Prima Pars
128. Summa I q.39: Persons Compared to the Essence – Overview and Article 1 (Is the Essence the Same as the Person?)
Class of 2008-04-10
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/128-summa-i-q-39-persons-compared-to-the-essence-overview-and/

[0:00] 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, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. Deo gratias. Let's recall now that the treatise on the Trinity is divided into three parts, because the divine persons are distinguished by relations of origin.

[0:51] And so, there was one question on the origin of processions in God. There was a second question on the relations in God, and then there are fifteen questions on the persons.

[1:12] Now, those fifteen questions on the persons were divided into ten and five, right? The absolute consideration of persons, which we just finished, and then the comparative consideration of them, which will be the last five questions.

[1:34] Thomas begins then in his little proemium by saying that after those things which have been considered absolute, is the Latin word, right? About the persons, it remains to consider about the persons in comparison to, and he gives three things, right? To the essence or the divine nature, the divine substance, and to the properties or the relations, huh?

[2:07] And to the notional acts, like to generate, right? To breathe, right? What is that? I mean, if the act of generating is something different, really, from the Father, then you're going to have more than three things there in God, right? You see,

[2:28] like me and my son and my generator, my son, there are three different things. So is the Father and the Son and the Father generating the sons? Three different things? No. So these comparisons have to be taken up, okay?

[2:48] And then the comparison of the persons, what to each other, right? So Thomas kind of divides the first three against the last two, right? Because you're comparing the persons to something. Other, at least mentally speaking, than the notion of the persons, and then you're comparing the persons to what? Each other, right? Okay. So that's accordance to the rule of three and two. Okay, Thomas is not so pedantic as to point this out all the time.

[3:26] Okay. Now, as regards the first of these eight things, are what asked? First, whether the essence, the nature of God, the substance of God, is the same as the person.

[3:45] Is there any real distinction between the Father and the divine nature? And the Son and the divine nature. There is a real distinction between the Father and the Son. But is there a real distinction between the Father and the divine nature? In anticipation, you might expect the answer will be no.

[4:14] And once you've seen that they all are one in the same divine nature, whether one can say that they are what three persons of one nature, one substance, of one essence.

[4:32] Then there comes a three, four, five, and six. There, some questions about how you can speak about these things. And the first one is whether essential names should be said of the persons in plural or in singular. So you can say the Father is God, the Son is God, right? The Holy Spirit is God, and that falls upon the first article, right? That they are the same thing, right?

[5:01] Well, now I'm a man, you are a man, he's a man, right? And we're three men, right? So can you say the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit are three gods? No, no. Okay. So that's strange way of being said, right? Here's something said of three that are really distinct, just as you and I are distinct, right? What's said of you and I, who are really distinct, is said in the plural, right?

[5:31] Why not in God? Okay. And as you see, sometimes I quote in these texts from the great Hilary, right? You know that speech is subject to the thing. You have to know what the thing is to see how something can or cannot be said of something.

[6:00] That's follows immediately upon the first thing. Then, whether notional adjectives or verbs or participles can be predicated of the essential names taken what concretely? Now, what does that mean? I mean, can you say that God generates? God breathes.

[6:28] See, notice how, how in Saint John, there is a different thing. But you know, he says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God." Right? He doesn't say towards the Father, although he is towards the Father. Well, what is God standing for there? The Father, yeah. So, if the Father, if God can stand in that text for the Father, right? Why can't you say that the God generates?

[7:00] Well, like we see in the in the creed, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, right? Hard question sometimes to see how to speak, huh? And as Hillary again says, right? Or as a Jerome, I guess, says, "Ex verbis inordinate prolatis." Some words put forth disorderly, heresy arises, huh? So you have to be careful.

[7:27] Who's that? Cacked up in the church and said she shouldn't be called the Mother of God, but the Mother of Christ. And they threw things at her. I guess. Yeah, yeah, but you got to be careful. People, you know, saying things. Sometimes they don't know what they're saying, and sometimes they're radical without knowing it.

[7:48] If you speak this way, you're going to get in trouble eventually. It's going to influence your thinking, right? Don't know how to speak about things. Many ways you get into trouble. Not know how to speak.

