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Triumph of St. Thomas over the heretics by Fra Filippino Lippi

 

Make Good, Make Being, Make God

 

Is There a Facere Bridge in Aquinas From Agere to Esse?

 

 

This is less an article and more a request for those who are learned in the work and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas to consider translating a Latin word used by St. Thomas, faciendum, as “to be made” instead of the most common translation “to be done.” Another possibility is a compound word translation of faciendum: “to be done/made” or “made/done” so that the translation includes the notion of human bringing good into existence via the doing of human acts. Also, does a translation of “good is to be made” entail or support a re-wording as “being is to be made;” so that “making good” is “making [not creating] being” in likeness to God’s creation of being?

 

Anything and everything asserted here or stated here that is not in the form of a question is asserted or stated in the mode of “Does this make sense in terms of Thomas’s work?” or “Is this at all helpful in explaining his work?” and not as some authoritative pronouncement of Thomist scholars (which this author is not) who have read and re-read Thomas’s works and studied them in the original Latin for decades over the course of a long academic career.

 

The word faciendum occurs in what Thomas calls the first precept of the natural law (henceforth “First Precept”):

 

“Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.” Summa Theologica, I-II, 94, a,2,c.

 

A widely-used translation of these words is as follows:

 

“Hence this is the first precept of law, that good is to be done and purused, and evil is to be avoided.” (Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1948, henceforth “English Fathers”).

 

Many other translations, scholarly books, and articles use the “to be done” translation.

 

 

A long time ago it what now seems a galaxy far far away, I studied Latin in High School and College. In what seems another alternate universe, I also was enrolled in philosophy graduate courses, off and on, for the better part of twelve years at a secular university where the history of thought began in ancient chaos, went through to Aristotle, had a dark unlit lacuna up to Descartes (or perhaps Pascal and Montaigne), and then went on to the glory of British analytic be-all-end-all philosophy. Once I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon in Houston, Texas during the Spring of 1972 with then-graduate-student Libby Potter (now Professor Bodacious Par Excellence Elizabeth Potter) and Professor Gilbert Ryle (yes, THE Gilbert Ryle, author of Concept of Mind; Fellow Magdalen College; Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford; Editor of the journal Mind,) who, had he not been British to the core, could have been a true southern gentleman. Libby and I were chosen to accompany Professor Ryle for an afternoon before an evening meet-and-greet and dinner. He was retired, but the university lured him with an offer he could not refuse if he would visit with the faculty and students for a week and give a talk, and he needed the money to pay for good health care for an ailing relative. That afternoon (and for that entire week whose focus was the philosophy of mind and epistemology) Gilbert, Libby, and I and all attendees at the various events did not discuss anyone who lived and thought between The Philosopher and Rene D. – including Augustine, Abelard, Averroes, Avecinna, Algazel, Anselm, Alpharabius, Ambrose and Aquinas; nor was there ever any mention of any of these thinkers in any class in all my years of study. Later in life I not only regretted this void, but I began to be interested in the works and thought of a man, St. Thomas, known to many as one of the most humble and most intelligent men who ever lived.

 

While a graduate student, sometimes near a month’s end there would be a few dollars remaining from my fellowship stipend and, since I really have never consumed alcohol and lager was out of the question, I would go to the campus store and buy any affordable philosophy books. I particularly liked paperback books in a series devoted to essays about a named philosopher in the Doubleday Modern Studies In Philosophy series. One day in 1972 the book Aquinas A Collection Of Critical Essays, edited by Anthony Kenny (1969) was there, $1.95, so I bought it. It was only until several years ago that I opened it – since I decided before I die I would like to see why all the fuss about St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

And this brings us back to my college minor in Latin – the last essay in the Kenny book, by Germain G. Grisez, is “The First Principle Of Practical Reason” and it makes this statement:

 

“This principle as Aquinas states it is: Good is to be done and pursued and evil is to be avoided.”

