Prima Pars
143. Summa I q.42: Equality and Order among the Divine Persons (Quantity of Virtue, Likeness, Equality as a Relation of Reason)
Class of 2008-06-05
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/143-summa-i-q-42-equality-and-order-among-the-divine-persons/

[0:00] Then one ought to consider, he says. Look at the premium here now. Beginning of the forty-second question. Then we're not to consider about the comparison of persons to each other. And first, as regards equality and what likeness. Second, as regards what Mission. Mission, right? one person sends another person. What the hell does that mean? Okay.

[0:34] And why is it the father sent? He's never sent. But you'll find in scripture talks about someone being sent, right? I'll send you the Holy Spirit. The Father who sent me, and so on. Now about the first six things are asked. First, whether equality has place in divine what persons. Here the problem arises because of the what, partly because of the word equality, which seems to imply what quantity, right?

[1:17] But has other meanings. And then, whether the person proceeding is equal to the one from whom he proceeds by what eternity. Is the son as eternal as the what? Father, right? Or was the father around before the son was?

[1:44] Now we human beings, the father's around before he generates the son, right? So that's going to be one particular equality, right? And the third now is whether there is some order in the divine what persons.

[2:09] Now, why does he take up that right after the second article? Because that doesn't seem to be a question of equality, right? And similitude, does it?

[2:36] And I think I mentioned before how, when I first got thinking about the word order, my first thought about the word order is that it meant before and after, okay.

[2:56] And. It seemed reasonable to me that, in general, order means before and after. But then, when I was reading Thomas, and he's talking about Augustine, and Augustine says there's a ordo naturae in God, huh ordo naturae. And in the Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia, he's talking about this, and somewhat here he talks about it. He'll say there's an ordo naturae in God, not an order of before and after, he says, right?

[4:05] But an order of one from the other, order of origin, right? Which Augustine speaks of as the ordo naturae. And then I said maybe I was mistaken in saying that order means before and after. Maybe there can be an order of before and after, but also an order of this from that. And in the Trinity, this is from that. The Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.

[4:39] But there's no before and after. That's very explicit in the Athanasian Creed. There's no before and after in God. In any sense of before and after. Only in our thought, yeah, but not but not in the thing. Say, the Father, God the Father, is not before God the Son. In any sense of before, and there's not only temporal sense of before, but there's other sense. Yeah, yeah, no sense, no sense, no sense of before the Son before.

[5:07] And when Thomas, you know, shows this, he'll sometimes go back to. He didn't say he's doing it, but but I recognize he's doing it. He'll go back to the four central senses of before that Aristotle distinguishes in the Categories, in chapter twelve. And he'll say that in no one of those four senses is the Father before the what, the Son, right? Okay. So then I said, gee, maybe I was mistaken.

[5:38] Maybe this is only one of two meanings of order, right? And it was, you know, on the authority of the text of Thomas, I thought that I was mistaken, my first impression, right? But then I didn't have the sentences of Peter Lombard. I didn't have Thomas's commentary on it.

[6:04] And Thomas gives a very complete consideration of this, and more complete in the sentences than in the later works. It's more abbreviated. And there Thomas says, first thing that pertains to order, he says, is distinction.

[6:25] But he says really distinction is not so much what order means; it's presupposed to order, right? And then he says before and after is what order means in general.

[6:41] And then he says he has many species of before and after, right? Okay. Now, now he's confirming marginal inside silence. After that, I was not far off, right?

[7:01] Now, if you keep the word order in talking about God, as the great Augustine does, right? He's keeping some difference down there and dropping the genus.

[7:25] Now you see, I'm the father of my son, right? And I'm before my son, right? Okay. And my son, in some way, proceeds from me, right? And that's specific about this order, right? Okay.

[7:54] Now I'm before Barack Obama, right? Because I was born before he was born, right? I'm before him in time, but he didn't proceed from me. Okay, so that's a different specific order, right? The order I have with my son, right? So as Father Boulay was always drumming into us now, this example with other examples is very common when a name is carried over from creatures to God that you drop the genus and keep what is what specific.

[8:36] Okay. So like scientia, right, Latin. When it's carried over to God, you drop the idea of this habit, right? That it is, and just keep the idea of the act for which is a habitum, but a specific to it. Okay.

