Prima Pars
137. Summa I, Q. 40, Arts. 2–3: Relations Distinguish and Make Up the Divine Persons, and What Remains When We Abstract the Relations
Class of 2008-05-15
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/137-summa-i-q-40-arts-2-3-relations-distinguish-and-make-up-the/

[0:00] Go on to article 2 Whether the persons are distinguished by relations. To the second, one goes forward. Thus, it seems that the persons are not distinguished by the relations.

[0:21] For simple things are distinguished by what? By themselves, right? I know it's a a cube of clay and a sphere of clay could be distinguished by what? Something other than itself, right? By their shapes. There's a composition there, right? But simple things have to be distinguished by themselves, it seems. But the divine persons are maxime, most of all simple, right? Therefore, they are distinguished by themselves and not by what relations?

[1:05] Moreover, no form is distinguished except by except according to its own genus. For white is distinguished from black only according to what quality, right? It's different quality. But hypostasis signifies an individual in the genus of substance.

[1:30] But substance and relation are different categories, right? Different genera. Therefore, hypostases are not able to be distinguished by what relations? Moreover, the absolute is before the relative.

[1:52] And we've, spoken before about Thomas used the word absolute there for something that is itself rather than towards another, right? So the absolute is before the relative. But the first distinction, of all distinctions, of all distinctions, real distinctions, that is to say, right? But the first distinction is the distinction of the divine persons.

[2:17] Therefore, the divine persons should not be distinguished by relations, but by something what absolute, right? First distinction should be an absolute distinction, not a relative distinction, right? Because the absolute is before the relative, huh? That's a marvelous objection.

[2:37] You wonder how this guy thought it. I mean, slept at night, huh? My teacher father, you know, he had this problem sleeping. You know, used to read a book a day, you know, and so he couldn't sleep at night. They put him in the hospital one time and they're experimenting with you know things to help him sleep. Because a lot of these things, I guess, to help you sleep, they make you kind of groggy each day, and they couldn't find anything, right?

[3:03] Yeah. So. uh... She Padre Pio had to sleep for 3 years, once. Really? Oh, they said, I remember one of the friars complaining, 'I haven't slept in three nights. ' He said, 'I haven't slept in three years. '" Why can't put him in this place?

[3:32] I think you got problems. I heard about these military men sometimes, you know, during a campaign, you know, when the action is tough and going for a few nights without sleep. Did you just hear about MacArthur?

[3:43] Well, the one where, where a friend came by, you know, and he sat down to eat dinner, you know, and the guy noticed MacArthur wasn't eating anything, right? He said, "Why aren't you eating? Are you hungry?" MacArthur says, "I'm too tired to eat." He says. Oh. So finally, they said good night and so on, and next morning this guy got up and he was leaving. He said to the guy, "say goodbye to McArthur for me.

[4:08] I don't want to wake the guy up and he needs to sleep. Oh, he was up there two hours ago. So I don't know how they get. They stay awake, you know, but that's how they train them that they can really do it. But most of us wouldn't be much good, you know, in the planning at this time.

[4:27] So you wonder how Thomas here stayed They described Thomas. you know, he dictated to several people at the same time. Somebody's exhausted, laying on the bed, there and continuing to dictate.

[4:40] Distinguo. Yeah. I guess the fourth objection, right? That which presupposes distinction, right? Some distinction cannot be the first beginning of distinction. But relation presupposes distinction, since it is placed in its what definition?

[5:15] For the being of the relative is to have itself to another, so it's got to be another, and therefore distinction before you can what have a relation. So how can this be the first beginning distinguishing things in God? How can relation be such a thing?

[5:35] Okay, that's that convinces me. I don't know. you know. I just give up. Yeah. So when Saint Thomas died, they said he was not responding.

[5:50] There was no response. There you go. But against all this nonsense is what Boethius says, the Greek Boethius, in the book De Trinitate, right? That only relation multiplies the what, Trinity, sola, sola relatio, right? Sola.

