Descartes’s Proofs of God and the Crisis of

Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways in Early Modern

Thomism: Scholastic and Cartesian Debates*
Igor Agostini
University of Salento

I
It is well known that the demonstration of God’s existence is a crucial problem in
early modern theology and philosophy. In contrast to the medieval period, in the
seventeenth century atheism became not only an individual standpoint, but a true
philosophical and epistemological position. Accordingly, any attempt to prove the
existence of God had to address both atheist and libertine attacks against the classical
proofs of his existence. In this sense, it is not possible to understand fully Descartes’s
metaphysical project, including his proposal of new proofs for the existence of

*
To the memory of Ettore Lojacono
The following acronyms are used:
AT: René Descartes, Œuvres de Descartes (ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery; rev. ed. ed.
Joseph Beaude et al.; 11 vols.; Paris: Vrin, 1964–1974).
B: René Descartes, Tutte le lettere, 1619–1650 (ed. Giulia Belgioioso, with the collaboration of
Igor Agostini et al.; 2nd ed.; Bompiani: Il pensiero occidentale; Milan: Bompiani, 2009).
B Op 1: René Descartes, Opere 1637–1649 (ed. Giulia Belgioioso, with the collaboration of
Igor Agostini, Francesco Marrone, and Massimiliano Savini; Bompiani: Il pensiero occidentale;
Milan: Bompiani, 2009).
B Op 2: René Descartes, Opere postume 1650–2009 (ed. Giulia Belgioioso, with the collaboration
of Igor Agostini, Francesco Marrone, and Massimiliano Savini; Bompiani: Il pensiero occidentale;
Milan: Bompiani, 2009).
CSM: René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols. 1–2 (ed. and trans. John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984–1985).
CSMK: René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3: The Correspondence (ed.
and trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).

HTR 108:2 (2015) 235–262

236 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

God, without reading it as a reaction to this intellectual context. 1 In spite of

the charge of atheism brought against him in the Admiranda methodus novæ
philosophiæ Renati Des Cartes (Utrecht, 1643) by the Utrecht Theologian Gijsbert
Voetius (1589–1676) and his follower Maarten Schoock (1614–1669) (who accused
Descartes of replacing the traditional arguments for God’s existence with new proofs
intentionally made susceptible to the criticism of atheists), Descartes consistently
claimed that the demonstrations proposed in the Meditationes de prima philosophia
(Paris, 1641) aimed to establish the existence of God against the atheists.
Besides the relationship with atheism, however, there is another side to the
intellectual context. Despite their novelty, Descartes’s demonstrations also need
to be related to the treatment of the question of God’s existence in late Scholastic
thought, in which the Jesuit theologian and philosopher Francisco Suárez (1548–
1617) played a determining role. Descartes cites very few sources, but we do
know for certain that he read Suárez’s main philosophical work, the Disputationes
metaphysicæ (1597), which he quotes in the Quartæ responsiones.2 It is for this
reason that so much attention in the scholarship has been devoted to the relationship
between Descartes and Suárez on the existence of God.3
However, this is only a part of the whole story. The unremitting focus on Suárez
in the literature risks, in my opinion, obscuring the more relevant aspects of the
context. In this paper, I offer a broader picture of this context, arguing that Suárez’s
treatment of the existence of God is just one step in a process that began much
earlier, and in which the role played by the famous sixteenth-century Dominican
commentator Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534) is central. Cajetan claimed that
Thomas’s famous five ways do not demonstrate the existence of God per se, but
“quasi per accidens” by proving the existence of properties that can only belong
to God. This is the origin of a crisis in Thomism concerning the conclusions of
the five ways, i.e., the identification of the subject of the conclusions of Aquinas’s
arguments with God. On Cajetan’s interpretation, they seem to be subjected to the
challenge of insufficiency as demonstrations of God’s existence. In this article, I aim
to connect the crisis of Thomas’s five ways to Descartes’s metaphysical project of
furnishing new proofs of God’s existence. In order to do this, I will analyze some
passages of the Epistola ad Voetium (Amsterdam, 1643), where Descartes defends
1
See Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Proofs of the Existence of God,” in The Cambridge History of
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers; trans. Thomas A. Carlson
and Daniel Garber; 2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 1:305–30, esp. 305–9.
2
Secundæ responsiones; CSM 2:164 / B Op 1:997 / AT 7:235.
3
See, in particular, Blake D. Dutton, “Suarezian Foundations of Descartes’ Ontological Argument,”
The Modern Schoolman 20 (1993) 245–58; Emanuela Scribano, L’esistenza di Dio. Storia della
prova ontologica da Descartes a Kant (Rome: Laterza, 1994; French transl.: L’existence de Dieu.
Histoire de la preuve ontologique de Descartes à Kant [trans. Charles Barone; Paris: Seuil, 2002]);
Aza Goudriaan, Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis bei Suárez und Descartes. Im Zusammenhang mit
der nederländischen reformierten Theologie und Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts (Brill’s Studies
in Intellectual History; Leiden: Brill, 1999); and Jorge Secada, Cartesian Metaphysics: The Late
Scholastic Origins of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
 IGOR AGOSTINI 237

his demonstrations of the existence of God against the charge of atheism raised
against him by Voetius and Schoock. In particular, I will deal with Descartes’s
appeal to the authority of one of the most important theologians of the day, the
Jesuit Gregory of Valencia (1545–1603). Gregory was a major figure in the debate
on the validity of Thomas’s five ways, and he discussed Cajetan’s interpretation
at length. Descartes’s reference to Gregory is important because it allows us to
relate Descartes’s metaphysical reflection on the existence of God to the crisis of
Thomas’s five ways generated in the hearth of early modern Thomism.
Moreover, this connection between Descartes and the Scholastic debate on
Thomas’s five ways will be discussed at length in the context of early Cartesianism.
In order to substantiate this point, I will provide an analysis of the debate between
the Calvinist theologian Jakob Revius (1586–1658) and the Cartesian philosopher
Tobias Andreæ (1609–1676), in which Descartes’s proofs of God’s existence are
again put in relation to Gregory of Valencia’s criticism of Cajetan.

 II
In the Epistola dedicatoria of his Meditationes de prima philosophia, addressed to
the Doctors of the Sorbonne, introducing the proofs of God’s existence, Descartes
writes:
I will add that these proofs are of such a kind that I reckon they leave no
room for the possibility that the human mind will ever discover better ones.
The vital importance of the cause and the glory of God to which the entire
undertaking is directed here compel me to speak somewhat more freely about
my own achievements than is my custom.4

The history of the Epistola dedicatoria is very well known among Descartes
scholars. As Descartes’s correspondence shows, the Epistola dedicatoria was
composed to obtain the approbation of the Meditationes from the Doctors of the
Sorbonne. Descartes devised this strategy together with Mersenne. In his letter of
July 30, 1640, Descartes writes to him that he planned his manuscript to be “seen
and approved by various doctors, and if I can, by the Sorbonne as a whole”;5 some
months later, on September 30, Descartes claims that, if Mersenne agrees, “I would
dedicate it to all the masters of the Sorbonne, asking them to be my protectors in
God’s cause.”6

4
As translated in CSM 2:4; Meditationes, Epistola dedicatoria; B Op 1:684 / AT 7:4, 8–13:
“Addamque etiam tales esse, ut non putem ullam viam humano ingenio patere, per quam meliores
inveniri unquam possint: cogit enim me causæ necessitas, et gloria Dei, ad quam totum hoc refertur,
ut hic aliquanto liberius de meis loquar quam mea fert consuetudo.”
5
As translated in CSMK, 150; To Mersenne, July 7, 1640; B, 1232–1234 / AT 3:126, 23–127,
1: “fait voir et approuver par divers Docteurs, et si je puis, par le Corps de la Sorbonne.”
6
As translated in CSMK, 153; To Mersenne, September 30, 1640; B, 1284 / AT 3:184, 18–20:
“je le dédierais, si vous le trouvez bon, à Mrs de la Sorbonne en général, afin de les prier d’être
mes protecteurs en la cause de Dieu.” The Meditationes would be published with the notice “Cum
238 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

However, in spite of the fact that the defense of God and religion (“Dei et
religionis causa”)7 is actually the leitmotif of the Epistola dedicatoria, interpreters
have always been divided on the true intentions lying at the basis of Descartes’s
apologetic project. The Epistola dedicatoria is indeed at the origin of two opposite
interpretations of Descartes’s philosophy.
The first, advocating Descartes’s sincerity, sees in the metaphysics of the
Meditationes a defense of the truth of Christian beliefs. This is the apologetic
reading, proposed, among others, by Descartes’s first great biographer Adrien
Baillet (1649–1709),8 and, in more recent times, by scholars like Henri Gouhier
(1898–1994), Alfred Espinas (1844–1922), and Jean Laporte (1886–1948).9 The
second interpretation, seeing in the Epistola dedicatoria a simple strategy that
Descartes followed in order to ensure that his Meditationes were approved by the
Sorbonne, reads the Epistola dedicatoria as the apologetic mask of a subversive
project. Such an interpretation has been proposed in different forms. A moderate
version of this reading is the physicalist interpretation by Étienne Gilson (1884–
1978), according to whom Descartes’s goal was to impose a new physics under
the guise of a metaphysics built up from many elements of traditional Scholastic
doctrines.10 A much more radical version is the atheistic interpretation of Descartes’s
philosophy that can be found, for example, in the Athei detecti of the Jesuit Jean

Privilegio et Approbatione Doctorum,” which explains why scholars sometimes claim that the
approbation was in fact accorded: see Jean-Robert Armogathe, “L’approbation des Meditationes par
la Faculté de Théologie de Paris (1641),” Bulletin cartésien 21 (1994) 1–3; Gary Hatfield, Descartes
and the “Meditations” (London: Routledge, 2003) 44. However, there are at least three reasons
for concluding that the Meditationes never received the approbation: 1) Descartes’s complaint in
his letter of January 19, 1642 to Guillaume Gibieuf, who had tried to plead with the Sorbonne for
him (To Gibieuf, January 19, 1642; B, 1561 / AT 3:473, 13–474, 8); 2) the lack of the approbation
in the first edition of the Meditationes (Paris: Soly, 1641); 3) the fact that in the second edition
(Amsterdam: Elzevier, 1642) the notice “Cum Privilegio et Approbatione Doctorum” was deleted.
See Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (2 vols.; Paris: Horthemels, 1691; repr., New
York: Garland, 1987) 2:137; Charles Adam, Vie et œuvres de Descartes. Étude historique (Paris:
Cerf, 1910 = AT 12) 302; AT 3:419 n.; Giovanni Crapulli, “La prima edizione delle Meditationes de
prima philosophia di Descartes e il suo ‘esemplare ideale,’ ” Studia cartesiana 1 (1979) 37–90; and
Matthijs van Otegem, A Bibliography of the Works of Descartes (1637–1704) (2 vols.; Quaestiones
infinitae 38; Utrecht: Zeno, 2002) 1:160. It should be added also that the fact that the Meditationes
did not receive the approbation is one of the arguments addressed against Descartes by Gassendi
in the Disquisitio metaphysica, Scribendi occasio, inst. 3: “Abfuit sublimis Facultas, ut votis tuis
annueret” (Pierre Gassendi, Disquisitio metaphysica seu dubitationes et instantiæ adversus Renati
Cartesii Metaphysicam et Responsa [ed. Bernard Rochot; Paris: Vrin, 1962] 21).
7
Meditationes, Epistola dedicatoria; B Op 1:686 / AT 7:6, 19–20.
8
See Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes, 2:101.
9
Henri Gouhier, La pensée religieuse de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1924; 2nd ed., 1972); Alfred
Espinas, Descartes et la morale (Études sur l’histoire de la philosophie de l’action; 2 vols.; Paris:
Bossard, 1925); and Jean Laporte, Le rationalisme de Descartes (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1945; 2nd ed., 1950). For a recent theological approach see also Teologia fondamentale.
Testi antologici (ed. Antonio Sabetta and Pierluigi Sguazzardo; Rome: Città nuova, 2004) 71–80.
10
Étienne Gilson, La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie (Bibliothèque de philosophie
contemporaine; Paris: Alcan, 1913; 2nd ed., Paris: Vrin, 1987).
 IGOR AGOSTINI 239

