Summa I, q.13, aa.10–12: Univocal, Equivocal and Analogous Names; 'He Who Is' as God's Most Proper Name; Affirmative Statements About God

Orientation #

He begins mid-article, “to the first objection” of a. 10, and refers back to what “we talked about last time” on purely equivocal names and “the distinction that we saw in the earlier article” between the name’s origin and what it is imposed to signify (prev. lecture). Article 11 he “divides against the three previous articles” as dealing with another name. He announces nothing about next time.

The previous class worked through a. 8–10 (whether “God” names the nature, is communicable, is said univocally/equivocally/analogically); the next takes up q. 14 on divine knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. a. 10 ad 1–3: predication of a name vs. its meaning (“according to the predication of the name”) #

Point: the multiplicity of a name is judged by its signification, not by the diversity of things it is said of.

• Thomas: “man,” of whomever it is said, truly or falsely, is said in the same way; it is said in many ways only if we intend to signify diverse things (a true man vs. a stone).
• His classroom experience: students say “animal” said of dog and cat “doesn’t mean the same thing,” because they are thinking that dog and cat are different things. Being said of diverse things vs. meaning diverse things: “a fundamental distinction that needs to be seen.” Aristotle: most men are not good at seeing distinctions.
• Student example: “woman” said of a beautiful and an ugly woman: same meaning, different things said of.
• His example: “three is an odd number” (true) and “four is an odd number” (false): “odd number” means the same in both.
• If by “animal” of a dog I mean dog, and of a cat I mean “living body with senses that meows,” then it has different meanings.
• Application: the Catholic saying “the idol is not God” contradicts the pagan asserting it, because both use “God” for the true God; if the pagan meant only “god by opinion,” he would be saying something true, and Catholics also use it so: Psalm 95(:5), “all the gods of the Gentiles are demons”: the god by opinion, not the true God, is a demon.
• Ad 2 and 3 are answered the same way: those objections “proceed according to the diversity of the predication,” like his students’ confusion.
• Parallel example: if I say sense pleasures are true beatitude and you deny it, we contradict; if you mean “apparent happiness,” we use the word in a different, though analogous, sense.

2. a. 10 ad 4: “animal” of the true and the pictured animal; equivocal by chance vs. by reason (“is not said pure equivoce”) #

Point: Aristotle’s “equivocal” in the Categories is taken largo modo so as to include the analogous.

• Thomas: animal said of the true animal and the painted or sculpted one is not said purely equivocally; the Philosopher takes “equivocal” broadly as including the analogous, since being, said analogically, is sometimes said to be predicated equivocally of the diverse predicaments.
• His division: equivocal = has more than one meaning, period. Equivocal by chance: many meanings, no connection among them, nothing noteworthy beyond “many meanings.” Equivocal by reason: many meanings plus an order among the meanings (reason and order go together, as discussed before). “Purely” equivocal = nothing mixed in, no orderliness.
• General rule of naming: when a common name is said of two things, and one of them adds something significant to the common meaning, that one gets a new name and the other keeps the common name as its own. So “equivocal by reason,” having something noteworthy (order), gets the new name “analogous,” and equivocal by chance keeps the name “equivocal.”
  • “thing” vs. “person”: a person is something, so thing divides into thing and person; person adds reason and will, so gets a new name; “treat the girl like a person, not like a thing.”
  • “animal”: rational animal adds reason, gets the name “man”; irrational animals could be called “beast,” but since beast adds nothing noteworthy they often keep “animal,” and man is divided against “animals.” So in one sense man is an animal, in another not. Joke: if the biology teacher calls you an animal he’s not insulting you; if your girlfriend does, she probably is.
• Footnote he flags: “analogous” comes from the Greek for proportional likeness of ratios, which is only one kind of equivocal by reason; people take equivocal by reason too narrowly. Other kinds: a name becomes equivocal by reason by losing part of its meaning:
  • “hope,” “love” first name emotions, which have a bodily aspect (turmoil) and a formal aspect from the soul; carried over to acts of the will (the virtue of hope; love of God, love of wisdom) the bodily aspect is dropped, the formal kept. To come up “when we get to Thomas on hope.”
  • De Anima: paskein / passio, “undergoing.” First meaning of suffering: acted upon in a way painful and contrary to nature. Shakespeare’s Beatrice to Benedick, “for which of my good qualities did you first suffer love?”: “I call it suffering because I can’t help myself,” not painful. Drop “contrary to nature,” keep “receiving something”: sensing is an undergoing (perfecting, not destructive, though the body is involved); then understanding is an undergoing with the body dropped out altogether. He prefers the English “undergoing,” which still keeps a little of the first sense (“he’s undergone a lot”). Pun: to understand the Eucharist is to know what stands under the accidents.
• He is “trying to revive the use of the phrase equivocal by reason” to avoid limiting it to one or two kinds; whatever it is called, the new name marks the noteworthy thing, order among the meanings.
• Categories: Aristotle is not there concerned to show being is equivocal by reason rather than by chance, only that it is not said univocally of everything, hence different highest genera: a man and his shape are not “a thing” in exactly the same meaning; man is more a thing, his shape a “something other thing” that is a thing in a way.

