Q.3, Art.7 Replies and Art.8: Why the Simpler Can Be More Perfect, Why God Is Not Part of Other Things, and Things That Are Other by Themselves

Orientation #

The recording opens in the replies to a. 7 (“Now the first objection was saying…”), continuing the article begun last time (prev. lecture). He closes by proposing “maybe we should take up perfection next week” and returns to the prooemium of q. 3 to show why perfection follows simplicity. The previous class worked through a. 7’s five arguments for total simplicity; the next takes up q. 4 on God’s perfection.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to obj. 1 of a. 7: the caused as such is composed (“of the very what notion of being caused”) #

Point: creatures imitate God as the caused imitates the first cause, but to be caused is already to be composed.

1. What is caused receives its existence from God.
2. Hence in the caused, what it is is other than its existence (if the two were the same, it would be uncaused).
3. Therefore composition, at least of essence and esse, belongs to the caused as such. He notes Thomas is not merely saying the creature is imperfectly like God (true, but not the point), and that this becomes “more manifest” when the effects of God are taken up later (he says “question fifty-eight” — locus as heard, unverified).

2. Reply to obj. 2: with us the composed is better; in God not (“composed things are better than what simple things”) #

Point: the perfection of a creature’s goodness is found in many things, the perfection of divine goodness in one simple thing. He unfolds what Thomas leaves compressed: material vs. immaterial creatures. In the material world the composed is more perfect; among the separated substances (angels) it is the reverse: the higher angel has fewer thoughts, but they express more; God understands everything perfectly in one thought. His own poem: God the Father “said it all with one word”; when the Word became man he spoke few words and said much — “He was the brevity and soul of wit” [ed.: he later quotes the Bible: “the fool multiplies his words”].

3. Euclid II.5 as an anticipation: the simpler contains more (“the square would have more area”) #

Point: a hint in the material world that the simpler can be the more perfect.

• Proportion he draws: words are to meaning as perimeter is to area.
• Euclid II.5 (rectangles): of all rectangles with the same perimeter, the square has the greatest area; the difference in area between square and oblong is the square of the difference of the sides. His examples, perimeter 20: 5×5=25, 4×6=24 (diff. 1, 1²=1), 3×7=21 (diff. 2, 2²=4), 2×8=16 (diff. 3, 3²=9).
• A rectangle can have more perimeter (24) and less area (20): more fence enclosing less land, which arouses wonder; ancient crooks sold land by perimeter.
• The square as the simplest rectangle containing the most: “a little anticipation” of the angels, where the higher is simpler and more perfect. Further hints of the same: Thomas and Aristotle say more with fewer words than the moderns (Locke apologising for prolixity at the end of the Essay; TV and faculty meetings — talk that says nothing); in the Poetics Aristotle ranks tragedy above epic because it produces the same effect (pity and fear) more compactly — “Sophocles is Homer writing tragedy”; Mozart (23rd piano concerto) simpler yet more profound than Haydn, sparing in change of key; Shakespeare’s lines. But it “doesn’t seem to fit the material world as a whole”, so we are surprised that God is both infinitely perfect and altogether simple — which is why Thomas places simplicity and perfection side by side (also in the Contra Gentiles, not in the Compendium).

4. Why a. 8 stands apart; Anaxagoras (“looking at the relationship to others”) #

Point: articles 1–7 look at God in himself; a. 8 at God in relation to others (whether he enters composition with them). Anaxagoras (DK 12) in the reverse order: mind is unmixed with other things, else it could not rule them; later, it is the thinnest and purest of all things. His second thought: “purest” may mean mind is not itself a mixture — if thinnest, it cannot be a mixture, since then something would be thinner. Thomas’s order: God not put together himself, then not putting something else together.

5. The objections and sed contra of a. 8 (“God is put together with other things”) #

Obj. 1 (from esse): Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4, “the esse of all things is the divine being” — a misreading, as if God were the esse said of all things (he recalls the Contra Gentiles chapter that “I am who am” is not the esse said of all things). Obj. 2 (from form): Augustine, “the Word of God is a form not formed”; but form is part of the composite. Obj. 3: God and first matter are both omnino simplicia, so differ by no difference, so are wholly the same; first matter enters composition — David of Dinant’s position, “a kind of pantheism”. Sed contra: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2 (no touch or communion of mingling in parts); Liber de Causis (Arab, from the Neoplatonists, once thought Aristotle’s; Thomas commented on it): the first cause rules all things without being mixed with them.

