Prima Pars
70. Summa Theologiae I, Q.16 aa.7–8: Is Created Truth Eternal? Is Truth Unchangeable? (with Aristotle's convertible terms: being, one, true, good)
Class of 2007-03-01
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/070-summa-theologiae-i-q-16-aa-7-8-is-created-truth-eternal-is/

[0:01] In the 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, ordains illuminating images, and arouses us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. In the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. You thanked God recently for your guardian angel. Have you thanked God recently for your guardian angel?

[0:31] Well, it's a good thing to do here. I ran across this verse here. I thought it would fit me very well. It's verse twenty there in chapter forty of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus So I got the official text out here to make sure that I had the whole thing down. Oinas, and that is wine. Wine. Oinas, kai musika Musika is music. Yeah. So wine and music. Euphrainousin they gladden, rejoice, the kardian the heart.

[1:19] Kai and hyper above amphoterón both of these, agapesis, sophias Yeah. So I enjoy wine, right? And I enjoy musica. Ah. and they rejoice my heart, but above both of these, the love of what? Wisdom. I got thinking about the Greek word there, agapesis. Now you've probably seen that book of C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, where he discusses you know the four Greek, four different words in Greek, right?

[2:03] Four different kinds of love, and the Greek word that's used for charity, right? Caritas is agape, right? Okay. This is like that. It's agapesis. It's got the same first part of the word, huh? And that's actually the word Aristotle uses at the beginning of the fourteen books of wisdom, where he speaks about the agapesis of the senses, right? Of men, you know, love the senses not just in order to do things, but just in order to see things, and especially the sense of sight, because that most of all reveals things.

[2:42] And so you had that same word agapesis huh So, but it names, you know, more. Well, actually, I looked up in the big Greek dictionary agapesis. they had the idea of choice too, huh? And if you ever do the treatise on love there. There's one kind of love that's called amor, which is more the sense love, although it can be used in other ways too. And then you had dilectio, which is more the love of the will, but it comes from the Latin word for what choice.

[3:16] And so I sometimes translate the word dilectio there, not just by love, but a chosen love, right? And this agapesis has something of that sort, right? It's it's a chosen love. It's it's a love of the will. It's not a what emotion, right? I told you about this little Polish French professor of philosophy. says, Mister Berquist do you have any emotional attachment to the syllogism So I was trying to give him the syllogism, and I said, Well, I said I would have an emotional attachment to a girl, but I would have to do the syllogism. I love it.

[3:48] I love its rigor, you know. It's conclusion following necessarily, but I don't have quite that emotional feeling for it. It's called a Polish joke, right? Yeah, yeah.

[4:03] You'd argue this case first of all. Then you run to the board and start doing some symbolic logic on the board. I think that ended the conversation there. Okay, so we're up to Article Seven here, in Question Sixteen, whether created truth is what eternal, right?

[4:24] And because the other one obviously is eternal, right? God's truth. For Augustine says in the book on free will, we call it freedom, free will, but the Latin says liberum what arbitrium, free judgment. that should be the root of our freedom. That our judgment is not what altogether what determined, right? And so I can see something in some way good, even in the bad, right? And therefore my will can be inclined even to to bad things.

[5:05] So people aren't exactly sure, but they're kind of afraid to translate it. Actually, the Latin says libero. This is in the ablative, I guess. Libero arbitrio, The liberum arbitrium, they'll call it. They usually translate free will, but it it doesn't have the word will in there, but judgment. Huh?

[5:28] Why the cat or the dog is kind of determined their judgments. Huh? Used to notice how the cats, you know, despite the fact that they were they knew me pretty well, being on their side, right? You give them a little aggressive, you know, behavior, you know, and they really get kind of, you know, they can't they can't help a judge, you know, even though they have enough experience of you as a as a friendly sort of person who feeds them every day or something like that.

[5:59] Okay, so Augustine says in the book on free judgment, free will, that nothing is more eternal than the ratio, the thought of the definition of the circle, and that two and three are what five.

[6:19] But the truth of these things is a created truth. Therefore, created truth is eternal. Moreover, everything that is always so is eternal. But universals are everywhere and always. Therefore, they are eternal. Therefore, also true, which is maxime, most universal. It's one of the most universal things. We saw before, like being and one and so on.

[7:03] So when did man? I have a beginning in time, somewhere back in thirty six or thirty five. I guess you count the time in the womb, and I could have an end right in time, you know. But when does man begin? When does man cease to be? Well, what man is seems to be always. So it's eternal, right?

[7:26] Moreover, that which is true in the present was always true to be in the future. But the truth of a statement about the present is a created truth. Therefore, the truth of a statement about the future, therefore, some created truth is what eternal.

[7:51] Moreover, everything that lacks a beginning and an end is eternal. But the truth of enunciable sounds things that are able to be stated. Lacks a beginning and end, because if truth began when before it was not, it would be true that truth was not right. And therefore, by some truth, it would be true, and thus truth would be before it began to be, huh? So truth couldn't have a beginning in time, could it?

