Exemplar cause
| Latin | Causa exemplaris; ideae divinae |
|---|---|
| Treatise | Summa theologiae I, q. 15; q. 44 a. 3 |
| Controlling authority | Catechism 279–308; Dei Filius |
| Doctrinal standing | God creates according to his wisdom; the plurality of ideas is Thomistic theology |
| School | Thomism |
Exemplar cause is the likeness according to which an agent produces a determined effect, and in Thomism God is the first exemplar of all created essences through the divine ideas.[1]
The likeness according to which a thing is made
An artisan produces a house because the likeness of the house pre-exists in his mind. Fire produces fire because the form pre-exists in the agent according to natural essence. In Summa theologiae I, question 15, article 1, Aquinas argues that in all things not generated by chance, form is the end of generation, and the agent does not act on account of the form except insofar as the likeness of the form is in it. That likeness is the exemplar.[1]
The 1913 article on cause treats exemplar causality within the scholastic analysis as the formal cause considered as a measure in the agent, especially the intelligent agent. It is not a fifth finite cause stacked beside Aristotle's four. It specifies the formal and efficient orders when the agent acts by intellect. Chance is excluded because determined effects require determined measures.[2]
Divine ideas in the one intellect
Because the world is not the result of chance, there is an idea in the divine mind as the archetype form of things. Article 2 of question 15 asks whether there are many ideas. Aquinas answers that God knows the many ways in which his essence is imitable, and those distinct relations of imitability are many ideas, though they are not many things in God. The ideas are the essence of God understood by him as imitable in diverse modes on the part of creatures.
Question 44, article 3, places God as the exemplar cause of all beings. Created forms are likenesses of the divine essence, not copies of a separate realm of Forms. Plato's separated ideas are refused insofar as they would be substances outside God. What is true in the Platonic insight, that making follows a measure, is located inside the one simple intellect. The plurality is on the side of the known, not a composition in the knower.[3]
Creation, not necessary emanation
Catholic doctrine requires that God create freely from nothing, according to his wisdom and will, for his glory. Dei Filius and the Catechism close both a blind world and a necessary overflow of the divine substance. Exemplar causality in Thomism is the way of stating that the world's order is from God's knowledge without making creatures fragments of God or making the ideas a second god.[4][5]
The Word is the perfect image of the Father. Created things are imperfect images. Trinitarian dogma governs the language of image and idea so that the eternal Word is not reduced to a created exemplar, and created exemplarity is not inflated into a fourth person. School theology here is a servant of the creed, not a rival source.
Art, law, and providence
Human arts participate exemplar causality analogically. A builder's idea is a created measure. Eternal law is the exemplar of the moral order in the divine wisdom. Providence is the execution of that order in time. None of these theological uses turns the textbook diagram into dogma. They keep making, commanding, and governing from collapsing into chance or into a will without wisdom.
Aeterni Patris commends this metaphysics because it lets Catholics confess both the intelligibility of natures and the freedom of the Creator. Fides et Ratio repeats the warning against a philosophy that would leave the world without a measure in mind. Exemplar cause is the Thomistic name of that measure, referred to God, with a greater unlikeness than likeness.[6]
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 15, articles 1–3 — Primary account of the divine ideas as the exemplar measures of created things in the one divine intellect.
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Cause — Public-domain analysis of the four causes, including efficient, final, and exemplar causality in the scholastic tradition.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 44 — Primary account of God as first efficient cause of being, exemplar of essences, and final cause of every appetite, with creatures as participating existence.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 279–314 — Authoritative doctrine of creation from nothing, divine conservation, providence, secondary causes, and the permission of evil without making God its author.
- Back to citation First Vatican Council, Dei Filius — Dogmatic constitution on God the Creator, the natural knowability of God, the distinction of the natural and supernatural orders, and the gratuity of revelation.
- Back to citation Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris — Encyclical restoring Christian philosophy in the school of Thomas Aquinas while distinguishing that commendation from a definition of every Thomistic thesis.