Prima Pars
99. Inward Procession, the Word, and Why the Word's Procession Is Called Generation (ST I q.27 a.1–2)
Class of 2007-10-18
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/099-inward-procession-the-word-and-why-the-words-procession-is/

[0:00] Now, Thomas says, if, however, someone diligently considers, right? Now here we—that's why we pray before, right? About our guardian angel, right? Stands in the light of our mind order the images, And rouse us to consider more correctly, right? Think about it again, now, you know, if one diligently, lovingly considers this thing more deeply, both take proceeding according as it is to something what outside. That's the mistake.

[0:37] Whence neither lays down a going forward in God Himself, huh? Okay. But now Thomas makes distinction. But since every going forward is according to some what action, some doing,

[1:00] just as according to the action which goes or tends to some exterior matter, there is some proceeding to the outside, right? So according to the action which remains in the what one doing it, there is to be noted a going forward ad intra, the inside. Okay. And then back to something as close as you can get to senses to to imagine it, right? And there you begin to see a little bit of a going forward that is ad intra, right?

[1:35] The image goes forward from my imagination, but the image remains in my imagination, unlike the chair or the fried egg, whatever it is, that goes forward from my activity and it's something outside of me that is perfected, huh?

[1:56] And Thomas now he jumps, you know, from imagination. He can go through that. He sometimes does, right? But he says, and this most of all is clear in the understanding. It's more clear in the understanding than is in the heart, although it's there too, right? But the going forward in the reason is more known to us than the going forward in the heart.

[2:21] And this most of all is clear in the understanding, whose activity, to wit, to understand, remains in the one what understanding. Incidentally, Thomas takes the word intelligere. He understands it as being intus legere, to read within. So my eyes read the words on the outside, and my reason reads within the meanings inside those words.

[2:54] What did Shakespeare say? What said a word? One guy's thesis saying. Sometimes there's a lot of a word. For whoever understands, from this very fact that he understands, there goes forward something within him, which is the what conception, the concept of the thing understood, right? Notice the word conceptual because we say that we say concept, that shows a connection between calling the second person of the Trinity sometimes a word and sometimes what call him the Son, right?

[3:43] But the word or the thought is sometimes called a concept, okay? From the understanding, the understandable power going forward and or coming and proceeding from its what knowledge, right? Which thought or concept the exterior voice or voice word signifies, right? And it's called in Latin the what the word of the heart, and signified by the what word of the voice, yeah, yeah. Now

[4:29] again in Greek, if you look in Greek, the word logos first means something like word, right? And then later on it means thought, and then maybe later on it means what reason, right? But the first meaning of it is something sensible, the word that is spoken, right? And even later on the word that is written, but originally the spoken word, right? And then it signifies a thought which is not sensible,

[5:06] but is signified by what is sensible, right? So it's not purely by chance that it's called the thought logos in Greek, right? And then reason that has thoughts is called logos in Greek, right? Sometimes

[5:26] in English the word is not moved as much, of course, part of this comes from the fact that we learned our philosophy from the Greeks and the Romans, and sometimes we borrowed the Greek or Roman word and then we lost what sight of it.

[5:50] And therefore, there's a real difficulty for the modern thinkers that they don't go back and know the Greek and the Latin, then they. Begin using a word in its later meanings without the earlier meanings, and then they're out of order. Simple as that.

[6:13] I admire the way the great Shakespeare there. He moves the word "nature," right? Now you see, in Latin or the Greek word "phusis," the first meaning of nature or "phusis" is birth, right? Now it's not surprising we should have a name for birth. That's a very striking thing when the baby comes out. But then the word for birth was carried over to the source of the baby within the mother, and then it was generalized in a third meaning for the any source within not just of birth but of any change, and then to matter and form, which breaks down to that, and then finally it was carried over to what the thing is.

[7:01] Now Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence Lawrence there, he seems to be using the word "birth" to mean what the thing is. Something goes something like, "For not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give. Not so good, but strained from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse." Beautiful way he says it, right? But what does he mean?

