Prima Pars
105. Summa I, Q.28, Art. 4 and Intro to Q.29: The Four Real Relations in God and the Plan of the Treatise on the Divine Persons
Class of 2007-11-15
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/105-summa-i-q-28-art-4-and-intro-to-q-29-the-four-real-relations/

[0:00] Article four here. Okay. To the fourth one proceeds thus. It seems that in God there are not only the four real relations, to wit, fatherhood, sonhood, and notice the problem in naming as he says, you know, the relations, right? For the second kind of proceeding. So they borrow words taken from the procession itself, right? So separatio and then procession, just taking the common name there, because there's no name for that.

[0:39] So unlike what's in the creature. For one can consider in God the relation of the one understanding to the understood, right? And the one willing to the will. Which seem to be real relations, right? Nor are they contained under the four said, right? Therefore, there are not only four relations, real relations in God, huh? Okay. They like the India, they like to multiply these things. Okay.

[1:16] So why isn't that a real relation? When he really understands himself, right? Okay. Moreover, real relations are taken in God according to the what? Understandable going forward of the word or thought. But understandable relations are multiplied forever, as Avicenna says. Therefore, in God there are what? Infinite real relations, huh? Now what Avicenna was talking about is that I can know what a triangle is, and then I can know that I know what a triangle is.

[1:57] And I can also know that I know what a triangle is. I can know that too. This goes on forever, right? And Aristotle, if you look at his consideration there of the infinite in the third book of Natural Hearing, right after he gets through talking about acting and undergoing, right? Then he has a number of reasons why people think that the infinite exists, right? And some are taken from the fact that the straight line is divisible forever and so on, but others that the mind never gives out, right?

[2:29] So it seems then that in God is going to be an infinity of real relations, right? Because as Avicenna says, understandable relations multiplied forever, right? Okay.

[2:48] Moreover, there are ideas in God. This is what Augustine, you know, because his Platonic background, right? Right. But the relations are not distinguished from each other except by their what? Respect to creatures. So God made the dog by one idea and the cat by another idea, right? Okay.

[3:15] Therefore, in God there are many what eternal relations, huh? Moreover, equality and likeness and identity are some relations, right? And they are in God from eternity, huh? So the Father is like the Son, and Son is equal to the Father, right? Okay. Therefore, there are more relations eternally in God than those four that we've talked about, huh? I don't know about this Thomas. It really exercises your mind, huh?

[4:00] Aristotle is talking about dialectic, huh? In the book on dialectic, there he says that the first thing it's useful for is to exercise the mind. Gumnasia, he says.

[4:16] But now the said contrary is a little different, huh? Instead of being on the side of the truth, it's the opposite, what error? But against this, it seems that there are fewer, right? Because according to the philosopher in the third book of actual hearing, the physics, there is the same road from Athens to Thebes and from Thebes to Athens, right? Therefore, it seems for the same reason there is the same relation of the Father to the Son, which is called fatherhood, and of the Son to the Father, which is called sonhood, and thus there are not four relations in God, huh?

[4:54] Okay. And notice we're talking before about the way the philosopher names this category of being. He doesn't call it relation; he calls it towards something, right? Huh? But in daily life, we speak of of a relation between us, right? And you might think, well, just one relation between us, right?

[5:19] Relation between me and my son, or between me and my student, right? Huh? Okay. Two relations. Say. But if you think of relation as being towards another, right? Well, I am towards my son in a different way than my son is towards me, right? Okay. I'm towards my wife in a different way than my wife is towards me, right? I'm towards the student in a different way than the student is towards me.

[5:41] The double is towards the half in a different way than the half is towards the the double. But notice the way this goes now. This is a different way that you've you know you tend to find this more in the disputed questions of Thomas because you have arguments on this side, that side, and sometimes he'll say it's not the true truth on both sides, right, where the truth is in between these.

[6:04] And so this said contrary here is not an authority defining what Thomas is going to say, but taking the opposite error. Now, what are the two ways of making a mistake? huh Excess and defect on the right Yeah Yeah. And so, as Shakespeare says, right? All my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so. Well, the first two objections are saying more than the truth, right?

