The Metaphysics of Creation Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles II,9780199246540

The Metaphysics of Creation Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles II

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ISBN13: 9780199246540
ISBN10: 0199246548
Format: Paperback
Pub. Date: 2002-02-07
Publisher(s): Clarendon Press
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Summary

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

Author Biography


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

Table of Contents

Abbreviations xiii
Nature from the Top Down
1(29)
The aims of the book
1(1)
Aquinas's natural theology
2(6)
SCG II as the thematic continuation of SCG I
8(2)
`Divine truth'
10(4)
God's immanent and transeunt activity
14(4)
The positive results of meditating on creation
18(5)
The corrective results of meditating on creation
23(2)
How philosophy and the faith are taught
25(3)
Aquinas's plan for SCG II
28(2)
From God to Everything Else
30(40)
SCG II as the logical continuation of SCG I
30(3)
Considering the source
33(3)
The actus purus argument
36(5)
God's active power
41(3)
How to attribute power to God
44(3)
How to attribute relations to God
47(6)
God as the source of everything else
53(3)
Argument E/U
56(14)
Creation as Doubly Universal Production
70(31)
For all things the cause of being
70(3)
Out of no antecedent matter
73(5)
Not even prime matter
78(3)
Not through movement or change
81(4)
Something out of nothing
85(2)
Movement and change considered more closely
87(4)
No successiveness in creating
91(7)
No body can create
98(1)
Creating belongs to God alone
99(2)
Creation's Modalities
101(41)
Why would God create?
101(2)
The scope of God's creative power
103(4)
Separated substances as counter-instances to the single-effect account of creation
107(3)
Corporeal matter as a counter-instance to the single-effect account of creation
110(3)
Omnipotence and absolute possibility
113(7)
The modality of creative action
120(6)
The modalities of intellection and volition
126(4)
Justice, goodness, and God's plan as possible grounds for obligatory creation
130(7)
Kinds of necessity in created things
137(5)
Could the Created World have Existed for Ever?
142(41)
`The eternity of the world'
142(6)
The modalities of beginningless creation
148(4)
The created world need not have existed for ever
152(7)
Beginninglessness based on considerations of God
159(8)
Beginninglessness based on considerations of created things
167(5)
Beginninglessness based on considerations of the making of things
172(3)
Purported proofs that the world must have begun to exist
175(7)
Aquinas's probable argument for the greater goodness of a temporally finite world
182(1)
The Origin of Species
183(45)
From producing to distinguishing
183(3)
Distinguishing and furnishing
186(4)
Aquinas's non-creationist reading of Genesis 1
190(3)
Distinguishing distinguished, broadly
193(3)
The complex product of an absolutely simple producer
196(2)
Distinguishing distinguished, more narrowly
198(5)
A mind behind the scenes
203(2)
Not by chance
205(6)
Not by matter alone
211(5)
Manifold manifestation
216(8)
God's choice of this world
224(4)
Intellects
228(42)
Considering created things themselves
228(2)
Considering intellective creatures only
230(5)
Reasons why creation includes intellective substances
235(5)
Intellects and wills
240(4)
Will and freedom
244(7)
What intellective creatures could not be
251(5)
The metaphysical complexity of the simplest possible creatures
256(7)
The two species of potentiality-actuality composition
263(5)
Incorruptibility
268(2)
Metaphysical Hybrids
270(53)
Intellective substances and corporeal substances
270(3)
Inapplicable modes of union
273(5)
Power contact
278(6)
Unconditional union
284(6)
Aquinas's unreasonable hypothesis
290(4)
The very nature of a human being
294(2)
Soul as the first principle of life
296(3)
Body and soul
299(8)
Body and souls?
307(6)
The peculiar character of the human soul
313(10)
The Soul's Anatomy
323(46)
Aquinas's philosophy of mind in SCG II
323(2)
Special features of the soul's union with the body
325(12)
Aquinas's agenda in SCG II.73-78
337(5)
Parts of the soul
342(3)
The sensory part
345(5)
Sense in intellect's service
350(7)
Intellective cognition
357(7)
Organlessness
364(5)
Souls before Birth and at Death
369(50)
The rest of Book II
369(4)
Reproduction, embryology, science, and metaphysics
373(3)
Aquinas's basic argument regarding the origin of an individual human being
376(8)
Particular creation as the source of a human soul's existence
384(3)
Other naturalistic explanations of the origin of a human soul
387(9)
The argument from the substantial unity of the human soul
396(7)
Arguing for the incorruptibility of intellective souls
403(9)
Arguing against arguments for the corruptibility of intellective souls
412(7)
Appendix I. A Chronology of Aquinas's Life and Works 419(8)
Appendix II: A Table Indicating the Correspondence between Sections of Chapters of SCG II in the Pera (Marietti) Edition and the Anderson Translation 427(9)
Appendix III: In Sent. I.44.1.2: Could God Make a Better Universe? 436(4)
References 440(11)
Index locorum 451(16)
General index 467

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