Prima Pars
15. God's simplicity, perfection, infinity, unchangeableness and unity: why the mind looks for one, simple, unlimited, unchanging beginning, and an overview of the question on simplicity
Class of 2006-02-01
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/015-gods-simplicity-perfection-infinity-unchangeableness-and/

[0:00] Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds order illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:30] So we saw at the end here last class, I guess, that the beginning of the question on simplicity of God, Thomas will enumerate the five parts you could say of the consideration of the substance of God, what he is, or maybe what he is not. And so he says, first, we will inquire about the simplicity of him, by which is removed from him composition, and because simple things, embodied things, and were known to us are imperfect in parts.

[1:06] Secondly, we will inquire about the perfection of it. There you kind of see the reason why the simplicity and perfection are put next to each other. So in material things, the plants are more perfect than the inanimate things, and the animals than the plants, but they're more composed. So simplicity and perfection doesn't seem to go together, right, in the material world. But in God, he's both simple and perfect.

[1:34] So puts those two alongside each other, right? And then the infinity of him, which is rather close to his perfection, because God will be infinite not in the quantitative sense, right, but in the sense that there is no limit to his perfection, right? His perfection is not limited in a particular kind of thing, but is universally perfected, perfect, lacking in nothing, is Aristotle and Thomas say. Then the fourth thing is about the immutability, the unchangeableness, you could say in English, and the fifth about the what?

[2:19] Unity. God is one. Now I raised the question there about two and three, right? Okay. And of course, I'm not a fanatic about two and three. I usually state the rule is that most single divisions or even distinctions are into two or three, right? And therefore, when you divide into more than three, usually you are what? Combining a number of distinctions or divisions. Okay.

[3:03] And when Thomas, you know, explains, let's say, the division of being according to the figures of predication, there are ten kinds of being, when he divides them, he divides them into three, and then he subdivides by two or three until he gets down to all ten. So,

[3:29] should that be done here, or is that something that is exception to the rule? Right, the exception that proves the rule, as they say. Because an exception proves that something is true for the most part, right? Okay.

[3:46] But it's kind of interesting, as far as I know, Thomas is the only one who, in his consideration of the substance of God, divides it into these five, and he does so both in the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, although the order is a little bit different in the two. But he has those same five, right? You say, "Well, that is that

[4:09] all that can be said, so to speak. " Is there something complete about this? It's hard to see a division into five, right, all by itself.

[4:23] Now, as a natural philosopher, I am struck by a certain likeness of what the Greek natural philosopher has said about the first matter, and what Thomas is going to say about the first mover or maker or creator.

[4:56] That, in words at least, right, four of these five names will be found. Now let me recall just for a second. The first natural philosopher was, as you may recall, Thales, right?

[5:20] And Thales seems to have looked for one beginning of all things. And did he have? Did he know there was one beginning of all things? Did he have any reason for saying there is one beginning for all things? I don't know, but

[5:45] would reason be inclined to look for one beginning for all things? We have another fragment from the great Heraclitus, the central thinker of thought. For he says, "It is wise," he says, "listening not to me, but to reason, to agree that all things are one."

[6:12] Heraclitus is saying that it's the very nature of reason to look for something one behind things. So I sometimes say to the students, "A guess can be reasonable because there is a reason for it, right? Or because reason is naturally inclined in that way." And sometimes I say that reason, or try to show a little bit, that reason is naturally inclined to look for something one

[6:51] by something, perhaps there's even more so a reason, that it looks for order. And that's why the scientist is always talking about laws, law and order always coupled together. Or Shakespeare defines reason as looking before and after, or by them before and after. Now, is order more based upon many or upon something one?

[7:19] Yeah, and even the first sense of order, which is that of chronological order, temporal order. We order all events before and after the birth of Christ. We order all events by one event, and not because we're Christians, though. Because the Mohammedans, I guess, they take the the gira, the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina, and they order events before and after that, right? But if I order events by my birthday and you by your birthday, and so on, we couldn't understand each other.

[7:56] We couldn't see whether the number you have right is before after the time I am talking about my numbers, right? So you can kind of see that order is based upon something one. The order of the army has to go back to one man in charge, right? And the order of the country to to one government, right? Not several governments.

