Prima Pars
68. Summa I q.16 a.4–5: Is the true before the good? Is God truth? (Simply vs. in some respect; appropriation; 'through itself')
Class of 2007-02-22
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/068-summa-i-q-16-a-4-5-is-the-true-before-the-good-is-god-truth/

[0:01] In the Name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain illuminate our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, common doctor and angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. Name Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:33] So up to the fourth article and the sixteenth question. Yes. Whether good is before what the true secundum rationem that means like in definition.

[0:50] As I mentioned before, the most universal words, thoughts in a sense, some call them the transcendentals right, for want of a better name. But there's a certain order among the definition. So the most fundamental ones are are being and something right. And then one adds something to that right. So one means undivided being, okay. And true and good are a couple other transcendental. So now he's asking about the order of those two in particular.

[1:33] It seems to the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that good secundum rationem, or by definition, you could say, is before true. For what is more universal is before according to reason. Just like animals before dog, right? Because animals in the definition of dog, but not vice versa, right? So animals before dog secundum rationem.

[2:05] But good is more universal than true, for true is a particular good, namely the good of the understanding. Therefore, the good is before in definition the true.

[2:21] Okay. Nice little argument, huh? Like just saying what true just one particular good, and that's the good of your your understanding, but you got health and you got a lot other goods, right?

[2:35] Second objection. Moreover, the good is in things. The true, however, is in the putting together and dividing of the understanding. So when I put man, let's say, and what animal together and say man is an animal. Or when I divide man and stone, say man is not a stone. Then I have something true, right? But those. But what is in things are before what is in the what understanding.

[3:10] So if the good is in things and the things are before our understanding anyway, right? Then wouldn't good be before true? Moreover, truth is a certain species or form of virtue. And Aristotle has one of those virtues called truth, where a man shows himself in his words and deeds as he is. And this is a virtue taken up in the fourth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. But virtue is contained under the good, for it is a good quality of the mind, as Augustine says.

[3:52] Therefore, good is before true. That objection is probably easiest to answer, right? Because the true that is a species of virtue wouldn't seem to be the true that is transcendental and is being said of all things in some way.

[4:11] But against this, this is kind of the reverse of the first argument objection. What is in more things, right, is before by reason. But true is in something in which there is not the good, namely in mathematics. Therefore, the true is before the what good?

[4:36] Can you explain how it's there's no good in mathematics? Well, basically, the good is the same thing as the end or purpose, right? And you see, sometimes the means are good, but the means are good because they lead to the end, right? Like medicine is good because it leads to health. Well, end or purpose is not one of the kinds of causes you talk about in mathematics.

[5:00] What's the purpose of a circle or a triangle, right? The circle is not smooth, so it can roll out of danger, and the triangle pointed, so it can protect itself. Okay. So you don't seem to have the end, and therefore you don't have the what good in mathematics? But yet you, soon have things that are very true there, right? So isn't true broader than you know applied to other things?

[5:33] I answer: It should be said that although good and true are convertible with being in what subject, right? Now, remember what convertible means. A and B are convertible if every A is a B and every B is an A, right? Okay. So he's saying that being and good and being and true are convertible, right? Okay. And therefore, convertible with each other too. Okay. But nevertheless, they differ in what definition, huh?

[6:17] And according to this, true, speaking absolutely, is before good, huh? Which appears from two things. It's going to give two arguments here, in a sense.

[6:35] First, from this fact that true is closer to what being, which is the most fundamental one, which is before all of them, than the good. Why? Because the true regards being simply and immediately. But the notion of good falls upon being, according as it is in some way perfect, right? For thus it is good or desirable. So, in a sense, you might say that we showed that God, for example, was good, right?

[7:16] What did we show before we showed that God was good? At least perfect, yeah, yeah. So, perfect seems to add something, right, to the idea of just being, right? And but just being is enough for what truth? Truth is saying what is is. So, the truth seems to be closer to being and meaning than the the good.

[7:51] Another sign that may be the same argument that Thomas is giving there, the first argument, is we often distinguish between necessary being and contingent being. It's kind of a per se division of being, and this actually enters into what are the arguments is this of God.