[8:57] In a sense, if you take over understanding to God, right? You and I have understanding. Let's say you and I have the ability to understand, right? And our ability to understand is what different from our ability to walk. Well, walking is not carried over to God. God doesn't walk, except maybe metaphorically speaking, right? But in God, is there an ability to understand that's different from understanding? No.

[9:24] So we drop off the idea of ability, but keep the idea of what actually understanding. God understands everything, right? So when you speak of the order of nature, you're dropping the genus the idea of before and after, and keeping what is specific to one order, right? Namely, the idea of what? Origin. Origin, yeah. Okay. Now. What's the first meaning of before and after that Aristotle gives in the twelfth chapter of Categories?

[10:00] Before and after in time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, you see the connection then, in a way, between the second article and the what? Third one, right?

[10:24] If this son proceeds from the father, you might think that the father is in some way before the what? Son, right? Which would make some sense. You're talking about human beings, huh? But in God, there's no what? Before and after there. Well, then why does Augustine speak of order, right? Well, as they say, he keep the specific difference of one order, right, and drop the generic notion out.

[10:58] You keep the idea of origin from one thing to another, but not that what is the origin of something else is before it, right?

[11:09] As they say, that's a common thing in theology, right? You know, justice is a what? A habit. Aristotle defines human virtue, moral virtue, as a habit with choice existing in the middle towards us, right? Well, there's choice in God, right? God chooses things, but there's no what habits in God, right? So you carried the word virtue over to God. You drop the what? Yeah, you drop the genus, right?

[11:53] Now the fourth article is the second kind of what? Equality, right? Will the divine persons are equal in what? Magnitude, right? Or is one of them greater than the other, right? That kind of dangerous way of what? Speaking of Hilary that'll show up there. You know, he speaks of the fathers being mayor, but the son is not minor. Sounds like a contradiction of words right? But. And then whether one of them is in the other, right?

[12:31] Now why the heck should that be attached to their being equal in magnitude? Well, their being equal in magnitude is because each of them is God, right?

[12:48] And. So if if the father is God and the son is God, then in a way the father is in the son, right? Because there's no difference between the father and divine nature we saw, right? And since the divine nature is in the son, right? In a way, the father is in the son, right?

[13:14] So maybe that's why that article comes up, right? After the one about them being equal in what magnitude, right? Because in that one he's going to be saying they're equal in magnitude because each of them is the divine nature, each of them is God,

[13:32] and therefore in some way they're in each other, as God. They're distinct as as relatives, right? And then the third one with the equal according to power, where it's more illumination, right? About the you know the father not really having power that the son doesn't have, right? See, the same argument could say, well, the father and the son have the power of breathing, divine person, right? The Holy Spirit doesn't have that power.

[14:03] Isn't he less powerful? Well, you got to be careful about that, right? The material seems to become more clear as you go along, right? But notice you can kind of divide the first article against the other five, right? First article saying, can you speak of equality in God, right? What does this mean? What does it mean here, right? Doesn't mean quantity, right? And then if you look at the remaining five articles, there's three kinds of equality, right?

[14:39] They're equal in duration, you might say they're all equally eternal, right? And then they're equal in what magnitude or greatness, and then they're equal in what power, right?

[14:56] And perhaps those three are ordered in a certain way, right? Because you think of in us, right? Magnitude. You think of man as being a greater thing than a dog, and then you talk subsequently of the power of the man to do certain things, right? By eternity talks maybe about his duration, his very being, right? So.

[15:26] So you could divide one against three kinds of equality, right? You see that? So you're not dividing into six, but Thomas doesn't get so pedantic, right? So he's doing. But since he's doing that, right? Okay.

[15:45] Because you find in the second, the fourth, and the what sixth article the word equal again, right now, but they're no more particular. And then you have to figure out why those other two ones are in there, right? Why order in divine persons attached to the consideration of their equality in eternity,

[16:12] And why one of them being the other is attached to their being what equal in magnitude, huh But maybe that will become clear when we get into those the articles. So to the first one goes forward. Thus, it seems that equality does not belong in the divine persons. For equality is noted according to unity or oneness in quantity, as is clear through the philosopher in the fifth book of Wisdom Metaphysics.

[16:48] But in God or in the divine persons, there is found neither what intrinsic continuous quantity, which is called magnitude, nor extrinsic continuous quantity, which are called what place and time, extrinsic measures. Place is the measure of the what mobile, mobile, and time of what motion itself.