[8:24] Because then it wouldn't be true that there was no truth before that. Or if it is true that there was no truth before it, then there would be truth before truth was. And likewise, if one lays down that truth has an end, it would follow that after it, it would be after it had ceased to be, right? For it would be true the truth no longer is.

[8:47] Therefore, truth is what eternal. Reminding a little bit of of what I mentioned before, I think we studied it, didn't we? In the first reading, there from the second book of wisdom, Aristotle takes up how man is towards truth, and his beginning statement is kind of marvelous, right? He says the knowledge of truth is in one way difficult, in another way what easy.

[9:20] And I still always, you know, say to students, if you went down and knocked on each professor's door down the hall and asked that professor, "Is the knowledge of truth easy or difficult?" They'd always say it's difficult. if not impossible. It's kind of sketchy, too. But if he knocked at the last door and it said Aristotle on the door, right, and you asked him, "Is the knowledge of truth difficult or easy?"

[9:43] He would say, "Well, in one way it's difficult, in another way what easy. " Okay, then it goes on to explain both of those, right? But I also point out that if you had a modern philosopher talking about this, he'd probably begin with the question of whether man can know truth, huh? But do you see a little difficulty in trying to seriously investigate that question?

[10:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the kind of main idea that he says, isn't it? Because on the one hand, I mean, there are things, there are truths that we obviously know, like four is double two, or the whole is more than the part, and nothing is before after itself, and so on. But apart from that, if man was not able to know the truth, he could never know the truth of that statement, huh?

[10:42] And so, in kind of in an investigation, you're trying to find out, right? You kind of assume that you can know the truth, huh? So

[10:54] now, against all this is that God alone is what eternal. Okay. Now Thomas says, "I answer. It should be said that the truth of things that are enunciable or stateable

[11:13] is not anything other than the truth of the understanding we're talking about. For the stateable, the statements, you could say, too, is in the understanding and in the what vocal sounds that signify what's inside the understanding.

[11:35] And according as it is in vocal sound, it is called the what the stateable truth, right? Ah, no, no, excuse me. According as it is in vocal sound, the thing stateable is true. According as it signifies some truth of the what understanding, right?

[12:00] Not an account of some truth existing in the statement as in the subject. Just as urine is called healthy, not from health which is in it, but from the health of the animal that it what signifies, huh? That's why I saw it kind of amazing when you read Aristotle's book, the second book in logic, the Peri Hermeneias, which is about the statement, huh? But actually, when he says what the book is about, it's about the statement in in vocal sound.

[12:34] And of course, everybody knows that the statement in vocal sound is not the thing of primary interest; it's the statement in the reason, huh? But he he has to have a what a sensible tool for man, huh? Okay.

[12:50] Was it here? I was raising, or somebody was raising recently. Can you pray without words? What would you say? Yeah, yeah. But when the apostles ask our Lord, teaches how to pray, he teaches them giving him the words of the what, our Father, right? So I would not deny it. You could, in some sense, pray without words, right? But it's hard to teach somebody to pray without words.

[13:31] And with yourself, you know, am I daydreaming or am I really, you know, or something like that? With with thinking, right? Can you think without words?

[13:48] I'm not saying you can, but can the logician direct your thinking without using words? And it's a little bit like you know the the reason we give one of the reasons we give for the sacraments that grace is given through a sensible sign, right? And one reason given is that this is a harmony with with man, right? That's hard for man to use a a sign or a tool that is not in some way what sensible, right?

[14:17] And the same way when you want to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, we need some kind of a sensible things like these these figures, right? And we speak sometimes of how Arabic numerals are better for calculating maybe than the Roman what he's writing things were right. It'd be kind of hard. I guess the Romans probably had ways we don't know too well to do these things, but they couldn't be as as as easy maybe as Roman ones, right?

[14:43] And so we need those sort of things. So he's making a distinction here, though. But it's like you know we order our thinking by ordering our thoughts, and we order. There are thoughts by ordering the words that signify those thoughts in some way. So what's in the vocal sound is for the sake of ordering something in the mind, but we can't get that very directly. Aristotle's books are actually about that, and it makes it crystal clear when he defines statement there in the beginning of Peri Hermeneias.

[15:26] So he's making comparison here to to the urine there, which is doesn't have any health in it, but it's a sign of the health, right?

[15:37] Likewise, it has been said above that things are denominated true from the truth of the understanding. Whence, if no understanding were eternal, no truth would be what eternal. But because only the divine understanding is eternal,

[16:00] in it alone does truth have what eternity, right? Nor an account of this does it follow that something other is eternal than God, because the very truth of the divine understanding is God Himself, as we've shown before.