[8:03] Shakespeare says something about stumbling in your own words. Okay. And fifth one, whether they can be said of the essential names taken in the abstract. So, can you say that God? Can you say that the divine nature is generated? No. I would guess not. Right? We'll see what the the master says.

[8:37] But you could say God from God, wouldn't you? You say God generates God. It takes a while to get into these questions. See exactly what I can see that they're important.

[8:56] I think the thing that Thomas Aquinas says, if you read them too fast. You get mental indigestion, whereas Father Boulay would say mental constipation. And but if you slow down and do it slowly, you know, then you see, well, I can see what he's saying, you know. But I have to do it slowly, right?

[9:24] I find myself now. I have to eat more slowly. You know, I get food stuck in my throat. You know, this is always true. Your mind, you know, things stuck. They won't get into the mind, right? Because you try to to eat too fast. Feast to reason, as as Socrates says, right? Have to eat moderately or slowly. Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast. Wisely and slow, they choke that eat too fast. And the sixth article: Whether the names of persons can be said of the what?

[10:09] abstract names and concrete names? Well, that's the name God, then, right? Can you say God is the Holy Spirit? Says Holy Spirit is God, I think. Can you say God is the Holy Spirit? I know. Wait, till Thomas says, right? Would it be good to say? You know, you should never discuss the work of art except in the presence of it.

[10:43] Well I say we should never discuss the Trinity without Thomas in front of you? Now, the last two articles could be divided against the earlier ones, They're dealing now with this idea of appropriation. And

[11:02] the first article, of course, is obviously presupposed. The second one: Whether the essential attributes, like say God is wise or God is good or God is powerful, can these essential attributes of God be appropriated to persons? You

[11:19] can see there's a danger in that, right? Okay. And sometimes I was taking the example there, you know, of the incarnation there, and you say the Word was made flesh. Is that an appropriation? Is it really God who became flesh? No, no, that's not appropriation. It's only the Word that was made flesh. That's not appropriation at all. But when you say the Holy Spirit will overshadow you, right?

[11:52] So they attribute the incarnation, the work of the incarnation, to the Holy Spirit. Is that an appropriation? Yeah. It's really a work of the whole Trinity, huh? Or we attribute, see, I believe in God the Father, Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. So I say that God the Father created heaven and earth. But was it just the Father? Just like it was just the Son who became man?

[12:20] No. But that's an appropriation. So you can see the church does appropriate. So you can see Thomas is going to defend this as something, and why it should be allowed, right? But you come back and consider these things, you don't realize that, you know, maybe some things that you learned as a child, right, were being said

[12:44] without appropriation, and some other things were being said by appropriation, right? And then, and the eighth one is going to go into the various appropriations that the great Augustine or the great Hilary make, huh? And like power to the Father and wisdom to the Son and goodness to the Holy Spirit and that's not too hard to understand. But some ones more strange ones, you know, unity to the Father and equality to the Son and connection to the union to the Holy Spirit and so on.

[13:24] Could we drop back again? In the beginning, you mentioned you mentioned four things, right? But maybe some go together or something. When he says essence, property, notional acts and comparison. Those are three different questions, though, being right. Okay, but now how is it three? What goes together? Because there's four things there. Yes, essence, properties, notional acts, and comparison. Well, no, no, you divide those first three against the last two, right?

[14:00] So here you're comparing the persons to the essence to the properties to the notional acts, none of which, as such, are names of persons, right? And then in the last two ones, you're talking about the persons in comparison to each other. Okay, okay. So one one person sends the other person, for example, right? Okay, so there. Okay, there's two things there. Okay, and then then how does that?

[14:30] Then then with our eight things, we have three. We divide that into three. Yeah, the first two kind of go together, and then the last two go together. Yeah. And I know sometimes Thomas, like in the sentences, you'll have the last two and the first one there together in the same question, right? So Thomas kind of sees them as as being parts of the same consideration. But these these four in the middle seem to be dealing with

[15:02] various questions about naming, right? And how I can say something. Actually, questions of predication, right? This is the key thing in logic, by the way, right? In other words, it belongs to logic to consider the way this is said of that, right? So the first book in logic in Latin is called the Predicabilia, which comes from the Latin word for being said of, right? And the second book is the De Predicamentis, right?

