Prima Pars
17. Summa Theologiae I, Q.3, Articles 3–4: God is His own nature and His own existence
Class of 2006-02-16
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/017-summa-theologiae-i-q-3-articles-3-4-god-is-his-own-nature/

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

[0:46] up to the third article, I believe. To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that in God is not. Excuse me. It seems it is not the same God and his what essence or his nature, right? Now, essence or nature means what he is, right? Okay.

[1:16] And in case you didn't know it, you and what you are are not identical. What am I? I'm a man, right? What is Socrates? He's a man. But is Socrates and what a man the same? No, because then he'd be the only man, right? And to be a man would be to be Socrates, okay? So the question is, are they distinct also in God, right? Or are they the same thing?

[1:51] The first argument: nothing is in itself, right? That seems to be what an axiom. Aristotle talks about that in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, which the rude multitude call the physics, right? Where he distinguishes the eight senses of in and out, but in no sense of in is something said to be in itself, right?

[2:20] So that's an axiom. But the essence or nature of God, which is his what deity or godhood, is said to be in God, right? Therefore, it seems that God is not the same as his what essence or nature. Or you might say, you know, strictly speaking, that the nature of God is in God, right? Okay, but nothing is in itself. Therefore, the nature of God is not God, right?

[2:48] Okay. But is that the way it is in God? Is that the way it is in our knowledge, right? Okay. When you study later on, the way we know and the way we name. You discover something you've known all your life to be, but maybe not why. Why do we have all these abstract names, like, and then concrete words like healthy and health, right? Sick and sickness, right?

[3:23] Wisdom and wise, right? Goodness and good. Why do we have those, huh? Well, it goes back to our reason's own object being the what it is, of a thing sensed or imagined, And these are things are all composed of matter and form. And form is that by which something is something. So we have one word for the concrete and one thing for the form by which it is, and we can't avoid that way of thinking, even when we think about God.

[3:58] But we negate the imperfection of our way of knowing when we talk about God, huh? But that's why we have both of these, huh? In fact, they'll say you know, get used to this after a while. That God is whatever He has, but I am not what I have. I have human nature, but I'm not human nature. I have health, but I'm not health. I have some knowledge, but I'm not knowledge.

[4:30] But God is whatever He is said to have, right? But why do we use that word "have"? It's because we're knowing God from creatures, huh? And we have to use the abstract name to bring out His simplicity, and we have to use a concrete to show that He's what perfect, right? I mean, if God was not wise, He wouldn't be perfect, right? And so we have to use the word "wise" said of God, right?

[4:59] But then, lest you think that God's wisdom is something what added to God, huh? We say God is wisdom itself, okay? But lest you think that God is just that by which something is wise, which is the way wisdom signifies, right? Then we add that He is what wise, and so Dionysius says both ways of speaking are what limping, right? Are imperfect, huh? Okay, but we have to use both, right?

[5:34] But realize that that distinction is because of our way of knowing, huh? Okay, This will probably come out in the answer to this. Moreover, the effect is likened to its cause or is assimilated to its cause, because every agent makes what is like itself. You'll find that statement coming up again again in Thomas.

[6:01] But in created things. And the individual substance, the suppositum, is not the what same thing as his nature. For man is not the same thing as his what human nature, and Socrates is not the same as human nature. Therefore, neither is God the same as his what divine nature, right?

[6:26] Well, we are like God, but you'll find out that there is quite a distance, right? And I told you about the time I was teaching Introduction to Philosophy, and I was teaching Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason, huh? And Shakespeare, in there, calls reason godlike, right? I happened to have one Mohammedan in the class, a guy from Saudi Arabia, and he objected to reason being called godlike, right?

[6:57] Nothing's like God, huh? So I spoke to him about the fourth Latern Council says you can never know the likeness between the creature and God without a greater what unlike this. I remember Paul the sixth. We read that one time that text in one of his talks. So I wanted to make him realize that we're not that far away in that respect. He objected to you know,

[7:24] but to some extent there must be some likeness between the maker and the made, huh? But it can be a greater distance, maybe, huh? Than likeness.

[7:38] But against this, about God, it is said that He is what vita, life itself, and not only that He is what living, as is clear from the words of our Lord there in the Gospel of Saint John. I am the what the road, huh? Who does in Greek? But truth itself and life itself is God. As man, he's the via, the road. As God, he's truth itself and what life, huh?

