Inward Procession, the Word, and Why the Word's Procession Is Called Generation (ST I q.27 a.1–2)

Orientation #

He picks up the article in mid-course (“Thomas says, if, however, someone diligently considers”) and refers back to “the treatise on the operation of God” and “the substance of God” as earlier in the order of learning; the second procession (the will’s) he says is “less known to us” and comes “later on,” and he ends having started the second article (“I don’t know if we get to it”). The previous class began Question 27 and Article 1 on whether procession can be said of God; the next treats articles 3 and 4 on the procession of love.

The class, in order #

1. Two goings-forward: ad extra and ad intra (“this most of all is clear in the understanding”) #

Point: the objectors’ mistake is to take “proceeding” only as going out to something outside; Thomas distinguishes a going-forward that stays within.

1. Every going-forward is according to some action.
2. An action tending to exterior matter yields a proceeding to the outside; an action that remains in the doer yields a going-forward ad intra.
3. Get as close to sense as you can: the image goes forward from my imagination but remains in it, unlike the chair or the fried egg that is perfected outside me.
4. Thomas jumps to the understanding, where this is “most of all clear” — more known to us than the going-forward in the heart, though it is there too: whoever understands, from the very fact that he understands, has something go forward within him, the conception (concept) of the thing understood, which the spoken word signifies — the “word of the heart” signified by the “word of the voice.”

• Aside: Thomas reads intelligere as intus legere, to read within: the eyes read the words outside, reason reads the meanings inside them.
• He flags the word concept: it shows the connection between calling the second person a Word and calling him the Son.
• Aside: the Arab philosophers called the first act of reason imaginatio per intellectum; image and thought are alike in being a likeness of the thing.

2. Digression: how words move (“moves the word nature”) #

Point: names for immaterial things begin as names for sensible things; a thinker who starts from the later meaning is “out of order.”

• Greek logos: first the spoken (later written) word, then the thought it signifies, then the reason that has thoughts. In English “word” has not moved as far; we borrowed Greek and Latin words and lost sight of the earlier senses — the difficulty of modern thinkers who do not go back to the Greek and Latin.
• Greek phusis / Latin natura: first birth, then the source of the baby within the mother, then any inner source of change, then matter and form, then what the thing is. English “birth” does not move that way, though nature keeps traces (prenatal, nativity, native).
• Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet has Friar Lawrence say a thing “revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse” — using “birth” for what the thing is, moving the word all the way as the Greek does.

3. God above all things: understand from the highest creatures (“according to the likeness of the highest creatures”) #

Point: what is said to be in God is understood not after the lowest creatures (bodies) but after the likeness of the highest — and even that likeness falls short.

• David of Dinant said God is first matter: Thomas calls this “most stupidly taught,” not as abuse but because nothing is further from God; to say God is a stone would be closer, stone having more perfection than first matter.
• Augustine’s De Trinitate spends long on the image of the Trinity in us for this reason: to ascend from what is more like God yet falls short.
• Fourth Lateran Council (he says 1215; Paul VI first called it to his attention): the likeness of the creature to God is never known without a greater unlikeness; the psalm’s “who is like God.” Story: a Saudi student objected to Shakespeare’s reason being called “godlike”; he answered with the Lateran text. Yet some likeness must be, since every agent makes something like itself.
• So procession in God is not local motion (the first meaning — going forward from bedroom, house, car, room), nor the action of a cause in an exterior effect (heat from the heater), but an emanation of an understandable word from the one saying it, remaining in him. This is what the Catholic faith lays down.

4. Replies to the first two objections: not local motion, not diverse (“the more it is one with that”) #

• To obj. 1 (proceeding means motion outward): the objection holds of going-forward as local motion or as action on exterior matter or effect; neither is in God (God needs no exterior matter — that too is his effect). Imagining and understanding are not local motions. Aside: Thomas uses processio in every article.
• To obj. 2 (what proceeds is diverse from its source): true of proceeding to the outside, which is other in substance; not of the inward, understandable going-forward — rather, the more perfect it is, the more one it is with its source.
• From the Compendium: the cat outside is like the father of my thought (it acts on my senses), my mind like the mother that conceives. But when reason thinks about itself (Shakespeare’s definition of reason), reason is more like the father of its own thought — closer to what is in God, where the Son is like the Father; image is the Latin word for likeness.
• Boundary: in me the being of reason and the being of my thought differ — I had reason before I had a thought of what reason is; reason has natural being, my definition has intelligible being. In God, to be and to understand are the same (treatise on God’s operation, “the order of learning”), so the thought of God is God; my definition of reason is not reason though very like it.
• Argument as read: the better we understand, the more the concept is inward to and one with the one understanding; the understanding in act becomes one with the thing understood, as Aristotle said in De Anima III; the divine understanding is in the summit of perfection; therefore the divine Word is perfectly one with its source, without diversity.
• Distinction: diversity (a distinction of substance, denied) vs. distinction (not denied).
• Aside: it makes him nervous that people think him holy for thinking about God; he simply can find nothing more interesting to think about.

