Summa I q.42 a.2-3: The Son Co-eternal with the Father, and the Objections to an Order of Nature in God

Orientation #

He refers back to eternity “as we were taught by Boethius, a long time back” and to “the article on eternity” where each objection attacks a part of the definition (prev. lecture is not the referent; these are earlier in the course). He recalls “I told you before” about his own problem with order. The previous class began q. 42 with a. 1 on equality; the next continues a. 3 and a. 4 on order and the Son’s equality in greatness.

The class, in order #

1. Objections 3 and 4 of a. 2 (“everything that is generated begins to be”) #

Point: the recording opens mid-objections; the two hardest are read. Obj. 3: what is corrupted ceases to be, so what is generated begins to be; the Son is generated, so he begins to be — “the more difficult” one. Obj. 4: either the Son is always being generated (then always imperfect, like time and motion, which are always in coming-to-be) or there is an instant of his generation, before which he was not. “You have to understand eternity to answer that objection.” Sed contra: Athanasius, i.e. the Athanasian Creed — “a very important creed here” — the three persons are co-eternal.

2. Body: two ways something is after its beginning (“on the side of the agent”) #

Point: Thomas grants the Father is a beginning (that from which something proceeds in any way), so he must show why the Son is nonetheless not posterior.

1. Something existing from a beginning can be after its beginning in two ways: on the side of the agent, or on the side of the action.
2. Agent, voluntary: he chooses the time as he chooses the form (“in the fullness of time”). Agent, natural: it lacks at first the perfection of its power — a man cannot generate at the start of life. Reason (Metaphysics IX, “the ninth book of Wisdom”): a natural power acts automatically, like fire burning paper put in it; the only reason it would not act at once is that its power is not yet all there. Aside: Kittredge would start class the moment he arrived; other professors are “veritably late” — the voluntary agent chooses now or later.
3. Action: the effect is not together with its beginning when the action is successive; it exists at the instant in which the action is terminated. Example: begin to walk now and you are not at once at your destination; begin to build a house and there is no house now.
4. The Father generates the Son not by will but by nature (excluded earlier), and his nature was perfect from eternity — so nothing on the side of the agent delays the Son.
5. The action is not successive, otherwise the Son would be generated successively, a material generation with motion — impossible. Conclusion: the Son was whenever the Father was; co-eternal; likewise the Holy Spirit to both.

3. Confirming from the Word (“thinking of Himself”) #

Point: the body is confirmed by the Word proceeding from God thinking himself. God always thinks himself perfectly, so the thought is always there when the thinking is, and the thinking is always. Our thinking is like motion: we think something out before we understand it; God does not. His understanding is a substance, always perfect.

• Student: “So he only has one thought then.” — “Yep. Only one thought. That’s another argument, but that’s true.”
• Student: nothing in nature acts that way, already perfected as it acts — unless two being half of four (two does not exist and later become half of four). His reply adds Augustine’s image in the mirror: as soon as you are in view it is there, as long as you are there it is there — but “not of the same nature”; light too takes some time [unclear in recording].

4. Reply to obj. 1: Arius’s twelve ways (“splendor is proceeding from the light”) #

Point: no creaturely way of proceeding perfectly represents the divine generation, so a likeness must be collected from many (Augustine, book on the words of the Lord). The Synod of Ephesus (he takes it as the Council of Ephesus) uses three words: coexist / splendor — splendor proceeds from light and seems simultaneous to sense, showing co-eternity (he links it to Psalm 109, ex utero ante luciferum genui te, “a good Psalm”); Word — shows the absence of undergoing (impassibilitate), the immateriality of the generation; Son — insinuates sameness of substance, though “son” alone might suggest material sons. Most expressive of all: the thought proceeding from the understanding, which is not posterior to it except in an understanding like ours that goes from potency to act.