[8:15] But that seems to be more a division of the true than of the good, right? Necessary truth and a contingent truth, right? So two is half of four is what necessarily true, huh? Always true.

[8:34] Triangle is green, is contingent; could happen, right? But is necessarily so. So necessary and contingent seems to be more a division of true than of the good, huh?

[8:50] This why it's so important in logic to distinguish between the necessary and the contingent, and so on. But that's just not a sign of what Thomas is saying here, right? That truth seems to be closer to being, and therefore, if that comes before all the other transcendental, s then true is going to be what. Be before good. You see that argument? Okay.

[9:22] Now, if you remember, before Thomas argued that one is before true, you can't understand something unless it's one. Some way. Now, the second reason he gives, the second appears from this fact that knowledge naturally comes before what? Desire. Okay. So he distinguishes between the will and the emotions. Huh? Well, the will follows upon reason, and the emotions follows upon the reason. follow upon sensation, and that's why the animals have emotions. But they don't have will.

[10:06] Okay. Now, when we first talked about the good and the true, we tied them up with the reason and the will, right? And so, if the reason is naturally before the will, and true pertains to reason, and the good to will or desire, well, then

[10:26] true is going to be before the good. Whence, since true regards knowledge, the good desire, true will be before the good by what reason? Okay. Of course, that's going to be important for understanding the Trinity later on. Why does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Son, from the Father through the Son, or from the Father and the Son rather than the reverse, right? Okay. We have to understand that the good has to be what Known before it can be loved, right?

[11:05] Okay. So, helps us to understand the the order origin there in the Trinity. So, you all convinced by Thomas's two reasons? Okay. Now, the first objection was saying wasn't good wasn't true just a particular kind of good, right? Well, Thomas's interesting thing that he points out here. To the first, therefore, it should be said that will and understanding mutually include each other.

[11:43] For the understanding understands the will, and the will wills the understanding to understand. Thus, among those things which are ordered to the object of the will are contained those things which are the understanding and the reverse. So you can say the good some particular truths about the good, right? There's truths about the bad, other things too. Whence, in the order of desirables, good has itself as universal and true as what particular.

[12:18] In the order of understandable things, true is what Universal. universal, and the truth about the good is particular, right? From this, therefore, that true the true is a certain good. It follows that good is before in the order of what desirables, but not over that it is before what. Yeah. So that objection, in a sense, if you want to say there's a mistake in the objection, it's a mistake of what.

[12:55] Simply, and not simply, yeah. Same kind of mistake that Feuerbach made, right? Feuerbach syllogizes, man's mind is infinite. The infinite is God, therefore man's mind is God, right? But God is simply infinite, right? And our mind is only infinite in some what, some way. Okay, that's a hard distinction for people to get a hand on. Okay, you know my famous examples I use in class to bring out that kind of mistake.

[13:33] I always call upon a young lady, and I would say, you know, she's going to contradict herself. You all listen to her contradict herself. And I begin by saying, do you know my brother Mark? And the poor little girl would reply, no. I said, how come she said she doesn't know about Mark? And I said, do you know what a man is? And she says, yes. That's what my brother Mark is.

[13:55] So you do know him after all, don't you? You know who my brother is? Yes, that's where my brother Mark is. See, so she really contradicting herself. No, because simply we'd say she doesn't know my brother Mark, right? But in some way, in knowing what a man is, knowing what a brother is, she knows my brother Mark and every other man in the world in some way.

[14:19] Do you see? Okay. Or my other favorite example was, you know, suppose somebody knocks on the door there, right? And you can't see who's at the door. I said, do you know who's at the door? You say, I don't know who's at the door. Go open the door. It's your mother. You know your own mother. See.

[14:38] And well, in some way you don't know your mother. You don't know your mother as the person knocking at the door now, right? But simply speaking, you do know your mother, I hope. Okay, unless you've got Alzheimer's, right? Right. But

[14:56] that's a very common kind of what mistake, right? That's exactly Feuerbach, you know, in his perverse little book there, The Essence of Christianity, the way he reasons, right? He says the theologians tell us infinite is God, but man's mind is infinite, therefore man's mind is God. And that's a you know Karl Marx says in his preface to his doctoral thesis, right? The highest divinity is the human mind.

