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Aquinas on the Necessity of Natures: The Logical Limits of Divine Omnipotence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2025

Turner C. Nevitt Open the ORCID record for Turner C. Nevitt [Opens in a new window]
Turner C. Nevitt*
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Department of Philosophy, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA
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Email: tnevitt@sandiego.edu
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Abstract

For years, Thomists have debated Aquinas’s view on the status of human beings or persons between death and resurrection. Survivalists hold that, for Aquinas, the survival of the separated soul is sufficient for the continued existence of the human being; corruptionists deny this, insisting that the body is also necessary for a human being to exist, absolutely speaking. Most survivalists agree that matter is part of a human being’s nature, signified by its essential definition. So how can a human being survive the loss of its body at death? Many survivalists reply that a thing’s essence and definition only express what it is naturally, or normally, or typically, but not necessarily. In this paper, I argue that this view of essences and definitions is not Aquinas’s own. This comes out clearly in Aquinas’s treatments of God’s absolute power, which he thinks is limited only by logical contradiction. In such treatments, Aquinas consistently appeals to the natures of things to explain why not even God can make things to be other than they are by definition, on pain of logical contradiction. This shows that he thinks of a thing’s essence and definition as strictly necessary, not merely normative, for its existence.

Keywords

corruptionismdefinitionessencenaturesurvivalism
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Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 106 , Issue 4 , July 2025 , pp. 271 - 285
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.

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References

1 For background on the debate, see nn. 2 and 3 of Turner C. Nevitt, ‘Aquinas on the Death of Christ: A New Argument for Corruptionism’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 90 (2016), pp. 77–99.

2 These disagreements are surveyed in Turner C. Nevitt, ‘Survivalism versus Corruptionism: Whose Nature? Which Personality?’, Quaestiones Disputatae, 10 (2020), pp. 127–44.

3 See, for example, Eleonore Stump, ‘Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul’, in Bruno Niederbacher and Edmund Runggaldier, eds., Die menschliche Seele: Brauchen wir den Dualismus? (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2006), pp. 151–72; Jason Eberl, ‘Do Human Persons Persist between Death and Resurrection?’, in Kevin Timpe, ed., Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 188–205; Edward Feser, ‘Aquinas on the Human Soul’, in Jonathan J. Loose, Angus J.L. Menuge, and J.P. Moreland, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), pp. 88–101; Allison Krile Thornton, ‘Disembodied Animals’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 56/2 (2019), pp. 203–17.

4 It is difficult to say much more about this view of essences, since most survivalists who take this view do not say much more about it themselves, nor do they quote texts in which Aquinas describes essences this way. The fullest statement and defense of this view of essences is Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 279–310, especially pp. 297–301. For a corruptionist reply to Brower’s argument based on the death of Christ, see Nevitt, ‘Aquinas on the Death of Christ’, pp. 91–93; for a reply to his argument based on the separated soul and the Eucharistic accidents, see Nevitt, ‘Survivalism versus Corruptionism’, pp. 137–8.

5 Quaestiones disputatae de quolibet (henceforth QDQ) IX, q. 1, a. 1. References to the works of Aquinas are to the online edition at Corpus Thomisticum, https://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. Translations are my own.

6 Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (henceforth QDV) q. 2, a. 10.

7 Quaestiones disputatae de potentia (henceforth QDP) q. 3, a. 16 (emphasis mine). By ‘organized body’ Aquinas means a body with what he calls the ‘primary organs’, such as the brain or heart, which are part of a human being’s ‘proper matter’, and are thus ‘absolutely necessary’ for a human being (cf. Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 30). For further discussion and references, see Nevitt, ‘Survivalism versus Corruptionism’, p. 136.

8 De ente et essentia (henceforth DEE), c. 1. For a much fuller account of Aquinas’s view of essences and definitions, see Turner C. Nevitt, Aquinas on Essence and Existence (Doctoral Dissertation, Fordham University, New York, NY, 2015), cc. 1–3.