• His illustration: my mind is an ability to know a subject I have not studied; I go to Euclid and form my thoughts, so my thoughts are posterior to my mind. God is pure act, understanding itself; no passive ability to be actualised, no real distinction between his ability to understand and his understanding. Reasoning from us to him: when I finally fully understand the definition of a square (equilateral, right-angled quadrilateral), I cannot be in that state without having the thought of it; God is always in that fully actual state, so always has the thought, so the Son is co-eternal. This “adds something” to the body: the word thought brings out the immateriality Thomas argued from non-succession.
• Same for the Holy Spirit: breathing is natural and they are always breathing. Peter’s confession, “the Son of the living God”: living and breath go together.

5. Reply to obj. 2: two senses of beginning (“beginning of duration, but not a beginning of origin”) #

Point: eternity excludes a beginning of duration, not of origin. Boethius’s definition, tota (simul) et perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis, denies a beginning and end of the life possessed; yet the thought proceeds from the thinker. Aristotle showed Melissus mixing two senses of beginning — “very commonly done.” Asides: Aristotle begins Metaphysics V with the word “beginning” (“a very good place to begin”); Bonaventure opens the mind’s journey to God, “In the beginning I call upon the first beginning.”

6. Reply to obj. 3: generation as change (“not a changing over, transmutatio”) #

Point: every corruption is a mutatio, so what is corrupted begins not to be; the generation opposed to corruption is also a mutatio; but divine generation is not a transmutatio (trans = over). Hence the Son is always generated and the Father always generates — and, he adds, the Father and Son always breathe and the Holy Spirit is always breathed.

7. Reply to obj. 4: the now of time and the now of eternity (“the now that stands still”) #

Point: the objection is partly a grammar problem and partly a confusion of the instant of time with the now of eternity.

• In time: the indivisible instant vs. the enduring time. In eternity: the indivisible now always standing. Boethius: the flowing now makes time (as a point is supposed to make a line), the now that stands still makes eternity.
• The Son’s generation is not in time but in eternity. Aristotle, treatise on time: to be in time is to be contained in a number, so what always is is not in time; a sign of being in time is that you change — grow up, get old, wear away — and eternal things do not. Example: Kittredge, born 1860, died 1941, is contained by time; an eternal thing has no beginning or end in time. To be in time is not to be when time is, any more than to be in place is to be when the place is — else the universe would be in this room. God is when time is, but not in time.
• So one may say “always being born” (Origen) to signify presence and permanence; but Gregory and Augustine say it is better to say “always born”: semper designates the permanence of eternity, natus the perfection of what is generated. Thus the Son is neither imperfect nor “was there a when he was not”, as Arius, “the chooser”, says.
• Student: what is the difference between semper natus and semper nasciturum [likely nascitur], both passive? — One is “always being born”, the other “always born”; the verb reflects motion, what is most known to us: when I am walking home I have not walked home yet. Student: “like process theology”. “Again the problem: we use our grammar to talk about God.”
• Aside: Latin has no article, so medievals write ly (seen in Cajetan), sometimes the Greek neuter to; he once guessed French la came from ly but is told it comes from ille.

8. Article 3, objections 1 and 2: is there an order of nature? (“the order of this from that”) #

Point: obj. 1 (order of nature is neither essence, person nor notion) is easily solved — it signifies the notion of origin in general. Obj. 2 is “important”: where there is order of nature, one is before the other at least by nature and understanding; but in the persons nothing is before or after (Athanasian Creed, “a precious thing” there).

• His own story: he first took order to mean before and after; then read in the disputed questions that in God there is not an order of this before that but of this from that, and concluded there were two meanings. Then, in Warren Murray’s office (before he had an edition of the Sentences), he found Thomas saying three things pertain to order: distinction is presupposed (nothing is before or after itself); order means before and after; there are species of order (before in time, cause before effect). Carried over to God (as in Augustine’s phrase “order of origin”), you drop the genus, before and after, and keep the specific difference: I am before my son and I am his origin; in God only the origin remains. “My first thought was better than my second thought.” In the text he had (maybe De Potentia) Thomas does not make the distinctions.
• Why drop genus, keep difference: common in the names of God (Boethius does it “all the time”); Porphyry — genus is to difference as matter to form, ability to act; God is pure act. Example: demonstration is a syllogism making us know the cause and that it cannot be otherwise; carried to God you keep “knows the cause and that it cannot be otherwise” and drop the syllogism, the imperfection of our way of knowing.
• Lesson: earlier works, though less authoritative, are sometimes more explicit. Aristotle enumerates all ten categories only in the Categories and the Topics, elsewhere three or four — hence someone said he “wasn’t sure how many”; Thomas too gives only the part of a distinction relevant to the text. From his own writing he knows a later treatment may be briefer — so the argument “Mark is shortest, therefore first” cuts neither way. Aside: the parish read Mark because it fit the time; Dr. Mede impressed by Brother Augustine’s computer room, “before the revolution.”

