Divine ideas
| Principal locus | ST I, q. 15 |
|---|---|
| Also called | Exemplars; types in the divine mind |
| Doctrinal standing | That God knows all he makes is Catholic doctrine; the plurality of ideas as types is Thomistic synthesis |
| Rejected extreme | A Platonic world of forms existing beside God |
Divine ideas, in Thomism, are the types in God's intellect according to which he knows and produces creatures, many as objects known, one as the simple divine essence understood as imitable.[1]
Types in the divine intellect
An idea, in the sense Thomas takes from Augustine and a purified Plato, is a type or exemplar in a mind, according to which something is made or known. Builders work from a plan. God, who creates by intellect and will, has the types of all that he makes. Summa theologiae I, question 15 asks whether there are ideas in God, whether they are many, and of what they are. The answers are yes, yes, and of all that God knows, including things that will never be produced.[1]
The ideas are not a warehouse of extra things next to God. That would restore a Platonic third world and violate simplicity. The one divine essence is the idea, inasmuch as it is understood by God as imitable by creatures in different ways. The plurality is on the side of the objects and of the respects of imitability, not on the side of a composed divine mind. Many types, one simple knowledge.[2]
Many ideas and simple knowledge
If there were only one idea without distinction of types, God would not know this horse as this, or this man as this. Creation is of distinct natures and individuals. The types must therefore be many. If the many types were many accidents in God, God would be composed. Thomas's solution is that God knows his essence as the exemplary cause of many, and that knowledge is identical with his essence. The ideas are God knowing God as imitable.
This is among the more technical stretches of the treatise on God. It is theology, not a defined diagram. It exists to protect two truths at once: the richness of the created order, which is not a blur, and the simplicity of the Creator, who is not a committee of forms. Later commentators multiplied distinctions about possible and actual ideas. Those distinctions are school instruments. They should be used when they help, not preached as a second Genesis.
Creation, providence, and exemplar causality
Because God creates by knowledge, the ideas are exemplar causes. Efficient causality answers who produces. Exemplar causality answers according to what measure. Final causality answers for what end. The four causes are not four gods. In God, the measure, the agent, and the end coincide. Creatures receive distinct essences because they imitate the one essence in limited ways. Participation language and idea language are here the same doctrine in two keys.
Providence then has a place. The type of the order of things toward an end pre-exists in God. That type is providence. Government executes it. Conservation and concurrence keep the participants in being and in act. The ideas are therefore not a decorative preface to the treatise on creation. They are why creation is wise rather than a burst of brute force, and why the sciences can study stable natures.[3]
Catholic measure
The Church confesses that God made all things by his wisdom and that nothing is made without the Word. She does not require the faithful to master question 15. She does require that God not be treated as ignorant of what he makes, or as consulting a world of forms he did not author, or as composing himself out of the things he knows. Those errors are already excluded by simplicity, omniscience, and creation from nothing.[2]
Thomism's account of the ideas is the classical Latin way of saying that. It remains synthesis. A Catholic theologian who prefers a different technical statement of the same truths is not thereby a Platonist or a Deist. A statement that evacuates God's knowledge, or that makes creatures parts of God, has left the doctrine the ideas exist to serve.
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 15 — Whether there are ideas in God, whether they are many, and whether they concern all that God knows.
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 199–221 — Authoritative confession of the one God, his name, simplicity, fullness of being, and the identity of his essence with his existence.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 22 — Providence as the type of the order of things toward an end, its universality, and its execution as government.