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Comparison of the Cosmogo-nies of Aquinas, Avicenna, and the Shi`ite Doctrine of Creation

and Emanation

E. M. MacierowskiBenedictine College, Kansas

An Introduction

This essay has three aims:

(1) First, I shall demonstrate that key books of the corpus of the Iranian philosopher, Avi-

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cenna (980-1037) have had a very important influence on a central theme in a central figure of Christian theology. Scholars prior to this es-say had already noticed a debt of Christian thought to Avicenna, the Iranian master Sheikh (Sheikh al-ra'is). Let us for the moment consider only two general indications. First, Aquinas quotes Avicenna over five hundred (500) times; second, Avicenna transforms the pagan Aristotelian philosophy into a philoso-phy friendly to religion–providing monotheistic theologies with a comprehensive philosophical framework systematically aimed at supporting those theologies. However, for the first time, this research documents a dialogue between Aquinas and Avicenna, a dialogue particularly promising with a view to advancing construc-tive dialogue today between philosophers liv-ing within the religious communities of Shi`ite Islam and Christianity.          (2) Second, given that Ibn Sina’s Neopla-tonic type of emanative cosmogony presents a challenge to any monotheism that holds a doc-trine of creation, this essay shows a very im-portant distinction between the reactions of the Christian Aquinas and the Shi`ite Ṭūsī in facing this challenge. Both were affected by the same Iranian philosopher-master and could accept neither Avicenna’s emanation nor Aris-totle's co-eternity that took God out of the ma-terial causation of the world. Aquinas develops the creationist response. In contrast, Ṭūsī, as a Shi`ite heir to the Mu`tazilites’ rationalistic

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approach, makes the following brilliant double move: first he brings in the notion of God’s good will and appeals to the ethics of imitating the members of the house of the Prophet – into cosmogony, arguing that God creates the Nec-essary Existence due to the good intention; second, he adopts a rationalistic Neoplatonic model of emanation in series from the Neces-sary Existent because Ṭūsī's God creates the Necessary Existent (from which the rest of the world subsequently emanates). Here we ex-hibit the two-fold strategy of Ṭūsī- the Iranian master theologian of the Shi`a.       (3) Finally, we need to recognize that the Iranian-Shi`a tradition is not an isolated, re-mote way of life belonging merely to two hun-dred million persons–but a central point of en-counter for understanding the Christian her-itage. As isolated citizens of diverse nations are being transformed to become members of the same global village, it is important to real-ize, respect, and take seriously the Shi`a Ira-nian contribution to the spiritual unity (tawḥīd) of the world—at least for persons who try to live the Christian ideals of justice, mercy, and love. With trust that whatever truth I may ut-ter will be received in a friendly spirit, and whatever error I commit will be corrected in a spirit of generosity, let me recall, as we begin, that man’iyeh-man to’iyeh-tost; man, to har do, yek ast.

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The Argument

The complex and difficult question of the ori-gin of the world has exercised philosophers and theologians for millennia.i In our brief es-say here, we shall attempt to explore the an-swers to the how the world came into being—the cosmogonies—of St. Thomas Aquinas and some Shi`ite thinkers. Since both Thomas Aquinas and the Shi`ite thinkers we have in mind both read the metaphysics of Avicenna (d. 1037), we shall begin with a review of his cosmogony as especially developed in the Metaphysics of the Healing (IX, 4). Then I shall turn to Aquinas’s treatment of the issue in his apologetic work, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith sometimes known as the Summa contra Gentiles, for short, which considers some of the chief teachings of Muslim and Jewish thinkers. Finally, we shall turn to Nāṣir Khos-raw and Naṣīr ad-Dīn Ṭūsī to consider their ef-forts to change Avicenna from within the Shi`ite tradition. There are several key con-cerns that all these thinkers attempt to bal-ance: How can one preserve monotheism? How can one preserve the divine transcen-dence? How can one produce a rationally co-herent account of the origin of the world? How do notions like “nothing” and “time” fit into the account? There is also the problem of alienation and the role of mediation in its over-

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coming; we shall touch on this a bit with the Shi`ite thinkers.ii The central point of dis-agreement between Avicenna and Aquinas is this: Avicenna holds to what might be de-scribed as a neo-platonic model of mediated creation or “emanation,” whereas Aquinas maintains that God alone has the proper power to bring something into being out of nothing, to perform an act of “creation.” Though it might appear that St. Thomas would be ready to extirpate Avicennianism root and branch, the Angelic Doctor in fact nevertheless accepts certain principles held by Avicenna himself. It is well known that St. Thomas re-jected the doctrine of universal hylomorphism in creatures as posited by the Andalusian Jew-ish philosopher Shlomo Ibn Gabirol (ca 1021-1058 CE) and later held by members of the Franciscan school.iii The Persian Muslim philosopher Avicenna (d. 1037 CE), in the Book of Healing, Metaphysics IX, 4,iv also held that the intelligences do not contain matter; this is the point of his arguing against the "ma-terial form" as the first product of emanation. This would be quite consistent with the hy-pothesis that Avicenna would be concerned as much as possible to preserve the doctrine of Book Lambda of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, given a framework of emanationism, at least as far as the immateriality of the intelligences is con-cerned.v Thus, Aquinas agrees with Avicenna that the intelligences are immaterial; but nev-ertheless Aquinas does disagree strongly with

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Avicenna on the manner in which things other than God emerge: Is it by creation or by ema-nation?

For if only God can create, whatever can-not be produced except by way of cre-ation, must be produced immediately by Him. Now all the separate substances are

iIn the Greek world, Hesiod’s poem on the origin of the gods, the Theogony, starts with an initial Chaos, from which is engendered all things; the Orphic myths put Chronos, the god of Time, as the source of both Chaos and Aither or even Night (Erebos), whence a cosmic egg is supposed to have emerged, and from thence every-thing else. Such stories give a vague genealogy, but not much more.In the Book of Genesis, a similar initial state of chaos is described in the Hebrew creation story. “In the begin-ning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gn 1:1-2, RSV; the note to Gn 1:1 reports a possible alternative translation: ‘When God began to create...’.) In simplified Romanization the Hebrew text would read: be-reshīth bārā’ ’elōhīm ’eth ha-shamayim wa-ha-’aretz. The next verse relates God’s action: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gn 1.3). In the 1903 article s.v. “Creation” by E. G. H., the Jewish Encyclopaedia points out that al-though “[m]ost Jewish philosophers find in barī’ah ... creation ex nihilo (yēsh mē’ēyn),” i.e. existence out of nothing, the etymological meaning of the root BR’ is “to cut out and put into shape” (4:336). Accordingly, it would not be impossible to interpret the text in its prim-itive setting as a process involving pre-given matter. The most explicit Old Testament passage in support of a teaching of creation out of nothing, however, occurs in II Machabees 7:28, where the mother consoles her

