Summa I q.39 a.1 Replies and Article 2: Relations as Opposition, and 'Three Persons of One Essence'

Orientation #

He picks up mid-article (“the first objection was a very powerful one”) from the previous class’s treatment of whether essence and person are the same (prev. lecture), finishes the replies of a.1, then reads a.2 with objections and replies, and at the end points forward to “the third article” on whether the three are three gods. The class sits between the first article on essence and person and the next class on predicating “God” in the plural.

The class, in order #

1. Why immaterial substances are one of a kind (“Plato began to see about immaterial substances”) #

Point: the first objection is powerful because distinction by relation seems impossible where there is no matter, and he first sets out the background thesis that immaterial substances differ in kind.

• Plato, mistaken about the nature of the forms, still saw that among immaterial substances there is only one of each kind: they differ “like circle and square and triangle, not like two circles or two points.” Aristotle saw this, and Thomas says the same of angels: no two angels of one kind.
• Thomas’s own objection: would angels love each other more if of the same kind? His answer, no: the higher and better a creature, the more it loves the common good, and the common good is served more by distinction of kinds than by individuals of one kind.
• Examples of what this shows: the criticism of Vivaldi (“wrote the same concerto a hundred times”), Handel’s pieces sounding alike, against Mozart and Shakespeare’s plays, each almost sui generis: distinction of kind as a perfection. The philosopher at yearly meetings giving the same talk: “differs numerically from the talk last year,” no new kind.
• Odd and even numbers as a series of different numbers, rather than “two twos and three twos.”
• Merely mental multiplicity: “Socrates is Socrates” gives Socrates twice; “the statement ‘Socrates is Socrates’ is the statement ‘Socrates is Socrates’” gives four; ad infinitum. That is the sense of the objection’s multiplication.

2. Reply to obj. 1: subsisting relations distinguish supposita (“relations in creatures are what accidents”) #

Point: relations can distinguish persons in God only because there they subsist; they do not distinguish the essence.

1. In creatures individual substances cannot be distinguished through relations, because relations in creatures are accidents, not the substance (“my being a father or a teacher or a husband or a son”); distinction must come through essential principles in the genus of substance.
2. In God the relations subsist, “just as the wisdom is subsisting” (in me wisdom is “very accidental”).
3. Therefore, according as they are opposed to one another, they can distinguish supposita.
4. But the supposita are not distinguished by the essence, because the relations, as really the same with the essence, are not distinguished from each other; they distinguish only ad invicem, towards each other.

• “I think it’s kind of marvelous”: Thomas takes relation as one kind of opposition from a pagan, Aristotle, who in the Categories and the fifth book of Wisdom counts relatives among the four kinds of opposites; otherwise one could say he invented the opposition to save his faith. Providence parallel: the unconverted Jews, hostile in Acts, are witnesses to the antiquity of the prophetic books (“if all the Jews had been converted… you just invented those books”). Likewise the Athenian stranger in Plato’s Laws proposes a law against homosexuality as against nature, “not influenced by the Pope”; people pretend one holds such things “because of religion and not because of natural reason.”
• John 1:1 in Greek: not “with God” but “toward God” (pros), Aristotle’s very word for relation in the Categories (pros ti, in Latin ad aliquid); so the distinction between the Word and what the Word is toward is a distinction of relatives.
• Aside: pipe-smoking (Washington Irving’s satirical history of New York, the Dutch debating and smoking with no decisions; Irish farm workers in tie and vest smoking in the field).

3. Reply to obj. 2: same in reality, two in understanding (“the second figure of the syllogism”) #

Point: the second-figure argument only shows that person and essence differ in understanding, not in reality.

