Prima Pars
138. Aquinas on the Trinity: Whether Fatherhood Comes Before Generation, and Why Notional Acts Are Attributed to the Persons
Class of 2008-05-22
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/138-aquinas-on-the-trinity-whether-fatherhood-comes-before-generation/

[0:01] In the Name of the Father and the Son 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. Father and the Son, Holy Spirit.

[0:30] So when you talk to your Mohammedan friends, you're going to be able to defend us against the charge of being polytheists. Now the Mohammedans think we're polytheists, right? Little lapse on our part, right, back to polytheism. And I know what the Jews think of us, but they don't believe in the Trinity either, do they? So

[1:03] I'm kind of struck by Thomas, you know, ending the treatise on the substance of God with the unity of God, right, to leave you with that thought before he takes up the Trinity.

[1:16] But De Koninck said, you know, sometimes these mysteries are revealed in a certain order. So if the mystery of the Trinity had been revealed in the Old Testament in a polytheistic age, you would not have overcome this polytheism. And so maybe there's a reason why God did not reveal in an explicit way in the Old Testament the way He does in the New Testament. De Koninck made a similar remark.

[1:48] You know how he spoke of the Marian century, starting with the Immaculate Conception, there, ending up with the Assumption, so on. But there's a reason, maybe, why those great mysteries of Mary were being defined more explicitly long after the mysteries about Christ had been defined, because Mary is so elevated. You might think she's another goddess or something, right? And but when the other mysteries have sunk in and they're well established and so on, then you can bring out the greatness of Mary without that same danger.

[2:24] And De Koninck thought that maybe mysteries about Saint Joseph would come out now that the mysteries of Mary were kind of been clarified, right? And I remember as I grew up as a child there, like in my home parish nativity, you had the main part there with the central altar, then you had the side altar for the Blessed Virgin, and then the side altar for Joseph. And that seemed to be like in most of the churches in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

[2:55] I kind of thought, well, yeah, every church has got a side altar to Mary and one to Joseph. But you see the Prominence of Joseph, and maybe it was time, you know, after the great mysteries of Mary have been brought out, that Joseph, you know, who I have his mysteries brought out, but we'll see.

[3:18] So, to the fourth article, to the fourth one goes forward. Thus, it seems that the notional acts, like to generate, to breathe, and so on, are understood before the what properties of relations.

[3:40] Now, Thomas, you'll see in the body of the article, will make some distinctions, right? Very subtle, but we'll see them. For the magister, the teacher, right? That's the.

[3:57] Yeah, Thomas is known as the magister, that's quite a title, huh? Even though, in another sense, Christ is the magister, but but you find this very often. And for what centuries? Several centuries, there, right? The sense of Peter Lombard was something that everybody who was going to get a doctorate, so we say in theology, would comment on, right? And Thomas says the wrong thing in the sentences, huh?

[4:27] Which he was thinking of revising when he decided to write the Summa, right? He was never made a doctor of the church, and that's interesting. He's not even a saint, is he? No, no, no. Guess he was bishop of Paris, though, Contaim.

[4:46] So the magister, the teacher, says he is always the father because he what always generated the son. So this is saying your understanding is being the father, is subsequent to his what? Yeah, he's understood to have generated the son, and that's why he's the father, right? And thus it seems that generation, according to the understanding or our understanding, goes before fatherhood, right? Now, especially in regard to the father, he's going to make this distinction, huh?

[5:23] Or use a distinction as he says. Moreover, every relation presupposes, in its understanding, that upon which it is founded, right? Now, Aristotle, in the fifth book of Wisdom, said that some relations are based upon quantity, yeah, or the one, and some are based upon acting upon and undergoing, right? And so, the objection gives an example here, as equality is what presupposes some quantity. But fatherhood is one of the other kind of relations that is based upon action and undergoing.

[6:07] But fatherhood is relation founded upon the action which is generation. Therefore, fatherhood presupposes what generation. And Thomas is going to say in the reply, right, that if you consider in the in fatherhood or father just the relation, not the fact that it's constituting a person, but just that it is a relation, then it's posterior in understanding to the act, right? But if you consider it as constituting a person, right, well then you understand that person as being before he does something.