[6:20] I was mentioning earlier, before someone came in, I found this thing on the internet called the Literature Network, and it has the full text of a lot of fictional works, right? You can get all Shakespeare's plays, you can get all Jane Austen's novels, I guess all Dickens' novels, a lot of, awful lot from Chesterton and so on, you know, get Homer and so on. And it's mainly literary thing, Literature Network is called.

[6:48] But see, here's St. Augustine. I don't know what they put there, so I opened up and it was about the Confessions, right? You can see why the Confessions are kind of regarded as more humanistic or more literary than they wouldn't have a De Trinitate in there or something like that. And you know, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy had been admired by the poets, and as you know, the great Chaucer, right, translated it into what, Middle English?

[7:16] I guess Queen Elizabeth was trying to do her own translation. And Washington Irving talks about it and so on. So literary things, you know. It's written in the form of a dialogue, right? Yeah. So just like Plato's, you know, dialogues are more

[7:34] pleasing to the poets than Aristotle's treatises, right? We lost Aristotle's dialogues, but Cicero says even better than Plato's. but I don't know. We don't have them; we just have fragments, huh? Here's a fragment, you heard the famous fragment from the dialogue in philosophy? The guy says, "Either you ought to philosophize or you ought not to." What do you say. If. You say you ought to, then do so.

[7:58] If you say you ought not to, you're going to have to philosophize to show why not. So in either case, you must philosophize. Could have been devastating in those dialogues.

[8:14] I remember seeing the two physicists debating, right? And the physicist says, "Well, my philosophy is to avoid philosophy." I knew that's crap he says, you know. So it's kind of, you know, still living on Aristotle's fragment.

[8:32] Is that all in English? That website just English translations, or? Yeah, it's all English, yeah. Get Homer in there and Tolstoy and Hawthorne, quite quite a bit. I was kind of surprised. Yeah, really, all free. Yeah, I kind of got it backwards because I was looking under Hawthorne one time and I found this kind of interesting work called Old Home, Our Old Home. Which is about his travels around England.

[8:57] It's very, very interesting to read. Just kind of light reading, you know. And then I was looking at Jane Austen because we were hearing on the TV and so on, and and uh then I said, gee this belongs to Literature Network I'm gonna type that in. And all some other stuff comes up, you know. So I'm sure there's all kinds of stuff I don't know about on the internet.

[9:19] But you know, even we clumsy, ignorant computers occasionally stumble upon something, right? Yeah. Even scientists sometimes stumble upon something, right? Uh huh. Heisenberg talks about the development of quantum theory and how it all started and so on. He says, it'll always be hard to understand how such a apparently accidental discovery, you know, should have led to all this change and the greatest change in physics since the beginning.

[9:54] you know That's what somebody just, somebody said, something to think. all the Great discoveries in modern science started with the expression "That's funny." They quote some famous scientist in the 19th century, you know, talking about how everything seems to be, you know, worked out and kind of complete and stuff. but there's a little cloud here, and, a little cloud there. You know, one led to relativity, one led to quantum theory.

[10:21] There's a little puzzlement out there on the horizon, you know, but it doesn't seem to amount to it. you know. all of a sudden this thing, you know, comes up in the whole sky. you know. A. Big change.

[10:36] Incidentally, there's a new letter that discovered of Einstein. It's going on action, so it's in the news a little bit. And really, he pans religion, you know, even the Jewish religion, right? It's all, you know, childish superstitions. Nothing can convince otherwise, he says. So it's kind of, you know, really the most negative thing people have seen really from Einstein, you know. I'll let it go to somebody, you know, his views.

[11:09] I think this is common among them. You know, most of those great physicists, you know, they were atheists or something of that sort. But something that the mind training, you know, at the time Brother Rochelle likes to tell a story about Einstein Rochelle likes to tell a story about Einstein. There was some seminarian that wanted to meet him or something. He went to meet him, and he said that Einstein was fascinated with the doctrine of transubstantiation.