[15:23] And but it's a very common kind of what mistake. You know, perhaps the key thing in wisdom there is whether act or ability comes first. And in the ninth book of wisdom, where Aristotle takes up act and ability and then their order, he says that in some way ability is before act. That is to say that the thing that goes from ability to act. Is an ability before it's an act, but he says since it goes from ability to act because it's something already in act, then simply act is before ability, and therefore the beginning of all things is pure act, like we've seen here about God earlier in the thing here.

[16:19] But someone who makes a mistake of thinking that what is in some way before is simply before, then he makes the beginning of all things be matter, but is most in what ability and least in act. In a sense, that's really what's behind you know a lot of materialism, right, and a lot of you know the evolutionists and so on, right? Because in a way they're saying that this is the only way to get this variety of animals and so on and plants.

[16:50] If you begin by thinking that matter is the beginning of all things, it's going to have to be kind of this random gradualism that they try to explain the order of things by. So, what do you think? Pure act, God really is the beginning of all things, or matter's beginning of all things, right? Those who think matter's beginning of all things are making this same kind of what mistake, right?

[17:21] So Thomas is pointing out that simply true is before what good, right? But in some way good is before true. So that's a very important kind of distinction. When I teach logic, I wonder you know when should I teach that distinction, right? And you could you could teach it as one kind of distinction, right, in the beginning of logic, or you can wait until you get to the book on fallacies and point out there's one kind of mistake, you know, it's a mistake from overlooking this distinction.

[18:05] It's a mistake from confusing what is so simply with what is so in some respect. Another favorite example is you know if somebody annoys you, would it be good to murder them?

[18:21] Well, simply you'd say no, but in some way to be good, you get rid of an annoyance in your life. So nothing that isn't you know bad that isn't in some way good, right? You'd be tired on Sunday mornings, you'd just stay home and not go to church, huh?

[18:42] In some way it would be good, right? You get a little more of a sleep. So I tell them you know all day long what you're doing is doing something bad because it's good in some way, or not doing something good like studying because in some way it's bad, right? Stud is going to prevent you from going to the party or something, right? Or going to the game or something, right?

[19:05] So there's nothing so good in this world that doesn't prevent you from doing something else that's good. So in some way you can say anything good is bad, in some way bad.

[19:18] So you can always find a reason for not doing the good, and always find a reason for doing the bad. But you're making this kind of mistake all the time, huh? As I said, I mean it may sound like a strange distinction, but it's you're overlooking this distinction that is behind all your not doing what you should do and doing what you shouldn't do.

[19:44] Now the second objection. To second it should be said that in this way something. Is before in definition, that it falls before in the understanding. But the understanding grasps before being itself, and then it grasps that it what understands being,

[20:19] and third it grasps that it what desires being. Whence among these three things, the definition of the thought you might say of being is first, right? Second, the thought of true. Third, the thought of what? The good, right? Even though the good is in what? Things, yeah. Now he doesn't talk about the one here because that's something that he talked about earlier when he talked about the one.

[20:53] But actually, the one would come between being and the what? True True, true. Can't understand the many. Do you know that? Unless you make them in some way one, then you understand them insofar as they're one. Okay. I mean, can you understand man and stone together?

[21:26] They're not one thing, right? But if you make one thing out of them, make one statement out of them. Man is not a stone. You can understand them together then, right? Okay, but they're one in some way in the statement, right? Okay. Make up one statement. If you just understand what a man is, understand what a stone is, you can't understand the two at the same time.

[21:56] Okay. Now the third objection was easiest to answer. To third, it should be said that the virtue which is called truth by Aristotle in the fourth book of the Nicomachean Ethics is not the common truth that we're talking about in this article. But the truth according to which man shows himself in what he says and does as he is, in virtue that Iago doesn't have, right? Huh?