[17:21] Nor according to what discrete quantity is there found discrete quantity is there a found inequality because two persons are more than what one. Therefore, equality doesn't belong to divine persons.

[17:42] A lot of things to be untied there, right? Moreover, divine persons are of one essence or nature. But essence is signified by way of what form? Just like human nature is said to be our form, but it coming together in a form does not make equality, but what likeness? Huh? Therefore, in divine persons, one ought to speak of likeness and not what.

[18:21] Moreover, in whatever things is found equality, those things are said to be equal to each other, because the equal is said to be equal to the equal, right?

[18:34] But divine persons are not able to be what said to be equal to each other. Because, as Augustine says in the sixth book of Trinity, the image, if it is perfectly fulfills that of which it is the image, is co-equal to it, but that is not equal to its what image.

[19:01] The image, however, of the Father is the son, and therefore the father is not equal to the son. He had a little problem like that with the word like, because what's an image? Image is a likeness of something, right? So if you make a statue of you, that statue is what a likeness of you, right? It's like you. Would you be said to be like your statue?

[19:31] So the son, one of the names of the son we saw was what son word or thought and imago, right? So maybe we should say the son is like the father, but not the father like the son. Moreover, equality. is a certain relation, right?

[19:57] But no relation is common to the three persons. Only the divine nature is common to the three persons, right? But according to relations of relations, the persons are distinguished from each other. Therefore, equality, what, does not belong to divine persons.

[20:25] If you have this relation there, do you have another person? Equality. But against all this is what Athanasius says. This again, the Athanasian Creed. So

[20:42] the three what co-eternal persons are co-eternal and what equal. Now, Thomas is going to answer. I answer. It should be said that it is necessary to place equality in the divine persons, because according to the philosopher in the tenth book of wisdom, there metaphysics. That's the book on the what one and the many. The equal is said by negation of more and less. That's a very subtle thing.

[21:33] Two lines are equal, doesn't it? One is neither longer nor what shorter than the other, right? I notice in in the categories, right? Aristotle has a chapter on before and after, and then on the four central meanings of before and the crowning sense. And then in the next chapter, he has on hama which he translated simul in Latin, right, or together in English sometimes. we make a Latin simultaneous.

[22:16] So why is he put together the simul or hama after before and after categories? Because simul is defined. So if I say two events are what happened together, neither happened before or after the other, right?

[22:47] So it seems like. Hama, Greek there, simul in Latin or together, I am going to speak in English. Is understood by negation of before and after, and Aristotle saying the same thing about equal, right? So, you're kind of sitting there on the grammar, right? Because you say equal and unequal, right? Well unequal is by negation of equal, yeah. But equal itself is understood by negation not of unequal to be circular, but by negation of more and what less.

[23:27] So you can't say that one of them is more or less than the other, right? For as Boethius says, the great Boethius says, "in his book on the Trinity,

[23:44] that the difference follows those right, a difference of deity right follows those who either what increase or diminish as the Arians right, who distract the Trinity, varying them by grades of merits, and what lead them into a plurality of what beings, right?

[24:12] So if one of these persons was more or less than the other, they wouldn't all be what same God, would they? Wouldn't it be something?

[24:24] The reason for this is because of unequal things, there cannot be one what quantity and number, right? But quantity in God is nothing other than His very what essence. Whence it follows that if there was some inequality in the divine persons, there would not be in them one what essence, and thus the three persons would not be one God, which is impossible. Therefore, it is necessary to place equality in the what divine persons.

[25:11] Can't say that one person is saying that is more or less than the other, right? Because if one person was more or less than another, one person would not be what God. They wouldn't all be one and the same God, right?

[25:29] Therefore, it can't be what more or less, and equality is negation of more or less. To neither more nor less than they must be equal. If I am neither taller or shorter than you, then I must be equal to you in height or something.

[25:51] Now, in the body of the article, it doesn't solve this little problem about the word, right? Okay. You see, this in English, though, you had this with words like, like in Shakespeare's definition of reason. Reason is the ability for what? Large discourses, looking before and after, right? Well, is large there in the sense of what? Quantity? No, no. When I explain large discourse, they say, "Well,

[26:32] one meaning of that is that reason can have a discourse about the universal, and universal covers many things, right? Okay, that's a little bit like quantity, right? Huh? Close, okay. Ah, but another meaning of large discourse is that reason can have a discourse about great things, right? Okay, very important things, like we're having a discourse here about God, right? Okay, and even a discourse about the soul, or a discourse about human happiness, and so on, the end of life.