[6:52] In the case of the son, it would be somewhat different, as you'll point out in the reply to the third objection. Moreover, just as act of generation has itself to fatherhood, so birth to sonhood. But sonhood or sonship presupposes birth,

[7:15] for he is the son because he was born. Therefore, for like reason, fatherhood presupposes what generation. That seems to be quite similar those two what ratios, huh? But ratios are likenesses that are what far apart, right? Exercise the mind, seeing them. You've got to see exactly in what way these what are alike, yeah, yeah. In the case of generation and being generated or being born, in one way they are alike in that they're both relations, which as relations are understood as based upon the fact that you generated or we're generated by another.

[8:09] But if you see these relations as constituting persons, that'd be a big difference, because you have to understand the relation of fatherhood as constituting the person of the father as before he doing something, right? But the son, even that way, you can understand as a result of what the father has done, and therefore it can be understood as being before the son, right? Because birth is the way to the one who is born, right?

[8:42] Or being generated is on the way to the one being generated. But generation proceeds from the one generated. so it's going to presuppose in that way the father, right, as a person.

[9:00] But against this is the generation, is the operation of the person of the Father. But fatherhood constitutes the person of the Father, right? Therefore, it's before in understanding fatherhood, then what generation? Well, Thomas will see a distinction and use a distinction, right? You see a distinction between the relation being considered simply as relation, and then the relation being considered as constituting this person who is the Father.

[9:38] And one case will be what understood after generation, and another before. That's very subtle, right? Maybe Shakespeare says we should look before and after, right? And this is a question of before and after. And you say, well, if the Father Is before generation. That's it. Generation can't be before the father. But it's possible for the father to be before generation. In one way of understanding the father, as a constituted person, right.

[10:19] Another way understood simply as relation to be after generation and to be based upon generation. Do you see that? It's very subtle, right? Okay. As you know from your great study of the categories, huh? Even there, Aristotle distinguished four central meanings of what. Before. It's possible for A to be before B in one sense and B after B in another sense, huh?

[10:52] Like we studied philosophy before what theology. But theology is before philosophy and dignity or worth, huh? So nothing prevents philosophy being before theology, in the order of learning. And in the order of goodness or excellence, theology being before philosophy. Right. Okay. So Thomas is playing on a very subtle thing. In one way, we understand the father's fatherhood through the fact that he generates, right? Through generating. Just like some relations are based upon what acting and doing, others upon quantity, and this upon some action or doing.

[11:38] But another way we understand the father as before generation, if we see fatherhood as constituting a person, where the person is understood to be before he does something. What did Descartes say? I think, therefore, I am. Well, no, thinking is coming before in knowing, before knowing that I am, right? But in things that I am should be understood. I have to be before I can do something, right?

[12:05] I can't do something before I am, you know. No. Okay. Now Thomas says, I answer. It should be said that according to those who say that the properties, the relations, do not distinguish and constitute the hypostases, the persons, but they merely make known the hypostases, the persons, as distinct and constituted. It should be said absolutely that the relations, according to the way of understanding, follow upon the notional acts.

[12:43] Because then they're just going to be considered as relations, huh? That these persons already constituted and distinguished have, huh? Just as my person is more fundamental than what my being a father or a teacher or something like that, sorry. So that it could be said simply without any distinction that because he generates, he is the Father, and then that he generates is what, in our way of understanding, before his being Father.

[13:16] But supposing what we've shown before that the relations both distinguish and constitute the hypostases, He's talking like a Greek, here, huh? They both distinguish and constitute the persons in God, right? Is necessary to what? Use a distinction. I kind of like the fact that this guy starts by using the word "use," right? I'm always kind of hesitant to say I'm going to make a distinction because it seems like I'm kind of inventing a distinction to get out of some kind of a difficulty or something, right?

[13:55] I much rather say that you see a distinction, right? Rather than that you what? Make one, right? Not that the other can't be in some way defended the way of speaking, but it's not as good as to say I see a distinction. And the distinction you see, in which Thomas, in this case, sees, he's now going to use. Okay, what's the distinction that he sees?

[14:27] Well, we'll see as we go on here, huh? But we've already touched upon it, right? But supposing what we've shown before that the relations distinguish and constitute the hypostases, the persons, it is necessary to use a distinction which I have seen. Thomas has seen.

