Prima Pars
142. Summa I q.41 a.6: Why There Is Only One Son and One Holy Spirit (Material vs. Formal Distinction, Simply vs. Not Simply)
Class of 2008-06-05
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/142-summa-i-q-41-a-6-why-there-is-only-one-son-and-one-holy-spirit/

[0:00] The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our Light and Light, 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. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you've written. Father and the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:26] So I guess we're up to the sixth article there in question forty-one. To the sixth, one goes forward. Thus, it seems that a notional act can terminate at many persons. Thus, that there would be many what persons generated, huh? And breathed in God, huh? To

[0:59] whomever there is found the power of generating, he is able to generate. But in the son, there's the power of generating. I guess because the son would not have as much power as the Father, right? There he can generate, but he can't generate himself. Therefore, another Son. Therefore, there could be many what sons in God, or grandson, huh?

[1:30] Or just we human beings can have grandsons, and not God. Moreover, Augustine says against Maximinus that the Son did not what generate the Creator, not that he was not able, but that it was not suitable, not not to do so. He seems to say he's got the power, right?

[1:57] I don't know, but Augustine's words there sometimes. Moreover, God the Father is more powerful to generate than a created Father. But one man can generate many sons. I have two sons. Therefore, God, especially since the power of God, having generated the Son, is not diminished. Huh? He's not exhausted, you know, by by this.

[2:32] But against all this is that in God to be and able to be don't differ. If therefore in God there could be many sons, there would be many sons, and thus there would be more persons than three in God, which is what. Heretical?

[2:55] Answer. It should be said, as Athanasius says, and that's in the famous Athanasian Creed, which may go back in some way to Athanasius, but has that name anyway.

[3:11] If I remember rightly, that's the creed that has the divinity and then the humanity that division, rather than according to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[3:24] But Thomas often refers to it, and it's a pretty authoritative creed. It's one of the four or five main creeds. In God, there is only one Father, one Son, and one what? Holy Spirit.

[3:46] Now Thomas is going to give four reasons why this is so. Any one of them would be enough, maybe, but Thomas is going to be what? Very strong. First, on the side of the what relations themselves, by which alone the persons are what distinguished them. For as we've seen before, the divine persons are these relations subsisting.

[4:24] In essence, the divine persons are these subsisting relations. There cannot be many fathers or many sons in God, unless there are many fatherhoods and many what relations, which cannot be except according to a what? Material distinction of things. For forms of one kind cannot be multiplied except according to what? Matter, which in God is not. Whence in God there cannot be except one only one subsisting sonship, just as whiteness subsisting could not be except what?

[5:11] One. So let's go back to the point we've seen before here in the course. I think. Why is it possible to have many chairs in this room exactly of the same kind?

[5:31] Yeah. The simplest answer is you have enough what? Why do you have many window panes? They're exactly the same kind, and so on, because you have enough what? So it's matter is subject to quantity that enables you to have many individuals of the same what kind? And that's true even in a way in mathematics, right? Because you keep the idea of the continuous, right? So, how are the two endpoints,

[6:08] either end of the line? How are they two and not one? Because they're exactly the same thing, aren't they? But because one's here and one's what, there.

[6:20] So, matter is subject to quantity, to extension, right? Is what enables you to have many individuals of the same kind. And because there's no matter in the angels, for example, Thomas will argue that no two angels are the same what, kind, okay?

[6:44] And same thing is going to be true for God. So, can there be two fatherhoods in God? No. Can there be two sonships? No, because then there'd be a material what distinction. There's only formal distinction in God. Okay. Now we've seen this distinction before, but distinction of distinction, right? Okay.

[7:12] Puzzling, right? There's a distinction of distinction, just like there is a definition of what. Definition. Definition. And this reflects part of the nature of our reason. That reason can know itself. That's why Thomas says there can be an art of logic, though, because reason can think about its own act, and not just about what the hands do. You know, you're making a chair or something, but they can think about thinking itself, right?

[7:41] Okay. And that's kind of reflected in the fact that there can be statements about statements, and there can be definitions of definition, and even distinctions of distinction, right? So Thomas sometimes, when he's talking about this, and we've seen this before, he'll see this distinction between a material distinction and then what he calls a formal distinction. This material distinction is due ultimately to matter as subject to what quantity, okay?