[27:13] This is a large discourse in the sense of a discourse about the what? Okay. Now, in trying to explain that meaning to people, I use a manuductio by the opposite, right? I says, "What do you mean by small talk? "

[27:33] What does it mean that you, you know, small in a quantitative sense? Does it? No, it's talking about in unimportant things, little things, right? Okay. So, large discourse is like big talk, right? Now, we're talking about great things, right? Okay. So, great here is not in the original quantitative sense of great, huh? Okay. Just like small is not the original meaning of small.

[28:05] The original meaning of small is in quantity in the what strict sense, right? Okay. What if we say somebody is a small person? What does that mean? In terms of his physical size? Could be, but does it have another meaning?

[28:25] What about he has a small mind? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But Churchill said about Clemency, I told you that. He's a very modest man. With much to be modest about.

[28:55] So he says to the first, therefore it should be said. This is the first, you know. A guy can't move the word, right? Stuck on the original meaning.

[29:05] I was thinking, you know, do you know Thomas's prayer there for before communion? And of course, he's talking about how he's approaching the sacrament, and how he's

[29:19] weak, and how he's sinful and poor, and so on. And he says, out of your immense what? largitatis right. Yeah, that's large in this other sense. Okay. To the first, therefore it should be said that twofold is what quantity. In one, what is called the quantity, and molis in Latin means what A heap, right? Bulk. yeah. Or dimensive quantity, right? One dimension. Two dimensions, three dimensions, right? Which is found only in what bodily things, right?

[30:01] Whence in the divine persons it has no what place. So we're not speaking then of the Father and the Son, are being equal in size, right? At least in the first meaning of size, right? Okay. What does it mean I'm going to size you up though?

[30:25] That's a different sense, isn't it? Probably, huh? I'm not gonna, you know, see how tall you are. I'm gonna size you up your what character and so on, right?

[30:38] But notice how you're moving the word here, right? The first meaning of size, and the first meaning of large and small and so on, is what Quantity, strictly speaking, yeah. The other is the quantity of what virtue, right?

[30:57] Which can be taken to mean power or the perfection of the thing. Which is to be noted according to perfection of some nature or somewhat form. Which quantity is designated according as it is said something is more or less what hot or more or less sweet or something, right? In so far it is more or less perfect in what Heat. huh?

[31:28] Now. He says quantity of this sort is to be noted first in its root, right? That is in the very perfection of the form or the what nature,

[31:46] and thus it is called what spiritual magnitude. Just as a great heat on account of its what intention and perfection of the seat. And therefore Augustine says in the sixth book of the Trinity, and notice Augustine's what

[32:12] alliteration, here right? He's fond of those things, rhetorician In hisque non mole magni sunt, in those things which are not what great in their what heap, huh? Bulk, yeah. That is what to be more, which is to be what. Yeah, comes out much better in Latin. Hoc melius esse, quod est melius esse. That is to be more, which is better, right? But in Latin it what Alliterates, right?

[32:48] That's why you say you can't you can't uh, translate alliteration, right? Shakespeare says. Full fathom five thy father lies. How can you translate that in other language? Because the words would mean full and fathom and five, it would not be in the same letter, right? You see, in French. What did you call that way of speaking, Dr. Purvis? You can't translate what Alliteration. Oh, yeah. Alliteration. Yeah, see, full, plan in French, huh?

[33:19] Yes. Fathom, I don't want the word to be there. Five, cinq, you know, Fathom would be what Pear or something. Yeah, so it wouldn't begin. the words that mean the same. Wouldn't mean the the what same, right? There's a bug there, Okay.

[33:44] We're seeing with Augustine, here, right? Mole magne sunt, right? And Melius esse, quadis Melius esse, right? Has a nice flow because of the alliteration, right? Augustine has a certain style, right? That's why Latin scholars would rather read what Shakespeare, I mean uh, Augustine than Thomas, right? Because he has this nice Cicero, right? For that is Melius better, which is more what perfect, right? Secondly, one notes the quantum the virtual quantity in the effects of the form, right?

[34:29] For the first effect of a form is for something to be, right? So to be a chair, the wood has to what? The form it's acquired from the carpenter, right? For everything has to be existence according to its what form.