[8:24] So there is something about the very nature of reason that makes us look for something one behind the many. Of course, you can see in numbers that one is the beginning of all numbers.

[8:40] Now you may have, in addition to that, some reason to think that there is one beginning too, and all the more would you look for this.

[8:50] But of course, the difference between Thales and the Bible says Thales is looking for one matter of which all things are made. And the Bible begins, you know, with one maker, but of course the Bible is the word of God, so you can speak about the maker right away. But Thales is the word of man, right? Starting with the senses, and it's more obvious that things depend upon matter than upon a maker, and so he looks for one, one matter.

[9:24] Now, the second thing you see about Thales is that he he guesses that this here water is that one matter which all things are made. He takes something which, at least to our senses, appears to be homogeneous, to be very simple. The water. He doesn't take orange juice, you know, where sometimes one part separates from the other, or milk, you know, that sort of thing, or even something that has a quality, like red wine or something like that.

[9:59] So he guesses. That there's something simple, right? Of course, you could say, well, isn't it simple before the composed? And so isn't the beginning of things the simplest thing there is, huh? So two of the five words are right there, okay?

[10:21] And it doesn't mean now that one simple means exactly the same thing in these two cases. It's not purely by by chance, huh? Now the next thinker, if you recall, just using the fragments we have,

[10:40] was Anaximander, right? And Anaximander said that the beginning of all things was the unlimited. That's the third of the words, right? The infinite, the unlimited.

[11:00] Infinite the unlimited. And Thomas will recall, I think, in the Summa Contra Gentiles that how all the Greek philosophers, he quotes Aristotle, saying that the Greek philosophers all thought of the beginning as being unlimited in some way. And Thomas takes it, over Aristotle's phrase, he uses in the Physics for other things, where Aristotle says they all say the same thing without giving me a reason, but as if coerced by the truth itself.

[11:42] It is a natural inclination. And notice, if this one simple thing, if out of it there comes an infinity of things, and no end to things coming to be, in some way that beginning has to be unlimited. Just like in the simple example of a piece of clay, you can mold it into a sphere or into a cube or into a pyramid. There's an infinity of shapes you can mold it into, right?

[12:09] So there's something infinite about that piece of clay. Or water can take on the what shape of any container, and there could be an infinity of different shapes that water can take on. So there's some kind of infinity, right? In the case of of water, it's a quite different kind of infinity than God has, because God's one is not an ability to be formed or to be actualized in various ways.

[12:38] But nevertheless, it's something that's unlimited. And so, as Thomas says, after Aristotle, the unlimited, the way they thought didn't exist, well then they realize the unlimited beginning is something different, right? Okay. Now. The other thing that Anaximander says that's very interesting is that he says whatever is the beginning of things is also their end.

[13:12] Now he's thinking of beginning and end in the sense of matter. That whatever you make things out of originally, whatever is the first matter which things are made originally, when you break those things down, you come back to that same what matter. And in class, I sometimes, you know, simply explain this by saying, you know, if you buy your little boy a bag of blocks and he builds a tower or something out of it, and then you knock the tower down, do you have a Lego set?

[13:44] No, you had the same thing you began with, right? Why, if you buy a Lego set and you built a rocket out of it or something, right? You took it apart, do you have a bag of blocks? No, you come back to the same beginning. So, and Anaximander says then, if the unlimited beginning of things, the unlimited is what eternal and doesn't grow old. In some way, it remains through it all change, so it's unchangeable in some way, right?

[14:14] And there is a reason to think that the beginning of things must be something unchangeable, incorruptible, right? Because at the beginning of all things we're corruptible, then everything could what cease to be, right? So

[14:32] you have the four of the five, right? Okay. Now, of course, all of this is thinking of the beginning as what one matter, but for the things set of that one matter that they're thinking of as beginning of all things, those same words are used in talking about the divine substance. That purely by chance or equivocal, purely equivocal, or is there some likeness there?

[15:15] Now, the one you don't see here so much at all is the what perfect. Okay. And of course, that doesn't fit matter, huh? Because matter is perfected by form, by the actuality that comes to it. So there is kind of a difference between perfect and the other what four. Okay, a little distinction there into two, right? Now, just to elaborate on this up here again, huh?

