Seven Apostles, the Father of Lights, and Why Aquinas Treats God's Substance in Five

Orientation #

He opens with his usual prayer and a “little scriptural thing,” then says he is “tying the knot” on an earlier conversation about wisdom and reason. He does not announce a next class. The neighbouring classes treat the structure of the Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 111 on the divisions of grace.

The class, in order #

1. The seven at the third appearance (“there is seven”) #

John’s gospel has three accounts of Christ’s appearing after the resurrection: to all but Thomas; with Thomas present; and John 21. In the third, seven are named: Simon Peter; Thomas the twin; Nathanael of Cana; the two sons of Zebedee (James and John); and two others unnamed.

• Is Nathanael one of the Twelve? He is not named among the Twelve in the other gospels; the Catholic Encyclopedia reports the general acceptance that he is Bartholomew, on three grounds: (1) he appears here among apostles; (2) the dramatic character of his introduction to Christ in John; (3) in the enumerations of the Twelve he is always paired with Philip — Philip and Bartholomew — in the same order in the Synoptics. (Philip is the one who brings Nathanael to Christ.)
• The Fathers in the Catena Aurea stop on the number seven: those who build up the Church are seven because moved by the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
• Aside: at the end of ch. 21 Christ foretells Peter’s crucifixion, and of John says “I want him to remain until I come — what is that to you?”; Peter and John are the two who run to the tomb and are closely associated in Acts.

2. Seven as a number of perfection (“a symbol of wisdom”) #

Instances he gathers: seven sacraments; ten commandments as three and seven; philosophy divided into seven parts (three speculative, three practical, and logic); seven angels standing before God; seven canonical epistles (James, Jude, two of Peter, three of John) — which he calls “my reward” for reading the Catena Aurea. The age of reason is seven. Thomas says the square of a number has the same significance as the number: seven times seven is forty-nine, the age at which Aristotle says the mind is best, and Thomas’s own age at death (1225–1274).

3. James on endurance: perfect and whole (“teleioi kai holoklēroi”) #

Reading James 1: endurance has a perfect work (ergon teleion), that you may be teleioi kai holoklēroi, “in nothing wanting” (en mēdeni leipomenoi). Holoklēroi is a very emphatic way of saying whole — no part missing — and lexicons give both “whole” and “perfect.”

• This joins with Aristotle, Physics III (“natural hearing”), which Thomas constantly quotes: whole and perfect mean almost the same. A whole car is more perfect than a part of a car; a whole chair than an arm or leg of it; in Quebec a repas complet is appetizer, main course, dessert — even if the dessert is only jello, the three parts are there.
• Three is the first number of which we say “all,” and “all” is almost the same as whole; hence three signifies perfection. Aristotle (On the Universe) says we use three in praising God because perfection is three; some thought he meant the Trinity, but Thomas says it is three’s natural perfection.
• Other perfect numbers: seven, ten, and a hundred and a thousand as multiples of ten. Ten is three plus seven. Augustine sometimes explains a number by its factors, sometimes by its parts — twelve apostles as three times four, preaching the Trinity to the four corners of the world.
• Aside: ch. 28 is where Thomas begins on the perfection of God, and twenty-eight is a perfect number; John 21 is three times seven, though the chapter divisions go back to the University of Paris.

4. The Father of Lights (“no change, no shadow”) #

James 1:17 (ten plus seven): every good giving and every perfect gift (pan dōma teleion) comes down (katabainon) from the Father of Lights (apo tou patros tōn phōtōn), with whom is no parallagē nor tropēs aposkiasma — no change, no turn, not even a shadow of change. This is Thomas’s most common scriptural authority that God is unchanging. The gifts coming down are the light of reason, the light of faith, the light of glory.

• Tropē means turn: we are always turning our minds elsewhere — Washington Irving speaks of a man’s “turn of mind” — but God has no turn of mind.
• Aside: a friend studying to be an amateur magician told him that when asked for a number between one and ten, most people choose three.