[7:27] Revolts from true birth, revolts from its true nature, stumbling on abuse. Huh? Which is the way he says. But Shakespeare has moved the word "birth," like the Greek or the Latin words "phusis" or "natura," all the way, right?

[7:47] Now sometimes you know we use the word "nature" in English because the word "birth" does not move that way, right? And we can still see some connection between nature and birth, with prenatal, postnatal, nativity, native, and so on.

[8:17] So Thomas assimilates the going forward that is in God, right, to the going forward in our reason, huh? When we think about something, we what?

[8:33] Form a thought of that thing, right? And as I said, though, but even more known than that is that when you imagine a gold mountain, we form an image of a gold mountain. And Thomas explains how sometimes the the Arab philosophers would call the first act of reason, which Thomas usually calls simple grasp or understanding. Imaginatio per intellectum, imagining, you know. But notice the idea that the word "image" has got the idea of a likeness of something, and a thought is a likeness of the thing thought about.

[9:14] So you have that very, very similarity the two there. Now he's pointing out distinction, isn't he, between two going forwards, a going forward which is to the outside ad extra, and a going forward that remains inside, right? And he's saying the going forward that is in God is a going forward where what goes forward remains inside, right? He said, "Well, what is that? Well, we got something like that, right?

[9:59] Although most unequal to it, but something like it in a way when we imagine, right, an image goes forward, right, imagination, or when we think about something and a thought goes forward, then. Okay.

[10:15] Now he says the next paragraph. Since, however, God is above all things, those things which I said to be in God should not be understood according to the way of the lowest creatures. Remember St. Thomas' critique of David Dinant, huh? He said that God was the first matter. He says he most stupidly taught. He wasn't just being, you know,

[10:46] using bad language about somebody, but he couldn't take anything further away. If he'd say he has a stone, he'd be closer to the truth. Because stone is more perfection than the first matter.

[10:58] So he says, since God is above all things, those things which are said in God should not be understood according to the way of the lowest creatures, which are bodies, but according to the likeness of the highest creatures, which are the what? Yeah. I see that comes out very much in Augustine's work on the Trinity, because he spends a long time talking about the image of the Trinity in us, right, trying to help us ascend, right, to what is in God from something that is more like Him but still falling short of Him.

[11:37] And Thomas goes on, from which likeness taken will still fall short from the representation of divine things. And we've talked a little bit about that text in the Fourth Lateran Council, is it 1215?

[11:57] Paul the Sixth first called to my attention one time, but. But you can never what know the likeness of the creature to God without a greater what unlikeness, and so in some of the psalms say, who is like God, right? There is always an infinite distance there. I told you some of you about my experience there from the Shakespeare's definition of reason and and the definition of reason and the exhortation of his reason, and we said that reason is godlike, right?

[12:29] And I had a guy from Saudi Arabia. He objected to reason being called godlike, and so I talked to him afterwards, and I said, as I explained in the text there in the Lateran Council, that never can you know the likeness of the creature to God without at the same time a greater what unlikeness. I don't know if that appeased him a little bit or not. There is got to be some likeness because every agent makes something like itself in some way.

[13:02] Every cause is such. Well, not therefore not to take proceeding or going forward according as it is in bodily things, right? Or through a local motion. That's the first meaning of going forward. I went forward from my bedroom this morning, right? Went forward from my house. Went forward from my car, right? I go forward from this room, okay?

[13:33] So, not to understand it in the manner of local motion, change of place, or by the action of some cause in an exterior effect, right? As heat from the heater in the heating, right? But according to a what

[13:55] emanation, yeah, flowing out as of a understandable word from the one what saying it, which remains in him, right? And in this way, the Catholic faith lays down that there is a going forward in God, okay? Not not a local motion, but a going forward that or that remains within God, right? And doesn't go to anything exterior. Want to take a little break here? Yeah. Let's look at our objections here now.

[14:34] The first objection said that going forward signifies emotion to the outside, but in divine things there's nothing what is motion and nothing what extraneous, right? So he says to the first, therefore it should be said that that objection proceeds about the going forward, which is a local motion. you know so Thomas in every article, by the way, uses the word processio right? The first one precedes us.