[6:38] And the said contrary is saying less than the truth. So, like Falstaff says, right? If they say more or less than the truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness. Okay. No. But it's also in in the pledge there, where he says, "Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Now, you know, to understand this fully, you go back to what Aristotle has taught us, huh?

[7:09] that when reason says that what is is, it's speaking truly, and when it says that what is not is not, speaking truly. But when it says that what is is not, it's speaking falsely. When it's saying what is not is, it's also speaking falsely. So saying what is not is is adding to the truth, saying more than the truth, and saying what is is not

[7:41] is saying less than the truth. So the first objections are saying that what is not another real relation, in other words, besides the four, is so it's adding to the truth. And the said contrary is saying no, there's less than four, right? So it's saying that what is is not. Okay.

[8:04] So I answer it should be said that according to the philosopher, and he calls him the philosopher by Antonomasia huh That's the way it's the way the Isagoge Porphyry got, you know. Reginald had met the introduction to the Categories, right? But then just was shortened to the Isagoge, the introduction by antonomasia Well Thomas calls Aristotle the philosopher, right?

[8:40] He was, as De Koninck said, a very humble student of Aristotle. I answer it should be said that according to the philosopher in the fifth book of wisdom. Now, what is the fifth book of wisdom of metaphysics? That's the book where Aristotle takes up. The words used most of all in wisdom, right? But also used in the axioms, right? And to some extent everywhere, because the most common word, son.

[9:12] And he realizes that all these words are names or words equivocal by reason. So what he does is to distinguish the meanings of those words, son. In the fifth book. Now among those words is a very common word, relation, right? Pros ti. And so he teaches us a lot about this here, like relations, relations are reasonable. Reasonable. Okay. So according to the philosopher in the fifth book of wisdom, all relation is founded either upon quantity, right?

[9:44] As double and half, right? Or I'm taller than you, or I'm shorter than you, right? Okay. Or upon acting and undergoing, right? As making or made, father. Son, Lord, Master, and servant, and others of this sort, right? Okay.

[10:09] Since, however, quantity is not found in God, for He is great without quantity, as the great Augustine says, it remains, therefore, that a real relation in God cannot be except one founded upon some kind of action, some kind of activity.

[10:33] Okay. Now he's going to subdivide those actions. Not, however, upon actions according as there goes forward something outside of God or extensive to God,

[10:47] because the relations of God to to creatures are not really in Him. God is said to be what related to the creature because the creature is related to Him. Aristotle first seen that there was this odd situation of relations. He says that the known is related to the knower because the knower is related to what the known, right? The relation of the knower to the known is real, but not the reverse, the creatures.

[11:17] Hence, it remains that the relations, real relations in God, cannot be taken except according to an action, an activity, according as there is procession in God, not to the outside, but one that remains within Him, right? Now he said that's a little bit like, you know, if you want to take something, you know, infinitely different from it, right? But a little bit like it. It's like the way that there proceeds from my imagination when I imagine a gold mountain, let's say.

[11:59] There proceeds from my imagination or a unicorn, an image of a gold mountain, right? But the image remains within my imagination, right? Okay. It's a little bit like the proceeding in God. What proceeds remains within that which it proceeds, right? Father is in I, I am in the Father, he says. And even more is it like the what? When I think about something, there proceeds or goes forward from my reason a thought, right?

[12:32] But the thought remains within the reason, right? Okay. So notice what he's doing now. He's dividing into two, following Aristotle, right? Relations are based either upon quantity or upon some activity you're doing, right? There's no quantity in God, so it's got to be one based upon an activity, right? But either one to the outside or one that remains within can't be one to the outside because those are these what relations of reason,

[13:08] okay? So it's got to be within. But the going forwards within are of two only, right? So far you've been dividing always by two, right? Okay, but he's going to end up with four, right? Okay. One of which is taken according to the activity of the understanding, and that's the going forward or procession of the word, the thought.

