Summa I, Q. 40, Arts. 2–3: Relations Distinguish and Make Up the Divine Persons, and What Remains When We Abstract the Relations

Orientation #

He opens with “Go on to article 2” and does not refer to last time by content, except a passing “we’ve spoken before about Thomas used the word absolute”. No mention of next time. The previous class treated q. 40, a. 1 on whether relation and person are the same, and the next goes on to the notional properties and notional acts.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, objections 1-3 (“simple things are distinguished by themselves”) #

Point: three objections against the persons being distinguished by relations, each read with a gloss.

• Obj. 1: simple things are distinguished by themselves; a cube of clay and a sphere of clay are distinguished by something other than themselves (their shapes) because there is composition there. The divine persons are maxime simple, so distinguished by themselves, not by relations.
• Obj. 2: no form is distinguished except according to its own genus; white from black only by a different quality. Hypostasis signifies an individual in the genus of substance; substance and relation are different categories. So hypostases cannot be distinguished by relations.
• Obj. 3: the absolute is before the relative (Thomas’s word “absolute” = something that is itself rather than towards another). The first of all real distinctions is that of the divine persons, so it should be an absolute, not a relative, distinction. “That’s a marvelous objection. You wonder how this guy… slept at night.”
• Aside: stories of not sleeping — his teacher (a book a day, hospital experiments), Padre Pio (“I haven’t slept in three years”), MacArthur “too tired to eat” and up two hours later; Thomas dictating to several people at once, exhausted on the bed, still dictating “Distinguo.”

2. Objection 4 and the sed contra (“only relation multiplies the Trinity”) #

Point: relation seems to presuppose distinction, yet Boethius says relation alone multiplies.

• Obj. 4: what presupposes distinction cannot be the first beginning of distinction; relation presupposes it, since “the being of the relative is to have itself to another” — so there must already be another. “That convinces me… I just give up.”
• Sed contra: Boethius, De Trinitate: sola relatio multiplies the Trinity.
• Asides, one line each: the Literature Network website (Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Chesterton, Homer, Augustine’s Confessions as the “literary” Augustine; Boethius’s Consolation admired by poets, translated by Chaucer, Queen Elizabeth); Aristotle’s lost dialogues, which Cicero rated above Plato’s; the surviving fragment: either you ought to philosophize or not, and to show why not you must philosophize — so in either case you must; a physicist whose “philosophy is to avoid philosophy”; Heisenberg on quantum theory as an apparently accidental discovery, great discoveries starting with “That’s funny”, the “little cloud” that led to relativity and quantum theory; a newly auctioned Einstein letter panning religion, and Brother Rochelle’s story of Einstein fascinated (by curiosity, imagination) with transubstantiation.

3. Body: something common needs something distinctive; origin or relation (“origin signifies by way of an action”) #

Point: since the persons agree in essence, something must distinguish them, and the candidates are origin and relation.

1. Wherever many things share something common, one must seek something distinctive: man is common to us, so something else distinguishes us. He notes the divine nature is common differently — man is universal, the divine nature is one individually.
2. Two things are found in the persons by which they differ: origin (one proceeds from another) and relation. Really they do not differ, but differ in mode of signifying: origin signifies by way of action (generation), relation by way of form (fatherhood).
3. Some, noticing that relation follows on act, said the hypostases are distinguished by origin (Father distinguished by generating, Son by being generated) and that the relations/properties only manifest the distinction afterwards — as in creatures properties manifest a distinction of individuals that comes about by material principles.

• Aside: the Pope’s book uses “the triune God”, a term he had seen in lectures here.

4. Thomas’s first reason: distinction must be through something intrinsic (“however strange it may seem, must be the truth”) #

Point: origin does not signify as intrinsic, so the persons must be distinguished by relation, by elimination.

1. For two things to be understood as distinct, their distinction must be understood through something intrinsic to each — in created things, matter or form.
2. Origin does not signify as intrinsic but as a road from the thing (generating) or to the thing (being generated). So generator and generated cannot be distinguished by generation alone; each must have in it that by which it is distinguished.
3. In a divine person there is nothing to understand but essence and relation (proprietas); essence is common; so the remainder, relation, distinguishes.

• Sherlock Holmes: eliminate all but one and the last, however strange, must be the truth — if one of six of you committed the murder and five are eliminated. The division is exhausted.
• Student: is this like what was said about kicking — one act common to all three? He: Thomas doesn’t say that; he grants a distinction in Father generating and Son generated, but it is by something signified as proceeding from one or ending in the other, not intrinsic; Thomas subdivides the intrinsic into nature and relation and eliminates one.

