Summa I, Q. 28, Art. 1: Are There Real Relations in God? Relations of Reason and the Sabellian Heresy

Orientation #

He says that last time, the first meeting, they finished question 27 on the processions (prev. lecture), and that today is question 28 on the relations, the remaining fifteen questions being on the persons. He ends with the words “Now the second article,” which he does not begin. The previous class treated whether the procession of love is a generation; the next treats a. 2, whether relation in God is the divine essence.

The class, in order #

1. Opening aside: Peter of Tarentaise (“reply to 108 questions”) #

He has just reread Thomas’s Compendium of Theology and looked at a minor work in the Marietti edition: Thomas’s reply to 108 questions sent by the Master General of the Dominicans, drawn from a critic of Peter of Tarentaise [ed.: transcript “Peter of Tarente”; name inferred] and his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard; Thomas is generally favourable to Peter. Peter became Innocent V, the first Dominican pope, reigning about half a year; his dates (c. 1225-1276) almost match Thomas’s (d. 1274). He gave the eulogy on St. Bonaventure at the council: a Dominican praising a Franciscan, illustrating the friendship of the two orders, who visited each other for refreshment on each other’s feasts.

2. Division of the treatise and recap of q. 27 (“according to the order of teaching”) #

Point: the treatise on the Trinity has three parts because the persons are distinguished by relations of origin.

1. The persons are distinguished by relations of origin, one proceeding from another.
2. So in the order of teaching (and of learning) one must treat the processions first, then the relations based on them, then the persons.
3. Hence of the 17 questions: q. 27 on procession (done last time), q. 28 on relations (today), fifteen on the persons. Recap of q. 27’s five articles, which he divides into three: (a) a. 1, whether there is a going forward in God; (b) aa. 2-4, what it is: one going forward is a conceiving, giving birth, generation (a. 2); there is another besides (a. 3); it is not a generation, not producing a son, “more like a breathing” (a. 4); (c) a. 5, how many: only two, because the going forward must be by an activity remaining within the doer, and there are only two, God understanding himself and God loving himself. Since God’s understanding and loving are his being, God as understood in himself is God and God as loved in himself is God.

3. Preview of the four articles of q. 28 (“this chair is on my right”) #

Point: everything turns on whether the relations are real, because otherwise the distinction of persons is only of reason.

• Aristotle and Avicenna taught that some relations are not real but of reason; Thomas brought their teaching together and distinguished several kinds. Example: this chair is on my right — no real relation in the chair.
• If the relations in God were not real, the distinction of Father, Son and Holy Spirit would be a distinction of reason, not of things: the heresy of Sabellius, for whom these are three names of one person (Father as God, second person as become man, Holy Spirit as sanctifying us).
• “Real” comes from the word for thing. His question to people: are Father, Son, Holy Spirit one thing or three things? Answer reached: it depends on what “thing” means — three things if relation, one thing if the substance; both, without contradiction, because “thing” has more than one meaning, as Aristotle first pointed out (going back to the Categories).
• a. 2: whether the relations are the very divine essence or something attached extrinsically; answer, the very essence. Compared to the divine substance, Father and God are not really distinct (only in thought); compared to each other, Father and Son are really distinct. “Interesting, huh?”
• a. 3: whether there can be many relations in God really distinct from each other. a. 4: their number, which turns out to be four. He plants a question to look ahead to: if four relations, why only three persons? Answer deferred to the persons: the persons are constituted by these relations.

