Prima Pars
60. Summa I q.14 a.11: Whether God Knows Singulars – Practical Knowledge, Fiction and the Likeness of Matter to God
Class of 2007-01-11
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/060-summa-i-q-14-a-11-whether-god-knows-singulars-practical-knowledge/

[0:00] Up to Article Eleven, I believe, huh? Yes. Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order illumine images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:31] So, whether God knows singulars, right? To the eleventh, one proceeds thus. It seems that God does not know singulars, for the divine understanding is more immaterial than the human understanding. But the human understanding, on account of its immateriality, does not know singular things. But as is said in the second book about the soul, reason is of universals, sense of the what singulars. Therefore, God does not know singulars, huh?

[1:18] Or as Boethius says in Porphyry, there, right? A thing is singular when sensed, but universal when what understood, huh? Moreover, only those powers in us know singulars which we see forms that are not separated from material conditions.

[1:52] But things in God are most of all separated from all materiality. Therefore, God does not know singular things. You see, both of these are based upon the fact that our mind gets its knowledge of things from what, from things, yeah, okay. And these things, in their material conditions, as such, cannot be received in our mind because our mind, our understanding, is what immaterial, and so they have to be separated from their material conditions, and therefore they're separated from what makes them singulars—one differing from another, right?

[2:49] That's true even in math. If I imagine a square, right, but understand what this is, I'm understanding what a square is, and that's something now universal.

[3:03] Okay. Moreover, all knowledge is through some likeness, but the likeness of singulars, in so far as they are singulars, does not seem to be in God, because the beginning of singularity is matter,

[3:22] which, since it is being in potency only, is altogether unlike God, who is pure act. That's where Aristotle says in the what first book of Natural Hearing that form is something godlike, right? Because form is act, and God is pure act, huh? Why matter doesn't seem to be like God. Okay.

[3:52] But against all this nonsense is what is said in Proverbs 16, verse 2, that all the ways of men are clear to his eyes, right?

[4:12] Now he says, "I answer. It should be said that God knows singular things. " Now he's going in his first paragraph. The way he gets there is going to conclude that God does know singulars, but then he'll go into the question: Well, how is it that God can know singulars, but we can't know them directly by our understanding, right? But let's look at the first part here.

[4:39] I answer: It should be said that God knows singular things, for all perfections found in creatures, right, preexist in God in some higher way.

[4:56] But to know singulars pertains to our perfection, right? Especially the perfection of our what practical knowledge, huh? Whence it is necessary that God know what singulars. You followed the argument there? Okay.

[5:21] I think he's a sign there from what the philosopher, meaning Aristotle, says. For the philosopher has it for something what inconvenient, something that doesn't fit, right? That something be known by us that is not known by what God.

[5:43] Whence he argues against Empedocles, and there are at least two places where he does this, in the first book about the soul, and in the third book of Wisdom or first philosophy, the third book after the books of Natural Philosophy, that it would happen for God to be most what foolish. If he was ignorant of discord, now going back to the position of Empedocles, Empedocles thought that there were four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.

[6:21] Right, the longest-lasting chemical theory in history, because it lasted about two thousand years, and there's even allusions to it in Shakespeare. Right, so Empedocles, around 500 BC, Shakespeare a hundred later. This is the theory, but then he had two movers: now love that brings these things together, and hate or discord that what separates them. Right, a little bit like our idea of attraction and what repulsion.

[6:55] But like a good Greek, of course, he thought of God as something that was what immortal. So in the composition of God, you could have earth, air, fire, and water, and love, right? But you couldn't have any hate in God because then he would be destructible, corruptible. So there's a good reason to exclude hate from God. huh

[7:23] And you have to admire him for seeing that in a way, right? Now he also thought that what we know things by having them in us. So I know earth, air, fire, and water, and even love and hate because I have these things inside of me, right? Okay, which makes some sense, right?

[7:50] You know, I picked up a cat when the cat's afraid of the dog, and you can feel them kind of shaking me in your hands. But you kind of know what fear is because you have fear within yourself sometimes, right? Then you know it's for the animal to have fear, or for the animal to have anger, or hunger, or something like that. So if that were true, then since there's earth, air, fire, water, and love and hate in us, we know all these six things.

