Summa I q.41 a.4–5: Power as a Beginning, and Whether the Power of Generating Signifies the Divine Essence or the Relation

Orientation #

He opens by continuing an article already begun: “Now we got to come to the third objection” (prev. lecture: a. 4 begun). Back-references he makes himself: “we had an article earlier” on whether the names of God are synonyms, and one on whether the Father is principium. He closes a. 5 and says “so we get to stop here… Fourth” [ed.: the next article is a. 6], to be run “next” time. The previous class worked through a. 3 and began a. 4; the next takes up a. 6.

The class, in order #

1. Third objection of a. 4 (“It takes longer to answer the third objection”) #

The objection: the Son proceeds as Word (a conception of understanding), the Spirit as love (will); but power in God is said in comparison to effects, not to understanding and willing (as was had above); so power is not said in comparison to notional acts. His preliminary observation before reading Thomas: power might be more properly said toward creatures than toward notional acts, because there is a real distinction between God and creature; but is there a real distinction between the Father and generating and breathing? “Let’s listen to Thomas.”

2. Power signifies a beginning; nothing is the beginning of itself (“nothing is the beginning of itself”) #

Thomas’s reply starts: power signifies a beginning.

• Aristotle’s definition (beginning of “the ninth book”, starting from the powers most known to us, of motion): active power is a beginning of change in another as other; passive, of being changed by another. Beginning is in the definition.
• Axiom of beginning: nothing is the beginning of itself. Aristotle uses it in book I of “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics] against Parmenides and Melissus: if everything is one, there are no beginnings, since a beginning is always distinct from that of which it is the beginning.
• Compared to the axiom of before and after: today is not before or after today, but before tomorrow and after yesterday. So a beginning implies distinction from that of which it is the beginning.

3. Twofold distinction: in the thing, or in reason only (“a twofold distinction”) #

Thomas: in things said about God there is a twofold distinction, secundum rem vs secundum rationem tantum (“only”, he notes, because a distinction of thoughts about really distinct things is also a distinction of thoughts).

• Aristotle already saw this. Plato’s Parmenides (“a terrible dialogue”) treats being and one as different things; Aristotle in the fourth book of “wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IV] says being and one are the same thing but the words are not synonyms: one adds indivision, a negation, a being of reason that adds nothing to being. So they differ secundum rationem only. He connects this to the earlier article: names of God are not synonyms though they signify the same thing.
• Real distinction: substance vs quantity (what you are vs your size), my substance vs my knowledge of geometry, act vs ability, matter vs form. Rational only: being vs the one convertible with being.

4. The reply: real distinction saves the proper notion of power (“the proper notion of a beginning”) #

Thomas’s argument as he reads it:

1. Secundum rem, God by His essence is distinguished from what He begins through creation; one person is distinguished from another of which he is the beginning by a notional act.
2. But action is not distinguished from the agent in God except by reason only; otherwise action would be an accident and there would be composition in God.
3. So for actions by which something proceeds distinct from God, essentially (creature) or personally (another person), power can be attributed according to the proper notion of beginning. Recall the article on the Father as principium: the Father is beginning of the Son, Father and Son of the Spirit, God of creatures, because of real distinction. Apocalypse: “I am the Alpha and the Omega… the beginning and the end” (arche, telos).
4. Hence as we place the power of creating in God, so the power of generating and of breathing.
5. But to understand and to will do not designate a procession of one thing from another as distinct; so there the notion of power is saved only secundum modum intelligendi et significandi, as the understanding, the power of understanding and to understand are diversely signified in God, though God’s understanding is His essence and has no beginning. His summary of “the key thing”: beginning is always distinct from what it begins; where the distinction is real (Father/Son, God/creature) power is in its proper notion; toward God’s understanding and will it is only in our way of understanding.

5. Is God’s understanding a beginning of His loving? (“Could I love wisdom if I didn’t understand”) #

Answer: no, except according to our way of understanding, since we understand God from creatures.

• In us understanding and loving are really distinct, so my understanding what wisdom is is a real beginning of my loving wisdom; faith is before charity (“in some way know God before I can love Him”); the Vatican Council quoting Augustine: by believing to come to hope, by hoping to love. We can love God more than we understand Him.
• Can you love what you don’t know? So if God did not understand Himself He could not love Himself; but His understanding Himself and loving Himself differ only “in our reason.”
• His circle example: the center is one point but is defined as the beginning of this line and of that; my understanding and my loving are really distinct points on the circumference, but the “center” that begins both, in God, is one and the same point defined differently.
• Thomas does reason from God’s understanding Himself to His loving Himself, because the good as known is the object of love: an order that is in our thoughts, not a real distinction or real order in God; whereas between Father and Son there is real distinction and real proceeding.
• Pointer: the Disputed Questions De Potentia treat the power of creating and then the power of generating; breathing is similar to generating.
• Student contrast: my ability to understand is a real beginning of my understanding (I had the ability before I understood, and can understand more than I do); God’s ability to understand was not a real beginning of His understanding. “So that’s beautiful.” Break.