[15:06] Yeah. Yeah. Especially Mancini, you know, talking about the ways of going forward. So he says that objection proceeds about the going forward, which is a local motion. Well, imagining or understanding is not a local motion, is it?

[15:24] Or which, or that going forward, which is an action tending to some exterior matter or an exterior effect. He says both of them because God doesn't need an exterior matter. That's an effect of him too, the exterior matter. But such a going forward is not in God, right? Okay.

[15:45] So they say, you know, as they say, we approach it from something which is more like what is in God, right? But very different, as we'll see, from God. But the two examples are what the going forward of the image when you imagine something, and the going forward of the thought when you think about something, right?

[16:06] Okay. And the second objection: everything going forward is diverse from that from which it what goes forward, right? To the second, it should be said that that which goes forward, according to the going forward which is to the outside, is necessarily diverse from that from which it proceeds; it's other in substance, right? It's not the same thing. But that which goes forward to the inside by a understandable going forward is not necessary that be diverse.

[16:47] Nay, rather, the more perfect it is, the more it is one with that from which it what proceeds. Huh? Now I was looking a little bit at Thomas's text there in the compendium there. It's kind of beautiful the way he does it, huh? And he says,

[17:13] if I think about the dog I've seen the cat I've seen, and I get the thought about what a cat is, Well, we call this a concept, right? Now, in this, the cat outside there, he's really the father of my thought, Can somebody act upon my senses, right? Okay. And my mind, he says, is more like a mother. Okay. Just as the man acts male acts upon the female, right?

[17:51] And the female conceives, right? So the exterior object that the cat acts upon my senses and through them, eventually upon my reason. And so it's more like the father, and my thought is my mind is like the mother, right? But if the mind thinks about itself,

[18:16] then in a way, it's the father of its own thought, right? That's why, like Shakespeare's definition of reason, right? Because reason, from reason, is preceding a thought of what reason is. And therefore, the reason is not as much like the mother here, but like the what father, and more like what you have in what God, okay.

[18:43] And of course, the son is like the what father, right? So the definition, like the image, right? You can see it with the word image. Image is the Latin word for what

[18:57] likeness, huh? Okay. And so the thought is like an image; it's a likeness of it. So the the better reason understands itself, the more its thought is like what reason is. Okay.

[19:17] But as Thomas will point out later on, the being of my reason and the being of my thought is not the same. I had reason before I had the thought about what reason is. Thinking about reason wasn't; that was something older. But in the case of God, as we know from the treatise on the operation of God, to be and to understand the same thing, God.

[19:46] Okay. And that's why the word of God will be God. Why my thought of what reason is is not reason, although it's a likeness of reason. But the the image of God, right, which is the second person of us the Trinity, is God, huh? Because the understanding of God of what is in the understanding of God is God, huh? Because the understanding of God, as we know from the previous treatise, you see the order of learning here, we learned in the previous treatise that the understanding of God is the being of God, and therefore the thought of God is God.

[20:26] Why the thought? My thought, even my quick definition, Shakespeare's definition of reason. The definition of reason is not reason, although it's very much like reason.

[20:38] My reason has, as Thomas would say, natural being and then this intelligible being. My definition has right, but in God, the natural being of God, the understanding about it, the same. Therefore, the thought of God is God. It's pretty amazing thing.

[20:59] Sometimes it makes me nervous. Some people think I am holy because I have to think about God. I think about that. I can't think. I can't think anything better to think about. Anything more interesting to think about, right? You know.

[21:15] So let's go back to the first and second objection. Let's look at the beginning of it. That which goes forward by the going forward, which is to the outside, is necessary to be diverse, right? To be other in substance, you would say, from that from which it proceeds, right? But that which goes forward to the inside by a what understandable going forward is not necessary to be diverse.

[21:46] Nay, the more perfectly it goes forward, the more it is one with that from which it goes forward. For it's manifest that the better we what understand something, right? The more the concept, the intellectual concept, is more what inward to the one understanding, huh? And more one with it. For the understanding, according as it understands an act, in this way becomes one with the thing understood. So Aristotle had pointed out already in the third book about the soul.

