Summa I q.41 a.6: Why There Is Only One Son and One Holy Spirit (Material vs. Formal Distinction, Simply vs. Not Simply)

Orientation #

He says “we’re up to the sixth article there in question forty-one,” and refers back to “last time” on the distinction between reason as nature and reason as reason (prev. lecture). He closes by noting this ends the first three of the five questions of the comparative consideration, and that the point about equal power “is going to come up again” in the next question. The previous class treated a. 5 of q. 41 on the power of generating; the next takes up q. 42 on the comparison of the persons to one another.

The class, in order #

1. The objections and the sed contra (“a notional act can terminate at many persons”) #

He reads the three objections and the contrary of a. 6.

• Obj. 1: whoever has the power of generating can generate; the Son has the power of generating (otherwise he would have less power than the Father); so there could be many sons, “or grandson.” Aside: “we human beings can have grandsons, and not God.”
• Obj. 2: Augustine against Maximinus says the Son did not generate, “not that he was not able, but that it was not suitable” — “he seems to say he’s got the power.”
• Obj. 3: God the Father is more powerful to generate than a created father; one man can generate many sons (“I have two sons”); and God’s power is not diminished or “exhausted” by having generated.
• Sed contra: in God to be and to be able don’t differ; if there could be many sons there would be, and more than three persons — heretical.

2. First reason: no material distinction in God (“forms of one kind cannot be multiplied”) #

Thomas cites Athanasius (the Athanasian Creed, which “may go back in some way” to him; one of the four or five main creeds, dividing by divinity and humanity rather than by the three persons) and gives four reasons, “any one of them would be enough, maybe.” Argument from the relations:

1. The persons are subsisting relations, distinguished only by the relations.
2. Many fathers or sons would require many fatherhoods or sonships, which is possible only by a material distinction; forms of one kind are multiplied only by matter.
3. There is no matter in God; so only one subsisting sonship, “just as whiteness subsisting could not be except one.” Why many of one kind at all: many chairs, many window panes of the same kind, because there is “enough matter”; matter as subject to quantity (extension) lets individuals of one kind be here and there. Even in mathematics: the two endpoints of a line are two only because one is here, one there; Euclid’s first theorem draws two circles, two because one is here and one there. Since no matter in angels, Thomas argues no two angels are of the same kind; the same for God. “Distinction of distinction”: like definition of definition or statements about statements — reason can know its own act, which is why there can be an art of logic. Material distinction (matter subject to continuous quantity) vs. formal distinction (by opposites). The four opposites (Categories, before “before and after”; same fourfold in Wisdom V): contradictories, having and lacking, contraries, relatives. Elimination for God: not contradictories (being/non-being, but God is “I am who am”); not having/lack (lack is non-being in a subject); not contraries (Natural Hearing I, Wisdom X: one contrary is a kind of lacking — love/hate, hot/cold, white/black); so only relatives; not relatives of quantity but of activity, hence origin. So Father and Son differ only formally, by fatherhood and sonship; two sonships would be back to material distinction.

3. Second reason: one act of understanding and willing (“only one act of understanding in God”) #

The relations rest on origin, a proceeding that remains within God, so only by understanding and willing; as seen in the treatise on God’s activity, God understands and wills all by one simple act, so only one Word and one Spirit. Example: I can think of a triangle and of a square, two thoughts because more than one thinking; with only one thinking there would be one thought. God, thinking himself, thinks all else, “even of us”; loving himself, he loves whatever else — “Aristotle already said so.”

4. Third and fourth reasons (“nature is determined to what, just one”) #

Third, from the manner of proceeding: the persons proceed naturally — the Father didn’t “choose to have a Son today”; nature is determined to one (recall of reason as nature vs. reason as reason, and Shakespeare in Coriolanus on nature not being able to be more than one thing, prev. lecture). Fourth, from perfection: the whole divine sonship is contained in the Son, so another son could not differ from him at all. Compares the argument that there can’t be two Gods, since a second would lack something. Aside: this is why the Son is so loved by the Father.

5. Reply to obj. 1: the gerundive “generandi” (“the power to be generated”) #

Simply, the Son has whatever power the Father has, but not “the power of generating” if generandi is the gerundive of the active verb, since that brings in the Father’s relation to the Son — as Father and Son have the same being, yet the Son is not the Father because of the notion joined to the Father. If generandi is passive, the Son has the power of being generated. If impersonal, “the power by which from some person someone is generated.” Same ability, distinguished by being in the Father with fatherhood and in the Son with sonship. “Kind of a subtle thing”; “you can see how much trouble that would have given people.” Student exchange: isn’t the Father doing something and the Son receiving? — That would be Aristotle’s acting-upon and undergoing; the Son is pure act too. Active/passive here is a grammatical distinction only, like “able to know” vs. “able to be known” in God; no passive ability in God. Student: so it is our way of describing it? — “Limitations of language,” yes.