[16:26] Now, in reply to that thing, there's an objection drawn from Augustine, to the first, therefore it should be said that the definition of circle and that two and three are five has eternity in the divine mind. can't be turned in my mind because my mind was not always, huh? Just as Mr. Berquist was not always, huh?

[16:52] The second one is, if you look back there for a second, the second that's the one drawn from what the universal, right? Okay, the universals are ubique, everywhere and always, right? To the second, it should be said that for something to be always and everywhere can be understood in what two different ways.

[17:16] In one way, that it has in itself, whence it stretches itself out to every time and every place, just as it belongs to God to be where everywhere, right, and always. In another way, because it does not have in itself that by which is determined or limited to some place or to some what time.

[17:45] Just as first matter is said to be one, not because it has one form. As a man is one for the unity of his one form, but by the removal or the absence, right, of all forms distinguishing it, and in this way each universal is said to be what everywhere and always, in so far as universals abstract from the here and the now, right? Okay.

[18:20] But from this it does not follow them to be eternal, except in understanding if this understanding is eternal, which of course is only the divine understanding.

[18:38] Okay. To the third, this is the one about a statement always being true. To the third, it should be said that that which is now,

[18:50] from this was future before it came to be, because it was in its cause, right, that it might be. Whence, taking away its cause, it would not be future for it to come about. But the only only the first cause is what eternal. Incidentally, Thomas has a famous work on the eternity of the world, right, where he objects, where he considers the arguments for and against, and argues that although some of them have maybe some probability, none of them are demonstrative; they show necessarily that the universe always was or always was not always, right?

[19:31] And so he says we know it only by what faith, right, like the heaven beginning of Genesis, in the beginning God made heaven and earth, and

[19:42] we think Aristotle, you know, thought the universe was eternal, right? But his reasons are not necessary reasons. It's sort of interesting that in the book on dialectical reasoning, probable reasoning as opposed to demonstration, Aristotle gives an example of whether the universe is eternal or not. Something we'd love to know, as if Aristotle recognized that he didn't have a what a demonstration, right? Huh? Okay.

[20:13] But you know, Thomas is not sure what Aristotle is doing. Sometimes he may have taken as being probable that the universe was eternal, right? But he might also have been doing something like we know Euclid did. When you go through the theorems of Euclid in geometry, sometimes a geometrical theorem requires a number of cases they call that to be distinguished, and the great commentators like Proclus and so on.

[20:48] will, distinguish these cases, but what Euclid has done is take the most difficult case and show it, and leave the easier cases for us nincompoops to come afterwards, right? And so, when Aristotle is going to demonstrate that God exists, he does so assuming a more difficult case in which to show it, namely the case in which to say the universe always was. See, if the universe was not always, then it's clear something had to bring it into existence.

[21:24] If the universe always existed, it had to have a cause too, but it's not so clear. And Aristotle brought that out, though, right? So, like Euclid, he's taking the more what difficult case, huh? So that that's another way of looking at what Aristotle is doing there. Although they also, you know, in addition, had thought it was more probable too. But I mean, it doesn't seem so far-fetched to think when you see that this is what Euclid does all the time.

[21:49] And I mean, Heath he would talk about that, right? You know, it's contrary to the custom of Euclid to give all the cases; he just takes the most difficult one, and these for us nitwits or dimwits, to supply the other cases. Whence it does not follow that those things which are were always true that they would be in the future, except in so far as, in the eternal cause, it was that they would be what future, which cause God alone is.

[22:31] Okay, now the fourth one here about truth always was, right? To the fourth, it should be said because our understanding is not eternal. Neither is the truth of those statements which are formed by us, are put together by us, eternal, right?

[22:54] So the statement that the whole is more than a part wasn't always made, huh? Because God doesn't know it by putting together whole and part, and before there was a mind to put them together, it wasn't put together. So that truth of that statement didn't exist.

[23:17] But at some time, he says it what began, right? And before, huh, this sort of truth was. It was not true to say that such truth was not, except by the divine understanding itself, in which alone truth is what eternal. But now it is true to say the truth. Then what? Yeah.

[23:51] Which is not true except what? By the truth which is now in our understanding, not to the truth which is on the side of the what thing?

[24:03] Because this is a truth about non-being. Going back to this whole thing about non-being, non-being, however, does not have from itself that it be true, but only from the understanding what grasping it.

[24:20] My sentence in English is easy to see the idea that nothing is not something except by the mind that takes it as something. But something and being are almost the same thing, and nothing and non-being are the same thing.

[24:35] Whence, in so far as it is true to say, whence that extent, it is true to say that truth was not, in so far as we grasped the non-being of it as preceding its what being, right? But we still got to be there to grasp it, and we're not always there to grasp it.