[22:31] Because Iago pretends to be Othello's friend, right? And so on. And the truth of life is said in particular, according as man in his life fulfills that to which he is ordered by the divine understanding. Okay, these are all particular meanings of truth. The truth of justice is according as man. observes. There is what he owes to another according to the order of the laws. Whence from these particular meanings of truth, one ought not to proceed to what?

[23:10] Common truth, huh? Okay. So we're up to the fifth article now, huh? Whether God is truth. To the fifth, one proceeds thus: It seems that God is not truth, for truth consists in the putting together and dividing of the understanding. That's the way we kind of see it in our own mind, right? But in God, there's no putting together and dividing.

[23:45] God is completely simple. Therefore, there's no truth there. What do they say about Voltaire who's supposed to have gone through the Summa, getting objections to? So his Catholic friends, or was

[24:08] he? Couldn't answer these things, huh? Moreover, truth, according to Augustine in the book on True Religion, is a likeness to the beginning, right, or of the beginning. But in God,

[24:26] there's no likeness to a what? Beginning, right? Therefore, in God, there's no truth. Moreover, whatever is said of God is said of Him as the first cause of all things, as the being of God is the cause of all being, and the goodness of God is the cause of every good.

[24:56] If, therefore, in God there be truth, then every truth would be from Him, huh? But someone to sin is true. Therefore, this would be from God, huh? So God's the cause of sin, right? Such is therefore clearly false. Okay.

[25:21] But against this is what the Lord says in the Gospel Saint John, the fourteenth chapter, the sixth verse: I am the what? Road, huh? The hodos? And truth and what? Life, huh?

[25:41] Now, if you look at the context of that in John there, I think it's when Philip asked, "You know, we don't know where you're going and how to get there." And Christ answers both questions by saying, "I am the way to get there. I am the road, and where you're going is to be as the truth itself and life itself, huh?"

[26:09] So this is touching upon in a certain way Christ as man and Christ as what God. So if you look at the third part of the Summa Theologiae, which is beginning from considering the incarnation and Christ as man, it said Thomas in the beginning says it's about Christ who as man is the via right He's a road

[26:42] to God. huh? So via who pertains to his human nature, veritas in vita to his what divine nature. And now our veritas in vita though are they personal or substantial in God? They pertain to yeah. So how is Christ speaking here?

[27:13] He says truth and life, or all three. Yeah, no, truth and life now. As the divinity itself. Yeah, According to itself But sometimes in your system when you go in the treatise of the Trinity, what they call appropriation, right? Sometimes something that is an attribute of the divine substance is appropriated, right, to the Father or to the Son or to the Holy Spirit, a reason of a certain likeness, right?

[27:42] Between the what's personal and that particular thing, right? So love, which is common to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, is sometimes appropriated to the Holy Spirit because he proceeds by way of what of of love, right? No, by the will. Because the second person proceeds as the Word of God, right? Then to him is sometimes appropriated what truth, and as we'll see here in this discussion here of truth here, right after Thomas gets through with this, he talks about what in question eighteen there the the life of God, right?

[28:21] Okay. So going back to philosophy, when you first distinguish the grades of life, you do so by what what the plant has, and then what the animals have, and then understanding, right? So it kind of attaches life here to the consideration of divine understanding, and therefore you go to to um uh Peter's profession of faith. now that this is the day, at least in in uh in our church, um it says Thou art the what Christ, the Son of the Living God, right?

[28:58] So kind of appropriately says. The living God, right? Could you think of life here in terms of him being the Word of God and proceeding by way of truth? So, I think he says truth and life is appropriating, right? Those attributes of the divine substance, right? The divine substance is truth itself, as we're going to find out in this article. It's not the time of the Trinity yet; the time of the divine substance at this point.

[29:32] What's common to them, and and the divine substance is is life itself, right? So he's appropriating that to himself. Sometimes, like like in the the Athanasian Creed, now they'll divide the articles of faith according to the humanity and the divinity of Christ. Christ, huh? Okay. And this kind of touches upon the distinction between the humanity of Christ and the divinity of Christ, huh? But in Peter's profession of faith, he had the same thing.