[15:40] And you get into the book on places, speak of the predicata, the four predicata, but they all have the same root, really, the idea of being said of, right? So to consider the way this is said of that. Is most proper to logic to consider that, and that's because logic considers things as they are in the mind, and in our mind or reason that one thing is what said of another,

[16:17] and so and one of the first things we learn in logic is the fact that a name can be said of many things univocally or equivocally, equivocally by chance or by reason and so on, and this is kind of something that's going to be done in every other science, right? So logic is helping you a bit, right? But then with the Trinity, you get into ways that one thing is said of another that the philosopher did not anticipate, because he knew nothing about the what Trinity, right?

[16:52] And so you have to make some special considerations, right, about what can be said of what in theology. Okay. Yes. So let's look at the first article now, which is really the fundamental article, the most important of the articles in some senses, right? Underlies everything else. To the first one proceeds thus: it seems that in God the essence is not the same as a person, right? But Thomas always thinks absolutely what he thinks before he thinks what he thinks.

[17:35] He says, in whatever things the essence or nature is the same thing as a person, or the individual substance, suppositum, it is necessary that there be only one individual, right, of that nature, as is clear in all the separated what substances, So when Thomas talks about the angels, huh? he maintains that no two angels have the same what nature, right? That the difference between two angels, to use a geometrical comparison, is like the difference between a circle and a square, not like between two circles, right?

[18:22] The distinction between you and me is like between two what circles, right? Okay. Now why is that, right? So There's no matter, right? And therefore you don't have the continuous, right?

[18:41] Now you say, in the first theorem in geometry, right, you have what two circles, right, intersecting, and these two circles are exactly the same diameter, same radius,

[18:56] Because you could, want to construct an equilateral triangle. So he takes a straight line and top a straight line, and he rotates it around like that, makes one circle. Then he takes the other end point and okay. But how do those two circles differ now in kind? Number. Yeah, just a number, and they're but they're exactly the same kind of thing. But they differ because one is here and one is there, right?

[19:23] Okay. But even before that, the two different end points that you use, you know, as the centers of these two circles. How do those two points differ? Exactly the same kind of thing, but because one's here and one is there, right?

[19:40] And when we study this in in wisdom a little bit, we find out that matter, as subject to quantity, to the continuous quantity, is the source of the multiplication of individuals of the same kind. So how is it possible to have many chairs here? Exactly the same in this room, huh? The simplest answer is to say you have enough wood. yes.

[20:10] So it involves wood, one kind of matter, subject to quantity. wouldn't I say enough, right? How can you have many windows, right? Exactly the same kind. The simplest answer is you have enough glass, right? When you get to the immaterial things, the immaterial substances, there's no matter there, right? And there's nothing continuous. So therefore, there can't be many of the same what kind. So that each one is different, right?

[20:43] My old teacher Kasurik to say, you know, you see your first angel, you know, and then you see a second one, you're not going to be counting them. You're not, you see the second angel. You know the great angel is going to see first, right? And he always said, you know, he'll say, well, this is God, you know. The angel said, no, no, I'm not God. But he's going to be so wonderful, right?

[21:04] You see, you think he's God, right? And but then when you see a second angel, you won't say, not the second angel I see. He's going to be so different the first one. It's what do you think of being two, you know? Okay. Now it's interesting that Plato, although he made the mistake

[21:26] of thinking that there's a world of the natures of man and dog and cat and horse, right? The world of the forms, as he called them. There's only one form of each what kind. So in a sense, Plato realizes that if there is a kind of thing that is immaterial, it's sui generis. one of a kind, right? It's only one of that kind.

[21:54] This seems to be a contradiction here, what you're finding here in the Trinity, right? Because if you have, you know, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are immaterial, right? And if there's no distinction between them and the divine nature, should have only one person, really, huh? You see how people get into this business of thinking there's only one person, that's only one nature. So how is Thomas going to get out of this?

