Q.43 a.8 on Who Sends Whom, and Why the Trinity Is Taught Before the Incarnation

Orientation #

He opens by saying he wants to talk about “the order of talking about the Trinity before the incarnation,” but first reads a. 8, the last of q. 43 (prev. lecture ended at a. 7). At the close he says: “we’ve just got through considering the Trinity, and now in the fall we’ll proceed to talk about the Incarnation, Tertia Pars,” and that after the order of teaching “we’ll talk a little bit about names.” The previous class treated a. 7 on the visible mission of the Holy Spirit; the next turns to the logic of names.

The class, in order #

1. The objections and sed contra of a. 8 (“This convinces me”) #

He reads Thomas’s three objections, agrees with them, and then finds the sed contra ties him “into a knot.”

1. Augustine, De Trinitate bk. 4: the Father is sent by no one because he is from no one; so if a person is sent by another, he must be from that one.
2. The sender has authority over the one sent; in God there is no authority except of origin; so the one sent is from the sender.
3. If a person could be sent by one from whom he is not, nothing would stop saying a man gives the Holy Spirit, against Augustine bk. 15. Sed contra: Isaiah 48:16, “the Lord God and his Spirit sent me” (he thinks Christ quotes it in the synagogue); the Son is sent by the Holy Spirit, but is not from him. He confesses that after reading the first seven articles his “inconsidered judgment” would have been the objections’ side.

2. Two opinions and the truth in between (“Augustine is really a troublemaker”) #

The point: Thomas does not answer the objections one by one but resolves the whole in the body, finding truth on both sides.

• Opinion 1: a person is sent only by the one from whom he is eternally; the Son “sent by the Holy Spirit” then refers to his human nature, sent to preach.
• Opinion 2 (Augustine, bk. 2): the Son is sent by himself and by the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit by himself and by the Son. Berquist: “by himself, I don’t know.” So Augustine holds that only a person from another is sent, but that sending belongs to every person. Thomas’s resolution, as he reads it:

1. Being sent designates two things: a person existing from another, and a visible or invisible effect by which the sending is noted (recalled from earlier: no change in God, but a change in us, by which he is in us in a new way as known or loved).
2. If “sending” designates the beginning of the person sent, only the one who is that person’s beginning sends: the Son only by the Father; the Holy Spirit by Father and Son. Neither sends himself.
3. If “sending” designates the beginning of the effect in the creature, the whole Trinity sends the person sent (“that’s maybe what you were talking about, Father, a little bit earlier”).
4. Even so a man does not give the Holy Spirit, since he cannot cause even the effect of grace (“give up your ambition to send the Holy Spirit to somebody”). Aside on method: in the disputed questions Thomas sometimes comes down on one side and answers the other’s objections; sometimes he says the truth is in between and answers both sets, which is more complicated but true.

3. Two reverse orders in Scripture (“Thomas is a man who looks before and after”) #

The point: Scripture gives both “do good and avoid evil” and “turn away from evil and do good,” and Thomas notices the reversed order is not random.

• Our Father vs. Psalms: the Our Father puts doing good (thy will be done, daily bread) before turning from sin (forgive us); the Psalms, on Thomas following Augustine, go the other way: first fifty on repentance and fighting sin (Psalm 50, the one Teresa of Avila loved), second fifty on good deeds, last fifty on resting in God. Same parts, reversed.
• His answer: one is the order of intention, one the order of execution. You intend to do good, and therefore want to avoid evil, as the philosopher wants truth and consequently avoids error as an impediment. In carrying out, you are in a sinful state, so the first thing is to be turned away (baptism’s washing symbolism). Fitting that the Psalms, being drawn out, follow execution; the Our Father is compact. A student first suggested “avoiding evil is first in terms of our experience”; he accepts it and gives Thomas’s terms.

4. Peter’s confession vs. John’s prologue (“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God”) #

The point: the same reversal appears between humanity and divinity of Christ.

• At Caesarea Philippi Peter says “the Christ, the Son of the Living God”: humanity given before divinity. John’s gospel ends with the same profession (“that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”), differing only in that Peter addresses Christ as “you.”
• John’s prologue goes the other way: the Word was God, then the Word was made flesh, from divinity to manhood. So the question: what is the correct order, and what is the difference between the two?

5. The two ways a teacher leads, q. 117 a. 1 (“led by the hand to a knowledge of the truth”) #

He reads the end of the body (Marietti text, after the Posterior Analytics quote that all teaching and learning is from pre-existent knowledge): ducit autem magister discipulum ex praecognitis.

1. First way: by proposing aids (auxilia) which the understanding uses: less universal statements (he notes this seems the reverse of what Aristotle teaches at the start of the eight books of Natural Hearing), sensible examples, likenesses, opposites, from which the learner’s understanding is manuducitur, led by the hand. Msgr. Dionne gave courses on the manuductio proper to logic and to wisdom, the latter “totally neglected.”
2. Second way: by strengthening the learner’s understanding, not by an active power of a superior nature (as guardian angels illuminate us; all human understandings are one grade of nature) but by proposing the order of premises to conclusions, since the learner may not by himself have the power to bring things together; hence Post. An. I: a demonstration is a syllogism making us know. Corollary: what is before in one order may be after in the other. In an easy science like Euclid almost no induction is needed and you mainly do the second; in others, above all logic (which Thomas says has maximae difficultates) and wisdom, the induction is extensive.

