Real Relations and Relations of Reason: Knowledge, God's Unchanging Eternity, the Trinity, and Why God Allows Evil

Orientation #

He continues the treatment of the category of relation in the Categories, taking up “another distinction,” going “beyond the text” of Aristotle, and reads a Thomas text he has translated for the class (printed handout: DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 182). He says nothing explicit about last time or next time. The previous class treated Cajetan on relation, the senses of esse, and a Trinitarian text of Aquinas.

The class, in order #

1. The distinction tells nothing about real vs. reason (“this distinction tells us nothing about”) #

Point: the Categories distinction (relativa secundum dici, the Platonic/“Latin” definition, vs. relativa secundum esse, which alone puts things in the category) is a different distinction from real relations vs. relations of reason.

• Why Aristotle takes up relation before quality: he had to distinguish the two kinds, because only the relativa secundum esse are “primarily and fundamentally and wholly” in towards-something; the relativa secundum dici can be fundamentally in another category, “even in substance or more often in quality.”
• The Thomas text (De Potentia, “the most powerful” of the disputed questions), read in his translation and Latin: the distinction secundum esse / secundum dici “nihil facit” for whether the relation is real.
  1. Some relativa secundum esse are not real: right and left in a column.
  2. Some relativa secundum dici nevertheless imply real relations: science and sense.
  • Definition given: names are relativa secundum esse when imposed to signify the relations themselves; relativa secundum dici when imposed to signify qualities or something else chiefly, upon which certain relations follow.
• “Aristotle foresaw this.” He flags real vs. reason as “an even more difficult distinction.”

2. Knowledge is really related to the known, not the reverse (“Knowledge is really related to the thing known”) #

Point: the famous Aristotelian example; the relation of knower to known is real, of known to knower is not.

• Argument, from the basis of knowing, which he calls “very subtle”:
  1. Clay in the shape of a cube, given the shape of a sphere: the cube shape is gone. Matter receiving a shape it lacks loses the shape it has.
  2. The eye receiving the shape of the chair does not lose its own shape; it receives the shape of another as the shape of another.
  3. That reception is in the eye, not in the wooden chair. So knowledge, and the relation of knower to known, is really in the knower, not in the thing.
• Illustration: someone in the balcony looking down at you; you are seen, but nothing is added to you.
• Why we think otherwise: when one thing is towards another we tend to think of the other as reversely towards the first.

3. Left and right of the pillar: a relation of reason (“the left and the right side of the pillar”) #

Point: a relative secundum esse can be a relation of reason.

• Left and right are really distinct in the body (he is right-handed; “Obama was lefty”), but standing in for the pillar, the distinction is not really in the pillar; we still say “chipped on the left side.”
• Boundary drawn: left and right, even said of the pillar, have as their whole nature to be relative (secundum esse); yet the relation is not real. Hence this is “a different distinction” from the Categories one.

4. Creature to God real, God to creature not; God unchanging and eternal (“is the relation of the creature to God real”) #

Point: the creature really depends on God; God is not really related to the creature, because if he were, God would be changed.

• When God knocks Paul off the horse, the change is in Paul; God never changes. Unchanging is “one of the five attributes of the substance of God”; there is no movement in God.
• Aside on “variety is the spice of life” (a proverb from his boyhood; his grandchildren Rose and he entertained with something different each day): so God’s unchanging life “sounds awfully dull.”
• Why it is hard for us: Aristotle takes time as the number of the before and after in motion, and our knowledge starts from the senses, so motion seems most real; Shakespeare: “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.” Hence God, who never moves, “doesn’t seem to be real.”
• Aristotle and Boethius, having shown God unchanging, say God is not in time; Thomas, following “his master” Boethius, says measured by eternity. Boethius’ definition: tota simul, all at once, perfect possession of undying life. The now that flows makes time; the now that stands still makes eternity.
• Fairy-tale picture of the frozen servant with the cake: if the now of time were frozen, how much life would you have? He cannot read one paragraph of Thomas, eat one piece of candy, or hear one melody of Mozart in the indivisible now. God in one now has perfect possession of unending life; compared to God we are “almost dead.” Augustine: in the beatific vision you partake of eternity.
• Aside: his CDs and the Boston classical station (Beethoven’s Pastoral, Schubert’s Trout Quintet); his life, like the life of his mind, is discourse, going from one thing to another.
• Conclusion: when our mind sees the creature’s relation to God it tries to create a relation of God back to us, “and there ain’t such a relation in reality.” “A real profound distinction.”

5. The two main distinctions of relations; logic as relations of reason (“the two main distinctions of what relations”) #

Point: relations secundum esse / secundum dici belong to the Categories; real relations / relations of reason Aristotle treats in the Metaphysics.

• Genus to species: a relation of reason; so even logic, a rigorous science, is about relations of reason (also called second intentions).
• Syllogism: “Every man has reason, Duane is a man, therefore Duane has reason.” A student first says “Duane” is the middle term; corrected: Duane is the minor term, man the middle term. Being a middle or minor term is not a real relation in the thing.
• He marks this as going beyond the Categories, which are concerned only with secundum esse vs. secundum dici.

6. Thomas returns to the distinction in the Trinity (“the ability to generate the Son”) #

Point: at the other end of our knowledge Thomas asks whether the power to generate the Son is something relative or absolute; answer: relative, “with a little tag on that.”