6. Three errors, three reasons (“there were three errors, three mistakes”) #

Errors: (1) God the soul of the world (Varro; Augustine, City of God VII) — reducible to God as soul of the first heaven; (2) God the formal principle of all things (Amalric of Bène; the “being of all things” view reduces here); (3) David of Dinant: God is first matter, “most stupidly”. He defends Thomas’s harshness: nothing is further from pure act than pure passive ability. The first two make God a formal principle, the third a material one. Reasons:

1. God is the first efficient cause; the efficient cause agrees with the form of the thing made only in species, not in number (man generates man; the Christmas-cookie stamp gives the dough the same shape but is not the same in number, else you could not go on to the next). With matter it agrees not even in kind, since matter is passive ability and the agent is act.
2. The first efficient cause acts first and through itself; what enters composition does not act but is that by which the composite acts (the hand does not act, the man acts through the hand; fire heats through heat). So God cannot be a part.
3. No part of a composite is simply first among beings: matter is ability, and ability is after act simpliciter; the form that is a part is a partaking form, and what partakes is after what is by essence (fire in kindled things after what is fire essentially). But God is first being simply.

7. Reply 1: God the esse of all things effectively and as exemplar (“a cause in two and a half senses”) #

Point: Dionysius means God is the being of all things not formally but as efficient cause and exemplar. Aristotle distinguishes the intrinsic form from the exemplar or model outside the thing (his father’s wagon company: patterns on the wall, taken down to shape new wood). So God is cause as end, as mover/maker, and as exemplar, but not as intrinsic form and not at all as matter — “two and a half senses”; “image and likeness of God” speaks of the exemplar cause. Dionysius and Augustine must be explained by Thomas so as not to be misunderstood; his rule: “Aristotle means what Thomas says he means”, likewise Augustine and Dionysius. Aside on Aristotle needing explanation: Metaphysics XII seems to say God knows only himself; but in at least two places Aristotle calls it absurd (against Empedocles: we know by like — love by love, earth by earth — but there is no hate in God, so we would know what God does not). Thomas’s reading: Aristotle says what God knows chiefly; nothing else could be the primary object or perfection of his mind, and he knows other things by knowing himself.

8. Reply 2: form as exemplar; the beatific vision (“God Himself has to be what joined to our mind”) #

God is a form as exemplar, not as part of a composite. This recurs in the beatific vision: we cannot see God as he is by a created form (limited), so God himself is joined to the mind as both what is seen and that by which he is seen — not to make one thing (as body and soul), but only as that by which we understand; Thomas must defend this, since seeing him as he is is of faith. “That’s a subtle thing.”

9. Reply 3: to differ vs. to be other by oneself (“other by what themselves”) #

Distinction: things that differ strictly have something in common (genus) plus a difference (dog and cat: both four-footed animals; one barks, one meows); things that are other/diverse are other by themselves, not by a part. Argument:

1. Man and horse differ by rational and irrational.
2. If those differences differed by further differences, and so on, there would be no end.
3. So there must be things other by themselves; Thomas: simple things do not differ by other differences; strictly they are not said to differ but to be diverse (Metaphysics X: diverse is said absolutely; what differs, differs by something). Hence God and first matter do not differ by something but are other by themselves — so it does not follow they are the same. Examples: the ten highest genera do not differ by differences (no genus above them); odd vs. even (having a middle vs. not — other by themselves); something vs. nothing (“to be or not to be” — not different by nothing, other by themselves); pure act and pure ability. Student suggests “distinct”: things are distinct where one is not the other (ability is not act), but not by something else. English rendering: “diverse” as opposite of idem, better “other”. “It’s a very important thing to see.” Epistemic form: you would have to know an infinity of differences before knowing anything differs.

