Prima Pars
41. Summa I q.12 a.3–4: Can the Bodily Eye See God? The Meanings of 'to See' and 'Eye', and Why No Creature Sees God by Nature
Class of 2006-09-28
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/041-summa-i-q-12-a-3-4-can-the-bodily-eye-see-god-the-meanings/

[0:01] In the, name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, remain here for us and, help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the, Holy Spirit.

[0:28] Amen. Actually, I ran across those three things that we have in the prayer to the angels on and the sentences right together. Those three, yeah.

[0:43] Okay, right to Article Three, right? Whether the essence of God, the substance of God, the nature of God is able to be seen by the bodily eye,

[1:01] for it is said in the Book of Job in the nineteenth chapter, "In my flesh I will see God," right? And and in forty-two, by the ear of the ear, right, or by the hearing of the ear, I have heard you, and now my eye sees you. Huh?

[1:29] You have to realize that the word sight can be used metaphorically, right? Although here, I think the way he's going to understand that first passage is that when my soul is joined to my body again, I will be seeing God with the soul, right? My soul will be the body, right?

[1:50] So that my soul in my flesh will see God, right? But not through the flesh, right? More of Augustine says in the last book of the City of God, chapter twenty-nine,

[2:15] that the what eyes of the glorified, huh, will excel, right, huh? That they will not only what see more acutely than the serpents or the eagles, supposed to be able to fly towards the sun, like Saint John represents the eagle. Um, which no matter how accurate they get to be, these senses of the serpents or the eagles and so on, they cannot see nothing but bodies, right?

[2:52] Huh? But the eyes of the blessed will see, right, also incorporeal things, huh? A lot of times, Augustine has to be explained, huh? And Thomas will, of course, explain what Augustine means to say. Okay.

[3:13] But whoever is able to see bodiless things is able to be raised up to seeing God, right? Therefore, the glorified eye is able to see God. But Thomas will be solving that in the way in which you know I say that I see that you're alive, but do I really see you're alive? No, I really see you know your movements, and but right away I'm sharp enough to see that you're alive.

[3:45] Yeah. And you're going to see God in everything, huh? The way Saint Francis does, right? And but it's because your mind will be so sharp, right?

[4:01] Moreover, God is able to be seen by man by imaginary vision, for it is said in the Book of Isaiah, chapter six, I saw the Lord sitting upon a what throne? I guess it is. But imaginary vision has its origin from the what senses? For the image, as Aristotle says, is a motion made by the sense and act. huh? So you stick in the first image, you're like, If I look at you and I close my eyes, I still kind of what see you, right?

[4:37] But it's because what there's a motion set inside of me from what I saw originally with my eyes, huh? But now I no longer see you with my eyes, but you kind of fade away, right? But there's a kind of you know, motion there. It's weaker than the original thing because it's you know you hit one ball and hit another ball, it gradually gets weaker, right? But

[5:04] Isaiah says his vision, right? So in church in my hometown, there's got this big guy out there. you know, but it's like Isaiah, I suppose inspired by Isaiah, he's sitting there.

[5:16] Okay. Therefore, God is able to be seen by a what sensible vision, I don't know if you can imagine God or picture God. But against this is what Augustine says in the book about seeing God to Paulina that God no one has seen ever in this life as He is, or in the life of the angels as those what physical things are, right? Which are discerned by bodily corporal vision, a bodily vision, right?

[5:56] Okay. So Thomas says, "I answer. It should be said that it is impossible for God to be seen by the sense of what sight, huh? or by any other sense or power of the sensitive part. Huh? For every power of this sort is the act or form of a bodily organ, right? As will be said later when he talks about the human soul. I think we read that one time did we here?

[6:33] Ah, and when he got through the dynamo, I think we went to the part of the summa. Um, but act is proportional to that of which it is an act. Huh?

[6:47] Whence no power of this kind can extend itself beyond what bodily things. But God is bodiless, as has been shown above, right? Whence neither by sense nor by imagination, which also is a bodily organ, is he able to be seen, but only by the what understanding, huh? Okay.

