In addition to Arabic philosophers like Avicenna, Latin thinkers working in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries gained better access to Greek Christian authors like Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus. The works of these authors laid a much stronger emphasis on the mystery and unknowability of God than can be found in the Western tradition dominated by Augustine, who argued along with other Latin Fathers like Hilary of Poitiers and Gregory the Great that God is present to the soul in a way that anticipates a direct vision of him in the life to come.290 In their eagerness to master new sources, Western scholars in the late twelfth century incorporated references to the inadequacy of human knowledge to God without always parsing their meaning sufficiently in terms of what can be positively known about God, whether now or in the life to come.291
By the early thirteenth century, the question remained largely unanswered as to how exactly the mind can aspire to the vision of God in heaven in the way Peter Lombard for one continued to affirm.292 However, the problem did not come to a head until rising interest in Avicenna in the 1230s began to expose the inherent conflict between the cherished Western belief in a beatific vision and Greek negative theology, albeit a somewhat exaggerated version of it.293 As we have seen, Avicenna taught that the best we can achieve in terms of knowing God is a connection with the Active Intellect, which is not fully divine and by some
290 Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 41; cf. Antoine Côté, L’infinité divine, 34.
291 Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 47.
292 Peter Lombard, Sent. 1, d 1, c 3.2.
293 P.-M. De Contenson, ‘Avicennisme latin et vision de Dieu au début du XIIIe siècle,’ Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 34 (1959), 29-97.
accounts is nothing but a supreme creature. The Aristotelian solution was no better insofar as it posited a union with the knower and the known that blurred the distinction between God and creatures, leading to a form of pantheism that had already been condemned in 1210.294
In vastly under and over-underestimating the prospects of an ultimate beatific vision of God, these theories drew attention to the need for philosophical arguments explaining its possibility. In their quest to meet this need, scholars in this period such as William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales, Guerric of St Quintin, and Hugh of St Cher all sought to clarify in some way how God is both known and unknown in the coming life.295 Their solutions respectively posited that we will see God ultimately only through a likeness, through intellectual creatures, under some other guise than his essence, or not at all.296 Notwithstanding his initial proposal, William, then Bishop of Paris, ultimately recognized such solutions as unsatisfactory in terms of allowing a genuine encounter with God himself.
As an impetus to resolve the matter conclusively, William formed a small theological commission, including Alexander of Hales, which condemned 10 propositions, the first of which rejected the claim that the divine essence will not be seen by human beings at any point.297 The actual focus of this condemnation, though not named, was likely John
Chrysostom, whose homilies on the Gospel of John had been translated by Burgundio of Pisa
294 Bernard Blackenhorn, The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 101-10.
295 Simon Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 51.
296 Henri F. Dondaine, ‘L’objet et le ‘medium’ de la vision béatifique chez les théologiens du XIIIe siècle,’ Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 19 (1952), 60-130.
297 Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘Le dernier avatar de la théologie orientale in Occident au XIIIe siècle,’ in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer: études d'histoire littéraire et doctrinale de la scolastique médiévale offertes à Auguste Pelzer à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversiare (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l'Université, 1947), 159-81.
between 1171-3 and who advocated the condemned position most famously and most clearly.298 Following the condemnation, the authors of the Summa, among others, worked hard to counteract negative theology with positive claims about the knowability of God, which came to represent the linchpin of the Summa’s theological vision.
In an introductory article on this topic, Augustine is by far the most quoted authority, with 75 quotations, 5 from pseudo-Augustinian works, and 34 to Augustine’s ep. 147, otherwise known as the ‘Book of the Vision of God’ (De videndo Dei), which contains what is possibly Augustine’s most significant and focused writing on the beatific vision. By invoking this text repeatedly, the Summa clearly situates itself on the side of the Western tradition that affirms the possibility of knowing God, not least in the life to come. When it comes to developing the contours of its account, however, the Summa ironically turns to Avicenna to resolve the problem to which the reading of his very work had given rise.
As I will demonstrate in this chapter, Avicenna’s doctrine of the transcendentals offered the tools the Summists needed to explain how the soul knows God in this life in a way that anticipates the possibility of knowing God in the life to come. Although the Summa’s initial discussion makes much of its allegiance to Augustine, consequently, its substantial claims are presented in a completely innovative, Avicennian, and distinctly non-Augustinian way that ultimately seems to lend itself to expressing the experience of Francis of knowing God and reality and to the affective and practical vision by which he lived. These aspects of this vision will be considered after the discussion of the transcendentals below.