[8:24] Matter is subject to quantity and to continuous quantity, right? Which is extension. So one differs from another because it's here and the other's there. First theorem in Euclid says what? On a straight line to construct an equilateral triangle. What he does is to draw this circle and then he draws this circle, right? And draws the line to the thing. Why do you have two circles there, right?

[8:56] Well, one's here, one's there, right? Okay. But formal distinction is by what? It's not by here and there, right? Well, more general by opposites, huh? Okay. Formal distinction is by opposites.

[9:25] And then Aristotle in the categories before he takes up before and after, who talks about there being four kinds of opposites, contradictories, right? And having and lacking, and then contraries, and then relatives, huh? And he does that same. He teaches the same fourfold distinction of opposites in the fifth book of Wisdom. You may remember Thomas. recalling. this Right, if the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, for that matter, are really distinct in God, right, it's got to be either by a material distinction or a what?

[10:13] Formal distinction. But it can't be by material distinction, right? Because there's no matter in God, or quantity. It'll come up again when it comes to equality. whereas I mean in God, right? And then it's got to be by formal distinction, and then he'll go through the four kinds of opposites, right? He says, well, it can't be by contradictory opposites, because that's the opposition between being and non-being.

[10:42] But God is I am what? Who am right? So one person can't differ from the other by not being. He wouldn't be God. He wouldn't be I, right? And likewise, he can't be by having and lack, right? Because lack is a kind of non-being, non-being in a subject, right? It can't even be by contraries, because as we learn in the first book of Natural Hearing and in the tenth book of Wisdom, one contrary is kind of lacking with respect to the other, like love and hate, right?

[11:16] Well, hate seems to be missing something, or hot and cold, right? And so on, or white and black, right? One contrary has got a little bit of lack in it. So the only kind of distinction that can be in God by opposites would be by what? Relatives, right? And of course, you can subdivide those too, right? It can't be by relatives based on quantity. It's got to be relatives based upon what?

[11:46] Some kind of activity, right? And then goes into the idea of origin, right? So again, it comes back here, right? The distinction between God the Father and God the Son is by these relations of fatherhood and sonship, right? And so it can't be a material distinction. So it's only a formal distinction. But there can't be two sonships, right? Because then you'd be back into a material distinction, right?

[12:20] So now you have to distinguish the distinction. So that's his first argument, huh? Now, as you know, these what? Relations are based upon the origin of one person from another, right? On the way that one person proceeds from the other, right? And it's got to be a proceeding that remains within God, right? Well, that can only be understanding and what? Willing, right? God's understanding or knowing Himself.

[13:03] In God's loving Himself, as we saw in the treatise on the activity of God, there is only one act of understanding in God, only one loving in God, right? So it can only be one person proceeding by way of understanding, namely the Word, and one proceeding by way of love, namely the Holy Spirit.

[13:29] See, says second from the way of processions, for God understands all things and wills all things by one simple what act, whence there is not able to be except one person going forth in the manner of a thought or word, right, which is the Son, and one going forward by the way of love, which is the what Holy Spirit.

[14:06] See, I have two thoughts in my head, in fact more than two thoughts. But then, what is there one thinking in mind? I can think of what a triangle is, and I can think of what a square is, right? When I think of a triangle, I'm not thinking of a square, and vice versa. So I can have two thoughts because I have more than one thinking. But if I had only one thinking, how many thoughts would I have?

[14:37] One thought, right? See, you're at disadvantage, disadvantageous for me. But in God, He has one thinking, right? Where He thinks of Himself, and thinking of Himself, He thinks of all other things, even of us, right? So there can be only one thought in God. The same thing for His love, right? By loving Himself, He loves whatever else He loves, right? And so it's by one simple act He loves Himself.

[15:12] Aristotle already said so. So that's the second good reason, right, for saying that you can't give, you can't say more than one word in God, you can't breathe more than one what Spirit.

[15:39] The third reason is taken from the way of going forward, because the persons, as we saw before, they go forward what naturally, as has been said before, right? God the Father didn't say, "I choose to have a Son today." And the father and son say, chose to have a Holy Spirit? No. The son proceeds naturally from the father, right? And we talked last time about the distinction even in us between reason as a what, nature, reason as reason, right?

