Prima Pars
33. God's Unchangeableness (Summa I, Q.9): Pure Act, Motion vs. Doing, and How Angels Are in Place
Class of 2006-04-27
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/033-gods-unchangeableness-summa-i-q-9-pure-act-motion-vs-doing/

[0:00] Okay, we'll start I'll be repeating, so I not put myself. in the. Name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illuminate images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you have written. In the name of. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[0:25] Amen. Thinking about the angels for a second, there. I was looking at the. Finally found this passage. I can't remember where it was in Thomas, but it's in chapter seventeen of the De Substantiis Separatis. And this may be, you know, modern, since it's late when Thomas, twelve seventy two, twelve seventy three, towards end of his life. And it's you know addressed to Brother Reginald too, you know, but it's about the angels and so on, the separated substances.

[0:58] And chapter seventeen is kind of the break between the first part of the work, where he's going through what the philosophers think about the separated substances and so on, what they thought out, and then the second part, what the Christians, you know, bring out. That's kind of interesting chapter for Thomas and his authorities, right? Because in the seventeenth chapter there, he says we've gone through what Plato and Aristotle have said, right?

[1:23] And he calls them the praecipui sophi, the chief philosophers. That's what it means huh So just like Albert the Great. his master has said, you know, to be a proficient philosopher, you have to know Plato and Aristotle. That's it. And and says we said we've gone through what Plato and Aristotle brought about the origin and the nature of them and so on, their distinctions, so on, and what others different from them have erred, You know, and then he's going to begin the Christian, and then he says he's going to follow Dionysius, who most most excellently has spoken of the separate substances.

[2:01] And because I've seen this you know, in reading Thomas, that really, as far as the nature of the angels is concerned, and so on, Dionysius he follows more than Augustine. Augustine is a little bit ambiguous about it. And Augustine is certainly the guy he follows on the Trinity, right, on grace and things of that sort, right. He's the main main thinker before him, but about the nature of the angels, it's Dionysius rather than Augustine.

[2:26] It's kind of interesting just that little chapter. You see, you see the respect for Plato and Aristotle in philosophy, and then Dionysius in particular for for the separated substances or the angels as the we call them. Let's look again at Article One here. To the first, thus one proceeds. It seems that God is not altogether unchangeable. For whatever moves itself is in some way changeable. But as Augustine says in the eighth book on Genesis, the letter.

[3:03] The Creator Spirit moves itself neither through what time nor through place. Therefore, God is in some way movable. Moreover, Book of Wisdom, chapter seven, verse twenty-four, it is said about wisdom that is more mobile than all movable things. That's the way Heraclitus speaks of it, darting through the whole universe, right? But God is wisdom itself. Therefore, God is movable. I guess in English.

[3:45] Moreover, to approach and to depart from, or to get further away from, signify motion. But these things are said of God in Scripture, as in James chapter four, verse eight. Approach God, and He will approach you. Therefore, God is changeable. But against this is what is said in the Prophet Malachi, chapter three, verse six: "I am God, and I do not change." That's pretty definitive. Now we said in one of the canonical epistles, is it?

[4:26] Is it James? I forget. who it is. It's James? I think it is. He's got the shadow of change in God? huh? And some of you want to make him change, make him more human, or something. I don't know what the attitude is, but but you don't realize that he's we got the false idea that he's in time, he's frozen in time, someplace, and he can't do anything about it.

[4:50] And this is a you know I mean God's all eternal now. I mean it's so actual that it's hard for us to understand how actually is.

[5:00] I answer: It should be said. It should be said that from the things that have been sent before, we can show God to be altogether unchangeable. First, because above it was shown that there is a first being, right? Which we call what God. That's a reference back to the what question two, article three, where he proves the essence of God. But notice he uses the term "first being" rather than "first cause."

[5:34] But it's appropriate when you talk about this in terms of act and ability, because that's one of the two divisions of being as such. And so you say that that act is simply before ability, right, and time and so on. Then it makes sense to call the pure act the first being, rather than first cause, but shows how closely related those two. Things are.

[6:08] So this first being is pure act without the admixture of any potency. Huh? He's taking potency there in the passive sense. Okay, the ability to be actualized. Huh? In that ability is simply after act. So in the secundum quid we'd say, huh? Before act. Huh? The thing that goes from ability to act, but since it goes from ability to act because it's something already an act, simply act is first.

