God Is Three Persons, and Appropriating Essential Attributes to the Persons (Articles 6–7)

Orientation #

He refers back to “previous articles we read” (the philosophers could not arrive at the Trinity) and to a.4 ad 3, which he rereads in class. Next time: the “magnificent appropriations” of Augustine and Hilary (the eighth article); he will be absent next week and back May 8th. The previous class worked through aa.5 and the start of a.6; the next treats a.8 on appropriating eternity, beauty and use to the persons.

The class, in order #

1. Article 6, objections: why Thomas starts with the opposite (“The opposite is useful”) #

Point: the objections against saying “God is three persons,” and why objections belong in thinking at all.

• A student asks: wasn’t he just saying the one God is three persons, and now he says you can’t? Answer: this is an objection. Aside: the “simple, solid” reader who asks why Thomas always begins by saying one thing and ends with the opposite. Heraclitus: the opposite is useful. If you are mistaken you may find the mistake; if you are right, answering objections makes you understand the truth better and able to defend it.
• Obj. 1: “man is every man” is false, since it is verified of none of its subjects (Socrates is not every man); likewise “God is a Trinity,” since neither Father, Son nor Spirit is a Trinity, yet the Father is God, so God being a Trinity would make the Father a Trinity.
• Obj. 2: inferiors are said of superiors only by accidental predication (“an animal is a man”: it happens to an animal to be a man, otherwise every animal would be a man; it does not happen to a man to be an animal). “God” stands to the three persons as something common to what comes under it (Damascene); so the names of persons are said of “God” only accidentally. Note: “inferior” here means less universal, standing below, not lesser in goodness.
• Asides: his good student at St Mary’s, California, whose daily objection he answered “with the greatest of ease” (he had heard them all before); the seminary teacher who, forced to take a question, looked back at his notes: “it doesn’t say.” “Education, what crimes are committed in my name.”

2. Sed contra and the answer: real identity of essence and persons (“we believe the one God to be Trinity”) #

Point: substantive personal names can be said of the essence because the essence is really identical with each and with all three persons.

• Sed contra: Augustine, sermon on faith: we believe the one God to be Trinity.
• Corpus: notional adjectives (“generating”) cannot be said of the essence, but substantive personal names can, on account of the real identity of essence and persons. The essence is really the same not only with one person but with all three; so one, two and three persons can be said of the essence (“the essence is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”). Since “God” as such stands for the essence, “the essence is three persons” and “God is three persons” are both true.

3. Ad 1, and back to a.4 ad 3: why “God” stands for the nature where “man” does not (“the unity or the community of the human nature”) #

Point: “man” by itself stands for the person and only with an addition for the common nature; “God” by itself stands for the divine nature.

• Ad 1: “man is every man” is false because verified of no one standing under it; but “God” per se stands for the essence, so although “God is a Trinity” is true of none of the supposita, it is true of the essence. Porretanus, not attending to this, denied it (he “gets into trouble in other places” too; “he was not obstinate though”). He flags this as “a subtle thing,” and rereads a.4 ad 3 to show why.
• a.4 ad 3, as read: the form signified by “man,” humanitas, is really divided among diverse subjects; so “man” as such stands for the person even with nothing added. The unity or community of human nature is not secundum rem but only secundum considerationem (“unless you’re a Platonist” with human nature up in the world of forms): you all have two legs in common, but the common idea is only in my mind. Hence “man” stands for the common nature only when something added requires it, as in “man is a species”: the old classical argument “man is a species, Socrates is a man, Socrates is a species” shows that “man” does not usually stand for what it stands for there.
• Aside: late modern philosophers get hung up on “there is no man, only individual men,” and then what happens to the science about man? The difference here answers that.
• “Form” here means nature, as Scripture says “took on the form of a slave.” The form signified by “God,” the divine nature, is one in common secundum rem; so by itself, without addition, it stands for the common nature, and something joined determines it to a person. “God generates”: by the notional act it stands for the Father. “God does not generate”: nothing added determines it to the Son, so it is understood that generation is repugnant to the divine nature (the divine nature is not generated); add something pertaining to the Son (“the generated God does not generate”) and the speech is true.
• Confirmed with students: you would not say the Father is the Trinity, nor the Son, nor the Spirit; you do say the Father is God.

4. Ad 2: predication by identity, not universal of singular (“in divine things there is not the universal”) #

Point: “God is the Father” is per se, unlike “an animal is a man.”