Hardouin (1646–1729)11 and in the Scrutinium atheismi of the German theologian

Theophil Gottlieb Spitzel (1639–1691).12
The principal source of the accusation of atheism addressed against Descartes
in these pamphlets is the Admiranda methodus, published in Utrecht in March
of 1643. This book, which appeared under the name of Maarten Schoock, but in
fact was composed by him under the dictate of Gijsbert Voetius,13 is at the origin
of a long querelle. Under pressure exerted by Voetius, a lawsuit was brought
against Descartes by the city of Utrecht.14 It is not necessary, here, to reconstruct
the history of the controversy.15 Indeed, I will focus on Schoock’s accusation of
atheism against Descartes, which is developed especially in the Præfatio and in
the third chapter of the fourth section of his book (Cartesii nova philosophandi
11
Jean Hardouin, Athei detecti, in Opera varia (Amsterdam: Du Sauzet, 1733) 1–273. On
Hardouin’s interpretation of Descartes, see Cornelio Fabro, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno
(Cultura 28; Rome: Studium, 1964) 99–126.
12
Theophil Gottlieb Spitzel, Scrutinium atheismi historico-ætiologicum (Augsburg: Prætorius,
1663). See also Fabro, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, 111 and 120–22.
13
Maarten Schoock, Admiranda Methodus novæ philosophiæ Renati Des Cartes (Utrecht: Janssonius
van Waesberge, 1643; repr., Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2010). See also the French translation La
querelle d’Utrecht. René Descartes et Martin Schoock (trans. Theo Verbeek; Paris: Les impressions
nouvelles, 1988) 153–320. On Voetius, see A. C. Duker, Gisbertus Voetius (4 vols; Leiden: Brill,
1897–1915; repr., Leiden: Groen, 1989); L. Janse, Gisbertus Voëtius (1589–1676) (Banier bibliotheek
voor het gezin; Utrecht: De Banier,1971); De scholastieke Voetius. Een luisteroefening aan de hand
van Voetius’ “Disputationes selectæ” (ed. W. J. van Asselt and E. Dekker; Zoetermeer, Holland:
Boekencentrum, 1995); W. J. van Asselt, “G. Voetius, gereformeerd scholasticus,” in Vier eeuwen
theologie in Utrecht. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de theologische faculteit aan de Universiteit
Utrecht (ed. Aart de Groot and Otto J. de Jong; Zoetermeer, Holland: Boekencentrum, 2001) 99–108;
Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625–1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus van
Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen (Brill’s Series in Church History 26; Leiden: Brill, 2006); and
Andreas J. Beck, Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676). Sein Theologieverständnis und seine Gotteslehre
(Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 92; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007).
On the controversy between Voetius and Descartes, see Thomas Arthur McGahagan, “Cartesianism
in the Netherlands, 1639–1676: The New Science and the Calvinist Counter-Reformation” (Ph.D.
diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976); Theo Verbeek, “Voetius en Descartes,” in De onbekende
Voetius. Voordrachten wetenschappelijk symposium Utrecht 3 maart 1989 (ed. J. van Oort et al.;
Kampen, Holland: Kok, 1989) 200–219; idem, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian
Philosophy, 1637–1650 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992); idem, “Descartes
and the Problem of Atheism: The Utrecht Crisis,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch
Review of Church History 71 (1991) 211–23, esp. 213; J. A. van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality:
Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature, and Change (Leiden: Brill, 1995); and idem, “Waren er
muilezels op de zesde dag? Descartes, Voetius en de zeventiende-eeuwse methodenstrijd,” in Kometen,
monsters en muilezels. Het veranderende natuurbeeld en de natuurwetenschap in de zeventiende
eeuw (ed. Florike Egmond, Eric Jorink, and Rienk Vermij; Haarlem, Holland: Arcadia,1999) 120–32.
14
Lettre apologétique de M. Descartes aux magistrats de la ville d’Utrecht, contre MM. Voétius
père et fils; B Op 2:116–92 / AT 8.2: 201–73. See also Verantwoordingh van Renatus Descartes aen
d’Achtbare Overigheit van Uitrecht. Een onbekende Descartes-tekst (ed. Erik-Jan Bos; Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 1996) and the French translation in La Querelle d’Utrecht (ed.
Verbeek), 406–37.
15
See Erik-Jan Bos, “Descartes’s Lettre Apologétique aux Magistrats d’Utrecht: New Facts
and Materials,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999) 415–33. 
240 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

methodus ad scepticismum viam sternit), entitled “Atheismi muros dum subvertere

Cartesius laborat, fulcit et ædificat.” Let me now consider some passages from the
Admiranda methodus.
Schoock claims that, if we pay attention to Descartes’s words only, there is no
one who appears to be so far (“alienissimus”) from the suspicion of atheism.16
According to Schoock, the Meditationes contain so many passages that supposedly
prove the inapplicability of the accusation of atheism that it is not necessary to
quote them all. In particular, there is a text from the Epistola dedicatoria that is
remarkably clear:
I will not mention here all the passages of the six Meditations. However, in
the same Dedicatory letter to the Sorbonne, he clearly and boldly shows that
he is not at all troubled by suspicion of Atheism.17

Schoock here refers to the passage of the Epistola dedicatoria where Descartes
boasts that the human mind will never discover better (“meliores”) arguments than
the ones he proposes in his Meditationes. However, according to Schoock, we should
not trust Descartes here. His words, in spite of their apologetic style, will never
deceive careful readers. And the proof that Descartes is not sincere is that such
deceptive words were employed, before him, by Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585–1619),
who was burned alive in Toulouse as an atheist and an apostle of atheism.18
This is the same accusation that Shoock formulates against Descartes in the
Præfatio:
I knew a man equal to Vanini, a man who, though he wants to give the im-
pression that he battles Atheism by means of Achillean arguments, subtly and
covertly instills the poison of Atheism in people who, lacking intelligence, are
not able to discover the snake hidden in the grass.19

Just like Vanini, Descartes aims to reject all the traditional proofs of God’s existence
and replace them with those proposed in his Meditationes, and he presents them
in the Epistola dedicatoria as the best (“meliores”) possible proofs. However, as
in the case of Vanini’s arguments, Descartes’s proofs turn out to be, if carefully

16
Schoock, Admiranda methodus, 13: “Etenim si verba semper virtutem arguerent, iisque tuto
fides adhiberi deberet, ab Atheismi levissima etiam suspicione homo noster alienissimus esset.”
17
Schoock, Admiranda methodus, 262: “Ut alia enim multa loca passim in sex Meditationibus
occurrentia omittamus, in ipsa Dedicatoria epistola ad Sorbonam parisiensem evidenter ac audacter
satis ostendit se Atheismi suspicione nequaquam lavorare velle.”
18
Schoock, Admiranda methodus, 262: “Similibus verborum ampullis Atheismi suspicionem
a se averuncare laborabat Cæsar Vaninus, et tamen publice Tolosæ est combutus non tantum quod
Atheus esset, sed Atheismi Apostolus” (quoted in Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1670 / AT 8.2:174,
25–27). On the question of Vanini’s atheism, see Emanuela Scribano, “Le tracce dell’ateo. Da
Lessius a Descartes via Vanini, Mersenne e Petit,” Rivista di storia della filosofia 62 (2007) 677–98.
19
Schoock, Admiranda methodus, xiii (quoted in Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1644–46 / AT
8.2:142, 1–6): “Cognovi hominem cum Vaninio paria facere, et dum videri vult Atheos Achilleis
argumentis oppugnare, subdole ac admodum occulte Atheismi venenum iis affricare, qui anguem
in herba latitantem præ ingenii imbecillitate ubique deprehendere non possunt.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 241

analyzed, weak and deceitful (“elumbia et siculentua”). After all—Schoock

claims—Descartes himself, in the Epistola dedicatoria, ends up confessing that
even though he “regard[s] the proofs as quite certain and evident,” he still “cannot
. . . persuade [himself] that they are suitable to be grasped by everyone.”20 But if
not everyone is capable of grasping Descartes’s proofs, how is it possible to pass
them off as the best, as he claims? Just like any other battle, the war against atheists
requires weapons without defects. However, according to Schoock, the weakness
of Descartes’s arguments is intentional. Descartes is applying complete and utter
artifice here: he aims at denying the existence of God by proposing arguments that
leave themselves open to the objections of the atheists. In spite of what Descartes
claims, the arguments of the Meditationes cannot defend the cause of God. On the
contrary, they aim to ruin it. Accordingly, the comparison with Vanini is completely
justified.