[22:25] When, since the divine understanding is what in the in the perfection, right, It, is necessary that the divine word be perfectly one with that from which it goes forward, right? Without any what diversity, right? Thomas would not say without, but not without some distinction, right? But diversity seems to imply what a distinction of substance, right? And that's what he's denying, right?

[23:00] Now the third objection that to proceed from another seems to be repugnant to the notion of the first beginning, right? To the third, it ought to be said that to proceed from a beginning as something extraneous to that thing or outside of it, right? And diverse or other in substance, right, is repugnant to the what. Notion of a first beginning, but to go forward as intimate or inward, huh, and without diversity, to an understandable way, is included in the notion of the first beginning.

[23:46] Then, what Thomas is turning the tail of there, right, huh? So, don't be like atheists, you know, when he talks about the objection to God's existence from the evil in the world, right? He says they don't know how to reason. He says they should reason that if there's evil in the world, then God is, because he said there wouldn't be evil in the world without what an order of the good, which the evil is opposed to, and the order of good is from God.

[24:13] So they should argue if there's evil in the world, there must be order of good, and therefore there must be the God. They're all mixed up. So Thomas, the sense is saying here that to proceed. From another, in this way he's been talking about, right? To proceed from another, inwardly, right, and without any diversity of substance, right, is not only not opposed to being the first beginning of things, but it's involved in it, yeah.

[24:44] Now, why is that? See, well, we learn when we talk about God's operation. God, in a sense, is like an artist with respect to creatures, right? And that's what he goes on to say. here. For when we say that the house builder is the beginning of the house, in the notion of this beginning is included the conception of his art. You've got to have a thought about what he's making.

[25:13] He has no thought about what he's making. He's not a house builder. And it would be included, he says, in the notion of the first beginning if the house builder was the first beginning, right? But God, who is the first beginning of things, is compared to created things as an artist to what artificial things. Now the same thing could be said about the Holy Spirit. It doesn't begin at this point yet, right?

[25:44] But as Aristotle first pointed out, but Thomas follows Aristotle in this regard, Reason doesn't what make anything without what the will, right? And the reason for that is what Plato and Aristotle saw that there's the same knowledge of opposites. So my knowledge, say, of grammar enables me to say I am your professor and you are my students, but it also enables me to say I is your professor and you am my students.

[26:29] I can speak correctly or incorrectly, right? And it's not by chance that I speak incorrectly. Once you have the art of grammar, a little child might do this by by by chance, but it's by the same knowledge, right? And by the medical art, I could heal you or make you sick, right? Save your life or end your life, right? And some people, you know, misuse the medical art.

[26:56] So medical art doesn't determine whether you should what that you will save the man's life or end it, right. The art is capable of either. So you need the will to determine. I shall make this rather than that. Do this rather than that. It doesn't, you know, go into that and think it's not necessary, right? He's kind of you know approaching it to what. The proceeding that takes place in God's understanding Himself, right?

[27:28] And then later on we get into this other proceeding, which is more less known to us, huh? But first we have to, in the second article here, get into it's being called generation, huh? Now, how long do you want to go, Father? Four, three, two, one. Okay, so we'll start on the second article. I don't know if we get to it, but okay. You got some vague idea now of what kind of going forward there is in God, okay?

[28:03] And how to approach it, right? And I guess that's very much, very much at length in the De Trinitate, right? He's got to go to the image of the Trinity in us, right? Okay. So in in my own teaching here, going back to Shakespeare, there, right? When your reason formed a definition of reason, right? You had some likeness to the Father and the Son. There'd be many differences.

[28:32] We'll find out. Some likeness. And if you were delighted in knowing, you know, you love, you know, what does Augustine say? Intellectum valde ama, love the understanding very much, right? You realize what the understanding really is and what it makes you capable of, that you really love this thing, right? Now you get a little image of the Trinity, right? Augustine goes, oh Lord, you know, trying to you know develop this image.