[13:39] Now, as I mentioned before, when when Saint John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God, and the Word was God," the Greek word there is logos, right? And to be understood in the not the first sense of the word logos, which is word, but in the what sense of thought, right?

[14:01] But it's interesting that that in English we have kept the word word, right? So you're forced to move, as Monsignor says, the word word to mean thought, and therefore the word word becomes like the Greek word logos, equivocal by reason, right?

[14:19] Now it's equivocal by reason of what the the ratio of the spoken word to the thought, right? It's a sign of that thought, right? Like Albert was saying there about statement, right? Okay.

[14:36] And the other is according to the what action of the will, which is the going forward of what love, right? Okay. Now by each of these what going forwards is necessary to to take two what opposed relations, huh? Of which one is of that what going forward from the beginning, right? And the other of the what beginning itself, right? Okay. Now when Aristotle talks about beginning and Thomas talks about that's the first word in Book Five, by the way, beginning.

[15:19] And beginning is that from which something goes forward in any way whatsoever, right? And so later on, Thomas will have a question here: Is the Father a beginning, right, of the Son? Well, he is, in one sense, because the Son proceeds from the Father, right? Just like I was saying in the beginning of class here, quoting my teacher Albert, the great one of my teachers, where he says that premise means what a beginning, right?

[15:46] By statement means simply signifies, right? But the premise is a beginning because something proceeds from it, namely the conclusion, right? Now the procession of the word, right, or the thought, is called what generation, right? According to the proper notion by which it belongs to living things.

[16:21] Now the relation of a beginning, generation, living in perfect things, is called what fatherhood, right? Relation of the one proceeding from a beginning is called what sonhood, right? Okay.

[16:38] Now the going forward of love does not have its own name, right? And that's because we don't have anything exactly like this in creatures, right? Okay. Whence neither the relations which are taken according to it, they don't have a name, right? Okay.

[17:03] But the relation of the beginning of this going forward can be called what breathing, spiratio, right? But breathing names, strictly speaking, more the activity, right? Than the relation, right? So we borrow the name of the activity to name the relation, but you got to know what you're doing, right? Okay. While in the case of generation, you could say, you know, the generator and the generated, but we also have a name, father and son, right?

[17:37] And the relation of the one going forward, well, for lack of a name, we keep the common name, right? Procession, right? Okay. But Thomas explains, although these two names, what pertain to the what the processions themselves or the origins and not relations, right? So we borrow the name, right? Okay.

[18:02] So it can be only Thomas says what four real relations in God, because those relations have to be based upon an activity remains within God, and there's only two kinds of that activity: God's understanding Himself in what loving Himself, right? And so according to God's understanding Himself, there proceeds the Word, right? And so you have the relation of the Father and Son, the Speaker and the Word, right?

[18:31] And and then this other one proceeding according to love, it doesn't have a name, right? But likely to have the one proceeding and the one from whom he proceeds, right? Okay. Now of course to dissipate a bit, if there's four real relations, why aren't there four what persons in God, right? Well, the relation that, for want of a better name here, is called breathing, is what distinguishes whoever is breathing from the one who breathed, the Holy Spirit.

[19:06] But it belongs what to the Father and Son. There's no opposition between breathing and being a Father and a Son, so it belongs to both of them. But there's an opposition to the one breathed. So there's a real distinction between the Father and the Son, the one breathed.

[19:24] So that the relation though, of being the breather doesn't distinguish the Father from the Son. They're distinguished by Father and Son, right? They'll come out when we get into the treatise on the divine persons, right? Okay. So notice what Thomas has done to this point, right? He's talked about the processions or the origins or the going forwards in God, right? And now he's talked about relations based upon those, right?

[19:55] And then he'll talk about after this article about the persons who are Distinguished by those relations. Let's come back now to these attempts. Now you notice that Thomas has five replies here, right? Because the first four objections, right, were saying that there's more than these what four gradations, right? And then the said contra was saying there's less. That's the ad quintum, right? So you have to reply to both sides.