[11:33] Yeah, I'd heard that. yeah. it seemed like he thought it was true. Well, he was fascinated with his curiosity. Yeah, his imagination, you know. Okay. So let's look at

[11:54] the body of the article now. Kind of go along with it. I answer: It should be said that whenever, in whatever many things, right, there's found something common, it's necessary to seek something that is what distinctive.

[12:16] So if man is common to all of us, there must be something that distinguishes us, other than the fact that we're men, because that's okay. Now, of course, the divine nature is common in a different sense than man is to us, because man is something universal, but it's one divine nature individually, right? That is common.

[12:40] Whence, since the three persons come together according to unity of the essence, that book I was mentioning by the Pope, you know, during lectures, you know, used the term the triune God again that I'd seen in his lectures here.

[12:58] Whence, since the three persons come together according to the unity of the essence. It is necessary to seek something by which they are distinguished, so not distinguished by the divine nature,

[13:13] in order that they might be what really many, plural. Now he says there are found in the divine persons two things by which they differ, to wit, origin, right? The one proceeds from the other, and the relations, right?

[13:36] Which, although in reality do not differ, right? Nevertheless, they differ in their way of what signify. For origin signifies by way of an action, as generation, right? Relation, however, by way of a form, as what fatherhood, right?

[14:05] Now, which is which of these two, right? He's narrowing it down to these two, right? Some therefore, noticing that relation falls upon an act,

[14:20] said that the hypostases in God are distinguished by the origin, as if we say that the Father is distinguished from the Son in so far as he, the Father, generates him, right? And the Son because he is what generated,

[14:47] and that the relations or the properties manifest consequently the distinctions of what hypostases or distinction of persons, speaking the Greeks and the Romans, right?

[15:03] Just as in creatures the properties manifest the what distinction of individuals which come about through something else, namely the material principles, huh? But this cannot stand on account of two things, Thomas says.

[15:26] First, in order for this that some two things be understood as being distinct one from the other, is necessary that what to understand their distinction through something inside or intrinsic to each of them,

[15:48] just as in created things through what their matter or through their form. But the origin of something does not signify as something intrinsic to it, huh? But either as a road from the thing, like generating, right, or to the thing as being born or generated, just as generation signifies as a road to the thing generated, and as something going forth from the one what, generating, rather than as intrinsic, right.

[16:30] Whence it is not able to be that the thing generated and the one generating are distinguished by generation alone, but is necessary to understand both in the one generating as well as in the one generated those by which they are distinguished from each other. That makes sense. Okay.

[16:58] But in the divine person, there is nothing other to understand except the essence and the relation or property. Do they translate that property proprietas? Yes. Yeah. Whence, since they come together in the essence, right, remains that they should be distinguished through the relations of persons from each other. So they got to be distinguished by something within them, right? And all that's within them is the divine nature and this relation, and one of these can't distinguish them—the divine nature, because that's common to all three.

[17:40] Therefore, it must be the remainder. Elimination, right? That's like similar. The reason why he says they can't distinguish by the act—it's similar to what you said about kicking. It's one act. Yeah. And it's common to all three. Yeah. But he doesn't say that. You know, he sees some distinction. You know, the father generates, the son generates. The distinction is in them, but that's by reason of something that is signified as proceeding from one or ending up with the other one, right?

[18:15] Rather than by something intrinsic to them, right? And Thomas says they have to be more distinguished by what is intrinsic to them, right? So he eliminates what is signified not as intrinsic to them, right? And then he subdivides what's intrinsic into the nature and relation, and eliminates what one of them, and the one that remains. As Sherlock Holmes says, however strange it may seem, must be the truth, right?

[18:39] When all but one have been eliminated, right? You know, if I know one of you guys committed the murder, right, and I eliminate five of you, then the last guy—strange as it may seem—that he would have done this, he must be the one, right? I'll choose a six. Yeah, yeah, we should. It's exhausted, right?

