity conceived in such manner St. Thomas will have to tell us what he thinks about its intelligibility. After all, metaphysics for St. Thomas —following Aristotle— is a scientia, a real and actual knowledge of that object, of that entity, which is seen on that horizon of creationality.

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¹ [Tr. note: from St. Augustine’s De trinitate, Book 4, Ch. 2, No. 4]
² Questiones disputatae de potentia 3.7.
³ “Emanatio totius entis a causa universali quae est Deus”, S. Th. I, q. 45, a. 1.
⁴ “Sicut igitur generatio hominis est ex non ente quod est non homo, ita creatio, quae est emanatio totius entis, est ex non ente quod est nihil”, Ibid.
⁵ [Tr. note: Zubiri writes “all” (todos) since he is referring to the Spanish equivalent of the Douai-Rheims translation from the Vulgate. Modern translations already take what Zubiri says in this paragraph into consideration]
⁶ In Aristotelis libros Peri Hermeneias, L. I., lectio XIV, no. 22. Zubiri repeats here the text quoted on the note to page 96, a text also quoted in Sobre el sentimiento y la volición (On Sentiment and Volition) (Madrid, Alianza, 1992, p. 158).
⁷ “Res divina prior est ente et omnibus differentiis ejus: est enim super ens et super unum, etc.” This text from the Commentary of Cajetan to the Summa of St. Thomas (q. 39, a. I, VII) also appears quoted in “En torno al problema de Dios” (In Regard to the Problem of God), appearing in Naturaleza, Historia, Dios (Nature, History, God), p. 442 (1987 Spanish ed.).
⁸ The text of Marius Victorinus (P. L. VIII, col. 11, 29 D) appears quoted in the same context of the previous footnote (Naturaleza, Historia, Dios, p. 441). There we find along this same line, a reference to the “unsure” John Scotus Eriugena (P. L., CXXII, col. 680 D), and another reference to the Thomist comentary on Dionysius the Areopagite (Comm. de Div. nom. I, L. 3).
⁹ “Esse non est formaliter in Deo; nihil quod est in Deo habet rationem entis”. Zubiri also quotes this same text of Meister Eckhart in the mentioned passage of Naturalez, Historia, Dios (Nature, History, God), p. 441.
¹⁰ [Tr. note: Zubiri neologism, from Lt. ab alio, Sp. por otro, by another]