 

Keeping in mind that I had forgotten most of the Latin I learned and that I had never read any Aquinas, let alone Aquinas in the original Latin, the word “faciendum” and the translation “to be done” jumped out at me. Early on in one’s first high school course in first year first semester Latin, in the first weeks when one encounters verbs – after nouns, pronouns, and adjectives – having mastered first conjugation “amo, amare, amavi, amatus” (to love) and second conjugation “moneo, monere, monui, monitus” (to advise), the freshman student arrives at exemplary third conjugation “io” verb “facio, facere, feci, factus “ (to make) – for fresh freshmen, the verb “facio” is “I make;” (with a secondary meaning – I do). The “faciendum” form of the verb “facere” is what is called a gerundive and it is used to convey the idea that something is “to be made.” So you can see, when I read Thomas Aquinas’s “faciendum” translated as “to be done” and not “to be made” it struck me as odd and, after saying Whoa Nellie, I wondered what I was missing. (Thank you Frs. Sokolski, Mokarzel, and Watson, OMIs, and Fr. Dreissoner, S.M. who taught me Latin, not thinking I would ever remember any of it).

 

I went to my old Henle and Bennett Latin Grammars [yes-kept them since high school] and there it is – the first definition of “facio” is “I make.” My Cassell’s Latin Dictionary has “to make, prepare, build” as the first of the “A” definitions for “facere”, and it is only in the “B” definitions that “to do” is mentioned. OK, so I figure I will see how some other folks translate “faciendum” – and now I am literally sitting here amidst books and articles by real professors, thinkers and scholars with names like Pegis, Nichols, Gilson, Chesterton, Copleston, Rice, Donigan, Wippel, Rhonheimer, Davies, Hall, Renick, Rogers, Kerr, M-D Chenu, Barron, Vann, Clarke, to name a few, and their translations of “faciendum” are all “to be done.” Still the thought about what I first learned “facere” to mean, and English words descended from it like fact, facilitate, and factory, keep bugging me, and I wondered why St. Thomas – if he meant “done” – used “faciendum,” why didn’t he use “agendum,” (to be done) a form of the common verb agere (to do), and why do all these folks use to the “to be done” translation? Of course, he did not have to deal with this – he used “faciendum” and everyone at the time read “faciendum”- and they read it with the full import of what St. Thomas meant.

 

I have been gifted with, from a trash pile at a major seminary here, a Latin version of St. Thomas’s Summa Theologica. It was there with many similar copies, along with Latin versions of the Summa Contra Gentiles, English translations of both, and numerous other works, many in Latin, deemed useless by current, what should I call them? “thinkers”? So I go to I-II, 94, a, 2, c – this is how different parts and sections of the Summa Theologica are cited– and these are St. Thomas’s own words:

 

“Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra rationem boni, quae est, bonum est quod omnia appetunt. Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum. Et super hoc fundantur omnia alia praecepta legis naturae, ut scilicet omnia illa facienda vel vitanda pertineant ad praecepta legis naturae, quae ratio practica naturaliter apprehendit esse bona humana.”

 

An exemplary translation in the “done” mode is this:

 

“Consequently, the first principle in the practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based on this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man’s good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.” (English Fathers, 1948).

 

A scan of other parts of the Summa reveals that Thomas uses many forms of “facere bonum” when speaking of human actions. For example, in II-II, 79, in discussing justice, he uses “bonum facere” or “facere bonum” many times.

 

 

I wonder: is there anything to be learned or anything of value in using the “to be made” translation as opposed to the “to be done” translation? In what context or other sources might St. Thomas have encountered the verb “facere” that could have had any influence on his use of “faciendum” ?