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of this sort; they are not composed of mat-ter and form, for the moment assuming them to exist. [The proof occurs later: SCG II, 46]. And similarly all corporeal matter must be produced immediately by God.vi

Here Aquinas distinguishes explicitly be-tween the material and immaterial entities.

seven sons about to be tortured under Antiochus using these words: “I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed.” This text, found in the Greek (ouk ex on-tōn: “not out of beings”) and Latin versions of the Bible, does not occur in the Hebrew canon; Christians are di-vided about its authenticity, with Catholics accepting its authority as “deutero-canonical” and Protestants mini-mizing it along with other books they call “apocryphal.” (For a discussion of this and related issues, see the In-troduction to The Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apoc-rypha, Revised Standard Version, edd. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, 1965, separately paginated, pp. ix-xx.) In Judaism, the topic of creation was “not to be expounded before two people,” i.e. not for popular dis-cussion; the Jewish biblical, rabbinic, and philosophical traditions are well surveyed elsewhere; see “Creation and Cosmogony,” in The Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971) 5:1059-1071. Just as in Judaism, several words drawn from the popu-lar vocabulary of making and shaping something had been used, so too in the Christian setting. Greek-speak-ing Jews at Alexandria needed access to a usable Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures; this was made available in the so-called Septuagint version. In Roman-ized type, the key Greek text reads “en archēi epoíēsen ho theós ton ouranòn kai tēn gēn” (Gn 1:1). Here the equivalent for the Hebrew BR’ is the Greek verb poiéō, ‘I make’; Braun’s full treatment of this key word (with

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Concerning these he argued in an anticipatory way that they are not able to perform the act of creation. In other words, they cannot give being after pure non-being. This chapter (SCG II, 22) is devoted to exploring the divine power: quod Deus omnia possit. It is easy to see that, if the separate substances are depen-

3200 references in the LXX), its various underlying O.T. Hebrew words, and its historical uses can be found in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 6:458-485. Two other Greek verbs are also noteworthy: dēmiourgéō (Kittel, 2:62) and Foerster’s important arti-cle on ktízō (Kittel, 3:1000-1035), which claims that “Creation by the Word implies creatio ex nihilo” (3:1012) and offers arguments independent of 2 Mach. 7 to justify that that claim. Even the Latin word creo seems to have originally been used, in “concrete” situa-tions, as somehow a causative form of cresco (‘I grow’); see H. Pinard, s.v. “création” in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (1908, 3: 2034).Within the specifically Islamic context, again, there are several Qur’ānic terms associated with the notion of cre-ation. Of particular importance is khalq, which names the act of creating (the verbal noun) principally and the resulting product of that act (also expressed by the pas-sive participle, al-makhlūq). (See Encyclopedia of Islam, s.v. khalḳ by R. Arnaldez for lexicographical data.) . Sometimes the verb is used concretely, as when Jesus is reported to have said in the Qur’ān: “Lo! I fashion (’akhluqu) for you out of clay the likeness of a bird” (3:49, Pickthall tr.). Again, the cognate Hebrew root (ḤLQ) means to divide or share (Brown-Driver Briggs, 323b-324a) and also to be flat or polished (EI2, Ar-naldez). On the other hand, the active participle al-khāliq “defined by the article, is applied only to God and is one of His Names,” indicating an agent who produces some new thing without a previous model (Arnaldez).

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dent in their existence so as to require produc-tion, this dependence cannot be accounted for through motion, since that would presuppose matter, which the separate substances are free of. Similarly, matter itself cannot presuppose matter to account for its production, lest there be an infinite regress. The production of imma-

For the purposes of this article, it is useful to note that several of the terms that Muslim philosophers use for naming creation or emanation occur within the text of the Qur’ān itself, which will be quoted in Pickthall’s ren-dering. One Qur’ānic verse applies three such expres-sions to God: “He is Allāh, the Creator (al-khāliq), the Shaper out of naught (al-bāri’), the Fashioner (al-muṣawwir)” (59:24). The first two attributes seem to be synonymous; the third is a causative participle of the root ṢWR, ‘form,’ which will appear in philosophical Ara-bic in contrast with hayūlà or ‘matter,’ borrowed from the Greek word hylē. The central attribute (al-bāri’) has the same root BR’ as the key Hebrew term used in Gn 1:1. The closest passage expressing anything like an ex-plicit doctrine of creation out of nothing in the Qur’ān is where God assures Zachariah that his barren wife will bear him an heir: “Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me, even as I created thee before, when thou wast naught (wa lam taku shay’an” (19:9). Again, passages like 2:117: “The Originator (badī‘) of the heavens and the earth! When He decreeth (qaḍà) a thing, He saith unto it only (fa’innamā yaqūlu la-hu): Be! and it is (kun fa-yakūnu)” (Q 2:117; cf. 3:47; 19:35). What will turn out to be the key term for emanation (fayḍ) is also of Qur’ãnic provenance: the verb in the first form (fãḍa) is used at Q 5: 83and at Q 9: 92: “their eyes overflow (tafīḍu) with tears” (Pickthall). The fourth form (’afāḍa) is used at Q 2: 199 “the multitude hasteneth onward”; 2: 198 “ye press on (’afaḍtum)”; 24: 14 “ye murmured (’afaḍtum)”; 10: 61 “when ye are engaged (tufīḍūna) therein”; 46: 8

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terial substances and of material substances can only be accounted for by the act of cre-ation, since no finite nature is its very esse.