[34:54] The second effect is what operation. For every agent acts through its own what form. One notes, therefore, the virtual quantity, both according to the being and according to the operation. According to being, in so far

[35:19] as those things which are of a more perfect nature are of a greater what duration. It's going to go back to eternity. According to operation, insofar as those things which are of a more perfect nature are more potent to what act.

[35:42] Thus, therefore, the great Augustine says in the book on Faith to Peter, equality is understood in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, in so far as. No one of them either precedes by eternity, right? Or exceeds in magnitude, or is what overcome in power, right? Knows exactly the three that Thomas is going to be talking about, right? And in fact, in the same order, right?

[36:17] Okay. As Cajetan says in his commentary on the Summa, you know, In the New England edition he used to print Cajetan's commentary with the Summa, and he says Thomas seems to have inherited the mind of all the Church Fathers because he so studied them and reverenced them.

[36:47] And I see something similar. You know, Aristotle seemed to have inherited the mind of Plato and the philosophers before him because he read them so carefully, right? So are what they had to say, you know.

[37:02] And the same is true, I think, of Euclid, right? So Euclid didn't, you know, he probably didn't originate the Pythagorean theorem and all these other things, right? But he he what seems to have what taken all over, right? And and brought it to us in perfection.

[37:22] So when you read Thomas, you're not reading what one man on his own going off on a tangent, right? Okay. Let's come up this quantity of virtue. It is it quantity in the um when he's speaking about this quantity of virtue would it belong to the category of quantity? No, no. No, but it would be it would belong to something kind of transcending the categories, but more in terms of what perfection, more in terms of form.

[38:00] So the difference between less hot and more hot. Quality, yeah. That's really just a difference in quality. It's quality, yeah, yeah. So so the hotter thing has more of the perfection of heat, and the less one, right? The same way if I say he's more just, more virtuous than somebody else, right? Then he has what more of the perfection of this virtue than their man has. He's more humble than somebody else, right?

[38:30] He has more of the perfection of the virtue of what humility. So are we using quantity in like is it a metaphorical sense or I'm trying to understand? No, no. I mean I don't think it's I don't think it's metaphorical. Um,

[38:47] it's equivocal by reason, right? It's like words like excel, you know. See, somebody one ability to excels another, right? It's higher than it, right? But you might say that one student excels another because he's a more perfect, right? His understanding.

[39:28] So this quantity of virtue could exist in any category. You have more or less perfection. Yeah, yeah. You see, Aristotle, in the eighth book of wisdom, he compares natures to what numbers, right? And there you see, you see, kind of likeness that's based on, right? And

[39:56] you see, numbers differ by the addition and subtraction of one, right? You have different numbers. Okay. Now, in logic, say, you know, we talk about adding a difference to a genus.

[40:15] Okay. And so you say you got a stone, and stone is just a body, right? Okay. Now a body plus life equals what? A plant. Okay.

[40:41] But a body plus life plus sense equals a what? A man. But a body plus life plus sense plus reason equals a what? Man. So you see a likeness there, right? Between numbers and

[41:15] the natures of things, right? And to go back to Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason, right? That's what he says. What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, he says, no more. And that's the word more there, right? No more.

[41:51] What's he saying there, right? He's saying that if the chief good of man, if the greatest good of man, right, is no more than the chief good of the beast, then man is no more than a what? Beast, right. Okay. Now that's based upon a beautiful proportion, right? That the chief good of man is to man as the chief good of the beast is to the beast, and then alternate the proportion, right?

[42:25] Therefore, if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast, then man is no more than the beast, right? Okay.

[42:33] Now, to bring out the force of his argument, and I say, what if we say this? What is a three if it be half a four?

[42:49] You'd say a two, no more, right? Okay. That's in the sense of Shakespeare's reasoning, right? It's a great, great figure what he's doing there. Kind of amazing. I don't know why he does this. I don't know why Shakespeare does this.

[43:08] I told you years ago. You know, I was reading Kittredge's edition of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Mark Anthony, you know, was saying, "I'm not a speaker like Brutus, you know, to say what I think, you know." And he actually makes a what? Kittredge notes he makes a complete enumeration of the qualities of good orator. Now, what the heck is that in the seat, right? You know. And it's not in the order of Aristotle's rhetoric, because he alliterates, right?