5. Reason as “the ability for large discourse, looking before and after” — six senses of large #

Wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, so: whose discourse is largest? “Discourse” comes from running, an act of the legs, taken from the swiftness of mind over body (I can go to Mars in my mind at once, not in my body); “understand” likewise comes from standing under. Herman Purkus’s definition of reason: the ability to understand, reason, and order yourself and others. Three ways a discourse is large, each divided in two — six:

1. About the large: (a) covering a large area, i.e. about the universal — “no odd number is even” covers an infinity; (b) about great things, opposed to small as in “small talk” — the universe, the soul, God. Galileo: the whole is better than the part, so a discourse about the universe is greater than any other — but God is better than the universe.
2. Its beginning or end is large: (a) a large induction, from many singulars; (b) a principle with many applications — force equals mass times acceleration yields an infinity of forces and masses by substitution; likewise “the whole is more than a part.”
3. It is long: (a) many steps; (b) between things very far apart. In which is the wise man’s discourse largest? In (1a), being and one, said of everything whatsoever; in (1b), the first cause, God, the immaterial substances. In (2a): Monsignor Dionne, lecturing on Albert the Great, listed sciences depending on experience (natural science, political philosophy) against those done in the head (geometry — you will not find a flat surface anywhere), and put wisdom among those depending on experience. What experience? Not experience of being: experience means getting something more universal from many particulars, and all the lesser sciences are the experience required before wisdom. In (2b): its universality makes it applicable everywhere. In (3b): it reasons from motion — “the act of what is able to be insofar as it is able to be,” hardly an act — all the way to God, pure act. Not in (3a): geometry goes through more steps (the Pythagorean theorem is proposition 47, and you must do most of the earlier ones). So in five of the six senses.

• Why should the same man have both (1a) and (1b)? Because the best thing is the first cause of all things, whose causality extends to all; God is the cause of being as being, so he who treats the best must treat all things.

6. Looking before and after: the two divisions of being as such #

Looking before and after includes looking for distinctions, on the axiom that nothing is before or after itself — so you must distinguish before you can order. If you cannot distinguish water from wine you cannot say one is better. Setting aside being as such vs. accidental being and being in reason only (his old teacher Kasurik joked that philosophy is the only subject you can be paid for talking about nothing: “nothing is nothing,” “you can’t get something out of nothing”), the two fundamental divisions of being are:

1. According to the figures of predication: substance, quantity, quality, relation — what it is, how much, how it is, toward what — with six less important ones. Metaphysics VII–VIII treat substance.
2. Act and ability — Metaphysics IX. Order within the first: substance before accidents; quantity closer to substance than quality, since sense qualities and shape presuppose quantity, as do powers with bodily organs; quantity and quality before relation, since relations are founded on quantity (double, half) or quality (father and son, teacher and student).

7. The ninth book of wisdom, in three parts (“my favorite book of wisdom”) #

1. Abilities for motion (particular): ability to be moved vs. ability to move another; then natural vs. rational ability to move another — the natural is limited to one, the rational open to opposites (toast: you can toast it or burn it; the doctor can save your life or end it).
2. A universal consideration of act: besides motion, which is best known to us and where we start, there is form (the shape of the chair is the act of the wood) and there are operations that are not motions — when you are walking home you have not walked home; but when you have understood, you have understood; loved, seen, heard. Motion is imperfect act as against form; and new senses of ability appear.
3. Before and after: act is before ability in knowledge, in goodness or perfection, and in cause. Ability is before act only in this, that what goes from ability to act is in ability first — but it goes over only through something already in act. Hence ability is simply after act, and the first cause must be pure act, as Metaphysics XII concludes.

8. The order of the Summa Contra Gentiles’ first conclusions (“where does he begin?”) #

Theology needs God’s existence first. SCG gives two arguments from motion (Aristotle’s), where the Summa Theologiae takes only the first of them, then others harder to see. Then, generalizing by act-before-ability:

1. Unchanging — as James said; from the definition of motion, if God is pure act there is no motion in him.
2. Simple — nearly as quick: if God were composed, either one part would be to another as ability to act (matter and form, or substance and being), or all the parts would be to the whole as ability to act. Boundary case: in C-A-T no one letter is to another as ability to act, but the three letters are to the word “cat” as ability to act; in a chair the shape is to the wood as act to ability. Either way composition requires passive ability, the ability to be actualized, not the ability to act on something.
3. Perfect, and therefore good — because act is better than ability; if he is being itself he has all the perfection of being. The Greek teleion comes from telos, end, and Metaphysics IX shows act is the end of ability; and God is the end of the whole universe.