[28:59] But for our purposes right now, it's sufficient to to just think about the fact that when you imagine something, there is a proceeding, right? That's to the inside, not to the outside, right? Okay. And when we understand something and form a thought of it, there is a going forward that is to the inside and not to the outside, right? And then that the image or the thought is a likeness of that of which you're imagining, I think.

[29:31] And you start to see a little bit of what's going on in God, huh? But you know, the Mohammedans they think that we are, yeah, that we're back there with the pre-pre Moses.

[29:59] The second one proceeds thus: It seems that the procession which is in God cannot be called what generation, right? For generation is a change from not being to being, and supposed corruption, and the subject of both is matter. Well, none of this belongs to God, right? None of this is found in God. There's no change from not-being to being, huh? And I am who am.

[30:38] And there's nothing. There's no matter there, right? But also Thomas begins the objection with what is first called generation by us, right? Our first experience of generation, right? And we have to.

[31:00] Transcend the imagination, as Boethius would say, right. Moreover, in God, there is a what going forward according to a intelligible way, right? But in us, such a going forward is not called generation. Therefore, neither in God.

[31:26] No, it's the solution of that will require us to go back and realize that the understanding of God is the being of God, right? When the understanding of you or me is not you or me, right? Okay.

[31:46] I wouldn't be very wouldn't have been very long in the beginning. I didn't understand anything at all. So we're always coming to understand something more for studious, right? So our being is not our understanding, but in God, we have the same thing, right?

[32:13] Moreover, everything generated, right, gets its being from the one what generating, right? But the being of anything generated is a being that is what received.

[32:33] But no being is received is subsisting to itself. Since, therefore, the divine being is being subsisting to itself, and this is back in the substance of God, I am who I am, right? It follows that the being of no one generated is the divine being. Therefore, there is no generation of divine things. The objector had

[33:03] got to me first, you know. I would have lost faith, right? Close the book. Yeah. But against all this is what is said in Psalm two, verse seven. I today have generated you, right? Beautiful text.

[33:29] Now, answer. It should be said that the going forward of the word or the thought in divine things is called generation, right? Thomas is just asserting that, right? Now he says to the evidence of this, right? It should be known that the name of generation is used in two ways.

[33:57] In one way, generally, to all things that are generable and corruptible, and thus generation is nothing other than a change from non-being to being.

[34:14] In another way, properly, in particular, in living things, right, and thus generation signifies the origin of something living from a beginning, a living beginning that is conjoined to it. And this properly is called what nativity, right?

[34:45] But not everything of this sort is said to be generated, but properly what proceeds by way of what likeness, huh? Whence your what hairs, right? Are not your sons, right? What's pilus? What's the word there? Skin. Skin. Okay. Okay. They do not have the notion of one generated or son, but only what proceeds by way of what likeness, huh? Not of any sort whatsoever, because worms, which are generated in animals, do not have the what?

[35:27] What was the word pilus? There was it. Generation and sonship. What's the aspect? No word. Pilus. Was it flesh? I can't figure out that word. What word is for a worm which is generated from animals? Well, the first thing is he's saying that, yeah,

[35:46] he's eliminating the proceeding of hair from me, right? Or pilus flesh? Okay. Skin doesn't sorry to be the guy. Yeah. Okay. I'm thinking. Oh. Yeah. Hair is

[36:02] used the example of Thomas here. So hair does not have the notion of something generated in a son because there's no real likeness to me, right? But only what proceeds according to the notion of likeness, and not of any kind of likeness, for the what worms the generated animals do not have the notion of generation from that or of what sonhood, right? Although they have a likeness in genus, right?

[36:29] But there is required for the notion of such generation that it proceeds by reason of likeness in the nature of the same what species, in particular, just as man proceeds from man and horse from what horse, right? Now, I know Thomas is going to

[36:55] make it too explicit here, but. Nossi has been distinguishing two senses here, and one is more general, and one is more particular, right? And which one is going to use in admitting this in God? That's going to be the more particular one, right? Okay. But this kind of fits into a more general thing, where

[37:21] going back to logic here for a moment, you distinguish between the genus and the difference in a definition. Going back to what even Porphyry would teach us, that the genus is to the difference as matter is to what Form. form. Yeah. So just as wood say is able to be formed into a chair or maybe a table or a door or something else, right? So the genus can become this or that species, right?