Therefore these so very diverse existents are an immediate effect of the aforementioned [divine] power. But no power (virtus) immediately pro-

“what ye say among yourselves (tufīḍūna) concerning it”; 7:50 “pour (’afīḍū) on us some water (calaynā min al-mā’)” (Lizzini, Olga. Fluxus(fayḍ): Indagine sui fonda-menti della metafisica e della fisica di Avicenna. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2011, p. 9, n.8.).Though all three religious traditions provide authorita-tive claims that God creates the world, and many au-thoritative claims have been interpreted to mean that God has created the world from nothing, the purposes of the revelatory claims is religious. The authoritative texts indicate no need for philosophical argument or demonstration to sustain the truth of their claims. As we shall see, some of the Qur’ānic vocabulary or at least words of the same roots will reappear in Muslim philo-sophical authors, e.g.’ibdā‘ in al-Fārābī, and al-bāri’ in Avicenna. Generically, the topic under discussion here is the origin of the world as a whole. Accordingly, some philosophical positions seem to be excluded from the start: Parmenidean monism, for example, maintains that being is the unoriginated whole: “it never was (oude pot’ ēn) and never will be (oud’ estai), since it is now al-together, whole (epei nyn esti homou pan),” thus indi-cating “that being (eon) is ingenerable and indestruc-tible (hōs agenēton eon kai anōletron estin)” (DK Frag-mente der Vorsokratiker 28B 8. 3-5). Similarly, if Hera-clitus’ claim that everything is in motion holds, there is again no account of the origin of the whole as such; in-deed he explicitly states, “neither any of the gods nor any human beings have made this kosmos, but it always was, is, and will be ever-living fire” (DK Fragmente der

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ducing many effects not out of matter is deter-mined to one effect.vii

This constitutes the substance of Aquinas‘ argument. Nevertheless, he goes on to make sure that there is no mistaking that it is the divine power (and none other) that is not

Vorsokratiker 22B 30). In the Stoics there is even an ex-plicit pantheism: “and the whole kosmos and the heav-ens are god’s entity (ousia theou)” (H. von Arnim, Sto-icorum Veterum Fragmenta, II, 305, 26ff.)iiA full treatment of the notion of the role of the mediator figure in Aquinas would require a treatment of the inte-rior life of the Blessed Trinity, which is accessible only through the claims of the Person of Jesus Christ; some of these issues are brought up in Summa contra Gen-tiles, Book IV, chapter 11; but for methodological rea-sons cannot be undertaken here. Aquinas explicitly re-serves the considerations of truths that exceed the ca-pacity of the human intellect to grasp for Book IV.iii See for example Aimé Forest, La structure méta-physique du concretselonsaint Thomas, ch. 4, sec. 3, pp. 116-120.iv The citations of Avicernna’s Metaphysics from the Shifā’ will be reported using the pagination of the Madk-our Cairo edition; Lizzini’s Italian version reproduces the Madkour Arabic text with its pagination in square brackets, as well as the Van Riet Latin version in the notes. In Marmura’s edition, his English version faces the Arabic text with Madkour’s pagination also given in square brackets, but only in the Arabic text itself. *<MSL, pp. 17-18>: (iv) A fourth difficulty is also con-cerned with the source of potentiality, but from a slightly different point of view. If the first effect of the Necessary Being were not an Intelligence, but a “mate-rial form" (al-ṣūrat al-māddiyya), what would follow then? Such a material form, according to Avicenna,

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determined to one effect. In the Avicennian scheme, as may be recalled, the first produced intelligence produces the second intelligence by thinking the Necessary Existence, and so on for the superlunary world, by a process of in-termediation.viii Aquinas will have no existen-tialization through intermediation.

would entail either that matter be the active cause of bodies, or that, as an equivocal cause, the material form would be an operation having no need of matter <n56: Madkour ed., p. 404, 8-19= Marmura tr.: “(7) Someone, however, may say, ‘There is nothing to prevent the thing [first] originated by the First Principle from being a ma-terial form, but that the existence of its matter proceeds necessarily from it.’ [To this] we say: (8) This necessi-tates that the things that [come] to be after this form and this matter are successively [lower] in the ranks of effects and that their existence [comes about] through the mediation of matter. Matter would then be a cause for the existence of the forms of the numerous bodies in the world and of their powers. But this is impossible, since the existence of matter consists in its being a re-cipient only and [since] it is /not a cause for the exis-tence of anything by any way other than reception. If, among material [things], there is something which is not like this, then it is not ‘matter’ except in an equivocal sense of the term. Thus, if it comes about that the thing supposed as permanent does not have the description of matter except in the equivocal sense, then the first ef-fect would not be related to it as a form, except in an equivocal sense. If, then, this second thing that the thing supposed as permanent does not have the descrip-tion of matter except in the equivocal sense, then the first effect would not be related to it as a form, except in an equivocal sense. If, then, this second thing [is such that] in one respect this matter comes to be from it and in another respect there comes to be from it form, such

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Now I say "immediately", since, if He should produce mediately (per media), the diversity might come about from the side of the mediate causes.ix

If it were the case, however, that diver-sity came about only because of the mediate causes, it would not be possible to account for

that [this] other form does not exist except through the mediation of matter, then the material form would be performing an act in which matter is not needed. The essence of each thing that performs its act without needing matter dispenses from the start with matter. Thus, the material form would dispense with matter, [which is absurd].” >. Since the material form is of itself insufficient to existentialize matter, the first member of the dilemma—that matter be the active cause of bodies—is false. The form is only a partial cause relative to matter. The second alternative would introduce a super-fluous entity. Hence the first product of the Necessary Being is not a separate material form, but, as has al-ready been stated, an intelligence devoid of matter <n57: Madkour ed., p. 405, 1-9: “(9) In brief, even though the material form is a cause of matter in that it actualizes and perfects it, matter also has an influence in its existence—namely, in rendering it specific and making it concrete. And, if the principle of existence is from [what is] other than matter, as you have known, the each of the two is necessarily a cause of the other in one thing, but not in one respect. If it were not for this, it would be impossible for the material form to have, in any manner whatsoever, a connection with matter. For this reason we have previously said that form alone is not sufficient for the existence of matter, but, rather, form is part of the cause. If this, then, is the case, then it is impossible to make form a cause of matter in all re-spects, [form] being in no need of anything other than itself. It is thus evident that it is basically impossible for

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the order, as Aquinas argued previously (SCG II, 16 n. 941). Aquinas will argue later, in the second part of Book II, that the Avicennian doctrine of intermediates would reduce the cosmos to a chance occurrence. Although that section is beyond the scope of the present analysis, the germ of the argument is clear enough here. The point is that no existent is

the first effect to be a material form; for it not to be mat-ter is more obvious. Hence, it is necessary for the first effect to be basically an immaterial form—indeed, [it must be] an intellect <caqlan>.” v Cf. Metaph. XII, 6: 1071b20-22 and J. Owens, Doctrine of Being inthe Aristotelian ‘Metaphysics’, p. 441, n. 16.viMy translation; cf. CG I, 22, 2 [Anderson]. The chief texts of Aquinas under consideration here are the Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium seu “Summa contra Gentiles.” Turin; Rome: Marietti, (historico-philological introduction I: 1967; books I & II in vol. II and Books II-IV in vol. III, 1961). Except where otherwise indicated, we shall be using the English ver-sion under the title On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles, translated Anton C. Pegis, et al. in five sections: vol. I, II, III.1, III.2, IV. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. It would be a great help to ex-pand philosophical dialogue if the Arabic translation of Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles by the Maronite Bishop Nicmatullāh Abū Karam were more accessible; it was reprinted in Lebanon at the Dār wa-maktabat Bib-liūn in 2005 and originally published in 1931 in Jūniah: Maṭbacat-al-mursalīn-al-lubnāniyīn under the title Majmū-

catu-r-rudūd calà al-khawārij: falāsifatu-l-muslimīn. He is better known for his Latin version of Avicenna’s Kitāb an-najāt, which appeared as Avicennae Metaphysices Compendium ex Arabo Latinum reddidit et adnotation-ibus adornavit Nematallah Carame (Rome: Pont. Institu-tum Orientalium Studiorum, 1926.