[20:31] And you see that sometimes in disputed questions, you have arguments on one side and on the other side, right? If the whole truth is on one side, you'll answer all the objections on the other side. But if the truth is somewhere in between, you'll be answering both sets of objections and maybe you know.

[20:49] Okay. Now the first objection was saying, what about the relation of the one understanding to the understood, and the one willing to the what, willed, huh?

[21:04] To the first, therefore it should be said that in those in which the understanding and the understood, right, the willing and the willed differ, right?

[21:19] There can be a real relation, right, of knowledge to the thing known, and of the one willing to the thing what, willed, huh? Okay. So if I love my wife, I have a real relation to my wife because I love my wife. Okay. And if I know what a dog is or a cat is, right, a real relation to the dog or the cat, I'm not a dog or a cat.

[21:51] But in God, the understanding and the understood are entirely the same thing. Okay. Why? Because by understanding Himself, He understands all the things. So that goes back to what we learned in treatise on the understanding of God.

[22:11] And for the same reason, the will and the willed, right? Because God wills all things by willing His own goodness. Of course, as we talked about relations of reason, huh? There has to be a real distinction between the two things that have a real relation. Okay? So God is understanding and the understood are entirely the same thing in God, huh? Okay.

[22:48] So there can't be a real relations there. Whence in God relations of this sort. Are not real the relations of reason, just as neither the relation of the same to the same. Socrates is Socrates, right? Socrates is the same Socrates. Is that a real relation? No, because Socrates is not really two. Okay. But nevertheless, the relation to the thought is real, right?

[23:23] Because the word is understood, the thought is understood as going forward through the action of the what, the understandable action. Not, however, as what the thing understood, right? Okay. Unless even us can make a distinction there between the thing understood and the thought, right?

[23:47] Or between a unicorn and my image of a unicorn, right? huh? Okay. So the image is really going forward from the imagination, right? And the thought is really going forward from the what reason, right?

[24:05] So God in understanding himself, there proceeds from God a what thought of God, right? That's where he's saying this is the thought. Okay. Whence, when we understand, say, stone, that which the understanding conceives from the thing understood is called the what word or the thought. So notice what he's saying, then. He's saying that in God, his understanding and what he understands are altogether the same, right? But the thought proceeding is not the same as that from which it proceeds, and therefore you have real relations of the thought to the one from which it proceeds, the speaker, you might say, and the relation of the speaker to the word that proceeds from it.

[25:21] Similar to the reply. Similar to the reply to the fourth objection in the first article, the relations which follow the operation of intellect, which are between the word intellectually going forth and that from which it proceeds, are not real, but relations of reason only relations of reason only, but of reality, since the thing understood and the reason are or thought, yeah, are a thought compared really to that which it proceeds was the proceeds of thought, yeah.

[26:00] Again, it's going back to the fact that these are relations of reason, right? You have to admire Aristotle for seeing this distinction, right, between a real relation and relation of reason. And the category of relation, so called, right, is about real relations. But these relations of reason of many kinds, and some of them, for example, I studied in logic, right, relation of genus to species and species to genus.

[26:31] Other relations come up in the other sciences. But Aristotle's classic example there is a case where there is a real relation of this to that, but not of that to this.

[26:48] So when I see you, there is a real relation, right? I'm really changed by seeing you, right? But if you don't know I'm seeing you, so you think, you know, it's funny how you're in church and you look at somebody, so they're looking around, they kind of know you're looking at them, you know. I don't know how they know it, you know. But if you're not aware of somebody's looking at you, right, you're not really affected at all, right, by this activity of seeing you, right?

[27:13] And of course, I can I can see something like a stone or a chair, right, which is entirely material, but this activity of seeing it is a kind of immaterial activity. And that immaterial activity or immaterial being is only in my eyes, not out there in the chair or the stone, right? So Aristotle said the relation of the knower to the known is real in creatures, right?

[27:38] But the relation of the known to the knower is a reason only. And that's a kind of relation of of reason you have between God and creatures, right? The creature is really related to God, really dependent upon God, but God in no way dependent or changed by having created the creature. He's a really independent guy. He's really independent of us. It's kind of amazing, right?