[19:14] Now, secondly, because distinction in divine persons should not be understood in this way—that something what common is divided, right? Because the common essence remains what undivided, right?

[19:35] But it's necessary that those things that are distinguishing constitute the very things what that are distinct. Thus, therefore, the relations or the properties distinguish or constitute the hypostases or persons, in so far as those very subsisting persons, insofar as they are those very subsisting persons. Just as fatherhood is the father, right, and sonhood or sonship is the son, in the way of speaking that in God the abstract and the concrete, what is and that by which it is, do not differ, right?

[20:20] But it's against the notion of origin that it constitutes the hypostasis of the persona. Why? Because the origin actively signifies, signified, signifies as going forth from the person subsisting, whence it what presupposes him, right? So I couldn't generate unless I already were.

[20:53] So you have to see the person is somehow constituted before he can generate it. But the origin, passively signified as nativity, birth, signifies as a way to the person subsisting, right? And not yet as what constituting him, right?

[21:16] Whence it is said better, huh Helios right? He's not saying that there isn't some basis for distinguishing the father and the son because the one generates and the other is generated, right? Okay. But is that the best way of distinguishing between me and my son? That I generated him and he was generated by me. And it does distinguish us in some way, but aren't we better distinguished by something intrinsic to us, right?

[21:50] I'm a philosopher and he's a soldier in Afghanistan. Okay. An email from him saying, you know, you're getting a little used to, going nowhere without your gun. Don't be going to the bathroom without your gun.

[22:06] Even though he's in a relatively safer part, you know, of Afghanistan, he's not out in the border there with the Pakistan. So something intrinsic to the man, right? It's the best way to distinguish it.

[22:26] So Thomas is not saying that there's no truth in the other position, right? He says, although they are distinguished in both ways, right? Nevertheless, before and chiefly through the what relations, according to the way of what understanding,

[22:50] whence this name father not only signifies a property but also a what hypostasis person. But this name generator or generating signifies only a what. Property,

[23:08] because this name Father signifies a relation which is distinctive of and constitutive of the hypostasis. But this name generating or generated signifies origin, which does not distinguish and constitute the hypostasis. So you convinced by Thomas then You can understand him a bit? Of course, every every little bit.

[23:39] Thomas often says we come to truth paulatim, right? Yeah. Just probably translated in English best as bit by bit. Yeah. I understand something of that, and now I'll read it again and understand a little bit more of it, you know. Yeah. And I mentioned how when I was at Laval you know, De Koninck was I'd been teaching, you know, the eight books of natural hearing, the physics since nineteen thirty five when I was up there in 58, you know.

[24:03] I says he still sees something new every time I go through these. He says, right? So. You know, C. S. Lewis complains. You know, he says, "What do you do with the guy who says? " Do you ask him? You know, have you read Homer? Have you read Shakespeare? Oh, yeah, once. Some that you you read and you read again, right? Someone's describing a study of the Kittredge you know, kind of the great scholar of Chaucer and Shakespeare and so on, And he taught Shakespeare.

[24:43] as if he could go on reading Shakespeare forever, you know. He could never exhaust him at it But he thought it's always true about something like this,

[24:59] now the first objection was saying that simple things are distinguished by themselves, but the divine persons are most simple. Well, Thomas says in answer to the first, therefore it should be said that the persons are the subsisting relations. Whence it is not repugnant to simplicity of divine persons that they be distinguished by relations, they're being distinguished by themselves. A

[25:34] second objection: no form is distinguished except according to its what genus, right? Well, Thomas points out the second. It should be said, and this is very important, that the divine persons are not distinguished in the being in which they subsist. They're not distinguished in the nature that they have, right? They're not distinguished in their understanding or willing, right? Um.

