Summa I, Q.33 a.1–3: Beginning vs. Cause, 'Father' as the Proper Name of the First Person, and Fatherhood Said of God Before Creatures

Orientation #

He begins directly with the objections of q. 33 a. 1 and says nothing explicit about last time or next time; a back-reference to “what Thomas said before” that the Trinity cannot be known without revelation is his own. The previous class introduced q. 33 and the notion of “beginning” applied to the Father; the next takes up q. 34 on “Word” as a name of the Son.

The class, in order #

1. Article 1, the objections: “a beginning and a cause are the same thing” #

Point: three objections against calling the Father the beginning of the Son or Holy Spirit, read with running comment.

• Obj. 1: beginning and cause are the same “according to the philosopher” (Aristotle often uses them interchangeably, as Thomas himself sometimes uses division for distinction, though strictly one is more general); we do not say the Father is the cause of the Son, “although Basil says” it and it must be piously expounded; so not beginning either.
• Obj. 2: beginning is said with respect to what was begun; then the Son would be begun and hence created, “which would seem to be erroneous.” He adds Thomas on the Incarnation: Christ insofar as he is man is a creature, but not Christ simply, because “Christ” names a person.
• Digression, the mistake of simply / not simply: Meno says you cannot investigate what you do not know; Socrates replies that learning is recalling what you already know, “the same kind of mistake” (did Plato do it on purpose?). Being able to know is not actually knowing: the slave boy did not know how to double the square, and if you already knew the Pythagorean theorem you could not be taught it. Everyday form: we do what is bad because in some way good (“if someone annoys you should you kill him? … removes an irritation”), and omit the good because in some way bad (Mass keeps you from the ball game); nothing in this life fails to prevent some other good.
• Obj. 3: the name beginning is taken from priority, beforeness; Aristotle’s common notion of beginning is “what’s first in being or becoming or in knowing,” and first is defined by before; but in God there is nothing before and after (Athanasian Creed).
• Sed contra: Augustine, De Trinitate IV, the Father is “the beginning of the whole deity” — to be taken carefully: not of the divine nature, but of the whole Trinity.

2. Body of a. 1: “that from which something proceeds” #

Point: Thomas gives beginning a meaning different from Aristotle’s: nothing other than that from which something goes forth, in whatever way — the idea of origin; since the Son proceeds from the Father (and the Spirit from both), the Father is a beginning.

• Aristotle’s notion (first in being, becoming, knowing) is true of every beginning we know. In the “fifth book of wisdom” he gives the common notion of beginning first and then uses it to break down the meanings of before, so the two are tied together; in the Categories he gives the ordered meanings of before without reference to beginning, and Thomas goes back to that order to show there is nothing before and after in God.
• Scripture: “I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end” — there beginning means cause, in the sense of maker; sometimes all three pairs are given (beginning/end, alpha/omega, first/last), and first corresponds to beginning: “we’re back with Aristotle.”
• In comparison to the creature God is a beginning that is before; “but the Father is not a beginning that is before the Son. That’s a very subtle thing.”
• Aside: we cannot criticize Aristotle, “poor man didn’t have the faith”; nobody figures out the Trinity unless it is revealed.

3. Reply 1: beginning more common than cause #

Point: the Greeks use cause and beginning indifferently in divine things; the Latins use only beginning, because beginning is more common than cause as cause is more common than element, and the more common name is more suitably transferred to God.

• His scandal at first seeing Basil use aitia (cause; arche = beginning) of the Father: “has he ever read the fifth book of wisdom?”
• The first three words of Metaphysics V are beginning (arche, principium), cause (aitia), element (stoicheion), from more general to particular; “drummed into” him by the opening of Natural Hearing I (“in every science in which there are beginnings, causes or elements”), where Thomas explains the three.
• His own imitation: distinction vs. division — every division is a distinction but not the reverse; division is of parts of a whole, so Thomas will not speak of the division of Father, Son, Spirit, since that would imply parts composing God.
• Reason for the rule: the more special a name, the more it determines a mode suited to the creature (as with “He who is,” the least limiting name). Cause implies diversity of substance and dependence, some distance in perfection or power in every genus of cause; beginning is used where there is only order: the point beginning of the line, the first part of the line, the first hour of the day (though “be careful about the word order too”).
• Upshot: if beginning is used synonymously with cause, the Father is not the beginning of the Son; taken more generally, he is, since the Son proceeds from him but is not his effect.
• Aside: as the Greeks came to use hypostasis for person though it is more general — hence “hypostatic union,” “the hypostatic order.”

4. Reply 2: “principiata” and the authority of the Father #

Point: the Greeks say the Son and Spirit are principiata (have a beginning, have begun); Latin doctors avoid it, since though we attribute auctoritas to the Father — not our sense of authority but being source, origin — nothing of subjection or lessening is to be attributed to Son or Spirit, to avoid every occasion of error.

