Kinds of Opposites and the Trinity: Heaven's Praise, Evil as Privation, and Why the Father Is Not Before the Son

Orientation #

He refers back to “last time” for the distinction between formal and material distinction and for “seeing a distinction comes before seeing before and after” (prev. lecture); he says “we’ll get into the study of evil today” and then “I’ll talk tomorrow about evil”, and closes “I won’t go back to that right now” on relation. He works from photocopied handout pages 2–4 (Metaphysics V text, Sentences texts, De malo); a text-matching system reports handouts “Note for Book One, Reading Eleven” p. 1 and “Contradiction and the Growth of Reason” p. 10 as read in this episode (probably these copies). The previous class worked through the senses of before, simultaneous and having; the next takes up God’s priority to the world and Boethius’s definition of eternity.

The class, in order #

1. Three things we do in heaven (“praise is not exactly the same thing”) #

Point: besides seeing God as He is and loving Him, there must be a third act, praise, because three is the first number of which we say “all”.

• Knowledge causes love: seeing God as He is, one cannot but love Him. Praise is a distinct act from knowing and loving, as love is distinct from knowing.
• Mozart (known by hearing) and Shakespeare (known by imagination and his words): knowing how good the works are leads to love and then spontaneous praise; Wagner: Mozart “above all the masters and all the arts and all the ages”.
• Anima Christi, last petition: in hora mortis meae voca me … cum sanctis tuis — to praise Him with the saints.
• Connection to the three theological virtues: belief is rewarded by sight (as believing Thomas, or Euclid on the Pythagorean theorem, is rewarded by coming to know); charity in heaven is the culmination of love begun here; and praise corresponds to hope, since Augustine and Thomas teach the Creed under faith, the two commandments under charity, and the Our Father (prayer) under hope. Thomas gives the mode of the Psalms as orativus et laudativus.
• Augustine: he who sings prays twice; the principal hours are Lauds (named from praise) and Vespers (named from the time of day).
• Aristotle “on the universe”: we use the number three in praising God. In the Summa objection on whether natural reason can know three persons, Thomas replies: not from an inkling of the persons but from the perfection of three, which has beginning, middle and end. Three mutually perpendicular lines determine the three dimensions; three parts of logic.

2. Aristotle’s four opposites, unfolded by Thomas into two, then three (“placed against another or is opposed”) #

Point: Aristotle lists four ways opposites are said; Thomas unfolds them as dependence (one kind) and removal (three grades).

• Handout note: one paragraph is missing in the post-predicaments copy, another in the four-opposites copy; they must be put together (his fault; he will supply it).
• Aristotle’s order: contradictory, contraries, privation and habit, ad aliquid — perhaps contradictory and contraries together because both have “contra”; Thomas orders the removals differently, with contradiction and contraries as extremes and privation between.
• Thomas: something is contraponitur either by reason of dependence (relatives) or by reason of removal; removal happens in three ways:
  1. Contradiction removes wholly, leaving nothing: man / non-man. Negation.
  2. Privation leaves the subject only: non-being of something in a subject able to have it, and in the strict sense that should have it. Sight / blindness.
  3. Contraries leave subject and genus: black / white, both colors in the same surface; virtue / vice, both in the genus habit. “Contraries are the species furthest apart within the same genus.”
• Contradiction vs. privation: one of two contradictories is said of everything, so a stone or tree “doesn’t see”; but the stone is not blind, because “blind” leaves a subject able to have sight. A diamond given to his wife doesn’t see, but nothing is lacking in the gift (“only if your heart wasn’t in it”), since it cannot and should not have sight.
• Relatives do not remove: being taller demands someone shorter; a father cannot be one without a son or daughter.
• Non-being in the three removals: contradiction plainly (non-man); privation is non-being in a subject; and in Physics I one contrary seems to lack something relative to the other (black vs. white, sickness vs. health).

3. Opposites and the distinction of persons in God (“the only kind of formal distinction that can be in God”) #

Point: since God has no quantity, the real distinction of persons is formal, and among the four opposites only relative opposition can ground it.

1. Material distinction comes from division of the continuous (cutting a line gives two lines; this is how number and the science of numbers arise); formal distinction, in things without matter, is by opposites.
2. God is not a body, so the distinction of persons is formal, hence by some kind of opposite.
3. God is “I am who am”; contradiction would make one person “not”, and privation a lack of being; so the only possible formal distinction in God is by relatives — what Augustine and Boethius saw and Thomas follows. “See how important this is.”

• Aside (De veritate, his current reading): the image of the Trinity in man is not in knowing material things, is most of all in remembering, understanding and loving God (knower and known are one; knowing = receiving the form of another as other while retaining one’s own), and secondarily in the soul knowing and loving itself — reason (Father), the definition it brings forth (Word), love of it (Shakespeare’s definition of reason as example).
• Aside: De Anima proem — all knowledge is good, knowledge of a better thing is better (body < soul < angel < God); so he likes to read the Summa backward, soul, then angels, then God, “and that’s where it stops”.