[26:08] Nor in anything what absolute right. Whence, but only according to the fact that they are what said towards something right. Whence for their distinction the relation suffices. huh? Whence? For me to be a distinct person from my son, I have to have an understanding and a will, rational nature right. He's got to have another, is it? Rational nature, another understanding, another will, right? Another body. Yeah, yeah.

[26:46] By talking about you know, makes you be a person. And but in God, you have the same nature individually. All three. It's common to all three, and the same understanding, the same will, right? So they can't be distinguished by something absolute, right? That the son is another divine nature from the father. No, another understanding, another will. No.

[27:16] So he says, "Not my will, but thine be done." He's talking about the human will, right, and the divine will, right. There, there's an absolute distinction, right?

[27:26] But there's no distinction between the will of the Father and the will of the Son in His divine nature, same will. So all that's left is this: what relative distinction? And the third objection says, "Well, the absolute is before the relative, and the first distinction there in things should be what an absolute distinction, then not a relative distinction." Thomas gets very subtle here, right? That the more a distinction is before, right, is prior, the closer it is to what unity.

[28:06] That's why the first distinctions are in sense the smallest, and therefore the hardest to what see. You know, the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato and Albert the Great and Thomas later on are always saying that the beginning, you know, is small in size but great in its power. It's like the seed. Um, so it's difficult to see because it's so small, right? And then they warn you that even a little mistake there will be, in the end, a great mistake, like when you, you know, turn the road right.

[28:45] A little mistake here becomes the further you go, infinite almost. So the the more a distinction is before, right, the closer it is to what unity. Unity.

[29:03] I mean, we're doing the categories, right? You know how the categories go, son. You know, you start off with, let's say, substance, right? And you divide it into material and immaterial. Material may be into living and non-living. Living into, you know, animals and plants, and then it keeps on spreading out, right? And so you get kind of like a evergreen tree, you know, going down. And so they called this the tree of porphyry.

[29:41] So I ended up at Leval there one time, Christmas time, and they give these little choking gifts, you know. So they gave the logic professor the tree of porphyry, right? They said. It does. As you go on, you get more and more multiplicity, right? You go down the tree, spread out. And as you go back, you're getting more and more what? Unity, right? To get one here.

[30:02] So the closer you are, the more A distinction is before this distinction before this one, so on. The more what? Closer you are to unity, right? So, if the first distinction of all was a distinction of absolutes, it would not be. It would be further from unity, and a distinction of what? Yeah. That's very subtle, right? I'm a Thomist I think these things too. Quanto quanto distinctio prior, the more distinction is before, right?

[30:41] So much it is closer to what unity, and therefore it ought to be minima. And therefore, distinction of persons ought not to be accepted that which distinguishes the least, right? To it, through what relation?

[31:01] Sometimes I have a close friend. You know, we think alike pretty much. You know, it's kind of nice to see. And my friend says, "You know, how why do we think alike so much, right? " But you know, the father and the son, they get, you know, they think alike because you know they have the same mind, right? It's kind of an odd thing, you know, think of two distinct persons having the same what?

[31:26] Same mind, yeah. That's strange. Yeah. And you kind of stick your fingers in there and think alike, don't you? That's true. Yeah, yeah. We say sometimes in English, you know, you and I are one mind on this matter, right?

[31:48] Alike. Therese called her sister Celine. I don't know exactly her expression, but like her either self, or. she said, "if you want to know me you know my sister? "

[32:06] It's interesting. the time is the same. Okay. Now, the fourth objection was saying that doesn't relation presuppose some other distinction, right? So, how can it be the first source of distinction? Thomas sees an element of truth in objection that relation presupposes a distinction of the individual substances when it is a what? Accident.

[32:42] But if the relation is subsisting, right? It does not presuppose a distinction, but it brings with itself a what distinction? When it is said that the being a relative is to have itself to another. Through the other is understood the what correlative, which is not before, but together. Nature's, Aristotle says in the book called the Categories, right?