6. Article 5: objections and sed contra (“signifies a relation and not an essence”) #

Question as he puts it: is the ability to generate the Son in the Father his fatherhood, or the divine nature itself?

• Obj. 1: power signifies a beginning (its definition, “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V]); but beginning in God is said with respect to a person, notionally; so power signifies relation. His gloss: the divine nature can’t be the beginning of the Son, else it would be different from the Son; “something up his sleeve.”
• Obj. 2: in God posse and agere do not differ; generation signifies relation; so the power of generating does. “So I’m convinced. For the time being.”
• Obj. 3: what signifies essence is common to the three; the power of generating is proper to the Father.
• Sed contra: as God is able to generate the Son, so He wills it; the will of generating signifies essence; therefore the power does (“a kind of strange argument”).
• Aside on Thomas: he never accepts something against the faith as unsolvable; “he’s always making these distinctions” should be “seeing the distinctions and using them.”

7. The body: that by which the generator generates (“that by which the one generating generates”) #

Some say the power of generating signifies relation; it cannot.

1. Power is the property in an agent by which the agent acts (agent = who does; power = that by which).
2. Everything producing through action produces something like itself in the form by which it acts: the generated man is like his father in human nature. His example: I did not generate my son by my knowledge of geometry, so I don’t say my son knows geometry; I generated him by my human nature, and in that he is like me.
3. So the generating power is that in which the generated is like the generator. The Son is like the Father in the divine nature, not in fatherhood; if by fatherhood, the Son would be another father (and the Spirit another son and father).
4. So the divine nature in the Father is the power of generating in Him (“but it’s in the Father, that’s kind of bringing it in over here”). Hilary, De Trinitate V: the birth of God cannot not possess the nature. Conclusion: the power of generating chiefly (principally, as the Master says in Sentences I d. 7) signifies the divine essence; “he didn’t say only.” Not the relation only, nor the essence as identical with relation, which would signify both equally. Fatherhood, though signified as the form of the Father, is a personal property, related to the Father as an individual form to a created individual; the individual form constitutes the person generating, not that by which he generates, “otherwise Socrates would engender Socrates.” So fatherhood constitutes the generator; the divine nature is that by which he generates. Damascene: generation is a work of nature, as of that by which the generator generates.

• Example: if I teach you geometry, I am the teacher, but that by which I teach is the science of geometry in me; not the same thing.
• Translation: signifies in recto the divine nature, obliquely the relation; his rendering: “the divine nature of the Father,” or the divine nature insofar as it is in the Father.

8. Reply to obj. 1, with the order of the categories (“Otherwise, it would be in the genus of”) #

Power does not signify the relation of beginning (else it would be in the genus of relation; it is in the second species of quality) but that which is a beginning.

• Digression on the Categories: Aristotle lists substance, how much, how (quality), towards what (relation), then the other six; but treats substance, quantity, then relation before quality. Porphyry in the Isagoge (to Chrysaorius) lists genus, difference, species, property, accident, but treats genus and species before difference. The lists follow the order of things: substance stands under all; quantity is presupposed to qualities (sense qualities, shape); relations are founded on quantity and quality; genus is the beginning, differences added give species, property follows on species, accident comes from outside. Porphyry’s reason for the change: genus and species are defined with reference to each other (genus: said of many differing in species in answer to “what is it?”; species: placed under a genus); difference is what the species has beyond the genus, or that by which species of one genus are separated (animal, man, rational; Aristotle’s example two-footed). Aristotle’s reason: Plato defined relatives as what is said to be of another; but some qualities, like knowledge (first species of quality), are said “of something,” so he has to distinguish what is wholly toward another (double: four, six, nothing in itself) from what is something in itself with a relation following upon it (knowledge, geometry). Cajetan’s commentary on this chapter is good on this.
• Application: power is basically a quality, on which follows a relation of being a beginning of another; that is not its whole nature. Thomas knows this distinction; Plato had not seen it.
• Second distinction: the agent as beginning vs that by which the agent acts. My teaching proceeds from me as your teacher and from my knowledge of geometry as that by which I teach, not in the same way. The agent is distinguished from the thing made, generator from generated; but that by which the generator generates is common to both (same nature), and more perfectly the more perfect the generation. Man generates one like in species, not the same individual nature; in God the nature is the same in number. Mother cat and kitten: same in kind, not in number; “the son has my nose… we don’t breathe through the same nose. But God the Father, God the Son, breathe through the same nose.”
• Student’s axiom “the more a thing is one, the more its power is infinite”: “Well, that’s true.”
• So saying the divine essence is the beginning by which the generator generates does not make the essence distinct, as it would if we said the essence generates.