4. The four objections and the sed contra (“all are changed into substance”) #

Obj. 1 (Boethius, book on the Trinity): when the predicaments are turned to divine predication, all change into substance — e.g. Aristotle distinguishes substance from quality, and my knowledge of geometry is other than what I am, but in God it is not an accident but his substance — “but ad aliquid altogether cannot be said”; whatever is really in God can be said of him; so relation is not really in God. He calls the text “kind of strange” and says the objection misunderstands it. Aside: he saw in a bookstore King Alfred the Great’s translation of Boethius, Saxon and English facing; he admires Alfred. Obj. 2 (Boethius, same book): the relation of Father to Son and of both to the Holy Spirit is like that of the same to the same. This is a relation of reason: when I say Socrates is Socrates, the sameness of Socrates to Socrates is no relation, since there are not two things there; every real relation requires two extremes. So the divine relations are of reason only. His preview of the reply: the objection exaggerates the likeness; it is like a thing to itself only in that there is one God, one substance — “God from God, light from light, not another God.” Plato in the Sophist: likeness is a slippery thing; important for knowing, and for being deceived; the task is to see exactly in which way things are alike. Obj. 3: fatherhood is a relation of a beginning; but God as beginning of creatures implies no real relation, only of reason. This is the kind Aristotle treats in the fifth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V]: the knower is really related to the known, but the known is related to the knower only because the knower is related to it; God is the measure of things, they are really related to him, not he to them. Question he leaves for the reply: what is the difference between “the Father is the beginning of the Son” and “God is the beginning of creatures,” such that one is a real relation and the other not? Obj. 4: divine generation is by the going forward of the understandable word; relations following on the operation of understanding are of reason (what we study in logic, genus and species); so fatherhood and sonhood are of reason only. He notes that objections 2, 3 and 4 touch three different kinds of relation of reason. Sed contra: Father is said only by fatherhood, Son by sonhood; if these are not really in God, God is not really Father of the Son but only in understanding: the Sabellian heresy (“got an adjective there”).

5. Respondeo (i): “towards something,” not “relation” (“I hate this other word”) #

Point: some relations are really in God — not those to creatures, but others.

• Thomas’s Latin ad aliquid translates Aristotle’s category pros ti exactly; Aristotle uses no abstract word “relation” but the concrete “towards something,” and so should translations.
• St. John’s Greek: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was [pros] God”; the Latin apud is less clear than the logicians’ pros; the Greek gives weight to what Augustine, Hilary, Boethius, Thomas and the Church say: the persons are distinguished by being towards someone.
• He hates the word “relationship” (heard in sermons), “an abstraction of an abstraction.” “Relation between us” gives a false idea, as if there were a third thing between me and my father, like this water container between you and me. Clearer: my father is something towards me, a father to me; I am towards him a son; being a father and being a son are not the same thing. So too I am towards you a teacher, you towards me a student; four is to two double, two is to four half, two is to six a third.
• “Relations are one of the most difficult things in the world to understand”; it takes a long time to master their subtleties.

6. Respondeo (ii): only in relatives is there a distinction of real and of reason (“what a thing is and its size”) #

Point: the other genera signify something inhering; relatives signify only a respect toward another, and that respect may or may not be in the nature of things.

• Quantity vs. quality: Aristotle names the categories concretely (ti estin, how much, how it is). The man in the street cannot answer “is the substance of a thing the same as its quantity?” but can answer “is what a dog is the same as its size?” — you and I have the same what-it-is but not the same size; John of the Cross is what a man is, without his taller brother’s size. Quantity is the size of a thing, quality how it is (healthy or sick, wise or foolish).
• Respect in the very nature of things, hence necessarily real: Thomas’s example from ancient science, the heavy body’s inclination to its place, the middle of the universe.
• Respect only in reason’s grasp comparing one to another: man to animal as species to genus — the relations studied in logic. Am I a subject or predicate in reality? Only in reason; in “Berquist is Berquist” I am both. “The dog is a quadruped” and “the dog is an animal,” “three is a number” and “three is an odd number”: one is more specific than the other, but that relation is not in things, since the universal is only in reason. Boethius on Porphyry: the thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood.
• Another kind of relation of reason: today is before tomorrow, because tomorrow does not exist; a relation of what exists to what does not, or between two non-existents (tomorrow before the day after), is not real. “Kind of strange”: the first place we think of before and after is not a real relation.