[15:58] The reason why I am emphasizing this natural inclination of our mind, right? Because what is going to be shown about the substance of God here can be known by faith, but can also be known by reason. This will come up in the first book,

[16:15] the Summa Contra Gentiles it's found in the fourth book, which is known only by faith. So you want to see there is something kind of reasonable about having these four here, that the mind kind of naturally inclines towards that. Now, when you go to the mathematical physicists, who are the most reasonable of modern scientists,

[16:39] I always like to quote Max Born, right? We talked about Max Born before, but Max Born got the Nobel Prize, right, for explaining what the waves mean in wave mechanics. He also wrote many books on the waves and so on. So he's a guy who won a Nobel Prize in physics, but he's also intimately associated with other great physicists. So he worked with with Einstein in Berlin, right?

[17:10] And you can buy it was in Borders bookshop, in fact, not so long ago. And they had re-edited the letters between Einstein and Max Born. So it's kind of a beautiful collection of letters back and forth, in scientific matters mainly. And and Born is also, you know, given a kind of induction to the letters, kind of in the circumstances of the letters and so on. So he's very intimately associated with Einstein, now perhaps the greatest scientist.

[17:40] But then he was very close to what Heisenberg and to Niels Bohr in the development of quantum theory that got the Nobel Prize. And I think it was Max Born who suggested to Heisenberg, Heisenberg was trying to develop the mathematics for quantum physics, and Born said, "and that reminds me that's a weird kind of math we have over here in Göttingen, and sure enough, that was useful to Heisenberg, huh?

[18:07] " And but anyway, Max Born, in his book there, The Restless Universe Universe, he says the genuine physicist, that's the real article, right? The genuine physicist believes, he says, absolutely in the unity and simplicity of nature, despite any appearance to the contrary. What does that show?

[18:40] It shows a natural inclination, right? Even the absence of a reason, right? Even the appearance might be that there is no unity or no simplicity. He's still going to believe in it, huh?

[18:55] Now you read Max Planck, the father of the physics of the 20th century, and Einstein, and so on, and they'll talk about this inclination of the mind to find unity. And if you ask somebody, you know, if you're going to reduce everything to one equation, well, they probably say probably not. but he says, well, you're actually thinking, that's what you're trying to do. So they naturally incline towards unity and simplicity, right?

[19:24] Now, of course, as you know, an equation is unlimited in the sense that, you know, force equals mass times acceleration. You can calculate an infinity of forces by that equation, right? So there's something infinite about this as well as being one simple. And the most basic laws of physics are the conservation laws: the conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and the conservation of angular momentum. But that's a kind of unchangeableness, right?

[19:56] That something remains the same throughout all change. yeah The. Same amount of energy or momentum and so on. So that's another place where you see the great physicists this natural tendency towards these four things. Something that has all these four, okay?

[20:18] That's kind of strange, huh? Because here we're talking about one maker or one mover, like in our arguments for existence of God, one creator, you can say.

[20:37] And it's kind of strange that these same four names will show up, huh? Now, perhaps the the thinking about the maker among the Greeks that is closest to us would be the great Anaxagoras, right? He spoke of a greater mind behind the as being the cause of the order in natural things. Of course, he talks about the mind. The first thing he says is it's unlimited. He's got one mind, right?

[21:09] He says it's the what thinnest of all things, right? And it has no matter, so it's unchangeable, right? That's kind of strange. It's like this, huh? Between what is said of the first matter and what is said of the first what maker,

[21:32] um, it doesn't mean that these four mean the same thing. That's because the same word is being said of both them, but it's not purely equivocal or equivocal by chance that these same four words show up for both of them.

[21:50] And if you go back to the definitions that we have of the four kinds of causes, huh? Of the four kinds of causes, Aristotle defines them. The definition of matter, the definition of mover or maker, seem to both, in a way, say that it's a beginning. The definition of matter is that from which something comes to be existing within it, huh? Well, that from which something comes to be, he says, is obviously emphasizing as kind of a beginning, an origin of this thing, right?