[6:42] Huh? So that's why we're saying in the in the ninth book of wisdom, the metaphysics, that those who think of matter as the beginning of all things are making the mistake of mixing up what is so in some imperfect way, right, qualified way, with what is so simply, which is a second kind of what Mistake. mistake outside of speech. Yeah. Yeah. And surprisingly often that kind of mistake comes up again and again.

[7:16] But everything that is in any way changed is in some way in what ability? It's able to be something other than it is, right? That in change you become other than you are, and you can't change unless you're able to be something other than you are. So everything that changes has some kind of passive ability, but there's none of that in God, who is pure act. Huh?

[7:40] He's almost pure act, as Thomas said, in some other passages today, from which it is clear that it is impossible for God in any way to be what changed. Huh?

[7:55] Okay. So that's the argument basically from pure act. Huh? Now the second, because everything that is moved, as you guard something remains, and as regards something passes away, just as what is moved from whiteness to blackness remains according to its substance. Huh? This is something we brought out in the first book of natural hearing. We did some of that didn't we? I think in this room or this building, anyway.

[8:27] Um. Sometimes they say, if this becomes that, this must be composed. Huh? Because there must be something in this that is able to be that, or this would never become that. But there must also be something in this whereby it differs from that, and so it's got to be those two things. Huh? The underlying subject, the substance, say, that remains in the opposite or the contrary that is lost, and thus he says, in everything that is moved.

[9:02] There is to be noted some what composition. So I always found that this particular text, and the order of the Summa Theologiae, would be a nice thing to bring in, you know, as a footnote, theological footnote, into doing that first book of the Physics, because you can say, now we've learned here that what changes is composed. So in theology, after you learn that God is not composed, you can syllogize that it doesn't change.

[9:32] And of course, in the Summa Theologiae, we show that God is simple before we show He's unchangeable. Although the order is the reverse in the Summa Contra Gentiles. It's always referred to this.

[9:48] So thus in everything that moves, there is noted some composition. But it's been shown above that in God there is no what composition, but He's Altogether simple, whence it is manifest that God is not able to be what moved. And Socrates, you know, talks about that in the Phaedo, that the simple is unchangeable, right, and that the composed is changeable, right. Then he's not exactly sure how to show that the soul is simple, so he goes to another argument, right?

[10:24] But they kind of see that, right? It's a very, very common thought there in the great, greatest of the philosophers. Now, the third argument: because everything that is moved acquires by its motion something, and it arrives at that to which what before it had not attained. But God, since he is infinite, comprehending in himself all the fullness of perfection of the whole being, is not able to what anything, nor extend himself towards something to which before he had not attained.

[11:09] Whence, in no way, to him belongs what motion. Now, notice the order of the three arguments, right? You know, pure act could always come into the what very beginning of knowing God, right? And and of course, in the Summa Theologiae, came up in the beginning of the discussion the simplicity of God. So he gives that argument first, and the simplicity, right? And then he gives the one from what God being infinite, huh?

[11:40] But you could also maybe argue from his being universally perfect, huh? In God. Okay? You know, but he gives the guy who's everything, right? But literally, God is everything, right? That's kind of the problem of Euthyphro there. Now, how can you give God something?

[12:11] No question. And hence he says it is, and this is a kind of a sign that some of the ancients, huh, as and he uses that phrase that Aristotle uses in physics, as they were coerced, huh, as were forced, right, by the truth itself. They laid down that the first beginning was what. Yeah.

[12:38] And even in mathematical physics, huh? They make the conservation laws, right? Beginning of everything. And even you could say, you know, that the the first matter, in a sense, remains throughout change under different forms, right? So it's not completely separated from change, but in a way, change does ultimately depend upon something unchanging.

[13:07] I mean, could you could you have the the unchanging depending upon the changing? I don't think that would make any sense at all. To have the unchanging depend upon the changing, does that make any sense? I don't know. They might seem to be a paradox to have the reverse: the changing depends upon the unchanging. As they say, you know, even if the baseball and it's caught in the outfield, there it should be the same ball.

[13:43] Something should remain, you know, and there is nothing that remains the same, so to speak, right? It's not the same ball. There is something fishy going on here. And of course the question with the ball being hit from the outfield, right? So it's interesting how the the changing depends upon the unchanging. Aristotle gets into the biological works there, you know. He talks about how you have to have something to rest in order to move.