[8:16] But since in God there's earth, air, fire, water, love, but no hate, he doesn't know hate, right? So a consequence of any of Empedocles' position is that we know something God doesn't know. Where starts all the ridiculous? So there must be something wrong with the position of what Empedocles, even though there's some reason why why he thought what he did, huh?

[8:49] But the perfections which are divided in lower things, like in this example of knowing, right, where we know the what universal by our reason and the singular by our senses, right, and these are different what powers in us, right.

[9:09] But the remember the definition there of reason by the by Shakespeare there, its ability for large discourse, looking before and after, and part of the meaning of large there you say large discourse is discourse about the universal. The universal can be said of an infinity of things that covers a large area, right? So that's kind of what reason is able to discourse about. But you have to go back to senses to know the what singular, right?

[9:42] To know this man or this dog or this this cat, you know, this mug, this this book here, right? Okay, an understanding to know directly what a book is that's something universal. That's why Austerlitz says, well, they're in the thing on music. They're talking about fiction, so on. How fiction is not the highest thing that man can attain to, but it's what's most kind of pleasingly proportioned to man, because in a way, what the writer of great fiction is doing is kind of trying to singularize universal or universalize the singular, right?

[10:35] And so it appeals to both our reason and to our what, our senses, okay. Our philosophy just kind of addresses itself to our reason to the universal, and history just to the what to singular, huh? But you see, Romeo and Juliet, you know, you don't say, well, that's a pair of lovers in fifteenth century, whatever century was fourteenth century, Verona, huh? Where they show you the house and so on?

[11:06] You know, it's they're they're still building again. And no, you say this is these are young lovers, right? Then okay. And when Oedipus falls, huh? The chorus comes in like kind of their commentary, right? But the chorus doesn't say, "Oh, Oedipus," it says, "Oh, you generations of men." They see something universal in the downfall, right, of this man, huh? So I remember one time I was sitting in the restaurant there, and I was a bachelor there, and these two guys were there talking, and they were ex Navy guys, right?

[11:47] And they just seen some movie about the Navy, you know, and they're laughing about. You can see the type all, you know, the type of the type, you know, the type that you you meet in the in the Navy, and and then catch that type. There's something kind universal there, right? Okay.

[12:05] So that's why we were talking before there about the conversion and so on. You know, people sometimes are converted more through fiction, let's say, than through philosophy, right? Because fiction, they say, appeals to both the singular and universal, right? And you know, they talked about Shakespeare. You know, I seen many of the best critics and so on. You know, this this combination, universal and singular, in Shakespeare, um.

[12:38] So people can you know go to Shakespeare and find Shakespeare expressing their emotion in some way better than they can express it themselves. So you see something universal in this expression of emotions. They get this this kind of concretized in in this or that character. Um.

[13:02] So we're divided there, right? But in God, these things are what simpliciter et unite—they're one and simple, huh? Whence—and the same thing is true about the angels, right? They're more unified than we are.

[13:20] Whence, although we, through one ability or power, know universals and immaterial things, and through another power the senses senses, know singular things, material things. But God, through His what simple understanding, knows what both them.

[13:46] Now, in the next paragraph, he starts to talk about how some people try to understand this, and they don't quite fully understand it, huh? But in what way this is able to be? Some wishing to make known say that God knows singular things through universal causes. Should not be to fully know the singular as singular, right?

[14:11] For there's nothing in any of the singulars does not arise from some universal cause. And they lay down an example as if some astronomer, were to know all the what universal motions of the heaven, they would be able to what pronounce future eclipses, huh? Predict them. But this he says doesn't suffice for understanding what God is, because the singulars obtain certain forms and powers from universal causes.

[14:49] But no matter how you join these things together, they are not what individuated through some kind of individual matter, right? And we've talked about that before. How is it possible you can have many chairs that say in this room of exactly the same kind? More wood. Yeah, you have enough wood. And how can you have many window panes exactly the same there, right? Well, because you have enough glass, right?