[22:36] The the mover is defined by Aristotle as whence from where, right? Whence there is a first beginning of motion or of rest, huh? But the definition of form that he gives is the definition of what was to be. Doesn't has explicitly as explicit as the matter and the mover the idea of a beginning, huh? You say, and the end, or is the very word end seems not to be a beginning at first, right?

[23:13] It's not until you get to the last meaning of beginning, as we know from the fifth book of wisdom, that the beginning, the end, is a beginning, right? But at first sight, the end is not clearly a beginning; it's just the opposite of a beginning, right? Um. So there is a likeness between matter and nature in that they both seem to be a what? A beginning, right?

[23:39] And what would seem to characterize the beginning of things? Huh? Well, obviously, the simple would seem to be a beginning of the composed, right? The one, the beginning of the many, right? If the beginning was not unchangeable, right, then everything would disappear, right? And if the beginning of things gives rise to all things, it must be in some way unlimited to them. Okay. So, kind of fits our easy notion of a beginning, right?

[24:21] But now you get to the important question: Is the one beginning of all things the one simple, unlimited, unchangeable beginning of all things? Is it one matter, or is it one maker? Or one creator? you can say.

[24:40] Well, beginning means right. Almost the same thing is first, right? Before all the rest, okay. So you have to go back to the famous thing in the ninth book of wisdom. Huh? Is ability before act? In which case, then the very first beginning of all things would be most in ability and be what matter. Or is the beginning of all things most in act? In fact, pure act.

[25:15] Then you'd be back to one what? Mover or maker? Was I think we taught when we did that? There is a very important kind of distinction, which corresponds to a very common kind of mistake.

[25:39] And this kind of distinction is a distinction between what is so simply and without qualification, and what is is so is not so simply, but with some qualification, some imperfect way, huh? Okay.

[26:09] I was talking today in the the Meno, huh? And Meno makes this kind of mistake for mixing up these two. And Socrates tries to reply and makes the same mistakes.

[26:23] But I was telling the students, you know, that this is the kind of mistake you are making all the time in your life. When you do what is bad, because in some imperfect way it's good. Or you don't do what is good for you to do, because in some way it's bad. I say.

[26:44] So if someone said to you, you know, it's good to rob the bank, you'd say no, okay? But why do people rob the bank? Well, in some way it is good. Increases the money in your pocket or something like that, right? Would it be good to me to murder you because you annoy me? Well, no, you say no, of course not, okay? But it wouldn't remove an annoyance, no matter.

[27:06] So you are choosing something bad because in some imperfect way it's good, right? Or you are not doing what is good because in some imperfect way it's bad. So there is nothing so good in this life, I said. Even that you should do it doesn't prevent you from doing something else, which is good too. And so, in some way, prevents you from doing good, and therefore, in some very diminished sense, it's bad.

[27:34] Do you see that? Okay. Well, this is the kind of mistake that is made about the greatest question of all. In a sense, is the first cause

[27:47] something like matter, some kind of matter, or is it like a mover or a maker? Well, Aristotle points out in that book. In the thing that goes from ability to act,

[28:03] ability comes before act. So in some way, ability does come before act. But then he points out that the thing that goes from ability to act doesn't give itself the act which it doesn't have. It goes from ability to act because Because of something already in act. So simply, you'd say that act is before ability. And therefore, the very first thing is most in act, huh?

[28:36] And therefore, the final answer is it is one maker, one creator, not one matter out of all things. But because it's what act, simply speaking, then the first beginning will be most perfect, huh?

[28:56] But that doesn't come up in some guys because they're thinking the beginning of all things as being matter. I'd like to mention something before people came in. I had to look at the newspaper the other day. There was this controversy about intelligent design in the schools and so on. And so somebody was writing into the Houston paper there and saying, you know, the notion of how this intelligent design talking it's unscientific and so on, you know.

[29:24] And he laid down the three rules of science, right? Rule number one was everything's got to be explained by material cause. Okay, so that obviously excludes intelligent design, but it's because even the matter, the mover, too, is a cause, which doesn't make any sense even in terms of generation, let's say, or something like that. But he doesn't understand what kind of a cause matter is. So one way I'm not saying how useful this is, right? But one way of dividing these five is into two, right?