[14:11] An example person is the mouse that they must have seen on a pile of grain. The mouse can't get anywhere because the the pile keeps giving way, right? But you have to rest yourself upon something unchanging, huh? So

[14:26] now the first objection was taken from Augustine, and he says to the first, therefore it should be said that Augustine there speaks in the way in which what Plato spoke, right? Saying that the first mover moves itself,

[14:50] naming all what operation or doing motion, okay. Now, sometimes when you take act and ability, there is two ways that they do it. There.

[15:11] So we don't call we call motion or doing. Let's not be too precise here. Act first, right? Okay, motion or doing, and you have words like action, right? Activity that are derived from the word act, right? You see. Now later on in the in the middle of the ninth book, Aristotle will carry the word act over to what form?

[15:47] And how do you do that? You see. Well, the way Aristotle does it there is by seeing a likeness of ratios. So he says, as my eyes, when they're closed, but I'm not a blind man, right? Are to what? By seeing and opening my eyes, so the wood before it's been formed is to the wood formed into a chair or a table or a statue, right? Okay.

[16:20] So the wood, in a way, is the statue. Something like my eye is to seeing when my eye is closed, but I'm not a blind man. And so the eye goes and is able to act, and the wood goes and is able to act. And so it's by likeness of ratios. But now Thomas, in the De Potentia, he gives another way of understanding, right? And that is that form is the end of emotion,

[16:55] or it's the cause of emotion, right? So there he explains form as act by its ratio to motion, right? As its beginning or by its end, right? So two different ways of understanding the

[17:15] equivocal by reason, huh? But by reason of what? Two different ways of doing it, two different ways, huh? It's kind of interesting to compare those those texts, right?

[17:27] But Thomas will point out how just as we call motion or doing act first, and then form later on, we call act, and that's why the word act and activity would never be applied to form because it's stuck with the first meaning of it. So the ability to move or to do something is seen by our mind before the ability for what For I think you say even in daily speech, you know, that you talk about Ability we're thinking first of the ability to do something.

[18:05] Okay. You're able to speak French, or you're able to play the piano, or you're able to walk, or you're able to see or to hear, right? And you wouldn't think by the way of the wood as having ability, huh? Yeah. But the wood is able to be formed, right? So there's some kind of ability there, but it's kind of a secondary meaning, huh?

[18:26] Now eventually we'll separate or distinguish between motion and doing, although we this little, you know, maybe like clarity in the the names and so on. But Plato kind of uses them interchangeably, right? But you're using these as opposed to that over there. Now, second, we began in metaphysics. I think we did the proemium to metaphysics, and Aristotle was giving the order in our knowing. And he says, sensing comes first, and then memory, and then experience, which is a collection of many memories of the same sort of thing.

[19:03] And then there starts to be a knowledge of universal. When you have experienced many things of the same sort, and your mind compares these things and separates out what they have in common, and that's the beginning, he says, of art or science. Okay, and uses art or science kind of interchangeably as being knowledge of the what universal, as opposed to knowledge of the singular or singulars, which he had in sensing, memory, experience.

[19:31] Then he's kind of a footnote to it, but you know, sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. We have elsewhere distinguished between art and science, but for him it's not important to do so at that time, right? So you might use motion or doing, right?

[19:48] Is walking a motion? I suppose you say is a motion yeah. But when you're walking, you're doing something. You know you might kind of use these almost interchangeably, right? It's like you know Shakespeare there in the

[20:10] Henry V, right, Where he's pilling to your imagination to fill out what isn't on the stage, right? You know, but sometimes you'll you'll talk about imagining these things. Other times, you know, use the word thought, right? These are kind of interchangeable, right? And we all do that in daily speech. I think that's so. I imagine that so. The kind of meaning, you know.

[20:39] You see, it's kind of similar to thinking and imagining, and not be concerned with bringing out the precise difference. Other times, you might speak more precisely and say, "Well, thinking is not imagining, " and you remember Aristotle separated them kind of easily at first. He says that I can, I'm free to imagine what I want to imagine. I can imagine myself now winning a million dollars that say today, right?

[21:05] You see, I'm a suit stake, so I can imagine that. I'm free to do that. But can I think that I've won a million dollars when I have no reason to think that I've won a million dollars? When I haven't even bought a ticket, right? So I have to have a reason to think that I've won, right? But I can imagine myself without any reason, so it's not the same thing thinking and imagining.