 III
Descartes answered the Admiranda methodus with the Epistola ad Voetium,
published in May of 1643, in Amsterdam, by Elzevier.21 As is well known, in his
reply Descartes unmasks Voetius as the true author of the Admiranda methodus.22
Consequently, his replies are actually addressed to Voetius. In particular, as concerns
the accusation of atheism, Descartes distinguishes four claims in Voetius’s attack in
the Admiranda methodus: (1) Descartes writes against atheists; (2) Descartes affirms that
his arguments are the best; (3) Descartes rejects the traditional arguments; and (4) Descartes
proposes new arguments that are weak and flattering. According to Descartes, the first
and second claims are absolutely true (“verissima”), while the third and the fourth
are absolutely false (“falsissima”). Nevertheless, even if all four claims were true,
it would not follow that he should be accused of atheism:
If someone tries to refute Atheism and adduces arguments that are inadequate
to the task, he should be accused of incompetence only, but not of Atheism.23

Indeed, Descartes claims, the refutation of atheists is a very difficult task, as Voetius
himself shows in his De atheismo.24 Thus not everyone who is unsuccessful in the
20
As translated in CSM 2:5; Meditationes, Epistola dedicatoria; B Op 1:684 / AT 7: 4, 13–15:
“Atqui quamtumvis certas et evidentes illas putem, non tamen ideo mihi persuadeo ad omnium
captum esse accommodatas.”
21
A Dutch version of the Epistola ad Voetium was published at the same time as the Latin edition:
Brief van Rene Des Cartes, aen den vermaerden D. Gisbertus Voetius (Amsterdam: Van Baardt, 1643).
22
Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1567 / AT 8.2:65, 5–8: “Non opus sit aliis argumentis ad probandum
eam, non ab illo cujus nomen feret, vel certe non ab illo solo, sed præcipue a te conscribi.” See also
Lettre apologétique; B Op 2:117–93 / AT 8.2:201–73.
23
Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1670 / AT 8.2:175, 22–25: “Quamvis enim quis, putans refutare
Atheismum, rationes afferat quæ ad hoc non sufficiant, imperitiæ tantum, non ideo statim Atheismi,
est accusandus.”
24
Descartes refers here (see also B Op 1:1668 / AT 8.2:173, 11–12) to the disputations defended
by Voetius on June 22 and 29 and July 6 and 13, 1639: Disputationum theologicarum . . . de
242 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

battle (“omnes qui certarunt”) against atheists should be considered incompetent

(“imperiti”), as Voetius argues.25 If the demonstrations of the Meditationes fail,
Descartes should not be considered more unsuccessful than many other renowned
theologians who preceded him.
However, Descartes does not limit himself to the generic claim “omnes qui
certarunt.” He mentions both Thomas Aquinas and Gregory of Valencia, one of the
most important Jesuit theologians of the end of the sixteenth century:
See Gregory of Valencia, the strong and celebrated Theologian. He refutes all
the arguments Thomas employed in order to prove the existence of God and
he shows that all these arguments are invalid. And other important [gravi] and
orthodox [pii] theologians did the same.26

Were Voetius’s arguments to be taken seriously, Descartes objects, even Thomas’s

proofs might be considered weak and flattering, and Thomas himself compared
with Vanini. In fact, there would be even greater reason to compare Thomas, rather
than Descartes, to Vanini, since the proofs of the Meditationes were never so widely
criticized as Thomas’s (“mea argumenta nunquam fuerunt ita refutata”). But how
could one suspect Thomas of atheism?27
In his letter dated January 22, 1644, to the French Ambassador to The Hague,
Monsieur Gaspard Coignet de la Thuillerie (1594–1653), Descartes complains
about the accusation of atheism and the comparison with Vanini raised against
him in the Admiranda methodus. Descartes asks him to intervene on his behalf

atheismo . . . sub præsidio D. Gisberti Voetii . . . tueri conabor Gualterus de Bruyn (Utrecht:
Roman, 1639). A revised version of the disputations, containing explicit references to Descartes,
would be published by Voetius in 1648–1649 in Disputationes theologicæ selectæ (5 vols; vols.
1–3: Utrecht: Janssonius van Waesberge, 1648–1659; vol. 4: Amsterdam: Janssonius van Waesberge
and Weyerstraet, 1667; vol. 5: Utrecht: Smytegelt, 1669). The text of the disputations of 1639 was
discovered by Theo Verbeek: see “From ‘Learned Ignorance’ to Scepticism: Descartes and Calvinist
Orthodoxy,” in Scepticism and Irreligion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (ed. Richard
H. Popkin and Arjo Vanderjagt; Leiden: Brill, 1993) 31–45. A partial English translation of the
Disputationes theologicæ selectæ is available in Reformed Dogmatics: J. Wollebius, G. Voetius, F.
Turretin (ed. and trans. John W. Beardslee III; Library of Protestant Thought; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1965).
25
Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1670 / AT 8.2:175, 25–176, 4: “Quin etiam profecto, cum
Atheorum refutatio sit difficillima, ut ipse testaris in ultimo tuo libro de Atheismo, non omnes qui
contra Atheos infeliciter certarunt habendi sunt imperiti.”
26
Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1670–72 / AT 8.2:176, 4–8: “Vide Gregorium de Valentia,
Theologum solidissimum et celeberrimum: ille refutat omnia argumenta quibus usus est D. Thomas
ad existentiam Dei probandam, et invalida esse ostendit. Idemque etiam alii graves et pii theologi
fecerunt.”
27
Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1670–72 / AT 8.2:176, 8–16: “Adeo ut ab iis qui vestro more
loquuntur, dici possit de D. Thoma (qui, si quis unquam alius, ab omni Atheismi suspicione
quammaxime fuit remotus), ejus argumenta contra Atheos, penitius inspecta et examinata, elumbia
et ficulnea deprehendi; eademque comparatio de illo cum Vanino possit institui, et ausim addere
(absit tamen invidia dicto) aptius quam de me, quia mea argumenta nunquam fuerunt ita refutata.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 243

with the magistrates of Utrecht and to plead his cause in the lawsuit started by the
city of Utrecht:
He [Schoock] explicitly claimed that I secretly teach Atheism, in the same
way as Vanini, who was burned in Toulouse.28

Again, in a letter to the University of Groningen dated February 16, 1645, Descartes
claims:
There can truly be no greater crime than the Atheism of which he [Schoock]
he accuses me. . . . He proves that I am an Atheist by no other arguments
except that I wrote against atheists and, according to many people, my efforts
were not poor.29

This is a well-known controversy,30 but I would like to focus on a lesser-known

aspect of the story. It concerns the passage of the Epistola ad Voetium, quoted above,
where Descartes appeals to the authority of Gregory of Valencia. Indeed, despite
what Descartes claims there, Gregory never rejected Thomas’s arguments. On the
contrary, he strongly defended Aquinas’s five ways from the criticisms leveled
against them. What is remarkable here is that Gregory’s defense of Thomas’s
arguments was addressed to an author of the Dominican Order, the most famous
commentator of Thomas’s Summa theologiæ of the sixteenth century, Thomas de
Vio Cajetan (1469–1534). To understand Gregory’s defense of Thomas’s proofs, it
is therefore necessary to refer to Cajetans’s commentary on the first part of Summa,
published in 1507.31

28
To La Thuillerie, January 22, 1644; B Op 1:1844 / AT 4:89, 19–21: “Diserte affirmabat me hic,
tanquam alterum Vaninum, Tholosæ combustum, subdole et admodum occulte Atheismum docere.” 
29
To the University of Groningen, February 17, 1645; B Op 1:1974 / AT 4:178, 8–13: “Nulla
manifestior calumnia, quam cujus nulla probatio est, nisi ex qua contrarium ejus quod affirmatur
possit inferri: ut ille non alio argumento me Atheum probat, quam quod scripserim contra Atheos,
et, multorum judicio, non male.”
30
For a general presentation, see Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch, 13–33.
31
Despite its relevance, both from a theoretical and historical point of view, and despite the
long debate that it generated at the time, Cajetan’s interpretation of the five ways has never received
systematic attention in the modern literature. There are, however, two excellent works in which the
theoretical relevance of this topic is stressed: Thomas C. O’Brien, Metaphysics and the Existence
of God: A Reflexion on the Question of God’s Existence in Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics
(Washington, D.C.: Thomist Press, 1960) 38–39, 235–40, and esp. 241, and David B. Twetten,
“Clearing a ‘Way’ for Aquinas: How the Proof from Motion Concludes to God,” Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 70 (1996) 259–78, esp. 267–68 and 275–76. From a
more historical perspective, there is Carlo Giacon, I grandi commentatori di San Tommaso (vol. 1
of La seconda scolastica; Archivum philosophicum Aloisianum, series 2, 3; 3 vols; Milan: Bocca,
1944–1950; 2nd ed., Turin: Nino Aragno, 2001) 133–40. See also J. Brockhoff, “Die Lehre des
hl. Thomas von der Erkennbarkeit Gottes,” Jahrbuch für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie 3
(1889) 182–97, at 184–85; Paul Geny, “A propos des preuves thomistes de 1’existence de Dieu,”
Revue de philosophie 31 (1924) 575–601, at 577; Fernand van Steenberghen, Le problème de
l’existence de Dieu dans les écrits de S. Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions de l’Institut
supérieur de philosophie, 1980) 296; Leo J. Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas
Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1990) 131 n. 264; Mark F. Johnson, “Why Five Ways?,” Proceedings of
244 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Cajetan claims that Thomas’s five ways can be considered as aiming to achieve
two different conclusions. The first is the existence of an infinite, immaterial,
eternal, supremely perfect, immutable being, which everyone calls God. But, if this
conclusion were the aim of the five ways, its achievement would then be controversial
(“istæ rationes habent plurimum disputationis”). For example, Thomas’s “prima
via” demonstrates the existence of an unmoved mover, and this mover could be
nothing other than an intellective soul; the “secunda via” demonstrates nothing
more than the existence of a celestial being; and the conclusions of the other three
proofs do not reach higher. Accordingly, they do not prove the existence of God,
insofar as they still need to prove that the unmoved mover or the first efficient
cause is God. However, it is not in this sense that Thomas’s proofs, according to
Cajetan, should be read.
There is indeed a second possible conclusion at which the five ways can be
considered to aim: the existence of some properties belonging “secundum veritatem”
to God. And, if they are interpreted in this way, Thomas’s arguments prove God’s
existence without difficulty.32 In particular, Cajetan holds that Thomas’s “prima
via” aims to prove nothing else but the existence of a first unmoved mover. Its task
is not to establish the nature of this first unmoved mover (for instance, to establish
whether this first mover is the soul of the world or the soul of heaven). Indeed, it is
only in the following question of the Summa, on God’s simplicity (“De simplicitate

the American Catholic Philosophical Association 65 (1991) 107–21, at 110; and Stéphane-Marie
Barbellion, Les “preuves” de l’existence de Dieu. Pour une relecture des cinq voies de saint
Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Cerf, 1999) 279–80. See also the writings of Mauro Mantovani: “Ratio e
demonstratio: L’argomentazione dell’esistenza di Dio. I commenti universitari alle cinque vie del
maestro Juan de Guevara (OSA, 1518–1600),” in Momenti del logos. Ricerche del “Progetto LERS”
(logos, episteme, ratio, scientia) in memoria di Marilena Amerise e di Marco Arosio (ed. Flavia
Carderi, Mauro Mantovani, and Graziano Perillo; Rome: Nuova cultura, 2012) 351–383, esp. 353
and 381–82; An Deus sit (Summa Theologiæ I, q.2). Los commentarios de la “primera Escuela” de
Salamanca (Salamanca: Editorial San Esteban, 2007); and La discussione sull’esistenza di Dio nei
teologi domenicani a Salamanca dal 1561 al 1669. Studio sui testi di Sotomayor, Mancio, Medina,
Astorga, Báñez e Godoy (Rome: LAS, 2011).
32
Thomas de Vio Cajetanus, Commentaria in primam partem “Summæ theologiæ” (1507), q.
2, a. 3, n. 3, in Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia (Leonine edition; Rome: Typographia polyglotta,
1882 –) 4:32: “Circa has rationes in communi, advertendum est diligenter quod possunt afferri ad
duo. Primo, ad concludendum illud ens incorporeum, immateriale, æternum, summum, immutabile,
primum, perfectissimum, etc., quod et quale Deum tenemus esse. Et sic istæ rationes habent
plurimum disputationis: eo quod prima via . . . non ducit ad motorem magis immobilem quam sit
anima intellectiva; secunda . . . non ducit nisi ad corpus cæleste et ejus motorem; reliquarum quoque
nulla magis sursum ducere videtur. Et ad hoc intentum non afferuntur hoc in loco hæ rationes, ut
nunc nunc patebit. Alio modo afferri possunt ad concludendum quædam prædicata inveniri in rerum
natura, quæ secundum veritatem sunt propria Dei: non curando quomodo vel qualiter sint, etc. Et
ad hoc intentum hic afferuntur: et sunt nihil fere difficultatis habentes secundum philosophiam.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 245