• Ad 2: “God (or the divine essence) is the Father” is predication by identity, not of an inferior of its superior, because in divine things there is no universal and singular: the universal is one only in consideration and is said of many that differ in being, whereas the being of God is the same as the divine nature, common to the three. So it is not strictly universal and singular, “though something similar.” Hence “the Father is God” and “God is the Father” are both per se, in no way per accidens.
• Examples of the contrast: a dog as dog is an animal, but is an animal a dog? “Depends on the animal”; seven as such is a number, but a number as such is not seven; there something is accidental. Not so with the Father and God: not “he could be the Father” but he must be.
• Plato, Sophist: “likeness is a slippery thing.” There is a likeness between God said of the three persons and man said of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the likeness can trip you up, as in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, where the errors come from mixing up two pairs of identical twins. Break.

5. Article 7, objections: should essential attributes be appropriated? (“from words put forward disorderly, heresy is incurred”) #

Point: three objections against appropriation.

• Obj. 1: what can lead into error of faith must be avoided (Jerome: from words put forward disorderly, heresy is incurred); appropriating what is common to one person suggests it belongs to him alone or more than to the others (if wisdom is appropriated to the Son, either he alone is wise or wiser than the other two). He notes Scripture is full of such appropriations and is meant, as Paul says, for our instruction.
• Obj. 2: attributes signified in the abstract are signified in the manner of a form, but one person is not related to another as a form, since a form is not distinguished in subject from that of which it is the form. Aside: we spoke before of the four causes in God: something like the moving or making cause (one person generates another; Aristotle gives the human father as example), nothing like matter or end; this objection asks whether form too is excluded.
• Obj. 3: the proper (proprium, “private”) is before the appropriated and is in its notion; but the essential attributes are before the persons in our understanding, as the common before the private; so they should not be appropriated. He glosses: you would be putting the proper in the definition of the appropriated, and so the private in the definition of the common. “Not exactly clear”; he mentions Aristotle’s Physics on the universal term.

6. Sed contra and answer: manifesting the less known by the more known (“Christ, the virtue of God and the wisdom of God”) #

Point: appropriation is suitable for manifesting the faith, because the essential attributes are more known to us than the personal properties.

• Sed contra: Paul, 1 Corinthians 1: Christ the virtue of God and the wisdom of God; even the abstract name is appropriated to one person. Thomas descends to Scripture’s way of speaking to justify it.
• Argument: (1) the Trinity cannot be demonstrated (previous articles: the philosophers never arrived at it); (2) but it is suitable to declare it through things more manifest to us; (3) the essential attributes are more known by reason than the personal properties: the sign is that from creatures we arrive with certitude at the attributes (Aristotle knew God simple, perfect, one, at the end of the twelfth book of “Wisdom,” quoting Homer, “the rule of many is not good; let there be one”), but not at the personal properties; (4) so, as we use the footprint and image found in creatures to make known the persons, we use the essential attributes; this manifestation is called appropriation.
• The image, his version: following Shakespeare’s definition of reason (“large discourse, looking before and after”), from my reason proceeds a thought of what reason is, and understanding it clearly I love it (Augustine: intellectum valde ama); so from the Father proceeds the thought of himself, then love. This is not the same as appropriation, but Augustine helps us this way, though he knows how far removed footprint and image are.
• The footprint: wherever there is a beginning, middle and end in creatures (Homer’s plot): beginning is the footprint of the Father, middle of the Son, end of the Holy Spirit.

7. Two ways of appropriating: likeness and dissimilitude (“in another way, by way of dissimilitude”) #

Point: appropriation works by likeness and, “very subtle,” by contrast as well.

• By likeness: what pertains to understanding is appropriated to the Son, who proceeds per modum intellectus as the Word, God’s thought of himself. By dissimilitude: power to the Father, as Augustine says, because among us fathers are infirm from old age, lest we suspect that of God.
• Both at once: wisdom to the Son by likeness, but also because young sons are foolish (“to play the young man” means to play the fool in English literature). Goodness to the Holy Spirit by likeness, since goodness is the object of love and he proceeds by way of love (his name “breath”), and by opposition, since our spirit drives us into wrong things (“fools rushing”).
• Student: was beginning-middle-end Augustine’s or his own? Thomas uses it sometimes, probably from Augustine. Explained: the beginning is from nothing else but something proceeds from it (Father); the middle is from something and something is from it (Son); the end is from something and nothing proceeds from it (Spirit): “a more distant likeness,” but “kind of beautiful.” Another footprint in material things: substance has a form (like the thought) from which proceeds an inclination to operations (like love).
• Summary of the article’s two moves: why it is appropriate (led from more known to less known: the Summa treats the attributes before the Trinity), and how. Aside: Summa Contra Gentiles divides what is known by reason and faith (books 1-3) from what is known only by faith (book 4), same order from more to less known; so the moral law, knowable by reason and faith, is very well known, while the Trinity is not known by both.