[21:29] But sometimes Aristotle will use the words interchangeably himself, right? And when they're contrasting math with natural philosophy, you know, sometimes you'll say in math there's no matter, right? In the definitions, then other times you say there's understandable matter, but it's really understandable in the sense more of what imaginable, You can imagine the extension, part of the side of the park. So occasionally Aristotle will use we'll call doing a a motion, right?

[22:05] Okay, but it's it's it's an activity as opposed to form, right? And motion is the activity most known to us. So when we say that God, what does God do? Well, he he understands himself again, right? And he loves himself, right? So is understanding God and loving God doing something? You know the

[22:37] joke about about the philosopher sitting in the chair. You ever talk about that? And you know, now it's not doing anything, would you? You know. Yeah, you know, I told you the story about the one philosopher where he says if he's reading, and his eyes are looking down the page, his wife. Knows enough not to interrupt his his profound work, but when he pauses and looks up like that, he's not apparently doing anything.

[23:05] Then you come to look with a small talker like that, you see. And you know yourself, you tend to look up in the book and think about what you just read. That's kind of where you really cement it in, where you really stocks in. You think about a bit, and then you're really doing something. But to the average person, you appear to be doing what resting. Yeah, yeah, doing nothing.

[23:30] And so, mostly what's the manifest? So Plato will call understanding something and loving something to be doing something, right? But he'll call it a movement, huh? So it's as if God, in understanding Himself and loving Himself, is moving Himself, right? Then using the word motion, right? Kind of loosely for operation, let's say in Latin, probably, or doing something, huh?

[24:08] People are asking what are you going to be doing in your retirement? Sometimes they say, "I'll listen, to Mozart. Sometimes they say, "I'll be thinking about God. " But if I'm thinking about God, am I doing something in my retirement? Right. But I'm more apt to say, I'm doing something when I think about God, than that I'm moving when I think about God. Huh? I'm kind of at rest when I think about God.

[24:31] You see, but moving is like doing, as opposed to what form, right? So that's the way Plato spoke, and Thomas will sometimes say that there's not really a difference between Plato when he arrives at the first cause moving itself, and when Aristotle arrives at the first cause as the unmoved mover. Because Aristotle is using motion in a strict sense, as opposed to to doing, like Plato was using in a in a broader sense, huh?

[25:07] Of course, for that matter, you see the you know we talked about the equivocation when you use the word move for the fourth kind of cause, huh? You know the beauty of Juliet moved Romeo to go over the wall, right? Well, it doesn't mean it was a real push. though. Like you had a guy down there pushing over the wall, that would be the third kind of cause on the mover, right?

[25:32] But but the end is said to move us, right? And to to draw us, right? But not the way that the cowboy draws the horse that he's or cow that he's lassoing and he's pulling it, right? But in some sense we see he's a big draw, a drawer, this performer, where he is pulling people in, right? And so there's a little play in those words, huh?

[26:01] And you know, I ran across another passage I mentioned where Thomas was saying somewhere that Augustine always tries to follow Plato as far as he can, you know, without getting into conflict with the faith, obviously. And here we have Augustine again doing that, right? But the Thomas son is much other than Aristotle. Does in one place at least in the third book on the soul, you know, speak of doing as a motion.

[26:28] Augustine there speaks in the way in which Plato does, you know, who said that the first mover moves itself, calling all operation a what motion, right? Now in Thomas, this distinction that Aristotle makes in the ninth book of wisdom, right, between an imperfect act like walking home, right, or building a house, where the activity is essentially incomplete, right, and exists only when it is incomplete, because when I have walked home, I'm no longer walking home, and when I have built the house, I'm no longer building the house, and then activity like what understanding what a triangle is, or seeing the painting, or loving someone, right, where when I'm loving someone, I have loved them already, and when I understand, when I'm understanding where a triangle

[27:24] is. I've understood what a triangle is, yes, and he so he calls that a perfect act. When the Latin Thomas will use the word emotion for the imperfect act and operation for the what perfect act done. So of course God can't have motion in the sense of imperfect act, but the two things are, you know, something in common that distinguishes them from the the form, right?

[27:53] According as even to understand and to will and to love are sometimes called motion, right, or some, yeah, okay. Because therefore God understands and loves himself. According to this, they say that God what moves himself, huh? Not, however, as motion names a imperfect act, right? And mutation is a thing existing in what potency. For motion is defined as the act of what is able to be, right?