9 When Aquinas calls a thing’s essence its form, he means the form of the whole (forma totius), which in the case of composite things includes substantial form and matter; he does not mean the form of a part (forma partis), a thing’s substantial form alone. For Aquinas’s reasons for refusing to identify a composite thing’s essence with its substantial form alone, see Armand Maurer, ‘Form and Essence in the Philosophy of St. Thomas’, in Being and Knowing: Studies in Thomas Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990), pp. 3–18. For a briefer treatment, see John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), pp. 328–33.

10 DEE, c. 2.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Thus, in the case of composite substances, we can distinguish between a universal and an individual essence and form, which each contain matter in different senses. This raises a host of complicated questions, which are helpfully treated in Joshua Hochschild, ‘Form, Essence, and Soul: Distinguishing Principles of Thomistic Metaphysics’, in Nikolaj Zunic, ed., Distinctions of Being: Philosophical Approaches to Reality (Washington, DC: American Maritain Association, 2012), pp. 21–35.

14 Cf. Compendium theologiae (henceforth CT) I, c. 154; DEE, c. 2; QDQ II, q. 2, a. 2; QDP q. 9, a. 1, arg. 7; Summa contra Gentiles (henceforth SCG) IV, c. 81, n. 10; Summa theologiae (henceforth ST) I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 3.

15 Cf. Expositio libri Posteriorum Analyticorum (henceforth In Post. An.) II, l. 2, n. 2; In Post. An. I, l. 10, n. 3; In Post. An. II, l. 6, n. 6; In Post. An. II, l.8, n. 6; Sentencia libri De anima (henceforth In De An.) I, l. 1, n. 10; Sententia libri Metaphysicae (henceforth In Met.) VII, l. 4, nn. 12 & 25; In Met. VII, l. 9, n. 1; CT I, c. 11; CT I, c. 21.

16 Cf. DEE, c. 1; Scriptum super Sententiis (henceforth In Sent.) IV, d. 49, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5; Expositio libri Peryermeneias (henceforth In Peri Herm.) I, l. 10, n. 5; CT I, c. 30.

17 Super Boetium De Trinitate (henceforth In BDT) q. 5, a. 1.

18 For a full account of all these requirements, see Nevitt, Aquinas on Essence and Existence, c. 2.

19 Cf. In Post. An. II, l. 2, n. 4; In Post. An. II, l. 7, n. 3; In Post. An. II, l. 13, n. 3; SCG I, c. 25, n. 10.

20 Cf. In Met. VII, l. 3, nn. 2–5.

21 In Peri Herm. I, l. 4, n. 2.

22 Cf. In Post. An. II, l. 4, n. 6; In Post. An. II, l. 15, nn. 9–10; In Met. VIII, l. 3, n. 22; SCG I, c. 54, n. 3; SCG III, c. 97, n. 3; SCG IV, c. 35, n. 11; SCG IV, c. 84, n. 5; QDP q. 7, a. 4; CT I, c. 77.

23 Ibid. Cf. also, e.g., In Sent. I, d. 44, q. 1, a. 1; QDA q. 7; SCG II, c. 95, n. 2; SCG III, c. 97, n. 3; ST I, q. 25, a. 6.

24 In Met. VIII, l. 3, n. 22.

25 That is, assuming the thing has only one nature in which to subsist. The person of Christ, who has both a divine and human nature, is an exception to this rule. But it would be a mistake to extend Christ’s case to other human beings, as explained in Nevitt, ‘Aquinas on the Death of Christ’, pp. 91–3.

26 QDP q. 5, a. 1.

27 SCG II, c. 30, n. 8.

28 Ibid., n. 10.

29 Ibid., n. 9.

30 Commentaria in octo libros Physicorum (henceforth In Phys.) III, l. 7, n. 355; In Met. XI, l. 10, n. 2334.

31 QDQ I, q. 10, aa. 1 & 2; In BDT, q. 4, a. 3; SCG IV, c. 87, n. 3; ST III, q. 54, a. 1, ad 1; ST III Suppl., q. 83, aa. 2–4.

