Summa I, Q.29 a.3: Should the Name 'Person' Be Used of God? (Boethius, Hypostasis, and Where Names Come From)

Orientation #

He says the first two articles of q. 29 were read “before my vacation”: the definition of person (Boethius) and its comparison with things close to it, person in general. Today the second half of the question begins: whether the name belongs in divine things at all (a. 3); what it signifies there is the next article. The previous class worked through a. 2 on person, hypostasis, subsistence and essence, and the next takes up a. 4 on whether “person” signifies relation or substance in God.

The class, in order #

1. Where we are in the treatise on the Trinity (“according to the order of teaching”) #

The point: he places q. 29 in the whole treatise before reading.

• Treatise on the Trinity in three parts, because the persons are distinguished by relations of origin: procession (a going forward that remains within God; one is generation, the other more mysterious and “its name is not generation”), relations, persons.
• Persons: 15 of the 17 questions. Divided into absolute consideration (first 10) and comparative (last 5: “whether they’re equal or not”).
• First 10: four questions on persons in general, six on persons in particular: one on the Father, two on the Son, three on the Holy Spirit (“good Pythagorean way of looking at things”).
• Q. 29 (see the proemium): four articles that “obviously” fall into three: (i) meaning of the name person; (ii) a. 2 and a. 3 together, [as he puts it] number of persons and what follows on it; (iii) what belongs to our knowledge of persons. Then he re-cuts: aa. 1-2 = person in general (Boethius’s definition, comparison with neighbouring names), aa. 3-4 = person in divine things (whether the name belongs there, what it signifies there). “So obviously these four fall into two parts.”

2. The four objections (“Pretty convincing, right?”) #

The point: he reads and glosses each objection, and warns that heard alone they would persuade.

1. Dionysius, beginning of Divine Names: one should not dare say or think anything of the supersubstantial divinity beyond what Scripture divinely expresses. “Person” is in neither Testament. Aside on Dionysius: “a very great authority in the Middle Ages”, thought to be Paul’s convert at the Areopagus; Gregory the Great, he thinks, brought him back from Constantinople. His own first reaction: the name is not there but what it signifies is. “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.”
2. Boethius, book on the two natures: “person” is drawn from the masks representing men in comedies and tragedies, personando (sounding through, the concavity magnifying the voice, no microphones; the actor need not act with his face); Greek prosopa, placed before the eyes and hiding the thing. So only by metaphor of God. He flags it: this argument is “from what the word is taken from, rather than its meaning.” Example: “perfect” from factum, made; God is not made, yet perfect signifies the actuality a thing has after being made. A name can be taken from something other than what it means; “necessary to distinguish those two.”
3. Every person is a hypostasis; hypostasis (Boethius) signifies what is subject to accidents, and nothing stands under anything in God; Jerome: in the name hypostasis “poison is hidden under the honey.” His gloss: hypostasis and substantia are etymologically the same (under + stand), but Latin substantia also means the nature, what a thing is, which Greek hypostasis never does; so “three hypostases” translated “three substances” suggests three natures, heresy. “A problem in translation.” Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations: the most common mistake is mixing up the senses of a word, in theology as in philosophy.
4. Remove the definition, remove the defined. (a) “Reason” implies discursive knowledge, which God lacks (shown in the treatise on God’s operations). Shakespeare’s definition of reason: “ability for large discourse, looking before and after”; discourse means either going from one thing to another or coming to know the unknown through the known; neither is in God, “all things are open and naked to his eyes, at once”; Shakespeare’s definition thus fits. (b) “Individual”: the principle of individuation is matter, “your flesh and blood and bones is not my flesh and blood and bones”; God is immaterial. (c) “Substance” is taken from standing under accidents.

• “If all you ever heard was these four objections … I’d be totally on the false side.”

3. Sed contra: the Athanasian Creed (“Symbolon means what?”) #

The point: the authority is the Creed, called a symbol.

• Symbolon: etymologically “thrown together”; creeds are called symbols because things are put together.
• The Athanasian Creed: maybe not composed by Athanasius but from his teaching; in church documents it stands beside the Nicene-Constantinopolitan and Apostles’ Creeds; it makes explicit things the others do not, e.g. no before and after in God, the Father not before the Son.
• Student remark: that creed also carries the division of what is to be believed (Trinity, divinity, humanity). He agrees: the Nicene Creed divides the articles by Father, Son, Holy Spirit (creation attached to the Father, sanctification to the Holy Spirit); the Athanasian Creed and, he guesses, the creed of the Fourth Council divide by divinity and humanity of Christ, the division theology uses: divinity/Trinity in the prima pars, incarnation in the tertia; same in Thomas’s Compendium of Theology. Articles of faith divide into two or three, or both; more than three usually needs combining or subdividing.

4. The response: person names what is most perfect (“a very beautiful middle term”) #

The point: the argument for “person” of God, and why he finds it beautiful.