[7:15] So even the painter will not see him, right, with his bodily eye. That is to say, right, or by his imagination. Huh? You talk to an average Catholic, right, and you kind of you know wonder whether they think that God is bodiless, really, huh? Yeah. And I remember, my cousin who was a philosopher trying to tell his mother that God, in his divine nature, has no body, and she just couldn't understand this.

[7:50] I remember saying, you know, she's a little girl, you know, thinking God with his little finger could move the whole world, right? I don't know what she meant by that.

[8:02] But it's hard for us to transcend the what imagination, too, right? As Aristotle says in the book on the sense of the sensible, we understand nothing without the what continuous and time, huh? Because the images are continuous, right? And they're tied up with the temporal. And so, even in our statements, we always have the past, the present, the future. And so, if we try to understand something that is not continuous, either we don't understand it at all, or falsely in the try to imagine it, or else we have to negate what we what imagine, right?

[8:43] Say God is not a body, right? God has no parts, right? And so, as Boethius says in the book on the Trinity, you have to, in talking about God, transcend the imagination, right? And that's very hard. And I mention often this famous text from Aristotle there in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, and he's talking about place on the beginning of the fourth book, and he quotes the common opinion of the Greeks before him that whatever is must be somewhere, and if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't what exist.

[9:24] Well, to be somewhere to be in place is a property of an actual body, right? So if you're thinking that whatever is must be somewhere, and it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. you're thinking that what it is is the same as bodies and and what is in bodies, huh? And so you can't really transcend imagination, huh? You remember when the Russians said, the Sputnik guy, you know?

[9:48] He radioed back there, he said, "no God up here is there. But I mean, most people, you know, think that, right? Yeah, a lot of times you know, if you ever think about your your soul after you die, right? You know, gee, where will I be? But you're still thinking of your soul is kind of like being a body, right? So it's very hard to overcome that, right?

[10:16] And that's what the philosophers said that the the study of the immaterial substances belongs to the last part of life. Your mind has really been perfected by studying other things. You begin with Euclid's geometry there. You're dealing with what a triangle is and what a circle is and other things that can be imagined, right? And then you go on to natural things which are sensible too and can be to some extent imagined.

[10:46] And then you have to either stop there, as most people do, or else you have to reason out that there's something that is not continuous, not a body. And then you are knowing this more by kind of a distant likeness, but more by negation, right? And so, if you go back to what we said about God, everything seems to be, for the most part, negative, right? And even if the words are affirmative, like you say God is simple, you examine the treatise on the simplicity of God.

[11:24] It's showing that He's not composed, is not put together, that you and I are put together in more than one way. And God's not put together, right? Can't even put Him together the definition.

[11:45] But we tend to know simple things in a composed way. So we say God is pure act, and we say first matter is pure ability. But the word "pure" in one case is negating any passive ability; in the other case, is negating any act. So what is more simple is being known to what is a mixture of act and ability, and by kind of a what

[12:23] negation of one of those. That's why I really liked it, you know, when Aristotle is explaining how Homer taught the other Greeks how to make a good plot. He didn't take everything that happened. He didn't give us the whole history of the Trojan War, say, but he takes up in one year and he takes a a course of events that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

[12:50] When Aristotle defines beginning, middle, and end, he defines the middle as what has something before him and something after. it. He defines the beginning and the end. By what one of those affirmed and one negated, so the beginning is before, but not after, and the end is after, but not before. So in a sense, it's like we know the middle of things better, right? But you could say that the pure act is the beginning of all things.

[13:19] Now, what's furthest away from pure act is pure ability. That's the end, in terms of or last, you might say, in terms of of its perfection, so on. And what's most known to us is the middle, the things that are a mixture of act and ability. And so we know the extremes, the beginning and the end, by partly by negation of what we find in the middle.

[13:46] But it's kind of interesting that it's reflected in the in in the definitions of beginning, middle, and end, and repeats itself at that level.