[15:19] So it's matter—wood, glass, or some other kind of matter—as subject to extension, right? There's a reason why you can have what many, huh? Why is it that Grandma can make many Christmas tree cookies at Christmas time, right?

[15:35] Stamp, right? Okay. Now he says others. This is another two-things, but. Others say God knows singulars by applying universal causes, right, to particular effects. But this is nothing. Thomas is very sophist If he was at the University today, he'd be saying that almost all the time. Sophist but this is nothing. Because no one is able to apply something to another unless he already foreknows another, right?

[16:18] Hence, the foresaid application cannot be the reason for knowing particulars, but it presupposes a knowledge of the what singulars, huh? Now, the real solution is to realize that God's knowledge is just the opposite of what our knowledge is, huh? Our knowledge of the things around us is derived from them, right? Right. God's knowledge is what causing them, yeah. Okay. And his knowledge is a cause of the matter as well as of the what form, right?

[16:59] And in some way, God is like all beings, right? That sees to be itself, and even potency is one kind of being, right? So even though it's not like the one who is pure act, if you just consider he's pure act, if you consider the fact he is I am who am, then whatever it is in any way whatsoever is in some way like God, and therefore is knowable through God's knowing what himself in every way in which he can be things be made like him.

[17:31] And therefore, it has to be said otherwise that since God is the cause of things through his knowledge, as has been said, as far extends the knowledge of God as extends the causality of God.

[17:51] Whence, since the active power of God extends itself not only to forms, which in a way what our active power does in the human art, right? We get the wood from nature or something like that, right? And then we act upon and give the form the matter a what a form, but the matter is not really produced by the art originally. Whence,

[18:21] since the active power of God extends itself not only to the forms from which is taken the what universal thought, but also extends all the way down to matter because he creates even the matter. It is necessary that the knowledge of God extends itself all the way down to the what singulars, which are individuated through matter in the case of the singulars terrible singulars.

[18:51] For since he knows things other than himself through his own what nature, his own essence, in so far as he is what a likeness of of all things. As the active what beginning of them. This goes back the idea that what every agent makes what is like itself, okay. And I can't you know when grandma makes the Christmas cookie, right? She already has actually the shape of the Christmas tree and the little what metal thing, right?

[19:25] And so you make something like your self. So all these things exist in their likeness in God, but in a simple one, huh? So since he knows things other than himself through his own nature essence, insofar as is a likeness of things as the active principle of them, right? Is necessary that his essence, his nature, his substance be a sufficient principle or beginning of knowing all things which come to be through him. Not only in the universal, right, but also the singular, because they come to be in the singular, right.

[20:08] And it would be similar in the knowledge of the artist if it were productive of the whole thing and not just of the what, form, yeah, okay.

[20:23] Now the first objection was trying to transpose our way of knowing into God, and that's putting the cart before the horse. To the first, therefore, it should be said that our understanding

[20:40] separates the understandable form from the individuating principles. Okay, because our knowledge is derived from things, huh? And it has to be separated from matter to get it into our what mind, because our mind is what immaterial.

[21:00] It was kind of actually a a gradual becoming material. You go from the what senses to the imagination to the images to the images to what thoughts. You're getting you're going more and more abstract from from matter. So we leave aside the individuating matter,

[21:22] and you know, but the way we show it in some ways, just take the example there. Just take the example of the definition of square, right? Okay, now one understands distinctly what a square is by the definition of square. The definition of square is well,

[21:48] yeah, equilateral and right, right angles, quadrilateral. Now, does the definition have parts, right? Okay, but now do those parts meet at a common boundary. So in a continuous thing, this part and this part meet at a point, right? In a surface, let's say this part and this part meet at a line, right? And in a body, parts meet at a surface. Do these meet at a point?

[22:33] If they met at a point. it's going to be a line. This is a line, isn't it? So this is not really continuous, is it? Aristotle says it's more like what numbers, huh? Okay, because you know when you first distinguish between a continuous quantity and numbers, we say continuous quantity is a quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary, right? But in the case of discrete quantity, number, the parts don't meet at a common boundary.