3. a. 10 ad 5: neither Catholic nor pagan knows God’s nature (“by some meaning of causality”) #

Point: the Gentile can take the name “God” in the same meaning as we do, though neither knows the divine nature in itself.

• Both know God according to some meaning of causality (unmoved mover, first maker, first cause), of excellence (summum bonum), or of negation (incorporeal, not composed). In that same meaning the Gentile uses “God” when he says the idol is a god and worships it: he takes God as the one who should be worshipped, as we do; we only deny the statue is he. Heraclitus [ed.: transcript “Archelaus”]: as if a man should chatter to his house.
• Someone who knew God by no meaning at all could not even name him, except as we sometimes put forth names whose meanings we do not know: Thomas on the young student of metaphysics, who says it with his mouth but does not attain it with his mind.
• Break.

4. a. 11 objections and sed contra (“this name Who is is not maxime”) #

Point: the article treats another name, Qui est.

• Obj. 1: “God” is incommunicable, “who is” is communicable (what is is communicable to many), so not most proper. Aside: God to St Catherine, “I am who am, and you are she who is not”; in John’s Gospel the Lord says “I am” many times, and Peter in the denial says “I am not” three times: “I don’t know what it’s going to mean.”
• Obj. 2: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 3: the name Good manifests all the divine processions; being the universal beginning most belongs to God; so Good is most proper. He notes Dionysius takes names as signifying procession into creatures, so begins with Good, though it is not the first name we say of God.
• Obj. 3: every divine name implies relation to creatures since we know God only from creatures; “who is” implies none.
• Sed contra: Exodus 3, “Who is sent me to you.”

5. a. 11 body: three reasons (“for a threefold reason”) #

Point: “who is” is most proper for its meaning, its universality, and its consignification.

1. Meaning: it signifies not some form but to be itself; God’s esse is his essence, substance, nature, which belongs to nothing else (shown above); each thing is named from its form, and this is unique to the divine form.
2. Universality: other names are either less common, or if convertible add something by reason (Aristotle, beginning of Metaphysics IV: “one” adds undivided being, “good” desirable being), and so inform and determine it. But in this life our understanding cannot know the divine essence as it is in itself; whatever mode it determines falls short. So the less determined and more common a name, the more properly it is said of God, because God is infinite. Damascene: “who is” is the most principal of the names, comprehending the whole, “having to be itself as a certain infinite and undetermined pelagos of substance.” He dwells on pelagos: Greek for ocean (spells it out), almost a metaphor, “the endless ocean of the divine being.” Hence one of the five things said of God’s substance was infinity: unless we knew God infinite we could not appreciate this name, since we name as we know. St Thérèse of Lisieux seeing the ocean for the first time.
   • Aside on the choice in studies: know all things in general and the best things in particular (science of being as being, which also knows God; general natural philosophy, the eight books of Natural Hearing and three on the Soul, useful for the soul) vs. know lesser things in detail (the entomologist). Our mind’s limits force the choice.
   • He says at the house chapel “let us thank the one who is for all it is”: nothing else quite is. A student adds: God’s being is all the being there can be.
   • Any other name determines some way of the substance; “who is” determines no particular way, is indeterminate to all, hence names the infinite ocean of substance.
3. Consignification: it signifies to be in the present, which belongs most properly to God, whose being knows no past or future (Augustine, De Trinitate V). Christ: “before Abraham was, I am”: ungrammatical but more proper than “I was.”

• “Very difficult reasons”; they gain meaning the more you think of them.
• Aside from Metaphysics V, the chapter on “perfect”: three senses fitting creatures: (a) has all its parts (missing an arm = incomplete); (b) has the whole ability of its kind: Homer the complete poet (plots, multi-dimensional characters unlike the one-dimensional French dramatists, vivid words, arrows “striving to get into your insides,” similes giving calm in the whirlwind of passion, “as Hegel says,” tranquility to battle scenes), yet lacks Mozart’s or the doctor’s ability; (c) has reached its end. Then the sense in which God is perfect: lacking in nothing, not limited in any way; Averroes saw Aristotle speaks of God there, and Thomas cites him so. Fits the “infinite ocean.”