[16:20] We talked about even Shakespeare saw this, right? Nature not being able to be more than what, one thing, he says in Coriolanus. Okay. Because the persons proceed naturally, but nature is determined to what, just one.

[16:42] And the fourth reason he gives is from the what, perfection of the divine persons. For from this he is a perfect son, that the whole sonhood of God, right, or the whole divine sonship, is contained in him, right?

[17:05] And that there is only one what such son, and similarly for the other persons. Perfect is that which is what, lacking nothing, right? So there's nothing more,

[17:24] right? He is the whole perfection of. So how would another son differ from him, right? He wouldn't be different at all. Reminds me a little bit of the argument they give sometimes, you know, that there can't be more than one God, right? Because God is everything.

[17:42] And if there's another God, he'd have to be lacking in something, and then he wouldn't be God, right? There can't be two, two ones and have everything.

[17:54] So it can't be two sons if one son has everything that pertains to the son. Gets why he's loved so much by the Father, right? Likewise for the Holy Spirit.

[18:17] Okay, to the first objection, right? First objection, I suppose, is based on the idea that the Father can't be more powerful than the Son. Kidding. So therefore, if the Father has the power to generate a son, then the son must have that same power that the Father has, right? So why can't he generate?

[18:44] To the first, therefore, it should be said that although simply it should be conceded that the power which the Father has, the Son also has.

[18:58] Nevertheless, it ought not to be conceded that the Son has the power power of what generating. If generating is a gerundive of the what active verb, right? Because that brings the relation of the Father to the what Son, right?

[19:26] So, what the sense would be that the Son has the power to generate? For just as there is the same being of the Father and the Son, nevertheless, it does not belong to Son to be the Father on account of the what notion joined to the Father, right?

[19:49] If, however, this word generandi, the generandi is a gerundive of the passive word, the power of generating is in the Son. That is, he's what able to be generated, right? So the ability of the father to generate the son, and the ability of the son to be generated, they're the same what ability, but distinguished, right, by the one being in the father, and the other being in the what son.

[20:25] So the son has the same ability the father has, but the father has this ability to generate, and the son has this ability to be generated. Kind of a subtle thing, right? You can see how much trouble that would have given people, though, right? This particular thing.

[20:53] And likewise, he says, if the gerundive, I use the impersonal verb, that the sense would be the power of generating, right? That is by which, from some person, someone is generated, right?

[21:14] So we call it the the same ability, even though one's active, the one's passive. Yeah, but yet it's that distinction is kind of active and passive. There is kind of grammatical distinction, right? Because you don't really strictly speaking have a passive ability in God, right?

[21:38] Just like if you said, you know, God is what able to know, and God is able to be known, right? Was able to be known a passive ability

[21:54] actualized by the ability to know grammatically. Able to know is is active, right? And able to be known is what passive because there really an undergoing there in God. No, so Thomas had said he said earlier it's something like that that this is grammatically it's passing, right?

[22:24] God the Father generates the son is able to be generated. Yeah. Isn't there though? In other words, the father is doing an activity, the son is just is receiving. Yeah, but that's strictly speaking what Aristotle would call acting upon undergoing, right? Because the son is a pure act as well as the father, right? Yeah. So though we use the active and passive verbs here, right? It doesn't correspond to act and passive ability in God, right?

[23:04] So is that just because it's our way of explaining it to make sense of it for ourselves, but really, maybe we have to describe it in some way? Yeah, yeah. There was like limitations of limitations of language. Yeah, yeah. But it's the same ability the father has that the son has, right? Yes. But it's in the father with his relation. Yeah. And therefore, it's called in the father the ability to generate, and in the son, it's with his relation, right?

[23:31] So in the son, it's the ability to be what generated, right? You see, that's a difficult thing. I think. Because it wouldn't be right to say that he's acted upon, because that would preclude his existence, and then he gets acted. Yeah, yeah. Or as a passive ability, right? like god is pure act. and i mentioned before how, in the ninth book of wisdom, Aristotle in the first two parts he talks about ability and act and the distinction of them, right, and the various kinds of ability, various kinds of act, and then the third part he talks about what the order of act and ability, right?

