Summa I, Q. 30, a. 1: Are There Many Persons in God? Subsistent Relations, and Numbering vs. Numbered Number

Orientation #

He recalls that in the four questions on the persons in general “last time we learned what in general a person is” and how the name is used of God, and that the previous article showed person to signify relation “as a thing subsisting in the divine nature” (prev. lecture). Next he says Thomas will “narrow this down” to three rather than four in the next article, and that the equality of the persons returns in the comparative questions (he names q. 42) and in the fourth question on our knowledge (q. 32). The previous class treated q. 29 a. 4 on whether “person” signifies relation or substance; the next covers the objections and replies on why there are exactly three persons.

The class, in order #

1. Proemium to question thirty (“four things are asked”) #

Point: Thomas now moves from person in general to the plurality of persons, in four articles.

• (1) whether there are many persons “in divinis” (he glosses: “in divine things”); (2) how many — really the question of three or four, “because there are four relations” and the persons are subsistent relations; (3) what the numerical terms signify in God; (4) the community of the name “person”: if said of many, is it like “man” said of us, or “animal” said of dog, cat and horse?
• Student asks whether “in divinis” has significance: he says it is colloquial, literally “in divine things”; in English one would more naturally say “in God”.

2. The four objections (“that’s a nice objection”) #

Point: he reads the four objections, marking which he thinks strong.

1. Person is “an individual substance of a reasonable (or intellectual) nature”; many persons would mean many substances — “this poison that Jerome spoke of”, heretical, “like saying there’s three natures”.
2. Absolute properties (simple, good, perfect, knowing) make no distinction of persons even in us — “does my geometry and my logic [make] two persons?” — much less then a plurality of relations; but in God the only plurality is of relations. He flags it: “That’s a nice objection.”
3. Boethius: that is truly one in which there is no number; plurality implies number. So Boethius must be interpreted, “like he does Augustine”.
4. Where there is number there is whole and part (two is part of three); this is repugnant to divine simplicity. Aside: in the Sentences Thomas has a question whether there is whole or part in God; in the Summa composing parts are excluded in the question on simplicity, subject parts in the question on unity — so “there’s no parts in God” is already established.

3. Sed contra and the response (“many things subsisting in the divine nature”) #

Point: the response is a short syllogism from what has already been shown.

• Sed contra: the Athanasian Creed (“other is the person of the Father…”) — perhaps not written by Athanasius but from his teaching and the Church’s tradition; his text cites Denzinger.
• Argument: (1) “person” in God signifies a relation as a thing subsisting in the divine nature (last article; “relation per modum substantiae” is the other way of saying it); (2) there are many real relations in God (shown above; he notes Thomas does not yet face four relations vs. three persons); so (3) there are many things subsisting in the divine nature, which is to be many persons. “Subsists” = exists by itself, not in another as in a subject.
• Contrast: a human person is a subsisting thing in human nature but is not a relation; in God it is.

4. Reply 1: substance is equivocal (“substance is not laid down in the definition”) #

Point: the objection takes “substance” in the wrong of its two senses.

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“fifth book of wisdom”): substance means (a) the individual subsisting in a nature, (b) the nature, what it is. The definition takes (a), “clear from the fact that there is added individua”. The Greek hypostasis (hypo = under, stasis = stands) and Latin suppositum (placed under) are etymologically alike and mean only sense (a); substantia can mean both, hence the equivocation.
• Parallel from logic: a genus is “said with one meaning of many things of different kinds, signifying what each is”; “many” is opposed both to few and to one. Number is a genus of only two species (odd and even), so one who objects “I only got two” has taken the wrong sense. Moral: a definition is made of words, and most words have more than one meaning; Thomas makes you concentrate on each word.
• The Greeks say three hypostases; we keep the word in “hypostatic union”. We do not say three substances “lest you understand in the other sense”, three natures.
• Aside: the “Hans article” [name unclear in recording] on the grace of Mary being “of the hypostatic order” as Mother of God and mediatrix; other saints have enough grace to save others, we not even enough to save ourselves — cf. the oil lamps (“maybe we don’t have enough for you”). A student links it to St Alphonsus; he says he must look it up.
• Aside: the same equivocation with “end”: “happiness is the end of human life; the end of human life is death; therefore happiness is death” — so he says “end or purpose or goal” to students.

5. Reply 2: subsistence and real distinction (“they both subsist and are really distinguished”) #

Point: many persons require things that are both subsistent and really distinct; only the divine relations have both.