[13:59] Okay, the first objection now was taken from the book of Job, which Thomas says is the book that is there to what defend faith, right? Because he says the chief objection against God is what the evil in the world, and the bad things that happen even to to good people, right? And that book is addressing itself to that problem. So the book of Job is kind of the first of the sapiential books, but it's kind of defending the faith against the most common objection.

[14:36] I was invited down to BC one time there to hear some atheist, right? But this whole argument was from the Holocaust and so on, right? I mean, this just this heavy, explained, you know. And so, I mean, it's objection really that you have in Job, and so it's not a new objection, right? Everything, but it's an old one. So the first, therefore, it should be said that when it is said in the book of Job, or Job says, "In my flesh I will see God," right, my Savior.

[15:10] It should not be understood that God will be seen by the eye of the flesh, right? But that he, Job, existing in the flesh, right, or his soul existing in the flesh, after the resurrection, right, will see God, right? So it's kind of a belief there expressed in that text of the resurrection, right? I also thought that I'd take the words there, you know, from on my tomb, you know.

[15:40] I believe that I shall see my Redeemer and in my flesh. I will see, you know, right? Yeah, yeah. That's when that Psalm was it, Psalm sixty-two. I think it is sixty-three. Oh God, you are my God; whom I seek. for. You my flesh pines, and my soul thirsts. And you have a flesh mention as well there, but the soul is thirsty to see God, right? But the flesh is in senses wants the resurrection too.

[16:10] Likewise, when it is said. Now my eye sees you. It is understood about the eye of the what mind, huh? As is said, for example, Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, the apostle. I'm not saying he, what? Saint Paul is called the apostle by what? antonomasia. Yeah, yeah. Paul and Peter, I guess, are called apostles by antonomasia. I remember how John Paul II would call them the princes of the apostles.

[16:45] Another way of talking about this, an emphasis upon them. To notice that in the text themselves, and they refer to themselves as as the apostle, Apostle of the Gentiles of the Jews. He will

[17:07] give you a spirit of wisdom in your knowledge, illuminating, having illuminated, enlightened the eyes of your what heart, right? Okay. Now, go back a bit here. If you take these two words, to see and the eye, right? They're both carried over, but I think the word to see can be carried over with a new meaning, but the word eye is carried over only metaphorically. Okay. Now, when I was a little boy, my mother would say, "I see," said the blind man, but he couldn't see at all, right?

[17:51] Okay. So it's punning upon two meanings of the word to see, right? But the word to see here is a word equivocal, has many meanings, but it's equivocal by reason. There's an order among the meanings, and the first meaning of to see is the act of the what? Eye. And

[18:21] that's the only name for that act, right? Okay. Now I ask them, what is the next meaning of the word to see? And they usually want to say to understand, because I'm quoting my mother and so on, right? Well, the thing you have to realize is that when you pun, you like to pun upon meanings that are far apart, because then the person knows that you're using them in two different senses, right?

[18:46] But is there a sense of the word to see that's closer to the act of the eye than is to understand? To imagine, to imagine, yeah, to picture, right? And I often take the example from.

[19:05] Hamlet, right? Where the Horatio doubts the soldiers who have seen the ghost, seen with their eyes now, right? Seen the ghost of Hamlet's father walking in the thing at Elsinore, in Denmark, there, right? And so he's not going to go there, right? He's not going to believe them unless he sees with his own eyes. And but he does see with his own eyes, right? And he says, "I would not believe this without me.

[19:35] You know, two doubts of the man others. Well, then they come to Hamlet to tell him about this, and before they have a chance to tell Hamlet about it, Hamlet says, "I can see my father now." Looking around, you know, the ghost has appeared again, and Hamlet says, "In my mind's eye, right."Now using mind there to refer not to the reason but to refer to the imagination, right?

[20:07] He can picture his father and the way he looked and so on, right? So I can see my grandchildren now, right? But not the way I can see you guys now, right? But that that sense of to see is very much like to see with the eyes. A sign of that is that in a dream, we think often we're seeing with our eyes and we're actually imagining, picturing these things, right?