5. Reply to the third objection: proceeding is included in the first beginning (“included in the notion of the first beginning”) #

Point: to proceed from another as extraneous and diverse is repugnant to a first beginning, but to proceed inwardly and without diversity is included in the notion of the first beginning — Thomas “turns the tail” of the objection.

• Comparison: as with atheists arguing from evil — Thomas says they should reason that evil requires an order of good, which is from God, so evil proves God.
• Reason: the house builder as beginning of the house includes the conception of his art; no thought of what he makes, no house builder. God is to creatures as artist to artificial things.
• Anticipation of the Holy Spirit (not yet in the text): reason makes nothing without the will, because knowledge is of opposites (Plato, Aristotle): grammar lets me say “I am your professor” or “I is your professor”; the medical art can heal or kill. The art is capable of either, so the will must determine “this rather than that.”

6. Recap before the second article (“You got some vague idea now”) #

• In his own teaching: when reason forms a definition of reason, there is some likeness to Father and Son (with many differences); if you also delight in and love the understanding — Augustine’s intellectum valde ama — you get a little image of the Trinity. For now it suffices that imagining and thinking are proceedings to the inside, and image or thought is a likeness of what is imagined or understood.
• Aside: the Mohammedans think we are back with the pre-Moses [unclear in recording].

7. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“cannot be called what generation”) #

• Obj. 1: generation is a change from not-being to being, supposes corruption, and has matter as subject; none of this is in God (“I am who am”). He notes Thomas starts from what we first call generation; we must “transcend the imagination,” as Boethius would say.
• Obj. 2: in God the going-forward is intelligible; in us such a going-forward is not called generation. He previews the solution: in God understanding is being; in us not — we always come to understand more.
• Obj. 3: everything generated receives being from its generator, and received being is not subsisting; the divine being subsists; so nothing generated has divine being. Joke: had the objector got to him first he would have lost the faith and closed the book.
• Sed contra: Psalm 2:7, “today I have generated you” — “beautiful text.”

8. The answer: two senses of generation; genus and difference (“hairs are not your sons”) #

Thomas asserts that the going-forward of the Word is called generation, then explains: “generation” is used

• (a) generally, of all generable and corruptible things: a change from non-being to being;
• (b) properly, of living things: origin of a living thing from a conjoined living beginning — properly nativity; and not everything of this sort, but only what proceeds by way of likeness (your hairs are not your sons — he puzzles over the Latin word in the text before settling on “hair”), and not any likeness (worms generated in animals have only a likeness in genus), but likeness in the nature of the same species: man from man, horse from horse.
• He says Thomas will not make this explicit here, but the move fits a general rule from logic: in a definition the genus is to the difference as matter to form (Porphyry) — wood can become chair, table or door, so the genus becomes this or that species by the difference.
  • Anaxagoras could not understand ability and imagined chair, table and door already in the wood.
  • Locke on triangle in general: three sides equal, two, or none — “all and none of these”; Berkeley concludes there are no general ideas. Neither British empiricist can understand the genus: a plane figure with three straight sides is neither equal nor unequal in act, both in ability; the difference (equilateral, isosceles, scalene) determines. Locke was right that it is all and none, but missed the distinction: all in ability, none in act.
• Application: God is pure act (early in the treatise on simplicity in the Summa Theologiae; in the Summa Contra Gentiles under unchangeableness, “more explicit… very good”). So God cannot be in a genus. Thomas in the commentary on the Sentences often says: when a name is carried from creatures to God, drop the genus (from matter, potential) and keep the difference (form, act — “something God-like,” the Philosopher says). Example: definition is “speech making known what a thing is” — no speech or making-known in God, only actually knowing what things are. Aristotle’s better example: science is the effect of demonstration, a syllogism making us know the cause and that it cannot be otherwise; God needs no syllogism, so drop the genus, keep the knowing.
• Aside: Father Boulay used to turn this on the students.

9. Why the divine procession is generation and the Word is Son (“in the beginning was the word”) #

• Living things that proceed from ability to act (men, animals) include both senses: there was a change from non-being of Jane [ed.: name unclear] to her being, and she proceeded from her parents as the same specific kind. A living thing whose life does not pass from ability to act excludes the first, generic notion altogether but can keep the notion proper to living things: one thing going forward from another in likeness of the same kind, without change from non-being.
• So the going-forward of the Word in God is generation: by way of understandable action (an operation of life), from a conjoined beginning, by reason of likeness (the concept is a likeness of the thing understood), and in the same nature — because in God to understand and to be are the same. Hence it is called generation and what proceeds is called Son; later the three names: Son, Word, Image (the same word used of imagination).
• “Sometimes it makes me nervous… anything more interesting to think about” and “It’s beautiful” are his flags of stress at this identity of thought and being in God.
• John’s prologue: logos was translated by its first meaning, “word,” though the Word of God is not a word in the first sense; a little divine providence, since it forces you to move the word from word to thought. Greek has the article: this is the thought, by antonomasia — among many reasons, the only thought that is a substance (creatures’ thoughts are accidents), and a perfect thought of what it is of. Monsignor Dionne said you can’t move the word — he was stuck with the first one.