[14:53] Because origin is signified in God actively and what? Passively. Actively, as generation is attributed to the Father, and breathing, if we take this for a notional act, is attributed to both the Father and the Son. But passively, as Thomas will point out later on, I think the next question, this passive is secundum grammar only, right? Passively, as birth or nativity is attributed to the Son, for want of a better word, right?

[15:36] Procession to the what? Holy Spirit, huh? Or being breathed, huh? Now, Thomas sees a number of distinctions here. The first is between those origins that are signified passively and those that are signified actively. And then those that are signified actively is going to see an even more subtle distinction that we've talked about.

[16:02] He says origin signified passively, simply, right? Come before, according to our understanding, they come before the what? Properties of the persons proceeding from them, even the what? Personal ones, the ones that constitute those persons. Why? He gives a reason here. Because origin passively signifies, signifies as the road, the way to the person constituted by that property.

[16:42] So being born is what? Signifies as the coming to be, right? The one being born, being breathed, right? Likewise. Likewise, origin actively signifies is before, according to the understanding, then the relation of the person originating something, which is not personal. Remember how we spoke before of how fatherhood constitutes the father, right? Breathing doesn't constitute the father, right? Sonship constitutes the son, right? So if you take breathing, he's going to make the same point as he made before.

[17:31] For the notional act of breathing, according to our understanding, precedes a relative property that doesn't really have a name, right? Which is common to the father and the what? Son, right? But now the most subtle distinction that he sees and uses. Correct myself, huh?

[17:58] But the personal property of the father can be considered in two what ways? In one way, simply as a what relation? And thus, again, according to the understanding, it presupposes a what? Notional act.

[18:21] This is what Aristotle had taught already, right? The relations are based upon quantity or upon action and passion. Because relation, as such, in quantum ad aliud, relation as relation is founded upon act. But if we consider it in another way, according as it constitutes a person, is constitutive of a person, he says. And thus is necessary that it be understood before. The relation to be understood before the actual, notional act, just as the person acting is presupposed or understood before the action.

[19:09] The being of one, of someone, right, is understood as before they're doing something. So, do you see the distinctions? If you see them, you can use them and avoid these problems, huh? Can you draw out that as one again? He said we can consider fatherhood, right? Simply as relation, right? Now, relation as a relation—that's all you're considering about, right? Is always based either upon quantity or upon acting upon and undergoing, right?

[19:58] Action and passion. And in the case of God, it's not based upon quantity, right? But based upon action, right? So then, the relation of fatherhood is understood as fouling upon the act of what generation.

[20:19] In the same way, you say that I am a father because I generated somebody, right? Okay. So if you consider, it's just as relation, period. But now, if you stop and say, "Yeah, but this relation constitutes the person of the father, right? "

[20:42] And then, if you see it in that way, you consider in that way as constituting a person. Well, this person is presupposed to what he does.

[21:00] Yeah. He didn't generate. Yeah. He wouldn't be father. Yeah, yeah. But but this is an action of a person, right? And considered it. until he does that. I know, I know, I know, I know. But but then that's going back and saying that the relation is what's most fundamental, right?

[21:23] And if you stop there and just consider the relation as a relation, what you say is correct, right? But if you go beyond that and say, "But this relation, right,

[21:37] constitutes right a person, right? " Then you say, "Well, which is more fundamental? " understanding that something is right, or that it does something, right? But then that is more fundamental, right?

[21:59] So the father has to be before he can do something, right? Because what he does is understood as proceeding from him as a person, right? Now this is not the same with the son, because the son is understood as what proceeding from or resulting from this act of generation of the father, right? Yeah. So it's very subtle, Thomas is saying there.

[22:36] Now, in referring then back to the words of the magister, right, the teacher Peter, to the first, therefore it should be said that when the magister says that because he generates, he is the father, right?

[22:54] He says he takes the name of father according as it designates a relation. What only. Not over according as it signifies a subsisting what person,

[23:09] because in that way it would be necessary to say the reverse that because he the father is he what generates. Otherwise you'd have him what doing something before he's understood to be.