[30:06] And you might contrast perfect with the other four, right? Because the other four, um, our mind is very much naturally inclined to it, and in some way it fits the other kind of beginning as well, right? But still, different. Why perfect is something you don't find in these guys because of thinking of one beginning in the sense of matter. Okay, do you see that distinction a little bit?

[30:38] I don't say how useful that is, but I think it's interesting to see that. And and when you see that our mind is naturally inclined towards something one simple unchangeable infinite, then it's not like Thomas Aquinas or out of the the blue, right? Our mind is going that way definitely, right? And and even in say the mathematical physics as I was mentioning, the Bohr and Einstein and Einstein, most of them, um, you know that's in some sense a very limited thing because there's no real matter or motion in mathematical physics.

[31:16] It's mathematical, huh? As Schrodinger said, it perfected the mathematics of the atom. There's no stuff at all in the modern atom. He compares it to Plato and the tomatoes there, right? Where he has this geometrical theory for earth, air, fire, and water. There's no matter there. There's no matter or motion in matter. But even despite that, you find that tendency, right? Mathematical physicists are something one simple, unchangeable, right?

[31:43] So it's kind of a you know confirmation that we're on the right way, you know. This is the way our mind is is moving, right? Even without having a reason to move in that direction, you see. But we'll be getting reasons why God is these four, right? Even before we see the reasons, we say, "Hey, hey, that makes sense. That's the way my mind is what going, yeah, yeah, yeah."

[32:08] You see, I think that's rather profound, I think. But you don't see that tendency towards perfect so much, right? Because they're they're stuck on the most known cause, you might say, huh? Okay.

[32:25] But the English word for cause is ground, right? Which is very close to the first opinion about the beginning of things, which is mother earth, right? You know, common mother thou, Shakespeare says, huh? Whose womb and measureless infinite breast, teems and feeds all. But you're thinking but matyr, mother, so we get the word matter, huh? Materia from matyr. But nevertheless, four of the five, right? Then you have to realize which comes first, act or ability, huh?

[32:56] then you'll see the other one, perfect, huh? Now we still have a problem here for the two and three man, right? You got a distinction into two, but one of these is not divided into two or three, but into what? Four.

[33:20] Now I think one and simple are almost right, the same, right? And I'm going to show you my thinking in this regard. You know, now studying the fifth book of the wisdom, you study the words whole and part, huh? And this is one of the axioms: the whole is more than the part.

[33:58] Now, Aristotle there distinguishes about four senses of part and four senses of whole, right? But without going into all of them, right? Huh? There's a distinction between the composed whole, the whole that is put together from its parts but not said of them individually, and the universal whole, right, which is said of its parts, right, but not put together from them, huh? So he has that distinction in there.

[34:36] Then he distinguishes three kinds of what? Composed whole, right? Kind of the quantitative whole, right? And then the whole is a definition, and the whole that is matter and form. So he observes the rule of two and three of meta, because you first distinguish the universal whole from the composed whole, and then you distinguish the kinds of of composed whole. So I ask myself, you know,

[35:13] why doesn't Thomas have a question about whether God has parts, right? In which he's going to negate any parts in God. A lot of times in class, I use this as an example. I'll say I'm trying to illustrate the fact that a knowledge of the general is more useful in theology than a knowledge of the particular. If we can show in theology that God has no parts, we don't bother to show that he doesn't have two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen.

[35:54] So it's kind of more or less useless for theology to know that water is H2O. But it's very important to know that there are whole, parts. But if you can negate that, you know that God has parts. You don't have to show that there are two arms, two legs, or two hundred pages, or whatever, right? There are parts, period. Okay. So why doesn't Thomas have that right?

[36:18] Well, he said, "Well, he's got a question here on simplicity of God, right? " And that's denying all what composition, and therefore all holes in the sense of composed, all right. But what about the universal whole? See.

[36:36] Not that there at all No, But Aquinas showed that God is not universal whole too? Well, when you show that God is is one in a way, you are showing that he's not universal whole.