[33:19] So that philosophy gets in everything else. Whether abstracting by the understanding the relations of the persons, they remain hypostases. It, the third one goes forward thus. It seems that abstracting by the understanding the properties or relations of the persons, still the hypostases remain, right? Hypostases remain. How do you say that plural in English? Hypostases. Hypostases.

[34:09] For that that has itself in addition to something can be understood removing that which is added to it. Just as man has itself to animal from addition, right? To addition of the of the difference, right? And one is able to understand animal removing the difference rational.

[34:35] But person has itself in addition to the hypostases. For a person is a hypostasis distinguished by a property pertaining to dignity, right? Now sometimes the Latins use the word hypostasis for what? It's a synonym for person, right? But the word itself more signifies an individual substance, right? And then a person is individual substance of a rational nature, so you add something to it. So it seems like you could understand this without that, right?

[35:17] Moreover, the father does not, from the same, have that he is the father and that he is what aliquis, someone. For since by fatherhood he is the father, if by fatherhood he was someone, it would follow that the son in whom is not fatherhood would not be what someone, aliquis, right? Removing therefore by the understanding fatherhood from the father, though he still remains that he is someone, which is hypostasis.

[35:50] Therefore, removing the property from the person, there remains the hypostasis. Moreover, Augustine says in the fifth book of the Trinity, this is not the same thing to say the ungenerated one, which is to say the father. Because even though he had not generated the son, nothing would prevent one from saying that he was what ungenerated, right?

[36:22] But if the son, but if he did not what generate the son, there would not be in him fatherhood. Therefore, removing fatherhood, there still remains the hypostasis of the father as something ungenerated.

[36:40] Okay, you all convinced? But against this is what Hilary says in the fourth book of the Trinity about the Trinity. The son has nothing except what he has by being born. But by nativity or birth, he is the son. Therefore, removing sonship, there does not remain the hypostasis of the son, and the same reason would apply to what other persons.

[37:08] Now, Thomas is going to start with saving a distinction, right? And this is a distinction that Aristotle had already made, right? Answer: It should be said that there is a twofold abstraction by the understanding. One, according as universal, is abstracted from the particular, as animal from what man. Another, according as the form is abstracted from matter, as the form of the circle is abstracted by the understanding from all sensible matter, right?

[37:47] Like we might abstract sphere from marble ball and baseball and the rest of them. Now, between these two abstractions, this is the difference that in the abstraction which comes about of the universal according to the universal in particular, there does not remain that from which the abstraction is made. For removing from man the rational difference, the difference rational, there does not remain in the understanding man, but only animal remains there.

[38:24] But in the abstraction which is noted according to form and matter, both remain in the understanding. For in abstracting the form of circle from bronze, there remains apart from each other in our understanding, the understanding of circle and the understanding of what bronze. I never understand that fully. but he's saying that.

[38:51] Now, although in God there is not a universal nor a particular, nor form and matter secundum rem, right, in the thing. Nevertheless, by the way of signifying them, there is found some likeness of these in God, right? According to which Damascene says that the substance is common, the particular is the what hypostasis. If, therefore, we speak of the abstraction which is by which is according to the universal in particular.

[39:32] Having removed the properties, right, there remains in the understanding the common essence, right? Not, however, the hypostasis of the Father, which is, as were a particular, right? It's like in the mind of a philosopher, there remains the divine essence, but not the person of the Father, right? But if we speak according to the way of abstraction of form for matter,

[40:08] having removed the properties that are not personal, right, there remains the understanding of the hypostasis and persons, just as having removed by the understanding from the Father that he is ungenerated, right, or that he breathes, there could still remain the hypostasis or person of the what Father? But having removed the property, the personal property to the understanding, the one that constitutes him as Father, there is taken away the understanding of the what hypostasis?