Dei”),33 that Thomas aims to determine the nature of the first mover.34 Similarly,
Thomas’s “secunda via” is meant to prove the existence of a first efficient cause
without establishing whether this cause is corporeal or incorporeal (again, this
point will be decided in quæstio 3). In the same way, the aim of the “tertia via” is
to demonstrate the existence of a necessary uncaused being, and not to prove his
oneness, since such a conclusion will be reached only in quæstio 11.35 The same
goes for the final two of Thomas’s ways: the “quarta via” is intended to prove the
existence of a “maxime ens, verum, bonum, nobile”; finally, the “quinta via” aims
to demonstrate the existence of a first being governing the world by its intellect,
without establishing who this being is.36
Despite their conclusions, though, Thomas’s five ways are still valid, since the
properties that they demonstrate can belong only to God. The predicates of being a
first unmoved mover, first efficient cause, necessary uncaused being, maximal being,
and first governor of the world are “secundum veritatem” peculiar (“propria”)37 to
God. Accordingly, by demonstrating the existence of these properties, Thomas’s
five ways prove the existence of God too, insofar as he is the only being to whom
these properties can belong.
However, such a demonstration, as Cajetan himself acknowledges, is not a
per se demonstration. Indeed, what is directly (“directe”) established here is not
the existence of God as God (“Deus ut Deus”), but the existence of God insofar
as a certain property belongs to him (“Deus ut habens talem conditionem”). The
existence of God as God (“Deus ut Deus”) is demonstrated only in a second step
(“consequenter”): it is deduced from the former conclusion (“Deus existit ut

33
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, I, q. 3, in Opera omnia 4:35–49.
34
De Vio, Commentaria, 4:32: “Et ut melius intelligatur quod dicimus, singillatim explanando
dicitur quod primæ viæ ex parte motus, sat est quod inferatur, ergo datur primum movens immobile,
non curando utrum illud sit anima cæli aut mundi: hoc enim quæretur in sequenti quæstione.”
35
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, I, q. 3, in Opera omnia 4:107–13.
36
De Vio, Commentaria, 4:32: “Secundæ quoque viæ ex parte efficientis, sat est quod ducat ad
primum efficiens, non curando an illud sit corpus vel incorporeum: hoc enim quæretur in sequenti
quæstione. Tertiæ vero viæ ex parte necessarii, sat est quod ducat ad primum necessarium non
ex alio, non curando an sit unum vel plura: hoc enim quæretur in questione XI. Quartæ quoque
viæ, ex gradibus rerum, sat est ducere ad maxime ens, verum, bonum, nobile a quo sunt omnium
participationes. Et similiter quintæ viæ, ex gubernatione, sat est ducere ad primum gubernantem
per intellectum, quicumque sit ille.”
37
I think that Cajetan employs the term “proprium” here in the Aristotelian sense, as a predicate
that belongs to the subject alone and necessarily (Aristotle, Top. 102a20–25). See Twetten, “Clearing
a ‘Way’ for Aquinas,” 266: “A proof’s nominal definition, for Thomas, must be proper to God; that
is, it must belong to God and only to God—it must be convertible with ‘God.’ ”
246 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

habens talem conditionem”), by means of the intermediate premise that God is the
substratum of the properties (“conditiones”) belonging to him.38

 IV
Cajetan’s interpretation of Thomas’s five ways did not go unnoticed, especially
among Dominicans. In the middle of the seventeenth century, as I will explain
below, the discussion on his interpretation was still open.
A very important step in the history of Thomas’s five ways between the sixteenth
and the seventeenth centuries is marked in 1584 by Domingo Báñez’s (1527–1604)
discussion of Cajetan’s interpretation in his influential Scholastica commentaria.39
Báñez agrees with Cajetan’s claim that the five ways can be interpreted as reaching
two different conclusions. The first is the existence of an infinite, immaterial, etc.,
being called God. The second is the existence of some properties belonging in
some way “secundum veritatem” to God.40
However, this premise does not entail the consequence that Cajetan claims
follows from it. According to Báñez, it is just false that God’s existence can be
demonstrated only “per accidens,” and it is not true that what is proven is nothing
more than the existence of some properties belonging “secundum veritatem” to
God.41 To support this claim, Báñez provides two arguments. The first argument is
grounded on the premise that the predicate attributed to God in the five ways can
be considered in two different manners: 1) as belonging uniquely to God (“propria
Dei”); 2) as belonging to God in common with other beings (“communia”). In
the first case, Cajetan’s statement that Thomas’s proofs are not sufficient to prove
per se God’s existence is simply false. In the second case, Cajetan’s claim that
the five ways prove the existence of attributes belonging uniquely to God is false
38
De Vio, Commentaria, 4:32: “Omnia enim hæc prædicata, scilicet movens immobile, primum
efficiens, necessarium non ex alio, maxime ens, et primum gubernans intelligendo, sunt secundum
veritatem propria Deo: et ideo, concludendo hæc inveniri in rerum natura, concluditur directe,
quasi per accidens, quod Deus est, idest, Deus non ut Deus, sed ut habens talem conditionem, est;
et consequenter, ipsum substratum, scilicet Deus ut Deus, est.”
39
On the historical importance of Báñez’s Scholastica commentaria, see Juan Belda Plans, La
Escuela de Salamanca y la renovación de la teología en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Biblioteca de autores
cristianos, 2000) 918. On Báñez’s criticism of Cajetan, see Mortimer J. Adler, “The Demonstration
of God’s Existence,” The Thomist 5 (1943) 188–218, at 189–90; Twetten, “Clearing a ‘Way’ for
Aquinas,” 267–68 and 276; and Mantovani, La discussione sull’esistenza di Dio, 266–69. See also
John F. X. Knasas, “Ad Mentem Thomæ: Does Natural Philosophy Prove God?,” Proceedings of
the American Catholic Philosophical Association 61 (1987) 209–20.
40
Domingo Báñez, Scholastica commentaria in universam primam partem Angelici Doctoris D.
Thomæ, in duos tomos divisa (2 vols; Venice: Bertano, 1602) I, q. 2, a. 3, 1:137: “Tertio notandum
est, quod hæ rationes ad duo possunt afferri. Primo ad probandum esse in rerum natura ens quoddam
infinitum, immateriale, etc. quale dicimus esse Deum. Secundo, ad concludendum inveniri in natura
quædam prædicata, quæ secundum veritatem sunt propria Deo, non curando quomodo illi conveniant.”
41
Báñez, Scholastica commentaria, I, q. 2, a. 3, 1:137: “Cajetanus in hoc articulo dicit rationes
istas quasi per accidens concludere Deum esse, scilicet quod invenitur primus motor, quod est
prædicatum proprium Dei secundum veritatem. Hæc tamen sententia falsa est.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 247

too; indeed, if these attributes are common, they cannot be “propria” of God. As a
consequence, in spite of Cajetan’s claim, Thomas’s proofs would not even prove
God’s existence “per accidens.” For example, if we demonstrate (“prima via”) the
existence of an unmoved mover, we are not yet allowed to affirm that the existence
of God has been demonstrated, because the property of an unmoved mover is a
common one and does not belong uniquely to God.42
However, according to Báñez, there is no doubt that the predicates demonstrated
by the five ways belong uniquely to God. As a consequence, the five ways directly
(“directe”) prove the existence of God. And this is Báñez’s second argument against
Cajetan.43
Báñez acknowledges that the five ways do not prove the existence of God
immediately and explicitly (“immediate et explicite”); even less do they prove
that God is a supremely perfect being (this is a task performed in the following
questions of the Summa). However, inasmuch as they prove the existence of
properties belonging uniquely to God, they demonstrate virtually and implicitly
(“virtualiter et implicite”) the existence of God (for example, in the first way, the
property of an unmoved mover).44
To strengthen his conclusions, Báñez adds to these first two arguments a third
one, grounded on the authority of two other Dominican authors, John Capreolus
(1480–1544) and Sylvester of Ferrara (1474–1528) (Ferrariensis). According to
Báñez, Capreolus and Sylvester of Ferrara never claim that Thomas’s five ways
are insufficient to prove directly the existence of God: “This is the sentence of

42
Báñez, Scholastica commentaria, I, q. 2, a. 3, 1:137: “Et probatur primo. Nam vel prædicata,
quæ hic de Deo concluduntur, sunt propria Deo, vel communia sibi, et corpori cælesti, sive motori
ejus. Si primum, ergo male docet Cajetanus per has rationes non concludi motorem magis immobilem,
quam anima intellectiva vel forma cæli. Si secundum, ergo non concludunt aliqua prædicata, quæ
secundum veritatem sunt propria Deo: siquidem communia, non sunt propria. Nam si hoc commune
tantum concluditur sequitur, neque etiam per accidens, istas rationes probare, Deum esse. Nam illud
prædicatum motor immobilis, non curando an aliquo modo saltim per accidens sit mobilis, potest
competere alteri quam Deo, scilicet intelligentiæ motrici cœli, ergo etiam si probetur, hujusmodi
motorem esse, nihil proprium de Deo probatur.”
43
Báñez, Scholastica commentaria, I, q. 2, a. 3, 1:137: “Nam prædicata, quæ in cæteris rationibus
probantur de Deo, non possunt alteri ab ipso competere. v.g. esse primum efficiens, ens non ab alio,
ens omnium perfectissimum, ergo directe istis rationibus probatur, Deum esse.”
44
Báñez, Scholastica commentaria, 1:137: “Licet omnes illæ rationes simul sumptæ non probent
immediate et explicite, Deum esse, et multo minus, Deum esse illud ens perfectissimum, quo
perfectius quid excogitari nequit (hoc enim reservatur ad probandum in sequentibus quæstionibus)
nihilominus rationes illæ efficacissime probant, quod in rerum natura reperiuntur perfectiones quædam,
et proprietates, quæ alteri quam Deo nequeunt competere, et ex consequenti virtualiter, et implicite
probant, Deum esse. Nam prima ratio convincit reperiri in rerum natura primum movens immobile,
et sic aliæ probant efficaciter alias proprietates, quæ soli Deo convenire possunt.”
248 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Capreolus in I. d. 3. q. 1 and of Ferrariensis in I. con. gen. cap. 13.”45 This was

a strategic move. In appealing to Capreolus and Sylvester of Ferrara, Báñez did
not simply mean to set the authority of two theologians in opposition to Cajetan’s
interpretation. Báñez aimed to establish an out-and-out orthodoxy. His strategy
was not just to demonstrate that Cajetan’s interpretation was false, but that it was
unorthodox.
Nevertheless, Báñez’s attempt did not succeed. There will not be space to cover
the entire history of the crisis of the five ways in early modern Thomistic theology,
but I will adduce some evidence showing that, despite Báñez’s attempt to dismiss
it as unorthodox, Cajetan’s interpretation was widely diffused between the end of
the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth.46 Three or four relevant
examples will be sufficient to substantiate this point.
The 1584 Commentaria by the Spanish Mercedarian theologian Francisco Zumel
(ca. 1540–1607) clearly accepts Cajetan’s interpretation:
Cajetan observes in this article that the arguments advanced here to prove
that there is only one God . . . do not prove very much. On the contrary, they
run into a great difficulty. . . . These demonstrations do not prove explicitly
and formally that God is.47