• Hilary, De Trinitate IX: by the authority of the giver the Father is maior — not merely greater than the Son’s human nature but in his divinity — yet the Son is not minor, since the same being is given. He calls it “misuse of the words” and would not extend Hilary’s way of speaking, though Hilary is not really mistaken: he is trying to express that the Father is the origin. “If I’m more than you, you’re less than me. There’s a lot of pitfalls here.”
• Aside: potholes everywhere after the rain and freeze.

5. Reply 3: “it does not signify beforeness but origin” #

Point: though the name beginning was taken from beforeness, what a name signifies and what it is taken from are not the same; it signifies origin, as the body said.

• He tells his students of Metaphysics V not to worry whether beginning in the Trinity should be taken Aristotle’s way, since that would make the Father before the Son — “that’s how respectful Thomas is of Aristotle.” (Break.)

6. Article 2: “the proper name of each person signifies” #

Point: whether “Father” is properly a name of a divine person; the proper name signifies that by which the person is distinguished, and that is paternity.

• Objections: (1) Father signifies relation, but a person is an individual substance; (2) generans is more common than father (every father generates, not conversely; perhaps he counts non-living generation) and the more common name is more proper in God; (3) nothing metaphorical is a proper name, and among us a word or thought is metaphorically called generated or a son, so its source is only metaphorically a father (“if I called my mind the father of my thoughts”); (4) what is properly said of God is said of God before creatures, but generation seems truer where things are distinct by essence, not relation only. Sed contra: Psalm 88, “he shall call upon me: you are my father.”
• Body: as man’s notion includes soul and body, this man’s includes this soul and this body (“seventh book of wisdom”), by which he is distinguished from all men; the Father is distinguished from others by fatherhood, so his proper name is Father, signifying paternity. Student: does fatherhood distinguish him from the Holy Spirit too? He: Thomas does not explain it here; it has to do with paternity being the personal notion that constitutes the Father; one might object that he is distinguished from the Spirit by common spiration — left there.
• Reply 1: among us a relation is not a subsisting person (“my being a father or husband is not this person”), but in God the relation Father signifies is a subsisting person; person in God signifies relation as subsisting in the divine nature, per modum substantiae, per modum personae. My fatherhood is quite different from his.
• Reply 2: per Aristotle, De Anima II, a thing is named from its perfection and end; generation signifies as in coming-to-be, fatherhood the completion, so Father is more the name than generator. Not false: Syrians use “the begatter.” His examples: he is called lover of wisdom, not of logic, arithmetic (Euclid VII-IX “much to my delight”), natural philosophy or ethics, because wisdom is the end and most perfect; we are named rational animals from our most perfect part; “do you love me or my money? … then you love money, not me.” Student’s plant case: a plant generates, but naming is from perfection.
• Reply 3: our word or thought does not subsist in human nature, so it is not properly generated or son; the divine Word subsists in the divine nature, so properly Son, its beginning properly Father, of the same nature — my thoughts and my reason do not share a nature (even my thought of Shakespeare’s definition of reason is not reason).
• Reply 4: generation and fatherhood are said of God before creatures as to the thing signified, not the mode of signifying; Ephesians 3, “from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named” (heaven = angels: the higher angel illuminates the lower). Generation takes its species from its end, the form of the generated; the closer that form to the generator’s, the truer the generation, as univocal generation is more perfect than equivocal; in God the form is the same in number, in creatures the same in kind only; so distinction by relation only belongs to the truth of divine generation. Me and my son: same nature in kind; Father and Son: one divine nature. “Everything the Father’s is mine” — not quite true of a human son (similar mind and heart, not the same). Boethius’s “like the relation of a thing to itself,” not exactly, since there is a distinction.
• Dionysius wrote Symbolic Theology (metaphorical names, said properly of creatures and carried over: God a rock, a lion) and De Divinis Nominibus (names whose thing signified is found most fully in God, then in creatures) — reverse orders. “Knowing” is imposed from creatures yet found much more in God; we are “practically dead intellectually.”
• Aside, knowing in some way vs simply: Socrates knows what he does not know; Einstein praised Newton for the same, a lesser sense of knowing. The wise man knows all things “in some way”; God simply. “Do you know my brother Mark? … you know what a man is, what a brother is” — so in some way everybody knows him, not simply. Likewise “preach the gospel to every creature”: man has something of every creature, spirit and matter, not “preach to the frogs.”

7. Article 3: “the whole meaning of the name is found” #

Point: whether father is said of God first personally or essentially (God our Father; even Homer’s Zeus “father of mortals and immortals”); the name is said first of that in which its whole definition is found perfectly, and that is the Father with respect to the Son.