[28:07] It's kind of amazing that he could love us so much as he does. Gratuitous love, you know. It's. He didn't create me just because because I was better than other people could have created, you know. I mean, you kind of really be thankful that he chose me to be right. It's gratuitous, right? Back in the army, you know, he said, "Well,

[28:43] when the army's retreating, what do you do? You leave some guys behind to slow down his advance, right? " And very likely you got hurt, right? Killed. Well, I got to somebody. It's not because you deserve to die, you know. I've got to choose somebody to stand back, right?

[29:11] That's a choice I can make, right? But I mean, God's choosing us. You know, it's not because we were better to be than others could have been, right?

[29:28] Could your mother and father have married someone else? I mean, if Rosalind said yes, Romeo would have been after her rather than Juliet, right? Yeah, it wasn't ever having children. I mean, you know, it could happen, right?

[29:50] So they wouldn't be equal to us, those of us. That's pride, right? Like Chesterton says about the army, he says, "General being in charge, it doesn't mean that he's necessarily the wisest guy, the smartest guy." Yeah. Yeah. No, you need a general. So, you might say, for the sake of the whole, somebody has to be in charge. Yeah.

[30:22] So you see, if if we think, or if I think, you know, God chose me to be because He foresaw the wonderful person I'd be, or something, that's a kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. University's not being computed on me, you know. That's pride. Yeah, that's that's that's that's one species of the four that the great Gregory distinguishes.

[30:52] It's interesting. The Greek philosophers had some understanding of this pride, right? And the the great Empedocles, right, says that men see a part of the truth, and they boast of having seen the whole. That's that first kind of pride, right? Aristotle speaks of the rhetorician and thinks he's politically wise. You know, it's kind of boasting, right? And

[31:20] but interesting, when Aristotle talks about his predecessors, and sometimes you know where he's going to introduce his own thinking in a subject, and he'll show that there's really defects in what his predecessors have thought, right? So it's not just that he wants to make a name for himself, right? And if he finds that that they had the same thought that he has, he's not going to be upset by this.

[31:45] Well, in a sense, you can see Aristotle is opposed to that that kind of pride, where he says that I alone see this, right?

[31:55] When you go through Aristotle's works, he's kind of following the advice of the great Heraclitus, you know, to find what is common, right? And he tries to find a thought that his predecessors, all or most of them, have seen to some extent already, right? And he tries to, you know, improve and perfect that thought. But he doesn't want it to be private to him, and he's not upset that that they saw it in some way too, you know.

[32:26] But that's what they call modern that kind of pride, the laxio, there, you know, being unique, you know, you know. There's more humility in the great Greek philosophers, it seems to me, than than in the modern philosophers. Anyway, Mark, you know, how Euclid, you know, the great, you know. Bringing together many things from people before him, but he added things himself, you know. But he he kind of respects those who came before him.

[33:02] They commentate on him, and you can see, you know, he keeps what they did, and then he puts on. He discovered himself. It's really kind of marvelous thing. Okay,

[33:19] the second objection was saying, well, these relations of reason, reasonable or intelligible relations, according to Avicenna and Aristotle too, we're talking about infinite. They're multiplied forever, right?

[33:34] Now, to the second, it should be said that in us, understandable relations are multiplied in infinitum, right? Because by another act, man understands what stone, right? And by another act, he understands himself to understand stone. And by another one, he understands understands this. Okay, so it's one act in me by which I understand what a triangle is, and then it's another act by which I understand that I understand what a triangle is, and yet another act which I understand that I understand what a triangle is.

[34:15] Okay, and thus forever are multiplied the acts of understanding, and consequently the what relations understood. But this in God doesn't have any place, right? Because by one act only He understands everything. You can see how the treatise on the Trinity depends upon the treatise on what the operations of God, right? That's why God is—only one thought, huh? Very

[34:48] one-track mind. But he expresses by this one thought everything we express by many thoughts, and much more—infinitely more, right? You heard my little poem. I always bring it in there. God the Father said it all in one word. I wonder when that word became a man. He spoke in words so few and said so much. It was a brevity and soul of wit. But God said it all in one thought.