10. Replies to the objections of article 2 (“not everything taken is received”) #

• To obj. 1: it concerns generation in the first sense, implying passage from ability to act — not in God, because God always actually understands himself, so always has this thought of himself; the Word never went from non-being to being, whereas my parents did not always conceive me. “You see that? It’s beautiful.”
• To obj. 2: it is only metaphorical to call my thoughts my sons, because in us to understand is not the substance of the one understanding, so the word going forward is not of the same nature; there is some likeness, which is why we say “concept,” “I conceived of this” — but he introduces his children and grandchildren, not his thoughts. In God, to understand is the very substance of the one understanding (treatise on the operations of God — which must therefore come before the Trinity in the order of learning), so the Word proceeds subsisting in the same nature and is properly generated and Son. Hence Scripture uses generation words of divine wisdom: conception and bringing forth, Proverbs 8:24 (“the abysses were not yet, and I was already conceived”).
• To obj. 3: not everything taken is received in a subject; otherwise one could not say the whole substance of a creature is taken from God, since of the whole substance there is no subject. What is generated in God takes being from the generator without its being received in matter or a subject (which would be repugnant to the subsistence of the divine being — back to the treatise on the substance of God); it is “taken” in that the one proceeding has the divine being, not as other than it. The perfection of the divine being contains both the Word proceeding and its beginning. “That’s a mouthful.”
• Closing aside: Charles de Koninck’s lecture gave a listener a week to think about; de Koninck: if you think you have understood everything, you have understood nothing. Bohr, at the “Bohr Festival” in Germany, took a graduate student Heisenberg’s objection for a walk and was more aware than his followers of not fully understanding the atom.

His words #

• going forward; his rendering of processio [ed.: procession]
• ad extra / ad intra; going forward to the outside vs. remaining inside
• intelligere as intus legere; to read within
• the what conception, concept; the thought formed in understanding, the “word of the heart” signified by the “word of the voice”
• logos; first word, then thought, then reason
• phusis / natura; first birth, moved through source, inner source of change, matter and form, what a thing is
• moving a word; carrying a name from an earlier sensible sense to a later one
• imaginatio per intellectum; the Arab philosophers’ name for the first act of reason (simple grasp)
• emanation; flowing out of an understandable word from the one saying it
• diversity vs. distinction; diversity implies distinction of substance, which is denied of the Word
• natural being / intelligible being; the being of my reason vs. the being of my definition of it
• turning the tail of an objection; making the objection’s premise prove the opposite
• nativity; generation proper to living things
• ability; [ed.: potency]; the genus is to the difference as matter (ability) is to form (act)
• drop the genus, keep the difference; the rule for names carried from creatures to God
• antonomasia; “the Word” as the thought, the only thought that is a substance
• Intellectum valde ama; Augustine, “love the understanding very much”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 27, a. 1, responsio and replies to objections 1-3 (inferred locus; he reads and translates)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 27, a. 2, objections, sed contra, responsio, replies (inferred locus; he reads and translates)
• Psalm 2:7 (sed contra)
• Proverbs 8:24 (ad 2)
• John 1:1 (“in the beginning was the word… the word was God”)
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence’s lines on “true birth” (quoted from memory)

Mentioned

• Thomas, Compendium (theologiae) (inferred), on father and mother of the concept
• Aristotle, De Anima III, understanding one with the thing understood
• Augustine, De Trinitate, image of the Trinity in us
• Fourth Lateran Council, likeness and greater unlikeness (he gives 1215)
• Thomas, commentary on the Sentences, dropping genus and keeping difference
• Summa Theologiae, simplicity of God; Summa Contra Gentiles, unchangeableness of God (God pure act)
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (inferred), definition of demonstration/science
• Porphyry, genus to difference as matter to form
• Boethius, “transcend the imagination”
• Heisenberg’s account of Bohr
• Matched by the text-matching system but not named in the transcript: Aquinas on Metaphysics VI, lectio 4 / handout “Note for Sixth Book of Wisdom, Reading 4,” p. 14. The transcript shows no reading of this text; treat as uncertain.

His questions #

• Since God is above all things, what is said in God should be understood according to the likeness of which creatures? The highest — the understanding, not bodies.
• Is the going-forward in God a local motion or the action of a cause on an exterior effect? Neither; it is an emanation of an understandable word that remains in the one saying it.
• Why is the thought of God God, while my thought of reason is not reason? Because in God to understand and to be are the same; in me reason has natural being and my definition intelligible being.
• Why can atheists’ argument from evil be turned around? Evil presupposes an order of good, which is from God — so evil shows God is.
• Are the three sides of the genus triangle equal or not? Neither in act; both in ability — the difference determines.
• Can God, being pure act, be in a genus? No; so a name carried to God drops the genus and keeps the difference.
• Which sense of generation is admitted in God? The more particular one, proper to living things: proceeding by likeness in the same specific nature, without change from non-being.
• Why was logos in John translated “word” rather than “thought”? It kept the first meaning, forcing the reader to move the word to “thought” — the thought by antonomasia.
• How can the Word “take” being from the Father without being received in a subject? As the whole substance of a creature is taken from God without a subject; the Word has the divine being, not as other from it.