298 György Geréby, ‘Hidden Themes in Fourteenth-Century Byzantine and Latin Theological debates:
Monarchianism and Crypto-Dyophysitism,’ in Greeks, Latins and Intellectual History 1204-1500, ed. Martin Hinterburger and Chris Schabel (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 195. See also Riccardo Saccenti, Un Nuovo lessico morale medieval: il contributo di Burgundio da Pisa (Aricca: Aracne, 2016).
A Transcendental Vision
Although Avicenna provided the fundamental building blocks for the transcendental vision of the Halensian Summists, his insights did not come to them without an intermediary.
The key figure in this respect was Philip the Chancellor, whose Summa de Bono codified a Christian version of the theory that influenced the Summists significantly.299 Though he preserved the primacy that Avicenna had attributed to being, Philip jettisoned the Persian philosopher’s account of ‘one’ and thing’ as the main qualities or first determinations of being and turned instead to Latin sources which identified them with unity, truth, and
goodness. As he understands them, these three notions respectively account for the efficient, formal, and final causation of beings. In turn, this three-fold causality is traceable to God, and in specific, to the members of the Triune God, that is, the Father, Son and Spirit,
respectively.300
Thus, Philip subsequently elucidates the relations amongst these primary notions, insofar as they mimic the relations amongst the persons of the Godhead. Finally, he spells out their relation to the highest, divine, good, as well as that good’s relation to created goods.
Here, Philip was undoubtedly motivated by a desire to refute the Cathar heresy, which posited a good God as the creator of spiritual being and an ‘evil’ God as the creator of
299 The first to point out Philip’s originality was Henri Pouillon, in ‘Le premier traitç des propriétiés
transcendentales, La Summa de bono du Chancelier Philippe,’ Revue néoscolastique de philosophie 42 (1939), 40-77.
300 Antonella Fani, ‘Communissima, trascendentali e Trinità: da Filippo il Cancelliere alla prima scuola francescana,’ Il Santo: Rivista Francescana de storia dottrina arte 49:1 (2009), 131-54.
matter.301 Such dualism posed a considerable threat to orthodoxy at the time, and in particular, to the Christian notion that God created all things good. Thus, the rationale for Philip’s defence of the good in the Summa de bono and his larger efforts to construct a transcendental theory to ground his affirmation of goodness.
Following predecessors who had engaged in transcendental thinking, Philip nowhere uses the term transcendens in his writings and instead refers to what he calls the common properties (communissima) or first intentions (primae intentiones) of beings. Nevertheless, he offered the first systematic account of the transcendentals in the Latin West and thereby laid the foundation for further scholastic work on this topic. As the first attempt at Christian transcendental theory, however, Philip’s ‘account bears the marks of a first draft; it is rather terse and sometimes little explicit.’302 Thus, it remained for later thinkers, above all, the authors of the Summa Halensis, to give a full-fledged account of the transcendental notions that Philip had codified.303
The point of departure for the Summa’s discussion of the transcendentals is the epistemological dimension of Avicenna’s account. In this regard, the Summa unabashedly claims at the outset that ‘being is the first object of the intellect,’304 quoting Avicenna as its explicit source. This being, we will discover, is ultimately God.305 Whereas Avicenna
301 Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought: From Philip the Chancellor to Francisco Suarez (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 112.
302 Ibid., 128.
303 The anonymous Tractatus de transcendentalibus entis conditionibus, ed. Dieter Halcour, in Franziskanische Studien 41 (1959), 41-106, was for a while attributed to Bonaventure but this authorship has proven uncertain. It seems to be an excerpt from the Summa Halensis, elaborated by a student of Alexander of Hales.
304 SH Vol 1, Tr3, Q1, M1, C1, Respondeo II (n. 72), 113: Dicendum quod cum sit ens primum intelligibile eius intentio apud intellectum est nota (Avicenna, Meta I.6); cf. Vol 2.1, In1, S1, Q1, C2 (n. 2), 3.