[23:25] Does that make sense? So Thomas says you have to see and use this distinction. Now the second thing was arguing from the yeah second objection again is saying that every relation presupposes understanding that upon which it's founded right. Thomas says okay yeah if you consider this relation as a relation then it's posterior. So he says that objection proceeds about fatherhood considered simply as a what relation and not according as it is constitutive of a what person.

[24:25] Now the third says do we have to have the son existing before? Okay. To the third therefore it should be said and this is playing on our difference now right.

[24:41] And then notice how the injection proceeds, going by a what proportion right. You know my simple example for math right. Four is to six as two is to three. And then I come back and say well that's true isn't it. Now two is to three is the ratio of a what prime number to a prime number. Therefore or the ratio of a what even number to an odd number.

[25:09] Therefore four to six is the ratio of a even number to an odd number. Why have I made a mistake here? Yeah Plato says likeness is a slippery thing right. And I misunderstood or I haven't understood fully in what way four and six are like two and three. They're not like two and three in being the ratio of a odd even number to an odd number right.

[25:38] They're not like two and three like being the ratio of a prime number to a prime number right. Two and three are prime numbers two and three are one's odd one's even right. But that's not what the likeness is based on is it. What way is four to six then like two to three.

[26:02] Yeah, you could say that four is the same parts of six that two is the three, right? If you have a hard time seeing that, think of four as being two twos and six as being three twos, right? So four is two of the three twos and six, right? So it's the same parts of six that two is the three. That's exactly the way which they are like.

[26:29] But I misunderstood it when I exaggerated. So Thomas here now points out a difference. I'm pointing out a difference between two and three and four and six, right? That the passive nativity is the road to the person of the Son, right? It's not understood as proceeding from the Son, right? While generating or giving birth is understood as proceeding from the Father, right?

[27:04] And so, since nativity or birth is the road to the person of the Son, therefore, according to understanding, it precedes the Father, even the Son rather, even as it is what constitutive of the person of the Son. But the act of generation is signified as going forth from the person of the Father, and therefore it presupposes the personal property of the Father as constituting the Father, right?

[27:36] So Thomas sees a difference there, right? I mentioned how you know now, first thinking about the four tools of dialectic, and Aristotle gives the tool of difference before the tool of likeness. And so I said to Monsignor Dion, you know, maybe he does that, right? Because to see the likeness without seeing the difference is going to be a cause of what? Yeah, and even deception, right? He seemed to sort of agree with that, right?

[28:15] Now we go on to the third comparison. We compared the person. To what? To relations. This one we just read, and the first one was to the what? Very substance, right? Okay. Now it remains to compare it to the what? Notional acts. So is the father and generation really two different things?

[28:52] Yeah, probably have the father generation. You have, you know, birth and the son. You have four things there, right? You have four different things.

[29:03] But the way of signifying is quite different, right? Does father signifies as a relation, and generation as an act, right? And we have to do that because we understand God from creatures, right? And we have to understand relation somehow is based upon quantity or based upon actions, yeah. So let's look at the proemium here first. Then we ought to consider about persons in comparison to notional acts.

[29:38] And about this, six things are asked, right? First is whether notional acts should be attributed to the persons. Secondly, whether these acts are necessary or what? Voluntarily, right? Does the father choose to generate the son? And the father and the son choose to breathe the Holy Spirit, or is it something that necessarily takes place?

[30:12] Third, whether according to these acts, the person proceeds from nothing or from what? Something. Is it like creation? Does the father create the son, so that he proceeds from nothing, or from something?

[30:31] The fourth question: Whether in God, one should lay down that there is a power with respect to the notional acts. So not only generation, but the ability to generate, right? The power to generate, and is there in the father and the son an ability to breathe the Holy Spirit, right? That they not only breathe the Holy Spirit, but they have this ability, this power to do so.

[30:59] Potency Yeah. Potency. And of course Thompson's going to answer yes, but then that gives rise to the fifth question: If that's so, what does ability or power signify there, right?

[31:18] This comes up again—the very great question, there Disputed questions, De potentia, right? Okay. You talk about its omnipotence and so, and then you talk about these power generating and power breathing and so on.

[31:37] And sixth question is whether a notional act, a notional act can terminate at what? Many persons. So he had three questions about the what?

