Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; ex nihilo; Thomas: actus essendi (esse als Aktualität d. Form); Kommunikation des Aktes an ein Seiendes

Kurzinhalt: Being most complete, it is the principle of plenitude that is reached in the journey from potency to act. And yet, it is what first falls into the intellect ... St. Thomas speaks of the communication of act to a being.

Textausschnitt: 108a The Aristotelian path leads from various kinds of potency to their determining and completive acts. It is form that actuates matter, giving to it the definiteness admired by most Greeks. It is accidental qualification that fulfils the receptive potencies of substances, bringing them to further completion. And so, form and accidental determinants are what is actual in their respective orders. Because of one or two events that had happened, and one or two thoughts that had been thought along the way, St. Thomas continued beyond that formal limit at which Aristotle had found his highest principle of act. And beyond form, in the trans-formal texture of actual existence, St. Thomas found the absolutely determinate principle of existential act: actus essendi, the act of being. (Fs) (notabene)

108b A paean to act as esse sounds in his works. A modern editor has gathered together some of the more striking characterizations in the compass of two pages in an easily available little book.20 It goes without saying, of course, that they should be studied in their larger context. Being (ens) is that which, as it were, has esse,21 for being is imposed upon something from the very act of existing of the thing;22 and so, properly, being signifies something existing in act (aliquid proprie esse in actu).23 St. Thomas indicates ways in which a thing can be said to be in the weaker senses that refer to, but fall short of, actual existence (esse in actu): thus, something can be said to be in the potentiality of the matter, as fire in the kindling; or again, in the mind, as the formula for combustion in the mind of the chemist or the arsonist; or in still another way, in the active power of the agent, as fire in the match (weaker in the sense that, although the fire exists in a more powerful, determinant mode, it doesn't exist in itself at all).24 When we say that something is, "is" means "primarily that which the intellect apprehends as being absolutely actual."25 Esse is the intrinsic and exclusive source of what is actual in a thing. "That which has esse is made actually existent"26 thereby. Any form "is understood to exist actually only in virtue of the fact that it is held to be."27 (Fs) (notabene)

109a And so, along the path that St. Thomas has walked he has found that it is not form that is most actual, but rather that esse is the actuality of every form.28 Indeed, of itself, form is not actual; it can be said to be relatively actual, that is, actual only through its relation to that which is absolutely and in every respect actual. Esse is the actuality of all acts, the perfection of all perfections;29 it is more formal than form, most determinative and completive, innermost and deepest in each thing,30 superior and noblest among all the principles that compose the thing.31 Being most complete, it is the principle of plenitude that is reached in the journey from potency to act. And yet, it is what first falls into the intellect, and what we encounter in everything that we encounter. It is the source of everything that is in the creature, and the source of the generosity with which the creator creates. (Fs) (notabene)

109b If the act of which St. Thomas speaks is mistaken for fact or result, the conception will not be able to carry the weight he has put upon it. Only as the most decisive and completive principle can esse, so to speak, "draw" all else in the being: form, matter, accidents, out of nothing and into composite unity with it. Only in this sublimation of other principles into its own order can their own nature be realized and the being itself made actual. Only in this way can there be an it in the first place. Not that the intrinsic act of the creature does this out of and from itself (a se). Rather, the actuation in the thing at this most absolute level of actuality (per modum actualitatis absolute) comes about through the communication of esse to the creature by the creator. (Fs) (notabene)

110a The philosopher who speaks of act here cannot fail to learn humility, for his dry language can scarcely hint at the drama with which the creature first begins to be and continues to be. On this level, the creature is bounded at the nadir by nothing, and at the apex by eternity. The nadir haunts the creature with its finitude, for (as Hegel has shown so brilliantly)32 its completion lies wholly outside of itself in the perfect infinite. It is not simply limited; it is radically dependent for its very being. In a word, it is, indeed, a creature. Nevertheless, this it that is is not simply negative. For with the finitude, of which as a Christian he was well aware, St. Thomas also recognizes a perseity, the created supposit. For insofar as it is and is an it, what has been communicated is not simply act, but being, a being. (Fs) (notabene)

111a There is no doubt that the nature of the unity that is created is at issue. As Aristotle before him, so too St. Thomas speaks of the communication of act to a being. The creator does not create an indeterminate world, after the manner of Descartes' suggestion regarding the material universe, viz., that God might create only matter and the laws of motion. Nor does the creator create the System, after the manner of a self-determining totality. Rather, the creator creates beings: this being, that, and yet others. Nor are these individuals mere particulars that serve an empiricist or a systematic function. It was this latter charge that was levelled against Hegel by Kierkegaard who sought to preserve the solvency of the individual, even though he restricted his defence to the individuality of the human subject. The solvency of the ontological individual, including the nonhuman, is also uppermost in St. Thomas' understanding of creation. (Fs)