• Absolute (in Thomas the opposite of relativum) properties in God — goodness, wisdom, love — are not opposed to each other, hence not really distinguished (only by reason; “reality” from res, thing).
• Background: Aristotle, Categories (ch. 12, “the first book in logic… from the father of logic”) and Metaphysics V, four kinds of opposites: contradictories (being/non-being), having and lacking (sight/blindness), contraries (virtue/vice), relatives (father/son, double/half). Apart from material distinction, distinction is by some opposition. The continuous has part outside part, so two circles are distinguished by one being here, the other there; without body, only opposites distinguish. Goodness and wisdom are neither contradictories, nor lack, nor contraries, nor toward each other; father is father of the son.
• The three cases: divine absolute properties subsist but are not really distinct; our absolute properties (his knowledge and love, “whiteness and sweetness”) are really distinct but do not subsist; divine relative properties both subsist (each the same thing as God) and are really distinct (opposed) — hence many persons. He stresses: “you got to have both of these things”.
• In us, the relation of father to son is really distinct but not subsistent, and it follows on a prior absolute distinction: “I’m a different person than you because my flesh and blood and bone is cut off from your flesh”; father and son are distinct persons by something absolute, and because this absolute generated that, the relation follows.
• Student: are souls distinct too? Example of Siamese twins, one flesh but two persons, two souls. His reply through Thomas on separated souls: they seem like angels, distinguishable only by opposites; but “my soul fits my body”, God would not create my soul unless my parents made a body it fits; distinction still goes back to matter. Hence no transmigration — the Pythagoras story (stop beating the dog, “the soul of my friend”). Aristotle’s argument: the body is composed of tools, and the doctor cannot use the carpenter’s tools; as this kind of soul only in this kind of body, so this individual soul proportional to this individual body. On twins: Aristotle would say some principal organs are multiplied, two bodies partly joined.
• Parallels: Physics II (“second book of Natural Hearing”), matter and form are relative, so one science considers both; Politics, a form of government must fit this people with these customs — “something the State Department might see”. Joke: you recognise a friend’s soul by the “back-assward” way his mind works.

6. Aside: pros ti, ad aliquid, and St John (“towards something”) #

Point: Aristotle’s concrete name for the category says better what a relative is than “relation”.

• Aristotle has no abstract word: pros ti, in Albert ad aliquid, “towards something/another”; “relation” or “relationship” is an abstraction. Strictly there is no relation “between” him and his son: “I am to him a father, and he is towards me a son.”
• John 1: we translate “with God”, but the Greek says pros, towards — a student of Aristotle would see the distinction of the Word from the one toward whom he is as a distinction by relative opposition. He says he read it himself without anyone pointing it out, though someone must have seen it; his old teacher [name garbled; possibly De Koninck (inferred)] spoke of pros ti rather than “relation”. “That’s important.”

7. Reply 3: Boethius on number (“a plurality of relations”) #

Point: God’s supreme unity and simplicity exclude every plurality of things said absolutely, i.e. every real plurality, but not a plurality of relations, which are said ad alterum and imply no composition in the thing, as Boethius himself teaches in the same book.

• The Father is this toward the Son, the Son that toward the Father; opposed and distinct, but nothing put together.
• Student: is the Holy Spirit “the relationship between” Father and Son? No: Thomas will insist Father and Son are both toward the Holy Spirit and it toward them; but we lack creaturely names for those relations as we have “father” and “son”.

8. Reply 4: numbering number and numbered number (“what kind of number you’re dealing with”) #

Point: whole and part belong to the abstract number, which is only in the mind; in the numbered number in God there is no part, since the Father is as much as the whole Trinity.