[36:50] That when and later on you say the Trinity, when you say God of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that's not a universal. set of three particulars under it. No, there's no subject parts to use a technical term. You know, there's no universal whole in it either. So in a way, when he denies when he says that God is simple, he's denying that God is composed whole. When he says God is is one, he's denying that God is say, what No universal whole.

[37:23] Yeah, you see. So the two of these can be put together and say he has no what parts, right? Okay. So there's a kind of affinity these two, huh?

[37:40] Now, as if you look at the at the uh Thomas's commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard, right? I know, you know, you have a common text of Lombard, and then you have often he has questions and articles. Well, in one place there, he has two articles next to each other that God

[38:03] has no what. God is not composed whole. He's not universal. It's a kind of confirmation of the affinity of these two, right? We wouldn't see it from this because he takes up the simplicity first and God being one at the end, right? But but there the two are right together, right? So he could have combined them, right, under the idea that God has no parts. great, advantages has because it's such different holes, right?

[38:28] But nevertheless, you could see something as an affinity of these, huh? Okay. And in a sense, to be composed in a way is to be many, isn't it? And not one, huh? It needs to be many in your parts, right? So you can see how close those two are related.

[38:50] Now another thing in support of like putting those together a little bit is if you go to the the compendium of theology, right? Which Thomas wrote for his brother Reginald to do, one of you know a shorter thing for himself to be able to read a lot, showing that God is one is one of the chapters in the consideration as being simple. Well, there they really are put together, right?

[39:17] Okay. So, if in my fanatic way of proceeding, I was going to try to give a division into what three, I would give it. You know, has no parts. He's unlimited. He's unchangeable, right? And then has no parts. So divide that into what composing parts and

[39:47] subject parts, right? Okay. I mean, it's a little forced, but that's good right? Now, so. I divided into one and, or into two rather, and then one of them I subdivide into three, and then subdivide, and I get parts, okay? A little sleight of hand there, but I mean, okay. Now,

[40:28] you see, as a natural philosopher, and I've done some study in philosophy of science too, right? You're struck by those four that I mentioned, huh? Coming up, you know, in all the Greek natural philosophers, the beginning, and then the mathematical physicists, right? You begin to see that our mind is naturally inclined towards that, even before you see addition to reasons why the first cause must be these four things, huh?

[41:00] Okay. As people enter these things, we'll see better and better. It's not exactly the same meaning in bold, right? But these four ones are in the same way. Now, another way of taking these five and dividing them into, say, three, right? You could put, let's say, one and simple together. We've already expanded this. Then you have perfect. Second thing to take up. It seems to me that infinite, we'll see again when we come to infinite, but infinite is especially close to perfect, huh?

[41:39] Because Thomas is going to explain how God is infinite. You'll be very careful to point out this is not a privation or a lack of of a limit. It's a negation of the limit, right? And it's something quite different from what we mean by infinite in quantity,

[42:00] huh? And you know, he wants to bring out, he says, that God is infinite, that there's no end to God's perfection, no limit, huh? You know. You know, a lot of things.

[42:14] You know, if you multiply the creatures' perfection, eventually you get the idea of God. How do you multiply? perfection of the creature, you're never going to equal God, right? Huh? There's no limit to perfection. There's various ways of seeing that, right? You know, there's no limit to perfection. I think this is very close to the idea of what perfect, right? Kind of almost an extension of consideration of perfection of God.

[42:47] And then you have this being unchangable, right? So if I was trying to divide these not into two as I did before, and then. So dividing one into three and then two, right? If I divide right away into three, I'd probably put one and simple together in perfect infinite, and then unchanging more right? Okay. But that's a little divergent, but you know. The other thing interests me more though, because it seems to me that it's good to see, you know, that four of these five are mine,

[43:26] without ever, you know, being induced to Christianity, is is moving that direction. Even unbelievers are moving that direction without maybe reflecting on it too much, but they know it.

[43:41] Einstein himself says all scientific work of a higher order proceeds from a state of mind akin to that of religion, huh? See, you're convinced the universe is going to make sense. It's going to be intelligible, you know, and therefore you're thinking something like like a like a believer that this is the product of a greater mind. Although Einstein's notion of the greater mind might be kind of pantheistic itself, and the force be with you.