[35:22] huh? So, you see something, you know, like this in human beings—that the greater a mind is, the more it says in fewer what words, right? You see Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas—they say much more in a few words than other guys say in a whole whole book, you know. May I ask? I was wondering about the angels. The angels see things simplistically, and yeah, the higher the angel. The more he understands, but the fewer thoughts he has.

[36:00] Okay. They still have more than one thought, obviously. Okay. In their natural knowledge, they know primarily their own substance, right? But then, to know the whole reality, they need more or less thoughts, depending on how high up they are, right? And but, you Thomas, to talk about that, you know, being something like that, human beings, you know, that the

[36:25] a lesser mind requires more examples, you know, and so on, right? I go back to example in grade school. There, you know, in math class, you know, you'd have a principle being explained, and then there'd be some things worked out, right? And extra practice for those who need it. But in the book, kind of thing, you know, you know, you practice some things you learned, and then extra practice those who need it, right?

[36:50] Well, not everybody need it, right? Some guys do the first things, and they understand better than people who who did the extra practice, right? And Thomas says, you know, a great mind, who just a few words can understand something better than somebody else, you have to explain it at great length, and he still doesn't understand it as well as the other guy. You multiply your examples, you know, and and so on.

[37:13] But that's why we say brevity is a soul of wit. Thomas always quoting there Saint Paul. There, he made a verbum abbreviatum But he says a lot in just a few words. You heard me expound that even Shakespeare, right? You see that? Shakespeare says more in a few words than other people say an whole novel or something. Words, words, as Herman says.

[37:46] They complain about about uh Polonius there, right? You know, he's more matterless. politicians. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Rectory seminary gave a commencement speech, and he said, "words, words everywhere, and not a thought or think.

[38:16] Now." The third objection, taking it from the ideas, right? Now Thomas says to the third, it should be said that the relations, the respects, right, the ideal ones that are in the ideas, are is understood by God, right?

[38:38] Whence, from their plurality, it does not follow that there are many relations in God, but that God knows many relations, in so far as He knows His nature, His substance, as being imitable by the dog in this way. He said he had the idea of the dog, right? Insofar as he knows it as being imitable by the cat in this way, he has another idea, right? There's not really many relations in God there, but many relations understood by God.

[39:24] So now the fourth objection, he's not going to answer too fully here because this will come up in the treatise on the what persons, right? Okay, but that's a good thing to you know to look forward to seeing resolved because it gets down to the comparison of persons, you know, and talk about their qualities, right? Okay, to the fourth, it should be said that equality and likeness in God are not what real relations, but of reason. Only, as will be clear later on.

[40:03] Now, without trying to get into that too much yet, this equality of the Father and the Son, right, is not to be considered, as as Augustine teaches us, by their relations, but by the fact that they are what, each of them, one and the same God, right? And so you can say the Father is the same God as the Son, and the Son is the same God, numerically, right, one, okay?

[40:33] And the Holy Spirit is the same God as the Father and the Son. That's why they're equal, right? Okay. But is that a real relation of a thing to itself? No. See. So that's a

[40:51] real relation, then. Yeah. They're really equal, but the equality is not a real relation, because it's based not upon the distinction of them by relations, right? But upon each one of them being the divine substance. And so the divine substance is what one thing, yeah. There can't be a real relation of a thing to itself. right? But Thomas will explain it better than I'm doing now.

[41:24] Okay. So Thomas needs that, huh? You know, he refers you down to question what, forty-two there, I think. The tissue text here. That's the part at the end that we're considering comparing the persons, right? Are they equal? Of course, Athanasius says the very word. Okay.

[41:49] We have that in our liturgy, one of the blessings. Yeah. The Father, Son, Holy Spirit, co-equal in essence. Yeah, so it's in the essence, right? And therefore, there can't be a what. You don't consider, you know, the equality of the Father and the Son by the relation. The Fatherhood is equal to the Sonhood, you see. Because equality is going to be in something absolute, right? And that's the divine substance by nature.