 

 

“To Make” Verbs in Scripture & Creed

 

St. Thomas had before him in the Latin Vulgate Bible (which some believe he had memorized and for which he had eidetic recall) many uses of various forms of the verb “facere”. To name a few: the use of the “facere” verb forms translated “made,” in the first creation account in Genesis; the use of the verb form “faciat,” usually translated “do,” in Luke’s account of the Last Supper’s words of institution of the Eucharist; and the variety of uses of the verb form “factum” in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. Common English translations of some of these words are of the “to make” kind, instead of the “to do” kind. Did these uses convey something other than what is conveyed by “to do?” Do they convey something about what St. Thomas believed or taught if we use the “to make” translations?

 

Genesis

 

Book 1 of Genesis, in the Latin Vulgate translation, contains several forms of the verb “facere” which have been translated as “make” or “made” – e.g. factum, facta, facientem, fecit,. This is in addition to Genesis’s use of the verb “creare” which in English is “to create”: “In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram” – In the beginning God created heaven and earth.

 

From Genesis 1

 

“et facta est lux” (and light was made)

 

“et ait faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostrum” (and He said let us make man in our image and likeness)

 

“viditque Deus cuncta quae fecit et erant valde bona et factum est” (and God saw all the things that He had made and they were very good)

 

Over and over in Genesis 1 God sees what He has made and He sees that it is good: “et vidit Deus quod esset bonum”.

 

Luke

In the eucharistic institution narrative in Luke, Chapter 22, Verse 19, Latin Vulgate translation, Luke reports that Jesus said: “ . . . hoc facite meam commemerationem.” Typical English translations of the “facere” verb form “facite” are “do this in memory of me;” but St. Thomas Aquinas had and knew the original Latin. The words from Luke are repeated in 1 Corinthians 11: 24-25: “et gratias agens fregit, et dixit: Accipite, et manducate: hoc est corpus meum, quod pro vobis tradetur: hoc facite in meam commemorationem. Similiter et calicem, postquam cœnavit, dicens: Hic calix novum testamentum est in meo sanguine: hoc facite quotiescumque bibetis, in meam commemorationem.”

John

The beginning chapter of John’s gospel, in the Latin Vulgate, uses a variety of forms of the verb “facere” which have been translatedin English as “to make” verbs:

“omnia per ipsum facta sunt et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est” (All things were made through this same [Word] and without this same [Word] was made nothing that was made)

“et mundus per ipsum factus est” (and the world was made by this same [Word])

“quotquot autem receperunt eum dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri” (But as many as received him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God)

“et Verbum caro factum est” (and the Word was made flesh)

The Nicene Creed

The Latin translation of the Nicene Creed of 325 uses several forms of the verb “facere” of which St. Thomas was aware; and the verb “creare,” “to create” was not used:

“Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipoténtem, Factórem cæli et terræ” (I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth)

 

“Per quem ómnia facta sunt” (through whom all things were made)

 

“Et incarnátus est de Spíritu Sancto ex María Vírgine, et homo factus est” (and He was incarnate of the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man)

 

In all of these scriptrural and creedal uses, a form of a Latin verb for doing or creating could have been used; but it is a form of the verb “facere” “to make” that is used – and St. Thomas knew this before he postulated his first precept of the natural law, using the “to make” verb form “faciendum”.

 

Make Good In God’s Image?

 

One could spend the rest of one’s life reading all that has been written on Genesis 1:26’s reference to man made “in the image of God”: “et ait faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostrum” (and He said let us make man in our image and likeness). In God’s image, we have an intellect and will, we think and reason and act freely. But is this all that we do “in imago Dei”? Does it make sense to say that we could “make” as in “make good” as part of being in the image of God? If so, would this contradict or coincide with, or mean zilch in comparison to, what St. Thomas says about “in imago Dei” and the “faciendum” part of his first precept of the natural law?

 

In speaking of men and women’s likeness to God and being made in God’s image, St. Thomas considered the question of “Whether the Image of God is to be Found in the Acts of the Soul?” (I,9 3,7).

 

“Therefore, first and chiefly, the image of the Trinity is to be found in the acts of the soul . . .” (I, 93, 7).