[20:37] And it's not until we wake up that we realize that are what we're imagining these things and not what actually seeing them, right? And usually relieved, with something that that we we don't want to be going on, right?

[20:59] Um. One day when I was first teaching, I couldn't find the. I had a hard time finding the classroom or something like that. I found it in time for my class, but you know, a little thing like that becomes a big thing in a dream. And I dreamt that I'd become chronic. So he's a good teacher, but he can't find the classroom.

[21:22] And we'll have to let him go because he doesn't get the classroom. What good is he doing? And so, but that was my imagination. Reality wasn't quite that bad. But even in a dream, you don't confuse what the eyes with understanding, do you? That they're further apart. But we do confuse imagining at least with thinking. And we say, "I imagine that's so. I think that's so, right?

[21:59] " And you read English philosophers, the empiricists, and so on, and they use the word idea. It's not too clear what they're thinking about. A what image or a thought, right?

[22:13] And in daily speech, we use the word idea sometimes, meaning one, sometimes the other, right? So if the girl says the guy don't get ideas, it's probably images, right? If you say the philosopher is an idea, you hope it's a thought. Some philosophers don't pull me an image, huh? But you know, we'll say I think that's so. I imagine that's so. It just meant almost the same thing, right?

[22:39] Now, when you carry the word to see from the act of the eye to imagine, and from to imagine to understand, right? I think that the word is taking on a new meaning in each case, right? Okay. But notice, huh?

[22:59] In addition to that same word taking on a new meaning, we also have another name for those other two acts, right? So to see with imagination, we can call to imagine, right? And instead of to see and to see with the reason, to understand, right?

[23:21] But now, if you take the word "I" and carry the word "I" over to the imagination, now would that be a new meaning, or would you be using the word "I" in a kind of metaphorical sense? Yeah, yeah, because the word "I" is much different from the imagination, and much, much more different from the reason understanding, right? By the word to see, it's something a little more spiritual, something more immaterial.

[23:52] And and the same way, the word light, I think, can be can be made given a new meaning, right? Manifestation and so on. So when Hamlet says, "I I can see my I see my father done," he says, "Where?" He says, "In my mind's eye." Well, he doesn't just say "I." They say, "My mind's eye," right? You know, and and Gregory the Great uses the word "I" sometimes for the reason, like in the second text that he's explaining here.

[24:22] And Gregory the Great says that anger disturbs the eye of the soul. Okay, so there's a likeness there: the eye of the soul and the eye of the body, right? But you'll see the eye of the soul, right? To use the word "eye by itself would be too misleading, right? Well, we'll tend to use the word to see, you know, class or something like that. You see what I mean?

[24:49] We, you know, we don't have to add. You see with your your mind what I mean, right? You see, because the word to see has taken on that new meaning for you, right? See, I use the word "I" for for reason or for imagination. I tend to say that the eye of the soul, right? You know, because it's especially for philosophical discourse, right?

[25:12] Okay, so it's not like Thomas is drawing this out of nowhere or something, you know, or just because of this particular text, he's trying to to

[25:24] give the word a metaphorical use here. But you find it in daily life. You find it in Hamlet. You find it in Gregory the Great, right? And okay, but it's hard sometimes to draw the line between what they call an analogous word and a metaphor. But you see, but in the case of analogous word, there a word like to see, the word is carried over with a new meaning.

[25:54] In the case of the metaphor, the word doesn't really have a new meaning, and that's why when Thomas explains figures of speech or figurative speaking, he says that the meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker. See?

[26:17] Do you see what I mean? But when I say that, my meaning is the meaning of the word to see. It's the third meaning of the word to see, right? Okay. But I say you're a rat. Or, I say, my wife, honey, or something, right? I don't mean what the word means, right? But there's some connection between what the word means and what I mean, right? In the case of metaphor, it's one of likeness.

[26:44] In the case of irony, as Thomas says, it's one of of opposition, right? Okay. And there are other figures of speech too, but what's common to all of them is that the meaning of the words is not the meaning of the speaker.