[8:13] But just as life has itself to the one living, so Godhood to what God, huh? Deitas to Deum Therefore, God is his very what divine nature, right? His very deity, his very Godhood, huh?

[8:35] Now he says, answer. It should be said that God is the very same as His essence or nature, to the understanding of which it should be known that in things put together from matter and form, it is necessary that the nature or the essence or the what it is differ from the what individual substance, the suppositum, huh? The underlying thing. Because the essence or nature comprehends in itself only those things which fall into the definition of the species, just as humanity comprehends in itself those things which fall in the definition of what of man, huh?

[9:25] So humanity signifies what human nature, that by which man is man, right? And nothing outside of that by which man is man, huh? For by these things they're the definition of human nature, man is man, and this is what humanity signifies. What human nature signifies, that by which man is man, huh? But individual matter, huh,

[9:57] with all the accidents. in the human nature,Individuating it, huh, does not fall into the definition of the species. So this flesh right here, this individual flesh right here, is not in the definition of what a man is, is it?

[10:16] Otherwise, a black man wouldn't be a man, okay? For there does not fall into the definition of man these individual fleshes and these individual what bones, huh? Or the accidents like whiteness or blackness, huh, or anything of this sort. Whence these fleshes and these bones and these accidents designate this matter, and they're not included in what human nature, huh? But nevertheless, they are included in the man, right?

[11:00] Okay. Whence that which is a man has in itself something that human nature does not have, and an account of this man is not wholly the same. Excuse me, an account of this is not wholly the same man and what human nature.

[11:23] But the human nature signifies as a what formal part of man, huh? Okay. Because defining principles or beginnings have themselves like a form, right? With respect to the individuating what Matter, huh? Aristotle defines the first two causes, matter and form. He defines matter as that from which something comes to be existing within it, huh? But he defines form as a definition of what was to be. Okay.

[12:03] You can say that the definition certainly, or excuse me, the form completes the thing, huh? Making it to be what it is, huh? Okay. So this is a table, not because it's wood, but it's first a table because of its form. So you see the connection there between form and what a thing is, huh? And that's why this Article Three is right after Article Two, huh? Because the nature of the thing is like the what form to the individual.

[12:37] Okay, so these things are very well ordered, as you can imagine, Thomas, huh? In those things, therefore, which are not put together from matter and form, in which individuation is not through individual matter, that is through this matter, but the forms are themselves through themselves what individuated, huh? It is necessary that the forms themselves be the subsisting individual substances, the supposita. Whence, in these, the suppositum, the individual substance, and the nature don't what differ.

[13:17] And thus, since God is not composed of matter and form, as we saw in the previous article, it is necessary that God be His own what Deity. deity, His own divine nature, His own life, and whatever other thing else is said of God, right? Huh? Whatever else is predicated or said of God, huh? Okay.

[13:39] So let's go back to the second. Remember that both in natural things and in mathematical things, what a thing is is not altogether the same as the individual. So let's say if I have two isosceles triangles or two circles, even the same size. How is it possible that you have two circles? Exactly the same kind of thing, aren't they? Or two isosceles triangles? How do you have that?

[14:13] It is only because of the matter. Yeah. And because of the matter being subject to what extension to the continuous, right? So I can put one here and one there, right? Or like the two points at the beginning and the end of the line. How do those two points differ? Not as regards what they are, right? One doesn't have different nature, so to speak, right? But because one's here and one's there, isn't it?

[14:45] So you have to have matter, and you have to have what matter is subject to quantity, and then being divisible, right? You can have many individuals, same thing. So we can have many windows of exactly the same kind at the door over there. And the simplest answer is because you have enough glass. So you have some kind of matter in this case, glass, that's subject to quantity.

[15:10] Enough glass, right? You can cut it off and make several ones, right? Or your mother lays out the dough and makes Christmas cookies or something, right? But you have enough dough to make so many cookies, right? Okay. So it's dough as subject to what extension, right? Okay. So your flesh is cut off from your neighbor's flesh, right? Okay. Just as the dough of, one cookie is cut off, right, through the division of the continuous from the next one, and you have the continuous in math, not matter in the ordinary sense, but Aristotle sometimes calls it intelligible, understandable matter.

[15:52] But might be better named imaginable matter, right? You have that continuum, that extension, huh? And you can place something here and something there, right? So the very first theorem in Euclid, if you remember it, it's to construct a equilateral triangle, right? And he takes one endpoint and draws a circle, and then he takes the other endpoint and draws a circle, and then when they meet, then he can prove that these two lines are equal and those two lines are equal, and therefore they're equal to each other.