[23:10] So the number seven, for example, whether you take a two and five or three and four, what you are going to take, just the two and the five meet somewhere, or the three and the four, right? Okay. And there is other ways you can show that these things are like numbers, huh? And that is that

[23:31] thoughts are like numbers; they're not divisible forever. So I can't divide five forever. I can divide five into three and two. I can divide three into two and one. I can divide two into one and one. That's it. I say, but a straight line is divisible always into shorter lines, huh? Are our thoughts like lines that are divisible forever? Now, when you study definition and logic, you see that

[24:04] if every part of a definition was in need of being defined, there would be an infinity of definitions before any definitions, and you would never learn what anything is by what a square is by a definition, huh? You have to define the parts and define the parts of the parts, the parts of parts, and so on forever. And when you show in logic that there are highest genera, right, then you see that the definition doesn't go on forever, and therefore like numbers rather than like the like continuous.

[24:35] Or another way of showing that is is the fact that what's the next longest line? You see? well, if you take a longer line, you could always take the line between that longer line and this line, and between that and this, because it's divisible forever, right? But in logic, in thoughts, there is a mixed thought, right? And if you add the quadrilateral, equilateral, and the right angle, where are you?

[25:08] You're at square. Okay, is there anything in between that? See, it's like numbers, right? Just like when you go from three to four, what's in between three and four? Nothing. Unless you're a mixed up model right

[25:24] And the same way with the syllogism, right? You say every mother is a woman, no man is a woman. What's the next thought? No man is a mother. Yeah. see. but there isn't a next longer line. There isn't a next bigger number, though. so thoughts are like numbers, right?

[25:47] I was thinking about how you know when Aristotle distinguishes the categories. There are the four central senses of before, right, and after. In the first sense of before and after, he gives is in time, right? But in general, that first sense you could reduce the before and after into continuous. And then the second sense of before and after he gives is before and being, but the example he gives is one is before two, and it's kind of significant.

[26:22] He takes the example from arithmetic because these sciences are most proportioned to us geometry, arithmetic. But geometry is about the continuous, and arithmetic about the discrete. And if you look at Euclid's Elements, you know the first six books are about the continuous geometry, and then books seven, eight, and nine are about number. See, he follows the same order, right? But it's also interesting that the next meaning of before will be before the discourse of reason, and that's like numbers, so you know it seems like you know one reason, but he he chose as an example one before two.

[27:08] You can see the bridge there to to before and after in our thinking, and numbers before and after numbers is closer to the before and after in our thinking, more like, or vice versa. The the before and after in our thinking is more like the before and after in numbers than it is like the before and after in the continuous. So even though we sometimes borrow these things, we say you know a line of thinking, right?

[27:40] A line of argument, right? You're closer to what thinking is like when you say put two and two together. That's closer. to what thinking is. it's more like numbers than it is like lines, huh? So. Meaning that line, that line of reasoning. Yeah, refers to the discourse from this to that. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, even the Greeks and Aristotle—they all use the word road, though, right?

[28:08] And road is taken from the continuous, huh? But when you carry the word road over to the mind, you drop the idea of the continuous. You drop the idea of the first of all. You drop matter, you know, the cement or the asphalt or whatever that road is made out of. And but you drop that out even if you went to the mathematical line. Say, but in the mathematical line, you at least keep the continuous, right?

[28:40] But then when you go from there to the mind, you drop even the continuous, but you keep the before and after, but in a different meaning from the original meaning, which is which is which is the continuous, huh? I

[28:59] was mentioning how I was struck by I was going to write a paper, a little article, one time called "Tragedy in Geometry." Did you that? But I mean the. I chose the word geometry there because it rhymes with tragedy, but or tragedy rather, because it rhymes with geometry. But they both have a connection with the imagination, but a little different connection in the way the imagination is used in geometry and used in fiction.

[29:30] And but show you how fundamental those things are for us because we never think without images, and those have a special connection with imagination.

[29:45] Okay, so so he says our understanding, huh? Abstract, abstracts or separates the understandable form. From the individual beginnings or principles, whence the form of our intelligible form of our understanding cannot be a likeness of the individual what principles. And account of this understanding does not know singulars, and you can say it doesn't know singulars what directly, right? I got to come back to my senses to know you, okay?