6. a. 11 ad 1: which is the proper name: “who is” or “God”? (“as regards that from which it is imposed”) #

Point: “a very subtle distinction.”

• As regards that from which the name is taken (to be; we name from the form, and only God’s substance is his to be), and its way of signifying (not particular, doesn’t “fence God in”), and its consignifying (eternal presence): “who is” is more proper than “God.”
• As regards that to which the name is imposed to signify: “God” is more proper, because imposed to signify the divine nature; more proper still the Tetragrammaton, imposed to signify the incommunicable divine substance, “if one can speak thus, as the singular one.”
• His comment: the very problem is stated “whether the name who is is most properly the name of God,” so one cannot raise it without using “God” for what one asks the name of; hence “God” must be most proper in some way, and “I am who am” in another, as Moses’ question shows. Same distinction as the earlier article on whether “God” names the substance or the operation (prev. lecture).
• Student: the reference-use of “God” is more common; the “from which” sense is more subtle, reached by some philosophers and by revelation. He agrees.
• Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles calls the identity of God’s substance and existence a “sublime truth.” Hilary of Poitiers, a philosopher before conversion, in his De Trinitate: hearing “I am who am” was for him a motive of credibility, as miracles might be for others.

7. a. 12 objections, sed contra, and the central question (“affirmative statements are not able to be formed”) #

Point: whether we can make affirmative propositions about God.

• Obj. 1: Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 2: negations about God are true, affirmations “don’t fit.”
• Obj. 2: Boethius, De Trinitate: a simple form cannot be a subject; God is most simple; every affirmation takes its subject as a subject.
• Obj. 3: every understanding that understands a thing other than it is, is false; God is without composition; every affirmative understanding understands with composition.
• His diagnosis: obj. 3 confuses the way we know with the way things are: “the central question of philosophy,” does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Aristotle no, Plato seems yes. Boethius in the Consolation, facing God’s eternal knowledge of what is not eternal, has Lady Wisdom introduce Aristotle as her true follower, though at the start he counted himself of the Academy and treated happiness in a Platonic order; he gives up Plato without saying so.
• Sed contra: nothing under faith can be false; some affirmatives are under faith (God is three and one, omnipotent). “Nice argument.”

8. a. 12 body: identity in thing, diversity in reason (“signify the same thing, secundum rem”) #

Point: in every true affirmation subject and predicate signify the same thing in reality but differ in reason.

1. Accidental predication: “man is white”: same in subject, other definitions.
2. Substantial: “man is an animal”: in the same suppositum are the sensible nature (animal) and the rational (man); same in subject, differ in definition.
3. Even “the same said of itself”: the subject is drawn to the suppositum, the predicate to the nature of the form in it; predicates stand formally, subjects materially (predicate like form, subject like matter).
4. The plurality of subject and predicate answers to this diversity by reason; the identity of the thing the intellect signifies by the composition.
5. God in himself is altogether one and simple (he notes: simple was the first attribute in the treatise on God’s substance, one the last; in the Compendium of Theology unity is treated under simplicity; here they are together). Our understanding knows him by diverse thoughts, unable to see him as he is, yet knows one and the same thing answers to all; it represents the plurality by subject and predicate, the unity by the composition.

• His preferred illustration, from the proem of SCG IV: all perfections of creatures descend from the one simple God; Heraclitus [ed.: transcript “Archytas”], the way up and the way down are the same. We start below with many perfections, hence many thoughts: God is the beginning of this, of that; saying “the beginning of this perfection is the beginning of that” signifies they are the same thing. The multiplicity is on the side of our thoughts from creatures, not attributed to God. (He mentions he would otherwise use the example of the circle.)
• Not false: we know a simple thing in a composed and multiple way; he knows composed and multiple things in a one and simple way; in neither case is the way of knowing the way things are, and the mind is not false because the two need not be the same.