1. Person signifies what is most perfect in the whole of nature: something subsisting (existing by itself, not in another, as opposed to an accident; what exists by itself is superior to what exists only in another) in a rational nature (the nature that understands, highest: stones, plants, sensing animals, understanding nature).
2. Everything that is a perfection should be attributed to God, whose essence contains every perfection; any name borrowed from creatures for God must signify a perfection. Conclusion: it is suitable, “most suitable”, that “person” be said of God. The middle term between “person” and “God” is “most perfect.”

• Not in the same way as of creatures but a more excellent way: as the Fourth Lateran Council says, no likeness of creature to God without a greater unlikeness. As with the other names imposed from creatures, “shown above” in q. 13 (q. 12 how we know God, q. 13 how we name him).
• He compares this to John Paul II’s constant talk of the importance of person: Thomas “gives more clearly the exact reason.”
• Aside: he gives students only the objections on paper and lets them “stew” a day; Thomas’s students had no text to look down at; English editions that print “yes/no” after each question let readers skip the reasons; the Baltimore Catechism at least gave answers to remember and understand later, “now they don’t even give you the answers.”

5. Reply 1: what the name signifies is in Scripture (“per se ens”) #

The point: Scripture asserts of God in many ways what “person” signifies.

• Two things: God is most of all per se ens (a being by itself) and most perfectly understanding, the two parts of the definition that come up again in reply 4.
• If only Scripture’s words could be used of God, one could speak of God only in the languages Scripture was handed down in: we could not say “Our Father” but Pater Noster, or rather Greek, or Aramaic (where “Our Father” was in verse form). Aside: Thomas’s Adoro te devote, “the rhythmus”, is mostly trochaic, which Shakespeare uses for solemn things and unusual creatures, against the iambic we fall into in daily speech.
• The necessity of disputing with heretics compels finding new names for the ancient faith; this newness is not the “profane newness of voices” Paul says to avoid, because not discordant from the sense of Scripture. His example: saying there is transsignification but not transubstantiation in the Eucharist is a profane newness; “transubstantiation” is not in Scripture either, but Christ’s words indicate a change of substance.

6. Reply 2: that from which a name is taken vs. that to which it is applied (“impositio nominis”) #

The point: the distinction he flagged in obj. 2, now made by Thomas.

• Impositum, “placed upon”; impositio nominis; English “put a label upon.” Thomas distinguishes that from which the name is taken and that to which it is applied (its meaning). Examples: Thomas’s (perhaps false) etymology lapis from laedit pedem, hurts the foot: that is what it is taken from, not what it means; “philosophy”: love of wisdom is what the name is taken from, but for Aristotle and Plato the word names the knowledge the love of wisdom pursues. Meaning and etymology need not coincide; you must know the meaning to see the connection. “A common point in Thomas.”
• Comedies and tragedies present famous men, so “person” was imposed to signify someone having dignity (“persons” in churches are those with dignity); some define person as a hypostasis distinguished by a property pertaining to dignity. Since subsisting in a rational nature is of great dignity, every such individual is a person; the dignity of the divine nature exceeds all, so “most of all to God belongs the name person.” Aside: Shakespeare’s “worthies”; compared to God “I’m worthless.” Thomas “turns the table”: look at that to which the name is applied and it belongs most to God, least to us.

7. Reply 3: hypostasis, substantia, and “understand” (“what stands under the accidents”) #

The point: the same distinction for “hypostasis”, plus a long digression on the English word.

• Hypostasis does not belong to God as regards its imposition (standing under accidents) but as regards what it signifies, a subsisting thing (cf. subsistence in the previous article): existing by itself, which belongs most to God.
• Jerome: before its signification was plene nota among the Latins, heretics used the name to make the simple confess many essences or natures as they confessed many hypostases, because Latin substantia is commonly taken for the nature of a thing. Greeks saying three hypostases give no occasion for that error; Latins saying three substances/persons do.
• Digression: the English word with the same etymology is “understand.” To understand is to know what stands under the accidents, the substance, what a thing is, the proper object of reason; only understanding knows substance, the senses know nothing more fundamental than quantity. Descartes identifies extension with substance, a problem running through modern philosophy; Bertrand Russell: the accidents of Mr Smith no more need a substance than the earth needs an elephant to rest on; if so, “what do you mean by substances?” Aristotle, Metaphysics IV: wisdom is about being as being, being is said in many ways, the first sense is substance, so wisdom is chiefly about substance, which connects understanding and its subject. “Understand” is better than Greek nous and, in some ways, than intelligere (to read within, intus). Shakespeare puns on “understanding.” To understand a word is to know what stands under it: he hears the Chinese or Japanese announcement on the aeroplane, hears the sounds, does not know what stands under them.