[30:30] I can think about what a man is all day long, and won't know you, right? Go back to my senses. But the understandable form of the divine understanding, which is the divine essence, is not immaterial by abstraction. Now, this is the important difference, huh? That the objection is overlooking, right? But through itself, right, it is the what beginning or source or cause of all the principles, right, which enter into the composition of the thing, whether they be principles of the species or principles of the individuals, the source of all of them.

[31:11] Whence, through it, divine essence, God knows not only universals but also what singulars. Huh? But then Thomas talks about God's practical knowledge, huh? And he says, "Well, in man, if your practical knowledge doesn't descend to the singular, it's imperfect, huh? " So, if God's practical knowledge didn't descend to the singular, it'd be very, it'd be very what? Imperfect. Yeah, yeah. You know that. I mean, you know how you know as parents say, you know, each child is different, and and you've got to descend right to the singular, right?

[31:48] And you know what they say in military art, you know, they fight the next war, the last war, but each war is in a way different, huh? And

[31:59] so the perfection of knowledge requires you to know the the what singular. Now I was kind of struck by the fact that you know MacArthur, you know, is, is admired for the Inchon landing, right? And

[32:17] I was meeting someplace that you know, MacArthur was an observant of the 1905 war between Russia and Japan, and he saw the Japs carry out the Inchon landing. So yeah, in particular, now it's that singular place and and the and the dangerous tides there, but also the possibilities what you could do there, right? So you have to know the singular, right? They landed in Inchon Landing? Yeah, during the Korean War.

[32:46] yeah. No, no, I mean the Japanese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. So someone knows that. In fact, you might remember that from the during the war. Yeah, yeah. But that's that's perfection of practical knowledge to know the what singular. And you read about all these different battles, you know, and somebody, you know, placing his troops on a higher ground let's say, and you know, we have to turn up a hill, or the sun shining their face or something.

[33:17] But just individual things like that can make the difference in a battle. And so the perfection of practical knowledge is is in the what singular, right? If you're going to get married, which I guess you guys are not going to, but but you've got to know what this individual, right? You can't you don't marry woman or or man, you marry this man, this woman, right?

[33:42] My brother Mark and I, when we were bachelors there in California, you know, in an apartment, sometimes we'd invite a couple out to dinner or something, you know. And these two couples we got to know pretty well because they both were teaching philosophy. The men were, and and they seemed to be, you know, well matched, the husband and wives, you know, husband A and his wife, and husband B.

[34:04] But if they were married to that woman, we'd start having a little chaos, right? You know, you know, it's this man, this kind of a woman, and that man, that kind of woman, and and and there's certain defects, you know, you have that one person, you know, you know, substitutes for not substitutes, but compliments you, you know. And the pedigree would would be just incredible. So if

[34:37] God's knowledge, practical knowledge, didn't descend to the singular, would be very imperfect, huh? You see? You see, you should marry somebody you don't know what their defects are. That's some

[35:02] of these some of these stupid science fiction movies years ago, you know. And the the day before the wedding was kind of a bachelor party, you know, and the guy's driving home, and and there's a body laying in the road he stops, you know, and it's one of these extraterrestrial guys who comes in takes over his body, right? So next day shows up and gets married to the woman, right?

[35:25] And the next scene, you know, kind of passing, and she's writing her mother, you know, John doesn't seem at all like the man I married.

[35:33] The ex-traveler. Practical knowledge, I mean, the singular. Yeah. He's from Mars. She's from Venus. Now the second objection, huh? So it's just the second. It should be said. This is about the immateriality, of that. To the second, it should be said that although the Form of the divine understanding, according to its being, does not have material conditions, as the species received in the what imagination and sense.

[36:16] Now that's, the word species in Latin and the word eidos in Greek, right? You know, when Porphyry writes the Five Predicables right eidos is the

[36:35] the name of what is being defined, right? By the genus and the difference. Well, they translate eidos in the Latin by species, and eidos and species both are similar in etymology because they're the form that you can see they're related. To the word to see, speculation and the word eidos, you know, identi, to see. But in English, we just tend to translate them. If we do in English, by the word what form, right?