Again, in 1592, the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina (1535–1600) writes in his
Commentaria:
Cajetan observes that these arguments are not advanced to prove the exis-
tence of God as an immaterial and immutable being, etc. They only aim to
prove the existence of some properties belonging to God, such as “unmoved
mover,” “first cause,” etc. Indeed, in what follows it will be shown that there
are other attributes of God and that there is only one God, and not many.48

45
Báñez, Scholastica commentaria, 1:137: “Ita sentiunt Capre. in I. d. 3. q. 1 Ferr. I. con. gen.
cap. 13. circa secundam rationem D. Thom.” See John Capreolus, Defensiones theologiæ divi Thomæ
Aquinatis (ed. Ceslai Paban and Thomas Pègues; 7 vols.; Tours: Cattier, 1900–1908) lib. 1, dist. 3, q.
1, 1:164–72; Francis Sylvester of Ferrara (Ferrariensis), Commentaria in “Summam contra Gentiles”
St Thomæ Aquinatis (1522), lib. 1, cap. 13, n. 22.3, in Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia, 13:39a.
46
For more details on the history of the crisis of the five ways, see Igor Agostini, “Suárez e
Descartes e il problema della dimostrazione dell’esistenza di Dio,” in Francisco Suárez and His
Legacy: The Impact of Suárezian Metaphysics and Epistemology on Modern Philosophy (ed.
Marco Sgarbi; Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2010) 169–204. See also O’Brien, Metaphysics and the
Existence of God, 38–44.
47
Francisco Zumel, In primam D. Thomæ partem commentaria (2 vols.; Venice: Prati, 1597) I,
q. 2, a. 3, 1:75b: “Caietanus in hoc articulo notat, quod rationes, quæ adducuntur ad probandum esse
unum Deum . . . non multum probant: imo habent ingentem difficultatem. . . . Istæ demonstrationes
non colligunt explicite et formaliter Deum esse.”
48
Luis de Molina, Commentaria in primam Divi Thomæ partem, in duos tomos divisa (2 vols.;
Venice: Societas minima, 1602–1604) I, q. 2, a. 3, 1:38b: “Notat Cajetanus, non afferri ad probandum,
Deum existere, quatenus ens quoddam a concretione materiæ, ac mutatione liberum est, etc. sed
solum ad probandum prædicata quædam, quæ Deo conveniunt, ut movens immotum, primam causam
etc. existere in rerum natura. In progressu namque ostenduntur alia ipsius Dei attributa, necnon
esse unum tantum, et non plures.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 249

But what is still more interesting is that, despite Báñez’s accusations about its
unorthodoxy, Cajetan’s interpretation was also accepted among the Dominicans.
A striking case is that of John Poinsot (1589–1644). In the first volume of his
monumental and influential Cursus theologicus, published in eight volumes since
1637, he claims:
Thomas chooses five main arguments in order to prove God’s existence in
article 3. By means of these arguments, as Cajetan claims (in commenting
on this article), what Thomas directly proves is the existence of five divine
conditions, or attributes, which can be found only in an uncreated being;
accordingly, once these conditions or attributes are proven, the existence of
an uncreated being is also proven.49

By the middle of the seventeenth century, therefore, the question concerning the
conclusions of the five ways was still entirely open and unresolved. It will be
worth quoting here the words of one of the most important Dominican theologians
of the seventeenth century, Xantes Mariales (ca. 1580–1660), the author of the
monumental Bibliotheca interpretum ad universam “Summam theologiæ”:
I find a great controversy [iurgium] among our theologians: do Thomas’s and
Aristotle’s arguments prove the existence of God directly and absolutely, or
only indirectly?50

Báñez’s attempt to reject Cajetan’s interpretation of Thomas’s proofs on the basis

of purported Thomistic orthodoxy had not been successful. However, it is true that,
especially at the beginning of this debate, Cajetan’s interpretation was very often
rejected, including from outside the Dominican Order. This is what happened in
1591 in the Commentaria of Gregory of Valencia.
Gregory begins his discussion by specifying a distinction between the validity
of Thomas’s arguments and the possibility of demonstrating the existence of God:

49
John of St. Thomas (John Poinsot), Cursus theologicus (vols. 1–3; Paris: Desclée et Socii,
1931–1937) q. 2, a. 1, 419a: “Quinque rationes principales elegit D. Th. in hoc. art. 3. ad probandum
Deum esse; ex quibus, ut advertit Cajetanus (in præsenti), directe probat quinque conditiones, seu
attributa divinitatis, quæ non possunt inveniri nisi in ente increato; et sic illis probatis, remanet
probatum dari aliquod ens increatum.” On the importance of Poinsot’s Cursus theologicus, see
Ramón Ceñal, “La filosofia española del siglo XVII,” Revista de la Universidad de Madrid 11 (1962)
373–410, esp. 382. See also Marco Forlivesi, “Le edizioni del Cursus theologicus di Johannes a S.
Thoma,” in Divus Thomas (Bon.) 93 (1994) 9-56.
50
Xantes Mariales, Bibliotheca interpretum ad universam “Summam theologiæ” Divi Thomæ
Aquinatis Ecclesiæ Doctoris (4 vols.; Venice: Combi and La Noú, 1660) controv. 14, c. 6, 1:28:
“Inter nostrates iurgium magnum invenio, utrum D. Thomæ Aristotelisque discursus, directe, absolute
probent Deum esse; an potius solum indirecte?”
250 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

It should be observed that, even if no one among such arguments could reach
its own conclusion, nevertheless what has been established before should be
considered as certain, i.e., that it is possible to demonstrate that God exists.
And when the existence of God is demonstrated by means of this or that
argument, it is not certain by faith.51

In this way, Gregory acknowledges that other arguments for God’s existence than
Thomas’s five ways could be given. In spite of this, however, Gregory claims that
in what follows he will support Thomas’s proofs: “Nevertheless, we will defend
too the arguments of S. Thomas.”52 Now, in his defense of Thomas’s proofs,
Gregory admits that the five ways do not prove, per se, that the unmoved mover
is a unique, immaterial, and infinite being. However, all that follows from this is
that Thomas’s arguments are insufficient to prove who God is, or what his nature
is. It does not follow that Thomas’s proofs do not demonstrate that God exists, at
least in the form of demonstration that is required to answer the question “an sit,”
which is the only pertinent one here.53
Gregory’s argument is grounded on the distinction, established by Thomas in
the Summa, between the “quid sit” and “an sit” questions. According to Thomas,
who follows Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics at this point, the knowledge of the
essence of a thing (“quid sit”) always follows the knowledge of its existence (“an
sit”), insofar as it is impossible to establish what a thing is without previously
knowing that it is.54
Now, Gregory capitalizes on this distinction to reject Cajetan’s interpretation of
the five ways. Insofar as the only pertinent question addressed by the five ways is
that of God’s existence (“an sit”), and not that of his essence (“quid sit”), Thomas’s
proofs are absolutely sufficient demonstrations. This is confirmed by the fact that
answering the “an sit” question requires nothing more than proving the truths of
the concepts that we form, in an imperfect and confused way, when we hear the
name of a thing (that is, it requires nothing more than proving that these concepts
51
Gregory of Valencia, Commentariorum theologicorum tomi quatuor. In quibus omnes materiæ,
quæ continentur in “Summa theologica” D. Thomæ Aquinatis, ordine explicantur (4 vols.; Venice:
Ciotti, 1592) pa. 1, q. 2, punct. 3, 1:83: “Est autem observandum, quod quamvis nulla hujusmodi
rationum concluderet, tamen pro certo nihilominus habendum esset id quod diximus punto precedente,
nempe demonstrari posse quid sit Deus. Neque certum est ex fide, quod per hanc vel illam rationem
demonstretur.”
52
Gregory of Valencia, Commentariorum theologicorum tomi quatuor, 1:83: “Sed tamen
defendemus etiam has divi Thomæ rationes.”
53
Gregory of Valencia, Commentariorum theologicorum tomi quatuor, 1:84: “Concedo, nullam
harum rationum, aut omnes simul provare per se, quod primum illud movens, sit etiam unum numero,
infinito, immateriale, etc. Cæterum ex hoc non sequitur aliud, quam non probari his rationibus quis
sit Deus, seu qualis sit natura Dei, prout nostro modo imperfecte potest etiam a nobis cognosci, ut
in sequentibus quæstionibus videbimus. Minime autem inde sequitur, non probari his rationibus
Deum esse, eo modo probationis, qui sufficiat ad satisfaciendum quæstioni, an est, de qua tantum
iam agimus.”
54
Thomas Aquinas, I, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2um, in Opera omnia 4:30b: “Quæstio quid est, sequitur ad
quæstionem an est.” See Aristotle, An. post. 1.1.74 a; 2.8.93a.
 IGOR AGOSTINI 251

are not fictitious ones, but correspond to reality). On the contrary, it is a completely
different matter to form a distinct concept of God; it is a task belonging to the “an
sit” question. Otherwise, there would be no difference between the “an sit” and
the “quid sit” questions.55
Therefore, according to Gregory, Cajetan does not distinguish carefully enough
(“non satis distinxisse”) between the “an sit” and the “quid sit” questions.56

V
In light of the analysis of Gregory’s position that I have sketched here, it is clear
that, far from criticizing Thomas’s five ways, Gregory defends them against
Cajetan’s interpretation. Accordingly, in presenting Gregory as a critic of the five
ways, Descartes committed a clear mistake.
This mistake was immediately challenged by Descartes’s contemporaries. In
his Methodi cartesianæ consideratio theologica, published in Leiden in 1648,
the Calvinist theologian Jakob Revius (along with Voetius, the most important
theological critic of Cartesianism during Descartes’s time in the Netherlands),
writes:
If Gregory were still alive, the praises that Descartes, as a flatterer, attributes
to him could not prevent him from rejecting such an atrocious insult. Gregory
is so far from refuting Thomas’s arguments of God’s existence that, on the
contrary, he defends all of them against the quibbles of their adversaries.57

One can hardly blame Revius for this remark.58 Nevertheless, ignoring the obvious
mistake it contains, the passage of the Epistola ad Voetium criticized by Revius