6. Digression: act before ability, and “simply” vs. “in some way” (“what is so simply”) #

Wisdom IX: first two parts on ability and act and their kinds; third part on their order — act before ability in definition, in our knowledge, and better; in time, ability is before act in the thing that goes from ability to act (wood before the chair), but since that happens by something already in act, simply act is before ability; hence in book XII the first in reality is pure act. The moderns see the first and conclude matter (most in ability) is the beginning of all things — a mistake “outside of speech”: confusing what is so simply with what is so in a diminished way. “A very common mistake”: choosing a bad thing because in some way good (skipping mass to sleep in; getting rid of an annoying student would in a diminished sense be good). Meno’s paradox (how aim at what you don’t know?) — answer: you know it in some way, not simply; example: how many students today? I don’t know, but I know the road (counting) and reach eight, which I sought under “the number of students.” Socrates’s reply (recollection from the soul’s pre-existence, forgotten by the shock of the body) makes the same kind of mistake: the slave boy, asked how to double a square, says double the side, is shown false, then led to the diagonal (four copies of the square, diagonals cut each in half, the square on the diagonals is half of four, twice the original). Socrates says he didn’t teach him — but the boy only had the ability to know from what he knew, which is not to know simply, “otherwise you know everything before you go to school.” Example: man and woman have the ability for a baby — not the same as having a baby. The two opinions on the beginning of things, matter or God; the true answer God; the other confuses before in time, “very qualified,” with before simply.

7. Replies to obj. 2 and 3 (“not from the impotency of the Son”) #

Augustine does not mean the Son can generate, but that his not generating is not from lack of power. This will get “more enlightenment” in the next question, whether the persons are equal in power [he says “sixth article”]; for now: same power, in the Father with fatherhood, in the Son with sonship. Obj. 3: immateriality (first reason) and perfection (fourth) require there not be many sons; that there are not many is from generating most perfectly — no human son has the whole perfection of human sonship. Aside: “not like those Hindus have all these countless ones.”

8. Where we are in the comparative consideration (“comparing the persons as persons to each other”) #

Five questions of the comparative consideration; a student half-recalls the division. The first three compare the persons to something other in thought (not in things): the divine nature, the relations, the notional acts. The last two compare the persons as persons to each other, divided into two — “can’t get away from this three-two business.”

His words #

• notional act; the act (generating, breathing) that terminates at a person
• “breathed” (spiration); the second procession
• material distinction vs. formal distinction; by matter subject to quantity vs. by opposites
• “distinction of distinction”; reason reflecting on its own act
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]
• four opposites: contradictories, having and lacking, contraries, relatives
• “I am who am”
• gerundive generandi: active, passive, impersonal
• ability [ed.: potency]; act
• “mistake outside of speech”: simply vs. in a qualified/diminished way [ed.: secundum quid]
• comparative consideration of the persons

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 41, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies) Mentioned
• Athanasian Creed
• Augustine, Contra Maximinum
• Aristotle, Categories (four opposites, before “before and after”); Metaphysics V, IX (three parts), X, XII; Physics I
• Euclid, Elements I, prop. 1 (equilateral triangle)
• Plato, Meno (paradox; slave boy)
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus (prev. lecture)
• Thomas on angels not of one kind; treatise on the activity of God (earlier in the course)

His questions #

• Why is it possible to have many chairs in this room of the same kind? Because there is enough matter; matter subject to quantity.
• How are the two endpoints of a line two and not one? Because one is here and the other there.
• Formal distinction is by what? By opposites, of four kinds.
• If I had only one thinking, how many thoughts would I have? One — so only one Word in God.
• How would another son differ from the Son? He wouldn’t differ at all; the Son has the whole sonship.
• Is there really an undergoing in God when the Son is generated? No; active/passive here is grammatical, a limitation of language.
• How can you direct yourself to what you don’t know (Meno)? By knowing it in some imperfect way, e.g. knowing the road to the count.
• Did the slave boy know how to double a square before the conversation? No; he had the ability to know it from what he knew, which is not to know simply.
• What is the distinction between the first three and the last two comparative questions? Persons compared to something other in thought vs. persons compared to each other.