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beyond the pale of the divine causality, not even the order which obtains among existent things, as would become clear from an analysis of the section on the distinction of things. The present argument, however, goes on:

I also say "not out of matter", since the same agent also causes by the same ac-tion diverse effects in accordance with the diversity of matter; like the heat of a fire, which hardens clay and melts wax.x

vii CG II, 22, Latin paragraph 982: “Haec igitur, tam di-versa existentia, praedictae virtutis immediatus effectus sunt. Nulla autem virtus producens immediate plures effectus non ex materia, est determinata ad unum effec-tum.”viii Avicenna, (Shifā’, Metaphysics, 9.4). (Madkour p. 406); Marmura trans.: “Thus, there necessarily follows from the first intellect, inasmuch as it intellectually ap-prehends the First, the existence of an intellect beneath it. Inasmuch as it intellectually apprehends itself, [there follows from it] the existence of the form of the outer-most sphere and its perfection--namely, the soul. …” Ac-cordingly, there will be a sequence of cosmic intelli-gences, each produced whenever (except for the last in-telligence) an intellect thinks the cause immediately above it; when it thinks itself as possible, a cosmic body, i.e. the appropriate heavenly sphere is produced; when it thinks itself as caused, the cosmic soul animating the corresponding sphere is produced.ix SCG II, 22 n. 982: “Dico autem immediate: quia, si per media produceret, posset provenire diversitas ex parte mediarum causarum.”x Ibid.: “Dico etiam non ex materia: quia idem agens et eadem actione causat diversos effectus secundum mate-riae diversitatem, sicut calor ignis, qui indurate lutum et dissolvit ceram.”

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Although the examples are taken from the realm of second matter, the argument ap-plies a fortiori to the utterly formless principle called prime matter. Before existence is be-stowed there is simply no matter to be diverse, and, where there is no pre-given diversity, there can be no obstruction to the divine power. These two qualifications distinguish God's power from that of separate substances and from natural agents in the realm of gener-ation and corruption. Aquinas concludes:

Therefore God's power is not determined to one effect.xi

For, as we have seen, God does produce many effects (a) immediately and (b) not out of matter. The nerve of Aquinas’ argument is that God produces both material and immaterial substances-- "these so utterly diverse exis-tents" (haec tam diversa existentia). All that they have in common is that both classes of be-ings exist. Why do they exist? That question provides the drive for Aquinas’ argument. The procedure presupposes the universality or commonality of created being, as occurs in St. Thomas’ employment of the Liber de Causis.xii

The second argument shows that the ac-tive potency of God can do all things that

xi SCG II, 22 n. 982: “Dei igitur virtus non est determi-nate ad unum effectum”; my translation corresponds to Anderson II, 65 par. 2.

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would not imply a contradiction, which is to say, all things which have no intrinsic defect which would prevent them from ever constitut-ing a being: such things as a round square or a man irrational by nature are excluded from God's power because they cannot even be be-ings.

(3) Again, every perfect power (vir-tus) reaches out to all those things to which the effect possessed by it through itself and proper to it (suus per se et pro-prius effectus) can extend; whatever can have the character of a dwelling falls within the range of the art of building, if it is perfect. Now God's power is through itself the cause of being, and the act of being (esse) is His proper effect, as was made clear above (ch. 21). Hence, His

xii At SCG II, 16 n. 935; Anderson II, par. 4, Aquinas says “The more universal an effect is, the higher its proper cause; for the higher the cause, to so many more things does its power extend (quia quanto causa est altior, tanto ad plura virtus eius extenditur). But to be is more universal than to be moved….” Both the thought and the terminology may well have been borrowed from the first section of the Latin Liber de Causis that was translated from Arabic: “Every primary cause is more intensely emanative over its effect than the secondary universal cause. So if the secondary universal cause should with-draw its power from a thing, nevertheless the primary universal cause does not withdraw it power from it (cum ergo removet causa universalis secunda virtutem suam a re, causa universalis prima non aufert virtutem suam ab ea).”

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power reaches out to all things with which the notion of being is not incom-patible; for if God's power were limited to some particular effect, He would not be through Himself the cause of being as such (causa entis inquantum huius-modi), but of this particular being (sed huius entis).xiii

This amounts to a restatement of the doctrine that God is the cause of common be-ing, of being anywhere and everywhere that it is found among creatures. True enough, crea-tures are really efficient causes. They can transform things from the point of view of suchness, but even their efficacy as generators of suchness occurs only if God makes them and their determinations to be. If God were de-termined in such wise as to produce only this being, it would be difficult to see how, given then only God and that individual being with nothing else existing, anything else could be, since, according to Aquinas’ argument in the previous chapter, only God can create. To con-tinue:

Now, the opposite of being, namely, non-being, is incompatible with the notion of being (Rationi autem entis repugnant oppositum entis, quod est non ens). Hence, God can do all things which do not essentially include the notion of non-being, and such are those which involve a contradiction.

xiiiSCG II, 22 n. 983; Anderson II, 65-66 par. 3.

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It follows that God can do whatever does not im-ply a contradiction.xiv

Here it is important to understand what is meant by "contradiction." What is meant is not merely an expression in the logical form, "A is not A". What is involved is an inspection of the real attributes of natures. Thus, since human nature involves a capacity to laugh, that is, to discover the incongruous in being, and this involvement is essential to being hu-man, it follows that an irrational human nature is contradictory. For the power to discover the incongruous in being flows from and presup-poses a rational nature. What would a "human being irrational by nature" look like? Similarly, in the case of a "round square", what kind of existential synthesis does it present? Only in-coherencies cannot be produced by God: the reason for this is that incoherencies cannot be beings. God is the universal cause of being, and His power extends to all beings. Things like a "round square" can be said, but not meant.

