Summa I, Q.31, Article 3: Can 'Alone' Be Said of God? Solus, Only, and Exclusive Words

Orientation #

He opens saying “great progress here” and that the next article (on adding “alone” to a personal term) will not be reached today; at the end he confirms they will not attack the fourth article because he must go home and come back for a wake. The previous class treated q. 31, aa. 1-2 (the name “Trinity” and “alius”), and the next completes a. 4 and begins q. 32, a. 1.

The class, in order #

1. Setting the article; digression on elenchus (“the hypostasis of things hoped for”) #

Point: article 3 asks whether the dictio exclusiva “solus” (translated “alone”) should be added to an essential term in divine things.

• Aside prompted by the citation of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations: the Greek title-word elenchus puzzled him because the same word appears in Paul’s definition of faith in Hebrews (“the hypostasis of things hoped for, the elenchus of things not seen”). Refutation is when “I overcome you”; here the mind is overcome by the unseen, since it assents to it. So “conviction” is a good translation; “assurance” and “evidence” of things not seen are not correct (“mixing up the English with the Latin”).

2. The three objections (“God is with the angels and the souls”) #

Point: he reads the objections and lets the students feel the difficulty.

1. Objection 1 (Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations II): that is alone which is not with another; God is with the angels and holy souls; so we cannot say God is alone. He puts it to the class: “Is God alone?”
2. Objection 2: whatever is joined to an essential term can be said of each person and of all together (“the wise God,” “the Father is the wise God,” “the Trinity is the wise God”); but Augustine, De Trinitate VI, says the Father is not the only true God; so one cannot say “God alone.” His comment: “I’m in trouble, right?”
   • Aside on alone vs. only: “I’m only human” does not mean “I alone am human” but “merely.”
3. Objection 3: if “alone” is joined to an essential term it is with respect to a personal or an essential predicate. Not personal, since “God alone is the Father” is false — a man is also a father (“that’s kind of strange”). Not essential, since “God alone creates” would yield “the Father alone creates” (whatever is said of God is said of the Father), which is false because the Son also creates.

3. Digression: “term,” terminus, limit (“nothing is a beginning of itself”) #

Point: the word “term” in the article’s Latin illustrates a drift of logical vocabulary.

• “Term” originally belonged to the syllogism (two statements, each of three terms); then “define your terms” made it mean names or words. “Terminus” and “limit” are one word; even a definition can be called a terminus.
• Aristotle’s chapter on limit in “the fourth book of Natural Hearing — excuse me, the sixth book” [ed.: Physics]: whether a line can be composed of points, whether points can be continuous (continuous things have a common limit). Can a point have a limit? His axioms: nothing is a beginning of itself; nothing is before or after itself; so nothing is a limit or end of itself. A limit in the point would be a limit of something other than itself, introducing multiplicity in what is simple; hence the point has no limit and points cannot be continuous. Greek uses eschaton (“last”) rather than “limit,” so “limit is what is last.”

4. Sed contra (“to the King of Ages, invisible”) #

Point: against the objections stands 1 Timothy — immortal, invisible, soli Deo, “the only God.” He asks how grammatically to render it: alone or only.

5. The body: categorematic vs. syncategorematic (“Socrates alone writes”) #

Point: “solus” can be taken in two ways, and only in the second can it be joined to an essential term.

• Categorematic (dictio categorematica): places the thing signified absolutely about a subject, as “white” in “man is white.” Taken so, “alone” cannot be joined to any term in divine things, because it would lay down solitude, so that God is solitary — against the authority just cited.
• Syncategorematic: imports the order of the predicate to the subject, like “all/every” and “none.” “Every man is an animal”: animal is said of man; “every” says nothing of the subject but how the predicate is said of it (distributed to all). “Alone” likewise excludes every other suppositum from consortium in the predicate: “Socrates alone writes” means writing is said of Socrates and no one else, though many others are with him. Boundary case: Socrates writing at the desk while everyone else reads — Socrates is not alone, but Socrates alone writes.
• So nothing prevents “God alone is eternal,” “God alone creates”: nothing beside God is eternal.
• Arithmetic test: “two alone is half of four” — if categorematic, four would not exist (nothing besides two); syncategorematically it adds that nothing else is half of four. “Two is less than ten” is true; “two alone is less than ten” is false. Pride: “I alone understand” — Hegel’s saying that no one else has understood him.
• He notes Thomas still hesitates to say “God is alone” and turns to the replies.