• Obj. 2 uses the second figure: middle term is predicate in both premises, only negative conclusions; one premise affirms something of one thing, the other denies it of the other. “We use that kind of syllogism all the way through the negative treatment of the divine essence”: the composed is something before it, God is nothing before him, so God is not composed.
• Reply: insofar as essence and person differ in understanding, something can be said of one and denied of the other, so “supposing one, the other is not” supposed, insofar as they are not the same in thought.
• Parallel he finds elsewhere in Thomas: Aristotle, Natural Hearing III, on acting and undergoing. “My kicking you” and “your being kicked”: one thing, in one subject, but two definitions (kicking as from me to you; being kicked as in you from me), so “you’re not kicking and I’m not being kicked.” Heraclitus: the way up and the way down are the same, the ladder is one. So one thing can be two in definition, and something affirmed of one is denied of the other.
• Such objections “can really paralyze people”: Thomas speaks of giving objections without answers as leaving the cistern open; Voltaire is said to have done just that to embarrass Thomas or any Catholic.

4. Reply to obj. 3: “supposit”, “in”, and our way of naming (“names according to the way of creatures”) #

Point: “supposit” and “in” are said of God from our creature-derived way of naming, with no real subjection or distinction.

• Reply: we impose names on divine things according to the way of creatures; because a creature’s nature is individuated by matter, which is subject to the specific nature, individuals are called subjects or supposita, hypostases, “standing under”; the divine persons are so called too, not that there is any supposition or subjection secundum rem.
• Aristotle, Natural Hearing IV, distinguishes about eight senses of “in”; strictly nothing is in itself, so there is always a distinction between what is in something and that in which it is: water in the glass, genus in the species. So “the divine nature is in God” seems to imply a distinction; we cannot avoid concrete and abstract names because of our way of knowing.
• De Anima III: reason’s own object is the what-it-is in what can be sensed or imagined; hence our statements have a noun and a verb, and the verb signifies with time, though God is not in time.
• From the first consideration of names (after simplicity and perfection): “God is wisdom” brings out simplicity, “God is wise” brings out perfection; we say he is justice itself (feared) and mercy itself. Form in creatures is really distinct, so we say “wisdom is in God,” yet there is no real distinction between wisdom and what it is in. Hence the two statements from earlier: whatever God has is God, and whatever is in God is God. “Has” and “in” come from our way of knowing; with God “it’s just the reverse”: he knows the composed through himself, being completely simple.
• Break.

5. Article 2, the objections and sed contra (“three persons are of one essence”) #

Point: he reads the six objections to saying the persons are “of one essence,” glossing each.

1. Hilary, on the Synods: Father, Son and Spirit are three in substance, one through consonantia (harmony); substance is essence, so three essences. Gloss: substance has two main meanings in Aristotle, what a thing is and the individual; three angels are three in both.
2. Nothing should be affirmed of God not expressed by Scripture’s authority (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1, and the study of Scripture as the soul of theology); Scripture never says “of one essence.” [The transcript’s “the thirteenth said” is unclear.]
3. Nature is the same as essence, so “of one nature” suffices.
4. We say the essence is of the person, not the person of the essence (“Socrates is of his nature” vs. “his nature is the nature of Socrates”).
5. Augustine: we do not say the persons are “from one essence,” lest person and essence be understood as other in God (a table is from wood, my son is from me, with a distinction in each); as prepositions are transitive to something other, so are the oblique cases, so the genitive too implies distinction. Student: does “oblique” mean the genitive only or other cases? “Perhaps other cases.”
6. What can occasion error should not be said of God; Hilary: one substance of Father and Son is predicated either as one thing subsisting with two names, or one substance divided making two perfect substances, or a third prior substance assumed (usurped) by two, “a little bit like the incarnation.”

• Sed contra: Augustine, Contra Maximinum II: homoousion (homo, same; ousia, substance), made firm at Nicaea against the Arians, signifies the same as “three persons of one essence.” Exchange: the creed now reads “one being,” but the actual word is substance. Aside: so many of Augustine’s books are “contra”; theology developed ad hoc, article by article against deniers, and the medievals like Thomas brought the whole together, one of the reasons Vatican II gives for studying Thomas.

6. Body of a.2: the essence signified as the form of the persons (“the essence is signified as the form”) #

Point: since we name God as we know him, the essence is signified as form of the persons, and forms are said “of” what has them.