55
Gregory of Valencia, Commentariorum theologicorum tomi quatuor, 1:84: “Et ratio est,
nam huic questioni an est, satisfiat per se, satis est probari veritatem illorum conceptuum, quos
imperfecte et confuse solemus in mente formare, cum rei nomen audimus; ita scilicet ut constet ex
probatione, eos conceptus non esse commentitios, sed aliquod ens omnino esse in rerum natura,
quod illis respondeat. Probare vero conceptus alios magis distinctos, quibus ulterius cognoscimus,
nam cujusmodi sit ea res, pertinet ad quæstionem quid sit, non autem ad quæstionem an est. Alias
istæ duæ quæstiones minime distinguerentur.”
56
Gregory of Valencia, Commentariorum theologicorum tomi quatuor, 1:85: “Quocirca, cum
Caietanus hic negat, probari per se his rationibus divi Thomæ Deum esse . . . et concedit tantum, id
probari per accidens . . . non satis distinxisse videtur inter quæstionem an est, et quid est.”
57
Jakob Revius, Methodi cartesianæ consideratio theologica (Leiden: De Vogel, 1648) 84:
“Si viveret Valentia, laudes quas ei assentator Cartesius adscribit, non impedirent, quo minus tam
atrocem iniuriam ad animum revocarer. Tantum enim abest omnia Thomæ argumenta pro existentia
Dei refutet, ut contra ea omnia contra adversariorum cavillationes defendeat” (also in Jakob Revius,
A Theological Examination of Cartesian Philosophy: Early Criticisms (1647) [ed. Aza Goudriaan;
Leiden: Brill, 2002] 160).
58
Although contemporaneous scholars also shared Revius’s criticism (see, e.g., Aza Goudriaan’s
remarks in Theological Examination, by Revius, 4, 54), André Robinet has tried to clear Descartes
of this accusation (Descartes. La lumière naturelle. Intuition, disposition, complexion [Paris: Vrin,
1999] 195–97). Robinet’s point is that Descartes’s reference to Gregory is correct because Gregory
would accept, as Descartes does, the antithomistic thesis that the “quid sit” question precedes the
252 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

seems to me particularly important as documentation of Descartes’s judgment

concerning Thomas’s five ways, especially since Descartes presents this judgment
here as neither a personal evaluation nor as the result of a comparison with the
alternative model of demonstrating God’s existence proposed in the Meditationes.
In this respect, Descartes’s attitude towards Thomas’s proofs in the Epistola ad
Voetium seems to me quite different from the one in the Third Meditation, where,
speaking about his first proof of God’s existence, Descartes writes: “Despite a most
careful and comprehensive survey, this is the only argument I have so far been able
to find.”59 Descartes claims here that he has examined every proof of the existence
of something distinct from himself very carefully, and that, so far, he has not been
able to find any argument other than the one he proposes in the Third Meditation.
Now, this is not the point Descartes makes in the Epistola ad Voetium. Here,
Descartes aims to ground his judgment about the traditional arguments (and,
precisely, about Thomas’s proofs) on authorial and historical bases, and this is
the reason he appeals to the criticism addressed to the five ways by “graves et pii
theologi.” In other words, what I think Descartes is trying to do in this passage
of the Epistola ad Voetium is to point out that the crisis of the Thomistic model
originates within Scholastic theology itself.
And in this sense, despite Descartes’s probably mistaken attribution to Gregory
of Valencia of a thesis that he never held, his diagnosis was fundamentally correct.
In the seventeenth century, the validity of the five ways had became disputable
within Thomism itself, at least since the most influential commentator of Thomas’s
Summa theologiæ, Cajetan, argued, as we have seen, that the five ways do not
demonstrate per se the existence of God.
However, in stressing the importance of the Epistola ad Voetium as a historical
document testifying to Descartes’s awareness of the crisis of Thomas’s five ways, I
do not want to connect Descartes to Cajetan directly—first, since, as we have seen,
Descartes never explicitly cites Cajetan, and, second, because it is not necessary
to go so far in the Scholastic debate as to look to its origins. Indeed, the thesis that
Thomas’s proofs do not directly demonstrate the existence of God was disseminated
in the very same Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne to which, as we have seen,
Descartes addressed the Epistola dedicatoria of his Meditationes. In 1627, the
Sorbonne Professor of Scholastic Theology Philippe de Gamaches (1568–1625)
claimed in his Summa theologica that, although the unicity of God can be inferred

“an sit.” Such an interpretation does not seem correct to me, for two reasons: first, Gregory does
not hold the thesis attributed to him by Robinet; second, even supposing that Gregory does indeed
have this thesis, he nevertheless defends Aquinas’s five ways.
59
As translated in CSM 2:29; Descartes, Meditationes, III; B Op 1:736 / AT 7:427–28: “Omnia
enim diligentissime circumspexi, et nullum aliud potui hactenus reperire.” See also Descartes’s
Conversation with Burman (transl. with intr. and comment. by John Cottingham; Oxford: Clarendon,
1976) 12: “After a most careful survey of all the effects, he found none which would serve to prove
God’s existence except from the idea of God”; B OP 2: 1258 / AT 5:153: ‘Omnia effecta diligentissime
circumspexit et nullum reperit quod Deum inferat praeter ejus ideam.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 253

from the conclusions of the a posteriori proofs, it will in fact be proven only in a
second step, i.e., in question 10:
We will answer that the question of the singularity or of the numerical unity
of that principle is not yet posed. We will deal with this in question 10. Nor
do we inquire now whether that principle is spiritual and incorporeal, or
whether it is eternal and immutable, etc. Indeed, although in light of what
we stated before about the truth of such claims, it is evident, these questions
nevertheless need to be developed later, in their own place. Now, we only
prove that this supreme and independent principle really exists in act, and
that its existence is manifest to the natural light.60

It might be useful (to restrict the inquiry to an author we can be sure Descartes
read) to remember that the question of the necessity of demonstrating the unicity
of the first cause in order to prove God’s existence was a subject of lengthy
discussion by Francisco Suárez. In his Disputationes metaphysicæ (1597), Suárez
claims that proving that God exists is not sufficient to demonstrate the existence
of a necessary and independent being. Indeed, what is still required is proof that
this being is unique:
And therefore in order to demonstrate that God exists it is not enough to
show that there is in reality some being which is necessary and from itself,
unless it is also proven that that [being] is unique and that it is the source of
all being, on whom all things that participate in that being in any way depend
and which [all things] receive. But when this has been demonstrated it is
sufficiently shown that God exists. For the rest of his attributes which have
a necessary connection with a being of this kind have to be demonstrated
afterwards.61

In response to this problem, Suárez states that, in God, the “quid sit” and “an sit”
questions cannot be separated:

60
Philippe de Gamaches, Summa theologica. Cum indice triplici quæstionum et capitum, rerum
ac verborum, et locorum concionibus utilium (Paris: Sonnius, 1634) q. 2, cap. 2, 38b: “Respondemus
non esse nunc quæstionem de singularitate, aut unitate numerica illius principiii, de ea enim inferius
quæst. X. sicut nec quærimus nunc, an sit spirituale et incorporeum, an ternum et immutabile, etc.
Quamvis enim veritas ex prædictis facile appareat, tamen istæ quæstiones sunt postea suis locis
seorsim pertractandæ, nunc autem solum probamus tale principium supremum, et independens vere
esse actu, eiusque existentia esse naturali lumine manifesta.”
61
Francisco Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicæ, disp. 29, sect. 2, n. 5, in Opera omnia (28
vols.; Paris: Ludovicus Vivès, 1856–1878) 26:35b–36a: “Et ideo ad demonstrandum Deum esse non
satis est ostendere dari in rerum natura ens quoddam necessarium et a se, nisi etiam probetur illud
esse unicum et tale ut sit fons totius esse, a quo pendent et illud recipiunt omnia quæ ipsum esse
quoquo modo participant. Hoc autem demonstrato, sufficienter ostenditur Deum esse; nam reliqua
ejus attributa quæ cum hujusmodi ente necessariam connexionem habent, postea demonstranda
sunt”; for English translation I have relied on The Metaphysical Demonstration of the Existence
of God: Metaphysical Disputations 28–29 (ed. and trans. John P. Doyle; South Bend, Ind.: St.
Augustine’s Press, 2004) 85.
254 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

We can only demonstrate that God exists by in some way demonstrating what
he is, as will become clear from what will be said.62
In the case of God these questions cannot be entirely separated, for the reason
that the existence of God is [the same as] the essence of God and the proper-
ties of that existence, by means of which it can be shown that that existence
is proper to God, constitute (so to speak) the quiddity and the essence itself
of God.63

In claiming the inseparability of the “quid sit” and “an sit” questions, Suárez
overturns the traditional thesis of the priority of the “an sit” question defended by
Gregory against Cajetan. In addition, as some scholars have already suggested,64
Suárez’s solution would later be adopted by Descartes in his response to the first
objector to his Meditationes, Johannes Caterus, to whom he explains that the
difference between his second proof of God’s existence (which starts from the ego
as containing the idea of God) and Thomas’s second way:
This idea contains the essence of God, at least in so far as I am capable of
understanding it; and according to the laws of true logic, we must never ask
about the existence of anything until we first understand its essence.65

Suárez’s claim of the inseparability of the “quid sit” and the “an sit” questions gets
stretched by Descartes here to such an extent that he makes the “quid sit” question
come before the “an sit.” Moreover, in contrast to Suárez, Descartes thinks that the
priority of the “quid sit” question is not only valid in the case of God, but expresses
a universal law of true logic (“vera logica”). On the main point, however, Descartes
agrees with Suárez: the knowledge of the “quid sit” is a necessary condition for
identifying the being reached by the a posteriori proofs with God. Descartes claims
that, unlike Thomas’s second way, his proof does not only demonstrate the existence
of a cause, but also demonstrates that this cause contains every perfection and, as
a consequence, is God:
It is this same idea which shows me not just that I have a cause, but that this
cause contains every perfection, and hence that it is God.66

62
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicæ, disp. 29, sect. 1, n. 41, 26:33b: “Nos non possumus
demonstrare Deum esse nisi demonstrando aliquo modo quid sit, ut ex dicendis clarius patebit”
(Metaphysical Demonstration, 80).
63
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicæ, disp. 29, sect. 3, n. 2, 26:47b–48a: “In Deo non possunt
omnino seiungi hæ quæstiones eo quod et esse Dei sit quidditas Dei et proprietates illius esse,
quibus ostendi potest illud esse proprium Dei, constituunt (ut ita loquamur) ipsam quidditatem et
essentiam Dei” (Metaphysical Demonstration, 114–15).
64
On this topic, see Scribano, L’existence de Dieu, 99–106.
65
As translated in CSM 2:78; B Op 1:822 / AT 7:107, 25–108, 1: “In illa idea continetur quid
sit Deus, saltem quantum a me potest intelligi; et, iuxta leges veræ Logicæ, de nulla unquam re
quæri debet an sit, nisi prius quid sit intelligatur.”
66
As translated in CSM 2:78; B Op 1:822 / AT 7:108, 3–6: “Illa est quæ docet non modo aliquam
esse mei causam, sed præterea etiam in causa illa contineri omnes perfectiones, ac proinde illam
Deum esse.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 255

In reversing the traditional thesis of the priority of the “an sit” question, however,
both Suárez and Descartes merely take the final step in a process that began much
earlier. The role played here by Henry of Ghent (1217? –1293) and John Duns
Scotus (1266–1308) is a decisive one.67 According to both of them, God’s existence
is reached only through our knowledge of God’s essence or quiddity. Otherwise,
the proof of God’s existence will not reach God as he is in himself. Accordingly,
the question of whether God exists is answered only through the question of what
God is, and God’s existence is deduced from God’s nature.
It is certain that Descartes did not ignore the existence of theologians claiming
that the “quid est” question precedes the “an sit” question in God. This is what he
states explicitly in the letter to Mersenne of December 31, 1640, although with the
precise sources undisclosed:
In the place where I put “in accordance with the laws of my logic”, please
put “in accordance with the laws of the true logic”; it is near the middle of
my Replies to Caterus, where he objects that I have borrowed my argument
from St Thomas. The reason why I add “my” or “the true” to “logic” is that
I have read theologians who follow the ordinary logic and inquire what God
is before inquiring whether God exists.68

However, if I insist on the importance of Cajetan in the whole story, it is because

his own interpretation of Thomas furnishes, in my opinion, the perfect evidence
for the crisis of the model of the five ways insofar as it shows that this crisis was
not merely the result of some external attack, but that it penetrated into the stricter
orthodoxy of Thomism itself.