[37:58] By this or that what difference, right? So the difference is said to be to the genus, like form is to matter, right? Now you may recall too when we talked about the natural philosophy there, the difficulty of understanding what ability, right? And the inability, say of Anaxagoras, to understand it, then. And so Anaxagoras falsely imagined that everything that the wood, let's say, could be made into chair, table, and door, were already in the wood.

[38:44] Why the wood was only able to be a chair, a table, and a door, and there was not actually a chair, a table, or a door in the wood.

[38:55] And we mentioned before how John Locke he's having difficulty understanding triangle in general, right? And since a triangle is a three-sided figure, either three sides equal or just two of them and none of them. And then he says, well, it's all none of these. And then Berkeley says, well, if it's all none of these, there can't be any general ideas. So aren't there general ideas? So neither of these British empiricists, famous ones, can understand

[39:40] the genus triangle, right? So if you say the genus triangle means a plane figure contained by three straight sides, are those three sides equal or not? What would you say?

[39:57] Well, it's neither an act, but it's both an ability. Okay. And the difference of equilateral or isosceles or scalene determines, right? So the difference is a little bit to the genus, like form is to matter, right? Is wood a chair, a table, or a door? We say it's actually none of these, but it's able to be all these, right? So in a sense, Locke was right in saying it's all none of them, but he didn't see a distinction.

[40:32] It's all of them in ability, none of them in act. Okay. Now, because of this beautiful proportion, when we come to understand that God is pure act,

[40:51] and That comes very early in the treatise when you get into the simplicity of God, right? Especially in the Summa Theologiae, it comes up in the first article, I think, in simplicity of God. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, it comes up in the consideration of the unchangeableness of God. But there's a whole chapter where he kind of shows that. So it's more explicit in the Summa Contra Gentiles, which I think is very good.

[41:24] But if God is pure act, can God be in a genus? And not if genus is the differences as matters to form, and therefore something an ability rather than an act, right? And so it's if you read through this, the sentences of Thomas, the commentary in the sentences, you'll often be pointing this out, that when a name is carried over from creatures to God, and the name is applied to creatures as a genus and a difference and so on, you drop the genus, which comes from matter and what is potential, and you keep the difference, which refers to form and what is an act, form and something God-like is, the philosopher says, huh?

[42:10] And so you know, say like a definition is speech making known what a thing is. There's no speech in God, or no making known of anything. But he just has what's actual there, knowing what things are. Okay. And Father Boulay used to turn this into us, you know, and I thought the fall. So it's significant that Thomas here is taking,

[42:44] approaching this through the more particular meaning of generation, as said in living things. He's going to keep there what is a perfection of this and drop what is an imperfection there. Aristotle talks about science, example. Take a better example, make it more clear. He says, well, science is an effect of demonstration. What's demonstration? Well, it's a syllogism making us know the cause? He says, and that of which it is a cause, and it can't be otherwise.

[43:18] Does God have a syllogism that makes him know? No. So you drop the genus there, syllogism making us know, right? And just keep the difference there, knowing what, knowing the cause, and that which is a cause can't be otherwise. Yeah, he knows that. He doesn't need a syllogism to make him know it. So you drop the genus, right? So it's a very general notion of generation as a change from non-being to being.

[43:48] That's not God. He is I am who am, right? Okay. But this idea of generation. Of something proceeding from something, in likeness to it, and and specific likeness, right? That's found very much in God, right? Okay.

[44:12] As man proceeds from man and horse from horse. In living things, however, which proceed from ability, the passive sense to act to the act of life,

[44:27] as are men and animals, generation includes both generations, right? The change from none being to being, and that was generated. There was a change in me from if you could see me, I wasn't there. There was a change, though, from non being of Jane breakfast breakfast to the being of Jane breakfast, right? Okay. And I proceeded from my mother and father, not as a dog or cat from them, but as a human being, the same specific kind of thing, right?