6. “Before” in Metaphysics V; senses vs. reason (“a thing is singular when sensed, the universal is understood”) #

The fifth book of wisdom begins with “beginning,” ending with the common notion: what is first in being, becoming or knowing. Since before and after concern order, and order proceeds from a beginning, “before” is divided into before in being, in knowing, in becoming, roughly the first three senses in the Categories; the fourth, in goodness, is more distant and taken under “perfect.” Under before in knowing, the fundamental distinction:

• Senses vs. reason: the senses know the singular directly (this man, glass, chair), the universal only as exemplified; for reason the reverse, as Boethius says. What you are as an individual is less known to me than that you are a man. This is why manuductio begins with sensible examples: knowledge begins in the senses; you cannot teach without them.

7. Applied: humanity before divinity, Word before flesh (“in the definition of the incarnation would be the Word”) #

• For the senses / manuductio: Christ’s humanity is sensible (Thomas fingers in his side; “my Lord” said of him as man, “my God” of the invisible); the fire at Pentecost more known to sense than the Holy Spirit. So the humanity is before the divinity, an “understatement,” since the divine nature is not sensed at all.
• For definition and demonstration (he adds definition from the Posterior Analytics): the Word is in the definition of the Incarnation, not the Incarnation in the definition of the Word; to understand the Incarnation you must know who the second person is and that he took a human nature to his person. So the Trinity is before the Incarnation in definition, John’s order. “The Word was made flesh” is a synecdoche, part for whole (heretics took it without figure), i.e. the Word was made man; the Creed likewise speaks of the divinity a bit and then “became man.” Simple example: asked “what is an animal?” one answers “dog, cat, horse” (as Meno gives examples of virtue), closer to the senses, the order of manuductio; but animal is in the definition of dog (a four-footed animal that barks), so animal is before dog in definition. This is what Aristotle means at the start of the Natural Hearing by confused before distinct, general before particular: order of definition and demonstration.
• Sacred Heart devotion as ascent: physical heart, emotional attachment, love of his human will, love of his divine will; like manuductio, which is more fundamental, and hence given first by Thomas.

8. Experience for wisdom; why the Gospels come before the Summa (“Wisdom demonstrates their beginnings”) #

Albert the Great (via Msgr. Dionne): natural science needs experience, geometry and arithmetic do not; wisdom needs “experience,” but not of being. Experience originally means gathering many singulars into memory; for wisdom it is gathering the many particular sciences (logic, geometry, natural philosophy, ethics, politics), a kind of induction. Yet wisdom treats the most universal things (being, one, true, good) which enter into every definition, and sees the axioms distinctly (Aristotle spends bk. 4 defending the axiom of being and non-being), so in definition and demonstration wisdom is before all the rest and is not demonstrated by them, though it is learned last, as Thomas says in giving the order of the sciences. Likewise the Gospels come before the Summa: those around Christ see his humanity and gradually his divinity (Last Supper: “show us the Father”); the question itself is “who do men say the Son of Man is,” not the Son of God. “It’s significant that Thomas gives that order first.”

9. Closing exchange (“Could have we gone the other way?”) #

He notes Mark and Luke have Peter say only “You are the Christ,” Matthew the full profession, John more fully still (Augustine: Matthew and John set outside to hold the others up); 1 John, “what we have seen and heard, touched,” follows the order of the senses. Student: could Thomas have written theology in the other order? Yes, and we do so with children, led by Christ’s human nature to the divine; but to understand Christ you must eventually see he is one divine person, not a human person, nor two persons, so you must reach the Trinity. Aside: Chesterton’s Everlasting Man recalled, and Churchill’s bravado on being asked if he was prepared to meet his Creator: “is he prepared to meet me?”

His words #

• “beginning” of the person / of the effect; Thomas’s two senses of “sending” [ed.: principium]
• order of intention vs. order of execution; the two orders of good/evil in Scripture
• aids, auxilia; the less-universal statements, examples, likenesses, opposites a teacher proposes
• manuducitur / manuductio; “led by the hand,” the first way of teaching, from the senses
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics]
• “wisdom,” “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]
• before in being, in knowing, in becoming; the fourth, in goodness, under “perfect”
• order of definition / order of demonstration; the second way, the order of understanding
• synecdoche; part named for the whole, as “flesh” for “man”
• experience; originally many singulars gathered in memory; for wisdom, the many particular sciences

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I q. 43 a. 8 (objections, sed contra, body)
• Thomas, ST I q. 117 a. 1, end of the body (Marietti text) Mentioned
• Augustine, De Trinitate bks. 4, 15, 2
• Isaiah 48:16
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I (all teaching from pre-existent knowledge; demonstration makes us know)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (“beginning,” “before”), IV (axiom of being and non-being, inferred locus)
• Aristotle, Categories (four senses of “before”)
• Aristotle, Physics I opening
• Boethius (singular sensed, universal understood; locus not given)
• Plato, Meno
• Matthew 16 and parallels in Mark, Luke; John 1, John 20; 1 John 1; Nicene Creed
• Thomas on the Psalms following Augustine (three fifties); Thomas on the order of learning the sciences (locus not given)
• Albert the Great on experience and wisdom (via Msgr. Dionne)
• Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

His questions #

• Is no divine person sent except by the one from whom he proceeds? Only if “sending” means beginning of the person; as beginning of the effect, the whole Trinity sends.
• Can a man give the Holy Spirit? No, he cannot cause even the effect of grace.
• How can “do good and avoid evil” and “turn from evil and do good” both be right? One is the order of intention, the other of execution.
• Do the senses know the universal? Only as exemplified in the singular; directly they know the singular.
• In what sense is the humanity of Christ before the divinity? For the senses and manuductio; the divinity is before in definition.
• Would dog be in the definition of animal? No; animal is in the definition of dog, so animal is before in definition.
• Why does Thomas give manuductio before the other way? Because it is before for us, who begin from the senses.
• Could theology have been written in the other order? Yes, as with children; but to understand Christ you must reach the Trinity.