 VI
The last point that I would like to stress is that the connection that I propose here
between Descartes’s proofs of God’s existence, on the one hand, and the debate
between Cajetan and Gregory, on the other, is not just the result of retrospective
interpretation. A reading relating Descartes’s proofs of the existence of God to the
positions of Gregory and Cajetan had already been proposed in the work of some
of Descartes’s contemporaries, who discuss Descartes’s reference to Gregory in
the Epistola ad Voetium at length. This is what happens in the discussion of the
Cartesian proofs of God’s existence that is at the center of the long debate between

67
See Henry of Ghent, Summa quæstionum ordinarium theologiæ (Paris: Ascensius, 1520) 22.5,
134C; John Duns Scotus, Opera omnia (ed. Charles Balić et al.; Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis
Vaticanis, 1950) 1.3.1, 3:6.
68
As translated in CSM 3:165; To Mersenne, December 31, 1640; B Op 1:1356 / AT 3:272,
25–273, 3: “Je vous prie, à l’endroit où j’ai mis juxta leges Logicæ meæ, de mettre au lieu juxta
leges veræ Logicæ; c’est environ le milieu de mes réponses ad Caterum, où il m’objecte que j’ai
emprunté mon argument de S. Thomas. Et ce qui me fait ajouter meæ ou veræ au mot Logicæ, est
que j’ai lu des Théologiens qui, suivant la logique ordinaire, quærunt prius de Deo quid sit, quam
quæsiverint an sit.” On this point, see Sergio Landucci, I filosofi e Dio (Rome: Laterza, 2005) 143.
256 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Jakob Revius and Tobias Andreæ, an eminent follower of Descartes, who introduced
his philosophy to the University of Groningen.
This controversy, which began with the publication of Revius’s Consideratio
theologica in 1648, marks one of the most radical moments of the crisis of the
Cartesian method in the Netherlands.69 However, in spite of both the importance
of this debate and the considerable quantity of words that the critical literature has
devoted to Revius, especially in more recent times,70 the debate with Tobias has
never been analyzed in terms of its theological aspects, which are nevertheless
crucial.
Revius’s criticism of Descartes began in 1643, in his Suarez repurgatus,71 and it
continued through a group of disputations held in 1647 at the University of Leiden
between February 4 and March 2, which were later republished in the Consideratio
theologica.72 The theological analysis of Cartesian philosophy, which undergirds
many of the criticisms raised by Revius against Descartes in his writings, would
become crucial in the Consideratio theologica. In fact, what constitutes the most
peculiar aspect of Revius’s pamphlet is the theological perspective from which its
attacks against Cartesian philosophy are directed: although (with the exception
of its last part) it is a commentary on the autobiographical account of Descartes’s
Discours de la méthode, the Consideratio theologica aims to analyze this account
in light of the very objective that, according to Revius, Descartes had proposed in
his work since 1637—that is, demonstrating the existence of God.73
Now, in Revius’s attack against Descartes’s proofs of God’s existence the
charge of having dismissed Thomas’s five ways is central: “Descartes rejects all
of Thomas’s arguments for the existence of God.”74 Revius develops in his attack
the arguments brought against Descartes in the Admiranda methodus, in which
Descartes was accused of having rejected the traditional arguments for the existence
of God. According to Revius, the arguments rejected by Descartes are Thomas’s
proofs. The charge of the Admiranda methodus becomes more detailed here, insofar
as Revius presents Descartes as an adversary of Thomas.
What allows Revius to see Descartes’s project as directly opposed to Thomas’s is
Descartes’s statement in the Epistola ad Voetium where he claims, as we saw above,
that his proofs of God’s existence have never been criticized as much as Thomas’s

69
See Massimiliano Savini, Johannes Clauberg. “Methodus cartesiana” et ontologie (Bibliothèque
d’histoire de la philosophie; Paris: Vrin, 2011) 102–9; 139–60.
70
See esp. Aza Goudriaan, introduction to Theological Examination, by Revius, 1–61.
71
Jakob Revius, Suarez repurgatus, sive syllabus “Disputationum metaphysicarum” Francisci
Suarez . . . (Leiden: Heger, 1643) 207–9; 504–7; 518–19; 872. See the texts in Revius, Theological
Examination, 181–90.
72
The texts are now available in Revius, Theological Examination, 63–108.
73
Savini, Johannes Clauberg, 105.
74
Revius, Methodi cartesianæ consideratio theologica, 84; also in Revius, Theological Examination,
160: “Argumenta Thomæ pro existentia Dei . . . omnia rejicit Cartesius.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 257

(“mea argument nunquam fuerunt ita refutata”).75 But what is worse, according
to Revius, is that Descartes does not limit himself to declaring the superiority of
his arguments. Descartes also claims to support his statement with the authority
of Gregory of Valencia:
And, to avoid giving the impression of being the only madman, he associates
himself with the Jesuit Gregory of Valencia.76

It is in this context that Revius makes the accusation quoted above: Descartes, as
a flatterer, attributes to Gregory a position that Gregory actually never held. The
answer to this accusation constitutes one of the main themes of the reply to Revius
made by Andreæ in his Methodi cartesianæ assertio, published in Groningen in
two volumes in 1653.
Here, Andreæ replies that if Revius had written that Gregory tried to defend
Thomas’s argument, he would not have found fault with him, and Descartes would
not have either. However, Gregory’s purposes are not what is in question here. The
question is not whether Gregory tried to defend (“conatur defendere”) Thomas’s
arguments, but whether he did in fact defend (“defendat”) them successfully. And
the answer to that question is simple: it is false that Gregory succeeded in defending
Thomas’s proofs.77 According to Andreæ, Descartes claims that Gregory showed
that Thomas’s arguments are false just because, even when trying to defend them,
he could not defend them successfully. In other words, it is the ineffectiveness of
Gregory’s defense of Thomas’s arguments that shows that they are false.
Andreæ’s exegesis of Gregory clearly distorts the true sense of Descartes’s and
Gregory’s texts. However, Andreæ uses another argument, grounded on Gregory’s
claim that, even if Thomas’s arguments were not sufficient to prove God’s existence,
it would not follow that demonstrating God’s existence is impossible. According to
Andreæ, Gregory here in some way acknowledges that Thomas’s arguments are not
demonstrative proofs. It is true that, some lines below, Gregory also claims to defend
Thomas’s proofs (“Sed tamen defendemus etiam has divi Thomæ rationes”), but
this does not mean that Gregory was persuaded by Thomas’s arguments. Indeed, the
claim testifies to nothing but the necessity of complying with Thomas’s authority.78

75
Epistola ad Voetium; B Op 1:1670–72 / AT 8.2:176, 16.
76
Revius, Methodi cartesianæ consideratio theologica, 84; also in Revius, Theological Examination,
160: “Neve solus insanire videatur, Gregorium de Valencia Iesuitam sibi socium assciscit.”
77
Tobias Andreæ, Methodi cartesianæ assertio, opposita Jacobii Revii . . . “Considerationi
theologicæ” quam vocat (2 vols.; Groningen: Collën, 1653–1654) 2:297: “Si diceret quod conetur
defendere, nil haberem quod ipsum arguerem, sed nec ille eopse coargueret Cartesium, qui id non
negavit, nec de eo quod conatus sit, voluerit, sibi propositum esse professus sit, sed de eo quod
egerit, locutus est. At quod defendat falsum est. Quia, quæ profert quibus ea invalida ostendat, etsi
conetur solvere, non tamen solide solvit, et sic quod Cartesius dixit revera ea reputat et invalida
esse ostendit.”
78
Andreæ, Methodi cartesianæ assertio, 2:300: “Sed tamen defendemus etiam has divi Thomæ
rationes, nempe quia est Doctor Angelicus, cui sacramentum dixerat, et militare decreverat.”
258 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Even here, Tobias distorts Gregory’s text. Nevertheless, Andreæ does not try to
defend Descartes purely by means of this exegesis of Gregory’s text. Andreæ makes
use of a more complex strategy here, where the real issue at stake is the defense
not of Descartes himself against the accusation of behaving as a flatterer, but of
the value of his proofs of the existence of God. It is for this reason that Andreæ
introduces another argument, which aims to show the superiority of Descartes’s
treatment of the question of God’s existence over Gregory’s. Andreæ focuses on the
distinction between the “an sit” and “quid sit” questions stressed by Gregory and
Revius. Andreæ claims to follow Descartes against Gregory here79 and concludes
that answering the “quid sit” question is a necessary and previous condition for
answering the “an sit” question:
Indeed, in contrast to the common and wrong opinion, it is impossible to
answer the “an est” question before answering to the “quid est” question, or
independently from it, insofar as it contains the demonstration of that quiddi-
ty whose existence has to be inferred. And if someone answers the “an est”
question without establishing what [QUID] the thing that needs to be proven
as existing is, he does not truly conclude that this thing is, or exists, because
concluding that it exists without knowing the “Quid” or the “de quo” of his
conclusion is nonsense.80