9. Aside: Mozart found his music (“Beethoven seems to have made his music”) #

Einstein’s remark: Beethoven made his music, Mozart found it, as if it were always part of the universe. Applied: do you make up distinctions to get out of difficulty, or see them, already there but unseen? Further asides, one line each: Einstein answered a stupid question by playing his violin; Heisenberg was better known at home as a pianist; child prodigies in music and mathematics, not in drama, because of imagination; Benedict XVI also prefers Mozart; Mozart died in his 36th year.

10. Reply to obj. 2: same in the thing, not in definition (“the same in the thing, but not in the”) #

In God the power of generating is the same as generation, as the divine essence with generation and fatherhood: the same in the thing, not in definition. “How simple Thomas sees these things.” He recalls the earlier distinction: fatherhood is not different from the essence, yet is in the Father as constituting and distinguishing him, not in the divine nature that way. Added by him: generation is “more the same” as fatherhood than the power of generating is; the Father is more distinguished from the Son by generation than by the power.

• Shakespeare’s definition of reason, “large discourse, looking before and after,” includes distinction, since before and after presuppose it: reason chiefly tries to see distinction and order, and distinction comes before order. You can’t say Mozart is better than Haydn unless you distinguish them, but you may distinguish without seeing who is better: Byron saw more Beaumont and Fletcher performed than Shakespeare, later called Fletcher “a limb of Shakespeare.” Samuel Johnson: it takes a hundred years to tell a poet; Homer read thousands of years later; the English at the Dardanelles excited by Troy.
• Aside: a colleague did his doctoral thesis on Fletcher because Shakespeare has too much written on him.

11. Reply to obj. 3: power in recto, generation obliquely (“the essence of the Father”) #

“Power of generating” signifies power directly (in recto) and generation obliquely, as if one said “the essence of the Father.” As to the essence signified it is common to the persons; as to the notion it connotes, proper to the Father. So, does the Son have the nature of the Father? Not without qualification: “not in the same way.” They stop here.

His words #

• “Natural Hearing”: his rendering of the title Physics [ed.: Physics].
• ability / power: his rendering of potentia [ed.: potency]; active power = beginning of change in another as other.
• beginning: his rendering of principium [ed.: principle]; a beginning is always distinct from that of which it is the beginning.
• secundum rem / secundum rationem tantum: distinction in the thing vs in reason (thought) only.
• “book of wisdom”: his name for the Metaphysics.
• breathing: his rendering of spiratio [ed.: spiration].
• secundum modum intelligendi et significandi tantum: only according to the way of understanding and signifying.
• posse / agere: to be able and to do.
• “chiefly”: his rendering of principaliter in a. 5.
• in recto / obliquely: directly vs “indirectly”; his gloss “the nature of the Father.”
• towards what: his rendering of the category of relation; “how much,” “how” for quantity and quality.
• connotes: the notion the power of generating carries obliquely.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 41, a. 4, obj. 3 and ad 3
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 41, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Apocalypse, “I am the Alpha and the Omega… the beginning and the end” (quoted)
• Shakespeare, reason as “large discourse, looking before and after” (quoted)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, definition of power, “beginning of the ninth book” (Metaphysics IX, inferred)
• Aristotle, Physics I (Parmenides and Melissus)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV (being and one); Metaphysics V (cited in obj. 1 as “fifth book of wisdom”)
• Aristotle, Categories: order of the categories, chapters on substance, quantity, relation, quality
• Plato, Parmenides
• Porphyry, Isagoge (opening to Chrysaorius)
• Cajetan, commentary on the Categories (relation chapter)
• Hilary, De Trinitate V; Damascene (as cited by Thomas)
• Peter Lombard, Sentences I, d. 7
• Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia
• Vatican Council quoting Augustine (believing, hoping, loving)
• Earlier articles: whether God’s names are synonyms; whether the Father is principium (loci not stated)
• Samuel Johnson on a hundred years; Byron on Fletcher; Manchester’s biography of Churchill (Dardanelles)

His questions #

• What is the axiom of beginning? Nothing is the beginning of itself; a beginning is always distinct from what it begins.
• Is there a real distinction between the Father and the generating and the power? Left open at first; Thomas’s reply: action is distinguished from the agent in God by reason only, but the Father is really distinct from the Son.
• Could I love wisdom if I didn’t understand what wisdom is? Is that because of a real distinction between your understanding and loving? No, and yes: in us understanding is a real beginning of loving.
• Is God’s understanding Himself something different from His loving Himself? Only “in our reason.”
• Was God’s ability to understand the real beginning of His understanding? No; only mine is.
• If he generated him by his fatherhood, then he would be what? Another father.
• Am I that by which I teach you geometry? No, the science of geometry in me is; I am the teacher.
• Power does not signify the relation of beginning; otherwise it would be in the genus of what? Relation; power is in the second species of quality.
• Does the Son have the nature of the Father? Only with a qualification: “not in the same way.”