32 SCG II, c. 30, n. 9.

33 QDP q. 5, a. 3; QDQ IV, q. 3, a. 1; QDV q. 5, a. 2, ad 6; ST I, q. 104, a. 3.

34 Cf. QDP q. 1, a. 3; QDP q. 3, a. 14; ST I, q. 25, a. 3.

35 QDP q. 3, a. 14.

36 Ibid.

37 QDP q. 5, a. 3. Cf. ST I, q. 25, a. 3.

38 In BDT q. 4, a. 3, ad 1; QDQ V, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1.

39 QDP q. 5, a. 3.

40 QDV q. 2, a. 10, ad 2.

41 Cf. In BDT q. 4, a. 3, ad 1; QDQ V, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1; QDQ XII, q. 2, a. 1; QDQ III, q. 1, a. 1.

42 Cf. ST I, q. 25, aa. 2–6; QDP q. 1, aa. 2–7.

43 QDP q. 5, a. 3; QDQ V, q. 2, a. 2.

44 QDP q. 6, a. 2, ad 3.

45 DEE, c. 1.

46 QDP q. 6, a. 2, ad 3.

47 Cf. SCG I, c. 81; QDP, q. 1, a. 5; QDP, q. 3, a. 15; QDV, q. 23, a. 4; ST I, q. 19, a. 3.

48 QDP q. 3, a 16.

49 Cf. supra n. 9.

50 ST I, q. 25, a. 6.

51 In Sent. I, d. 44, q. 1, a. 1.

52 QDV, q. 2, a. 10. Cf. also In Sent. II, d. 1, q. 1, a. 5, ad s.c. 3–6; ff; ST I, q. 7, a. 4; QDQ XII, q. 2, a. 2.

53 QDV, q. 2, a. 10.

54 QDQ IX, q. 1, a. 1 (emphasis mine).

55 Ibid.

56 Aquinas argues that an actual infinity is impossible at In Sent. II, d. 1, q. 1, a. 5, ad s.c. 3–6; ST I, q. 7, a. 4; and QDQ IX, q. 1, a. 1. But later he argues the opposite at QDQ XII, q. 2, a. 2. On the dating of these works, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, 3rd rev. ed., trans. Matthew K. Minerd and Robert Royal (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023), 386, 389, and 396.

57 See, for example, Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, pp. 299–300.

58 DEE, c. 1.

59 This fallacy is explained in connection with survivalism in Nevitt, ‘Aquinas on the Death of Christ’, pp. 93–6.

60 In Met. VII, l. 4. Cf. QDQ IX, q. 3, a. 1, ad 1.

61 In Post. An. II, l. 5, n. 2. Cf. In Met. VII, l. 3, n. 1327; SCG I, c. 25, n. 7; ST I, q. 3, a. 5.

62 Cf. In Met. VII, l. 12.

63 For further discussion of the problem and its solution, see Nevitt, Aquinas on Essence and Existence, pp. 66–86.

64 In Met. VII, l. 11, n. 2 (emphasis mine).

65 In Sent. I, d. 2, q. 1, a. 3.

66 ST III, q. 77, a. 1, obj. 2 & ad 2; QDQ IX, q. 3, a. 1 obj. 1–2 & ad 1–2.

67 For a fuller account of the quasi-definitions of substance and accident, see Etienne Gilson, ‘Quasi Definitio Substantiae’, in A. Maurer, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies I (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), pp. 111–129 and Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, pp. 228–37.

68 QDQ IX, q. 3, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. ST III, q. 77, a. 1, ad 2.

69 Ibid.

70 Failure to recognize this is the central mistake in the survivalist’s defense of the dispositional view of essences based on the fact that, e.g., the soul is essentially disposed to inform the body and accidents are essentially disposed to exist in a subject (cf. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, pp. 297–301). Such a defense conflates a thing’s proper accidents, to which it has an essential disposition, with the parts of its essence: the act of informing the body is not part of the soul’s essence, and the act of existing in a subject is not part of an accident’s essence. Thus, the fact that the soul can exist without the body, and accidents without a subject, does not show that a thing can exist without the parts of its own essence, or that it is merely disposed to have those parts. Cf. Nevitt, ‘Corruptionism versus Survivalism’, pp. 137–8.