[43:39] I have no wit, nor words, nor worth, you know, and so on. But you know, there's a precision Shakespeare, and nobody knows where it quite's there. It's there, and it doesn't serve any obvious poetic purpose, right? You shouldn't notice it the first time you read it because it'd be too distracting, right? But there's a double excellence in Shakespeare.

[44:06] So, if you take away reason from man, you just have a beast. Take away sense of the beast, just a plant. Okay. And something like that with numbers, right? Four, three, two, one. This would be man. This would be the beast. This would be the plant. This would be the stone, right? And take away from four one, and you have no more than three, right? Take away one from three, get two, and so on.

[44:39] And but there you see how more or less are really what taken in a non-quantitative sense, right? But looks back to the quantitative sense, and Aristotle in the eighth book of Natural Hearing, he makes a comparison that the natures of things are like what numbers, right? So man, beast, plant, and stone are like four, three, two, and one, right?

[45:19] I see. Plato sometimes said the natures of things are numbers, and did he mean this? And did Aristotle say, "Well, they're not really numbers, but there's a likeness between them, right?" And

[45:42] so, two would we talk two? We say a man is an animal, but then if you add rational animal, you get man. Well, add is that quantity? No, along the substance. Yeah, yeah. So, but but you're looking back to originally those words were used. Add and more or less were used originally in quantity, properly speaking. But it's carried over by a certain what likeness.

[46:18] So that guides your reasoning. Do we say what does that add up to, right? No. Or if a guy can't put together two premises, we say he can't put two and two together, right? Well, that's kind of metaphorical, yet. But these more general words like more or less, you know, they seem to be by certain likeness carried over from what quantity to what quality.

[46:46] You see this running through all our our words almost that the these words equivocal by reason they get their start in the continuous. Like the

[46:59] the word beginning, right? Aristotle begins the fifth book of wisdom, which is all about words equivocal by reason. The first word he takes up is the word beginning. And the first meaning of beginning is like the point is beginning of a line. This line here is beginning of the table. The surface of a body is the beginning of the body, right? So it's tied to the continuous.

[47:26] And then he says the foundation is the beginning of the house. And then he says the carpenter is in another sense is the beginning of the table. But now he's not part of it, right? He's not in it. And then we speak of the beginning of what knowledge where knowledge begins. Say we still use the word where, but it's not in place, right?

[47:57] Where your knowledge begins is not in place. And last thing he says, the end is the beginning. But they've removed the word, right? But the end goal you have in mind, in a sense, is the beginning of all your what actions, right?

[48:20] But as Monsignor Dionne said about somebody who can't move the word. Sure, stop. Sum it up again. So we'd answer the first ad primum, right? Okay. Yeah. Second. Now we answer the second objection? Yeah. Okay. And this is the second objection is saying, which when you speak of likeness, right, then equality. Well, in the second sense of equality, equality adds something to what likeness. Now we not only say like but just like the other person like, but just like the other person.

[49:11] Okay. Just mean equal, right? After my father died, I heard somebody, my cousin, saying to me, "Just like your father." Does that mean just like? Is that what you're saying Yeah. See. And of course, just means in a way equal. If I say it just fits, you know. Yeah, it's more or less, right? Okay. So,

[49:48] just in that sense, presupposes likeness, right? But you're what exactly like as you say, right? Just like your father. Thomas begins by pointing out: the second, therefore, should be said that where one is noting equality according to what virtual quantity, right? According to perfection, equality includes in itself likeness, right, and adds something, right, because it excludes what the excess of one or the other, right?

[50:31] For whatever things come together in one form can be called like, although they what partake that form unequally, right? Just as if one was to say that air is like fire in what heat, right? Thomas thinking of what air being a little bit like steam, right? Huh? Okay. Well, steam is hot, maybe not as hot as the what fire, right? But they cannot be said to be equal if one partakes more perfectly of that form than the what other, right?

[51:12] And because there is not only one, because not only one is the nature of the father and the son, but it's what equally perfectly in what both. Therefore, we not only say that the son is like the father, but one excludes the error of Arius binomius. But also, we say that he is what equal. That one excludes the error of what, Arius.

[51:43] And the third objection was saying, "Well, the son knows the image, goal, right, of the father, right? Therefore, he should be called the likeness of the father or like the father, not vice versa."