9. The scandal of five (“Berquist is really scratching his head”) #

His rule is two or three or both, defended as useful because true for the most part, with occasional exceptions; he says he is no fanatic about it. But Thomas in both Summas divides the consideration of God’s substance into five, in different orders:

• SCG: unchanging, simple, perfect (and good), one, infinite.
• ST: simple, perfect, infinite, unchanging, one. First attempted reduction to three: eternity is attached to unchanging — negate motion and you negate time; Boethius, eternity is interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio, a life with no beginning, no end, and no before and after in it. (Aside: our minds are restless like our hearts, discoursing, turning; in God there are no dropouts, no turning.) Infinity might be attached to perfection, since God’s perfection is endless — not the infinity of a body in length and depth, not limited to a genus. A student objects that this is “collapsing”; someone adds that unity could be reduced to simplicity — and indeed in the Compendium of Theology, written for Reginald who wanted a summary to consult in free moments, the unity of God stands in the treatise on simplicity. So: three parts, unity with simplicity, infinity with perfection. But why then did Thomas not do this in the Summa Contra Gentiles? “Duane was puzzled.”
• Aside: some wonder whether looking at God gets boring; the perfection of God is endless, so you never will be.

10. God in no genus, yet answering to the four (“he has the perfections of all genera”) #

Thomas himself never goofs on the rule for the categories: he divides the ten into three (what is said of individual substances as regards what they are; something outside what they are but in them; something outside them), or into two (substance and accident), then subdivides by twos and threes. “Predicament” is from the Latin for being said of; and in daily speech a predicament is something with no way out — as being in a genus is: a dog cannot get into the genus of quality. But God is in no genus, and has the perfections of all genera in a simple one.

• Quality: God’s operations, treated after his substance, answer to quality — wise (Aristotle says God alone is wise in the full sense), just, merciful, understanding, willing — but in God these are his very substance.
• Relation: creatures are really related to God, God not really to them — a relation of reason. Aristotle first saw this: knowledge is relative to the knowable, but the thing known has no real relation to knowledge, while I have a real relation to what I know. Then the highest study, the Trinity, is understood by relations — Father and Son, the Son proceeding by understanding, the Holy Spirit by love — presupposing what corresponds to quality.
• Quantity: no continuous quantity (God is not a body, surface, or line) and no number (number arises from division of the continuous, which is divisible forever). But there is a “dim likeness.” Test: how many legs, hands, heads have you? “Just one” is not false, though one is strictly not a number (number is a multitude composed of units, measured by the unit). It is like the lawyer’s question “have you stopped beating your wife?” — strictly he must answer no, having never begun, though people will hear it wrongly. One is called a number analogously, not equivocally by chance: by proportion, one is to two as three is to six. Shakespeare: number was slain by love, because it made the lovers one. So one is like discrete quantity, infinite like continuous. Thomas on the infinity of God speaks of spiritual magnitude, and magnitude is originally the name of continuous quantity; the Fourth Lateran Council calls God immense. “How great is God” — a great mountain is quantity strictly, a great man (Lincoln, Washington) another sense, but not wholly equivocal.

11. The solution, and why the Summa Theologiae differs (“so all things are solved”) #

In SCG the order matches the order of the first four genera:

1. unchanging, simple, perfect — substance;
2. one, then infinite — quantity (discrete before continuous, as in Aristotle’s Categories); these two come next because quantity is closest to substance — witness the confusion of body as species of quantity with body as species of substance;
3. wise, just, merciful, understanding, willing — quality, itself divided in two, understanding and will (God understands primarily himself, and so all things he causes; loves primarily himself, and so what can partake of his goodness);
4. creator, ruler, king, and finally the Trinity — relation, divided in three. So instead of five: three, then two, then two, then three. In the ST (which he says is not his favorite work) the order is “not as perfectly correct”: infinity comes right after perfection, because it is closely connected with it, and unity comes last — “because of those damn Muslims,” who think Christians are polytheists. Thomas wants the last thing said of God’s substance before the Trinity to be that there is only one God, so that nothing said of the Trinity may contradict it; Muhammad fought Arab polytheism and was scandalized by what looked like a relapse in the Christians. As theologians say, de uno et trino Deo — the fundamental distinction.