[31:58] Notional acts and two about the powers, right? And then one here about the notional act, the limit of it can be more than one person.

[32:11] So the first one proceeds thus: It seems that notional acts should not be attributed to persons. For the great Boethius says in the book about the Trinity that all the genera, right,

[32:31] when one turns them over to what predication in God, are changed into what divine substance except for the what relativity. But action is one of the ten genera. If therefore action is some action attributed to God, it pertains to his essence and not to his notion which is in relation. Moreover, Augustine says in the fifth book of the Trinity that everything that is said of God is either said according to his substance or according to relation.

[33:15] That's almost the same thing that Boethius is saying, right? But Boethius is following Augustine, right? Just like Thomas is following Augustine. But those things which belong to the substance of God are signified by the central attributes. Those things which um pertain to relation through the names of the persons and through the names of their properties or relations. That doesn't leave any room then for these notional acts.

[33:50] They should not therefore, apart from these, to be attributed to persons. Notional acts. Moreover, it is proper to action that it infer from itself a passion, right? Okay. The two categories in Aristotle, they're called poin and paschein right? Actio and passio, Latin, but in English you call acting upon and what undergoing. Well, there's no undergoing in God, right? That's something, something passive, right? And God is pure act.

[34:30] Therefore, neither should notional acts be what. But in God, there's no passions, right? Therefore, neither should notional acts be placed there, right? That's what Thomas is going to say secundum grammaticam. But against this is what Augustine says in the book on Faith to Peter. It is property of the Father, or property of the Father, that He generates a what son. But generation is a certain act. Therefore, notional acts ought to be placed in God, contrary to all these objections, right?

[35:23] So Thomas answers very briefly now. Notice the body of the article is very small, and the reply to the objections are comparatively long, especially the first two.

[35:38] Answer: It should be said that in divine persons there is to be noted a distinction according to what origin. But origin cannot be designated suitably except through some kind of what act. To designating, therefore, the order of origin in divine persons, it was necessary to attribute to the persons notional acts.

[36:09] As you said that the Father generated the Son, you wouldn't see how the Son is proceeding from the what Father, unless you attribute to the Father the Son breathing the Holy Spirit, right? You wouldn't see the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and the Son, right? So you've got to have notional acts, Thomas says. strange as it may seem, right?

[36:38] Now, let's go back to the first objection there, right? Quoting from Boethius, right? Boethius is going to admit two. Yeah. To the first, therefore, it should be said that every origin is designated by some act. But a twofold order of origin can be what attributed to God.

[37:15] One, according as the creature goes forward from him, and this is common to the three what persons, and therefore the actions which are attributed to God to designate the going forward of creatures from him pertain to the what essence.

[37:41] There is another order of origin in God, according as one person goes forward from what another, according to the going forward of a person from a person.

[37:55] Whence the acts designating the order of this origin are called what? Notional, because the notions of the persons are the habitudines and the relations of those persons to each other, as has been said. So in a way, he's admitting the distinction between the substance and relation, right? And then he talks about the fact of that we speak of two kinds of origin in regard to God, right? One is the origin of creatures from God, and the other is the origin of one person from another person.

[38:32] And the origin of what creatures from God are going to be the acts that designate that, right? Like creating, we are going to belong to the essential. But the origin of one person from another is going to be tied up with the what relations of one person to the other, and therefore the acts designating those origins will pertain to the relations, right? So in a way, he's admitting the distinction that Boethius made, right?

[39:04] That anything said in God has to pertain either to the essence of God or to the relations in some way. But origin in God can only be understood or expressed through some kind of act, right? And then he sees a distinction. He sees a distinction between the proceeding of creatures from God and the proceeding. of creatures. Yeah. Incidentally, that kind of follows the the order of the magister, right, in the sentences, right?

[39:39] Because he deals in the first book with the proceeding of one person from another, right? And then after that he goes on to the proceeding of the creature from God, right? From one proceeding to the other proceeding, right? Kind of a nice way of putting things together, right? And then the last two books he deals with the coming back of things to God, right?

[40:07] Now the second objection. again he quoted something similar from Augustine, right? That's the where Thomas gets into the very subtleties of this matter. Because is fatherhood and generation really two different things?