1. We name God not as he is but as we know him, from sensible things, where a species-nature is individuated by matter, so the nature is as form and the individual as [the transcript drops the term].
2. Therefore in God, as to the way of signifying, the essence is signified as the form of the three persons (cf. Philippians: “when he was in the form of God… took on the form of a servant”).
3. In creatures any form is “of” that whose form it is: the health or beauty of a man. The reverse (the thing having the form is “of” the form) is said only with an adjective designating the form: “a woman of exceptional beauty,” “a man of perfect virtue,” “a man of much knowledge,” not “a man of knowledge.” He grants he does not fully understand why we speak so, but we do.
4. Since in God the persons are multiplied and the essence not, we say one essence of the three persons and three persons of one essence, the genitive being construed (best word: “construed”) in the manner of designating a form.

• Elsewhere Thomas takes the same topic by the four causes (matter, form, agent/mover, end). Nothing in God is like matter. No person is the end of another, since the end is better than what is for it and the persons are equal; his own extension: to make the divine nature the end of the persons would make it better than them. Mover, not strictly a cause in God but largo modo: “the Father generates the Son” is something like it. Form: “three persons of one nature.” Hence Augustine could not say “from,” which implies matter or mover; even though in God the form and what has it are the same, as “by wisdom God is wise.”
• Aside: philosopher means lover of wisdom; if God is wisdom itself, the lover of wisdom must be a lover of God, “no wonder the modern philosophers stopped loving wisdom.”

7. Replies 1-3: substance, Scripture, nature vs. essence (“substance is taken there for what”) #

• Ad 1: Hilary’s “substance” is taken for hypostasis, not essence, the two senses from Metaphysics V. Substantia is etymologically the same as hypostasis, but hypostasis in Greek does not usually signify the nature while substance can; hence Jerome’s nomen venenum [ed.: “poison” name] when the Greeks’ three hypostases were translated as three substances and heard as three natures.
• Ad 2: not in Scripture’s very words but in its sense: John 10:30, “I and the Father are one,” and “I am in the Father and the Father in me.” As before: the meaning is there, and must be brought out when the heretic puts his words forth disorderly.
• Ad 3: nature designates a beginning of act (Aristotle: beginning and cause of motion and rest); essence is taken from being (esse). Things of one nature agree in some act (as all things heating); things of one essence are of one being. So “of one essence” expresses the divine unity more, though one may still say “of one nature.”
• Distinction he draws with the dogs around the school: the nature of the dog, of the cat, of man, as nature said of a kind.

8. Reply 4: one genitive or two (“Peter is of great virtue”) #

Point: the essence is of the person, not the reverse, unless the essence is further designated.

• Form absolutely taken is signified as of what has it: the virtue of Peter, the wisdom of Aristotle, of Thomas. The reverse requires two genitives, one for the form and one for its determination (“Peter is of great virtue”), or one genitive with the strength of two: “a man of blood,” one who has spilled much blood.
• So the essence is said to be of the person, not the reverse, except with something added designating the essence: “the Father is a person of the divine essence,” or “three persons of one nature,” where “one” is one in number, not just in kind. His own try: “you and I are of one mind”; he judges it “wasn’t very good.”

9. Reply 5: “from” means matter or maker, not form (“nothing is its own matter”) #

1. The preposition ex or de does not designate the relation of formal cause but of efficient or material cause: Aristotle defines the material cause as that from which something comes to be, existing in it; the mover is “whence first” the beginning of motion, and whence has the sense of “from which.” Thomas elsewhere distinguishes “from” the opposite, from the matter, from the mover.
2. These causes are in all things distinguished from what they cause: nothing is its own matter (the chair is not its own wood), nor its own active beginning.
3. But something is its own form, as in all immaterial things (Plato’s forms, each its own form).
4. Therefore “three persons of one essence,” signifying the essence as form, does not show the essence to be other than the person, which “from one essence” would show, like table and chair from the same wood.