[28:27] In so far as it's able to be. And this is the way we're speaking now, more strictly about change and motion, huh? Okay. Now the second objection is talking about wisdom being more mobile than or more movable than anything else, right? And this is said by certain what likeness, huh? In so far as it's what diffuses its likeness to the last of things, huh?

[29:01] For there's nothing. For nothing is able to be that does not proceed from the divine wisdom through a certain what imitation, just as from the first efficient beginning, the mover, the maker, and the formal, it's like an exemplar, or model. insofar as the artificial things proceed from the wisdom of the artist, thus, therefore, in so far as the likeness of the divine wisdom, step by step proceeds in the highest things which partake more of its likeness, down to the lowest of things which participate light.

[29:40] There is said to be a certain what proceeding in motion, divine wisdom in things. I suppose you could say, you know, I'm just like an emotion, You hit the ball, and further gets away from it, the slower it is, right? And so it's something like that. You know, like wisdom is descending down and slowing down, so to speak, or coming later. less. to those things down below, and he gives this a likeness to the to the sun there.

[30:15] So he says, every procession of the divine manifestation proceeding comes to us, right, from the Father of Lights. It's all the perfect gifts come down moved by Him. And the last one about God approaching us—does He really approach us? As I've said metaphorically,

[30:44] insofar as we really would approach Him, right, we fall short. Okay. Doesn't quite get talked about metaphors there. First question. In case you're running people, especially Protestants, sometimes who think that God really gets angry, right?

[31:22] Even some Catholic theologians think God got sad when Christ died on the cross. The Father got sad. Yeah. It's anthropomorphic, right? We realize that the the anthropomorphic in your own way.

[31:47] God is rather rather rather strange, you know. I was reading St. Alfonso's first meditation during the Passion, you know. You think about him becoming man and then dying and dying in most shameful death, right, and painful death, and so on.

[32:07] It's kind of strange, you know, and in sense it's quite different from the way we are. You know, we wouldn't. and the Greeks the Greeks thought this was foolishness, right?

[32:21] I was thinking, you know, of the way Shakespeare speaks in in Hamlet, you know, where Horatio, what happens? How strange it says. And Hamlet says, Well, then, as a stranger, you can give it welcome.

[32:35] as a stranger, then give it welcome." You know, the idea. Now, whether to be unchangeable, be a what property of God or be private to God, right? God is the only thing that's really unchangeable.

[32:52] The first, therefore, proceeds. It seems that to be unchangeable. Is not private to God, huh? So I would translate it, huh? Rather than it's not proper to God, huh? For the philosopher says in the second book of wisdom, which the rude multitude call the metaphysics, that matter is in everything that is moved, right?

[33:19] But the created substances, such as the angels and souls, do not have matter, right? As seems to some, right? Like Dionysius. Therefore, to be unchangeable is not private to what God.

[33:42] Moreover, everything that is moved is moved on account of some end. What therefore has arrived at the last end is not moved. But some creatures have already arrived at the last end, as all the blessed. Therefore, some creatures are immobile. And those people want to go over the action. Yes, what are you going to say about it?

[34:09] There is no motion in. Moreover, everything that is changeable is variable. But forms are invariable, as is said in the book of the six principles, huh? Now I have the book of the six beginnings, huh? But Aristotle in the categories, he talks about the ten highest genera, right? Or distinguishes them. But then he has a chapter devoted to substance and one to quantity and one to relation and one to quality.

[34:46] But then he kind of just you know leaves the last six. So some thought we had to say a little bit more about the last six. So this is the the book, the six beginnings, huh? Yeah. But form is consisting in a simple and variable essence. It says in that book. Therefore, it is not private only to God to be unchangeable, huh?

[35:13] But again, this is what Augustine says in the book on the nature of the what good. That God alone is unchangeable. But the things which He made, because they are for nothing, they are what changeable, huh?

[35:34] Thomas says, "I answer. It should be said that God alone is altogether unchangeable. In every way, is unchangeable. Every creature, however, in some way is what changeable.

[35:52] It should be known. That something can be said to be changeable in two ways. In one way, through the power or ability which is in it, and another way through the power ability which is in another.