8. Reply 4: reason, individual, substance; Richard of St Victor (“existere per se”) #

The point: each part of Boethius’s definition is applied to God under a stretched or corrected sense.

• Reason: taken not as implying discourse but generally for intellectual nature. Not mere ad hoc defence of Boethius: Aristotle too follows common speech, where imagining and thinking are used one for the other (“I imagine so-and-so will win the election”; Shakespeare’s Henry V, filling out with imagination two or three men whacking sticks as a battle, “filling yourself with your thoughts”); Aristotle’s “understandable matter” means imaginable matter, a bigger stretch than ratio for intellectus. Shakespeare’s definition: “looking” carries understanding, so drop discourse and keep understanding; the word is made equivocal in a more common sense. “If I have reason, I have an ability to understand … Sounds reasonable. Is it understandable too?”
• Individual: not as matter is the principle of individuation, but as implying incommunicability; he holds this for Richard of St Victor.
• Substance: as signifying existere per se, not standing under; even a dog’s or cat’s substance exists per se, not in another.
• Some say Boethius’s definition does not fit divine persons, so Richard of St Victor corrects it: person in God is “an incommunicable existence of the divine nature.” Thomas does not say one must do this, but it helps make the definition applicable; “individual” in the definition does not mean the Father’s matter differs from the Son’s (“maybe the Mormons believe this”), but something incommunicable. Aside: Hugo and Richard of St Victor; he was christened Hugo Duane, his confirmation name is Victor, his brother is Richard; switched names are common (his mother Mary Gertrude called Gertrude).
• Student question: why existere per se rather than esse, since reply 1 said per se ens? Answer: existere per se = through itself, as opposed to in another like an accident; “a thing to which it belongs to exist per se” was part of the definition of substance, so “exists per se” is not the genus (“thing”) but the difference that completes it. If what completes substance is standing under accidents, it cannot be said of God; if it is existing by itself, it belongs most to God, since he exists without all things and they cannot without him. The student: “it’s sort of beyond me, but … good enough is that you said so.”

His words #

• going forward: procession; the second procession has “not really a name, but its name is not generation.”
• symbolon: “thrown together”; a creed.
• “something subsisting”: what exists by itself, not in another, as opposed to an accident.
• rational nature: “the nature that understands.”
• middle term: “most perfect,” between person and God.
• per se ens / perfectissime intelligens: being by itself / most perfectly understanding (reply 1).
• impositio nominis: the placing of a name upon a thing; “that from which the name is taken” vs. “that to which it is applied” (its meaning).
• hypostasis / substantia: both etymologically “under-stand”; only the Latin also means the nature of a thing.
• understand: to know what stands under the accidents, or under a word.
• intelligere: “to read within” (intus).
• plene nota: fully known (Jerome).
• profane newness of voices: Paul’s warning; his instance, “transsignification.”
• discourse: going from one thing to another, or knowing the unknown through the known.
• equivocal “by reason”: dropping what is private to the first meaning, keeping what is common.
• incommunicability: what “individual” implies when said of God.
• existere per se: to exist by itself; the difference completing the definition of substance.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 29, a. 3, whole article (objections, sed contra, response, replies 1-4), translated from the Latin. Mentioned
• ST I, q. 29, proemium (the division of the four articles).
• ST I, qq. 12-13 (knowing and naming God), “shown above.”
• Treatise on God’s operations, that God does not know discursively (locus not given).
• Dionysius, Divine Names, beginning (obj. 1).
• Boethius, book on the two natures (obj. 2); his definition of person (obj. 4).
• Jerome, poison under honey (obj. 3).
• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations (mixing senses of a word); Metaphysics IV (“fourth book of wisdom”).
• Athanasian Creed; Nicene-Constantinopolitan and Apostles’ Creeds; creed of “the Fourth Council”; Fourth Lateran Council on likeness/unlikeness.
• Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology.
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote.
• Richard of St Victor, definition of person; Hugo of St Victor.
• Shakespeare: definition of reason (“large discourse, looking before and after”), Henry V, the “worthies,” puns on “understanding.”
• Bertrand Russell (elephant remark); Descartes; John Paul II on person.

His questions #

• The treatise on the Trinity is divided into what three parts? Procession, relations, persons, because the persons are distinguished by relations of origin.
• Symbolon means what? Thrown together; a creed.
• Something subsisting means what, as opposed to what? Existing by itself, not in another, as opposed to an accident.
• What is the middle term between person and God? What is most perfect: something subsisting in an understanding nature.
• So are you convinced now that the name person should be used of God? Yes; “every time we read an article, Thomas had to change my mind.”
• The name substance is commonly taken among us for what? The nature of the thing, what it is.
• What English word is etymologically the same as substantia and hypostasis? Understand.
• What does it mean to understand a word? To know what stands under the word.
• Why existere per se rather than esse (student)? Because “exists by itself” is the difference completing the definition of substance, and belongs most of all to God.