7. Respondeo (iii): procession in identity of nature gives real relations (“God is love”) #

1. When something goes forward from a beginning of the same nature, both the one going forward and that from which it goes are in the same order.
2. Therefore they have real respects to each other.
3. The goings forward in God are in identity of nature — shown earlier (treatise on God’s understanding): God’s understanding is God’s being, and God’s loving is God, so St. John can say “God is love.” Contrast: I cannot say “I am understanding” or “I am love”; I am a man who understands a few things; for me to be is not to understand or to love. God as understood has being in God’s understanding, which is his being, therefore is God; likewise God as loved. “An amazing thing.”
4. Conclusion: the relations taken according to these goings forward are real relations. “Something you can chew upon for a while.” Image in us: when my reason defines itself as “the ability for large discourse, looking before and after,” the definition proceeds from reason’s thought of itself, but reason’s understanding of what reason is is not the being of reason, so it is unlike the Trinity, though with a likeness. Comparison: I and my father are really related because I proceed from him in the same nature — the same specifically, not numerically. Asides: the first thing my reason thought about was not what reason is. His kindergarten teacher was Sister Aquinas (“some deep meaning”); a student corrects him: your first teacher was your mother and dad, then grandma. “That’s true.”

8. Reply to obj. 1 (“not an accident of God”) #

Boethius means ad aliquid is not said of God according to the proper notion of relation as existing-in (relation is not taken by comparison to its subject but to another); he does not exclude relation from God but its being predicated by way of existing within; it is predicated by way of having itself toward another. It is not an accident of God; these relations will be the same as God’s substance.

9. Reply to obj. 2: sameness and the danger of likeness (“likeness is a slippery thing”) #

• “Same” taken simply is a relation of reason: it can only be considered in an order reason introduces of a thing to itself under two considerations. It is otherwise when things are the same not in number but in genus or species.
• Boethius assimilates the divine relations to identity not in all respects, but only in this: through them the substance is not diversified, as neither through identity. “God from God, light from light” is not a different God.
• Distinction: Socrates is Socrates (numerically the same) vs. Socrates and Plato are the same (same in kind). Father and Son are not merely the same kind of thing; they are the same thing substantially, numerically — yet not the same person, since persons are distinguished by relations, and fatherhood and sonhood are not the same relation. Unlikeness: subject-Socrates and predicate-Socrates are not really related, Father and Son are.
• Dialectic’s four tools (reasoning from probable opinions): selecting probable premises; distinguishing meanings of words; difference; likeness. He was struck that Aristotle puts difference before likeness — one reason: likeness deceives when you miss the difference.
• Muslims think Christians hold three gods and are confused; no, one God. In the Summa the last question on the substance of God is on the unity of God, so one keeps in mind before the Trinity that the distinction of persons gives rise to no more than one God.
• Imagination is the great cause of deception because it delights in likenesses and ignores differences; hence the poet’s favourite figure is metaphor, then simile.

10. Reply to obj. 3: God and creatures, measure and measured (“non est similis ratio”) #

• The creature proceeds from God in diversity of nature; God is outside the whole order of creatures; he has relation to creatures not from his nature, since he produces them not by necessity of nature but through understanding and will. So no real relation in God to creatures, but a real relation in creatures to God, which are contained under the divine order and by nature depend on God. The divine processions are in the same nature; therefore non est similis ratio (“I like that”). The word “beginning” in both cases tempted the objector; Thomas sees the difference.
• Aristotle’s example: my seeing you is really related to you and depends on you; your being seen by me is not a real relation in you, though I cannot speak of my seeing without saying you are seen. My knowing what the moon is relates me to the moon; the moon is not related to me by being known. Thomas: God to creatures is as known to knower; creatures to God as knower to known. Contrast with the reply to obj. 4: genus to species is of reason on both sides; here one side is real, the other not.
• Measure: “you are sitting” is true because you sit, not vice versa; the measure does not depend on the measured, the measured on the measure. Plato in his last work, the Laws: not Protagoras’s “man is the measure of all things,” but God is the measure; the creature is related to God as measured to measure, the measure only by reason.
• Thomas, in the De Trinitate, De Potentia and elsewhere, says two kinds of relation of reason are explicit in Aristotle and Avicenna adds a couple; Thomas brings them together; at least three of the four kinds appear in these objections. Aside: Avicenna, always quoted by Thomas: God alone is liberal, getting nothing from his giving — pure generosity.

