Applying a Thomist Principle: Quidquid

recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur

by Br. Dunstan Robidoux OSB

Not infrequently, in different texts, Aquinas refers to a principle which he uses

as a principle of explanation–a principle which avers that “whatever is
received into something is received according to the condition of the
receiver.” Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur. Cf. Summa
Theologiae, 1a, q. 75, a. 5; 3a, q. 5. In the Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a.
4, a more specific application of this principle is proposed in terms which say
that “a thing known exists in a knower according to the mode of a
knower.” Cogitum…est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis. For
further references, see Summa Theologiae, q. 14, a. 1, ad 3; q. 16, a. 1; q. 19,
a. 6, ad 2; Summa Contra Gentiles, 2, 79, 7; De Veritate, q. 2, a. 3. In
knowing anything, or in thinking that one knows anything, something is known
by a prospective knower according to the mode of a knower’s being where
what is understood and known is regulated or determined according to how a
thing is known by a knower. In the context of his systematic theology of the
Trinity, Lonergan takes this Thomist principle and uses it to explain why
ongoing development sometimes fails to occur in theology. See
Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, p. 25. Seminal insights are not
always well understood (as these insights come from major thinkers in the
theological tradition as in St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, or Cardinal
Newman) and the result can be a tradition of misunderstanding (constituted by
truncated understandings) which introduces a distortion into the development
of later theology. Pseudo-problems are generated and, to address them,
provisional solutions are attempted which create new theological traditions,
traditions which jar with the received theological tradition and which emerge
as a miscast tradition. As Lonergan argues his case in more than one
context, Aquinas’s thought is replaced by Thomistic interpretations that
present a sometimes consistent misunderstanding of things although it is
claimed, at the same time, that everything is grounded in Aquinas’s texts and
the true meaning of his texts. False controversies take center stage as
inquiries move toward apprehensions of meaning that lead to a sense of
skepticism which acts to encourage an attitude of disbelief with respect to the
sense or meaning of the Church’s teachings in matters having to do with faith
and morals.
To cite only one notable example as one looks back into the history of
Catholic theology, in the De ente supernaturali: Supplementum
schematicum (On Supernatural Being: A Schematic Supplement), Lonergan
argues that the dispute which irrupted in the 16th Century between Molinists
and Bannezians about the relation between grace and human freedom should
be regarded as a false controversy because it proceeded on the basis of a
number of shared misunderstandings. To cite a particular glaring instance,
both schools adhered to a theory of human understanding which cannot be
squared with Aquinas’s stated views. When human understanding is
understood as a vital act, it is said that human understanding causes itself. It
is essentially self-caused or self-willed. Cf. J. Michael Stebbins, The Divine
Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of
Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), pp. 107-
110. But, the self-actualization of human knowing is not only a mistaken
notion in itself but one which is doubly false if one tries to claim that it
represents Aquinas’s understanding of human cognition. As Aquinas himself
says, “the knower as such is not an efficient…cause.” Cf. Aquinas, De
Veritate, q. 8, a. 6. Human knowing is not to be equated with the activity or
efficient causality of the agent intellect. Human knowledge is not essentially a
product of human effort (as a human knower moves from not knowing or not
understanding to knowing or understanding). As essential as is the reasoning
process for moving toward understanding, no one can know if understanding
will ever enter into one’s conscious experience. The absence of any
guarantees accordingly distinguishes understanding from any kind of human
making or human producing. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 85, a. 2. There is
nothing which a person can do whose term is necessarily an act of
understanding (even if an act of understanding is personally possessed by a
knower when it is enjoyed). Hence, as a consequence, understanding
presents itself as something which can only be elicited (and not produced) by
what human beings do. It cannot be earned. While given to persons who ask
questions, understanding exists as essentially a reception. It is a “being-
acted-upon.” Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 79, a. 2. It is an act, not an
action. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 28, a. 3, ad 1; Sententia super
Physicam, 3, 5, 320. While an action is something which is produced (it
comes from a subject or agent as its source or point of origin), as an act,
understanding is properly a passion (passio). It is a passive potency. It is
something which a subject receives or accepts. It is the act of a subject which
exists within a subject who, as a patient, undergoes and experiences what is
undergone and experienced, but who can only receive certain operations
according to the form or nature which specifies a subject’s operations in terms
of what can be received and what cannot be received by a given
subject. Cf. De Veritate, q. 26, a. 1; a. 3; Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 41, a.1,
ad 2; Stebbins, p. 107. In Lonergan’s own words, “act is limited by the
potency in which it is received.” Cf. Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, p.
147. Every form possesses an inclination of its own which specifies what it
may properly receive. Cf. Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae, q. 6, a. 4, ad 2. Hence,
until understanding dawns, one must continue to work and hope for it and,
until it dawns, one cannot say what one has understood. The receptive
character of human understanding accordingly explains why Aquinas speaks
about understanding as a “movement to the soul” from an agent object
instead of a movement “from the soul” to outer things. Cf. De Malo, q. 6, a.
un., arg. 14a. Intellectual knowledge is received from external things in a way
which shows that understanding operates “from things to the soul,” via a rebus
ad animam. Cf. De potentia, q. 9, a. 9. If the receptive character of human
understanding is not properly understood, it will lead to a false notion of
human autonomy (an exaggerated notion of it) and, as a result, God’s grace
will not be understood with regard to its full efficacy.