[16:25] But you have what one circle here and one circle there, right? So you take away matter and you take away extension, and then each thing is going to differ in kind. It's going to be the same as what it is. Okay, so

[16:47] that's what Thomas is deducing here in the third article from the fact that in the second article we saw that there's no what matter. Yeah, God is not composed of matter and form, so it can't really be this distinction between the individual and what it is. You have to admire Plato that he, in a way, saw this, right? He might have made a mistake of putting what a man is by himself in another world and had certain problems there.

[17:15] But Plato was the first one to realize, in a sense, that material things and what they are, or any material things put that way, and what it is, are not identical, right? At the same time, when he put what a thing is, what a man is, what a dog is, what a cat is in a world by itself, there's only one what a man is, only one what a dog is, and he was anticipating what we're going to be saying about God and even about the angels that each angel, like God, is not the same as what it is.

[17:51] Different species. Yeah, yeah, and there's no two angels of the same kind. Think I mentioned how Thomas at one point says, "You know, would the angels love each other more if they are the same kind?" He said, "Well, he says the more intellectual you are, the more you love the common good, right? And you have more the common good here with this diversity of species, so they love each other more because they are what different.

[18:18] Yeah, not the same kind. Yeah, this understanding of the concrete and abstract, wise, and this is part of part of the answer why this inclusive language is kind of scary when you have like human kind and all this kind of stuff that it's actually philosophically wrong outside of people's agendas. Well, you see there's another problem there because when you study Greek and Latin and you know English, say you notice how sometimes in Greek or Latin they have more words, right?

[19:03] To name things, and sometimes we have more words, right? Yes. Now, one thing I've noticed in reading the Peri Hermeneias of Aristotle, we talk about in English the parts of a statement are the noun and the verb, right? Okay.

[19:20] And in English, we can speak of of name as common to noun and verb, okay? But in Greek and in Latin, they had the same word for name and for what? Noun, right? And so, when you read the commentary, say of Ammonius Hermeiou, the Greek commentator on the Peri Hermeneias, Thomas followed by the way a lot. He's always explaining. Now, here he means by onoma, onoma as common to onoma and rhema huh?

[19:59] Yeah. Or in. Latin nomen as common to nomen and verbum right, okay. But here he means it as nomen as opposed to verbal right, okay. Now there's a reason why maybe the noun keeps the common name, and as Aristotle defines them, you know, both the noun and the verb, there a vocal sound that signifies by human agreement, no part of it signifies by itself, but in addition the verb signifies with time, so it has something you know in addition to what the noun has and what the name has, and therefore gets a new name right, okay.

[20:50] But usually we see they have two words right, it's a different word name and noun are not the same right, but the same way in Latin yeah, okay. But now in terms of man and man and woman, there it's reverse because in Greek you might or Latin you know you might have homo for man meaning human being and vir for the the male and femina for the female right.

[21:19] While we just have what man for both right, so I mean you're not that's just the way the language is right. You don't you know you work with the language that you have, so.

[21:35] I don't bother myself in class. if I say humankind I say mankind. I say mankind. I hear in church all the time and everywhere I go, you know, and it's kind of you know not realizing that that you have this sort of thing in our languages, huh? You know. You've probably seen C. S. Lewis's book there, The Four Loves, huh? And you realize that the Greek has maybe more words for love, right?

[21:59] And so we have a problem in translating sometimes, right? And but I just we have to work with that in our language, yeah. You know,

[22:20] okay. So, but Thomas when he gets to the twelfth and the thirteenth questions, right? Twelfth will be talking about our knowledge of God and thirteen about our naming God, right? And then he'll make these things more formally and completely, you know. But we're kind of anticipating here a little bit, huh? In this first objection, huh? So he says to the first, therefore it should be said that about simple things we are not able to speak except in the manner of what compose things from which we get our knowledge, huh?

[23:00] Okay, so Aristotle, and we learned maybe when you did the third book of the soul, Aristotle says that reason's own object is that what it is is something sensed or imagined. Okay, and they are all composed, right? Okay, and of course you see even in geometry, you know, when Euclid's going to define point, he says that which has no parts. So he's knowing the simple, even the the point, which is you know more known to us than God, but even the point is known what?