4. Sentences text: affirmation and negation “maxime opponuntur” (“first and the greatest opposition”) #

Point: contradiction is the greatest and first opposition, the cause of all opposition and all distinction, because it alone involves no coming together.

• Privation: coming together in the subject (blindness needs a thing apt to see); contraries: also in genus; relatives “least opposed”, hardly opposed at all — “if I am your father I can’t be your son”; they are opposed by positing, not removal.
• Contraries and relatives are signified by way of being in a nature (a species is something, not a lack).
• Principle: that in which something is found unmixed with its contrary is the maximum, first in its genus, and cause of the rest; hence every other opposition includes an affirmation and negation (father is not son, virtue is not vice, sight is not blindness, being is not non-being), as the first is found in the posterior; the others are by addition to it.
• Consequence: contrariety is found only in really diverse things, but affirmation/negation need not be; a distinction of reason suffices for affirmation and negation, since any distinction includes it; there is such a distinction of reason between the essence and the person (Father and God are not really distinct, yet distinct in reason); relative opposites require real distinction, and these distinguish the divine persons; a distinction of reason only also appears when something is said the same as itself. He flags this as “a very difficult thing” he will not go into now, and reads it loosely.

5. Sentences text on evil: three grades (“malum nominat non-being”) #

Point: evil is named from privation, and things are called evil in three ordered grades.

1. Per se malum: the privation itself; said first and absolutely; places nothing.
2. The subject of evil: something positive, called bad from the privation — as the eye is something, but not from being blind; second, in order to the first.
3. The cause inducing evil: something in itself, said bad privatively in order to its effect; third, in order to the second.

• Thomas: no “evil itself”; evil is not having what one should have when one should have it; not simply non-being but privation. “That is profound.” He will study evil more “tomorrow”.

6. De malo, objections 19 and 20 (“the best about the worst”) #

Point: evil is a being that answers “whether it is” but not “what it is”, and a being of reason rather than of nature.

• Obj. 19: if goodness were not something nothing would be good; so if malice is not something nothing is bad; but many things are bad; so malice is something. Reply: being is said (a) as signifying the nature of the ten genera — so neither evil nor any privation is a being or “something”; (b) as answering “whether it is” — so evil is, as blindness is; still not “something”, since “something” also answers “what it is”.
• Obj. 20: Metaphysics VI, good and evil are in things, true and false in the understanding (he notes this belongs to the second act of the mind, coming shortly); so evil is not a being of reason only. Reply: evil is in things as privation, not as something real; in the understanding it is something understood; so it is a being of reason, and this being understood is itself good.
• He calls De malo the most definitive work on evil, “a synthesis”.

7. Ignorance vs. error (“just simply the lack of knowledge”) #

Point: ignorance is opposed to knowledge as privation; a mistake is its contrary.

• Political campaign: better to persuade the undetermined voter than the one already thinking he should vote for the other man — the mistaken man resists, the ignorant one merely lacks determination.
• Four-chambered heart: whether a cat has one he does not know (privation); saying three or two chambers would be a mistake (false opinion).
• Tree surgery (“I’d be stumped”); identifying a wine grape (Mark would know). Student: “the only thing worse than ignorance is error.” The knower has true thinking, the mistaken false, the ignorant merely lacks.
• Aside: Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, “error” and “mistake”.

8. The rule of two or three (“you have to divide into two or three”) #

Point: Thomas divides opposites into two and then three, and the ten categories into three and then twos and threes, though Aristotle did not; by induction he takes it as a rule that to understand one divides into two or three, subdividing anything larger.

9. Sentences article: whether the Father is before the Son — the objections (“It seems that the Father is before the Son”) #

Point: the four objections run through the four senses of before, and the sed contra pushes toward Arianism.

• The Sentences as the medieval standard commented on by Thomas, Albert, Bonaventure; later replaced by the Summa. We know more what God is not; so one must go through all the senses of before.

1. As corruption is to ceasing to be, generation to beginning to be; the Son is generated, so began (duration).
2. Nothing receives what it already has; the generated receives being from the generator, so lacked it before.
3. A beginning is naturally before what it begins; the Father is the beginning of the Son (nature).
4. To give being is a dignity; the Father gives the Son his being (dignity).

• Sed contra: what has something before it is not simpliciter first; God is the first beginning (even Aristotle); so the Son would not be God — “which the Arians concede”; Jerome: the church woke and found itself Arian.
• Asides: Voltaire dropping Thomas’s own objections on unprepared clergy; his and Brother Mark’s joke of locking professors in with the objections; ideally students would stew a day on objections before the text; Thomas gentle with the challenging student; his St. Mary’s student who came daily with an objection.

10. The response: the Father in no way before the Son (“neque duratione, neque natura, neque intellectu, neque dignitate”) #

Point: the Father is not before the Son in any of the four senses, because what is absolute is common and what is relative is simul.