[25:00] So. No, so you can you can reason, huh? Like Socrates does sometimes. You can say. And Socrates gave one of the arguments for the immortality of the soul, he argues that

[25:26] uses the place that if what is less apt to survive death survives death, then what is more apt to survive death will survive death, right? Then he says, now in my body, huh? Or through my body, I'm in contact with this chair, which I can see and feel, right? And this chair that I can see or feel is obviously corruptible, destructible. But through my soul and through my reason, I'm in contact with what a chair is.

[26:09] Now, can you destroy what a chair is? So the soul through its reason is in contact with what is indestructible. The body through the senses is only in contact with what is destructible. Now that by itself doesn't show yet that the soul is indestructible, right? But it does show that the soul is closer to the indestructible than the what the body, right? So the soul is more apt to be indestructible than the body.

[26:49] Well, then he points to the fact that in a way the body does survive death, at least the bones, right? And he mentions down in Egypt, you know the flesh is, to some extent preserved, but at least the bones, you know, like in Hamlet, there when they're digging the grave, you know, they run across you know Alas poor Yorick, that was the guy who made all these jokes to the table, and so if the body then which is less apt to survive does in some way survive death, well then even more so the what soul, right?

[27:22] Okay. But then you can come back upon the same beginning and say something else though. You could say this chair is destructible, right? But the soul knows this chair in knowing what a chair is, and what a chair is, as we said, is indestructible. So what is destructible has become indestructible in so far as it's in reason or known by reason. Now, does what is destructible become indestructible in the soul because of the thing you're knowing?

[28:01] No, that's destructible. So it's a sign that the soul is something indestructible that even. Destructible things become indestructible in a way in the soul, right? Because what is received in something is received in it according to the what character of the receiver, right? Okay. Um, if I put there's a certain shape now the water's taken on here, right? But if clay took on the shape, it would hold it longer than the water, right?

[28:35] So the shape of the cup, however, is received differently in clay and water, and since the same shape being received in both, the difference must be due to the difference in clay and water that the one holds the shape somewhat and the other one easily loses it. So it's interesting that destructible things become indestructible as they are known by our reason, right? That's a sign of the nature of reason as something indestructible.

[29:11] Socrates doesn't develop that argument. actually. I think people are coming back upon that now see that as an argument. But a lot of times people misunderstand what Augustine is saying, right? Like in that first argument there,

[29:36] because Augustine is thinking there about the fact that there's something in a way indestructible about what a circle is, or what a sphere is, although this material sphere is indestructible. But even what a chair is, it's indestructible about that.

[29:55] Okay, up to Article Eight here now, where the truth is what unchangeable. To the eighth. One proceeds thus: it seems that truth is unchangeable. For Augustine says in the book on free judgment, free will,

[30:21] that truth is not what equal to the mind, because it would be changeable, even as the mind is. You change your mind, haven't you?

[30:37] We didn't change your mind. We changed. Wait just a minute! You be careful about that. My mind is changed, right? Moreover, that which remains after all change is what unchangeable. But just as the first matter is ungenerated and incorruptible, because it remains after all generation corruption, but truth remains after all change, because after all change it is true to say that it is or it is what not.

[31:18] Therefore, truth is unchangeable. Moreover, if the truth of a statement changed, it would most of all change with the change of the thing. But in this way, it does not change. For truth, according to Anselm, Anselm is a rightness or correctness, in so far as something fulfills that which was decreed, you might say, about it in the divine mind.

[31:58] But this statement, Socrates sits or what? Will sit. It takes it from the divine mind or received from the divine mind that might signify Socrates to sit, which it signifies even with him what not sitting. Therefore, the truth of the statement in no way is what changed. It's kind of changing what you mean. We're talking about the truth of the statement.

[32:28] Moreover, where there is the same cause, also the same effect. But the same thing is the cause of the truth of these three statements. Socrates, what? Yeah, he sat. Will sit. Okay.

[32:46] Yeah. Therefore, there is the same truth of these things. But it's necessary that one of these be true, right? Therefore, the truth of these statements remains unchangeably, and for the same reason that of any other statement. And sometimes looked up when they asked, you know, is the faith of the prophets in the Old Testament the same as our faith? Because they believe that Christ will be, and we believe that Christ has come, right?

[33:18] So, question is, you know, are we believing the same thing? I mean, perhaps make some some distinction there, right? But in sense, we're both believing the same thing, right? That they believe that Christ is going to be what become man, right? We believe that Christ has become man. We're really believing the same event, right? But we'll see how Thomas how Thomas handles that. But against all this is what is said in Psalm eleven, we saw this quoted before, that truths are diminished, right, by the sons of men.

[33:59] I answer: It should be said that as been said above, truth is properly in the understanding alone. But things, however, are said to be true by the truth which is in somewhat understanding. So the word is not being used in exactly one sense, is it? But the primary meaning is in the mind. Whence the changeableness of truth ought to be considered in regard to the what understanding?