[23:33] Negatively. Negatively, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting in terms of of act and ability, huh? You know, Thomas says that David did not religious most stupidly taught that God is the first matter, right? Okay, and Thomas is not being gratuitous in saying most stupidly taught, but there's no things further apart than God, who's pure act, right? And the first matter that is pure ability in the passive sense, huh?

[24:10] Okay, everything else in between God and the first matter is composed of ability and act, huh? Okay, so if he had said God is a stone, he would have been less stupid in saying closer to God, right? Because the stone is more actual than than the first matter. But now it's interesting, huh? You could say the first matter in God are simpler than something that's composed of act and ability, right?

[24:42] Okay. But when we try to define or say what the first matter is, we say it's pure ability, right? Ability in the passive sense. What does pure mean? Well, yeah, but it's really a negation of act, right? It's ability without any act. And then at the other extreme, we say God is pure act, right? What does the word pure mean there? Yeah, without any passive ability, right?

[25:15] So in a way, we're knowing the extremes which are simpler, in a sense, by a negation of something found in the middle, which is what composed. Composed. Okay, so that's another example of how the simple is known in a way by the negation of the composed, huh? And and this whole treatise here, which is this whole question of three, which is on the simplicity of God, right?

[25:39] Which you're really showing that God is not composed in this way or this way or this way this way, and then you're finally showing that in no ways he composed, right? And then you go on to say nor does he enter into composition with other things, right? And so on. So he's we're knowing the simple through the composed? Yeah, yeah. You see that a little bit, you know.

[26:03] In Aristotle's definitions, to a beginning, middle, and end, because the the middle has something before it and something after it, but the beginning has something after it but nothing before it, and the end is after something but not before anything. So we use what a negation of something in the middle to talk about the beginning and about the what the end, right? Okay, and that's a little bit like what I was saying: pure act, pure ability, and these things that are composed of ability and act.

[26:46] And we know the extremes, right, by negating something in the composed. right? Okay, So that's a very common thing. But why do we do that, right?

[27:01] Because our reason's own object is the what it is is something sense to imagine. That's a composed thing, something has matter and form, and so and so we can't understand things that don't have this except by negating this, huh? Okay, and if we have to learn, in a sense, to transcend your imagination, your senses, and you talk about God, huh?

[27:28] You can't, as Boethius says in the De Trinitate, you can't deduce to the imagination, right? Lead back to the imagination, huh? But of course, you never think without imagining, and so one of the objections will be: you know, how can you think about God then? Because there's no image of God, huh? Well, you can imagine and negate what you imagine. So when you say God is not a body, you're what you have an image of a body, but you're negating that God has bodies.

[28:03] Okay, so to the first, therefore, it should be said that about simple things, we, meaning we miserable creatures, are not able to speak except in the way of what compose things from which we get knowledge. Yeah, so just the reverse of God, God by knowing himself, right, knows other things. So by knowing what is altogether simple, he knows even composed things. Huh? We're just the reverse, right?

[28:33] Okay, by knowing composed things and through non-composed things, we have to come to know somehow simple things, huh? Just like Sherlock Holmes says, right? We've got to reason backwards now, huh? And Watson says, "What do you mean? " Well, from the effect back to the cause, right? God is just the reverse, right? By knowing himself. Fully, he knows himself as the cause, and therefore he knows his effects.

[29:03] Okay, so just reverse of us, right? We know in the effect, and through the effect, we come to know the cause. And if the cause is the cause, we know that even later. The first cause is what we know at the end of the fourteen books of wisdom.

[29:24] And therefore, speaking about God, we use what concrete names, right? So you might signify his what? Subsist. That's existing by himself, right? Okay. Because before us, it's only the composed things that subsist.

[29:51] And we use abstract names that we might signify his what simplicity. Okay, so Dionysius. says, "All these names can both be affirmed and denied of God, right? So you can affirm the concrete name of God because He's subsisting, and deny it because it seems to go against His simplicity. You can affirm the abstract name of God to bring out His simplicity, but you can deny it because because it seems to signify that by which something is rather than what is.

[30:28] Okay? So human nature doesn't seem to signify what is, namely a man, but that by which a man is a man. Okay? But man signifies something that has human nature and therefore is composed, right? So you have those two kinds of names, right? Homo humanitas. Okay? And so we carry those two ways of speaking about God, but we have to realize that both have a what? A defect, right?