305 Vol. 1, P1, In2, Tr1, Q1, C2, Ar2, Solutio (n. 352), 522: Deus sicut efficiens, primum
identified ‘one’ and ‘thing’ as the first determinations of being, however, the Summa takes up Philip’s notion that the transcendental properties of being primarily include unity, truth, and goodness. In the Summa, however, these properties do not merely characterize beings. They also count as innate concepts of the mind, which respectively make it possible to identify any given thing as one, or indivisible in itself and distinct from other beings; as true, or
intelligible in terms of what it is; and good, or fit for a certain purpose.306 Thus, being is the most fundamental concept, from which unity, truth, and goodness subsequently unfold at decreasing levels of fundamentality.307
In relation to the soul, the Summa elaborates, these basic concepts are respectively ordained to the memory, understanding, and the will—a psychological triad that the Summa derives from Augustine.308 While memory is the faculty that retains the picture of what a thing is as distinct from or related to others, intelligence is what perceives the truth, and the will is what loves or approves what is good.309 Together, the Summa contends, these three concepts form the image of God, and indeed, the Triune God, on the mind. They enable memory, understanding, and will, respectively to recognize the Father as the efficient or generating cause of unity, the Son as the formal or exemplar cause of truth, and the Spirit as the final or purpose-giving cause of goodness in beings. While non-rational beings are what the Summa describes as mere ‘vestiges’ of the Trinity insofar as they exhibit unity, truth and
eius nomen est ens.
306 Vol 1, Tr3, Q1, M1, C2, Respondeo (n. 73), 114-5: The nature and relationship of unity, truth, and goodness;
cf. Vol 1, Tr3, Q2, M1, C2, Respondeo (n. 88), 140.
307 Vol 1, Tr3, Q1, M1, C2, IV (n. 73), 116.
308 Vol 2.1, In4, Tr 1, S1, Qu3, T1, C5, Ar6, Solutio (n. 341), 414: Memory, understanding will; cf. Augustine, De Trinitate X.
309 Vol 1, Tr3, Q1, M1, C2, Respondeo (n. 73), 114-5: Unity, truth, and goodness in the memory, understanding and will.
goodness, only rational beings are capable in virtue of their innate knowledge of being and its transcendental properties, that is, the image of God, to understand other beings in relation to their efficient, formal, and final cause.310
According to the Summa, this image renders every human being an ‘express likeness’311 of God, that is, a genuine expression of Godself outside himself. As such, the human mind or soul, while not made of the substance of God himself, involves a nonetheless immediate and intimate connection with God. As we will discover, this provides a basis for correctly understanding realities as he does and for at once discerning him to be the efficient, formal, and final cause of unity, truth, and goodness in beings, respectively. In explaining what this discernment involves, the Summa stresses that the transcendental concepts do not represent the objects of human knowledge as such but rather the means by which objects of experience are rendered intelligible. Precisely because the transcendentals are known prior to experience, however, the Summa elaborates that they cannot themselves be known through anything anterior to themselves.
Thus, the knowledge of the transcendentals can only be triggered by experience itself, which allows us to draw inferences about what is one, true, or God either by abnegation or from effects to a cause.312 In the mode of abnegation, the Summa states that the
transcendentals are known in terms of formal qualities that diametrically oppose those of
310 Vol 1, Tr3, Q1, M1, C2, Respondeo (n. 73), 114-5: Father, Son and Spirit as efficient, formal, and final cause of unity, truth, and goodness in creatures.
311 Vol 2.1, In1, S2, Q1, M2, C3, Contra 1 (n. 36), 46: Imago est expressa similitudo. See also the rest of the chapter on the distinction between a vestige and an image; cf. Vol 2.1 (n. 322), 391: we are the image of the Son who is the image of God; Vol 2.1 (n. 337), 409-10: the image of God is only in humans; Vol 2.1 (n. 343), 417:
the image of God is immediately related to God.
312 Vol 1, Tr3, Q1, M1, C1, Respondeo II (n. 72), 113: Knowledge through abnegation or effects.
empirical objects. Where the latter are finite, temporal, and so on, the transcendentals and their divine source are infinite and eternal. As effects of a cause, natural realities testify on the one hand to the infinite and eternal being that is their source: that is, they bespeak their relationship to the divine and thereby, his existence. By the same token, however, they give insight into his nature through a finite lens.
Here, the Summa strongly affirms here the possibility of a direct and positive or
‘kataphatic’ knowledge of God through creatures.313 In doing so, it repudiated the stance of the Greek Christian thinkers who denied that human beings can gain insight into God under any circumstances. While the Summa would be the first to insist that God in his totality cannot be captured by the human mind, it asserts the mind’s ability to grasp God’s presence in a partial but nonetheless positive way through the things God has made.314 To illustrate how, the Summa observes how a line leading to the centre of a circle touches the centre but does not circumscribe it. Although its circumference alone can do this, there is a conceivably infinite number of lines which can lead to the centre and touch on it in some way.