[34:33] Whose truth consists in this, that it has conformity or agreement to the things what understood. Which conformity is able to be varied in two ways, just as any other likeness from the change of one of the what? Extremes. Yeah. Whence, in one way, truth is varied from the side of the understanding. From this, that about the same thing, from this

[35:18] about the thing in the same way having itself, someone takes another what opinion, right? Another way, if the opinion remains the same, the thing is what changed. And in both ways, there comes a change from true to what false, huh?

[35:42] If therefore there is some understanding in which there is not able to be any alternation of opinion, right? Or whose what grasping you might say, right? Some thing

[36:00] is not able to escape, right? In that thing, there would be unchangeable what truth. I wonder who he's talking about. It's not about us. But such he says is the divine understanding, as is clear from what's gone before. Whence the truth of the divine understanding is unchangeable, because he saw that truth as God Himself was unchangeable, right? But the truth of our understanding is what changeable.

[36:36] Not that it itself, he says, is the subject of change, right? But in so far as our understanding changes from what truth to falsity, for in this way forms are said to be what changeable. Kind of a strange way of speaking, huh? Like we're doing the natural philosophy.

[37:01] But the truth of the divine understanding is, according as natural things are said to be true, which is altogether what. Yeah, they always conform to divine mind. Now the text from Augustine there in the first objection. Augustine was speaking about what the divine truth.

[37:32] And the second one was saying that what what remains after all change is unchangeable, right? To the second, it should be said that being and truth are what convertible. Now, what does convertible mean?

[37:51] What? Don't down with you? What? Pingum one to another, No. Every A is B, Every B is A. Yeah. Yeah. So it means convertible has one meaning when you set up the automobile, right? Another meaning when when we speak of of the the sinner converting, right? Okay. Uh in in morals and so on, But another meaning in what Logic, right? And in logic, we usually explain it by saying A and B are convertible if every A is a B and every B is a what A.

[38:34] huh? And so, um, when Aristotle's talking, for example in the book about places about things which are said of something, right? And he distinguishes two kinds of things that are said of something, but not convertibly. And two that are said of something, but convertibly. And the ones that are said of something not convertibly, one is he called the accident, right? And the other, the genus, right? Using genus in kind of a broad sense to include difference.

[39:11] But the difference is that the accident is saying something outside the nature of the thing. The genus is saying, or the difference is saying, something inside the nature, but more universal than that, right? So if I say, how about triangle and green, right? Are they convertible? Say there might be some triangle that is green, but is every, you know, thing green a triangle? Say, some men are white.

[39:42] Everything white is a man. Some men are white. Okay. So it's obviously not convertible. That's something accidental, right? But if you take something like a genus, you say every man is an animal. That's true. But can you turn it around and say every animal is a what? No, no. Okay. See, he distinguishes those two, but neither one of them is convertible. And then, what's convertible? He says. Either brings out the nature of the thing, what it is.

[40:15] We call that a definition, or if it doesn't bring out the nature, we'll just call it a what? Idion, a property, right? Okay. So if you take the definition of square, equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral, every square is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral, and every equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral is a square, right? So as I say, you know, if someone tries to give a definition and maybe has part of what the thing is, but what he says is not convertible, it's not yet a definition, right?

[40:54] So my simple example, you've heard me give sure many times. If Socrates asks me, "What is a man?" or "What is a dog?" I said, "Well, a dog is a four-footed animal." Socrates would probably say, "Well, every dog is a four-footed animal, but is every four-footed animal a dog?" So it's not yet a definition until it's convertible. That's where Aristotle teaches us there in the second book, the Posterior Analytics, he's talking about a definition, right?

[41:22] But if I say, for example, that every two is half of four, and every thing half of four is two, well, that's really convertible, but half of four doesn't really tell you the nature of two; it tells you what it is towards four. And or if I said four is double two,

[41:49] well, you don't really know what four is through knowing what two is, but this is convertible with four, right? So he calls that a property, right? And so you have the four predicates on them. There's a book for each one of these in the books on places, for reasoning, right? That this belongs to that, or doesn't belong to it, or it belongs to it essentially, not essentially, belongs to convertible or not, right?

[42:15] And if it's convertible, does it belong to nature or not, right? And he goes through and shows these these ways to do that. So that's what what it means to say convertible, right? Now, it was Aristotle who first saw that the there's a number of most universal words or thoughts,

[42:38] but thoughts that are in fact what, or words that are in fact convertible, and basically these thoughts were being right, thing or something, one right. If you take one in the sense of including not only undivided but distinct from other things, right?

[43:08] And then what's more hard to see, true and what, and good, right? Okay. And it takes some time to see that they are really convertible, right? Because people say, "Why aren't some aren't there some bad things, right? " You know. So is everything good? But when you study the nature of bad more fully, you realize that nature is a kind of what? I mean, bad rather is a kind of what?