[31:02] Huh? Okay. But as great Aristotle said, there, huh? Truth does not require that the way we know be the way things are, right? But we have to be careful to distinguish between the way we know and the way what things are, right? And especially in this case here, to see that our way of knowing is quite inadequate to know Him as He is, right? We know more Him as He is not, huh?

[31:36] Thomas always quoting some book of the Old Testament, but I can't find one when I go to my English copy. But what the prophet says in that day, you should have one name. When you see God as He is, right? You have one name. You won't have these two names the concrete and the abstract, right? Just the one name, huh? Signifying what you see in the direct vision, right?

[32:00] Okay. You won't have multiplicity of attributes of God, right? Just have one name, huh? That's in the Old Testament somewhere. Well, the reference that I can't find in the text I go to, but I mean, it's very interesting. You know.

[32:16] Maybe so, yeah. I don't know, but can't find my English Bible anyway. When therefore it is said that the Godhood, right, or the divine nature, or the divine life, or something of this sort is in God, right?

[32:37] It ought to be referred to the diversity which is in the way our mind takes these things, huh? Knowing God to compose things, and not to some diversity of the what thing, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, as I said before,

[32:56] the beginning of the trouble of our mind is not seeing some distinction, right, or misunderstanding some distinction, right. And sometimes when you talk about God, there's a distinction in God, like when you talk about God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. There's a real distinction in God between the Father and the Son. Now it's a very unusual kind distinction, but it is a real distinction, right?

[33:28] Okay. But when you talk about distinction between God and the divine nature, that's not a distinction in God, but in our what way of knowing God. And likewise, when you distinguish between the the knowledge of God and the love of God, and so on, right? That's a distinction in our what knowledge, and not in God. But the distinction our knowledge corresponds to the imperfection of our knowing the one simple God.

[34:02] Okay, so people are often what? In error. Yeah, because they misunderstand what kind of distinction is being made, right? Okay. Who is it Sabellius was it? now Who who said that you know Father, Son, Holy Spirit, just three names, of the same one. Insofar as he became man, he's called the Son, and you know, okay. But then, there's not a real distinction between these? Huh? And that's of course, heretical.

[34:39] the second objection was saying, "Hey, in us, they're, not the same, right? But every maker makes something like himself, okay? But not exactly like himself. " To the second, therefore, it should be said that the effects of God imitate him. Huh? They're like him. We're made to the image and likeness of God, as Scripture says. Thomas always talks about to the image and likeness of God, huh?

[35:04] Okay. But they don't imitate God what perfectly, but according as they are what able, right? And this pertains to the defect of the imitation, right? Because that which is simple and one cannot be represented except through what many.

[35:28] And thus it happens in these that composition, from which it happens that in them is not the same the individual substance, the suppositum that and the nature, huh? Not identical. So I'm not exactly and wholly the same as what I am. That's a very strange thing, right? You know, it's Plato first, what? Seemed to see that. Maybe I made some mistakes and unfolding this discovery, right? But but to have seen that in some way was was really kind of a great accomplishment, huh?

[36:08] You know. Plato is something, you know. You know, Boethius and Albert and Thomas, all three of them, you know. They say, you know, Plato and Aristotle, the chief philosophers, huh? Augustine, of course, praises the Pythagoreans. I don't think he knew Aristotle too much, but he praises the Pythagoreans, huh?

[36:33] Okay. Now the fourth article, huh? Whether in God is the same the what? Essence of being. Yeah, the nature, the essence, and the existence, huh?

[36:52] To the fourth, one proceeds thus: It seems that in God is not the same the essence or nature what he is and his existence is to be.

[37:07] Because if this is so, then to the divine being nothing could be what added, right? But the to be to which no addition is made is the common being which is said of all. Okay, this is what you have in Hegel, right? I mentioned how Hegel is logic, right? He identifies the being that is said of all things with God. He does explicitly in the logic, huh?

[37:37] He even quotes you know, I am who am," right? It would follow, therefore, that God is the common being able to be said of all things, huh? But this is false, according to that of the Book of Wisdom, chapter fourteen. They gave the incommunicable name to what pieces of wood and stone, to logs and and stones. Therefore, the what being of God is not his what essence, huh?

[38:14] Okay. I mentioned how the Summa Contra Gentiles after he shows that in God these two are the same, right? Then he has a chapter just devoted to showing that God is not the being which is said of all things. And apparently, Hegel never read that anyway.

