Aquinas on the Trinity (Summa I, q.30 a.4 and q.31): 'Person' Shared by Three, the Word 'Trinity' and Saying 'the Father Alone'

Orientation #

He begins directly at “article four” (q.30) and, having finished it, says “we’ll have to rest there” and turns to the framing of question 31, “the one we’re going to be getting next time”; he reads its first article “so we’ve got our appetite a bit”. He refers back to “what he said about the person back here about whether it signifies relation” — person signifies the relation as subsisting (earlier article). Verified sources: q.30 a.4 (19 min) and q.31 a.1 (11 min) matched against the text; a handout page (First Statement commentary, p. 3) matched for ~10 min. Last time treated the numerical terms of q.30 aa.3–4 (formal vs. material multitude); next time q.31 aa.1–2 (the name Trinity, alius vs. aliud).

The class, in order #

1. The objections: can “person” be common to three? (“tied up here with language”) #

The point: the three objections all trade on the tension between “common” and “incommunicable”.

1. Obj. 1: nothing is common to the three but the essence; “person” does not signify the essence in recto but relations — otherwise you could not say “three persons”.
2. Obj. 2: common is opposed to incommunicable, and incommunicable is in the definition of person (Richard of St Victor). His more-known parallel: “individual” is said of all of us, yet what it names is incommunicable; “you’re unique — just like everybody else.”
   • Aside grown from this: Boethius says a thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood; but the senses do not know that distinction — only reason does, so reason somehow knows the singular, “in this kind of universal way”. “It’s kind of a strange thing, you know. But that’s the way it is.”
3. Obj. 3: the community is either secundum rem or by reason; not secundum rem, else three persons are one person; not by reason, else person is a universal, and in God there is no universal and particular, genus and species — a universal is said of many differing in being, and Father, Son, Holy Spirit have the same being (“I am who I am”).
4. Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate VII — asked “what three?”, we say “three persons”, because what is a person is common to them.

2. The body: a community of reason, like “some man” (“the very way of speaking shows”) #

The point: person is common by reason, not as genus or species but as the individuum vagum.

1. The way of speaking shows commonness: “three persons” as “three men” shows man common to three. But it is not a community of thing, as the one essence is common — else one person of the three, as one essence. “A little more hard to understand than you might think.”
2. Others’ accounts of what sort of community: (a) a community of negation, because “incommunicable” is in the definition; (b) a community of intention (a mental thing), because individuum is in the definition — as if “being a species” were common to horse and cattle. Both excluded: “person” is not the name of a negation nor of an intention but a nomen rei. “So don’t let them tell you that person is not a thing.”
3. Even in human things “person” is common by a community of reason, not of genus or species, but as the individuum vagum — “some man”. “I’m some man; are you some man too?”
4. Genus/species names vs. individuum vagum: “man”, “animal” are imposed to signify the common natures themselves (I am an animal that has reason; the dog and cat are a living body that has senses), not the intentions of those natures signified by “genus” and “species” (the relation of reason: animal to dog, cat, horse as quadrilateral to square and oblong). “Some man” signifies a common nature with a determined way of existing belonging to singulars — subsisting by itself and distinct from others. Boundary: it is vagum (“some man came into the shop”), against the designated singular, “Socrates came into the shop”, which signifies this flesh and these bones.
5. Difference from person: “some man” signifies the individual from the side of his nature; “person” is imposed to signify a thing subsisting in such a nature (individua substantia). Applied: rational nature here is the divine nature; substance = subsisting by yourself; individua = distinct from all others. To say the Father is a person is to say he subsists in the divine nature distinct from Son and Spirit; so person is common by reason to the three.

• Student: is “God” or “the Father” common secundum rem or secundum rationem? He grants the contrast: person does not signify what is really common to the three; reason sees that each subsists in the divine nature distinct from the other two. Ties to the earlier point that person signifies relation as subsisting.

3. Replies 1 and 2: incommunicable, yet a common way of existing (“Subtle distinction, right?”) #

1. Ad 1: in recto explained from the definition — “individual substance” is signified directly, “of a rational nature” obliquely. The argument proceeds from community of thing; person is common by reason, not as one thing common to them.
2. Ad 2: though person is incommunicable, the way of existing incommunicably can be common to three. More-known parallel again: “to be unique is to be incommunicable; this way of being incommunicable is common to all of us.” And Boethius again: universal is common to many, singular is not — yet reason, which knows the universal directly, can understand singularity, while the senses, knowing the singular directly, cannot sense universality (maybe see likenesses, but “can’t separate out the idea”).