[30:18] What do men say that I am? Well, some think you're a liar you know. Some think you're this, something or that. What do you say I am? And he says, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God," right? So he's giving kind of complete profession of faith there. But as man, he's anointed, and so Christ is touching upon his human nature, and the Son of the Living God is divine nature, huh?

[30:43] It's divine person. Um. So if you say that's a complete profession of faith, a sign of which is the Christ. Now, you know, so we're going to build the church upon what you said here, right? Then you can take that as the way of dividing the articles of faith, and say, well, we're going to talk then about the humanity and the divinity of Christ, huh? In these little works of Thomas, where he's asked by Bishop so and so, you know, to give a brief exposition of the articles of faith, he'll generally divide them into the six on the side of his divinity, the six on the side of his humanity.

[31:21] Sometimes he'll divide them into seven and seven, but I think six and six is probably the best way of doing it. Um. And this is the division that Thomas gives in the in the part on faith there in the Compendium of Theology. It's divided into those two, and that's the way the Athanasian Creed divides it. I think it's in the fourth Lateran II I believe. Remember it there.

[31:44] But in the Apostles' Creed, you divided according to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? And then with the Father, you talk about those things like creation that are what appropriated to the Father, but not as if He alone is creating things, huh? And to the Son, the things that pertain to incarnation, because he alone was incarnated. and to the Holy Spirit, things like communion of saints and the Church and so on, right?

[32:13] But again, they're being appropriated to Him, right? Okay. Um. But I say in this text of our Lord, veritas and vita are being appropriated to Him.

[32:27] Do you understand a little bit? I'll come up in in the in the treatise on the Trinity and the Eucharist, go so on there, on the on whether we should appropriate or not, and Scripture does it, and then how you you'll show how Augustine and and Hilary and so on, right, appropriate these things. It's kind of very subtle the way he does it too, huh? Um. You know why is why is power appropriated to the Father, right?

[32:58] Both by reason of likeness, because power is the beginning, is is the beginning of the Trinity in a sense. But also by way of opposition, right? That the father is usually what weak as he declines in years, and to contrast the father with that, he's not weak; he's powerful, right? And and to the son is attributed wisdom, partly because he precedes as the word, but because the young are what foolish, foolish, yeah.

[33:25] In English literature, t here is a phrase, you know, to play the young man, which means to play the fool. And so, by way of opposition, wisdom is attributed to the son as well as you know, he's not young and foolish. Yeah, just that Ronald Reagan said when he was running for president, somebody commented on his age, and he's you know over seventy years old, as opposed to his opponent.

[33:53] Yeah. And he said, when a president, he said something about that. He says, "Well, I am not going to take an unright take advantage of the illegitimate advantage of the youthfulness of my opponent." Yeah, the youth and the experience, he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of destroyed his opposition there, trying to make a point about his age. Yeah, because even the other guy laughed at that. Okay.

[34:28] I answer: It should be said that as has been said, truth is found in the understanding, according as it grasps the thing as it is, right?

[34:42] And it's also said to be in the thing, according as it has being conformable, right, to the understanding. But this is most of all found in God, for His being not only is conformed to His what understanding,

[35:10] but also it is His very what active understanding, in order to be more conform. And His understanding is the measure and the cause of every other being, and of every other what understanding.

[35:29] And he is his very what being and understanding, huh? Whence it follows that not only is there truth in him, but that he himself is the highest and the what first truth, huh? Now the Summa Contra Gentiles; those are separate chapters, son. That he's truth itself, huh? Then t here is another chapter. He's the pure. Truth, huh? And then that he's the Summa Prima Pars huh? It's much more developed, huh?

[36:09] Than in the Summa Theologiae. but for you beginners, this is enough, huh? But notice, huh? In God, because He's altogether simple, there's no distinction between the what? Abstract and the concrete, okay? So when you say God is good, and good means has goodness, right? Um, you don't mean there's a real distinction between God and His what? Goodness, huh? A distinction between the have and the had. So in God, whatever God has, He is.

[36:49] Okay. So if you say God has knowledge, He is knowledge itself. Or if you say God has goodness, He is goodness itself, right? And that's not true about you and me, right? I have some geometry in me, but am I geometry? I have some logic in me. I am logic.