6. Reply to objection 1 (“alone in the garden”) #

Point: the objection takes “alone” categorematically, and even so its reason is wrong.

1. Though angels and holy souls are always with God, if there were not a plurality of persons in God, it would follow that God was solitary.
2. Solitude is not taken away by association with something of an extraneous nature: one is said to be alone in the garden though many plants and animals are there. Class case: home with a cat or dog you are “home alone”; a student objects that as the nature of the critter rises it is harder to say so — a horse in the house, “an elephant in the room.”
3. So God would be alone, angels and men existing with him, if there were not many persons in God; their association excludes neither absolute solitude nor, much less, the solitude “through comparison to some predicate” (the syncategorematic sense).

• On “syn-”: categorematica comes from the Greek for predicate, “said of” (Aristotle’s Categories = praedicamenta in Latin); syn- means not what is said of something but the way it is said, “with the predicate”: every, none, alone. “No man is a stone”: stone is denied of man, “no” tells how. “Two alone is half of four”: alone is not said of two.
• The whole thing is about those things that follow upon the Trinity: one consequence of there being three persons is that you should not say God is alone. Yet “God alone is wise”: even Aristotle says either God alone is wise or only God fully is wise — wisdom taken strictly, knowing everything simply; “not even Lucifer is wise.”
• Student: is this because you can say “God alone creates” but not “the Father alone creates”? He: right, that comes in the objection — “very, very subtle things here.”

7. Reply to objection 2: “alone” vs. “only” (“only Socrates runs”) #

Point: solus regards the subject, tantum (“only”) can regard subject or predicate.

1. “Solus” is not placed on the side of the predicate, taken formally (predicate is to subject as form to matter — that is why the other is called “subject”), but regards the suppositum, excluding another subject from what it is joined to. He proposes translating suppositum as “subjectness.”
2. The adverb tantum, “only,” being exclusive, can go on either side: “only Socrates runs” (no other runs) and “Socrates runs only.” His example: “only Berquist thinks” (nobody else thinks) vs. “Berquist thinks only” (that’s all he does — “it isn’t true, they’re doing media”).
3. Hence one cannot properly say “the Father is God alone” or “the Trinity is God alone,” unless something is understood on the side of the predicate: “the Trinity is the God who is alone God”; “the Father is the God who is alone God” is true if the relative refers to the predicate, not the subject term — otherwise you would say “the Father alone is God.”
4. Augustine, saying the Father is not God alone but the Trinity alone, speaks “laying it out” (expositively): the text of Paul, “to the King of Ages, invisible, the only God,” is about the whole Trinity, not the person of the Father. Some (Arian-style) use it to say only the Father is God and the Son is not; that misreads “God,” which stands for the Trinity.

• English play on “only”: placed before or after Socrates the meaning differs — “only Socrates thinks” vs. “Socrates only thinks”; “only children play” vs. “children only play”; “he only thinks of himself” vs. “only he thinks of himself” (the only egotist among us). Homer: with Achilles about to return, one man urged retreat behind the walls — “he alone looked before and behind,” as “only Socrates thinks.” That is why one must go back to the Latin.

8. Reply to objection 3: person vs. relation, and no descent (“immobilitat the term”) #

Point: “alone” can be joined to an essential term with both kinds of predicate.

• Aside: “proposition” etymologically means placed before, a premise of a syllogism; in Thomas and others it commonly means statement, just as “term” means name — “define your names” would be more correct.