9. a. 12 replies (“this adverb otherwise can determine the verb”) #

• Ad 1: affirmations are “unsuitable” insofar as no name belongs to God by its way of signifying: as said before, neither concrete nor abstract names fit perfectly; “God is good” because he really is good, “goodness itself” because good in a simple way, but not only goodness lest he seem merely that by which things are good; he is a goodness that is good and a good that is goodness. We cannot overcome the defect of our way of knowing.
• Ad 2: we cannot grasp subsisting simple forms as they are (angels too: “I’m going to be surprised when I finally see what my angel really is”); we grasp them in the way of composed things, subject and something in it, so we apprehend the simple form under the reason of a subject and attribute something to it.
• Ad 3, “the central question”: “otherwise” may modify “understands” on the side of the thing understood or of the one understanding. On the side of the thing: true, but does not apply, since our statement does not say God is composed but simple: we say and know in a composed way that God is simple. On the side of the knower: false, since the way of understanding is other than the way of being. Even for things below us: we understand material things immaterially, not as immaterial. Modern physics knows matter mathematically, and there is no matter in mathematics: Schrödinger, the modern atom “consists of no stuff at all”; the Communist materialists got concerned. Likewise we understand simple things above us in our composed way, not as composed; so the understanding forming a composition about God is not false.
• Aside: most philosophers have gone off this, implicitly assuming the way we know is the way things are. Spinoza: the order of thoughts and of things is the same. Hegel takes it from the German rationalists and makes being said of all things, our first and most confused thought, the being who said “I am who am”: “terrible,” but it follows necessarily from that assumption. Even Sherlock Holmes knows we must reason backwards.
• Simple example for students: you remember yesterday now; are you false because it isn’t now? We know the past now, and even talk about the future. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium (he thinks): memory contains past, present and future, making past and future present. Recording ends here.

His words #

• predication of the name vs. its meaning (signification): what a name is said of vs. what it means; the fundamental distinction of a. 10 ad 1.
• god by opinion: the sense in which idols and “the gods of the Gentiles” are called gods.
• equivocal: has more than one meaning, “period.”
• equivocal by chance / purely equivocal: many meanings, no connection; “pure” = nothing (no order) mixed in.
• equivocal by reason: many meanings with an order among them; the name he is “trying to revive”; gets the new name analogous [ed.: analogical], which strictly means likeness of ratios and is only one kind.
• largo modo: Aristotle’s broad use of “equivocal” including the analogous.
• new name / common name kept: the naming pattern where what adds something noteworthy gets a new name (person, man, analogous) and the other keeps the common name (thing, animal, equivocal).
• undergoing: his rendering of paskein / passio [ed.: passion, being acted upon], keeping a little of “suffering.”
• Qui est, “Who is,” “I am who am”: the name from Exodus 3.
• consignification: what a name signifies along with its meaning, here the present tense.
• pelagos: Greek “ocean”; Damascene’s “infinite ocean of substance.”
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; “Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics], fourth and fifth books.
• that from which the name is taken vs. that to which it is imposed to signify: the distinction of a. 11 ad 1.
• Tetragrammaton: the name imposed to signify the incommunicable divine substance “as the singular one.”
• secundum rem vs. by reason: same in the thing, differing in definition.
• suppositum: the individual substance in which the natures are.
• predicates formally, subjects materially: predicate as form, subject as matter.
• the central question of philosophy: does truth require that the way we know be the way things are?

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 10, ad 1–5 (with Psalm 95:5)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 11, whole article (with Exodus 3; Damascene; Augustine, De Trinitate V)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 12, whole article (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 2; Boethius, De Trinitate)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories (animal of the true and pictured animal; being not univocal, highest genera)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV beginning (being, one, good); Metaphysics V, chapter on “perfect”; Averroes’ commentary on it
• Aristotle, De Anima (paskein)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 3
• John’s Gospel (“I am”; Peter’s “I am not”; “before Abraham was, I am”)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (the “sublime truth”; proem of Book IV); Compendium of Theology
• Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate (autobiographical sketch)
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
• Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (inferred) (Beatrice and Benedick); Homer
• Bonaventure, Itinerarium (memory), tentatively
• Schrödinger; Spinoza; Hegel; St Thérèse of Lisieux; St Catherine

His questions #

• “Animal” said of dog and cat: is it said of diverse things, or does it mean diverse things? Said of diverse things, but with one meaning; confusing the two is the error of the objections.
• Does “odd number” mean the same in “three is odd” and “four is odd”? Yes; one is said truly, the other falsely, with the same meaning.
• What does equivocal by reason add to equivocal in general? An order among the meanings; hence it gets the new name “analogous.”
• Is a person something or nothing? Something; so “thing” divides into thing and person, and person gets the new name.
• Why must we know God is infinite before appreciating the name “who is”? Because we name things as we know them, and the name’s universality names the infinite ocean of substance.
• Which is more the proper name of God, “I am who am” or “God”? “Who is” as to that from which it is taken; “God” (and more so the Tetragrammaton) as to that to which it is imposed.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? No (Aristotle); the mind knowing a simple thing in a composed way is not false.
• Is our mind false in affirming one thought of God of another? No; the multiplicity is in our thoughts drawn from creatures, and the composition signifies their identity in God.
• Are you false remembering yesterday now, since it isn’t now? No; the way of knowing differs from the way of being.