 

St. Thomas agrees with St. Augustine that the image of God as Trinity is in both the mind and in the will. (I, 93,7 Reply Objection 2,3)

 

“Hence we refer the divine image in man to the verbal concept born of the knowledge of God, and to the love derived thereform.” (I,93,8)

 

In his discussion of free will, Thomas states that human free will, though not equal to the will of God, can imitate the will of God:

 

“The human will cannot be confirmed to the will of God so as to equal it, but only so as to imitate it. . . and human action is conformed to the Divine in so far as it is becoming to the agent: – and this by way of imitation, not by way of equality.” (I-II, 19, 10; Reply Obj. 1)

 

 

Do these references to image and likeness and imitation indicate that St. Thomas includes in his word “faciendum” in the first precept of the natural law that, in addition to good being done, good is somehow to be “made” ? Certainly there is a categorical difference between God creating, creation ex nihilo, and God making (The God who “makes” in Genesis, in John, and in the Nicene Creed). Can it be that human beings, in the image of God, can “make” similarly (not identically) to the way God makes? It seems that it is plausible that St. Thomas does believe, in some sense, it is part of the natural law that good is to be made; and the comments about the image of God being more than simply a likeness or similarity of intellect, and including notions of will, and acts, and love, could indicate that there is more than “to do” conveyed by his word “faciendum.”

 

Do Good, Make Good, Make Being

 

Is there any insight possible or profitable in proceeding down a conceptual path from good is being , from to do good is to make good, from to make good is to make being? Or, even further, for a human being to make being is to make Being?

 

And is it in any way profitable in interpreting the First Precept by reading it as saying “good [being] is to be made and evil [non-being] is to be avoided,” in the sense that, for St. Thomas, evil is not a being, evil has no being? On this reading, St. Thomas would be saying: “make good and seek after it and avoid evil” which is to say “make being and seek after it and avoid non-being”; i.e. he would not be saying “make non-being” because that makes no sense for him and is simply not possible – and thus he does not say “et malum non faciendum” but “malum vitandum.” In the sense of making good, evil cannot be made.

 

For Thomas, although “in idea” good is prior to being, “good” and “being” are in a sense interchangeable . He tells us:

 

“Now in things, each one has so much good as it has being: since good and being are convertible . . .” (I-II, 18, 1).

 

This statement is part of Thomas’s discussion of the good and evil of human acts (I-II, 18), and this is how he begins his explanation of the goodness, and evil, of an act:

 

“We must speak of good and evil in actions as of good
and evil in things: because such as everything is, such is the act
that it produces. Now in things, each one has so much good as it has
being: since good and being are convertible, as was stated in the
First Part (Q. 5, AA. 1, 3). But God alone has the whole plenitude of
His Being in a certain unity: whereas every other thing has its
proper fullness of being in a certain multiplicity. Wherefore it
happens with some things, that they have being in some respect, and
yet they are lacking in the fullness of being due to them. Thus the
fullness of human being requires a compound of soul and body, having
all the powers and instruments of knowledge and movement: wherefore
if any man be lacking in any of these, he is lacking in something due
to the fullness of his being. So that as much as he has of being, so
much has he of goodness: while so far as he is lacking in goodness,
and is said to be evil: thus a blind man is possessed of goodness
inasmuch as he lives; and of evil, inasmuch as he lacks sight. That,
however, which has nothing of being or goodness, could not be said to
be either evil or good. But since this same fulness of being is of
the very essence of good, if a thing be lacking in its due fulness of
being, it is not said to be good simply, but in a certain respect,
inasmuch as it is a being; although it can be called a being simply,
and a non-being in a certain respect, as was stated in the First Part
(Q. 5, A. 1, ad 1). We must therefore say that every action has
goodness, in so far as it has being; whereas it is lacking in
goodness, in so far as it is lacking in something that is due to its
fulness of being; and thus it is said to be evil: for instance if it
lacks the quantity determined by reason, or its due place, or
something of the kind.” (I-II,18,1).