[43:39] None being, right? And so that that's not a problem, is it? Of good being convertible with being, right? And that helps you when you finally you know realize that God is I am who am, right? Because then

[44:01] everything, insofar as it is, is in some way like God and therefore good, right? But the bad is really unlike God because it's a kind of non being. And Augustine, you know, the famous words of Augustine, he kind of you know exaggerates this. He says, "Sin is nothing, " and the man who sins becomes nothing. you know? But strictly speaking, sin or the bad is not nothing.

[44:31] It's the non being of something you're able to have, right? It's a non-being of something and a subject that is able to have this and should have it, or wouldn't have it, right? So it's not a pure what negation, right? We've talked about this before, right? You know the difference. If you go back to the categories, right? Aristotle goes through the ten categories, and he talks about the various kinds of opposition, right?

[45:00] And he distinguishes between the opposition of what contradiction, and then the opposition of having and lacking, and then the opposition of contraries, and and the opposition of relatives. But in the opposition of contraries, you you both of them are to something what real, right? But in the case of of having and lacking, the lacking is really a kind of non being. But it's not just non being, period.

[45:29] But it's non being in a subject capable of having something. It's a non-being of something you're able to have and should have. And so in bring out this, we say, you know, if you have contradictories in the strict sense, you understand them. Everything is either one or the other. Either you see or you don't see, right? I see this. Here it doesn't see, right? This bookmark, right?

[45:54] But if you take the the lack, which would be blind, right? Is everything either see or it's blind? No, because you've got to be something capable of seeing by nature, right? And something that should be able to see, right? And so it's only man and the other animals that are what capable of sight and should have sight, right? It's only man and animals that are said to be blind when they don't have what they're able to have and should have.

[46:28] But my bookmark, it's not able to have sight, nor can you say it's lacking something it should have. It's got a very nice material, it's made a very very good bookmark. You know, I got this in Italy here, genuine calf leather made in Italy. You know, excellent, right? It's lacking nothing that a bookmark should be lacking. And even fits my, you know, gold and red, you know, and it just fits the book and everything, just perfect, you know.

[46:54] But it's not the sort of thing that is, but it's not blind, right? So in the case of contradictories, either the affirmative or the negative is true, right? Now you go from from

[47:10] having and lack to contraries, you see. And one contrary will be lacking something in comparison to the other, but it's not simply the lack of the other. So in ethics, there you study virtue and vice. Vice is not just the lack of virtue. The man who has the vice has got a real but habitual inclination to something unreasonable. And so you can say that the vice lacks the order of reason.

[47:41] It lacks the moderation of reason, but it's not simply the lack of that. So the newborn baby is neither chaste nor lustful, right? But your age and my age were either one or the other, right? But

[48:01] but the newborn baby simply lacks the virtue and lacks the what? The vice, right? Okay. And we talked about that in the mind. It was easy to see too. That ignorance, if by ignorance you means something you don't know the lack of knowledge, right? Well, ignorance is again a lack because, as I say, my my bookmark here is not ignorant of theology. It doesn't know any theology.

[48:31] See. Well, it's not ignorance, strictly speaking, because it's not able by nature to know theology. Nor is it somebody that should know theology, right? Just to mark the place where I was.

[48:53] But a mistake or an error is really the contrary of knowing. The man who's mistaken or error is is ignorant, but he actually thinks something, right? Okay. Is that man good or bad over there? see? Well, Augustine says I don't know er. Or, I say I don't know. So.

[49:21] But if I say I don't know, I'm not what? I don't know whether it's good or bad. I'm not mistaken about it being good or bad either, am I right? But if I say something, I'm very likely to be what? Mistaken, right?

[49:38] So, now the Manichaeans thought that there was what? Two beginnings of the world, one good and one bad, right? And then these were fighting it out, so to speak. I don't know how we decide who's going to win, but It's a game tonight, you know? The two begins of yeah. But i if bad was something, what fundamentally a being rather than non-being, you'd have no problem, there, right?

[50:21] Okay. so, we're in, second objection, I guess. Yeah. To second, it should be said that true and being are what convertible. Just like you might say that what being and knowable are what convertible, right?

[50:42] Does that mean that non-being is what not knowable? Well, how can I know that my plate is empty? How can I know that I'm what ignorant, right? How can I know that my student's ignorant? How can I know that, right? Because that's a what a non-being, right? See. But as he's pointed out here before, the mind gives a kind of being a reason, you might say, to what non-being.

[51:16] That non-being, just like nothing, is something in the mind. And you know, we always go back to the to the thing we learned in natural philosophy. What kind of common opinion of the early Greeks was you can't get something from nothing, right? And King Lear talks about this. I'm not going to get you nothing. He says to Desdemona, not Desdemona, but who? Cordelia. Oh yeah, yeah. You hear that story, by the way, incidentally, the earlier versions of it.