In a similar fashion, the created intellect is like a line leading to the centre, or the divine substance, insofar as it traces creatures to their divine source and captures an aspect of that source at the point of converging with it. The difference between God and a normal sphere, as Alan of Lille affirms, is that ‘God is an intelligible sphere, whose centre is
313 Jacob W. Wood, ‘Kataphasis and Apophasis in Thirteenth Century Theology: The Anthropological Context of the Triplex Via in the Summa fratris Alexandri and Albert the Great,’ The Heythrop Journal 57 (2016), 293-311
314 Vol 1, P1, In1, Tr2, Q2, C1, Solutio (n. 36), 59: Apprehension vs. comprehension, citing Augustine, De videndo Dei 9.21 and Ad Paulinam; cf. Vol 1 (n. 8), 16: to see an aspect vs. comprehend a whole.
everywhere and his circumference is nowhere.’315 Thus, the possible means of knowing him finitely are ultimately infinite. After all, there are infinite possibilities for finite beings in the mind of God who is as Damascus called him, a ‘sea of infinite substance.’316
As we have seen, the key to gaining a finite glimpse into the infinite God is adherence to the ‘inner light’ of transcendental knowledge.317 When explaining how this light operates in a treatise on human knowledge, the mechanics of Avicenna’s psychology come into play.
In this regard, the Summa adopts almost completely the Arab philosopher’s theory of
external and internal senses that produce an image or ‘intention’ regarding sense experiences.
This was not uncommon in a day when this was the most sophisticated and advanced account of sensation on offer.318
When it comes to the theory of the intellect, however, things become more
complicated. As Dag Hasse has noted, Avicenna’s psychology met with a strong indigenous
315 Alan of Lille, Theologiae Regulae (PL, 210), 7: Deus est sphaera intellibilis, cuius centrum est ubique circumferentia nusquam.
316 Vol 1, Tr Intro, Q2, M3, C2, Respondeo 2 (n. 21), 32; John of Damascus, De fide I.9.
317 Vol 1, P1, In1, Tr3, Q2, C4, Contra 2 (n. 90), 146: Veritas est lux interior. See also Respondeo 2: veritas prima lux interior dicitur…est vis animae interior…quantum ad suam essentiam, attingit omne quod est, sicut ponit Augustinus (In Ion 2.1.19) exemplum de caeco posito in sole, quod praesens est ei lux, ipse tamen absens est ab illa. Ita ipsa summa sapientia, quae est prima veritas, omni iniquo praesens est, quamvis ipse absens (The first truth is called an interior light, and it is the interior power of the soul. Its essence extends to all that is, as Augustine posits in the example of a blind man who is placed in the light so that the light is present to him, but he is absent from the light. In this way, the highest wisdom, that is, the first truth, is present to every sinner even though they are absent from the light).
318 Vol 2.1, In4, Tr1, S2, Q2, T1, M1, C2 (n. 355), 432: Avicenna on the five external senses; Vol 2.1, In4, Tr1, S2, Q2, T1, M2, C1 (n. 357), 434-5: Avicenna on the internal senses, including estimation (n. 359), 436.
tradition for classifying intellectual functions.319 Augustine, John of Damascus, Aristotle, and numerous others all elaborated schemata for explaining the work of the mind. Thus, the Summa’s aim for mastery obligated its authors to run through the other possibilities
available. Because of the confusion surrounding Aristotle and Augustine at this time, what is ultimately offered by the Summa is a reading of the two thinkers that is distinctly Avicennian in nature, and which is often justified by appeals to De spiritu et anima.320
Although somewhat convoluted, this strategy was far from unusual at a time when Avicenna’s conceptualization of the intellect’s work carried so much sway, and yet there were other schemata to which it somehow had to be terminologically reconciled.321 As Hasse writes, the success of Avicenna’s doctrine of four intellects ‘was based less on quotations of his terminology—the scholastic terminology of intellects follows its own paths—but on the criteria given by Avicenna for the distinction between the intellects. These criteria and the
319 Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West (London: Warburg, 2001), 189-91. Avicenna’s doctrine of four intellects was hugely influential in the West not so much through terminology but in terms of the understanding of how the intellect works.
320 Vol 2.1, In4, Tr1, S2, Q3, T1, M1, C1, Solutio (n. 368), 447-8: Aristotle’s account of three intellects, namely, material, possible, and agent. See also the discussion of the five intellects treated in the pseudo-Augustinian De anima et spiritu in Vol 1, Tr Intro, Q2, M2, C4, Contra 1 (n. 17), 27: sense, imagination, reason, intellect, intelligence.
321 Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s De anima, 200: Avicenna’s theory of the four intellects was transformed
321 Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Avicenna’s De anima, 200: Avicenna’s theory of the four intellects was transformed