• Back to Boethius’s use of “cause” (mentioned before): even the large sense of mover in “the Father generates the Son” carries a real distinction, as the strict efficient cause does.

10. Reply 6 and the door to article 3 (“if you misunderstand, that’s your problem”) #

• Ad 6: Hilary, on the Synods: it is not prejudicial to sacred things if some do not hold them in a holy way; “if someone badly understands homoousion, what is it to me, understanding well?” One substance from the property of the nature generated, not from a portion or cutting up, nor from union, nor from communion. Student’s summary, accepted: “If you misunderstand, that’s your problem.”
• Occasion of error will return with appropriation. The Muslims say we are not monotheists because of the three persons; the third article asks why “Father is God, Son is God, Spirit is God” does not give three gods as “Socrates, Plato, Aristotle are men” gives three men, “obviously a mistake, but why the difference.” Class stops (recorder overloading).

His words #

• “one of a kind”: no two immaterial substances share an exact nature; they differ like circle and square.
• “supposita” / “hypostasis”: the standing-under, the subjects; said of the persons without real subjection.
• “subsisting relations”: relations in God that are the substance, as wisdom subsists there.
• “ad invicem”: towards each other; how opposed relations distinguish.
• “second figure”: middle term predicate in both premises, negative conclusions only.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• “fifth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• “pros” / “ad aliquid”: Aristotle’s word for relation, “toward something,” the word of John 1:1.
• “leaving the cistern open”: giving objections without answers.
• “consonantia”: harmony, Hilary’s word for the oneness of the three.
• “homoousion”: of the same substance (homo, ousia); the Nicene word, creed now “one being.”
• “largo modo”: mover said largely of the Father generating the Son.
• “construed” (constructed): how the genitive “of one essence” is to be taken, in the manner of a form.
• “nomen venenum”: Jerome on “substance,” poisonous because it can mean nature.
• “whence first”: the mover cause as the beginning of motion.
• “man of blood”: one genitive with the strength of two.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 1, ad 1-3 (verified).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 2, objections, sed contra, body, ad 1-6 (verified).
• John 1:1 (Greek “pros”); John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”); “I am in the Father and the Father in me.”
• Hilary, On the Synods (quoted within obj. 1, obj. 6, ad 6).
• Augustine, Contra Maximinum II (sed contra); Augustine on not saying “from one essence” (obj. 5).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories (relation as pros ti); Metaphysics V (four opposites; two senses of substance); Physics III (acting and undergoing); Physics IV (eight senses of “in”); De Anima III (object of reason).
• Aristotle’s definitions of nature and of material cause (no locus given).
• Thomas on angels loving each other more if of one kind (no locus given); Thomas on the four causes applied to the persons (no locus given); Thomas’s first consideration of the divine names (no locus given).
• Philippians, “in the form of God” (no verse given); Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1; Plato’s theory of forms; Plato, Laws (Athenian stranger); Acts of the Apostles; Nicene Council and creed; Boethius on “cause”; Jerome; Heraclitus; Voltaire; Vatican II on studying Thomas; Washington Irving’s history of New York; Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Shakespeare.

His questions #

• Would the angels love each other more if they were of the same kind? No; the higher creature loves the common good more, which is served by distinction of kinds.
• Are my kicking you and your being kicked two different things? Same reality in one subject, two definitions, so one is affirmed where the other is denied.
• If the divine nature is in God, is there a distinction between God and the divine nature? No real one; “in” comes from our way of knowing, so whatever is in God is God.
• What does the creed say for homoousion? “One being” in the reading, but the actual word is substance.
• Is one person the end or purpose of another in God? No; the end is better than what is for it, and the persons are equal.
• Does “oblique” mean only the genitive or other cases too? Perhaps other cases.
• Why say “of one essence” rather than “of one nature”? Essence is from being, nature from act; “one essence” expresses the unity more, though “one nature” is allowed.
• Is the chair its own matter? No; there is a distinction between the wood and the chair; but a thing is its own form.
• If the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, why not three gods, as three men? Left open for the third article.