 

I would like to go, or see if one can go, from “every action has goodness” to “actions which do good make good;” and thence on to “if an action makes good, an action brings something into being which did not exist before the action, and to the extent of that being, good is made;” i.e. human being by their actions make good and this is what is meant by saying “Make good and seek it, and avoid evil.” I hope in a few years there are several dissertations debunking this or establishing this or at least saying it is not complete bs (baloney sausage).

 

It seems to me if we do good, we make good. Even if it is simply an interior act, that act did not exist before we did it, that good, that “being” did not have being prior to our free act, and after our act that “being” is. With external human acts, the “making” part of it is easier to see, easier to talk about – we bring into being a house made for the homeless, we bring into being comfort for the downhearted, we give a promise – we “make a promise” – that did not exist before. In a very real sense of “being” we make being and this making is the result of our free human actions. This making is something beyond the “doing.” This making is like – thought not identical to – God’s various “makings” that are not ex nihilo. And the “making” of a particular person with a particular human act, is a unique making that no other person can do.

 

We cannot do everything God can do. If we could we would not be in His image and likeness, we would be God. There is so much God can do that we cannot do. But one thing that God cannot do is do our free human acts and, by such acts, “make the good” that we can make, and bring that good into being. In an ironic sense, we are “like God” in that there is something we can do that He cannot do. And that is the goodness, the generosity, the love, the splendor, the power, and the glory of His creating us free.

 

This is getting much longer than I expected, so let me go forward – since I have now made clear my confusions about St. Thomas’s work – to cite what I think are some pertinent passages from real Thomist scholars and how the “to be made” translation of faciendum might impact them or be relative to their works, as well as the equation make good = make being, and such making makes us like God, and even, perhaps, allows us to “participate” in Him.

 

Gerald Vann

 

In 1939 Fr. Gerald Vann wrote:

 

“Too often a material fidelity to particular conclusions reached by St. Thomas masks a radical infidelity to the spirit of Thomism and, in consequence, to the general context in which such particular conclusions should be viewed. This was especially the case with the degradation of Thomist morals into legalism; the shifting of the accent from being to doing, and, still more, not doing; and absorption in means to the exclusion of end.” (Vann, The Aquinas Prescription, p. 45).

 

Can it be the case that translating bonum faciendum as “good is to be made” does provide what Vann calls the correct “accent” for St. Thomas’s work on morals? In several ways, making good goes beyond doing good, especially if making good entails making being.

 

Fergus Kerr

 

In his, in my opinion, brilliant book, After Aquinas, Fergus Kerr, O.P., saved me countless hours of reading in his discussions of and interpretations of the work of numerous Thomist scholars. In discussing the work of William J. Hill, Kerr says:

 

“William J. Hill distinguishes between the word ‘being’ used as a substantive and thus suggesting ‘a static divinity that is a self-enclosed

Absolute’ and conceiving God as “Be-int itself’ – ‘the hyphen serving to convey the participial form of the term’ . . . so it turns out that God’s being is ‘not something static, akin to essence, but a dynamism expressed as actuality’. Thus Hill goes on, if God is construed as pure actuality, as the fullness of be-ing, rather than as infinite essence or substance, then it follows that divinity is “a pure dynamism” – there is a “spontaneous emanation of being into knowing and loving’ . . .” (Kerr, p. 201.

 

On this point, in discussing the work of David Burrell, Kerr says:

 

“The plan of the Summa, Burrell thinks, is to show how human beings, created by God, find their way to ultimate beatitude by the activities of knowing and loving . . .In particular, when he considers divine activity, Thomas models it on the activity of knowing and loving which we find ourselves practicing all the time. (Kerr, Id.)