[27:03] Do you see that? So that's what makes a metaphor. I've heard it referred to as an improper proportion, whereas analogy is proper, meaning that that if I use it with a new meaning, then I mean what the word means. It has a definition that corresponds to the word of my use of it. Whereas if it's improper, then I'm using it. I just say, I'm carrying over the.

[27:26] Yeah, yeah. I think it's more clear to say that that in the case of figurative speech, the meaning of the words, the meaning of the speaker, are not the same, right? The example I use, or use in class, in this topic assumption, there I'd say, if I come in on a weekend, I find you drunk under the table, and I say, what a fine example of an Assumption college student.

[27:49] You know, I don't mean this, right? See. But even daily life, you know, people are a little bit mean to you. You know, say you're nice. You know, say a little bit nasty. You know, say you're nice. It's very common, right? And everybody realizes that the person doesn't, the speaker doesn't mean what his word means. But in this case, in opposition to metaphor, it's the opposite. I mean, the opposite of what I I said, right?

[28:15] You know, in Mark Antony's famous speech in Julius Caesar, you know, he starts out by saying, you know, the assassinators and so on that they're honorable men, right? He keeps on giving reasons for showing that it's not honorable what they've done, right? And so the irony is very effective, though sometimes it's more effective, you know, to to say that, right? Um, but they're all honorable men. So, in the eyes of course, is understanding the figure of speech.

[28:51] So I think the word "I," you see. Is being used metaphorically, right? You call reason an eye, and because it's being used metaphorically, that's why we tend to use a phrase like "the mind's eye" for the imagination, or "the eye of the soul" for for reason. Okay.

[29:17] So it's interesting that in this first, probably this first objection, which had two texts, I guess from from Job, right? One of them, of course, Thomas is is saying that the word "eye" is being used in its proper sense, right? And the and he's taking that whole phrases as not meaning that he's using he's seeing God, right? Um, but he's seeing God with his reason, when his soul is in his body, right?

[29:51] But his soul is not seeing God through the eyes. Okay. By the other case, he's saying, no, the word sight or or Or eye is being used what metaphorically, yeah, yeah. That's the acumenTis right? But but notice that's the same phrase that Shakespeare uses for the imagination, right? Which shows how the mind, the word mind is sometimes used by by people for what imagination, sometimes for the reason that you don't have a great idea, right?

[30:27] Used to be a psychological column in the newspaper called mirror of your mind, right? And mind, you actually referred to anything going on inside, not just imagination or reason, but your emotions, and you know, and so

[30:43] the word becomes equivocal. Sometimes in the Introductions to Logic, they call the first the Greek, the Arab philosophers call the first act of reason, imaginatio per intellectum But an image and a thought are both a likeness, a different kind of likeness, but both are has something in common.

[31:09] Okay, to the second, it should be said. I was taking the text of Augustine here in the City of God, that Augustine spoke there, inquiring in those words, right? Okay, and under what condition? Condition, yeah, which is clear from what he sets forth beforehand, right? That the eyes the glorified, right, will be much different, right, than they are now.

[31:41] If through them we see what a bodily nature, right? Then you obviously see a different power, right? Okay, but afterwards he determines this saying, "Valde credibile it's very believable, right?

[32:02] That just as now we see what bodily, earthly bodies, right, and the new heavens and the new earth, right, that God everywhere present, right, and governing the universe, or governing all bodies, with a most clear perspicacity, right, we will see. Not as now we see the visible things of God through the things which are made, and then makes a comparison. I don't think you're there, but as men among whom we are living, right, and

[32:43] exercising, right, vital motions and so on, right away as living, right, we see, right, okay. We don't believe them to live, but we what see it alive? I see it alive, okay.

[33:03] From which it is clearly says that in this way Augustine understands the glorified eyes will see God just as our eyes see the life of someone, right? Okay, just as I can see in your body that you are alive, right? Although I don't even see your life with my eyes, right? But when I see your body, the movement of your body, my reason is so sharp I recognize that you are alive.