10. Back to the prooemium of q. 3: the order simplicity, perfection, infinity, immutability, unity (“Let’s go back… to the proemium”) #

Knowing whether God is, we cannot know what he is but what he is not (q. 3 ff.), then how known (q. 12) and named (q. 13; we name as we know). Removal: composition, motion, “and others” (Contra Gentiles and Compendium remove motion first, then composition). Why perfection second: bodily simples are imperfect and like parts (atom simpler than molecule, electron than atom), so our material mind, having seen God simple, would next think him imperfect; this is corrected at once. Infinity is close to perfection (infinite perfection). Unchangeable, three reasons: (a) second-figure syllogism — whatever changes is composed (Physics I: the healthy cannot become sick unless there is something in the healthy besides health; against Heraclitus), God is not composed, so God does not change (like Socrates in the Phaedo against soul as harmony; “a mother is a woman, Socrates is not a woman”); (b) universally perfect (Metaphysics V), lacking nothing of any kind, nothing to acquire; (c) infinite — even material infinitists like Melissus held the infinite unchangeable. Unity last, tied to composition and to infinity (can there be more than one infinite?). Aside: the Tampa church with all its colours; sonnets simpler than King Lear or Hamlet but not as perfect — “topsy turvy”.

11. Student question: Socrates and Plato; the through-itself first (“their matter rather than by a difference”) #

Student: Socrates and Plato differ not by a difference but by matter; is their matter simply other? Answer: that is a different kind of distinction — Thomas’s material distinction, tied to the continuous (the two endpoints of a line, same kind, differing only by here and there); the reply concerns formal distinction, whether every formal distinction is by a difference. Axiom: what is through another is after what is through itself; things other by another presuppose things other by themselves. Closing aside: modern philosophy makes a like mistake, seeing no difference between being (as everything) and matter because both seem simple, having nothing by which they differ — not seeing they may be other by themselves. “So much for the simplicity of God.”

His words #

• caused as such: its existence is other than what it is; essence–esse composition.
• separated substances: the philosopher’s name for the angels, separated from matter.
• omnino simplicia: altogether simple (God and first matter, in obj. 3).
• ability / passive ability [ed.: potency]: what matter is; “after act simpliciter”.
• partaking form: the form that is a part of a composite, after what is by essence.
• esse omnium: “being of all things” (Dionysius), to be read effectively and as exemplar.
• two and a half senses of cause: end, maker, exemplar; half of form; none of matter.
• differ vs. diverse/other: to differ is by a difference; other (diversum, opposite of idem) is said absolutely, “other by themselves”.
• material distinction vs. formal distinction: the former tied to the continuous.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; “twelfth/tenth/fifth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics XII, X, V].
• second figure: middle term predicate in both premises, affirmed of one, denied of the other.

Texts #

Read in class

• Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 7, ad 1 and ad 2.
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 8, whole article (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies).
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, prooemium.

Mentioned

• Euclid, Elements II.5 (worked with examples).
• Aristotle, Poetics (tragedy vs. epic); Metaphysics X (diverse said absolutely), XII (what God knows), V (perfect); Physics I (whatever changes is composed).
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4; Divine Names ch. 2 (Thomas’s commentary on the Divine Names, Albert’s on the Celestial Hierarchy).
• Augustine, “book about the words of God” (as heard); City of God VII.
• Liber de Causis (Thomas’s commentary); Summa Contra Gentiles (chapter that God is not the esse of all things; order motion–composition); Compendium Theologiae.
• Anaxagoras DK 12; Empedocles (like known by like); Melissus; Heraclitus; Locke, Essay; Plato, Phaedo.
• (Text-matching flagged ST I q. 93; the transcript supports only his passing phrase “image and likeness of God” as an instance of exemplar causality.)

His questions #

• Why does it belong to the caused as such to be composed? Because receiving existence from God, what it is is other than its existence.
• How is a simpler thing more perfect, given our experience? In the immaterial world the higher angel has fewer, fuller thoughts; God one thought; Euclid II.5, tragedy, Mozart give hints.
• Why does the eighth article come by itself after the first seven? The first seven look at God in himself; the eighth at his relation to others.
• Does the efficient cause agree in number with the form of the thing made? No, only in species (cookie stamp); with matter not even in kind.
• In how many senses of cause is God a cause? Two and a half: end, maker, exemplar; not intrinsic form, not matter.
• What do the differences differ by? Not by further differences (infinite regress); they are other by themselves.
• Do the ten highest genera differ by differences? No; they are other by themselves.
• Why does Thomas take up perfection right after simplicity? Because in bodies simples are imperfect, so our mind would infer God imperfect.
• Why is God unchangeable? Three reasons: simple (whatever changes is composed), universally perfect, infinite.
• Do Socrates and Plato differ by a difference or by matter? By matter — a material distinction, not the formal distinction at issue here.