[40:35] See, they're not synonyms exactly, are they? Thomas begins by saying he applies to the second objection that he's following Augustine, right? That the notional acts secundum modum significandi, according to the way of signifying, only differ from what the relations of the persons. But in things, reality they are altogether what the same.

[41:09] Whence even the magister, the teacher, says in the first book of the Sentences, distinction twenty-six, that generation and birth by other names are called what? Yeah. When you say by other names, though, you mean simply by synonyms. No,

[41:33] they don't signify exactly the same way. Not synonyms, right? But they signify the same what thing. Okay. Now, Thomas says to the evidence of this is not too strange, yeah. It should be noted that we are first able to what guess the origin of something from another from what motion.

[42:08] For that something is removed from its disposition through motion, is manifest that this happened from some what cause. And therefore, action, according to the first placing upon of the name, implies the origin of what

[42:33] Just as motion, insofar as it's in the movable thing from another, is called what passion undergoing, so the origin of that motion, according as it begins from another, and ends in that which is moved, is called action or acting upon.

[42:57] When one removes therefore motion from this understanding, action implies nothing other than the origin, the order of origin, according as from some cause or beginning, because beginning is more general than cause, there goes forward that which is from a beginning. Whence, since in God there is no motion, the action of the what personal action, the one producing a person, is nothing other than the relation of that beginning to the person which is from the beginning.

[43:41] Which relations? habitudo is kind of a rather word for relation are the relations themselves, or what we call the notions. Okay. Now, why is this whole way of speaking then right? See, but Thomas is not going to give the reason for that. Because, however, about divine and understandable things, we are not able to speak except according to the way of what sensible things. This what Aristotle taught in the third book about the soul, right?

[44:18] That the proper object of our reason is the what it is of something that can be sensed or imagined. And so, something that cannot be sensed or imagined, we either cannot understand and talk about, or we have to understand talk about it through. The way we understand those things that can be sensed or imagined. So he says, because about divine and understandable things we're not able to speak, except according to the way of sensible things, from which we receive knowledge.

[44:49] That's why he had the concrete and the abstract, right? That's why we have to speak about what God and the divine nature, right? Deus and divinitas, right? And we speak of Deus as habens divinitatem or something, right? God is having the divine nature, right? Even though God and what He has are the same thing, right? But we can't avoid that way of speaking, right? Derived from material things, where form and the thing that has the form are really what distinct, right?

[45:24] The hair and the hat. Father and fatherhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he says, because about divine and understandable things we're not able to speak, except according to the way of sensible things, from which we get our knowledge. In which actions and passions, in so far as they what imply motion, are other from the relations which follow upon those actions and passions, is necessary for us to consider separately, right?

[46:05] The relations of persons through the what manner of act, and apart from that, to the manner of what relations. So we have to understand something that is one and simple in God through two thoughts, right? One of which helps us understand why the other is there.

[46:33] Because you can't understand relations in God except according to the way that relations are in what creatures, right? So in creatures, there is a real what distinction between my generating my son and my being a father, right? And my being a father falls upon my generating my son, right? Now in God, the generating and the fatherhood are the same thing, right? So we're understanding one thing by two thoughts, right?

[47:10] Is that false? No, because the way things are and the way they're understood don't have to be the same for truth. Falsehood comes in if you say that because they have two thoughts that correspond to something in God, therefore in God there's two things, right? Really distinct, right? That's where the mistake comes in, huh? You have to admire Aristotle, right, as seeing that truth does not require that the way we understand be the way things are, right?

[47:48] In fact, in a way, truth requires that we don't confuse the two, right? Which Plato did, right? Hegel did, and you know the the the rationalists in modern times, especially you know like Spinoza, right? Descartes kind of starts it, but then it becomes full blown in Spinoza. Spinoza says that the order in our thoughts and the order in things is the same.

[48:22] Aristotle says, "Know that for the most part."The order in things and the order in our thought are the reverse. So, for example, we tend to know the effect before the cause, and so every time we ask the question "why," whether we can answer or not, that's a sign that we know the effect before the cause. So, in our knowledge, the effect is before the cause, but in things, the cause is before the what effect?