[37:18] That's why so was kind of puzzling, you know, with Bernadette there, right? Because, you know, she saw the beautiful lady and so on, and she didn't tell who who she was, and the priest told her to go back and ask her who she is. And she said, "I am the Immaculate Conception." So why didn't she use that way of speaking? You know, she couldn't have said that.

[37:40] The priest is saying, you know, who told you that? That's what the lady said. The the De Koninck had that little thing, and I'm sure has seen it. I don't have a copy of it myself, but things he wrote in the Blessed Virgin there, you know, from the things that attributed to Blessed Virgin there in the sapiential books, huh? Ego sapientia, I think it's called right. I have wisdom, you know.

[38:08] And why is that abstract word said of Mary as well as of God? It's not for exactly the same reason. But I think it's related to to to Monsignor Dionne's article there in the Summa Theologiae there, where he's it's entitled "The Grace of Mary is of the Hypostatic Order." Okay. And this, you know, she's the mediatrix of all grace, right? And who one of the Church Fathers there?

[38:38] Which one was it? No, just um, uh, you know, calling Mary the neck, right? You know, there's only one head, Christ. There's only one neck, Mary, right? So if all grace, in a sense, comes through Mary, right? Then she's like what? Grace itself, right? You see. So it may be something related to that, but it's a special way of speaking, right? But very striking, huh? That Mary should confirm this in the way she did.

[39:09] Because this is what—just a few years after. Yeah, yeah. Who was it? Was it? I think it was. Was I reading this? I'm trying to remember that one of the church fathers back there had had petitioned the Pope to declare the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. So this has taken some time, you know, for it to gradually develop.

[39:39] Okay. Now the first objection was saying, "Well, truth is found in what the putting together and dividing of the mind." To the first, therefore, it should be said that although in the divine understanding there is what neither composition nor division, right? Nevertheless, by his simple understanding, he judges of. All things, and he knows all these complex things, right? And thus, in his understanding, there is what truth. So he knows the composite things in a what simple way, as opposed to us who know simple things in a what composite way, right?

[40:25] Okay, not the way to go, is it? But that's the way we go, and the simpler something is, the more sometimes we have to have more negations, right? So you say a body has length, width, and depth, and then we say a surface has length and width but no depth. A line has length but neither width nor depth, and then the point has neither length nor width nor depth.

[40:54] So we're knowing the simple by the composed, just the reverse of what God. So God knows the statements without having to what put together and divide in his understanding. He knows composed things in a simple way, material things in an immaterial way. So,

[41:24] so as you said before, the the way you know doesn't have to be the way things are. But in the way you know, you have to know the way things are.

[41:42] Okay. Now the second one is taken from this text of Augustine there about truth being the likeness to the beginning. To this second, it should be said that the true in our understanding is according as it is conformed to its what beginning, right? Namely, to things from which it takes its what knowledge, huh?

[42:16] But the truth of things, right, is as they are conformed to their beginning, which is the what divine understanding. But this that Augustine had said, properly speaking, cannot be said in the divine truth, except perhaps according as truth is appropriated to the Son, right? Okay, that's kind of confirmation of what I was saying that in that thing up there, truth is appropriated, right? Okay.

[42:50] Who has a beginning, right? Okay. But if about truth said essentially, right? Not as appropriation to the Son. It cannot be understood, what Augustine says, unless you resolve the affirmative into the what, negative, huh?

[43:16] Okay, this is very important to see. As when it is said the Father is what, from himself, huh? Well, is that to be understood affirmatively?

[43:31] No, it should be understood because he is not from another. Okay. Now, sometimes people would say about substance and accident. Accident is a thing that exists in another; it's in a subject, right? Then they say substance exists in itself. Well, should you understand that affirmatively?

[43:56] Can something affirmatively be in it be in itself? No. So, if you say that substance exists in itself, you mean substance exists not in another. So that way of speaking can be misunder misunderstood, right?

[44:17] Sometimes you see this phrase here, you know, they'll say about God. You see, sometimes they call God causa sui, cause of himself, right? Must that be understood affirmatively?