[38:34] But it's uh, and you heard my my kind of saying that Shakespeare saw the difference, huh? I told you the Shakespeare's pun on it in Trois and Crisida. When Crisida comes over the Greek camp, the general of the army he gives her a what kiss, and then Ulysses once gets on the act, so he says she's been kissed by the general, but she hasn't been kissed in general.

[39:00] Everybody starts kissing hair and this is uh, starting the downfall of uh, Cressida, right? But but Shakespeare is putting the two senses of general, right? See. If you're talking about Douglas MacArthur, then you've got a universal cause, right? But he's not said of anybody else in the army, is it? You take soldier now, right? Soldier is said of everybody in the army, right? But soldier is general in a different way than General MacArthur is, Mm-hmm.

[39:29] You see? And but people do make the mistake of those confusing those two. Yeah. I was noticing I was giving the exam in wisdom, you know, and one of the questions I asked them was from the premium.

[39:49] Why is the man of art or science wiser than the man of your experience, right? Yeah. Now in the text In the text of the premium, Aristotle points out two differences between art and science and experience. And the first difference he points out is that experience is a knowledge of the singular or of singulars, right? While art or science is a knowledge of the what universal. The universal, there meaning what is said of many, right?

[40:26] Okay. And then from that difference, actually, Aristotle reasons that the man of experience might succeed in doing something better than the man of art or science, because what you do is in the what singular. He's closer to the singular, right? But then he goes on to point out a second difference between the man of experience and the man of art or science, that the man of experience, through experience, knows only that it is so, right?

[41:00] But art or science, when perfected, knows why it is so. It knows the cause. And then he goes on to show that we think the man who knows why, who knows the cause, is more knowing and wiser than the man who merely knows that it is so, right? So he argues, actually, from the second difference to the superiority in terms of knowing and wisdom for the man of art or science over the man of mere experience.

[41:28] I can see the students and some of their answers there. They're kind of confusing the two, right? Because Aristotle doesn't reason from, you know, art or science knowing universal to being superior. He doesn't try to do that. It's not so clear, right? But from it being a cause, but they're kind of you know running the two together, huh? In a sense, they're getting into this this problem, right?

[41:53] They're confusing what sometimes in the Latin is called the universale in causando, like Douglas MacArthur there, and the universale in predicando in being said of, like soldiers said of everybody in the army, huh?

[42:12] But one way people get mixed up here is because this idea that nothing can be added, nothing is added to it, right? Moreover, about God, we are able to know whether he be, right?

[42:33] But we are not able to know what he is. Therefore, they can't be the same thing: the being of God and what he is. Okay. Now you get that terrible Latin word quidditas, like Shakespeare knows like to make fun of that, you know, because it comes into the scholastic jargon quiddities, you know, you know, your subtleties your quiddities. But what quidditas means is is the whatness, right?

[43:03] The what it is. But against this is what Hilary says in the seventh book about the Trinity. And Hilary's perhaps the most quoted after Augustine. Right? Augustine is the primary man from, Thomas in the Treatise of the Trinity. but Hilary is also. It's not something that happens to God, right? But it's the subsisting truth of God Himself.

[43:33] Now he says, "I answer. It should be said that God is not only His own essence or nature, but also His own what, being, right?

[43:47] Which is able to be shown in many ways, huh? First, huh? Because whatever is in something that is besides or in addition to its what nature,

[44:04] it is necessary that it be caused, right? Either from the principles of the nature, the essence, as the what properties, right? These that come speaking the properties, following upon the species as the what ability to laugh, right? Follows upon man. That's the common example in in logic of the property, and is caused in the essential principles of species, or it's from something what outside, right? As hot or heat in the water is caused by the fire, as you know when you make tea or something.

[44:51] If therefore the very being of the thing is something other than its very nature, it is necessary that the being of that thing be either what caused by something outside, or from the essential principles of the thing itself.

[45:11] But is impossible that the existence, the being, be caused in the essential principles of a thing, because no thing suffices that it be for itself the cause of being if it has caused being. Have to be? can't be a cause of yourself, huh? It's necessary therefore that that whose being is other from its nature has being caused by another. But this cannot be said of God, because we say God is the first efficient cause.

[45:47] It is impossible therefore that in God be other what, the being and other essence, huh? So if the being of His nature was what not His nature, right?