[36:15] And he says all creatures, before they were right, were not possible to be through any created power, since nothing created was eternal, but only through the divine power, in so far as God was able to produce them or bring them forth in being.

[36:40] But just as it depends upon the will of God that He produce things in being, so also from His will is it, or it also depends upon His will, and that He conserve things in their being.

[37:00] For not otherwise does He conserve them in being, than by always giving them being. Hence, if He subtracted His action, all things would return to what? Nothing, as is clear through Augustine in the fourth book upon Genesis, to the literam. Thus, therefore, it was in the power and the ability of the Creator that that things would be before they were in themselves. So also is in the power of the Creator after they are in themselves.

[37:42] It's also within His power that they not be right. Don't get the wrong side that guy. Get angry. Friends, before you go to court. Yeah.

[37:57] Thus, therefore, through the power which is in another, to wit, in God, they are what changeable, right? In so far as by Him they are produced from nothing into being, right? And they are able from being to be reduced to what non-being.

[38:20] Now, second part of the dichotomy there, right, or the different, where he's going to speak about now being changeable, not a reason of a power ability in another, but in oneself, right?

[38:36] If, however, something is said to be changeable through a power existing in it, thus also in some way, also every creature is changeable, right? For there is in the creature a twofold power. to wit, the active and the passive. That's the first distinction Aristotle makes in the ninth book of Wisdom, right?

[39:05] I call that a passive power by which something is able to what get to its what get to its perfection, right? Either in being or in achieving its end. If, therefore, one notes the changeableness of a thing according to its power to being, thus, not in all creatures is there a what mutability, but in those only in which that which is

[39:42] possible in them is also able or can stand. It's compatible with, you might say, right, with non-being. Huh? Whence in the lower bodies, you know, because it is special opinion of Aristotle and Thomas about the living bodies. Whence in the lower bodies. There is changeableness according to their what substantial being, because the matter of them is able to be with the lack of the substantial form of them.

[40:14] So my matter could lose the substantial form it has right now, my soul, and become the matter of a lion or something, right? if They feed me to the lions or whatever. Okay, and also as regards accidental being, right? If the subject is compatible in itself with the what lack of the accident, just as this subject man is compatible in itself with what non-white, right? And therefore, it can change from white to what non-white, huh?

[40:49] My hair is changing from brown to to gray or something, okay? Um, but if it be such an accident that follows upon the essential principles of the subject, then the privation or lack, using this word, of that accident cannot stand with the subject. Once, the subject is not able to be changed according to the accident, just as snow cannot become black. I've never seen our snow in winter, but.

[41:22] Okay, but in the celestial bodies, matter is not what compatible with the lack of form, because they thought Aristotle and Thomas following him, that the form perfected the whole what ability of matter, so it was not an ability for any other form, right? Okay, We don't necessarily have to follow them in this particular position, right?

[41:52] And therefore, we thought that they are not changeable according to the substantial being, but according to their local being, their being here or there in place, because the subject is compatible with the lack of this place or that place. Um, they can lose this place and go to another place, like the sun goes one place to another. But now the bodyless substances, the incorporeal or bodyless substances, because they are what subsisting forms, not the matter, which nevertheless has themselves to the their being as potency to act, right?

[42:31] They do not not compatible with them the privation's act, because to be follows upon form, and nothing is corrupted except through the fact that it loses its what form. Hence, in the in such a one, the form is not in potency to what non-being.

[42:54] Okay, talk about what it has in itself, huh? Okay, and therefore these substances. Are unchangeable and variable according to their being, right? And this is what Dionysius says in the fourth chapter of the Divine Names. He's quoting Dionysius, not Augustine, because someone has some kind of spiritual matter, you know, for the angels. Dionysius is more clear than that.

[43:25] The intellectual, the the created intellectual substances, the angels, right? Munde, they're they're clean of, huh? Free of generation and from all variation, as being bodyless and immaterial substances. But nevertheless, there remains in them a twofold mutability, right? One, according as their inability to the what end, and thus there is in them mutability according to choice from good to what bad, as Damascene says. Another, according to place, right?

[44:09] In so far as by their what limited power they are able to what attain or to act upon certain places which before they did not attain to, huh? Which cannot be said of God, who by his infinity fills all places, as has been said before, huh? So this use of place here for the incorporeal substances, is it metaphorical or just? like... Well, no, it means they can apply their power into some place.