The third argument, too, is concerned with the impossibility of existentially realized contradictions, but focuses on the principle that every agent acts inasmuch as it is in act and on the nature of God, as actus perfectus. The perfect act contains within itself the per-fections of all things (cf. SCG I, 28), since His essence is none other than to be. In imparting

xivSCG II, 22 n. 983; Anderson II, 65-66 par. 3.

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being to any thing, God also imparts that thing's essence, since the only way that any-thing other than God can have an act of being is in a finite way. Within this finite way of be-ing, the thing can cause another thing to be in accordance with that finite specification. The way that the thing is a cause of being, how-ever, is delimited by its nature; God, on the other hand, is not delimited to causing any one sort of being. For, if He were so limited, as we have seen, nothing else would exist; it would be as if God were a natural agent—determined only to a single sort of perfection.

(4) Furthermore, every agent acts so far as it is in act. Hence, the mode of an agent's power in acting accords with its mode of act; man begets man, and fire begets fire. Now, God is perfect act, possessing within Himself the perfections of all things, as we have al-ready shown (I, 28). His active power, there-fore, is perfect, extending to everything not re-pugnant to the notion of that which is being in act (ad omnia se habens quaecumque non re-pugnant rationi eius quod est esse in actu); namely, to everything except that which im-plies a contradiction. God, then, is omnipotent as regards all but this.xv

From any natural agent, only acts of a determinate sort are produced, at least in the case of univocal generation. Equivocal genera-tion is not presently at issue; true enough, fire melts wax and hardens clay, but here Aquinas xvSCG II, 22 n. 984; Anderson II, 66 par. 4.

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is concerned with the proper activity of a natu-ral agent, namely, to generate another like it-self. In finite natures, perfection belongs to the agent in a finite way; thus, fire generates not man, but fire. Finite agents are thus deter-mined in their operation to a special range of effects; they are in a way perfect, in their kind, but they do not contain within themselves the perfections of all things, particularly not the perfections of things higher than themselves. Action takes place only to the extent that something actually is; and so action is conse-quent upon the way the act is found in the agent. “So it is impossible,” says Aquinas in SCG I, 28, “for an effect that it brought about through action to be at a higher level of act than the act of the agent is; but it is possible for the act of an effect to be more imperfect than the act of <its> agent cause, because an action can be weakened on the side of that at which it is brought to an end.”xviGod, however—who possess within <Macierowski, MSL, p. 108> Himself the perfections of all things, and not just of some single kind of things, in the manner of a natural agent in the order of gen-eration—is clearly not an univocal cause. Now although it is not our purpose here to discuss the doctrine of analogy thematically,xvii a few remarks are necessary to insure that one does not conclude from the fact that God is not a univocal cause that He is therefore merely an equivocal cause. In the First Book, after hav-ing shown that God's essence is His very esse

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(I, 22), St. Thomas argues to show that He is not, however, the esse formale of creatures as if the divine should accrue to some being other than God (I, 26). A couple of chapters later, God is shown to be the universally perfect be-ing (universaliter ens perfectum) which does not lack the perfection (nobilitas) of any genus (I, 28). In the following chapter, which is con-cerned with the likeness of creatures to God, and in which St. Thomas discusses equivocal causality in natural agents, he pointedly does not call God an equivocal cause (I, 29). Having taken up the question of how names are predi-cated of God and creatures, Aquinas notes that it is neither univocally (I, 32), nor equivocally (I, 33) but analogically (I, 34). For our present purpose, however; we have seen that God is the universal cause of esse; and is Himself esse, the perfect act. From the perfection of the act, the perfection of the active power is clear, since the mode of a thing's power ac-cords with its act. Fire exists in a fiery way, and so is able to produce a fiery effect; God IS and so is able to produce an effect that is, but God's action (esse) is not delimited to produc-ing only fiery effects, as fire is limited to do, or only human effects as human generators are delimited to do; He can produce all these and more at will, but without being specifically de-termined to any one or to any pre-given group of them. Once God creates a nature, however, since it receives its being from God and is not identical with God's essence (which is subsis-

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tent esse), that nature can only exist in a lim-ited way. Fiery nature exists in a fiery way, and so on for the rest; and once created, such a nature's power to act is real enough, but it is not omnivalent. It is restricted to acting in a fiery way, and so on. God is not so restricted: there is no being He cannot make to be, if He should choose.

The fifth argument outlines the three reasons that explain why an effect might not be subject to the power of some agent, and goes on to examine whether any of them may obtain in the case of divine power.

(6) Furthermore, there are three reasons why some particular effect may escape the power of some particular agent. First, because the effect has no likeness or affinity to the agent—for every agent produces its like in some fashion. Thus, the power in the human seed cannot produce an irrational animal or a plant, yet it can produce a man—a being supe-

xvi SCG I, 28, n. 265: "Amplius. Nihil agit nisi secundum quod est in actu. Actio igitur consequitur modum actus in agente. Impossibile est igitur, effectum qui per ac-tionem educitur, esse in nobiliori actu quam sit actus agentis: possibile est tamen actum effectus imperfec-tiorem esse quam sit actus causae agentis, eo quod ac-tion potest debilitari ex parte eius in quod terminatur."xvii For a useful study of the topic, see Bernard Mon-tagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Milwau-kee, WI.: Marquette University Press, 2004) from Doc-trine de l’analogie de l’être d’après Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain and Paris, 1963).

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rior to those things. Secondly, because of the excellence of the effect, which is dispropor-tionate to the agent's power; thus, an active corporeal power cannot produce a separate substance. Thirdly, because the effect requires a matter upon which the agent cannot act; a carpenter <precisely as a carpenter> cannot make a saw, since his art <which properly works on wood> does not enable him to act upon iron, from which a saw is made.xviii

As for the first point, "every being (ens), so far as it has being (esse), is similar to Him." For it belongs to God to be the principle of be-ing (principium essendi) to other things (II, 6); indeed, He is the cause of being (causa es-sendi) for all things (II, 15), as Aquinas has shown before. In the second place, since God is the good of every good (I, 40) and the high-est good (I, 41), any effect wrought by Him must be inferior to His own goodness; hence there is no danger of His trying to create something better than Himself, who is the uni-versally perfect being (I, 28). Finally, since creation presupposes no pre-given matter (II, 16), God's power to create can hardly be im-peded by the recalcitrance of matter, which does not even yet exist. "Restat igitur," con-cludes St. Thomas, "quod divina virtus non de-terminetur ad aliquem effectum, sed sim-pliciter Omnia potest: quod est eum esse om-nipotentem: It remains, then, that the divine power is not determined to some effect or xviiiSCG II, 22 n. 986; Anderson II, 66-67 par. 6.