9. Article 3, objections 3 and 4 (“whatever is ordered is distinguished”) #

Point: obj. 3 attacks from nature, obj. 2 from ordo. Obj. 3: whatever is ordered is distinguished (distinction presupposed to order, shown by the axiom of before and after); the nature in God is not distinguished; so no order of nature. Obj. 4: the divine nature is his essence, and no one speaks of an order of essence, so not of nature — an objection to the word. “What I like about these objections”: each concentrates on one word, as in the article on eternity. Thomas will illuminate the choice of “nature”, even by Augustine. Class ends before the reply.

His words #

• co-eternal: the three persons together without before and after in duration.
• beginning: that from which something proceeds in any way whatsoever; two senses, of duration and of origin.
• ninth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; fifth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• ability [ed.: potency]; pure act: God has no passive ability to be actualised.
• thought [ed.: Word, verbum]: what proceeds from understanding when it fully understands.
• breathing: the natural production of the Holy Spirit by Father and Son.
• tota et perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis: Boethius’s definition of eternity.
• mutatio vs transmutatio: change vs “changing over”; divine generation is the former’s name without the latter.
• flowing now / standing now: makes time / makes eternity (Boethius).
• semper natus vs always being born: permanence of eternity plus perfection of the generated, vs an imperfect coming-to-be.
• ly: the medieval Latin makeshift article.
• the chooser: his gloss on the name Arius.
• order: distinction presupposed, before and after as genus, species of order; carried to God drop the genus, keep the difference (this from that).
• episteme / demonstration: syllogism making us know the cause and that it cannot be otherwise.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I, q. 42, a. 2: objections 3–4, sed contra, body, replies 1–4.
• Thomas, ST I, q. 42, a. 3: objections 1–4.
• Psalm 109, ex utero ante luciferum genui te (quoted).
• Bonaventure, Itinerarium, opening sentence (quoted). Mentioned
• Athanasian Creed (co-eternity; no before and after).
• Augustine, book on the words of the Lord; Augustine’s mirror image; “order of origin”.
• Synod (Council) of Ephesus, the three words.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (natural power), Metaphysics V (beginning), on Melissus’s two senses of beginning, the treatise on time (Physics, inferred), Categories and Topics (ten categories).
• Boethius on eternity and the two nows.
• Origen, Gregory, Augustine on “always born”.
• Thomas, Sentences (three things in order), disputed questions / De Potentia (this from that).
• Porphyry (genus : difference :: matter : form).
• Peter’s confession, “Son of the living God”; Gospel of Mark.

His questions #

• Why can something be after its beginning on the side of the agent? Voluntary agents choose the time; natural agents may lack the perfection of their power at first.
• Why can it be after its beginning on the side of the action? Because the action is successive and the effect exists only at the instant the action ends.
• Does God have only one thought? Yes — “that’s another argument, but that’s true.”
• What does each of the three Ephesian words bring out? Splendor: co-eternity; Word: immateriality, no undergoing; Son: same substance.
• What kind of beginning does eternity exclude? A beginning of duration, not of origin.
• Is the Son’s generation in the now of time? No, in the standing now of eternity; what always is cannot be contained in a number.
• Is “always being born” or “always born” the better phrase? “Always born”: semper for eternity’s permanence, natus for the perfection of what is generated.
• What do you drop and what do you keep when you carry “order” over to God? Drop the genus, before and after; keep the difference, this from that.
• How can there be an order of nature in God if there is no before and after? Left open (reply to a. 3 not reached).