• The divine nature is one; Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each the same thing as the divine nature; yet the divine nature is in the Father not from anyone, in the Son from the Father (“God from God, light from light, true God from true God”), and the Son is numerically the God the Father is. “Really, really profound”; he says he still does not see how he understands it, and “certainly not like human nature.”
• The Holy Spirit is harder: Thomas says we have no proper names for him or his procession, as we have for the Son; “Holy Spirit” is strange since Father and Son are also spirit and holy. Compared to the Nicomachean Ethics: moral virtue lies between an excess and a defect (courage between cowardice and foolhardiness, both found), but for temperance the defect, enjoying sense pleasure less than one should, is not found, so a name must almost be made.
• A De Potentia text that struck him: the love of the Father and the Son, from which the Holy Spirit proceeds, must be based not only on knowing each other’s goodness but on being like each other; Thomas insists the love which is the Holy Spirit is like charity, the love of friendship between two persons. Left open: “I want more enlightenment on this”; he expects more when Thomas takes up the Trinity later in the disputed questions.

7. Digression: why God allows evil (“taken up with the problem of evil”) #

Point: occasioned by his son Marcus’s friend (Korean, or Vietnamese), who is troubled by the problem of evil; he knows no popular book to recommend, so he sketches an approach from Thomas.

• Article in the last part of the Prima pars: whether the effect of divine governance is one. Yes, insofar as it always makes the creature in some way like God; then, before the innumerable ways, one middle step: God wants us like himself in two ways, to be good and to be a cause of good (a student, arriving late, gives the two).
• Argument: partaking in God’s causality of good in others is where creatures can fail; unless God allows them to fail in their imperfect partaking, they cannot partake; so God has to allow evil, even so that we imitate him as redeemer by causing good to come from evil. Fr. Hardon’s retreat on providence: “Thank God for sinners,” because then one can forgive.
• Why not make everyone as he made Adam? Because it is good to give another existence; so Adam makes others (Eve: “I’ve made a man with the help of God”), though parents, especially after the fall, make many mistakes.
• Students’ stories: Mark Miller’s relative, long hostile to the Church, at death asks for a priest and then for communion again, and dies at peace; another man’s sister, called back at the end, writes that it was the most profound experience of her life. Our Lord’s joy over one sinner’s conversion; the woman in childbirth forgets the pain.
• Teacher example: the teacher partakes of God the supreme teacher, but partakes imperfectly, so some teachers deceive; error is evil (“error is magna pars miseriae” [ed.: as he gives it]).
• Job: in Thomas’s ordering of the Old Testament books the chief argument against God is from evil, and Job shows you will not understand in particular why he allows it; presumptuous to say why this person and not that (college students getting the right or the wrong professor). A student adds Bonaventure: on why God gives grace to this sinner and not that, “human loquacity should stop its mouth.”
• Closing anecdote: Kasurik, his advisor at Brother Richard’s insistence, had given up philosophy because of bad teaching, then met De Koninck; his devotion (adjusting the speaker for De Koninck like a slave boy at the St. Paul Seminary); when he could not answer Berquist’s questions he said “ask De Koninck.” Left open: “why he’s got all these bad teachers.”

His words #

• towards something; his rendering of the category name [ed.: ad aliquid, relation]
• relativa secundum dici; the “Latin” (Platonic) definition of relatives, said of another
• relativa secundum esse; relatives whose whole nature is to be towards another; the ones that put a thing in the category
• real relations vs. relations of reason; a relation in reality vs. one only spoken of, made by the mind
• nihil facit; Thomas: the secundum esse / dici distinction “does nothing” for whether the relation is real
• five attributes of the substance of God; unchanging is one of them
• tota simul; Boethius’ eternity: all at once, perfect possession of undying life
• the flowing now / the standing now; makes time / makes eternity
• second intentions; another name for logic’s relations of reason
• middle term, minor term; his syllogism example
• magna pars miseriae; “error is a great part of misery,” as he gives it

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia, text on the distinction of relatives secundum esse and secundum dici and real relation (his own translation and the Latin; locus unstated; handout DHB Vol III p. 182)
• Boethius, definition of eternity (quoted, locus unstated)
• Thomas Aquinas, Prima pars, article whether the effect of divine governance is one (recalled, locus unstated)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories, chapter on towards something
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, on relations of reason
• Aristotle, Physics (inferred), time as number of before and after in motion
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, moral virtue between two vices; the unnamed defect opposed to temperance
• Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia, on the love of the Father and the Son as origin of the Holy Spirit
• Augustine, on partaking of eternity in the beatific vision
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Job (Leonine edition)
• Shakespeare, “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs”
• Fr. Hardon, retreat on divine providence
• Bonaventure, on why grace is given to one sinner and not another (student’s citation)
• Genesis, Eve’s words at the first birth (inferred locus)

His questions #

• Why did Aristotle take up relation before quality? Because he had to distinguish relativa secundum esse from secundum dici; only the former are wholly in the category.
• Is the thing known really related to the knowledge? No; the relation is real only in the knower, since only the knower receives the shape of another without losing its own.
• Is the distinction between left and right really in the pillar? No; it is a relation of reason, though left and right are secundum esse.
• Is God really related to the creature? No; if he were, God would be changed, and God never changes.
• If God’s life is not measured by time, what is it measured by? Eternity, in Boethius’ sense of tota simul.
• If you froze the now of time, how much life would you have? Practically none; you could not read a paragraph or hear a melody.
• In “Every man has reason, Duane is a man,” what is Duane? The minor term; man is the middle term.
• Is the ability to generate the Son relative or absolute? Relative, “with a little tag on that.”
• In what two ways does God want us to be like himself? To be good and to be a cause of good.
• Why didn’t God make all of us as he made Adam? So that creatures could partake in causing good, giving existence to others; left partly open.