[44:43] Then they can apply their their power to every place, right? So what would you call it, at least a place? Well, it's different from being contained in place, right? Okay, it means that you know it's a little bit like the way God is said to be everywhere, right? Except they're not everywhere because their their power is not infinite, right? So they are said to be where they're acting, right?

[45:09] Huh? Okay, that doesn't mean that they're contained in that place, right? Yeah. But there is a little connection there between them and the place, huh? So like the place is sort of the object instead of yeah, the object of more power, yeah, yeah, yeah. But in a sense, you could say, you know, when you act upon something, if I tell you a sad story, I touched your heart, right?

[45:36] Huh? Yeah. And doesn't mean that I can cut your heart, but my causality was there, right? So it seems in a different sense, huh? Contact of power rather than contact of my surfaces, right? Why the water in here, right? The outer surface of the water and the inner surface of the cup are yeah, yeah, but that's a different sense of than saying that I touch you with my power, right?

[46:07] When you look at the treatise of the angels, we're going to get to the angels. You'll be talking about that fairly early in the treatise on the angels, and so it's a little way of of letting us into these things.

[46:21] De motu locali angelorum angelorum, question fifty-three. Okay, but question fifty-two: the comparazione angelorum ad loca, and utrum angelus sit in loco, right? That's equivocal. And

[46:40] just look at that for a second to your question. Yeah, fifty-two, article one, and just the bodily article. I answer: It should be said that it belongs to the angel to be in place, but equivoce, right? Oh, that's a good. idea. Yeah, the angel is said to be in place, and a body is said to be in place, right? A body is in place through this that there is applied to the place according to the contact of its dimensive what quantity, right?

[47:12] A dimensive quantity is the name for continuous quantity, right? You are thinking of the surface of the of the water here, right? The outer surface of the water, and that's in contact with the inner surface of the place, right? That's not the way the angels are there, so it's equiboce, huh? Where is that again? Question fifty-two, article one. Yeah.

[47:36] Which it says is not in the angels, but there is in them the quantity of what? Power. Yeah, virtual quantity. Through the application, therefore, of the angelic power to some place in any way, the angel is said to be in a bodily place, right? But you obviously use the word in equivocal sense, huh?

[47:58] And according to this, it is clear that it is not necessary to say that the angel is what commensurate there locally, these measured with the place, right? Or that it has a location in the continuous, huh? But these things belong to the located body. That's just another way in which which Christ is is is here or there, right? In the Eucharist, huh? Say,

[48:26] but he's there not by his own what dimensions, huh? But by the dimensions of the bread whose substance he has replaced. That's how he's that's how he's connected with that place, right? But that's a very unusual way, right? But it's different than this, and it's different than obviously the way you and I are in place, not with our bodies.

[48:51] What about what about the souls in heaven now? Yeah, they're not in place. And they might be able to have some application to, you know, that gives them some power to act upon things. But it'd be like the angels more, if they're in place. It'd be equivocally. Yeah. So then, sometimes it comes up they talk about well, heaven or purgatory. Is it a place? Is it a state?

[49:24] Yeah. Yeah. Play with those terms. Yeah. So it's very hard for us to understand because we never think without images, right? Right. And therefore, it's a common, you know, opinion of the Greeks or whatever is must be somewhere. And you continue in the place that your body is, right? And if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. But you're being, in a sense, deceived by your imagination. But it's very hard for people to rise above the imagination.

[49:53] And you know, one of the articles there in the De Trinitate of Boethius is there that Thomas has, you know. is you know. necessity of transcending the imagination in talking about God, right? But you have to transcend imagination also in logic, right? And I'm sure you've seen my articles on on logic there, but I'll quote the passage in the Parmenides there, you know, where Socrates is imagining universal to be like a sail covering everybody instead of, and if that was the way you imagine, say, the definition of rational animal is kind of a sail, well, then maybe one of us got animal, one of us got rational.

[50:33] We don't have the whole, you know. Some of us would be a friend. So you're getting a false thing, right? And you go to the great Porphyry, right, in the Isagoge, and the first universal he takes up is the genus, right? And he gives two meanings of genus before that are not the logical meaning, right? And the the first two meanings he gives, which Aristotle gives himself, of course, are ones that are what more sensible and imaginable.