[44:09] I don't know if the force is a mind or not, but doesn't sound too personal, the force. Okay. So let's look now at the first question, which is on the simplicity of God.

[44:29] It says about the first, there are eight things to be asked. First, whether God is a what body, huh? Secondly, whether in Him there is the composition, the putting together of form and matter.

[44:53] Now those two are fairly close together, right? As I mentioned before, in the fifth book of wisdom, right? Aristotle distinguishes between a quantitative whole and the composition of matter and form, huh? Okay.

[45:17] And sort of interesting, you know, in some of the key texts there where whole and part comes up, until Aristotle determines the truth, the composition of matter and form is left out, as if that's harder for our mind to see, huh?

[45:35] But no, just think of something simpler. Maybe you're thinking a more substantial form, but but just think of the of the rubber ball, right? The composition of rubber and that shape, right, is something quite different from, you know, lungs and liver and pancreas and all the rest of my part, stomach and other parts, right? Okay.

[45:59] The parts are what may be in contact, but their surfaces right. But matter and form is right. The the surface of form is touching the surface of matter. No, but form is the very actuality of the matter's ability. It's a quite different kind of composition.

[46:20] Now the third article is a little bit like the second article, right? Okay, whether there be in God a composition of what He is, a terrible word, quiddity. Now, which I don't like to translate in Danish, but quiddity, whatness, what it is, or the essence, another name for the same thing, or the nature, right?

[46:55] And the subject, right? Okay. Now we talked about that a bit earlier. We're doing wisdom, just philosophy. Is Socrates and what a man the same thing? No, so some distinction between the what it is of Socrates, a man, and Socrates, right, is the subject of that, but it is. That's a little bit like matter in what form, okay? It's not quite the same thing as body and soul, right?

[47:27] Okay. So there's a distinction in Socrates between his body and his soul, and there's some distinction between Socrates and what a man is. It's not exactly the same distinction, right? And so we're asking about both of those: are they distinct in God as a composition of those two? Something like that.

[47:51] Then the fourth article: whether there be in Him a composition which is from what it is and what To be, is, existence, right? Okay.

[48:05] And you know the existence of a cat and what a cat is are not the same thing, right? But this is true even though the angels are not the same. Gabriel and what the existence of Gabriel and what he is are not identical, huh? But in God they will be the same thing, huh?

[48:26] Now notice that is in some way like the composition of matter and form, in so far it's a composition of ability and act. So when Thomas is showing that the angels are not pure act, right? It's because their substance, what they are, right, is to their existence as ability to act, as a composition of ability and act. So it's only in God that you have pure act, but we're more potential than the angels, right?

[48:56] Because not only is there the composition. Of our nature and our existence, but our nature itself is composed of matter and form, which I like, ability and act.

[49:08] After he shows that about angels there in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he has a chapter to show that the composition of matter and form and substance and existence are not the same composition. And then whether there be in him the composition of genus and difference, well, that's another kind of composed whole that Aristotle talks about in the fifth book of Wisdom, and that is

[49:34] the definition. Okay. Now those up to this point are more what intrinsic composition, right? Then whether there is in him the composition of subject and what accident, right? Like you and your health, right? Or you and your shape, right? Or you and your knowledge. Not really the same thing, you and your knowledge, of geometry. Me and my knowledge of geometry. Just as before I had any knowledge of geometry.

[50:15] Okay, I'm losing some weight now, so my shape is changing, right? I'm still here, but my shape is changing, Improving, they say. Okay, my size is going down. Okay, but this is composition of substance and accident, God won't be that.

[50:41] Now, what he's done in the first six articles is eliminate every kind of composition found in the what creatures. And then in the seventh article, he's going to what give a reason in general, right? But there can't be any composition in God.

[51:02] Now, if you read the Summa Contra Gentiles, he has reverse order, right? He first shows there's no composition in God, and then in later chapters he eliminates different particular kinds of of this. So this is more inductive, isn't it? Huh? And he goes through all the particular kinds of composition, and then finally says universally. So this is more proportioned to a beginner in his way of proceeding than the Summa Contra Gentiles.