[22:21] Seems to contradict, you know. For those things which are the same in re, in reality, in the thing, one cannot be multiplied without the other being what multiplied, right?

[22:46] So if the divine nature is the same thing as these, right? They'd all be one and the same, right? But in God there is one essence and three persons. Therefore, the essence is not the same as the what person? Okay, that's something to chew on right now. Okay.

[23:06] Don't tell it to your mother here. Keep it with us. I don't. Yeah. Okay. Now the second objection is very powerful too. Affirmation, negation, together the ones are not verified to the same thing.

[23:31] But affirmation and negation are verified of the essence and the person. For the person is distinct, right? The essence is not distinct. That seems to be a syllogism then in the second figure, right? You affirm one thing, but you deny the other, right?

[23:53] You know how we're syllogizing there all the time in the substance of God. We say, you know, God is pure act. We show, and we say, well, what is composed has some ability, right? God has no ability in passive sense; he's pure act. So we affirm what of one, but we deny the other, right?

[24:16] The same thing, right? It's pretty powerful, right? And seems even God, you know, in his in his knowing and willing, can't overcome that, right? And we say God is all knowing, and that's true. Now someone came and said to you, "Okay, but I know something God doesn't know. What is that? That two is half of three." God doesn't know that. Yeah, he doesn't know that. See. Needed you.

[24:50] Our our our our Thomas was talking about I read the Summa of Cajetanus about the will of God this morning and and it's not of what is impossible per se, right? So God cannot will it to be a square circle, or to be a man without reason. Can be man without using his reason, but can't be man without reason. Okay.

[25:24] This is powerful objection, right? What is affirmed of one is denied of the other, right? You know, if I say a dog is four-footed, man is not four-footed, therefore.

[25:41] Yeah. It's a pretty good argument, right? Sugar is sweet. Salt is not sweet. Salt is not sugar, right? So he's saying the nature is not distinguished, right? Person is right. I can say that nature is not generated. Divine nature is not generated. The sun was generated. Therefore, the sun is not the divine nature.

[26:17] You can tell there was a problem. This changes everything. Got it all wrong with that, you know. Now, the third objection, not as powerful, but it's taken for the way we speak of these things. Nothing is subject to itself, right? But the person is subject to the essence or nature. Whence in Latin, it is called the suppositum, which means placed under, right? Or in Greek, hypostasis, which means what?

[26:57] Stand under, right? Okay. Therefore, the person is not the same as the what? Essence, huh? That's why we speak of form as being what? In matter, right? And the matter being under the form. And the nature is a bit like the form. Is in the form of God, right? Okay.

[27:23] But now, against all this nonsense, so what the great Augustine says in the seventh book about the Trinity. When we say the person of the Father, we do not say something other than the what substance of the Father.

[27:53] Now, answer. It should be said, Thomas, that to those considering the divine simplicity, this question manifestly has truth. For it has been shown above that the divine simplicity requires this: that in God be the same the essence and the what? Suppositum, right?

[28:25] Suppositum is the name there for the individual substance, right? Which, in understanding substances, is nothing other than the what? Person. Okay. But it seems to engender a difficulty, as it does, when the divine persons are what multiplied. In fact, there's three of them. And the essence or the nature, the substance retains what? Unity, right?

[28:58] And because, as Boethius says, huh? That seems to be almost the third guy he quotes after Augustine and and Hilary, huh? About the Trinity, for as Boethius says, but Boethius is very much following Augustine if you read him. As Boethius says, the relation right multiplies the Trinity of what persons in God.

[29:29] Some laid down, right, huh? And this is that terrible guy Gilbert de la Porrée, right? He's not so terrible because he got off, but then he was corrected by the councils and he confessed his mistake and so on, right? Okay, but some laid down in this way differs the essence from the person. In that the relations are said to be assisting right? And therefore they weren't really the same thing, right? As the divine essence,

[30:04] considering in relations only that they are towards another, right, and not that they are things themselves. Remember that word "thing" you spoke about in God, right? Are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one thing or three things?