11. Reply to obj. 4 and summing up (“I never had a universal in my class”) #

• Relations following on understanding that lie between things understood are of reason, introduced by reason between two things understood. But the relation between the word proceeding intellectually and that from which it proceeds is real, because the understanding is itself a thing, really compared to what proceeds from it, as a bodily thing to what proceeds from it bodily. So the definition of reason proceeding from my reason is really related to it; but “animal” to dog, cat, horse, elephant is universal to universals, and nothing outside the mind is universal.
• His old class list: John, Mary — never “man, woman, boy, girl”; never a universal sitting in class. Universality happens to things only in the mind, with perhaps a remote foundation outside. Other philosophers thought the way we know must be the way things are: Platonists put universals outside the mind (man himself, dog himself); skeptics, seeing no universals out there, called our knowledge false. Aristotle: nothing false in considering what is common to you two, unless I say the common exists apart from you.
• Relations of reason of this kind: being subject or predicate, middle, minor or major term. But an image proceeding from my imagination, or a thought from my mind, is one thing proceeding from another, a real relation.
• Summary: the second, third and fourth objections reason from different kinds of relation of reason and mix them up with the real relation of Father to Son and the other real relations in God. “Now the second article.”

His words #

• going forward; his rendering of processio [ed.: procession]
• breathing; the second going forward, not a generation [ed.: spiration]
• real; from the word for thing, so a real distinction is a distinction of things
• relation of reason; a respect that is only in reason’s grasp comparing one to another, not in the nature of things
• towards something (ad aliquid, pros ti); Aristotle’s concrete name for the category, preferred to the abstract “relation”
• relationship; rejected as “an abstraction of an abstraction”
• fifth book of Wisdom; his name for the work [ed.: Metaphysics V]
• what a thing is / how much / how it is; his concrete rendering of substance, quantity, quality
• identity of nature; the goings forward in God are within one nature, because God’s understanding and loving are his being
• large discourse, looking before and after; his definition of reason
• same; taken simply, a relation of reason; taken in genus or species, a relation between two things
• tools of dialectic; selecting probable premises, distinguishing meanings, difference, likeness
• measure / measured; the measured depends on the measure, not vice versa
• non est similis ratio; the reason is not alike (God-to-creature vs. Father-to-Son)
• liberal; Avicenna’s term for God alone, who gets nothing from giving

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 28, a. 1: prologue of the question, four objections, sed contra, response, four replies (read and translated).
• Boethius, De Trinitate (two passages, as quoted in objections 1 and 2). Mentioned
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 27 (recap of its five articles); q. 28, aa. 2-4 (previewed); the last question on the substance of God, on the unity of God.
• Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology; reply to 108 questions of the Master General (Marietti edition); De Trinitate; De Potentia (on kinds of relation of reason).
• Peter of Tarentaise, commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (inferred name).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“fifth book of Wisdom”), on knower and known; Categories (on “thing”, the categories, truth of “you are sitting”); Topics (inferred), the four tools of dialectic.
• Avicenna, on relations of reason and on God alone being liberal.
• Plato, Sophist (likeness is slippery); Laws (God, not man, the measure of all things).
• Boethius, commentary on Porphyry (singular when sensed, universal when understood).
• John 1:1; Nicene Creed, “God from God, light from light.”

His questions #

• Are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit one thing or three things? Both: three if “thing” means relation, one if it means the substance; no contradiction, since “thing” has more than one meaning.
• If the relations in God were not real, what heresy would you be back in? Sabellius’s: three names for one person.
• If there are four relations, why are there only three persons? Left open; to be answered when the persons are treated, since persons are constituted by relations.
• Is the sameness of Socrates to Socrates a relation? No, a relation of reason only; a real relation needs two extremes.
• Is there something between me and my father, or is he something towards me? He is a father towards me and I a son towards him; no third thing between.
• Is what a dog is and the size of a dog the same thing? No; two can share the same what-it-is without the same size.
• Is reason’s understanding of what reason is the being of reason? No; so our image of the Trinity is unlike it, though with a likeness.
• Is it true that you are sitting because of my statement, or is my statement true because you are sitting? The statement is true because you are sitting; the measured depends on the measure.
• Is the moon related to me by being known by me? No; I am really related to the moon, not it to me.
• What is the difference between “the Father is the beginning of the Son” and “God is the beginning of creatures”? The Son proceeds in the same nature, creatures in diversity of nature and by God’s will; non est similis ratio.