 

In his discussion of Theological Ethics, Kerr says:

 

“So, repeating that in every creature including animals there is a likeness to God by way of a trace, he [Thomas] argues that this is true of human beings as well but the distinctive thing is that, by finding a – the procession of the word in our minds and a procession of love in our wills there exists an image of the uncreated Trinity . . . but when God the Tr4inity made us in his own image we are talking about the image of the whole Trinity (image totius Trinitatis). It needs to be underlined that this is a dynamic conception: the human creature images the processions of Word and Spirit within the triune Godhead in his or her acts of understanding and loving.’ (Kerr, p.126)

 

“At most, in contrast to readers who take it for granted that Thomas’s God is a static entity and the human creature its mirror image, we have enough textual evidence to argue that the moral life as actually understanding and loving is the pracrtical and dynamic ‘imagind’ of the God whose act of being is always actuallyunderstanding and loving.” (Kerr, p. 128)

 

If we consider these actions of “loving” as discussed by Kerr, Burrell, and Hill as good human actions which result in an achieved end, they bring good into being, they are actions that “make good.” And they are actions in accord with St. Thomas’s first precept translated as “good is to be made”. The “good is to be made” translation conveys a factor of dynamism and end achieved that are not conveyed by simply “doing”.

 

In a chapter entitled “Deified Creaturehood,” Kerr discusses the concepts of deification, divinization and participation of the creature in God. After going through the history of this concept and summarizing various treatments of it, Kerr discusses the “most remarkable discussion in recent scholarship” “from Anna Williams. For Williams, according to Kerr, a ‘mystical theology’ of St. Thomas “is concerned with the union of God and the human being created in God’s image.” (Kerr, p. 157). Kerr says:

 

“Thus, our beatitude is not other than God himself; and as our participation in the divine beatitude it is something that God creates in us. But now this created beatitude is the life of human activity in which our human powers begin to be fulfilled here and now. Human beings become what they are meant to be only in union with God; and the specifically human activities, the practice of the virtues, are a form of participation in divine beatitude in this life.” (Kerr, p.158).

 

If a human being “makes good” in doing a free good human act, in making the good the human being “makes being”. Can we say that in making being that very being itself is God and that – on a principle like we become what we do – if we make being we unify ourselves with God? This seems to be consonant with what Kerr says of Williams: “Anna Williams insists that the project is wholly shaped by Thomas’s relentless portrayal of God as the God who is intent on union with humanity” (Kerr. P. 157).

 

Martin Rhonheimer

 

Martin Rhonheimer subtitles his book, Natural Law and Practical Reason, as “A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy.” Rhonheimer speaks of the “personally autonomous character of human actions” (Natural Law and Practical Reason, p. 237) and mentions St. Thomas ‘s quoting St. John Damascene: “Thomas follows a text of John Damascene to describe this personal autonomy as an imago, an ‘image,’ or ‘likeness’ of the divine potestas.” (Id. ). Rhonheimer goes on to say:

 

“The divine likeness of man provides a key not only to the personally autonomous character of human actions, but also (and in the first place) a key to the end and goal of human existence – and thereby, a key to the end and goal of the mastery of freedom that belongs to this imago.” (Id.)

“ . . .the personal autonomy that is the theme of the Secunda Pars is always also treated as a participation of the divine perfection and bonitas . . .(Id., p. 240).

 

Rhonheimer describes the imago as a“ ‘partaking’ through action” and a “new point of view” that “takes in man’s own power ‘of moving toward God’ (motus ad Deum) that is grounded in the imago character. (Id., pp. 241, 240).

 

Doesn’t it make sense to see this action-autonomy, this “partaking brought through action,” in terms of, by such actions, “making good”? That by “making good” one “moves toward God” and acts in His image in a way not totally conveyed by simply saying one “does” something? It seems to me that using the “make good” idea explains aspects of “participation” in God that are not within the concept of “doing.”

 

John F. Wippel

 

Similar comments apply to the treatment of Participation in Chapter IV of John F. Wippel’s book, The Metaphysical Thought Of Thomas Aquinas, in the discussion of “participation by likeness” (Id., p. 119; “participation by similitude” (Id., 125); “participates . . .by imitation” (Id., p. 118).