[42:23] That's co-equal in the essence, you say. Yeah. Now the fifth objection is answered. I think something we saw before, right? To the fifth, it should be said that the via, the road, huh, is what the same from one term to the other in a converso, but nevertheless the what relations are diverse, the respect is different. So it's the same thing to go to Athens to Thebes and to go from Thebes to Athens.

[42:58] I'm going to go out to California. I come back. Same thing to go from Massachusetts to California and from California back. I don't think so.

[43:10] Whence from this one cannot conclude that the same is relation of the father to the son and reverse. But one could conclude this about something absolute if there were middle between the two, right? Okay. So we we speak as they say, talking about the got to watch the language a little bit there. Is there a relation between two and four? Right. You might say, what's the same relation?

[43:39] Something absolute, right? Between two and four. How two and four are to each other is relation in between the two of them, right? But two is to four half. Is four to two half? No, it's double, right?

[44:02] So the father is to the son a father, not a son to a father to a son. And the son is to the father a son, and not a father. Yeah. The father and son are a breather to the breathed to the Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit is not a breather, but a breathed. Okay. Let's

[44:28] just take a little more time, but then gotta go to meeting at seven. So the treatise on the Trinity. Divided into how many parts, there, Patrick? Three. Three, okay. And now we're going to begin the third part, right? And notice when you say it's divided into three parts, sometimes people want to say, "Well, I want to make these parts kind of equal in size." Is that necessary? No, no.

[44:57] And there's going to be what, 15 questions, right? In the third part, or there's just one question in each of the first two parts, right? When Thomas divides a work of Aristotle, the first division of a work of Aristotle is almost always into what? Two. And what is that?

[45:20] Yeah. The drawing out, the Tractatus, huh? Which I compare it to. What's the first division of Romeo and Juliet? The prologue. Yeah, yeah. Of course, the prologue is very short compared to the play, right? Okay. So it doesn't have to be more or less equal size, right? You divide it.

[45:46] But it makes sense. Thomas gives kind of the reason why he divides this into these two parts, right? Because the persons are distinguished by relations based upon going forwards, right? According to the order of teaching and learning, we talk about the going forwards and then the relations based on them, and then the persons. And now we're about to talk about the persons, huh? But having foresaid or seen before those things which what seem to be what should be foreknown about the proceedings, the origins, and relations, it seems necessary to what?

[46:27] aggredi de personis, right? Now, aggredi means what? Yeah, kind of approach it, right? And I see Thomas uses the word aggredi sometimes in Aristotle's translation. When something's difficult, right? Like we're going to talk about time, you know. And you know how how the famous Augustine's famous words about time. He says, "I know what time is," he says, "if nobody asks me what it is." But someone asks me what time is, I don't know what it is.

[46:58] Well, it's the typical thing in the dialogue, right? But Thomas will comment on Aristotle says this because of the difficulty of it right But he's going to do it, right? We're going to I'm going to attempt to talk about time now. He was saying something like that, right? Okay. And Thomas is talking about the difficulties aggredi de personis, right? I think that that sense. Now he's going to divide the consideration of persons into two or three parts.

[47:26] Well, he says it's going to divide it into a what? Two parts, right? And first, according to an absolute consideration of them, right? And then of a what? Comparative. Yeah. Yeah, and actually it's in the ratio of ten to five, right? Two to one, right? So it's going to be ten questions on the absolute consideration of persons, and then five on the comparative consideration of them. So that's a distinction into two.

[48:01] Now he says, "Is necessary, absolutely about the persons, to consider them first in general, right? Okay, and then about them in what? Yeah, yeah. And this is going to be divided into four questions. The next four questions are going to be about persons in general, right? And then there will be six about what the persons in particular, right? Okay. Now, of course, we couldn't understand the distinction of six at all.

[48:36] So that's divided into what? One, two, three. Yeah. See, he has one on the father in particular, right? Okay. And then he comes to the son. He says the son has three names. He's called the son. He's called the word. He's called imago, image of God, right? Well, what you mean by son in a sense can be understood from what we said about father. So we're going to have just two articles on the son: one about the son as a word, a thought, and the other as image, right?