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other, but is simply capable of all things, and this is for Him to be omnipotent." Again Aquinas emphasizes God's freedom from being determined to any single effect; this calls to mind once again the words of the opening of the chapter: “Divina virtus non determinatur ad aliquem unum effectum” (II, 22).

What is the Angelic Doctor doing in this chapter? First and most obviously, he is con-trasting the way in which God's active power operates and the way in which natural agents operate. The examples adduced are telling. God does not act like fire, which is a natural agent delimited in the range of its power de-pending on its own nature and the material it is applied to. No, God is compared to the per-fect architect from the point of view of his art. This contrast reminds one of the Aristotelian dictum: "Now art is a principle of government found in another, whereas nature is an intrin-sic principle."xix Even in the human arts, intel-ligent choice is involved; the architect can build a house out of straw, wood, or brick, without being determined to use any one of these by his art, as such. Of course material considerations such as the availability may ac-cidentally affect his choice, but in the case of the Creator, whose act presupposes no matter whatever, the Artisan is free from any stric-tures upon His art. Now, as we recall, Avi-cenna explicitly denies that universe occurs from the First by way of natural generation (wa-laysa kawnu-l-kulli ‘an-hu ‘alà sabīli-ṭ-ṭab‘)

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if this means that the existence of the world should come about from Him without His knowledge or consent (bi-an yakūna wujūdu-l-kulli ‘an-hu lā bi-ma‘rifatin wa-lā li-raḍyin).xx The text of the Latin Avicenna is no less emphatic: “Omne enim esse quod est ab eo non est se-cundum viam naturae ad hoc ut esse omnium sit ab eo non per cognitionem nec per bene-placitum eius. For all the being that is from Him is not according to the way of nature in such wise that the being of all things is by him <but> not through his knowledge or con-sent.”xxi St. Thomas, however, is not convinced. For him, the doctrine that from the one only one proceeds amounts to the principle that emanation proceeds by way precisely of na-ture, which is determined to a single effect or to a single sort of effect, given material limita-tions. And where there is no matter, as in the case of the separate substances, Aquinas holds to the same principle. For intelligence implies choice, and choice implies liberty, not a neces-sary determination to some single effect.

In the following chapter (SCG II, 23), St. Thomas explores this issue at some length in order to show that God does not act out of a necessity of nature. The preceding chapter, then, may be understood to be building up to this issue. One reason that Avicenna's name

xixMetaph. XII, 3: 1070a 7-8: hē men oun technē archē en allōi, hē de physis archē en autōi.xxMadkour, p. 402.xxiMet. IX, 4; Venice, 1508 f. 104va 19-20.

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might not be mentioned in this context is that he explicitly denies the position that St. Thomas would have to attribute to him. It is not likely, of course, that St. Thomas’ contem-poraries could have missed the allusion, de-spite his silence on the source of the doctrine that he is criticizing. By refraining from nam-ing the source, however, St. Thomas saves himself from the complex task of engaging in a hermeneutical study of Avicenna's Meta-physics, which could only be done if he had available to him a translation of a quality com-parable to that of Moerbeke's translations of Aristotle. He thus saves himself from having to demonstrate that Avicenna in fact held the po-sition at issue, although in the Latin West that position would at least be regarded as Avicen-nian. Aquinas, however, refrains from attribut-ing this doctrine—at least until SCG II, 42—to Avicenna himself, and this is done only after rather a detailed conversation with Avicenna, wherein one might be able to get to know his doctrine, at least in general outline, to a rea-sonable degree, even if not in such detail as to prepare a brief or refutation ex his quae dicunt—on the basis of his very words (SCG I, 2 n. 10). The attribution occurs only well after the general Gestalt of the doctrine is quite clear, and also occurs within the methodological framework that Aquinas announced would guide the discussion of his work as a whole.

A Programmatic Conclusion

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What Aquinas sees as a corollary of the Avicennian doctrine “from the one only one can proceed” is that God would be compelled to act in the mode of an Aristotelian finite agent. No, that principle cannot be admitted. The reason for Aquinas’ refusal to accept that principle from Avicenna is not merely that it leads to a misunderstanding about God, but also that it is not true to the profound insight which Aquinas does accept from Avicenna, which is none other than haec sublimis veritas: that God is pure existence. That truth would be obscured, according to Aquinas, if existence were permitted to cascade down into finite things in no other way than through intermedi-ates; he therefore undertakes to wash away what he understands to be a blemish in Avi-cenna's metaphysics. The critique of Avi-cenna's theory of emanationism by Aquinas is in fact a profound appropriation of Avicennian doctrine as well. A review of some of the major themes discussed in this paper should help to disclose how St. Thomas makes the truths of Avicenna his own, and how it is that his criti-cism of Avicenna is based on Avicennian prin-ciples. This review, however, ought not to be understood as a derogation from Aquinas’ own metaphysical originality; for Aquinas seems to be unique in understanding esse to be the act of an essence. Nevertheless, it is clear that in certain crucial metaphysical areas, St. Thomas owes far more to Avicenna than to Aristotle,

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despite the constant invocation of the Stagirite as an authority: in some respects good creden-tials may almost be as important to an argu-ment's being accepted as its truth. Besides, in our own time, when in many quarters Aris-totelian credentials are a kiss of death, it may even help the argument to be heard if it be freed from that deafening name; and, if the ar-gument is heard, perhaps whatever truth it contains will be heard, too.

Foremost among Aquinas’ debts to Avi-cenna is the distinction between the two kinds of agent cause—the natural agent, and the metaphysical agent. For Avicenna, the natural agent is a principle of movement in the fashion of an Aristotelian moving cause, whereas the Creator is the cause of being. St. Thomas, whose arguments for the existence of God seem at first to fit within the framework of Aristotle's proofs for a prime mover, in fact could not legitimately conclude, as he does, to a God whose essence is esse (CG I, 22) merely on the basis of such movers. To reach such a conclusion would presuppose not only that the movers that are observed in the world of mo-tion and change are principles of movement, but also that they are in some way principles of existence. Otherwise, there would be as much chance of using this method to prove that God is as there would be to get blood out of a turnip. Existence is co-given along with movement. Since both are, as it were, inter-mingled in the way that they are given in real-

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ity, it is possible to proceed by way of “remo-tion” to the God Whose essence is none other than to be (esse), removing the limited ways in which the perfections belonging to the beings we experience when we try to talk about God. There are arguments from Avicenna's Meta-physics VIII, 4 and al-risālat al-‘arshiyya con-cluding to this Esse in a more condensed form in SCG I, 22. Having come to this conclusion, St. Thomas can then discuss the causality of being involved in the act of creation. It is im-portant to note, however, that the validity of the proofs from efficient causality presupposes that natural agents really do in some way give being, even though not as creators out of noth-ing. The proofs in Aquinas proceed to the level of metaphysical causality to be sure, but they are never disengaged in any sense from their co-givenness with physical causality until after it is shown that God's essence is His esse. In fact, to do so would force St. Thomas to kick away his ladder and keep silent.