[45:02] Okay. But that's because we proceed from potency to act, right? But there's none of that in God, right? He's pure act. If, however, there is something living whose life does not go from ability to act,

[45:19] the going forward, if there is one found in such a living thing, excludes altogether the first notion, generation, which is the more the generic notion, right?

[45:31] But it can have the notion of generation, which is private, appropriated, to living things, right? You'll keep the idea of one thing going forward from another in likeness of the same kind, exactly, right? But without this what going being changed from non-being to being.

[46:00] Thus, therefore, he says the going forward of the word or the thought in God has the notion of a what generation. It goes forward by way of a what understandable action, which is an operation of life, and from a beginning that is joint. and according to the notion of likeness, because the conception of the understanding is a likeness of the thing understood, right? Now later on, when you get to the names of the second person of the Trinity, there'll be three names: Son, Word, and Imago.

[46:42] Likeness, but but same word we use when we talk about the imagination, right? And by reason of likeness, because the conception, of the understanding is a likeness of the thing understood, and in the same nature existing, why? Because in God, unlike us, the same is to understand and to be. That's so. Yeah, my my condition for me to be is to understand. Because if that were the same, you know, then I would have what understood everything that I understand now.

[47:26] Then I came to be right, but in God they are the same, right? Whence the going forward of the Word in divine things is called generation, and the Word itself proceeding is called what? Son, right?

[47:47] So, what proceeds in God is the thought of God. Proceeds also by way of nature, right? And therefore, he has these two fundamental names: Son and Word, huh? Incidentally, it's interesting how, in the translation of the Gospel of Saint John, right? We translated that word "logos" by its first what meaning in Greek? Word, huh? You know, even though the Word of God is not word in the first sense, Word in the first sense of thought, right?

[48:37] But it's interesting, huh? A little bit of divine providence there, huh? That we kept the original meaning of the Greek word, and therefore you're forced, right, to move the word, right, from word to thought, from the sense of a word. So when you say, you know, in the beginning was the word, and the word was towards God, and the word was God, huh? You know, you could have translated in the beginning was a thought, and of course in the Greek, which is better than the Latin, because we don't have the article, right?

[49:15] But this is by antonomasia. This is the thought. Why is it the thought, huh? Well, for many reasons, but among many reasons, it's the only thought that is a what substance, huh? Right? Okay. The thought that the creatures have is an accident, right, huh? Okay. And and what's the thought of? And how it's being a perfect thought of that, right? Okay. But it's interesting we didn't translate that way.

[49:47] In the beginning was a thought, and the thought was towards God, right? So you're you're forced to to move the word, what? Yeah, an image. Even though in daily speech, you know, if you look up in a dictionary, you probably won't find word, well, the meaning of word being thought. But if you looked up the Greek word in the Greek dictionary "logos," you'd find, you know, thought and reason and so on, as well as the meaning of word.

[50:13] And that's good for us, you know, to be forced to do that, right? Most people can't go back and move the word. Monsignor Dionne said you can't move the word. He's stuck with the first one, huh?

[50:30] Time to look a little with objections here? Now the first objection is taking the generic meaning, right? The genus, right? Generation is a change from non-being to being, right? And its subject is matter. To the first, therefore, it should be said that that objection proceeds about generation in its first. What first we make distinguished, in so far as it implies a going forth from ability to act, right?

[51:05] And thus it is not found in divine things, because as we learned in the treatise on understanding of God, God always actually understands Himself, right? So always actually has a thought of Himself. So this thought never went from non being to being. But my parents did not always what conceive me, right? And I went from ability to act, went from none being to being. Wow. But the word of God never did, because He always understood Himself, so He always had what this thought of Himself.

[51:44] You see that? It's beautiful. And thus it is not found in divine things. That's the more generic notion. The second objection is: Well, if in God there is a procession according to an understandable way, but in us such a procession is not generation, therefore it shouldn't be in God, right? It's only kind of metaphorical if I say my thoughts are my son. I can kind of play this thing, you know.