[37:04] So instead of saying democracy is one eidos of government or one species of government, we might say that sometimes we say it's one form of government. Okay. So sometimes I translate species here as form, which is more like this.

[37:26] But they badly translate when Plato talks about the ideas, right? The ideas got much different meaning in English now. Means more the thought or the image sometimes, but it should be translated more into forms. like a capital F if you want to write. It'd be a better translation than ideas, given what idea means in English today, right? You know, you can

[37:54] try to do some linguishing of the looks of somebody, right? Well, there you're talking about the shape and so on the person, but it has reference to the eye that sees this, huh?

[38:07] So though the form of the divine understanding, which is the divine understanding, it substance itself, right? According to its being, does not have any material conditions, as do the what forms received in the imagination and the sense. Nevertheless, by its power, it extends to both what material and immaterial things, huh?

[38:29] Now, the third objection is saying, well, to quote Aristotle again, there Aristotle and Plato agree that form is something godlike, right? In the first book of Natural Hearing you may recall the argument there, right? Because Aristotle is arguing against Plato, so you take something in Pitt has in common, and when Thomas explains why he's called form godlike it rather than matter, it's because matter is a potential potency.

[38:58] Form is act, and God is what pure act. There's no passive potency in God. So in that respect, form seems godlike rather than matter, right? But if you think that God is not just pure act, but He is I am who am, right? That his very nature is to be. Then any kind of being, right, even being in potency, has some distant, right, likeness to God. It's much more distant in its likeness to God than than form, right?

[39:33] But still, it's like Him in some way because it's a kind of being, huh? So he says to third, it should be said that matter, although it recedes from the likeness of God according to its what potentiality, huh? Nevertheless, insofar as what, such being, yeah, it retains some likeness of the divine being, right? If God created matter, as He did right. And every agent makes something like itself.

[40:04] In some way, it must be what like God. Last time you distinguished that when you were explaining that argument of Aristotle against Plato, you said I can't remember exactly. You were distinguishing. You said, "Well, the form is like God, as the act, and potentiality is more distant." Yeah. But you said I can't remember exactly what it was. But he argues it's not nothing. It's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[40:33] He argues from a common understanding that he and Plato have a form that it's godlike, something good, therefore right and desirable. And then he says, "Well, then matter could be said to desire form, right? Meaning that it's perfected by form." Um, but the lack of form wouldn't make any sense to say that desires form because that's not going to be perfected by form. It's going to be what eliminated, right?

[41:04] Okay. Or you'll say if form is something good, then matter desiring form is in some way good too, not as good as form, right? But insofar as it's capable, form is good. And then, but privation or lack being opposed to form would seem to be something bad, and opposed as as the bad is opposed to the good. And that's kind of a a hint there that what what badness really is, huh?

[41:35] It's always some kind of what fundamentally it's a lack of something. Something is able to have it should have, but it lacks it when it should have, right? And so that's why you know Augustine kind of talks about that too and says you know sin is nothing and the man who sins becomes nothing, right? But he's kind of in a sense a little bit exaggerating what the bad is, right?

[42:01] It's not strictly speaking nothing or non-being. It's non-being of something you're able to have in a subject capable of having it, right? So blindness is bad, right? Um, but this cup here is not blind, right? Because it's not able to have such a thing, right? So it's not lacking something it's able to have and should have. I can't complain that you gave me no sightless in this yeah.

[42:29] But for an animal or a man, say which is apt by nature to have sight, the non-being of sight is something bad, right? And this is true of any kind of bad. I mean, moral badness, right? You know, my my love or my anger or my fear, if they're not reasonable, are bad, right?

[42:57] I was thinking, you know, I'm a lover of wisdom. Is this a reasonable love in my part? What is wisdom? Well, wisdom is the highest and greatest perfection of reason, right? And therefore, the highest and greatest good of reason. Hey, this is reasonable. Just about wisdom, huh? And of course, God is not only wise, but His wisdom itself, right? So, gee, maybe in loving wisdom, by loving God, you know.