• Sophists “would have a lot of fun with that”: e.g. dividing Shakespeare’s plays into roughly four kinds — someone objects each play is unique; “so that’s common to all of them and not unique.”

4. Digression: must the way we know be the way things are? (“the central question of philosophy”) #

The point: understanding singularity universally is a “very solid example” of the central question, answered no.

1. Two answers: Plato yes, Aristotle no.
2. Boethius in the Consolation: announces in book 1 he is of the Academy, but in book 5 has Lady Wisdom introduce Aristotle as her true follower, and follows him — needed to understand how God knows past, present and future as present in the now of eternity without falsity.
3. Socrates is a singular, man a universal; his cat Scrappy a singular, cat a universal: “I understand singularity universally” — my way of knowing is not the way the thing is, but I do not attribute my way of knowing to the thing (as if to be singular were to be universal). What I say about the thing must fit it.

• “You have to admire Aristotle for seeing this”; Plato, “the other chief philosopher”, was mistaken here, however attached Augustine was to him; most people don’t think him mistaken.

5. Reply 3: no universal and particular in God (“neither even in human things”) #

1. Though a community of reason, not of thing (and so resembling genus and species), it does not follow there is universal and particular, genus or species, in God — for two reasons:
   • (a) Even in human things the community of person (like that of “individual”) is not one of genus or species. Species (lowest): a name said with one meaning of many things not other in kind, only individually, signifying what it is; genus: of many other in kind, signifying what it is. Person does not signify “what it is” but directly the individual, “unique and not common to many.”
   • (b) The divine persons have one being, whereas genus, species and every universal are said of many differing in their being — “a subtle thing that Avicenna pointed out; Thomas picks up on it.”

• Joke: a nun surnamed Person; the old workman: “I didn’t know you were a person.” Compared to “history” becoming “herstory”.

6. Framing: where we are in the treatise (“Let’s look at the framing here”) #

The point: the questions on the persons are divided by successive twos and threes.

1. Order of teaching: persons are distinguished by relations of origin, so first the proceedings (generation → the relations father/son; another proceeding, not generation → Holy Spirit and those who breathe him), then the relations, then the persons — “15 questions of the 17”.
2. Persons: absolute consideration (ten questions) vs. comparative (equality, one sending another — “about five”).
3. Absolute: in general (four questions, two done) vs. in particular (six: one on the Father, especially the name; two on the Son; three on the Holy Spirit).
4. The four in general (q.29 prologue): meaning of the name person (subdivided: person in general, divine person, two articles each); the number of persons; what follows on the number (next time) — “who does not see” that two and three are a division with a subdivision, so the rule of two or three is not violated; fourth, our knowledge of the persons.

• Aggrediendum, “to take up”: the same word as when Aristotle takes up time in the fourth book — but there the difficulty is in the thing (time “hardly is”), here it is in us.

7. Preview of q.31: alone and only (“the Father alone is God”) #

1. The four articles: the name “Trinity” (traced to someone “from Antioch, I think” — he cannot recall the name); whether the Son is other than the Father — alius but not aliud; whether the exclusive diction, which seems to exclude otherness, can be joined to an essential name; whether to a personal name.
2. Working the English: Is the Father God? Yes. Then isn’t the Father alone God? “The Father alone is God” seems to say Son and Spirit are not God — like “I alone am a man” said to the class; yet alone in my room studying, “I alone am a man” is true; and if you deny “the Father alone is God” he seems only a part of God. Student: “the Father is the only God” is more admissible, referring to the nature — there is only one God, so Son and Spirit are each “the only God there is” too. He suspects some difficulty crossing between English and Latin, with analogous difficulties in the Latin.
3. John 1: “the Word was towards God” — “God” there stands for the Father by himself; then “and the Word was God.” “We’ll get to those next time.”