[33:26] You are not a dead body over there. Um. So our mind will be so glorified, right, and see God so clearly that in every effect of God, I mean, you see an effect of God, you will say, "Hey, this is an effect of God." This is a God is the cause of this, son. So he says, life is not seen by the bodily eye. Taking his comparison now, as something visible through itself.

[33:59] Remember that distinction in the second book of the about the soul, Aristotle, where he distinguishes the sensible per se, or sensible as such, and the sensible per accidens, or by happening. Okay, and then he distinguishes the first into two: the common sensibles, right, and the proper or private sensibles. So if I say I see your color, right? I see your shape, and I see a man, right?

[34:40] Okay. I don't see those three exactly the same way, right? The eye alone sees your color, right? The eye and the hand could know your shape, right? Then, so your color and your shape, the first my eyes know as such, right, and only my eyes. Your shape, both my sense of sight and my sense of touch as such know, but as is not private one, it is common.

[35:17] Calls that a common sensible, but those two are sensed as such. But you, a man, do I see a man in the same way? No. So my reason recognizes that there is a man here, right? When I see your shape and color and your movement and so on, right? Okay.

[35:41] So your life is not a what private or common sensible. It's not a sensible as such, right? But it's known by something else in you when I see your color and shape and movement done. So he says, "Life, vita." Life is not seen by the bodily eye as something seeable to itself, right, or by itself, but as something sensible by happening, or per accidens to use the Latin words, right?

[36:13] Quod est sensibile per accidens, which is not known by the senses as such, but it's known at once with the sense by some other knowing power, namely the reason, right? Okay, so the sensible per accidens is not just anything known by the reason, right? Like I know what a syllogism is, but that's not an accidental sensible. But it's something known not by the senses as such, but known by some other power in us when we sense something, right?

[36:56] Okay. That, however, at once bodies being seen, the divine presence is known from them by the understanding, right? Happens from two things. One is from the what clarity of the mind, the perspicacia, the sharpness, I suppose, of the mind, and secondly from the what flowing back, you might say, of the divine clarity in the bodies that have been renovated by the what? Measure to renewal. Yeah, yeah.

[37:40] Second, the the transfiguration, right? Not quite as bright as the sanctifying bodies, but they'll partake a little bit of this, huh? And so, knows

[37:59] what it is. You see the analogy Thomas is using, right? Just as I know now that you're alive, right? But not through my senses as such, right? But when I sense your color and movement and so on, right? My reason right away grabs the idea that you're alive, right? So it'd be like that when I see anything that's an effect of God, right? My senses won't see that it is an effect of God as such, right?

[38:26] But reason right away will say, "ah, that's another effect of God. That's another thing that he did. Another thing. You see? And this would be because my mind would be so sharp, right? Okay, that's kind of interesting. Think of that, right? Because it's very clear to me that you guys are alive. I don't need doubt about you being alive. And right away when I see moving and reacting and so on, but when I walk out there and I see the tree, you know, it's not as clear, this is an effect of God.

[38:55] as it is that you guys are alive. But in the next world, it will be as clear to me right away. And I see that tree. I'm around the corner. There's a tree there. Oh, another effect of God, right? You see? Second walk, and you say, "Oh, another, another live one."

[39:13] Another live body, live wire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quick, you see? That's interesting, huh? Very interesting comparison, right? That's what Augustine is saying, right? Huh? So need Thomas to explain

[39:33] Augustine now. Yeah. Occasionally, you know, Thomas to explain Aristotle. A lot of times he does What things you do, but people have misunderstood Aristotle sometimes, huh? You know, I always think of this text in the twelfth book of the wisdom, where Aristotle seems to be saying that God knows only Himself and nothing else, right? Thomas says, "Well, he doesn't mean that. He means, what does God know primarily, right?

[40:06] Say, and it's only by knowing himself he knows anything else, right? I say, and of course Aristotle, you know, in other places, you know, there's two or three places, for example, where he criticized Empedocles because in the position of Empedocles, we know something that God didn't know, and that's ridiculous, Aristotle. didn't know. so I mean, you know, so great a philosopher, so great a question should be, but you know, contradicting himself, you know, Thomas doesn't even carry the appearance to be so stupid, right?