[30:26] Put both of that question to what to say. What would you say? One nature, three persons. Yeah, you can see they're both one thing, and you're speaking what? Absolutely, right. But if you're taking relations, they are what? Three. So are these things in the same way?

[30:50] Aristotle already seen that, right? He speaks in the categories, right? So substance, quantity, quality, relation, and the other six, right, are not things in the same sense.

[31:07] So nothing prevents you from, in one sense, them being one thing, and another sense, the thing being what? Three things, huh? But anyway, Gilbert de la Porrée was not willing to call them things, apparently.

[31:32] But just as has been shown above, as relations in created things exist in something what? Accidentally, there's something added to it. But in God, as we saw, there are no what? Accidents, right?

[31:53] But in God, they are the very what? Divine nature, huh? Okay. This is a common thing. You know, we have two ways of speaking about God. Sometimes we say God has something, right? So God has wisdom, God has justice, God has mercy, and so on. And then we say that whatever God has, He is. And sometimes we take the reverse of have, and we see something is in God.

[32:23] There's wisdom in God. There's mercy in God. There is goodness in God, right? And then we say whatever is in God is God, right? You say, well, why do we have to speak that way, right? Was because our mind is naturally adapted to talking about things that are composed of matter and form, and the matter has a form, and the form is in the matter, right? And so we have this two ways of speaking, and we have to negate the real distinction in the things we know from God when we use these ways of speaking about God.

[33:04] So whatever is in God is God, and whatever God has is God. So he says the relations in God are the very divine nature. From which it follows that in God, in the thing itself, in things, the what relation, the person rather, and the essence are not what something other; they're exactly the same.

[33:44] And nevertheless, the persons are really what? Distinctions. Yeah. Why are they distinct to each other? Because they're relative to each other, right? And Aristotle had already seen relatives as one kind of what opposition, and opposition is the beginning of distinction. So because the Father is the Father towards the Son, and the Son is the Son towards the Father, then they really distinct the Father from the Son, and the Son from the Father.

[34:18] But the Father is not the Father of the divine nature. So he's not towards divine nature, right? And so, and likewise, at the beginning of John's great Gospel, there he says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God." Right? He doesn't say towards the divine nature, right? He says because that would get you into a mistake there, right? He says towards God, and God there is standing for the what Father, right?

[34:49] Okay. So he's relative to the Father, and therefore, since relatives are really distinct, he's really distinct from the Father. But he's not relative to the divine nature. He's not the son of the divine nature. Nor is the Father the father of the divine nature, right? If the Father were the father of the divine nature, then he'd be really distinct to the divine nature. We'd be Even a worse position they're in.

[35:20] Yeah. So the relation of Father and that is Son compared to divine nature, no difference whatsoever in things. There's a difference in our thinking, right? We need two thoughts because we can't express in one thought what this is. But towards each other, they're really what opposed relatively, and therefore they're really what distinct.

[35:56] For person, as has been said above, signifies a relation, but in so far as it subsisting in the divine nature. Person, you remember how word was it, relative or not? Remember that. But it's one of those mixed things. It signifying what a relation per modum substantiae, in the manner of a substance, right? It signifying relation in so far as it's something subsisting in the what divine nature, right?

[36:30] Of course, what subsists in the divine nature is is the divine nature. Okay. So he says, relation compared to the essence does not differ in the thing or reality, but in thought only. You have a thought adequate to God. See, two thoughts here.

[36:58] That's not something altogether what unique to the consideration of Trinity. You can say that I have a thought about let's say the divine understanding, right? And I have a thought about the divine love. But is the divine understanding and the divine love two things in God, like they are in me? My understanding and my loving are not the same thing in me.

[37:30] And yet, my understanding and my loving are something like God, very distant, but something like God, right? And so I speak of God as understanding and loving, but are they two things in God?

[37:48] But there's a distinction in my thought between what. Understanding and loving. The understanding of God and His loving, right? Okay. There's even order in my thoughts that I say that because God is one who understands, then God is one who has a will, right? Rather than emotions, which are tied up with the senses and the body, huh?

[38:14] You know, a little kind of a homely comparison I make there, and I say that we compare sometimes God's simplicity to the point that is the center of a circle, right?