In Avicenna, on the other hand, we find the distinction between natural and metaphysi-cal agency, but without a full treatment articu-lating their connection. The distinction comes, in a sense, “shot from a pistol.” Avicenna be-trays no difficulty in making the distinction nor any sense of surprise in discussing what “the divine philosophers . . . mean by ‘agent,’” namely “the principle and endower of exis-tence, for example, the Creator of the World.”xxii No text in Aristotle distinguishes be-

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tween the principle of movement and the cre-ative giver of existence. Some Aristotelians might even be scandalized by such a distinc-tion; but Avicenna did make it, and, in Aquinas’ view at least, deserves credit for making it. For it opens up a whole realm of metaphysical speculation hitherto unexplored, the realm of created being as such, a realm of special concern to the professional theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, who may perhaps have been able to have thought up the distinc-tion for themselves, but who, in point of histor-ical fact, as at least one Thomist empha-sizes,xxiii took it from Avicenna.

The “existential” approach that St. Thomas takes in interpreting Book alpha elat-ton of Aristotle's Metaphysics has been noted.xxiv How can one conclude to a first being absolutely if there is a plurality of genera and <yet> still remain within the Aristotelian framework? The question becomes somewhat easier to answer if one accepts the Liber de Causis as Aristotelian,xxv but it is hard to see such an answer in the authentic texts of Aristo-tle alone. Set in an Avicennian framework, the answer to the question ‘Why is there just one primary being?’ is even more obvious: since none of the genera is able to account for their several existences.

In fact, the more one considers the ques-tion of creation, the less it can be understood within a strictly Aristotelian framework. To ex-plain coming into being, for Aristotle, both the

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matter and the form must already be available; creation presupposes no pre-given subject at all. Avicenna, on the other hand, offers this as a philosophic notion of creation: to cause “be-ing after absolute non-being.”xxvi Aristotle sim-ply does not address himself to the question; Avicenna does. Perhaps this might explain the

xxiiShifā’ Metaph. 6.1; Madkour ed. 257. 14; Marmura translates the phrase mithla al-bāri’ li-l-cālam less force-fully: “This is because the metaphysical philosophers do not mean by ‘agent’ <fācil> only the principle of motion <mabda’ al-ḥaraka>, as the naturalists mean, but the principle and giver of existence <al-mabda’ al-wujūd wa mufīdahu>, as in the case of God with respect to the world.” Interestingly, by way of contrast, Aristotle him-self in defining what has come to be called traditionally the ‘efficient’ cause seems to restrict it to a source of moving or resting (Metaph. Δ 2, 1013a: eti hothen hē archē tēs metabolēs hē prōtē ē tēs ēremēseōs, hoion ho bouleusas aitios, kai ho patēr tou teknou, kai holōs to poioun tou poioumenou kai to metablētikon tou metabal-lontos; “again, whence the starting starting-point of change or of rest, for example, the one that plans is a cause, and a father <is cause> of a child, and as a whole what is making <is the cause> of what is being made and the changer of that which is changing.” From the Aristotelian lemma used in Averroes’ Large Tafsīr mā bacda ṭ-ṭabīcat, Dāl, T. 2 (ed. M. Bouyges, vol. 2, pp.481.15-482.2): wa ‘ayḍan tuqālu calà nawc ākhar min ḥaythu ibtidā’ at-taghyīri wa-s-sukūni-l-awwal mithlu mā tuqālu-l-mushīru cillah wa-l-āb li-l-walad wa bi-l-jumlah al-fācil li-l-maclūl bi-hi wa-l-mughayyir li-l-mutaghayyar.xxiii Albert G. Judy, The Use of Avicenna’s Metaphysics VIII, 4 in the Summa Contra Gentiles. (Licentiate Disser-tation) Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Stud-ies, 1969. Later published in Angelicum. For a response to one point in Judy’s valuable research, see E. M.

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latter's desire to distinguish between the kind of causality <that> “the naturalists or physi-cists” (al-ṭabi'iyyūn) deal with—such as Aristo-tle, to name the most obvious example—and the kind of causality studied by the “divine” philosophers or theologians or metaphysicians (al-ilāhiyyūn).xxvii In this way, Aristotle might not be taxed for his ignorance of a not yet ac-cessible Revelation, and, on the other hand, what he has to say about motion, to the extent that it is true, could be accepted without un-due scruples.

Although it was not possible here to en-gage in a study of the meaning of what the Latins call “esse proprium” in Avicenna him-self, where it is called al-wujūd al-khāṣṣ, as op-posed to esse affirmativum oral-wujūd al-ith-bātī, we find the term occurring in Aquinas in a context similar to that of Avicenna, namely, in the problem of distinct specification. It is a

Macierowski, “Does God Have a Quiddity according to Avicenna?”The Thomist, Vol. 52, No. 1 (January 1988), pp. 79-87.xxiv For a brief discussion of Aquinas’s and Avicenna’s use of Aristotle’s Metaphysics α, see E. M. Macierowski, The Problem of Creation: A Conversation between St Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Sina of Persia in the Summa contra Gentiles, Book II, 1-24 (Licentiate Thesis). Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1976, pp. 44-46. Joseph Owens argues that when Aristotle uses the expression “cause of being” (aition… tou einai) there, einai refers to a thing’s form (Doctrine of Being…, 2nd ed., pp. 180-189).xxv For the neo-Platonic Liber de Causis speaks of being as somehow an efficient cause.

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matter of extreme importance to determine in a decisive way whether the wujūd khāṣṣ im-plies a special act of existence for the nature, such as triangle or whiteness—or whether it is a mere modus loquendi for what St. Thomas would call the nature “absolutely considered.” True enough, the term wujūd, which is nor-mally and quite correctly rendered into Latin as esse, is ordinarily found in the existential sense elsewhere in Avicenna. But is the is in “A triangle is a triangle,” when Avicenna says it, as strong as the “is” in a Thomistic existen-tial judgment? Such questions, however, call for further investigation. It does seem, how-ever, that Avicenna intends to attribute some sort of non-existential being—a definitional be-ing in al-wujūd al-khāṣṣ.