• The thing he emphasizes: Thomas’s opening sentence follows the four chief senses of before “in exactly the same order”, taking the division as complete — otherwise his defense would not be complete. The second post-predicament is used “at the other end” of knowledge, the Trinity; logic is the introduction to philosophy (Isagoge as introduction to the first book of logic).
• “Where would Thomas be without Aristotle?” — as Augustine, lacking the liberal arts, was not suspicious of the Manichaean Faustus. The first post-predicament gives how the persons are distinguished (relative opposition, material distinction excluded), the second and third that they are simul, not one before another.
• Argument: in Father and Son only two things can be considered: (a) the absolute, the divine nature, common to both, indivisible (shown earlier in the distinction), so no priority; (b) the ad aliquid; relatives are simul by nature and by time, since they posit each other (cannot be taller for an hour before the other is shorter; Paul Berquist his first son — he was not a father before Paul was his son), and in understanding, since one is defined through the other (double and half must be known together: hama, simul, together). Though among men the father is before the son (as Socrates before Plato), as relatives father and son are simul in all the said ways, dignity too. Shakespeare’s “reason looks before and after” yields here negative knowledge: no before and after in the Trinity.
• Replies: (1) generation opposed to corruption is a change, to which a beginning is joined; divine generation is not a change but the operation of the divine nature in the Father, eternal as the nature is — change requires something composed that was there last week and this week (“Professor Berquist has changed”), and the Son is altogether simple. (2) One who receives does not have it from himself, but it does not follow he lacked it, since it may never have begun; the Father’s giving is measured by eternity, not time. (3) A beginning as that which begins is naturally before; as the relation of beginning it is simul with the begun; in God the Father has from the same that he is someone and that he is Father, so he is simul with the Son simply — Father is the beginning (God from God, light from light) but not before. (4) The property by which the Father gives is his dignity, but dignity is absolute, the same in both; fatherhood in the Father and sonship in the Son are the divine essence or goodness, one in number.
• Closing: the Categories, first book from the father of logic, used at the other end for the Trinity; one may say the Son is from the Father, not that the Father is before; relation left for another time.

His words #

• rule of two or three; to understand, divide into twos or threes and subdivide larger divisions.
• de modis oppositorum; “in how many ways opposites are said”, four.
• ad aliquid; “towards something”, relatives.
• contraponitur; “placed against”.
• removal (three ways) vs. dependence; his rendering of Thomas’s two-fold division.
• lack; his English for privation.
• “I am who am”; why contradiction and privation are excluded from God.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• maxime opponuntur; affirmation and negation most opposed.
• coming together [ed.: convenientia]; what other oppositions imply and contradiction lacks.
• malum procedens; the second and third grades of evil (as transcribed).
• being as ten genera vs. being as answer to “whether it is”; the De malo distinction.
• being of reason; evil as understood, not in things.
• mistake / error vs. ignorance; contrary of knowledge vs. its privation.
• simul, hama, together; “three languages” for the third post-predicament.
• neque duratione, neque natura, neque intellectu, neque dignitate; the four senses of before denied.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V, on the four opposites, with Thomas’s exposition (handout p. 2; combined from two short-text collections).
• Thomas, Scriptum super I Sententiarum, text on affirmation and negation as the greatest opposition (handout p. 3).
• Thomas, Scriptum super I Sententiarum, text on the three grades of evil (handout p. 3).
• Thomas, De malo, objections 19 and 20 and replies (handout p. 4).
• Thomas, Scriptum super I Sententiarum, article “whether the Father is before the Son”, objections, sed contra, response and replies (handout, senses of before).

Mentioned

• Anima Christi, last petition.
• Thomas on the modes of the books of Scripture (Psalms: orativus et laudativus).
• Aristotle, “on the universe” [ed.: De caelo, inferred] on the number three; Thomas’s Summa reply on knowing the Trinity by natural reason.
• Aristotle, Physics I, on contraries and lack.
• Thomas, De veritate, on the image of the Trinity in man.
• Aristotle, De Anima, proemium, on knowledge of better things.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI, good and evil in things, true and false in the mind.
• Porphyry’s Isagoge; Aristotle’s Categories.
• Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors; “reason looks before and after”; his definition of reason.
• Augustine’s Confessions on Faustus the Manichaean (as told).

His questions #

• What is the third thing we’ll be doing in heaven? Praising Him — three being the first number of which we say “all”.
• In how many ways are opposites said? Four: contradictory, contraries, privation and habit, relatives.
• What does “not a man” leave of man? Nothing.
• Would you say a stone is blind, like a man who doesn’t see? No; “blind” leaves a subject able to have sight.
• Does my being taller take away someone else’s being shorter? No, it demands it.
• The distinction of persons in God: formal or material, and by which opposite? Formal, since God has no quantity; only by relatives, since contradiction and privation bring in non-being.
• What kind of opposite is ignorance to knowledge? Privation, a lack; the contrary is a mistake or error.
• Can I be a father before having a son? No; relatives are simul by nature and time.
• Can I know what double is without knowing what half is? No; they must be known together, since one is defined through the other.
• Strictly speaking, what is a change? It requires something composed that remains through it; the Son is altogether simple, so generation in God is no change.