 

Marie Dominique Chenu

 

M.D. Chenu discusses the connection between St. Thomas’s concept of the image and likeness of God and moral action. He says: “The second doctrine on which Thomas’s moral vision rested was the biblical teaching that the human person was made “to the image and likeness of God. (Gn 2). Chenu quotes, approvingly, from Jean Tonneau:

 

“In the theologian’s understanding, to be human – that is to say intelligent, endowed with free will, master of oneself and one’s acts – is to be the image of God. To become human, to act human, or (if you prefer) to flow back toward God following the human mode and the characteristic resources available to humans through the creative flux – all this is literally to exercise one’s role as image of God. By the same stroke, to the astonishment of the simple moralist, on thus treats God not as legislator, remunerator, or helper, or whatever else you want to call him, but as model.” (Jean Tonneau, Morale et theologie, vol. 3, pp. 13-36)(Chenu, p. 98).

 

Again, it is proposed, in “acting human,” one images God by “making good,” in addition to “doing good.” The “making” aspect of one’s exercising “one’s role as image of God” conveys another aspect of being in God’s image.

 

 

Aidan Nichols

 

The work of Aidan Nichols in expounding St. Thomas’s writings may provide additional instances in which the possible interpretations – make good = make being; in making good, thereby making being, a person, to the extent being is made (not created) is like God and participates in divinity; and a person’s making good produces a unique good that no other person can make – may have application. Each quote below from Nichols’s Discovering Aquinas is restated in light of the possible interpretations.

 

“It is perfect [a thing], however, insofar as it is in act, and it is in act in the measure that it is being. For the tradition of Thomas, the primary meaning of the good is ‘perfective good’ . . .”. (Nichols. P. 155). Interpretation: A thing is in act, in act a thing is “making good,” in the measure that it is good. In “making good” a thing is perfecting good.

 

“The creature’s share in the transcendentals has, naturally, the same structure as its share in being, since the transcendentals are the constant properties thereof. It is by participatory dependence on the divine unity, truth, and goodness that created reality shows these features for itself.” (Id.) Interpretation: a creature’s – a human being’s – share in being depends on the extent to which a person “makes good;” and in making good, a person enters into participatory dependence on God.

 

Nichols discusses “causal participation” and “principles of causal likeness and participation” on pages 156-157 of his book. Nichols says:

 

“Fundamental for Thomas’s interest in causation are the interrelated concepts of causal likeness and causal participation.

‘The experience of the likeness between cause and effect which is had naturally in the sequence of generations and intentionally in human craft, points to the hierarchy of ontological sharing which secures this likeness.’” (Nichols quoting M.D. Jordan, Ordering Wisdom, p. 108).

Interpretation: A human being enters into ontological sharing with God, securing likeness with God, by making good, by being a cause of good, by being an onto-logos (or likeness of the onto-logos) as maker (not as creator), and as maker of a good for which no other creature can be the cause.

 

Etienne Gilson

 

Similarly, Etienne Gilson says “ “ . . . every good inhering in a finite human soul like ours is by that fact a very finite and participated good. . . . it is not simply a matter of being, but of a permanent effort to maintain ourselves in being, to conserve ourselves, realize ourselves . .   .Act always is being” (Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 352,358). Interpretation: is not the “making” of the good, a “participated good,” a participation in God? By making good, therefore making being, do we not real-ize ourselves?

 

Conclusion

 

Back to the beginning, is it helpful to translate bonum est faciendum as “good is to be made” ? And perhaps profitable to see St. Thomas as thinking, ever, in terms of human beings making good, making being by making good, and being like God in such making? And, in such likeness, participating in deity? And even, (without uttering nonsense or heresy) if we make good, in a sense we make God?

 

Guy McClung, J.D., Ph.D.

San Antonio, Texas

September 2015