[40:41] You know, and especially himself is so clear about the fact that there's something wrong with the position of Empedocles about how knowledge takes place. If the consequence of this position is that we know something God doesn't know, we know hate and God doesn't know hate. Okay, and so,

[41:07] I see Thomas, not in that particular text, but in some other place, you know. So great a philosophy and so great a matter should mean this. It. Doesn't make any sense, right? And the same thing, you know, it has part in that attitude towards what you know, Augustine, right? And so great a theologian

[41:26] could mean this, but he does read Augustine very carefully, like he reads Aristotle very carefully. Okay, but the third objection is taken from the text of Isaiah. So I think I think

[41:42] Isaiah says, "I saw God, right? You know, on the throne, right? This is something to that effect. Now it should be said that in an imaginary vision, the very substance of God, the essence of God, is not seen, but some form is what formed in imagination, representing God according to some way of likeness, right? As divine scriptures in the Bible, divine things are described metaphorically through what sensible things, right?

[42:18] So we say the Lord is a rock, right? Well, I thought the rock is taking on new meaning, you know, but the meaning of the speaker is not that God is a rock, but that he's something like a rock insofar as he can support or firmness to things, right?

[42:52] One thing you notice about about metaphors is that the same metaphor can be used for something good for something bad, right? So someone says you've got a stony heart. That's not a compliment, huh? We say the Lord is a rock, right? Or what's it? Was it Stonewall Jackson? It's like a stone wall or something, you know. That that was a compliment, right? Huh? So to be like a stone, it can be taken in a good way and like a bad way.

[43:28] The devil is a what? Lion going around, seeking whom he may devour, right? And you have Aslan, right? And the lion of the tribe of Judah, right? And so

[43:42] the lion's cruelty, right? Maybe the likeness there in the case of the devil, right? But the lion's strength and courage, whatever it is, is more like might not like the lion of the tribe of Judah, the one who conquers. He's the king of the beasts, right? And not by chance that English have you know the the lion is a symbol of this. Huh? You walk around Venice, you see all these lions there.

[44:08] Saint Mark, yeah, but also the symbol is there—the authority and kind of more authority there. It's interesting how the different senses, nevertheless, are kind of metaphorically carried over, right? Taste and see how sweet is the Lord, and so on, huh?

[44:32] And what in in the songs there, you know, running in the ointments of God, and so on, right? Smell or all these things said about the virgin, you know. It's not by chance, you know. You know, you open the grave of the saints, and you get the the lard instead of the stench that come from our bodies, and you get this, you know, the kind of a sign of the the the good odor of these people, right?

[45:00] And of course, the ear and the eye are used a lot in Christian scripture. Hear God speaking. Not so much this way, right? Unless you're what's his name? David, there. Who's that? The guy. Prophet. Nathan was it? Nathan before David. Who was Saul? Samuel. Yeah, Samuel. Yeah, who heard it? Nathan. And the master was. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's coming usually here, but he's actually here in his ear, right?

[45:36] It's not just you know, it's not just imaginary. Okay, now the fourth article. To the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that some created understanding, intellectual, there's the power, right, is able. Through its natural powers, to see the divine what substance, right? Thomas doesn't take the other side, right? Contrary guy, right? But

[46:16] Dionysius says in the fourth chapter the divine names that the angel is a pure what? Yeah, most what clear, right? Receiving the whole, if one could say so, beauty of God, right? Huh? What's quite a creature, right? I think tomorrow I think they have the Rayfield Gabriel. whatever here. Your calendar, not not yours. Yeah, Saint Michael in November. Yeah. I've Gabriel. Yeah, by himself. I don't have Rayfield on our calendar.

[46:53] I think we should correct that. That's another. Yeah, there' one feast there for three of them. We call them saints. There is the church book. Yeah.

[47:06] Um. But each thing is seen when it's what mirror is seen, right? Huh? Image. Since, therefore, the angel through his natural powers understands himself, it seems that also through his what natural powers he understands the divine essence.