[52:13] My thoughts are my son, right? Maybe play this on metaphorically. But the difference is that what my being, for me to be and be to understand, is not the same thing. But in God to be and to understand the same thing. So what proceeds by way of understanding is also I am who am. To the second, it should be said that to understand in us is not the very substance of our what understanding or reason, whence the word that goes forward by an understandable operation in us is not of the same nature with that from which it proceeds, whence not properly and completely belongs to it the notion of generation.

[53:03] There's some likeness, though, because we do call the thought a concept, right? I conceived of this, we say, right? But if you want me to introduce to my children and my grandchildren, it won't be my thoughts. If that's, what I think, I might tell you about my thoughts, but not. Yeah.

[53:29] But the what divine understanding, divine to understand, is the very substance, the one understanding, as has been shown above in the treatise on the what operations of God. So that treatise, I think, must come before this treatise on the Trinity. In the order of what learning, or in the order of teaching, yeah. And an account of this properly. Whence the word proceeding in God proceeds as subsisting in the same nature.

[54:07] An account of this is properly called generated, right, and a son. Whence about those things which pertain to the generation of living things, Scripture uses them to signifying the procession of the divine wisdom, to wit, by conception, right, and by giving birth and so on. Practition. For it is said from the person of divine wisdom, Proverbs eight twenty four. The abysses were not yet, right, and I already was conceived.

[54:47] Before the what? I came. Brought forth, came forth, yeah. But in our understanding, we use the name of conception, according as in the word or thought of our understanding is found a likeness of the thing understood, even though there is not found an identity of what nature, right?

[55:14] And the third objection here: if you receive something, the receiver and the receiver are not the same thing, right? To the third, it should be said that not everything taken is received in some what subject. Otherwise, one could not say that the whole substance of a thing created is taken from God. Since of the whole substance, there is not some what. Subject, yeah.

[55:46] Thus, therefore, that which is generated in divine things takes being from the one generating, not over that that being is received in some matter or in some subject, which would be repugnant to the what subsistence of the divine being. Now that again goes back to the treatise on the what substance of God, right? The previous objection is going back to the treatise on the operations, right?

[56:18] But in this way, it is said to be taken, in so far as the what one proceeding from another has divine being. Not as existing other from the divine being.

[56:37] So in the very perfection of the divine being is contained both the word or thought proceeding in an understandable way, and the beginning of that word or thought, the one from which proceeds.

[56:53] Just as with everything that pertain to his what perfection. Well, that's a mouthful, Thomas. Huh? He gave something to think about, right? I remember one time when when Charles de Koninck came down on his lecture, tour, you know, and this guy knew, and he heard de Koninck lecture for maybe I don't know, forty, fifty minutes. I was, Gee, he gave me enough to think about for a whole week, you know.

[57:19] Man, a guy once a week like that, you know. When de Koninck would teach Thomas, he says, "Now he says, you think you've understood everything now. " Yeah. It means you understood nothing.

[57:36] If you had understood something, you would have seen that I don't fully understand this. You see that even the great physicists there, even though when you read Heisenberg's account of Bohr and so on, that he was more aware of the fact that he had not understood the thing fully than the people who were, you know, spouting the ideas that got it from him, right? it's kind of interesting.

[58:00] The first time when Heisenberg met Bohr, Bohr came to Germany, and he's going to lecture on the atom. The German physicists were so impressed they called the Bohr Festival. Yeah. And this is the Bohr Festival. And in the question period there, Heisenberg, who was just a graduate student, really, time, posed an objection, right? And Bohr gave some kind of reply to it, you know, but he kept on looking over at Heisenberg, you know.

[58:29] Then when he got to the lecture, he says, "Let's go for a walk." Heisenberg talks about their conversation and how it influenced all subsequent thinking, you know. I mean, it's affected Bohr head on these physicists. But Bohr was more aware, you know. He said, you know, the German physicists were ahead of the incompleteness of the understanding of the atom.