• The wise man’s two great distinctions work together: act/ability is in a way more universal, since God is pure act, though he can be confined to no genus and yet answers to all four.
• Asides: Augustine and the boy at the shore emptying the ocean into a hole — a marvelous transfer from quantity up to the mind. The advertised hamburgers he cannot get his mouth around; there are subjects one cannot get one’s mind around, a different sense of “around.” Chesterton: we open the mind as we open the mouth, to close it on something solid — against those so open-minded they never chomp down. Last line: we are named from something in us — a man, five foot eight, a geometer, a grandfather (the four genera again).

His words #

• Natural Hearing — his rendering of Aristotle’s Physics, “as it says in the Greek.”
• wisdom (the book of) — his name for the Metaphysics; “the ninth book of wisdom.”
• ability / act — [ed.: potency and act]; “passive ability” = ability to be actualized.
• large discourse, looking before and after — Shakespeare’s definition of reason, his working text throughout.
• figures of predication — the division of being into substance, quantity, quality, relation, etc.
• operation — an act that is not a motion (seeing, understanding, loving), against walking home.
• the rule of two or three or both — his rule for Thomas’s divisions; “true for the most part.”
• predicament — the categories; and in daily speech, a place with no way out.
• spiritual magnitude — Thomas’s phrase for God’s infinity.
• equivocal by chance vs. analogous — one called a number is the latter.

Texts #

Read in class

• John 21 (with the Catena Aurea on the seven).
• James 1:2–4 (ergon teleion, teleioi kai holoklēroi, en mēdeni leipomenoi) and 1:17 (pan dōma teleion, patros tōn phōtōn, parallagē, tropēs aposkiasma).
• Aristotle, Physics III: whole and perfect mean almost the same.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, its three parts; XII on God (inferred for the book numbers he states).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I: existence of God, then unchanging, simple, perfect, one, infinite.
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I: simple, perfect, infinite, unchanging, one (inferred as qq. 3–11).

Mentioned

• Catholic Encyclopedia on Nathanael/Bartholomew; the Catena Aurea.
• Aristotle, On the Universe, on three in praising God; Categories, on the order of the genera.
• Augustine on the number twelve; the legend of Augustine and the boy.
• Thomas, Compendium of Theology (written for Reginald); Thomas on the Fourth Lateran Council; SCG ch. 28 on perfection.
• Boethius on eternity; Albert the Great on the categories; Monsignor Dionne on Albert; Shakespeare; Galileo; Chesterton; Washington Irving.

His questions #

• How many appear in John 21, and is Nathanael one of the Twelve? Seven; he is generally accepted to be Bartholomew, on three grounds.
• Why does seven signify perfection? It is the number of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and a symbol of wisdom; its square, 49, is the best age of mind and Thomas’s age at death.
• Whose discourse is the largest, and in how many of the six senses of large? The wise man’s, in five of the six — not in going through the most steps, where geometry exceeds him.
• What does Monsignor Dionne mean by wisdom depending on experience? Not experience of being; the lesser sciences are the experience required before wisdom.
• What are the two main distinctions of being as such? Being according to the figures of predication, and act and ability.
• Why must the first cause be pure act? Because ability is after act in knowledge, goodness, and causality, and what passes from ability to act does so through something in act.
• Why does Thomas divide the substance of God into five rather than two or three? Because the five, with the operations and the Trinity, follow the order of the four genera: substance, quantity, quality, relation.
• Can the five be reduced to three? In the Compendium unity goes with simplicity and infinity with perfection — but why not in the SCG is left open.
• How many heads do you have — and is one a number? One; one is not strictly a number, but is called one analogously by proportion (one to two as three to six).
• Why does the Summa Theologiae end with the unity of God? To forestall the charge of polytheism before treating the Trinity.