8. The replies (“the Father is not wise by the wisdom which he generates”) #

Point: appropriation asserts nothing private to a person.

• Ad 1: the attributes are not appropriated as if private to the persons but to manifest them by likeness or unlikeness; so no error follows but a manifestation of truth. “You got to know what you’re doing,” as with metaphor (though this is a different thing from metaphor): whether you can say it depends on what and how you are saying.
• Ad 2: if appropriated as private (the Son alone wisdom), one person would be related to another as form, since wisdom signifies that by which one is wise: is the Father wise by the Son? Augustine, De Trinitate book 7, excludes it: the Father is not wise by the wisdom he generated; the Son is called the wisdom of the Father because he is wisdom from the Father; each per se is wisdom and both together one wisdom; the Father is wise by the wisdom which is his essence, not as if he were not wise until he generated the Son. Compare: “does the Father love the Son by the Holy Spirit?” It can be said in some way, but not in the sense denied here.
• Ad 3: an attribute by its own notion is before the person in our understanding, but insofar as it has the notion of appropriated, nothing prevents what is proper to the person being before it. Example: colour, an accident of quality, is posterior to body as substance, yet naturally before a white body as white (Aristotle, fifth book of “Wisdom”). He admits getting “a little bit stuck” on this objection.
• The eighth article is left for next time.

His words #

• the opposite is useful: Heraclitus; why objections precede the answer.
• stands for [ed.: supponit, suppositio]: what a name is used for, as against what it signifies.
• secundum rem / secundum considerationem: in the thing itself / only in the mind’s consideration; human nature is common only the second way, divine nature the first.
• form (forma): used for nature, as in “form of a slave.”
• predication by identity: how “God is the Father” is said, not as superior of inferior.
• private [ed.: proprium, proper]: his rendering of proprium, opposed to “appropriated.”
• appropriation: the manifestation of the persons through essential attributes.
• footprint [ed.: vestigium] and image: likenesses of the Trinity in creatures (beginning-middle-end; reason-thought-love).
• likeness / dissimilitude (opposition): the two ways an attribute is appropriated.
• per modum intellectus: the Son’s mode of procession.
• intellectum valde ama: Augustine, “love understanding greatly.”
• “Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]: his name for Aristotle’s work, books 12 and 5.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, corpus, ad 1-2)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 4, ad 3 (reread)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39, a. 7 (whole article)
• Paul, 1 Corinthians 1 (sed contra of a.7)

Mentioned

• Augustine, sermon on faith; De Trinitate, book 7
• Jerome, on disorderly words and heresy
• Damascene, on “God” as common to the three
• Aristotle, “Wisdom” end of book 12 (God is one; Homer quoted); book 5 (colour and body); Physics
• Plato, Sophist (“likeness is a slippery thing”)
• Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors; his definition of reason
• Homer (rule of many; plot’s beginning, middle, end)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (order of books 1-3 and 4)
• Scripture, “form of a slave”

His questions #

• Why does Thomas always start by saying one thing and end by saying the opposite? Because the opposite is useful: objections uncover mistakes and deepen understanding of the truth.
• Is man every man? No; verified of no one standing under it, since “man” stands for the person.
• Why does “God” by itself stand for the nature more than “man” does? Because the divine nature is one secundum rem, human nature common only secundum considerationem.
• Would you say the Father is the Trinity? No; but the Father is God, and God is a Trinity, true of the essence.
• Is an animal a dog? Is a number seven? Depends; accidental; whereas God is the Father per se.
• Why is it appropriate that Scripture appropriates essential attributes to persons? To manifest the persons through what is more known to us.
• Is the Father wise by the wisdom which he generates? No; by the wisdom which is his essence (Augustine).
• Was beginning-middle-end Augustine’s or his own? Thomas uses it; probably goes back to Augustine.