The comparison between Descartes and Gregory is essential here in order to

reach the following twofold conclusion. On the one side, Andreæ can now state
that, on the basis of the distinction established by Gregory and Revius, it is not
possible at all to demonstrate the existence of God. On the other side, Andreæ claims
that insofar as Descartes’s arguments start from knowledge of the essence of God,
they can prove the existence of a being that contains all the perfections, and that,
therefore, they successfully prove the existence of God, because the being whose
existence is demonstrated cannot lack any perfection contained in his essence.81
Andreæ develops his comparison further by connecting Descartes with Cajetan.
According to Andreæ, the criticism leveled by Gregory against Cajetan—that he
79
Andreæ, Methodi cartesianæ assertio, 2:299: “Id vero Cartesius negat, et nos cum eo, et
MAXIME id inde sequi asseveramus.”
80
Andreæ, Methodi cartesianæ assertio, 2:299: “Nec enim, ut perperam vulgo, quæstio An est,
potest demonstrari aut determinari ante quæstionem Quid est, aut sejunctim ab ea, sive involvente
demonstratione quidditatem, cujus existentiam debet inferre; nec concludens An est, non includens
id QUID, quod esse demonstrandum est, vere concludit id esse vel existere, cum sit absurdum velle
probare, existere, nescientem Quid aut de quo concludat.”
81
Andreæ, Methodi cartesianæ assertio, 2:300: “Et ita argumenta Cartesii concludunt de ipso
Deo, de ente omnimodis perfecto, qualem homo natura concipere, et studio et revelatione accedente
perfectius cognoscere potest: ut de ejus demonstrationibus dici nequeat, quod Valentia de argumentis
Thomæ, neque singulis neque omnibus rationibus probari quasdam perfectiones sine quibus non
est Deus, adeoque neque singulis neque omnibus probari Deum esse. Qui enim probat de ente
omnimodis perfecto, vel omnes perfectiones habente, id existere, non omittit quasdam perfectiones,
sine quibus non est Deus, proindeque nec deficit in probando, Deum esse; sed probat ipsum Deum
esse, præter quem non queat esse tale ens, nec etiam cogitari possit ulla perfectio ulterior, quæ
inesse debeat enti, cujus existentia demonstratur, ut id Deus esse agnoscatur, cui ei tributæ omnes.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 259

does not distinguish between the “an sit” and “quid sit” questions (which is the same
criticism Revius levels against Descartes in his Consideratio theologica)—should
be addressed against Gregory and Revius themselves:
Therefore, I say of [Gregory of] Valencia and, even more truly, of Revius, the
same thing that Valencia objects to in Cajetan (i.e., that he did not sufficiently
distinguish between the “an est” and “quid est” questions), and the same thing
that Revius the fool says of Descartes: they were not able to distinguish those
questions or, at least, they did not know the right way to deal with them.82

In claiming that Gregory and Revius do not distinguish correctly between the
two questions, what Andreæ means is that to pose the “quid sit” question after the
“an sit” question is to confuse the distinction between the two, insofar as knowledge
of the essence of a thing is required before demonstrating its existence.
However, more than on the argument in itself, I would like to insist on
the connection that Andreæ establishes between Descartes and the Scholastic
background here: his entire defense of the Cartesian proofs of the existence of God
is conducted through the constant evocation of the comparison between Descartes
and Gregory. Moreover, with Andreæ, this comparison becomes integrated with the
crucial reference to Cajetan. In the picture sketched by Andreæ we have Descartes
and Cajetan on one side, both claiming that the “quid sit” question cannot be
answered before the “an sit” question, and, on the other, Gregory and Revius,
who both claim that the “quid sit” question comes after the “an sit” question. In
the whole discussion between Andreæ and Revius, this is the moment where the
connection between Descartes and the Scholastics, on the question of the existence
of God, becomes more complex.
The comparison between Descartes and the Scholastic debate on the five ways
is also at the center of Revius’s reply to the Methodi cartesianæ assertio. This
constitutes the last chapter of this long controversy. Revius’s reply came in the
form of the impressive, although little-known, pamphlet published in Leiden in
1654 under the title of Kartesiomania, hoc est, furiosum nugamentum, quod Tobias
Andreæ, sub titulo “Assertionis methodi cartesianæ,” orbi literato obstrusit,
succincte ac solide confutatum.
Revius’s Kartesiomania discusses at length the comparison among Descartes,
Gregory, and Cajetan proposed in Andreæ’s Methodi cartesianæ assertio, although
Revius challenges Andreæ’s presentation of the comparison and, especially, his
exegesis of Gregory:

82
Andreæ, Methodi cartesianæ assertio, 2:301: “Quare, quod Valentia Cajetano reponit, Non
satis distinxisse videri inter quæstionem AN EST et QUID EST, quod Revius ineptiens, idem de
Cartesio dicit, ego de ipso Valentia, ipsoque Revio verius, nescisse distinguere illas quæstiones,
aut saltem recte eas tractandi modum ignorasse.”
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Gregory rejects Thomas’s arguments . . . because he defends them unsuccess-

fully. This is the same as rejecting them. Whoever heard of such conjuring
tricks?83

According to Revius, the interpretation of Gregory proposed by Andreæ is

completely wrong. How is it possible to assume that defending unsuccessfully (“non
recte defendere”) is the same as rejecting (“confutare”)? It is also unacceptable to
attribute to Gregory, as Andreæ does, the idea that Thomas’s arguments would not be
demonstrative proofs. Gregory writes “quamvis nulla harum rationum concluderet,”
and not “quamvis nulla harum rationum concludat.” Therefore, according to Revius,
Andreæ confuses a hypothetical proposition with an assertoric one.84
In this way, Andreæ comes to make a mistake even bigger than Descartes’s.
While Descartes errs through ignorance (“inscitia”), insofar as he mentions an
author he does not know, Andreæ opposes Gregory to Descartes, making Gregory
an adversary of Descartes:
Here Descartes is certainly overly ignorant, insofar he appeals to the authority
of a writer whom he did not read. But the author of the Assertio prefers to
oppose Gregory to Descartes. Descartes places himself under the protection
of Gregory and, in order to be trusted, calls him “theologum solidissimum et
celeberrimum.” In contrast, he [Andreæ] presents Gregory as an adversary of
Descartes, aiming to persuade that he is an incompetent disputer.85

It is interesting to observe that the strategy followed by Revius consists in

contrasting Descartes’s exegesis of Gregory to Andreæ’s. By interpreting Gregory
in the way he does, Andreæ, according to Revius, far from following Descartes’s
exegesis, presents a completely different reading of the same text by Gregory. In
this way, in order to reject the theses defended in the Methodi cartesianæ assertio,
Revius dissociates Andreæ’s position from Descartes’s, although he continues to
criticize both.
Revius understands perfectly well not only the aim of Andreæ’s strategy, but
also his grounds: in order to claim the superiority of the Cartesian arguments over
Thomas’s, Andreæ needs to oppose Descartes’s position to Gregory’s. If read in
this light, the arguments put forward by Revius and Andreæ, although conflicting,
reveal an interesting convergence: both Andreæ and Revius, in fact, develop their

83
Jakob Revius, Kartesiomania, hoc est, furiosum nugamentum, quod Tobias Andreæ, sub titulo
“Assertionis methodi cartesianæ,” orbi literato obstrusit, succincte ac solide confutatum (2 vols.;
Leiden: Lopez de Haro, 1654) 2:203: “Quis similes præstigias unquam audivit? Refutat Valentia
argumenta Thomæ . . . quia illa non recte defendit, id autem re ipsa refutare est.”
84
Revius, Kartesiomania, 2:205–6: “Hactenus nihil audio moliri Gregorium adversus Thomam,
sed potius pro eo. Nam illud, quamvis nulla harum rationum concluderet etc. hypotheticum est,
alioqui dixisset, quamvis nulla concludat.”
85
Revius, Kartesiomania, 2:205: “Sed Cartesius hic inscitia haud dubie peccavit, dum auctorem
non inspectum in subsidium vocat. Assertor vero mavult eum Cartesio opponere, et quem ille pro se
citat, atque ut ei fidem conciliet, theologum solidissimum et celeberrimum vocat, eum hic ut Cartesii
adversarium introducit, et ineptissimum disputatorem esse persuasum vult.”
 IGOR AGOSTINI 261

argumentation along a common perspective, connecting Descartes’s new proofs

of the existence of God, along with his judgment on Thomas’s five ways, with the
interpretations given by Cajetan and Gregory of Valencia.
Andreæ defends Descartes’s interpretation of Gregory and assimilates
Descartes’s position to Cajetan’s. In contrast, Revius challenges both Descartes’s
and Andreæ’s interpretations of Gregory. But, in spite of this difference, both
Andreæ and Revius relate Descartes to Cajetan and Gregory and situate Descartes’s
metaphysical project in the context of the crisis of the five ways in early modern
Thomistic theology.
This convergence should be carefully considered. In contrast to the majority of
more recent scholarship, which focuses overwhelmingly on Descartes’s relationship
with Suárez, seventeenth-century authors like Andreæ and Revius, following
Descartes’s reference to Gregory of Valencia in the Epistola ad Voetium, directly
related Descartes’s attempts to provide new proofs of the existence of God to
the historical moment that, long before Suárez, had marked the internal crisis of
Thomas’s five ways. In other words, both Andreæ and Revius, in spite of their
contrast, link Descartes’s search for new proofs to Cajetan’s interpretation of the
five ways, and the debate it originated.
In this sense, Descartes’s contemporaries allow us to look at his metaphysical
project from a more complete historical perspective than is granted by the Cartesian
scholarship of recent times.

 VII
After an introduction (I) where I sketched the object and the aim of the present
article, I addressed the question of the alleged atheism of Cartesian philosophy,
the long story of which is grounded, in the seventeenth century, in the accusation
raised against Descartes by Voetius and Schook in the Admiranda methodus (II).
Then, I outlined Descartes’s response to this accusation in the Epistola ad Voetium,
focusing in particular on Descartes’s claim that, were Voetius’s arguments to be
taken seriously, Thomas himself should have been charged with atheism, since his
five ways had been more widely criticized than the proofs from the Meditationes.
Here, I focused on the passage of the Epistola ad Voetium where Descartes names
Gregory of Valencia among the theologians who criticized Thomas’s five ways.
In order to reconstruct the context of Descartes’s claim, I analyzed the positions
of some of the major contributors to the seventeenth-century Scholastic debate
about the conclusions of the five ways. My analysis shows that, far from criticizing
Thomas’s five ways, Gregory (along with the Dominican Domingo Báñez) defended
the five ways against Cajetan’s claim that they prove the existence of God “quasi
per accidens.” However, Cajetan was not the only one who held this thesis, and
he was followed by others both outside the Dominican Order (such as Zumel and
Molina) and inside it (such as John Poinsot).
262 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

On the basis of this historical analysis, I argued that, although Descartes was
wrong in presenting Gregory as a critic of the conclusions of the five ways, he
was fundamentally right in stressing the contested character of Thomas’s proofs
(V). In the last part of the article, I showed how a connection between Descartes
and the Scholastic debate on the conclusions of the five ways, and in particular the
criticism addressed by Gregory to Cajetan, was established by some of Descartes’s
contemporaries. In order to substantiate this point, I analyzed the debate over
Descartes’s proof of God’s existence between the Dutch Cartesian Tobias Andreæ
and the Calvinist theologian Jakob Revius, both (despite the difference in their
evaluation of Cartesian philosophy and its theological aspects) relating Descartes’s
new proofs of the existence of God to the controversy between Cajetan and Gregory
on Thomas’s five ways (VI).