[51:57] Now the name is not as nice as Cordelia. Shakespeare proves just the sound of the name, beautiful sound. Um. So he's saying nothing leads to nothing to nothing, right? Okay. And and even uh uh. Julie Andrews sings about this, right? Nothing comes of nothing. Nothing ever could. She's singing a lot of songs.

[52:19] So if someone asks us, we kind of know what these words mean, don't we, right? So does does the word nothing mean something? Yes. No, when you hear the word nothing, you say nothing will get you nothing, or you can't get something from nothing. Do you understand something by the word nothing, or do you understand nothing by the word nothing? See. Well, most people get see how a sophist gets you tied up in that, right?

[52:47] But Aristotle in the in the fifth book of Wisdom, there he distinguishes the meanings of being, right? The two main distinctions of the meaning of being are being as is found in the world around us, and he distinguishes it into being an act and being an ability, right? And being according to the figures of predication. Substance, quantity, quality, and so on, right? But then he gives being according to the truth of a statement, right?

[53:16] And that brings in these beings of what reason, right? And he talks also about accidental being, right? Like Christian geometers and you know white grandfathers and so on, right? So such a thing as a white grandfather or not? Do you think?

[53:39] Is there such a thing as a white grandfather? What kind of grandfather do you need to be to be a white grandfather? Or a white geometer?

[53:56] Or a white Christian? Yeah, yeah. I mean, does by being white, by being a grandfather, aren't those really two different things in me? And do they come together and make something one?

[54:23] So the fact that to be white and to be a grandfather happen to the same man that we see there exist white grandfathers, but in a way it's really in a way it's nothing.

[54:35] And in Aristotle points out, there's a way you became white. I suppose it's in my genes, almost. The way I became a grandfather, right? Quite the labor of my children as well as I. But there's no way in which you become a white grandfather. And since so is not always a white grandfather, there's no way to become one. And it seems hard to exist, right? But Aristotle, you know, has a completely universal understanding of being, right?

[55:05] And in some way, you can say white grandfathers exist, right? Or another example, you know, affirmative action, right? If if the Christian Academy wants to hire a a Christian geometer, they can go and get one, right? If you want to hire a black magician, maybe you want, to some extent, black magicians exist, right? To some extent, there are white white geometer or Christian geometers around, right? But it's hardly being, right?

[55:34] Though Thomas says, do not ignore being because our perfection depends upon it, right? You know, being a number of these things, right? Being a geometer and being a Christian, you know, being a cook and so on is all part of your your perfection, right? But your accidental being, now God doesn't need that sort of things. So the second it should be said, that true and being are convertible.

[56:00] Whence, just as being is not generated, nor is it corrupted as such, right? But by accident, by happening, insofar as this or that being is corrupted or what generated, as is said in the first book of the physics, huh? We know just famous argument there with with his name,

[56:28] Parmenides said that being can't come to be or cease to be, right? Okay. And you can't get being from what none being because you can't get something out of nothing, and you can't get being from being because then it would be before it came to be. Okay, so Aristotle says, well, the change is not from being to being, but from what this kind of being to that kind of being, right?

[57:06] You know, if a dog became a cat, that'd be quite a change, right? Okay. But someone came along and said, well, an animal, a dog is an animal, and a cat is an animal. So in the beginning here, you had an animal, and you have an animal. So then there's been no change, right?

[57:33] Or because animal would be before you had animal, right? It doesn't make any sense. But Aristotle says, well, it's not really the change is not between animal and animal, but between dog and cat, and these things are what happening to that, right? Okay. But this is you know all the way back to the first book of the of natural hearing, so called physics.

[58:02] So he says it should be said then that true and being are convertible, whence just as being is not generated nor corrupted per se, right? But per accidens, insofar as this or that kind of being is corrupted or what generated, right? As is said in the first book of the physics. So truth is changed, not that no truth remains, but because it does not remain that truth which was what before.

[58:35] So it's true that I am sitting, but then maybe a little while from now it'll be what false, as Aristotle's example in the Categories. Moreover let's look at the third objection again. Moreover, if the truth of a statement changes, it would most of all change with the change of the thing, but it does not thus change. For truth, according to Anselm, is a rightness. In so far as something fulfills that which there was about it in the divine mind, but this statement Socrates sits takes from the divine mind that it signifies Socrates sits,

[59:22] which it would signify even when he's not sitting. Therefore, the truth of the statement is in no way changed. To third, should be said that the proposition or statement not only has truth as what other things are said to have truth, right? In so far as it fulfills that about which it was ordered by the divine mind to have, right? But it's said to have truth in a certain special way, in so far as it signifies the truth of the what understanding, which consists in the conformity of the understanding and the thing, right?

[1:00:10] That's why we said before people think you know that Plato is right in thinking that the way we know must be the way things are, as if that requires that kind of conformity. That's a very subtle thing that they're into.