[48:57] You know, you take water and hydrogen and oxygen, and you take the proton. Right? Proton comes the Greek word for first. But of these three things, water, hydrogen, and proton, which is first in our knowledge? Yeah, it's second in our knowledge. Hydrogen, yeah, and proton is third, right, in our knowledge. But in things, proton is first, and hydrogen is second. So, in a sense, we're just backwards from just the reverse, and that's why the great Sherlock Holmes says to what Watson, "We're going to have to reason backwards."

[49:41] Watson says, "What do you mean?" From the effect back to the cause, he says. So, our mind is is naturally what backward. I was going to say the reason is reason backwards. That's just like identity there. Yeah. yeah. yeah.

[50:02] In theology, we're imitating God's way of knowing a bit, because this is revealed theology, right? So it's a result of God revealing, in a sense, his knowledge, right? Well, God knows all other things by knowing himself. So we kind of imitate that in theology we consider God before what reaches us. But as Thomas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the order then in theology is just the reverse in philosophy.

[50:40] In theology, God is the first thing to be considered, but in philosophy, he's the last thing to be considered. That's why I always thought Jesson was off the track here and he's writing an introduction to philosophy, and he's following the order of the Summa Contra Gentiles. So he's following the order of theology as introduction to philosophy, when Thomas himself says that the order is simply what the reverse.

[51:21] Okay. So we're forced, in a sense, to what. Understand one thing by two thoughts, right? And you know, take something you know a little more maybe known to us. But when we talked about God's substance and so on, and about his operations before we got to Trinity, we talked about God understands and he what? Wills, right? Now, are these two different things in God? His understanding and his will.

[51:58] Why do we have these two thoughts then about God? Because he understands all distinctly. Yeah, and because our understanding and our willing are not the same thing, right? And we have to, in a sense, use these two thoughts in talking about God, right? And we even try to understand why God has a will. You might say because he has an understanding.

[52:26] And so we have two thoughts, and one is kind of the reason for the other, right? But it's because we're understanding God through his effects, and what's simple and one in God is composed and multiple in creatures.

[52:47] Thomas, you know, quotes there. Was it the prophet? Not Zachary. What's the other one? He says, you know, in that day there will be one name. Thomas, that's that's when you see God as He is, right? When you have one name for Him. But so long as you know God from creatures, you don't know God as He is. You're going to have many thoughts about God. God is only one thought about himself.

[53:20] I got many thoughts about God. You know, amount to anything compared to his one thought. So going back again, because about divine and understandable things we are not able to speak except according to the way of sensible things, from which we take our knowledge. And in which actions and passions, in so far as they imply motion, are other from the relations which follow upon the actions and the passions.

[53:54] It is necessary to signify these separately. The relations of the persons through what the manner of an act, and a part through the manner of a what relation.

[54:10] And thus it is clear that they are the same in things in reality, but they differ only according to the way of what signifying.

[54:24] Now the third objection was saying he can't have passion in God, can't be passive. To the third, therefore, it should be said that action, according as it implies the origin of motion, infers from itself passion, right? But not in this way is action said to be placed in God.

[54:48] There is no motion there. Whence are not placed their passions, except what speaking grammatically, as regards the way of signifying, just as to the Father we attribute to generate, and to the Son to be generated.

[55:06] Now that's not simply a a distinction made out of the problem. You can see that distinction elsewhere, right? If I say, for example, I see this glass, right? Well, grammatically speaking, that's active, seeing the glass, and the glass is what is seen. So the glass is being acted upon by my seeing, right?

[55:38] You wouldn't say, would you? No. If anything, the glass is acting upon my eyes, right? That glare of the glass there is. You see. So,

[55:52] but being seen, grammatically speaking, is passive, right? Except the way is in reality. No. And in this case, there is a real acting upon, but it's reversed. The object is acting upon the senses. Sensing, as Aristotle says, is an undergoing, right? Okay. So you don't want to confuse the grammatical with the what? The real.

[56:22] And there is a kind of fallacy there, in the fallacies from language in the Sophistical Refutations But what are those? Would be to take the grammatical form and conclude something about reality from the grammatical form without realizing that that is source of deception.

[56:49] Okay. So should we take a break or? Break. For quantum.