5. Second reason: what distinguishes must constitute (“it presupposes him”) #

Point: the distinguishing principle must constitute the persons, which origin cannot do.

1. Distinction in the persons is not the division of something common — the essence remains undivided — so what distinguishes must constitute the very distinct things.
2. The relations therefore distinguish and constitute the persons as subsisting: fatherhood is the Father, sonship the Son, since in God abstract and concrete, what is and that by which it is, do not differ.
3. Origin cannot constitute: signified actively it goes forth from the subsisting person and presupposes him (“I couldn’t generate unless I already were”); signified passively (nativity) it is a way to the subsisting person, not yet constituting him.

• Not that the other position is false: “although they are distinguished in both ways”, chiefly and first by relation, in the way of understanding. His example: he and his son are distinguished by his generating him, but better by something intrinsic — “I’m a philosopher and he’s a soldier in Afghanistan” (email: don’t go to the bathroom without your gun).
• Hence “Father” signifies both a property and a hypostasis; “generating” signifies only a property, an origin that neither distinguishes nor constitutes.
• Aside: Thomas says we come to truth paulatim, bit by bit; De Koninck at Laval still saw something new in the Physics after teaching it since 1935; C. S. Lewis on books you read again; Kittredge teaching Shakespeare as if he could never exhaust him.

6. Replies 1 and 2: distinguished by themselves; not in anything absolute (“Not my will, but thine be done”) #

• Reply 1: the persons are subsisting relations; so distinction by relations is distinction by themselves, no offence to simplicity.
• Reply 2, “this is very important”: the persons are not distinguished in the being in which they subsist, nor in nature, understanding or willing, nor in anything absolute, but only according as they are said towards something; so relation suffices. Example: for him to be a distinct person from his son each needs another rational nature, understanding, will, body; in God all three have the same nature, understanding, will individually. “Not my will but thine” is human will vs. divine will — an absolute distinction; between the will of Father and Son in the divine nature there is none. So only a relative distinction is left.

7. Reply 3: the prior distinction is nearer to unity (“the closer it is to unity”) #

Point: “Thomas gets very subtle here” — the more prior a distinction, the closer to unity and so the smallest.

1. The more prior a distinction, the closer to unity; hence first distinctions are the smallest and hardest to see — the beginning is small in size, great in power, like the seed (Plato, Aristotle, Albert, Thomas); a small mistake there becomes almost infinite, like a wrong turn on a road.
2. The tree of Porphyry (substance into material/immaterial, living/non-living, animals/plants): going down, more multiplicity; going back up, more unity. (Laval Christmas joke gift: the logic professor got the tree of Porphyry.)
3. So if the first distinction were of absolutes it would be further from unity. Quanto distinctio prior, tanto propinquior unitati, so it should be minima — by relation, which distinguishes least.

• Illustration: a close friend who thinks alike; Father and Son think alike because they have the same mind — “two distinct persons having the same mind. That’s strange.” English “you and I are of one mind”; Thérèse of her sister Céline, “if you want to know me, know my sister.”

8. Reply 4: subsisting relation brings its own distinction (“which is not before, but together”) #

Relation presupposes a distinction of substances when it is an accident; a subsisting relation does not presuppose but brings with it the distinction. In “to have itself to another”, the other is the correlative, which is not before but together by nature — Aristotle, Categories. “So philosophy gets in everything else.”

9. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“nothing except what he has by being born”) #

Point: whether, abstracting the relations, the hypostases remain.

• Obj. 1: what is related to something by addition can be understood with the addition removed — animal without rational. Person adds to hypostasis (a hypostasis distinguished by a property pertaining to dignity). He notes the Latins use hypostasis as a synonym for person, but it more signifies individual substance; person adds rational nature.
• Obj. 2: the Father is father by fatherhood; if he were aliquis by fatherhood, the Son (who lacks it) would not be someone. So removing fatherhood he remains someone, a hypostasis.
• Obj. 3: Augustine, De Trinitate V: “ungenerated” is not the same as “Father”; even had he not generated, he would be ungenerated, though there would be no fatherhood. So removing fatherhood, the hypostasis remains as ungenerated.
• Sed contra: Hilary, De Trinitate IV: the Son has nothing except what he has by being born; by birth he is Son; remove sonship and no hypostasis remains — likewise the other persons.

10. Body: the twofold abstraction (“there is a twofold abstraction by the understanding”) #

Point: Thomas starts by saving a distinction Aristotle already made.

