The Metaphysics of Creation Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles II

by Kretzmann, Norman

• ISBN13: 9780198237877
• ISBN10: 0198237871
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-08-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Norman Kretzmann expounds and criticizes St. Thomas Aquinas's natural theology of creation, which is 'natural' (or philosophical) in virtue of Aquinas's having developed it without depending on the data of Scripture. The Metaphysics of Creation is a continuation of the project Kretzmann began in The Metaphysics of Theism, moving the focus from the first to the second book of Aquinas's Summa contra gentiles.

Author Biography

Norman Kretzmann, Susan Linn Sage Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cornell University, New York, completed this book at the beginning of 1998, and died in the summer of that year. He taught philosophy at Cornell for more than thirty years, and also held appointments at Bryn Mawr College, Ohio State University, and the University of Illinois, and visiting positions at Wayne State University and the Universities of Minnesota, Arizona, and Oxford.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	xiii
Nature from the Top Down	1	(29)
The aims of the book	1	(1)
Aquinas's natural theology	2	(6)
SCG II as the thematic continuation of SCG	8	(2)
`Divine truth'	10	(4)
God's immanent and transeunt activity	14	(4)
The positive results of meditating on creation	18	(5)
The corrective results of meditating on creation	23	(2)
How philosophy and the faith are taught	25	(3)
Aquinas's plan for SCG II	28	(2)
From God to Everything Else	30	(40)
SCG II as the logical continuation of SCG I	30	(3)
Considering the source	33	(3)
The actus purus argument	36	(5)
God's active power	41	(3)
How to attribute power to God	44	(3)
How to attribute relations to God	47	(6)
God as the source of everything else	53	(3)
Argument E/U	56	(14)
Creation as Doubly Universal Production	70	(31)
For all things the cause of being	70	(3)
Out of no antecedent matter	73	(5)
Not even prime matter	78	(3)
Not through movement or change	81	(4)
Something out of nothing	85	(2)
Movement and change considered more closely	87	(4)
No successiveness in creating	91	(7)
No body can create	98	(1)
Creating belongs to God alone	99	(2)
Creation's Modalities	101	(41)
Why would God create?	101	(2)
The scope of God's creative power	103	(4)
Separated substances as counter-instances to the single-effect account of creation	107	(3)
Corporeal matter as a counter-instance to the single-effect account of creation	110	(3)
Omnipotence and absolute possibility	113	(7)
The modality of creative action	120	(6)
The modalities of intellection and volition	126	(4)
Justice, goodness, and God's plan as possible grounds for obligatory creation	130	(7)
Kinds of necessity in created things	137	(5)
Five. Could the Created World have Existed for Ever?	142	(41)
`The eternity of the world'	142	(6)
The modalities of beginningless creation	148	(4)
The created world need not have existed for ever	152	(7)
Beginninglessness based on considerations of God	159	(8)
Beginninglessness based on considerations of created things	167	(5)
Beginninglessness based on considerations of the making of things	172	(3)
Purported proofs that the world must have begun to exist	175	(7)
Aquinas's probable argument for the greater goodness of a temporally finite world	182	(1)
The Origin of Species	183	(45)
From producing to distinguishing	183	(3)
Distinguishing and furnishing	186	(4)
Aquinas's non-creationist reading of Genesis 1	190	(3)
Distinguishing distinguished, broadly	193	(3)
The complex product of an absolutely simple producer	196	(2)
Distinguishing distinguished, more narrowly	198	(5)
A mind behind the scenes	203	(2)
Not by chance	205	(6)
Not by matter alone	211	(5)
Manifold manifestation	216	(8)
God's choice of this world	224	(4)
Intellects	228	(42)
Considering created things themselves	228	(2)
Considering intellective creatures only	230	(5)
Reasons why creation includes intellective substances	235	(5)
Intellects and wills	240	(4)
Will and freedom	244	(7)
What intellective creatures could not be	251	(5)
The metaphysical complexity of the simplest possible creatures	256	(7)
The two species of potentiality-actuality composition	263	(5)
Incorruptibility	268	(2)
Metaphysical Hybrids	270	(53)
Intellective substances and corporeal substances	270	(3)
Inapplicable modes of union	273	(5)
Power contact	278	(6)
Unconditional union	284	(6)
Aquinas's unreasonable hypothesis	290	(4)
The very nature of a human being	294	(2)
Soul as the first principle of life	296	(3)
Body and soul	299	(8)
Body and souls?	307	(6)
The peculiar character of the human soul	313	(10)
The Soul's Anatomy	323	(46)
Aquinas's philosophy of mind in SCG II	323	(2)
Special features of the soul's union with the body	325	(12)
Aquinas's agenda in SCG II.73-78	337	(5)
Parts of the soul	342	(3)
The sensory part	345	(5)
Sense in intellect's service	350	(7)
Intellective cognition	357	(7)
Organlessness	364	(5)
Souls before Birth and at Death	369	(50)
The rest of Book II	369	(4)
Reproduction, embryology, science, and metaphysics	373	(3)
Aquinas's basic argument regarding the origin of an individual human being	376	(8)
Particular creation as the source of a human soul's existence	384	(3)
Other naturalistic explanations of the origin of a human soul	387	(9)
The argument from the substantial unity of the human soul	396	(7)
Arguing for the incorruptibility of intellective souls	403	(9)
Arguing against arguments for the corruptibility of intellective souls	412	(7)
Appendix I: A Chronology of Aquinas's Life and Works	419	(8)
Appendix II: A Table Indicating the Correspondence between Sections of Chapters of SCG II in the Pera (Marietti) Edition and the Anderson Translation	427	(9)
Appendix III In Sent. I.44.2: Could God Make a Better Universe?	436	(4)
References	440	(11)
Index locorum	451	(16)
General index	467