[51:36] And if you read Thomas, you know, I think I've referred to it before, but in question one seventeen, article one, if you look at that just for a second,

[51:48] he's talking about whether one man can be a teacher of another man. Question one seventeen, article one. If you have the whole text here, whether one man is able to what teach another, right? And without going into the difficulties about that, if you look at the last paragraph, he's talking about how the teacher or the magister leads the student, right? At the end of the body of the article, question one seventeen, article one.

[52:21] The teacher leads the student from things already known, great cognities, right, to a knowledge of things unknown, but in two ways, right? Okay. First, he says by proposing to him some aids or some tools, right, by which his understanding, which his understanding uses to acquiring reasoned out knowledge, and sciencia. And then he kind of you know enumerates these some of the main ways, as when he proposes to him.

[52:58] Some statements or propositions minus universalis, less universal, right? Okay, not to show that God is not a body is more what is less universal than to show that God is not composed. And each of these particular kinds of composition are being eliminated, right? Before he shows it universally, huh? So it's closer to this first way that the teacher leads the student. huh? While in the Summa Ga Gentiles, he begins with the what universal reason and then descends, huh?

[53:38] More deductive, less inductive. Or when he proposes to him some sensible examples, right, or likenesses or opposites, right, or other things of this sort, by which the understanding of the learner is led by the hand to a knowledge of the unknown truth. Now the noun that Monsignor Dionne used to use was manuductio right? And Monsignor Dionne gave us

[54:10] a course on the manuductio required for wisdom, and another course on the manuductio for logic, right? Because logic and wisdom have the greatest difficulties; they're dealing with immaterial things and so on, and so you need a large manuductio leading up to them. And Dionne was showing us how to do this. Then the second way he leads them, you know, is by proposing the order of principles to conclusions, right?

[54:37] Okay, and that's in an easy scientific geometry. that's all Euclid does: He proposed the order of principles to conclusions and all the demonstrations. But when you get into a more difficult science, then you have to lead somebody by the hand to more universal things, from sensible examples, from likenesses and opposites, and so on. Okay, so he's following more the order of manuductio here in the Summa Theologiae than in the Summa Contra Gentiles huh?

[55:11] And in particular, in this question on the simplicity of God, right? The order is kind of universal. Now, the eighth article could be divided against the other ones because in the other ones he's asking, "Is there some composition in God?" Right? But now you are asking whether he enters into composition with what other things? Huh? Okay.

[55:42] I don't know if you remember my lecturing there on the the great fragment on the mind there of Anaxagoras. huh. He says a number of things about the mind; it's unlimited and so on. And another thing he says about the mind is that it's not mixed with matter, right?

[56:03] And then later on he says it's the purest of things. Now when I first you know read this, I thought that when he says it's not mixed with anything, and it's the purest of things, he's saying the same thing. Ah, just in one way grammatically a affirmative word, purest; in the other, the negative word, unmixed. Right? A little bit like if I was to say God is in no way composed, and then go on and say He's the simplest of all things.

[56:36] Well, I'd be saying the same thing almost, right? But then on second thought, I said no, no. Before he said that God is not mixed with matter, right? Because then He couldn't rule over it. Later on he says it's the purest of things. There he seems to be saying that the mind is not a mixture of things. See, it's a little different point, isn't it? See, to say you're you're mixed with other things is one thing, right?

[57:06] To say you are yourself a mixture of things is something else, right? And Anaxagoras is saying that the greater mind is neither mixed with other things nor is it what a mixture of things itself. Of course, he says it after he says it's the thinnest of all things. You couldn't be the thinnest of all things; you're a mixture of things, and then be something thinner inside you than you, right?

[57:30] So there are really two different things, right? So in those first six articles, right, in a sense saying there is no composition in God, right? Okay. And then in the eighth article he's asking the opposite, another question, right? That God doesn't enter in a composition with other things. Okay, so you can't be the soul of the world or something of that sort, right?

[58:00] You see that? That's why that one comes last. It's a really different thing you're saying there. The first ones are more intrinsic, and the seventh one is, of course, universal.

[58:16] Okay, want to take a little break now, or is it appropriate to take a time break now? Okay.