[38:33] And so we'll call this point here the understanding of the creature, right? And we'll call this point here the love of the creature, right? And the understanding of the creature and the love of the creature come from God, but in God there are what one, right? Okay. So I can speak of this one point as the center of a circle as the end of this line or the beginning of this line, and I can speak of it as the end of this line or the beginning of that line.

[39:03] So I have two thoughts about that point. Okay. But it's still one point, as opposed to these two points. Right? Which are really two points in reality, or in imagination. But this is one point even in my imagination.

[39:27] But because our thoughts come from creatures, that's why we have these thoughts. So when Thomas was talking about how we can make statements about God, well, we know the simple in a composed way, and so when I say God understands, or I say God loves, I'm understanding a simple thing in a composed way, and actually I have two compositions here. for. that statements, but then when I say but but in in God, God's understanding is God's love, right?

[40:10] The same thing. Then I negate the composition in my mind of two thoughts and don't attribute to the thing in itself. So I got to be pretty much on your toes. Why in God it's just the reverse. He understands statements, and we composed creatures in a what simple way. Now if you put those two together, what do they have in common? God understands the composed in a simple way, and we understand the same we do the simple in a composed way.

[40:52] What's the what's coming to us, dude? Well, that the way you understand and the way things are. Yeah, and that's why I mentioned before talking about the great Boethius here in the Consolation of Philosophy, which is the work that if I remember right the Benedict singles out in the, you know address there on Cassiodorus and Boethius is one after the five and Augustine is one devoted to Cassiodorus and and Boethius mentioned the Consolation of Philosophy, right?

[41:34] When he gets to the fifth book there, he's trying to understand God's eternal knowledge of temporal things. So God knows time eternally, while we know eternity what through time. Now our definition of eternity, which goes back to Boethius in the work of the Consolation of Philosophy, it's what tota simul et perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis. If you examine the definition, you'll see that tota simul is negating what

[42:15] before and after in time, and then interminabilis, the beginning and end that things have in time. huh Okay, they got the word interminabilis is in the definition. So you're understanding kind of negatively, imperfectly eternity through time, but God in His eternal knowledge understands time and everything in time is present to Him, and so Boethius, has written the Consolation of Philosophy, is a good Platonist in the form of a dialogue, but between himself and Lady Wisdom, right, who's come down to console him, right?

[43:02] The commentator says because women are better at consoling than men. So Lady Wisdom, of course, sapientia is feminine in Latin. So I call my little grandchild Sophia there, call her Lady Wisdom. Kind of picked up this nickname that she's Lady Wisdom.

[43:22] But he introduces Aristotle as a true follower, right? Because that's the thing that Aristotle and Plato split on. That Aristotle saw that the way you know didn't have to be the way things are in order for there to be truth. What you say about things has to be. in agreement, yeah?

[43:47] But you can say it in a way other than they are. Got to be careful what you're saying there, right? But it's you can see how people get fouled up on that.

[44:03] Thomas is talking about how there is a a a distinction in order of the attributes of God, right? But it's in our thought, not in the things, right? While in the Trinity there's a real distinction and a kind of order of one from the other, right? In the things themselves, right? But when we when you do this appropriation, we kind of use one focus a little bit in the other.

[44:38] So he says at the end of this body, then relation compared to the essence, to the nature, the divine substance, non differt re doesn't really differ. In things, there's no. There's not two things there. Like this is the divine nature and this is the Son. No, they're one and the same.

[45:02] But they differ ratione tantum, right? In thought only. But compared to the oppositum, it's clear that relation is a kind of opposite. Compared to the opposite relation, it has by virtue of the opposition a real what? Distinction. Yeah.

[45:26] Was it Sabellius I guess Sabellius, who denied the real distinction of the persons, he made them just distinguish, you know, by. Yeah. If we call the same person the father because he created the world, they call him the Son because he became man, and call the Holy Spirit because he sanctifies us. Yeah. So was he behind modalism, which you just learned about today? Is that is Harrison modalism?

[45:53] And thus there remains one essence, nature, substance, and three what persons? So.