• Objections: (1) the common is before the proper in understanding (Physics I: confused before distinct), and taken essentially father is common to the whole Trinity (“our Father”) — “a good objection”; (2) among things of one reason there is no before and after, and fatherhood is of one reason since, per Basil, to receive is common to the creature and the Son — so univocal; (3) no comparison among things not of one reason (which is sharper, the knife or the flavor? — but two knives, yes), yet the Son is compared to creatures as “firstborn of all creatures” (Colossians), so the same reason; as two philosophers are compared because both love wisdom.
• Sed contra: the eternal is before the temporal; God is Father of the Son from eternity, of the creature in time.
• Body: a name is said first where its whole definition is found, then of what keeps something of it by likeness, since imperfect things take origin from perfect (ninth book of wisdom: the actual is more perfect than the potential, and the potential becomes actual by what is actual); as in logic property in the full sense first, then in a lesser sense (always but not only). “Lion” of the animal first, then of the lion-hearted man by likeness in boldness. Father and Son have one nature (and, a student adds, glory); the creature’s sonship lacks the whole definition, being by likeness, more perfect as the likeness is closer: footprint only, irrational creatures (Job 38:28, father of the rain — the way St Francis spoke, brother and sister); image, rational creatures (Deuteronomy 32:6); grace, a sharing of the divine nature (consortes divinae naturae, Peter), adopted sons ordered to the inheritance (Romans 8:16-17); glory, already possessing it (Romans 5:2). Our glory is still not God’s. So fatherhood is said first of person to person: “the Father is more the father of the Son than he is our Father.”
• Reply 1: the general is before the particular absolutely in our understanding, being included in it, not conversely (God is understood in the Father, not the Father in God — the philosophers understood God to some extent); but common names implying regard to the creature are said after the personal ones, because the proceeding person proceeds also as beginning of the production of creatures: as the artist’s conceived thought proceeds before the artificial thing made to its likeness, so the Son proceeds before the creature called son by partaking his likeness (Romans 8:29, conformed to the image of his Son). God in understanding himself understands all things, so the Word has a relation to creatures; what he makes falls far short of what he understands.
• Reply 2: “to receive” is common to creature and Son not by one meaning but by remote likeness, whence “firstborn of creatures,” “firstborn among many brethren”; the Son has by nature what he receives (Basil), hence unigenitus, John 1:18. Reply 3: the same holds.

8. Digression: “more or less when things are not of the same kind” #

Point: between the purely equivocal (no comparison) and the univocal (strict comparison) lies comparison by likeness and order.

• End better than means though not good in the same way; substance has more being than accidents; cheese is not “sharper” than the knife (purely equivocal); Lafayette on which statue is more like Washington; inside goods of man better than outside; Shakespeare vs Mozart hard; Beaumont and Fletcher once performed as much as Shakespeare, Dryden calling Fletcher “a limb of Shakespeare”; Aristotle’s Poetics, tragedy better than epic (same pity and fear, more briefly); syllogism better than induction because it more forces the mind. Be careful: comparison needs some order and likeness.
• Aside: is dessert better than the main course? His mother and monks thought so.

His words #

• beginning (principium, arche); Thomas: that from which something proceeds, origin; Aristotle: what is first in being, becoming or knowing
• fifth / seventh / ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V, VII, IX]
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• cause (aitia); implies diversity of substance and dependence
• element (stoicheion)
• simply / not simply; the Meno mistake
• distinction vs division; division is of parts of a whole
• auctoritas of the Father: being source, origin, not our “authority”
• principiata: having a beginning, having begun
• maior / minor (Hilary)
• per modum substantiae, per modum personae: relation as subsisting
• generans / begatter; generation as in coming-to-be, fatherhood its completion
• univocal vs equivocal generation; same in number vs same in kind
• symbolic theology vs divine names (Dionysius)
• footprint, image, grace, glory: degrees of likeness
• consortes divinae naturae; unigenitus
• purely equivocal / univocal / likeness and order in between

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q. 33 a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I q. 33 a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I q. 33 a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (beginning, cause, element; before); Categories (before); Physics I opening; De Anima II (naming from perfection); Metaphysics VII, IX; Poetics (tragedy vs epic)
• Plato, Meno; Euclid VII-IX
• Augustine, De Trinitate IV; Hilary, De Trinitate IX; Basil; Boethius; Dionysius, Symbolic Theology and De Divinis Nominibus; Athanasian Creed
• Scripture: Apocalypse “alpha and omega” (inferred locus); Psalm 88; Ephesians 3; Colossians (firstborn); Job 38:28; Deuteronomy 32:6; 2 Peter (consortes) (inferred); Romans 8:16-17, 8:29, 5:2; John 1:18; Homer on Zeus

His questions #

• What does “beginning” mean in “I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end”? Cause, in the sense of maker.
• Is the Father a beginning that is before the Son? No; God is before the creature, but the Father is not before the Son.
• Beginning is more common than what, as cause is more common than what? Cause; element.
• Does fatherhood distinguish the Father from the Holy Spirit as well as the Son? Left open; Thomas does not explain it here.
• Why call me a lover of wisdom rather than of logic or natural philosophy? Because wisdom is the end and most perfect; things are named from their perfection.
• Which is more fundamental, Father said of the person or God our Father? The personal: the whole meaning of fatherhood is found only between Father and Son.
• Can you say more or less when things are not of the same kind? Yes, if there is likeness and order between them; not when purely equivocal.