[46:01] It either had to come from something else, right? Being to that nature, or else the nature would what give rise to its own existence. In which case, you'd be saying that it really had existence before it had existence, because it couldn't give rise to something without existing, and so it couldn't give rise to its own existence without already existing. So you got a contradiction there. So God would have to have his existence with something else, and then he wouldn't be the first cause; he'd be an effect.

[46:33] Secondly, because to be or existence is the actuality of every form or nature. For goodness or humanity does not signify something in act unless we signify it to what to be. It is necessary, therefore, that that being itself be compared to the essence, which is other from it, as act is to what potency, huh? Okay.

[47:04] Now it's a little bit like, form and matter isn't it, form and matter, isn't it? But it's not the same thing. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, you have a when he shows that in the angels, right, that their existence is not the same as what they are. Then he has a chapter devoted to showing that this distinction is not the same as matter and form, but there's some similarity there, right?

[47:24] Because in both cases you have act and what ability, right? Okay. But we've seen already God is what pure act, right? Okay. Since therefore in God there is nothing potential as has been shown above, it follows that there is not that is not other in him his essence than his what very being or existence. Okay. His essence, therefore, is his being, huh? Okay. So he's saying there that his nature was not the same thing as his existence, right?

[48:00] His nature would be to his existence his ability is to act, and then God would not be pure act, but he is pure act, right? So he can't have any composition of act and ability. Not only matter and form, he can't have, but he can't have nature and existence. Okay.

[48:25] And third, because just as that which has fire and is not fire is fired up by participation, so that which has being or existence and is not existence is being by what partaking. God, however, is his own essence, as has been shown. If therefore he is not his own existence, he will be being by what partaking, and not essentially. He will therefore not be the first being, which is absurd to say, right?

[49:03] God therefore is his own existence and not only his own what nature right okay I am who I am right In the Summa Contra Gentiles you'll say the sublime truth that God teaches what Moses right but now we're seeing reason for that huh

[49:25] Okay I mentioned how Hilary I guess was a convert huh and of course he was you know if you look at his thing in the Trinity there his little autobiographical sketch right he speaks of picking up the Bible and seeing this and Exodus right I am who I am right and that of course was a motive of what credibility for this philosophically thoughtful man right huh you know so

[49:53] if you knew this year right you know this sort of thing then you take the Bible and say well there's something to be said for this book you know there's something impressive about This, huh? Okay. I notice how Thomas often stops, and gives the arguments, huh? Okay. Now, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, you know, he sometimes gives, you know, ten, twelve, thirteen arguments, you know. One time I was teaching the Summa Contra Gentiles, and ask everybody thought, well, he, he, he, uh, what they'll say the lady doth protest too much.

[50:28] He gets too many arguments, you know. The student kinda gets lost, right? Huh? And so, the prima, the Summa Theologiae, which is more for beginners, he'll stop with three, right? but I know she does a lot in the disputed questions too. He'll stop with with three, huh? And it goes back to something we see in Aristotle. that Three is enough there. Turns out to be enough, enough to to be noteworthy, huh?

[50:56] Okay. Ah, but Heisenberg, you know, sees that too, huh? Three is enough. So now you kind of stand back and say, now can I remember those three arguments, huh? See, go to bed at night and later and think, now what are those three arguments that we saw today, huh?

[51:23] Of course, I always bring one from pure act because you can use that to show almost all these attributes, huh? That's so central to the ninth book of Wisdom, right? The book on ability and act, huh? But the f that act, is simply speaking, being before ability, therefore the first being, the first cause, can be pure act. And of course, if a thing's existence was not its nature, then its existence would be to its nature as act is to ability.

[51:51] The thing would not be pure act. So that's one reason, right? Huh? Okay. What's the other reason, son? And it's one little part is the participation. Yeah, yeah. Now, see, that w you were calling the the I recalled the second argument first, right? Because I'm kind of a pure act man. But are you recalling the the third argument, you see, okay? Because if God was not His own existence, if not existence itself, He'd be existing by partaking of existence, huh?

[52:22] Without the existence itself. And what partakes is after what is so essentially, right? So God would not be the first being, right? Huh? Okay. Now we missed one, right? You know. Remember when I was first studying the Summa Contra Gentiles? You know, and I do that. Then I come back to me after a while, try to remember the arguments, you know, and maybe remember some of them, and I forget some, you know, and then.

[52:49] But you're kind of, oh yeah, I forgot that argument. That was a interesting argument, you know. Why did I forget that one? You know? So what's what's what's the other argument there? Remember the, I remember the second. You remember the third. What was the first argument? Something.