[24:21] How act is before ability in definition, right? How act is before ability in our knowledge, right? How act is better than ability, right? But then he gets to which is before in time, he sees a distinction. He says in the thing that goes from ability to act,

[24:44] ability is before act in time. So the wood is able to be a chair in time before it's actually a chair. But since what goes from ability to act does so by reason of something already an act,

[25:01] because ability can't give itself the act it doesn't have, then Aristotle says simply, act is before ability. And from that he's going to reason in the twelfth book that what's first in reality is pure act. But the the moderns, right, see that ability is before act in the thing that goes from ability to act, and then they're deceived into thinking that ability is simply before act, and therefore the beginning of all things is what is most in ability, namely matter, and so they conclude that matter is beginning of all things.

[25:49] But they made the second kind of mistake outside of speech, which is the mistake for mixing up the what what is so simply. And fully so, right? With what is so not simply, but in some imperfect or diminished way. And this is a very common mistake, right? I used to tell my students, I'd say, "You're making a mistake all day long because, generally speaking, you're doing something bad all day long, right?

[26:22] " And so you choose something what that is bad because in some way it's good. Or you choose not to do something good because in some imperfect way it's bad, right? You don't have to go to mass on Sunday because it prevents you from sleeping in on Sunday, right? Or my favorite example, the other one was, you know, if you annoy me, would it be good to get rid of you?

[26:49] No, no, no, no. But in some diminished sense, it would be good, right? It would remove an annoyance from my life, right? You see? And this famous dialogue, the Meno of Plato, when Socrates says we're going to investigate what we don't know, and Meno says, "Well, how can you aim and direct your thinking to something you don't know? "

[27:16] Well, what's the answer to that? Yeah, you've got to know it in some way what you don't know. Is that a contradiction? No. And an example story is given in class, which is a very simple example, right? To show how I can direct myself to what I don't know, which at first sight seems impossible, right? But I'd say, how many students are in class today? I'd say, I don't know.

[27:50] I don't know. But I know how to get there. It's by counting, and I count: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Ah. Now, how did I direct myself to eight when I didn't know I was trying to get to eight? See?

[28:10] Well, eight is the number of students in class today, and I knew I was looking for the number of students in class, so in a way I knew eight, didn't I? But not simply. And then,

[28:28] knowing that I was looking for the number of students in class, I knew the road to take, which was to count. And then I got to eight, which I didn't know. So I didn't know the number of students before I counted, but in some imperfect way I did know it.

[28:52] Now it's hard for us to get a hold of that distinction of it, right? But then Socrates, and he replies to this, right? He makes the same mistake that Meno made—the same kind mistake—because he takes, he just the idea that he's heard that you know the soul preexisted the body, right? And maybe the soul has picked up knowledge, but the shock of being shoved into this ugly body, right, makes us, you know, forget what we know, and that we could recall what we know if we just tried.

[29:34] And Meno says, "Well, that's interesting, but you got any evidence?" And Socrates then takes the slave boy, Meno, right, and he asks him, "How do you double a what square?" And the slave boy says, "You double the side, right?"

[29:53] But then Socrates, by asking very simple questions and using the answers of the slave boy, the Slave boy finds out that that's what false, right? And then as Socrates asks him further, the slave boy eventually comes to realize that the diagonal would be the side of a square twice as big. Socrates says, you know, the slave boy,

[30:21] suppose this is original square, right? Now suppose you put another square exactly like that next to it, okay? And then below this one, another one just like it, and then felt the square here. Now you've got a square. How many times bigger than the original? one? Yeah. And then he takes the diagonals, right? And not too hard for the slave boy to see the diagonal cuts in half.

[30:47] So the square formed by the four diagonals is half of the four. Therefore, it's twice as big as original. See? But the way to double a square comes out of the slave boy's answers. And so Socrates said, I didn't teach him,

[31:06] right? The answer came out of him. The slave boy has recalled it, right? Now has he really recalled? See? The slave boy know that the diagonal is the side of a square twice as big before the conversation with Socrates. He would be led by the question. Yeah, yeah. In fact, the slave boy thought the way to double a square is to double the side.