8. q.31 a.1: the objections against the name “Trinity” (“It seems that there is not a trinity”) #

Read for appetite, replies not treated:

1. Either-or: every divine name signifies substance or relation; Trinity not substance (it would be said of each person), not relation (not said towards something). He compares the problem with “person”: it signifies relation per modum substantiae; Augustine’s “person signifies substantially” was resolved as the way it signifies, not what; there is a text of Thomas with four ways (substance per modum substantiae / per modum relationis, relation per modum relationis / per modum substantiae) — “very subtle”; “I don’t use this stuff for a sermon.”
2. Trinity is a collective name signifying multitude; the unity of a collective name is the least, but in God maxima unitas (seen back in the treatise).
3. Every three is threefold; threefoldness is a species of inequality; none in God. “One heck of a problem.”
4. Whatever is in God is in the unity of the essence (God is his essence); so three essential unities — heretical.
5. In God the concrete is said of the abstract (deity is God, fatherhood is the Father); but the Trinity cannot be said to be three — nine things.

• Boethius’s work on the Trinity (Thomas has a commentary): written in contracted, brief style so no one would make fun of it, “hiding” what he says; the irreverent quote such things like “how many angels dance”. Thomas is “just a humble guy who wants to know what you mean.”

9. Closing exchange: ways of speaking, appropriation (“using the more known to manifest”) #

• Student: Chrysostom spoke of the Eucharist one way in sermons, another in a letter to the Pope.
• He: this connects with appropriation, to come later. The objection there: attributing what belongs to the substance to one person risks misunderstanding (the Father alone almighty; the Spirit alone responsible for the incarnation — “overshadowed” in Scripture, but the incarnation is the work of the whole Trinity). Thomas: it is appropriation, by a connection between what is proper to the person and the general attribute; what we say of the substance is more known to us than the Trinity, so the more known manifests the less known — as in the creed and Scripture, and fitting in a sermon; Thomas defends the way of speaking that Scripture does not use.
• Student: why is Creator appropriated to the Father? He: from Aristotle’s definition of power, beginning of change in another, and the Father as beginning in the Trinity; Thomas gives another way too, by negation — the father “down here gets kind of flabby and weak”, as wisdom to the Son because the son is more foolish. “You’ve got to take a double way.” Class ends mid-thought.

His words #

• in recto vs. oblique: “individual substance” signified directly, “of a rational nature” indirectly.
• secundum rem vs. secundum rationem: really common vs. common by reason.
• community of negation / of intention / of reason: the three accounts of person’s commonness.
• nomen rei: person is a name of a thing.
• individuum vagum: “some man” — nature with the way of existing of singulars, undesignated.
• singular designated: Socrates, this flesh and these bones.
• individua substantia rationalis naturae: substance = subsisting by itself; individua = distinct from others.
• species / genus: “a name said with one meaning of many things not other in kind / other in kind, signifying what it is.”
• aggrediendum: to take up, approach (as Aristotle time).
• alius / aliud: other (masculine) admitted of the Son, not the neuter.
• exclusive diction: “alone”, “only”.
• per modum substantiae: person signifies relation by way of substance.
• maxima unitas: greatest unity in God.
• appropriation: attributing a common attribute to one person by connection with what is proper to him.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q.30, a.4 (objections, body, replies).
• Thomas, ST I, q.29, prologue (framing of the four questions in general).
• Thomas, ST I, q.31, prologue and a.1, five objections.
• Handout, “The First Statement and King of Statements”, p. 3 (verified source; not named in transcript — probably the genus/species definitions).

Mentioned

• Augustine, De Trinitate VII (“three persons”).
• Richard of St Victor, definition of person (incommunicable).
• Boethius, singular in sense / universal understood; Consolation of Philosophy books 1 and 5; work on the Trinity with Thomas’s commentary.
• Aristotle, fourth book on time (Physics IV, inferred); definition of power.
• Avicenna, universal said of many differing in being.
• John 1:1.
• John Chrysostom on the Eucharist (student).

His questions #

• What is common to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit? The divine substance; person does not signify it, else not three persons.
• Who sees the distinction between singular and universal — the senses or reason? Only reason; so reason knows the singular in a universal way.
• Are you some man too? Yes — “some man” is common to all as individuum vagum.
• How can I be unique if you’re unique too? The way of being incommunicable is common to all of us.
• Does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? Plato yes, Aristotle no; understanding singularity universally does not make me false.
• How are the fifteen questions on the persons divided? Absolute (ten) and comparative (five); absolute into general (four) and particular (six).
• Is the Father alone God? Is that the same as “the only God”? Both admitted in some way; “the only God” more admissible, referring to the nature — left open for next time.
• What does “God” stand for in “the Word was towards God”? The Father by himself.
• Why is Creator appropriated to the Father? Power is the beginning of change in another and the Father is the beginning in the Trinity; also a way by negation.