[47:30] We sees God naturally much more clearly than we do, because he sees himself, and he's a much more clear mirror of God, right? Huh? What's does he's going to be limited?

[47:43] Moreover, that which is most visible becomes less visible to us on account of the defect of our sight, either of our bodily sight or intellectual sight. So that's going back to what Aristotle said, right? That what's more knowable is less knowable to us, right?

[48:06] That's why we know things in a confused way before we know them distinctly, as he says in the beginning of the first book of Natural Hearing.

[48:17] And Aristotle says, "As the eyes of the bat are to the light of day, right? So is our reason, right, to the things which are most knowable. But the understanding of the angel does not undergo such defect, right? Since, therefore, God by himself is most knowable, right? It seems that he is most knowable by the angel.

[48:47] If, therefore, other things that are understandable through their what, if, therefore, he's able to understand other understandable things through his own natural powers, much more can he understand God, right? This is the difference between us and the angels: is that the object of our understanding is something that's understandable only in ability, and we have to make it actually understandable. That's the act of understanding. Does that? But the object of the angelic understanding is something that is what understandable in act.

[49:26] Therefore, it seems that it knows most of all what is most understandable in act, and that's God. Moreover, bodily sense is not able to be raised up to understanding a bodiless substance because it is above its nature. If, therefore, to see God by His essence was above the nature of any created understanding, it seems that no created understanding is able. to be raised up to the nature of the nature of. To arrive at what seeing the essence of God, which is erroneous, as has been said above, it seems therefore that it is natural to the created understanding to see the divine essence.

[50:22] But against this is what is said Romans. This is the Romans chapter six verse twenty three. By the grace of God, eternal life. But eternal life consists in the vision of the divine essence, according to that of the seventeenth chapter of John. where Christ says, "This is eternal life that they know Thee, the only true God." So, so it's by grace that you have eternal life. It's by grace then that you have know God.

[50:53] And therefore, it's not by nature. Therefore, it's see or nature alone. Therefore, to see the nature of God belongs to the created understanding by grace and not by nature. That's nice. Soldiers in there, right? Saw the phrase there in Thomas today. There he speaks of talking about the commandments, right?

[51:23] And when you have a commandment saying like "Thou shalt not commit adultery," right? Is it included under that commandment? Thou shalt not commit fornication, right?

[51:38] Or thou shalt not kill. Does that include I should not chop off your arm or something, which is lesser than killing? So, well, yes, it is right. But but how is it included in there, right? And Thomas says was not included via syllogistica. Say,

[52:04] in other words, you can't reason from the greater evil being prohibited to the lesser one, right? You can't say that if adultery is bad, then fornication is bad.

[52:22] You could argue if fornication is bad, then adultery is bad, right? Huh? Or if it's bad for me to cut off your arm, even more so is it bad for me to kill you? But you can't do the reverse, huh? And say if it's bad for me to kill you, then it must be bad for me to do something lesser. Okay.

[52:50] And then he goes on to explain. You know, it's more like that, like a seed, right? But it makes a nice comparison that. Just as the reason goes from what is what more known to us to what is less known to us and more difficult to be known, right? So in the moral life, we go from avoiding what is easier to avoid or easier to do to what is more difficult to do or more difficult to avoid, right?

[53:21] So there is some likeness there, right? But it's not via syllogistica; it's not by a syllogistic road, because via is kind of a Latin word for road, the way the roads are going. Via is kind of a common Latin translation of the Greek word "hodos right? But Christ says, "I am the hodos huh They translate it in Latin as "the "via." In English, by way, but way is not quite; it can mean the road, the way, but it's not quite as concrete as via.

[53:55] And hodos? So no syllogistic road there, but here's a syllogism right here in the same concept. By the grace of God is eternal life. Eternal life is to know God, right? Therefore, it's by grace that we know God, and not by what nature by nature alone, right?

[54:21] And it gives there's evidence there that the use of vision is referring to the understanding, not the understanding of the body Yeah, Yeah. The