By attending then to the wording of Aquinas’s principle (“whatever is received

into something is received according to the condition of the receiver”)and as
one thinks about its meaning, one can begin to sense that this principle
probably explains why Lonergan moved into an intentionality analysis of the
human subject after spending years reading into Aquinas’s thought. Aquinas
sometimes explicitly refers to inner experience which human beings can have
of themselves when they are engaged in certain acts. For instance, as a
prime example which Lonergan often refers to in one or more various texts, in
the ST, 1a, q. 84, a. 7, Aquinas avers: “Anyone can experience this for himself
that when he tries to understand something, he forms certain phantasms to
serve him by way of examples in which, as it were, he examines what he is
trying to understand. For this reason, when we wish to make someone
understand something, we lay examples before him from which he can form
phantasms for the purpose of understanding.” Cf. Aquinas as cited by
Giovanni B. Sala S.J., “From Thomas Aquinas to Bernard Lonergan:
Continuity and Novelty,”
http://www.workofgod.org/dialogue_partners/Sala/from_thomas_aquinas_to_b
ernard_l.htm#_ftnref10; Lonergan, Understanding and Being, p. 44. But,
while Aquinas does not frequently refer to inner human experience in
preferring to use a method of analysis which moves from exterior objects to
inner human acts (our inner conscious experience of these acts), Lonergan
prefers to work conversely through a form of analysis which moves from our
inner experience of human acts toward transcendent objects that are intended
by our desires and the different kinds of questions that we ask. Where
Aquinas distinguishes between different kinds of acts by distinguishing
between different kinds of objects, Lonergan moves from our experience of
questions and the existence of different kinds of questions to objects by way
of acts. By attending to questions and by distinguishing them, one can
determine an order of different intended objects and then, by attending to this
order of intended objects, one can specify the different kinds of acts which
come into existence, or which can come into existence, in order to meet these
different intended goals. Differences within the order of human intentionality
reveal a normative structure and a connatural order which exists within the
larger world of being or reality–a connatural order which refers to a
correspondence or a proportion which exists between the order of our human
knowing and the order which exists within the world of being (as this is
proportionate to the order of our human knowing). Two types of analysis can
be contrasted as we think about the kind of analysis that Aquinas prefers to
use and the kind that Lonergan prefers to use. But, within Aquinas, one finds
principles which lead from one kind of analysis to another: from the
metaphysics of Aquinas to the theory of human cognition present in the work
of Bernard Lonergan.

http://lonergan.org/2009/10/16/applying-a-thomist-principle-quidquid-recipitur-ad-modum-recipientis-
recipitur/