[53:04] Not the same as its existence, yeah. Then it would be something outside its nature, which would be just the hasty cause by you know by the nature, or by something else, yeah. Yeah, but you can't say that. Either one is a difficulty, right? Because it's caused by something else, then God would be the effect and not the first cause. And how can the nature give itself existence, right?

[53:31] Because then you are thinking of the nature as being what before itself, yeah. And how could it be before itself and doesn't exist yet? How can you give rights as my existence? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they must be the same thing in God, right? I am surprised that Thomas doesn't quote Exodus here, does he? Huh? The Super Contra Gentiles is my favorite book. He does, but that question twelve.

[53:59] I don't know. Now let's go and get this pantheistic argument that we had there for the first one. It's kinda. It's kind of interesting because if you identify the being that is God with the being said of all things, you are kind of identifying God with all things, right? So Hegel was really in the pantheistic tradition, huh? I think I mentioned how in the seventh chapter there, the first book of the second volume of Democracy in America, when De Tocqueville talks about the influence of democratic customs upon religion, he speaks of it as giving men pantheistic notions.

[54:51] And I always say for my students, you know, the force be with you. You know, after you die, you become a part of the force, right? And so this is a pantheistic notion. Well, this is not the result of some deep thought on the part of the author. Oh, how you know? But it just you know democratic customs, huh? And Tocqueville says you can see it in French literature and German philosophy.

[55:19] If you go through the in the Cardinal Simple law, right, get the official pronouncements, you know, the church and so on, you'll see throughout the nineteenth century they're always correcting some professor and some Catholic faculty, right, for his pantheistic notions, right? Okay. And oh, the cardinal there was pointing out that there are passages in Rahner and Küng you know, that sound kind of pantheistic, right? And the other ones sound orthodox, but these pantheistic ones, huh?

[55:49] And but Hegel is kind of you know the the it's kind of the joke, you know, that the philosophers come after Hegel; they're all living off the corpse of Hegel, right? Like a bunch of maggots, you know. So he's coming to wrestle. You know, feeder of all these things.

[56:12] Now, to the first, therefore, it should be said that, and this is now a phrase. Now, that to which addition is not made, right, can be understood in two ways, right? In one way, huh?

[56:32] That of its what nature, yeah, would not include any addition. It's it's very ratio that there has not come to be a what an addition to it, huh? Just as of the ratio of a irrational animal is that it be what Without reason. without reason. Another way is understood that something to which an addition does not come to be, because it is not of its what nature that there come to be for it in addition.

[57:16] As animal in general is without reason, huh? Because it is not of the ratio of animal in general that it have reason, but it's not of its ratio that it what lack reason, huh? So, in the first way, to be without addition is to be what divine, huh? That is, the divine being is a being to which no addition can be made, right?

[57:43] But in the second way, it's without addition, but it but it can have an addition, right? Okay, so when Aristotle divides being according to the figures of predication: substance, quantity, quality, and so on, right? Then he's adding to what being in general, right? Huh? Okay. So, although being doesn't have anything added to it, it's not opposed to having something added to it, right? Yeah. While the divine being cannot have anything added to it, okay.

[58:19] So there's a little equivocation there, and adequate cui non fideci, all right? Okay. Okay, now the second one is even more surprising, huh? But he's going back to the distinctions that Aristotle made in the fifth book of Wisdom. He talked about the word "being." Huh? One sense of being is what the truth of a statement, right? Okay. So, to the second, it should be said that to be is said in two ways.

[58:54] In one way, it signifies the act of being. In another way, it signifies a composition of a what statement, which the. soul introduces right, joining the predicate to the subject. Taking being in the first way, we are not able to know the being of God, just as we do not know his very nature, because they're the same thing. But only in the second way, for we know that this statement that we form about God, when we say God is, is true.

[59:31] And we know this from his effects, as has been said above. Okay, so we don't know the divine what existence in itself, right? Any more than we know the divine nature in itself.

[59:47] Okay, that's the objection was touched upon, right? But we know the statement that we make, right? That God is is true. That's a very subtle thing, right? But it's going back to the. Fifth book of wisdom, right? where Aristotle distinguishes those two senses of being, huh? Okay, it's a little hard to understand, though. But you can chew it around in your mind for a while. Okay. Yeah, take a little break there.