The prime product of creation, according to St. Thomas, is common being. He showed this by an implicit contrast to the Liber de

xxviShifā’ Metaph. 6.2; Madkour ed. 266. 12-13: fa-hādhā huwa al-macnà-lladhī yusammà ’ibdācan cinda al-ḥukamā’i wa huwa ta’yīsu-sh-shay’i bacda laysin muṭlaqin; Marmura (203.22-24) translates: “This, then, is the meaning that, for the philosophers, is termed ‘creation.’ It is the giving of existence to a thing after absolute nonexistence.” The causal second-form verbal ta’yīs is derived from the root ’YS. Cf. W. Wright, A Grammar of the Arabic Language, 3rd ed., v. I, p. 96C. Cambridge: University Press, 1896, §182, Rem. a. “Laysa is compounded of lā, not, and the un-used *’aysa, Heb. yēsh, he is, Aramaic ’ithay, ’ith…; originally a sub-stantive, signifying being, existence, as in the phrase lā yacrifu ’aysa min laysa, he does not know what is from what is not.”xxviiCf. note 26 citing Madkour, p. 257.

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Causis, where the first created thing is said to be esse, to be sure, but this in fact refers to the topmost rung of a Neoplatonic ladder of production. He thus uses this classic medieval Neoplatonic text in a thoroughly un-Neopla-tonic way.

On another occasion, I should hope to exhibit implicit references in Aquinas to the fourth book of Avicenna's Metaphysics in the discussion of order in creation and to show how the Avicennian distinction between the two kinds of agent is used in Aquinas’ discus-sion of instrumental causality. For it is of deci-sive importance to note that the instrumental causes of being in Aquinas are really and effi-caciously causes of being and not just movers or “such-ifiers” operating in total indifference to the existential order. After the first moment of creation, the creative power of God to pro-duce being operates through finite agents in the order of generation. This is why an analy-sis of efficient causality in creatures is able to reason to God. It would be instructive to exam-ine Avicenna's proofs for the existence of God with a view to the structure of efficient causal-ity, but that, too, cannot receive a scientific treatment here. However the structure of effi-cient causality be in Avicenna, St. Thomas starts from the distinction of the kinds of agent given by the great Persian philosopher and ar-ticulates his own doctrine of creative and in-strumental efficient causality. Now although we have not presented a thematic analysis of

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Avicenna's own doctrine of causality, one ought at least to ask whether the interrelation-ship between the two kinds of agency is fully articulated within his own methodology, or whether there might not be a tendency for a fissure or a gap to express itself between them. Aquinas will allow none, since any split would destroy the efficacy of the secondary causes. Although God would find it no burden to perform the acts of secondary causes for them, it would, according to Aquinas, be a mark of greater majesty—and less threatening of occasionalism—for God to endow his crea-tures with an efficacy of their own. In the sec-tions of the SCG that have been analyzed here, St. Thomas’ resolution to keep natural and metaphysical causality together is less clear in word than in deed. On1y if God, who can—if he so chooses—act without secondary natural causes to produce natural effects, should act through the instrumentality of natural causes is it possible for human beings to have real knowledge of natural causes that they in fact have. Philosophical science, however, cannot take the extraordinary as its norm, as Aquinas’ deeds clearly show. Starting from the way de-terminate natural things exist, Aquinas rea-sons to the Primum Ens, Who, as we have seen, is not limited to natural modes of action and who in fact transcends them. This is the Being whose very essence is none other than just to be (esse).

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This sublime truth, which is revealed in Holy Scripture, is in a certain very laborious and difficult way accessible to a man who rea-sons as a metaphysician. It marks for the Christian philosopher the highest knowledge that he can arrive at from natural data, once he knows where to look. This “knowing where to look,” however, is a trans-philosophical da-tum, even though the features to be examined all are accessible to philosophers who do look. That this looking is not exclusively the pre-serve of Christian philosophers is borne out by the penetrating example of Avicenna of Persia, a Muslim philosopher who also, like the Chris-tian and the Jew, is willing to ask the question about creation, a question which the Greeks could not even ask. That they did not answer it, therefore, is no surprise. Clearly, then, St. Thomas‘ critique of Avicenna is much more of an appropriation and a con-versation with a scholarly confrere than a one-sided criticism. (There is a criticism at the the-ological level, too, but here we are concerned with Aquinas’ philosophy.) Aquinas is eager to accept and to adapt Avicenna's theory of agent cause, but, as for the principle “from one only one can proceed,” that would be a falling away from the truth and a regression to the less than perfect insight of the Greeks.

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Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), Metafisica: La scienza delle cose di-vine (Al-ilāhiyyāt) dal Libro della Guarigione (Kitāb al-Šifā’), Traduzione dall’ arabo, intro-duzioni, note e apparati di Olga Lizzini e pre-fazione e cura editoriale di Pasquale Porro. Mi-lano: Bompiani (Il Pensiero occidentale), 2002; 2a edizione riveduta e corretta, 2006. This conve-nient edition contains Madkour’s Arabic text fac-ing the Italian translation with the text of the Latin critical edition by S. Van Riet running as notes across the bottom of the corresponding pages, but without the critical apparatus.

Avicenna, The Metaphysics of The Healing, A Parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, anno-tated by Michael E. Marmura. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2005.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium seu “Summa con-tra Gentiles.” Turin; Rome: Marietti, (historico-philological introduction I: 1967; books I & II in vol. II and Books II-IV in vol. III, 1961).

-----. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa contra Gentiles, v. I translated by Anton C. Pegis; II by James F. Anderson;III by Vernon J. Bourke is di-vided into two parts: III.1, III.2; and IV by Charles J. O’Neil. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955.

-----. Majmūcatu-r-rudūd calà al-khawārij: falāsifatu-l-mus-limīn. Arabic translation by the Maronite Bishop Nicmatullāh Abū Karam. Jūniah: Maṭbacat-al-mur-salīn-al-lubnāniyīn, 1931; reprinted in Lebanon at the Dār wa-maktabat Bibliūn, 2005. (Unavail-able.)

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Forest, Aimé. La structure métaphysique du concret selon saint Thomas. Paris: J. Vrin, 1931.

Lizzini, Olga. Fluxus(fayḍ): Indagine sui fondamenti della metafisica e della fisica di Avicenna. Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2011.

Macierowski, E. M. The Problem of Creation: A Conver-sation between St Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Sina of Persia in the Summa contra Gentiles, Book II, 1-24 (Licentiate Thesis). Toronto: Pontifical Insti-tute of Mediaeval Studies, 1976.

Owens, Joseph. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian ‘Metaphysics’. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Me-diaeval Studies, 2nd ed. Rev, 1963.

NOTES