[51:02] So one sense of genus is a multitude of men who have descended from the same man, and then another sense, of genus is that one patriarch, shall we say, from whom the multitude has descended, right? And this is kind of approaching bit by bit the idea of genus, because the genus is going to be something one said of many, right? And it's not something one like the individual patriarch is, and it's not the multitude itself, but something said of the many.

[51:41] And so he's kind of leading you gradually up to to see the genus, but you have to eventually move beyond the what can be sensed. The universe can only be understood. I was giving the students in metaphysics here recently that little passage there from Barclay's critique there, where he's talking about general ideas. I think I showed you guys one time, two tonight or today, but it's a nice passage because he quotes a passage from Locke, right?

[52:14] And Locke is thinking of the universal as kind of a mishmash of the particulars. Oh. So it's like you know, this is the way I get the idea of animal, I see, in general. I have the image of dog, image of a cat, image of a horse, and elephant, and I kind of you know put these inconsistent images together and and make a mishmash, and now I've got this very imperfect idea of animal.

[52:39] When actually animal leaves out the differences between dog, cat, and horse, you see. So he's trying to imagine the universal, And it's a little bit like people like Anaxagoras who imagined matter to be a mishmash, a composed of all the things it's able to be. Then you get all these difficulties Aristotle shows them, yeah, yeah. But it's but genus in a way to the difference is a little bit like matter is to form so it's a similar difficulty so we're doing the ninth book in metaphysics there an act and ability trying to show how you know they can't see the distinction these two guys neither Barclay nor Locke and Locke says it's all none of these well it's all of these in ability none of

[53:26] them in act but he can't he can't make the distinction so I said these two guys need to the book an act and ability then you go to Descartes now who thinks you can't define motion there's no way to define it but you can't define motion through act and ability so he needs the book an act and ability too and

[53:49] it's funny you know they don't read their their predecessors huh you know so okay so that's so they apply in other words their power to one place right and then they apply it maybe to another place right but God is everywhere in his infinite power. so that's a kind of change right to apply it here and then to apply it there yeah

[54:30] so in regard to place in regard to their end thus therefore in every creature there is some potency to change either according to substantial being as the corruptible bodies right and we can kind of skip the next part there or according to place only as the celestial bodies or in these two ways in the angels according to their order to the end right and also the application of their powers to diverse things as in the angels but then recalling what we said before and universally or in general all creatures are commonly changeable according to the power of the what Creator right in whose power is to be and the not to be of them right

[55:25] why would you try to oppose him do you think makes any sense to oppose someone whose being and non-being are his power but it's interesting you know he doesn't doesn't show his power the way we might if we had such power but they're perfect you know he's very patient he's very patient you know oh yeah whence since God in none of these ways is changeable right It is private to him, right?

[55:59] It's a property of him to be altogether what unchangeable, right? Okay. Now, first objection: matter isn't everything that is moved, but the created substances, as the angels and the souls, don't have matter, right? Okay. The first, therefore, it should be said that that objection proceeds about what is changeable according to what substantial being through its matter or accidental. For about such motion, the philosopher is treated, meaning the actual philosophers, I think.

[56:43] Yeah. I just like we use the word science sometimes, you know, meaning what natural science, right? You know, we don't usually say, you know, we might think of social science, you can call it a science, but but we we have to say social science, right? We wouldn't say science, right? It just say science, period. You think of natural science, right? The and fundamental. Now, the second one here was about the what blessed, right?

[57:11] Okay. So second, should be said that the good angels, huh? In addition to or above the unchangeableness of their being, right, which belongs to them by their very nature, huh? Not to run. They have unchangeableness of choice from the divine what power, right? Nevertheless, there remains in them changeableness according to place, huh?

[57:47] Interesting. He says the angels, but not the saints. Unless. Well, the objection was what? Blessed. Yeah. Okay. But it's similar, huh? By the way, when we get our bodies back, we will have a lot the the gift of agility that they. Saint Paul speaks of.

[58:10] The third objection, huh? About form being this way. To the third, it should be said that forms are said to be invariable because they are not able to be the subject of variation. But they are subject, nevertheless, to variation in so far as as the subject is varied according to them, right? Hmm. Whence it is clear that according as they are, thus they are what varied, huh?

[58:42] But they are not said to be what beings as were the subject of being, but because by them something is, right? So it's not like we're saying that the existing thing is unchangeable, right? But that by which it exists is in some sense unchangeable. So take a little break for a look at the eternity of God.