Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Truth (De Veritate)

1. Things are oriented to God as knowable and appetible. But not all things oriented to God as knowable know Him, for not all cognitive beings know God. Therefore, neither do all things oriented to Him as appetible tend to Him.

2. The good which is desired by all things is, in the opinion of the Philosopher, existence, as the Commentator maintains. But God is not the existence of all. Then God is not the good which is desired by all.

3. No one seeks what he flees from. But some people flee from God, as is had in the Psalms (73:23): "The pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually." And Job (21:14) says: "[They] have said to God: Depart from us." Hence not all things seek God.

4. No one seeks what he has. But some, the blessed who enjoy the possession of Him, have God. Then not all things seek Him.

5. There is a natural appetite only for what can be had. But only a rational creature can have God, since it alone is made to the image of God and "is the image of God by the very fact of having a capacity for Him," as Augustine says. Not all things, then, naturally seek God.

To the Contrary:

1'. There is the statement of Augustine: "Whatever can love loves God." But all things can love because all seek good. Then all seek God.

2'. Everything naturally tends to the end for which it exists. But all things are ordained to God as their end; for as is written in Proverbs (16:4): "The Lord hath made all things for himself." All things, therefore, naturally tend to God.

REPLY:

All things naturally tend to God implicitly, but not explicitly. That this may appear clearly it should be observed that a secondary cause can influence its effect only in so far as it receives the power of the first cause. The influence of an efficient cause is to act; that of a final cause is to be sought or desired. A secondary agent acts only by the efficacy of the first agent existing in it; similarly a secondary end is sought only by reason of the worth of the principal end existing in it inasmuch as it is subordinated to the principal end or has its likeness.

Accordingly, because God is the last end, He is sought in every end, just as, because He is the first efficient cause, He acts in every agent. But this is what tending to God implicitly, means. For the efficacy of the first cause is in the second as the principles of reasoning are in the conclusions. But to reduce conclusions to their principles or secondary causes to their first causes belongs only to the power of reasoning. Hence only a rational nature can trace secondary ends back to God by a sort of analytic procedure so as to seek God Himself explicitly. In demonstrative sciences a conclusion is correctly drawn only by a reduction to first principles. In the same way the appetite of a rational creature is correctly directed only by an explicit appetitive tendency to God, either actual or habitual.

Answers to Difficulties:

1. All cognitive beings also know God implicitly in any object of knowledge. Just as nothing has the note of appetibility except by a likeness to the first goodness, so nothing is knowable except by a likeness to the first truth.

2. Created existence is itself a likeness to the divine goodness. So in desiring to be, things implicitly desire a likeness to God and God Himself.

3. God can be viewed in two ways, in Himself and in His effects. Viewed in Himself He cannot but be loved since He is the very essence of goodness. Hence He is loved in His essence by all who see Him; and to the extent that each one knows Him each loves Him. But viewed in some of His effects, e.g., punishment or commands that seem onerous, seeing that they are contrary to our will, God is shunned and, in a sense, hated. And yet those who hate Him in some of His effects necessarily love Him in others. Thus even the devils, as Dionysius teaches, naturally desire to be and to live, and in this respect seek and love God Himself.

4. The blessed who already enjoy the possession of God desire the continuance of their enjoyment. Furthermore, the enjoyment itself is a sort of appetite perfected by its object, although the name appetite implies imperfection.

5. Only a rational creature has the capacity for God because only it can know and love Him explicitly. But other creatures too participate in a likeness to God and so tend to Him.