[31:33] And so he didn't know. He's in fact mistaken about how to do it, right? But the slave boy did know things from which or by which he's able to

[31:54] come to know, right? Right. Okay. In other words, through things that he knows already, he can what come to know. But is that the same thing as to know?

[32:10] Is the ability to know it, right? From what you know already, is that to know it? Well, it's the know it ability, but that's not to know it simply, is it? Otherwise, you know everything. You learn to go to school, right? Before you begin, right?

[32:33] So Socrates is making the same kind of mistake that Meno is making his objection. He's not seeing the distinction, right, between what is so simply and what is so not simply, right? Now when Meno objects, he's saying, you know, you can't aim at what you don't know.

[32:57] Because then you'd have to what to aim at something? You have to see it. You have to know it. And he doesn't see the distinction that you can know in some imperfect way what you don't know. And that might be enough, like in my example, right? To know how to get there, you think.

[33:17] But Socrates is making the same kind of mistake when he says the slave boy already knew how to double a square, right? When he only already had the ability to know it, but that's not to know something, right? Okay.

[33:36] As I said to the students, you know, trying to get this idea across them: if you have a man, a woman, you got a baby, right? Not necessarily, right? You might have the ability for a baby, right? Is that the same thing as to have a baby? You'll find out this isn't exactly the same thing. Is it?

[34:00] So, you know, the two main opinions about the beginning of things is that matter is the beginning of all things, and God is the beginning of all things, right? And the true answer is that God is the beginning of all things, right?

[34:18] But those who think that what matter is the beginning of all things are making the mistake of thinking that what is before, in a very qualified way, right, in time, is before what? Absolutely. Simply. No qualification.

[34:41] So that's a very important distinction. Okay. The second objection Thomas has got to properly understand the words of Augustine, right? To the second, should be said that Augustine, in those words, does not intend to say that the sun is able to generate a son.

[35:07] Rather, what he wants to say is that this is not from the what impotency, the lack of power of the sun, right? That he does not what generate, right? Now this is going to come up again in the what sixth article, right? To the next question: whether they are equal in power, right? So we have some more enlightenment about that, huh?

[35:45] Okay, so we'll expect some more enlightenment, right? We see a little bit in reply to the first objection that they have the same power, right?

[35:56] But this power is in the father with the relation of fatherhood, right? And in the sun, the creation of what? Sunship, right? So we let that rest. That point, but we'll get more illumination.

[36:15] Now the third objection was well, even a man can generate more than one son, right? But he goes back to the the arguments he had in the middle of the thing. That the immateriality, right, which is the first argument, right, and the perfection, which is the fourth argument, right,

[36:42] that the immateriality in divine perfection requires that there not be many what sons in God. Whence that there are not many sons is not from the what?

[37:02] Yeah, from the fact that he can generate most perfectly, right? Okay. Why no son that I generate or another man generates has the whole perfection of human sonship in him,

[37:25] right? You know anybody own son? Son of man, but okay. So he's convinced of this four reasons, right? You can't have many sons. Not like those Hindus have all these countless ones. Okay. Now, this is the end of the first and two parts of the what comparative consideration, right? Of the persons, and so you know there's five questions devoted to the comparative considerations, but you can't understand the distinction of into five, can't you?

[38:24] So what was the distinction? What's the distinction of the first three questions that we've just finished today, right now, and the last two questions?

[38:37] Oh yeah, I can't quite remember. We we talked about essence and notion in comparison to essence, notion, and relation, relation. Yeah. And then then this one is the persons and relations.

[38:58] So no, in the first three questions, you're comparing the persons to something other, at least in thought, from the persons, right? Okay. So you're comparing it to the what? Divine nature, right? Comparing it to the relations, right? Not that these are really different in what? In things, right? They're different in our thought, right? And then comparing it to the what? Notional acts, right? Okay.

[39:31] So the first three questions, right, which are divided into three, right, are comparison of the persons to something other in thought from the persons.

[39:45] And now the last two questions are comparing the persons as persons to what? Each other, right? Okay. And this is going to be divided not into three but into what? Two. Can't get. Away from this three two business? right