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Abstract: C ornelio Fabro, CSS (1911-1995) devoted his two major works in Thomistic metaphysics to the notion of participation. 1 His interpretation of Thomas Aquinas's texts led him to oppose strongly Louis-Bertrand Geiger's twofold division of participation 2 as well as the Scholastic reduction of the act of being (actus essendi) to factual existence. For his part, Fabro proposed a division between predicamental participation and transcendental participation and understood actus essendi as the intensive, actuating, and emergent act of a being (ens). The importance of understanding correctly the notions of participation and being (esse) is immediately apparent with regard to Aquinas's theology of grace. On the one hand, the gift of grace is described by Aquinas as a "certain participation of divine nature," 3 and, on the other,
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Metaphysics Theological Anthropology Related Papers Abstract: For students of Thomas Aquinas, Cornelio Fabro is well known for his thorough examinations of Thomas’s doctrine of participation. Less well known, however, is Fabro’s occasional reference to a doppia, or double, participation of the creature in the divine: one for its essence, the other for its act of existing (esse). In this paper, I examine these references to “double participation” by looking at another, related, doubling explicitly affirmed by Thomas Aquinas: double exemplarism. From his earliest writings, Thomas draws a distinction between two kinds of divine exemplarism, one of the divine ideas and the other of the divine nature. As I show, despite affirming this double exemplarism—or, more precisely, because of the way he affirms it—Thomas presents only a single line of what Fabro would term “transcendental participation.” Moreover, as I argue Fabro himself in fact follows Thomas on this point, a reading that can be strengthened through a careful consideration of what Thomas’s doctrine of double exemplarism entails.
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Abstract: This article is the second of three essays by Fr Jason Mitchell, myself, and Gregory Doolan on the three modes of participation in Thomas Aquinas. All three articles have been published together in the 2018 Fall issue of The Thomist.
Abstract:
In his commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus, Thomas Aquinas distinguishes three modes of participation. This article proposes an answer to the following question: Do finite beings participate in their actus essendi according to the second of these three modes of participation? I approach this question through an investigation of the criteria that identify and demarcate each of Aquinas’s three modes of participation.
In section I, I detail the criterial problem for identifying and demarcating Aquinas’s three modes of participation. In section II, I address at length John Wippel’s five arguments that purport to show that Aquinas’s second mode of participation excludes the participation of ens in esse. In section III, I propose my answer to the criterial problem, which supports my claim, contrary to Wippel, that the second mode of participation includes the participation of ens in its actus essendi. I do not provide a textual analysis of Aquinas’s account of the participation of ens in its actus essendi, since I have little to add to Wippel’s perspicuous treatment of this topic. My aim is more modest. I intend to challenge and correct Wippel’s taxonomy of the three modes of participation. Said otherwise, I accept the substance of his interpretation of the participation of ens in its actus essendi. What I reject is his taxonomy of Aquinas’s three modes of participation, which restrictively forces Aquinas’s diverse orders of ens-esse participation to fit the mold of the third mode of participation, and so excludes from the second mode of participation the participation of ens in its actus essendi.
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Abstract: The metaphysical notion of participation is operative throughout the thought of St. Thomas and within the Catholic understanding of the creature’s relationship to God—in particular, with regard to sanctifying grace. This is important, because without an understanding of sanctifying grace as an ontological participation in the life of God, Christians are left with the idea of justification as an external “covering over” of sin, without any real transformation taking place within the soul. Beginning with an examination of Aquinas’ views concerning the Analogy of Being and the meaning of participation, and particularly with regard to participation in God’s own esse, our paper will note the significance of the Thomistic synthesis of the Platonic understanding of participation (i.e., participant vs. that which is participated in) and the Aristotelian framework of Act and Potency, that is, a synthesis between the Platonic verticalism and the Aristotelian horizontalism, in Aquinas’ understanding, not only of creation, but also of the Incarnation and of the whole supernatural life of grace and justification.
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