[44:39] Because a cause is before its effect, right? So, if God was a cause of himself, he'd be before himself. But nothing is before or after itself, right? So this has to be understood what, negatively? You know, Jean Paul Sartre, the French atheist existentialist, right? At the end of his Being and Nothingness, one of his major works, there, you know, he's saying, you know, man is a useless what, passion.

[45:10] Kind of destroying his own philosophy, because man is trying to be God, right? What is God? He says God is causa sui, but that's a contradiction. So, if man is trying to be the cause of himself, he's trying to be something that's impossible. Therefore, man is a useless passion. But that's not to mean to understand this if you say to God, right? To be careful to avoid that.

[45:36] That way of speaking, you also to understand it properly. Okay. Take another example here from philosophy. There's another kind of axiom where we say that the through itself is before the through another, and the beginning or cause of it, huh? That's a very important thing. I'll just put on the board for this a second here.

[46:11] The through itself is before the through another, itself. and is a beginning or cause of it. Okay. Now, take a simple example of that.

[46:42] Let's say sugar is sweet through being sugar, right? Then sugar is sweet through itself, right? And the coffee is not sweet through being coffee, so if the coffee is sweet, it's sweet through another, right? Now, you know the four senses of before, right? Okay, we all know that.

[47:04] So, in the second sense of before, the sugar is sweet is before the coffee being sweet. Second sense of before is what can be without another being, but not vice versa. So the sugar can be sweet without the coffee being sweet, but the coffee can't be sweet without the sugar being sweet. So the through itself is is before the through another in being, right? And why is the coffee sweet if it is?

[47:34] Well, because this is the greater cause, right? This is a very important thing, huh? And you can use that in talking about God, huh? But without going into such a profound thing, in logic, right? When you're talking about statements in logic, and you say, "Well, some statements are known through another." So any statement that is known by some kind of reasoning, right? As a conclusion, it's a conclusion that you come to know through other statements called the premises.

[48:09] So we ask in logic: Are all statements known through other statements? No. So there must be before the statements that are known through other statements some statement that is known what? To itself, huh? And in Latin, you know, you see that in Thomas and Boethius, per se nota, right? Okay. Known through itself, right? Okay. And you have the famous distinction of Boethius between the per se nota omnibus and the per se notum sapientibus, right?

[48:55] Okay. In fact the whole is more than the part. It's known to itself by all, but let's say that spirits are not in place to the wise, right? Okay, and these are really the common beginnings of all reasoned out knowledge, and these are the beginnings prior to some science.

[49:20] Okay, now what does that mean? Per se nota. How do you understand it through itself, right? Does it mean that a statement that is known through itself proves itself? Can you prove a statement by itself?

[49:45] So how do you understand that through itself? Yeah, it's known, but not through what? Another yeah. The same thing with with definition, right? Ah. Sometimes part of a definition is the need of being defined, right? Now something that is known by definition is known to something else, right? Well, does that go on forever, right? Then there must be something that you know what it is, but not to something else.

[50:26] Might be. And again, should that be understood affirmatively, right? It makes known itself. If you don't know the meaning of a word, you can look it up in the dictionary, right? And then you learn the meaning of one word through other words, right? Well, are all words learned in that way?

[50:58] No. So there must be some words that are known. What? Yeah. what does that mean? Not to other words. Yeah, yeah. They're known, but not to other words, right? The first words are known through the senses, right? By associating a sound with something that you can sense.

[51:25] That's why you speak in the senses of a word, right? They go back to the senses ultimately, even though there are senses of the word that aren't sensible. You have to go there. there, right? So Thomas is pointing out an example of this. All kinds of examples of this, though, right?

[51:47] So if truth is said essentially, it cannot be understood, what Augustine says, unless it's resolving the affirmative into the negative. And he gives an example of something like that, like the Father is what from Himself, right? So you say the the Son is from the Father, and the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son. The Holy, but the Father is from Himself. What does that mean?

[52:16] Yeah. And similarly, one can say the divine truth is a likeness of the beginning, in so far as his being is not what dissimilar to his understanding.