St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R. ed. by John R. Catan (review)

644 BOOK REVIEWS St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R. Edited by JoHN R. CATAN. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980. Pp. Q91. $Q9.00; paper, $9.95. Joseph Owens is a prominent exponent of the primacy of existential act as the key to the text and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. These Collected Papers are major articles written during the period from 195Q to 1976, reprinted in this sequence: I. "Aquinas as Aristotelian Commentator" (1974); Q. "Aquinas on Knowing Existence " (1976); 3. " Judgment and Truth in Aquinas" (1970); 4. "The Accidental and Essential Character of Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas " (1958); 5. "Diversity and Community of Being in St. Thomas Aquinas" (1960); 6. "Aquinas and the Five Ways" (1974); 7." The Conclusion of the Prima Via" (195Q/53); 8. " The Starting Point of the Prima Via" (1967); 9. "Actuality in the Prima Via of St. Thomas" (1967); 10. "Immobility and Existence for Aquinas" (1968); 11." Aquinas on Infinite Regress" (196Q). The editor's arrangement is thus designed to present first background material, then the explicit treatment of the subject indicated by the volume's title. The title chosen may raise unmet expectations since fewer than half of the pages focus on the theme of God's existence and most of these concern St. Thomas on the argument from movement. Essay 6 simply draws the broad outline of the five ways in the Summa, and Essay 11 on infinite regress amounts merely to an extended note. The volume is poorly edited, moreover, since it is inadequately cross-referenced and not well indexed, and there are numerous typographical errors that distract the reader and occasionally make the text itself unintelligible. The author's reputation as interpreter of St. Thomas's thought well warrants this one-volume collection of reprints, but one may still regret that it does not appear in more discriminating format. As to the contents of the volume, the Owens version of St. Thomas represented by these reprinted essays is presumably well known. No review could summarize them without injustice to the densely argued development of the author's interpretation of St. Thomas. This review comes from one who flatly rejects that interpretation. But the review will address only one issue; the use made of texts to sustain the following: existence as the starting point of the demonstration of God's existence; existence as accidental predicate in all created beings; judgment as the immediate grasp of existence . The following statements concerning the title of the volume seem to be fair indications that these are indeed key elements in the Owens version of St. Thomas. In a reflection on the theological setting and character of St. Thomas's thought and writings, Owens wonders whether revelation is necessary to turn the human mind to existence, then remarks on the proof of God's existence: "Once that focus is attained one is aware of existential actuality BOOK REVIEWS 645 as an aspect immediately known and therefore able to serve as an operative factor in the starting point of a genuinely metaphysical demonstration " (p. 191). With regard to the five ways in the Summa tkeologiae, they begin, as Owens puts it, " from existents that possess being in accidental fashion and proceed from there to existence that subsists. All function on the ' existence ' side of the 'essence-existence couplet.' They are, accordingly, five different ways of incorporating the one basic demonstration" (p. 141). " All five can be understood as starting from observed sensible things in which existence is other than nature and as proceeding to existence identified with nature, which is the Judeo-Christian God as named in Exodus" {p. 137). Thus "subsistent existence as reached from the actual existence of sensible things appears at once as identical with the creative and provident God of the Christian creeds " (p. 262, note 88) . The statements incorporate the key elements mentioned and imply the relevance of the meaning of existence and its apprehension to the demonstration of God's existence.- They are descriptive assertions that seem to permit a concentration on these elements and do not involve an unfair quotation of the...