[49:11] Okay. And then the Holy Spirit. Now we're going to have Holy Spirit and gift of God, right? And amor, the love of God, right? Okay. So it's divided into three parts, right? The six articles. Okay. He must do something like that with the four four questions, right? But those six questions obviously divided into three according to the three persons, right? And one into one. He says one.

[49:38] One is two, and one is three, right? Okay. Now, to the common consideration of persons, four things seem to pertain, right? Okay. Let me just break down finally. Yeah. Right. It's going to be too pedantic, you know, like purpose, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So first he says the signification of this name person, right? The meaning of this name person, right? What does person mean, right?

[50:20] And secondly, the number of persons, right? How many persons are there anyway? Are there four persons because there's four relations, or what? Must be four.

[50:36] And then third. Those things which follow upon the number persons, right, or are opposed to it, as diversity and likeness and things of this sort, right.

[50:52] And fourth, those things which pertain to the what knowledge of persons, huh? So, if you wanted to divide those four into two or three, how would you do it? Two.

[51:10] Two. You could do two, and you would divide what against the other three. Person. What? The definition of person against. Okay, or or you could divide the fourth, which is referring to the knowledge of persons, right? Okay. In other words, we can say in all knowledge you can distinguish between what is known and and your knowledge, right? And how it's known, right? You might say, huh? Okay.

[51:41] Or you might want to divide it into three, right, and put the second and the third together, right? Because first he considers the meaning of the word person, right? Secondly, the number of persons and what follows upon it, right? Could be subdivided to those two, and then the what knowledge of persons, right? Okay. That's another way of doing it, huh? Because obviously the third is much more closely related to the second than the first and the fourth are.

[52:15] Okay. Okay. Not to be too pedantic about, but you know, you got a cut in those two and three. You can understand it, right?

[52:34] Now here's another division of four. Okay. About the first four things are asked, right? And first, about the definition of person, right? And that's the fundamental question article, and that's the definition of person given by the great what Boethius, right?

[53:04] And secondly, about the comparison of person to what the essence or nature or substance of God, to the subsistence of God, right? All these strange words, and the hypostases, right?

[53:23] Now, the word hypostasis should be naming an individual substance in Greek, right? But they were accustomed to use that word in talking about the persons, right? So it became kind of synonymous with what. Person, right? Okay.

[53:47] Subsistentium signifies more what something that exists by itself, right? Essence, of course, means the nature, the substance of the thing, right? So he's going to compare it to to those, and partly, do they mean the same thing or do they mean different things? What do they mean, right? Okay.

[54:14] Okay. Then the third article is whether the name of person belongs in divine things. Okay. What does it mean there? Okay. So you might distinguish the first two articles against the last two articles, right?

[54:40] Because the first two articles could be a preliminary, could be a preliminary to talking about what a human person is, right? You know, does the name of person belong human beings? Okay. I'd say a total of joke there. We had a kind of a

[55:03] modern thinking nun in the parish there, but her name was Jane Person. And this one guy at a conversation humor, he says, "Oh, he says, I didn't know you were a person." It was so funny. We help with laughs. So, would

[55:32] the name of person belong in in human beings, right? Or applied to women? So, and what does it mean there? He says, "It means a person."

[55:45] So you see how you naturally divide these four into what the first two, right, which are kind of of general, and then the last two, which are in particular, in regard to what. Yeah. And as I'm saying, you could you could take those first two, and then you know, you want to talk about human persons, right? Like John Paul, II is talking about human persons all the time, right?

[56:11] What does it mean, you know, and so on? Beings, persons, Are there persons among human beings. And if the answer is yes, what does it mean? To say, you know, I'm a person, right? I want to treat like a thing. I want to treat like a person. You hear this being said all the time in parishes, right? What does it mean to be a person, right? Okay.

[56:36] You see. So again, you can see to understand this first question, we have to divide into, I think, two, right? See, clear. Maybe I should stop now at this point, huh? For I'm still here, huh?