[1:00:25] Which, being taken away or subtracted, there is change the truth of the opinion, and consequently the truth of the statement. If therefore this statement, Socrates sits, him sitting is true,

[1:00:44] and by the truth of the thing in so far as it is certain what signifying voice, and by the truth of the signifying in so far as it signifies a true opinion, Socrates what rising, there remains the first truth, right? It's still kind of the same statement, right? Still signifying what it does signify, but it's not signifying something true in the mind, right? It's changed in the second way.

[1:01:12] Okay, that's kind of a strange argument there. So you say Socrates is sitting, and he's sitting, it's true, right? When he gets up, Socrates is sitting, still the same statement, hasn't changed, but no longer signifies what something true in my mind, right? Okay, so I've got to reject it now, right?

[1:01:47] But notice, there are some statements that are always true, like two is half of four. Some statements that are always false, like two is half of five. And some statements, like Socrates is sitting, they're sometimes true and sometimes what false, huh?

[1:02:11] Fourth objection. Look back at the objection again. Where there is the same cause, also the same effect. But they're the same thing as the cause and the truth of these three statements. Socrates was sitting, is sitting, will be sitting, right?

[1:02:28] To the fourth, it should be said that the sitting of Socrates, which is the cause of the truth of the statement Socrates is what sitting, does not have itself in the same way when Socrates sits and after he what? Yeah, and before he sat down, right? Whence the truth caused by this has itself in diverse ways, and diversity is signified in the propositions about the present, the past, and the what future.

[1:02:59] Whence it does not follow that although one of the three statements is true, right, that the same truth remains what unvarying. right I would think about that again when we get down to say whether the, you know, whether Isaiah had the same what belief that we have. Or, or Abraham's, you know, saw by Danny Joyce, right? That goes through God's knowledge, I suppose. Now the next question is going to be on the falsehood.

[1:03:31] It'll break around. Between truth and falsehood is good to pause between the two, isn't it? But this is an example there being the same knowledge of what? Yeah. And this is a famous statement. Goes back to Plato, especially, and Aristotle. And the one place it comes up in Plato that I mentioned before, I think, is in the dialogue called the what? Symposium, right? Which means. Oinas and I'm looking together together.

[1:04:01] But at the end of the symposium, everybody's kind of you know, under the table or at least in the chair, and the guy is hearing the last bit of conversation, you know, and Socrates and the Agathon, the tragic poet who has won the prize and for whom the symposium is an honor of, and Aristophanes, a great comedy poet, are conversing with Socrates. Right, last bit there before they they pass out.

[1:04:26] But Socrates gets up and walks out and has a bath, you know, spends his usual day, right? And but Socrates is arguing that if you guys knew what you were doing, you could write both tragedy and comedy, right? That you Agathon could write comedy as well as tragedy, and and you Aristophanes could write tragedy as well as comedy, right? And apparently they didn't do that though, right?

[1:04:50] See. But at least the poet, and the one whom Aristotle calls the poet, Homer, he wrote the Iliad, right? And then he wrote the Margites. And we've lost the Margites. There would be a few fragments of it in Plato and Aristotle. But Aristotle says in the book on the Poetic Art that the Margites is a comedy, but the Iliad is to tragedy, right? And so Homer did both, right?

[1:05:18] And the same thing could be said of Shakespeare, right? That he wrote both great tragedies and comedies. And I was mentioning my brother Richard, you know, seeing some Shakespearean comedies, same to me. I didn't realize Shakespeare was so funny, right? But the point is, in high school, you probably read, you know, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth and you read any of the plays. So you kind of think of Shakespeare in terms of his tragedies, and I realize he's also very good at writing comedies.

[1:05:44] You don't read that many plays, you know. And but some of maybe like like Moliere, you know, writes only comedies, right? So. It's more by nature than by knowledge that they're doing this. And because nature is determined to one opposite, by knowledge is open to both.

[1:06:13] And so in ethics, it's the same knowledge in which we learn about virtue and vice. And in logic, you learn about I'm reading the like an Albert again on the physical refutations, right? So you learn how to reason well and how to reason what badly, right? And in grammar, you learn how to speak correctly and incorrectly, right? And in medicine, you learn how to make a man sick as well as healthy.

[1:06:42] And it's not that your intention should be for both, but the knowledge gives you both, right? So that's kind of a famous thing. So it's appropriate you talk about falsity after you talk about what truth, yeah. Then, as I mentioned, he's going to talk about the life of God afterwards, huh? But in the Summa Contra Gentiles, it talks about the life of God after he's talked about the will as well, right?

[1:07:10] But here you can you can talk about it after you talk about the the mind, right? And that's the way you have to kind of understand the appropriation there in the words of Christ that I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? He puts those two together, the truth and the life, right? And because he proceeds, right, he has the Word of God, right? And God is alive because he understands.

[1:07:35] That's what he proceeds he's alive. but that's a kind of life, so life is considered. It's a point, right? Again, still talking about truth and falsity, huh? Okay, so it's we can take a little break.