• Universal from particular (animal from man) vs. form from matter (circle from sensible matter; sphere from a marble ball and a baseball). What separates them: in the first, that from which one abstracts does not remain — remove rational from man and only animal remains, not man; in the second both remain — circle from bronze leaves the understanding of circle and of bronze. “I never understand that fully.”
• In God there is neither universal/particular nor form/matter in reality, but by way of signifying there is a likeness: Damascene — the substance is common, the particular is the hypostasis.
• Applied: by the first abstraction, remove the properties and the common essence remains in the understanding, not the hypostasis of the Father (as in the mind of a philosopher). By the second, remove the non-personal properties (ungenerated, breathing) and the person of the Father remains; remove the personal property and the understanding of the hypostasis is taken away, because personal properties do not come to a pre-existing subject as form to subject but bring their subjects with them — subsisting relations, fatherhood is the Father. Hypostasis signifies something distinct; relation distinguishes and constitutes; so removing the personal relation, no hypostasis remains.
• The other position: hypostases distinguished by origin only (Father as not from another, Son as from another by generation), relations as properties pertaining to dignity added afterwards constituting persons, “personalities”; remove them and hypostases remain but not persons. “Hate to be debating this guy.” Cannot stand: (1) relations both distinguish and constitute the hypostases, as shown; (2) every hypostasis of rational nature is a person (Boethius’s definition), so to have a hypostasis and not a person one would have to abstract rationality from the nature, not the property from the person. “That’s a mouthful, Thomas.”

11. Replies of article 3 (“only as he is distinguished from the creatures”) #

• Reply 1: person adds to hypostasis not a property distinguishing absolutely but one pertaining to dignity, the whole taken as one difference; dignity comes from existing in the most noble, rational nature. Remove the distinguishing property and no hypostasis remains; it would remain only if one removed the rationality of the nature. In God both hypostasis and person include a distinguishing relation.
• Reply 2: by fatherhood the Father is not only father but person, quis, hypostasis; it no more follows that the Son is not a hypostasis than that he is not a person — he is one by sonship. (Student query: is “sonship” better than “sonhood”? “I guess so.”)
• Reply 3: Augustine did not mean the hypostasis of the Father remains as ungenerated when fatherhood is removed, as if innascibilitas constituted it; ungenerated posits nothing, it is negative, as Augustine himself says (ipsemet dicit). He speaks generally: not everything ungenerated is a father — God would be called ungenerated by one knowing nothing of the Trinity. Removing fatherhood, the Father remains only as distinguished from creatures, “as the Jews understand.” Aside: Aristotle and the Greeks knew nothing of this, though they used the number three to honour God. The class ends there.

His words #

• absolute; Thomas’s word for something that is itself rather than towards another.
• hypostasis / hypostases; individual in the genus of substance; Latins use it as a synonym for person.
• sola relatio; only relation multiplies the Trinity (Boethius).
• origin vs. relation; origin signifies by way of action (generation), relation by way of form (fatherhood).
• proprietas; property, used interchangeably with relation.
• abstract and concrete; what is and that by which it is, not different in God.
• paulatim; bit by bit.
• “natural hearing” [ed.: Physics]; the eight books De Koninck taught.
• minima; the least distinction, the first one.
• aliquis, quis; someone.
• twofold abstraction; universal from particular, form from matter.
• personalities; the other position’s name for the relations as added properties.
• innascibilitas; not being born, ungenerated, negative.
• ipsemet dicit; he himself says.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 40, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 40, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)

Mentioned

• Boethius, De Trinitate (sed contra a. 2); Boethius’s definition of person (a. 3)
• Augustine, De Trinitate, bk. V (obj. 3 of a. 3)
• Hilary, De Trinitate, bk. IV (sed contra a. 3)
• Damascene (substance common, particular hypostasis)
• Aristotle, Categories (correlatives together by nature); the lost dialogues, the fragment on philosophizing
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy; Augustine, Confessions; Hawthorne, Our Old Home

His questions #

• Simple things are distinguished by what? By themselves; the persons are subsisting relations, so distinction by relation is by themselves.
• Which of the two, origin or relation, distinguishes the persons? Relation, chiefly and first; origin is not intrinsic and presupposes the person.
• Is generating him the best way of distinguishing me from my son? No; something intrinsic — philosopher vs. soldier — as relation is intrinsic in God.
• Is it like the kicking, one act common to all three? (student) Thomas doesn’t argue that; he eliminates origin as not intrinsic.
• The more a distinction is before, the closer it is to what? Unity; so the first distinction is the least, by relation.
• Two distinct persons having the same mind — isn’t that strange? Yes; Father and Son think alike because they have the same mind.
• After abstracting the personal property, what remains? The common essence (as in the philosopher’s mind), not the hypostasis of the Father.
• Is “sonship” better than “sonhood”? (student) “I guess so.”
• Removing fatherhood, how does the Father remain? Only as distinguished from creatures, as the Jews understand.