1. “God alone is the Father” is twofold: if “Father” predicates the person of the Father, it is true (no man, no angel is that person); if it predicates only the relation, false, since fatherhood is found in others.
2. “God alone creates” is true, but “the Father alone creates” does not follow, because, as the sophists say, an exclusive word “immobilitat” (puts at rest) the term it is joined to, so there is no descent to what is below it. His note: sophistae here not pejorative — the sophists were the first to work out grammar, interested in words more than thoughts, so grammarians came to be called sophistae.
   • Examples: “man alone is a mortal rational animal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates alone is…” does not follow. “The philosopher alone is a lover of wisdom; Socrates is a philosopher; therefore Socrates alone is a lover of wisdom” — no. “An even number alone is divisible into two equal parts; four is even; therefore four alone is so divisible” — no.

• Asides: joke that Albert the Great, said to be enlightened by the Blessed Virgin, was enlightened only after studying grammar and never got it straightened out. Logician vs. grammarian: the logician prefers “man am an animal” (true) to “man is a stone” (false); the grammarian scores “I am a stone” perfect and “I is a professor” wrong, caring only whether it is said right. Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich: the dying man recalls having “done it in French,” the proper way — like the verities: not whether it is true, only that it is said correctly. A sophist who can do nothing else gets you to say something ungrammatically and leaves you there.

9. Close (“attack this fourth article”) #

He asks whether to try the fourth article, decides not to (a wake tonight, funeral tomorrow, one of the five pictured on the Assumption magazine at his retirement).

His words #

• dictio exclusiva, “solus”: exclusive word, “alone” (an adjective), as opposed to the adverb tantum, “only”
• elenchus: refutation; in Hebrews best rendered “conviction,” the mind overcome by the unseen
• term: originally a part of a syllogism’s statement, now a name; terminus = limit, “what is last” (eschaton)
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• categorematic: a word placing a thing signified absolutely about a subject (“said of,” from the Greek for predicate; Categories = praedicamenta)
• syncategorematic: a word “with the predicate” importing its order to the subject — every, none, alone
• consortium / consors: sharing in a predicate; the writing-companion
• suppositum: he translates “subjectness”
• immobilitat: an exclusive word “puts at rest” its term so one cannot descend under it
• sophistae: here the grammarians, first to work out grammar
• proposition: etymologically premise (placed before); in Thomas, statement

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 31, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Paul, 1 Timothy, “King of Ages, invisible, the only God” (sed contra)
• Augustine, De Trinitate VI, the Father is not the only true God (as cited in obj. 2 and reply)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations II (obj. 1)
• Paul, Hebrews, definition of faith
• Aristotle, Physics VI, on limit, points and the continuous
• Aristotle, Categories
• Aristotle on God alone being wise (no locus given)
• Homer, Iliad (inferred), Achilles’ return and the man who “looked before and behind”
• Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
• Hegel’s saying that no one has understood him

His questions #

• Is God alone? Not categorematically — that would deny the plurality of persons; but “God alone is wise/creates” holds.
• When you say “I’m only human,” do you mean “I alone am human”? No — merely.
• Can a point have a limit? Then can points be continuous? No; nothing is a limit of itself, so a limit in the point would require multiplicity in what is simple; hence not continuous.
• Two alone is half of four — what am I adding? Is “two alone is less than ten” true? Adding that nothing else is half of four; the second is false.
• If you’re home with your cat or dog and no other human, are you alone? Yes, “home alone” — though a student says it gets harder as the critter’s nature increases.
• Why can you say “God alone creates” but not “the Father alone creates”? The exclusive word immobilises the term; no descent from God to the Father.
• If you say “only Socrates thinks” vs. “Socrates only thinks,” is the meaning the same? No — before the subject it excludes other subjects, after it it restricts the predicate.
• What does “God alone is the Father” mean? True if “Father” predicates the person, false if only the relation.
• Which is better, “man am an animal” or “man is a stone”? The logician: the first (true); the grammarian: the second.