[51:58] Thomas says, "Well, you are overlooking a distinction here. To the third, it should be said that equality or likeness is able to be signified in two ways in God. That is to say, by nouns and by what verbs.

[52:17] Now, as a noun, as it signified by nouns, mutual equality is said in divine persons. I say each one is what like the other, right? And conversely. For the son is equal and like the father, and vice versa. The same is true. And therefore, because the divine essence is not more of the father than of the son, whence the son has the what magnitude or greatness of the father, which is to be what for him to be equal to the father.

[52:56] So the father has the same magnitude as the son, right? Same divine nature, which is for him to be equal to the son. But according to creatures, as Dionysius says in the ninth chapter of the Divine Names, one does not have this reciprocal conversion of equality and likeness. So was God like me?

[53:22] No, but I am in some distant way like him, right? I am made in his image and likeness. For the caused are like their causes, in so far as they have in some way the form of the causes, right? But not reverse. For the form is chiefly in the cause and secondarily in the cause.

[53:47] Now, we use words, I mean verbs rather, in God, but verbs signify equality with what motion? Because therefore the son receives from the father, whence he is equal to him, right, and not reverse. On account of this, we say the son using the verb is what coequal to the father, and not reverse, right?

[54:18] Okay. He's likened to the father, you might say, right? Or he generated like the Father. Fourth thing, the projection is talking about this relation of equality, right?

[54:48] Isn't the distinction in God that the what divine nature is common to them, but the relations what distinguish them, right? There is a relation that doesn't distinguish them, right?

[55:01] It's very interesting what he says here about relation of equality. To the fourth, therefore, it should be said that in the divine persons there is nothing to consider or think about except the essence, right? The divine nature in which they what communicate, come together, and the relations in which they are what distinguished. Now, which is equality?

[55:34] Well, it implies both of these, right? Now we've met this before in other things, right? Like we said, is the ability to generate? Does that signify the divine nature? Is that the divine nature?

[55:56] Does it signify the divine fatherhood? See? Well, maybe it's a divine nature as it's in the Father, right? It kind of has a meaning that involves both, right? Well, equality—you're not equal to yourself, right? So equality in some way implies the the persons' distinction, the relations whereby they're distinguished, but because they what have the same nature in number, right? Then it touches upon the divine nature, right?

[56:33] So he says equality implies both, to wit, the distinction of persons, because nothing is said to be equal to itself, right? So are you equal to yourself?

[56:49] No. So you're neither more nor less than yourself. But you're not equal. And unity of persons, because from this the persons are equal to each other, that they are one what greatness or one magnitude and one what essence or nature.

[57:14] Now it's manifest that the same is not referred to itself by some what real relation. Nor again is one relation referred to another. To some what other relation, right?

[57:37] For when we say that fatherhood is opposed to what sonship, opposition is not a relation in the middle between what fatherhood and sonship. Yeah. This is one way that you get a relation of what reason, right? When you're relating relations. Otherwise, you'd have what relations going on forever, right? Then the relation of the relations would have relation to those relations.

[58:12] Because in either way, in both ways, relation will be multiplied forever, right? And therefore, equality and likeness in the divine persons is not some real relation that is distinct from the what personal relation. Then you have a fourth person there, right? But in its understanding,it includes both the relations distinguishing the persons and the unity of the what? Nature of essence. Yeah. And in contrast, this the master says in the 31st distinction of the first book of sentences that in these the what equality is only what relative right?

[58:57] It's a relation of reason he's in a sense saying that. That's a beautiful thing, right? So. So if I say to you, does the equality of the Father and the Son signify their common nature, or does it signify their opposing relations?

[59:29] What you say? I'd say it signifies both. Yeah, yeah. Because can the divine nature be equal to itself? Doesn't equality imply some distinction between the things that are equal, right? But the only real distinction there is is between the relations, right? So in some way it involves them, right? But it also involves the what? Yeah. So these two distinct persons are equal because they have the same what?

[1:00:12] Yes. Yeah. So in a sense, in saying they're equal, you're saying that they're distinct but have the same what? Nature. So we'll stop. I'm going to tend to do another half a cup of. Forty thirty, anyway. Yeah. We'll get it. Yeah. We'll

[1:00:52] stop there. Yeah. Okay. Next week, I think plans are not. I'm going to be coming back on Friday late. so I'm leaving this Saturday. to go out to California for this talk, and then coming back.