[43:20] So, I'm not going to be careful about that, though, because if the wisdom I love is is what we call first philosophy, that's not exactly God. But nevertheless, you can say in Aristotle's proemium to the fourteen books there, of, wisdom that either God alone should be said to be wise, or only God fully, right? So, in a way, there's kind of an affinity between the love of wisdom and the love of God, right?

[43:44] And you can say the same thing about the love of truth and the love of God, right? And because he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? For this was I born, for this I came to the world that I might give what testimony unto the truth. So, there's sort of an affinity of these things, you know.

[44:16] So, the likeness of matter than to God is less than the likeness of act to God, right? There's still some kind of likeness there. I was looking at in the treatise of the Trinity the other day, and um,

[44:32] talking about the word "Father" said of God, and the word "Father" said of a member of the Trinity, yeah, and which is called Father first.

[44:44] Yeah, this is very interesting article, right? But it's actually the person, right? Is called Father first, and then God has said Father with respect to us. But then Thomas, in one of the reply to the objection, he distinguishes four fatherhoods when God is said to be our Father, and he begins with a quote from the Book of Job, where God is said to be the Father of rain, and these these irrational things, right?

[45:12] And and what we say has only a vestige of God and a footprint of God. That's the lowest kind of fatherly, right? In the lowest kind of likeness there, right? And then those who are made in the image of God, we are much more the sons of God than the rain. That's that's the higher step. Then those who have grace are even more. He quotes Saint Paul and so on.

[45:39] This, right? And finally, those who have glory, who see God as He is, they are most of all the sons of God, right? So you see, reflected in Scripture, right? So yeah, different. Where was that? It's in it. I can serve. It's right here. It's in the treatise on on yeah Trinity there. I don't understand.

[46:08] It's thirty-three, Article Three, Question thirty-three, Article Three, right? That's right. Okay. Thirty-three, Article Three, thirty-three on the Trinity. Yeah. So it says in the by the article, but in creatures, affiliation is found with respect to God, not according to a perfect reason because they don't have the same nature, right? Since there is not one nature of the creature in the in the Creator, but according to some likeness, which the more perfect it is, the more it approaches to true what?

[46:50] sonship, right? For God is said to be the Father of some creature on account of a likeness of the footprint only, vestige, as the rational creature is, according to Job thirty-eight, who is the father of rain, right? Or who generated the the drops of the dew? Of another creature, though, namely the rational creature, according to the likeness of the image, huh? We're made to the image and likeness of God.

[47:18] And he quotes there. Of some, he is the Father according to likeness of grace, where grace is said to be a what? Sharing the divine nature. So by grace, I'm more a son of God than I am just by my nature as a human being or as a rational animal. But my nature as a rational animal makes me more of a son of God than the rain.

[47:40] You kind of understand, you know, the truth of of Saint Francis's, you know, him there to the son and then in the things and calling brother brother. These irrational things, huh? Because they are Our brother is another what? Son, and sometimes Scripture speaks to that. Maybe it seems like kind of far fetched when when Francis does it, but but it has a scriptural basis to it, huh?

[48:03] You know, the rain and here getting snow out here. Well, hello, brother. You where you been, brother? You know, it's January. January, you're not here, brother. I expected you to show up a long time ago. That's kind of the way Francis would speak, you know. But but those of us who who have grace are even more the sons of God, right?

[48:29] So the and he quotes Romans there, right, huh? The Spirit renders testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God, right? If our sons, then we are heirs, right? But if we're heirs, we haven't inherited yet, huh? Okay. And then the son is a likeness according to what glory? Insofar as he already possessed the inheritance of glory, right? According to that of Romans five two, glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of God.

[49:02] So even more like God, you might say. Well, I mean, they say we are more like God when we see God as He is, right? And then we are most of all His sons, huh? And more His sons than we are in this life, right? But we are more His son in this life if we have grace than if we're just a human being, right? We're more a son if we're a human being, a rational animal, than if we're the snow or the rain or the the dog or some other brother of ours.

[49:39] So you have to be careful. You say brother, I mean different grades, right? You know. Well, Saint Francis referred to his body as brother ass. Yeah, that's putting it in his place.