[40:51] For the personal properties are not thus understood to come to the divine hypostasis as a form to a pre-existing subject, right? But they bring with themselves their what? Underlying subjects, They're subsisting relations, right? Insofar as they are the very persons themselves subsisting, just as the Fatherhood is the Father himself. But a hypostasis signifies something distinct in God, since the hypostasis is a what individual substance? Since, therefore, the relation is what distinguishes the hypostases, and constitutes them, as has been said, it remains that the personal relations, being removed by the understanding, there does not remain the what hypostasis?

[41:58] Some. But as has been said, some say that the hypostases in God are not distinguished by the relations, but by origin only. That the Father be understood to be a hypostasis through this that he is not from another, right? The Son through this that he is from another by generation. But the relations. Coming as it were, properties pertain to dignity constitute the notion of person, whence they are called personalities.

[42:37] Right. Whence removing these relations to the understanding, there remains hypostases, but not what persons. But this cannot be directly. Right. Hate to be debating this guy, wouldn't you? But this cannot stand on account of two things. Okay. First, because relations both distinguish and constitute the hypostases, as has been shown.

[43:16] Okay, it's not the the origin, right? that distinguishes and constitutes them, right? They're distinguished and constituted by something intrinsic to them. Secondly. Because every hypostasis of a rational nature is a person, as is clear at the definition of the Greek Boethius, saying that a person is an individual substance of a rational nature.

[43:45] Whence, in order that there would be a hypostasis and not a person, it would be necessary to abstract the rationality on the part of the nature, not over on the part of the person, what property, right? So you can understand hypostasis, individual substance, the understanding person, right? But in God, right, the hypostases are persons, so the persons don't remain once you abstract the what relations from them, because relations both constitute and distinguish the what persons, so.

[44:25] That's mouthful, Thomas. Okay. Now the first objection, right, saying that person adds to hypostasis, so you can remove what's personal and still have the hypostasis. To

[44:49] the first, therefore, it should be said that person does not add over hypostasis a property distinguishing absolutely, but a property distinguishing that pertains to what dignity, worth, and the whole of this is taken in place of one what difference, right?

[45:11] Now, property distinguishing pertains to dignity, according as is understood, as existing in this most noble nature, the rational nature. Whence, removing the property distinguishing from the person, there does not remain the hypostasis, but it would remain if one took away the what rationality of the nature.

[45:41] For both the person and the hypostasis is individual substance, right? Whence, in God, in the notion of both is a what relation distinguishing, right?

[45:57] So there's no distinction of hypostasis in God. There's not a distinction of what persons, because they're in a divine nature, which is a rational nature.

[46:08] Okay. Now, the second objection was saying he's an aliquis, right? By something different than he's a person. To the second, it should be said that by fatherhood, the father is not only what a father, but he is a what A person. And he is a quis, someone or a what, hypostasis.

[46:45] Nor does it follow that the son is not a what, someone or a hypostasis. Just as does not follow that he is not a what, person. So the father is a person by fatherhood, and the son is a person by what, sonship.

[47:06] Is that better than sonhood? I guess so. There's gold chips and silver chips. Okay, now, what about this objection from Augustine? Yeah, to the third, it should be said that the intention of Augustine was not to say that the hypostasis of the Father remains what, ungenerated, when one removes fatherhood, right? As if in nascibilitas, right, not being born, constitutes and distinguishes the hypostasis of the Father. For this cannot be, since ungenerated places nothing, right?

[47:59] But is said negatively, as he himself ipse met dicit, right? He himself says. But he speaks in general that not everything ungenerated is what, is a father, right? Because one might say that God is ungenerated if we knew nothing about the Trinity, right? That wouldn't constitute the Father, would it?

[48:25] Removing therefore fatherhood, there does not remain in God the hypostasis of the Father as he is distinguished from the other persons, but only as he is distinguished from the creatures, as the Jews understand, right? So Jews don't apparently believe the Trinity, right? Apparently not. No. And and Aristotle and those guys knew nothing about this, so even though they use the number three to honor God, with them.

[48:53] So we stopped knowing what. Okay. Yeah, maybe. Yeah.