• Aristotle, Physics IV (he was reading it this morning): time is the number of motion according to before and after — not numbering number (the abstract ten, fourteen) but numbered number (ten men, fourteen grandchildren). Arithmetic is about the numbering number; geometry about the continuous.
• Continuous vs. discrete (Categories, on quantity): parts of the continuous meet at a common boundary (point for a line, line for a surface, surface for a solid); three and four in seven meet nowhere. Physics VI: the continuous is divisible forever; one cannot divide the one, “even simpler than a point”.
• Time as numbered number of something continuous: numbering days is numbering before and after in the sun’s motion around the earth (the first motion for the Greeks); the motion is continuous because the distance is; hence time is listed among continuous quantities. “Three yards” is a numbered number of a continuous thing — paradoxical but continuous.
• Thomas: number is twofold, simple/absolute (two, three, four) and number in things numbered (two men, two horses). Taken absolutely nothing prevents whole and part, but that is only in our understanding, since absolute number exists apart from things only in the mind (aside: why “moderns get confused” between math and logic). In created things one is part of two, two of three — one child is part of what you have with two. “But it is not thus in God”: the Father is just as much as the whole Trinity, since Father and God are not really distinct; “that’s a very subtle thing to see”. Thomas returns to it in q. 42.
• More or less is said of something absolute, and the absolute is one; so Father and Son are not more God, wiser or better than the Father alone or than the Holy Spirit — “two heads better than one? no, father and son have only one head”. Athanasian Creed: all equal; treated in the five comparative questions after the ten on the persons absolutely.
• Aside: he hates the faculty-meeting phrase “our collective wisdom”, though it has some truth for us — nothing like that in the Trinity. Example: we may both know the Pythagorean theorem, but my knowledge is not individually yours; the Father has no wisdom the Son lacks.
• Student asks for review of the terms: numbering number = Thomas’s absolute/simplex number, in the mind; numbered number = fourteen children, three yards. Grade-school sticks: counting ten sticks, then “where is this ten that isn’t ten sticks?” — in the mind. Football field of a hundred yards: a continuous quantity numbered.
• Student confused: is time numbering number? No — “three o’clock” is not what Physics IV means; three days is a numbered number of before and after in the first motion; Robinson Crusoe’s marks at each sunrise number the before and after in something continuous; his wife’s three yards of cloth.
• Closing: what is numbered in God are the relations; what is absolute is one. God is three persons and the three are one God, but no person is part of God; compare Father with God, no opposition; Father with Son, opposition and distinction. Mohammedans think us polytheists, or worse, that the persons are three parts of God. Break before the next article.

His words #

• in divinis; “in divine things”, colloquial for “in God”.
• person; an individual substance of a reasonable (intellectual) nature; in God, a relation as a thing subsisting in the divine nature (relation per modum substantiae).
• subsists; exists by itself, not in another as in a subject.
• fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• suppositum / hypostasis; the individual standing under; substantia can also mean what a thing is.
• absolute; in Thomas the opposite of relativum.
• four kinds of opposites; contradictories, having and lacking, contraries, relatives.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• pros ti / ad aliquid / ad alterum; “towards something / another”, Aristotle’s concrete name for what we abstractly call relation.
• numbering number vs. numbered number; the abstract number in the mind (Thomas: absolute, simplex) vs. the number of things numbered (fourteen grandchildren, three yards).
• continuous vs. discrete quantity; parts meet at a common boundary / meet nowhere; the continuous is divisible forever.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 30, proemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, response, replies 1-4), read and translated from the Latin.
• Athanasian Creed, sed contra quotation (reference to Denzinger).

Mentioned

• Thomas, Sentences commentary, a question on whether there is whole or part in God (no locus given).
• Summa Theologiae I, questions on simplicity and unity of God; q. 32; q. 42 and the comparative questions; the previous article (q. 29 a. 4 (inferred)).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (substance; opposites); Categories ch. 12 (opposites) and the chapter on quantity; Physics IV (time, numbering/numbered number), VI (continuous), II (matter and form relative); Politics (government and people).
• Boethius, the same book as the objection’s text (De Trinitate (inferred)).
• Jerome on the “poison” of three substances.
• John 1:1 (pros).
• The “Hans article” [unclear in recording] on Mary’s grace being of the hypostatic order; St Alphonsus (student’s suggestion).
• Robinson Crusoe; Pythagoras and the beaten dog; parable of the oil lamps.

His questions #

• Why are there many persons in God? Because a divine person is a relation as a thing subsisting in the divine nature, and there are many real relations in God.
• Does my geometry and my logic make two persons? No; absolute properties give no distinction of persons, even in us.
• What does “many” mean in the definition of genus? Opposed to one, not to few; number is a genus of only odd and even.
• Are the divine absolute properties really distinguished? No; they subsist but are not opposed, so are distinct only by reason.
• Why are you and I, or I and my son, different persons? By something absolute — flesh cut off from flesh; father and son follow on that.
• Is there a relation “between” me and my son? Strictly no: I am toward him a father, he toward me a son (pros ti).
• Is the Holy Spirit the relationship between Father and Son? No; Father and Son are each toward the Holy Spirit and it toward them, though we lack names.
• Is time a numbering number or a numbered number, continuous or discrete? A numbered number of the before and after in the first motion, hence continuous.
• Is “three yards” a discrete or continuous quantity? Continuous; a number of a continuous thing.
• Are the Father and the Son more than the Father alone? No; the Father is just as much as the whole Trinity, since Father and God are not really distinct.