Prima Pars
144. Summa I q.42 a.2-3: The Son Co-eternal with the Father, and the Objections to an Order of Nature in God
Class of 2008-06-19
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/144-summa-i-q-42-a-2-3-the-son-co-eternal-with-the-father-and/

[0:00] Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightener, guardian Angels strengthen the lights of our minds, or to lunch. Or, everything that is corrupted ceases to be. Therefore, everything that is generated begins to be. Seems kind of reasonable, right? For it's generated in order that it may be. But the son is generated from the father, therefore he begins to be, and he's not what co-eternal with the father.

[0:42] It's the more the more difficult answer that objection. Moreover, if the son is generated by the father, either he is always generated, right? Or one can give some what instant of his generation. If he is always generated, he's always being generated, you could say, in a sense. When something is being generated, it is imperfect, right? Just as in things that are successive in time, which are always in what coming to be, is time and and motion.

[1:29] Then would follow that the son was always imperfect, which is unsuitable. Therefore, you can give some instant of the generation of the son. And therefore, before that instant, the son was not.

[1:43] But you have to understand eternity to answer that objection. We were taught that by Boethius, right, a long time back, something like that. But against this is what Athanasius says, and that's again a reference to the Athanasian what creed. It's a very important creed

[2:04] here. That the three persons are what co-eternal, right? Now Thomas says, I answer. It should be said that it is necessary to say that the son is co-eternal to the what father, right?

[2:31] For the evidence of this, it should be considered that something existing from a beginning. Of course, Thomas admitted that the father was a beginning, right? Meaning by beginning that from which something proceeds in any way whatsoever. To

[2:48] the evidence of this, he says it should be considered that something existing from a beginning is after, huh, posterior to its beginning. And this can happen, what, in two ways.

[3:05] In one way, on the side of the what agent, huh? In another way, on the side of the what action. Now, on the side of the agent, in one way, in voluntary agents; another way, in what natural agents. in voluntary agents, on account of the choice of the what time. For just as it's in the power of the voluntary agent to choose a form which is going to confer upon the effect, so it's in his power to choose a time in which he produces the effect.

[3:48] Right. Like that nervous effect in the fullness of time, right? In natural agents, this happens because some agent, from the beginning, does not have the perfection of the what power for acting, but this comes to him after some time, just as man, from the beginning of his life, is not able to what generate. Another

[4:27] distinction he makes there, right? Because a natural power, as Aristotle explains in the ninth book of Wisdom, is like the fire, right? If you put the paper in the fire, it's going to automatically burn it. It acts automatically, and so the only reason why it wouldn't act right away would be because it's not yet its power is not yet all there, right? Well, in the case of the voluntary agent, he can choose to do it now or later, huh?

[5:01] It doesn't automatically produce an effect, right? Kittredge might show up at the very beginning of class and begin, right? But I know other professors who are veritably late, right?

[5:29] Now, on the side of the action itself, it can be impeded that something be together from the beginning with its beginning, on account of this that the action is what successive, right? Before and after the action itself.

[5:49] Whence given that such an agent, by such an action, begins to act immediately when it is, but not at once in the same instant, is the effect, but in the instant to which the what action is terminated, right? So I can begin to walk right now, and we'll immediately be at my destination. Where I can begin to build a house, right, right now, and there won't be no, won't be a house right now, because this action has before and after in it, huh?

[6:22] Okay. All these distinctions are relevant to talking about the Father generating the Son. Now, it is manifest, according to the things that have been said before, that the Father does not generate the Son by will, right? We exclude that, but by nature.

[6:44] And again, that the nature of the Father from eternity was what perfect. Okay. So on the side of the agent, then, because he's acting naturally and his power was always there, right? There's no impediment to his having a son, right then, huh? Okay.

[7:09] But you got to look at the other thing too, right? What about the action? And again, the action by which the Father produces the Son is not successive, huh? Because thus the Son of God would be generated what successively. Yeah. And there would be a material generation and with motion, which is what impossible. It remains, therefore, that the Son was whenever the Father was, and thus he's what co-eternal.

[7:45] And likewise, the Holy Spirit to both, right? To be convinced by the body of the article. You can say that the Word of God proceeds from God, thinking of Himself, right? He's always thinking of Himself perfectly, right? So he always has a thought of himself. So the thought of himself is what always there when his thinking is there, which is always there. And his thinking is not like our thinking, which is like motion, because it's succession, right?

[8:25] Think something out, right? We think about something before we understand it, so we have to think it out. That's not true. God has to think about something before he understands it. No. So his his understanding is always perfect. His understanding, it's a substance, which is always perfect. So he always understands what he understands, right? So he always has the thought of what he understands. So the thought, which is a son, right, is co-eternal with the Father.

[9:01] Okay. So he only has one thought then. Yep. Only one thought. Yeah, that's another argument, but that's true. There's nothing in nature that acts that way. It's already perfected as it acts. Do you know what I mean? Well,

[9:24] unless you talk about something like you know, two and half or four. Oh yeah. So I mean, does the two exist and then a little while later it becomes half of four? No. The thing that Saint Augustine uses the idea of looking at an image in the mirror. It's not like when you look in the mirror and then after a while the image forms. As soon as you're in view of it, it's there.

[9:52] As long as you're there, it's there. That's one way, but it's not of the same nature. We see that the light has took no time.

[10:06] It took some time for the sun to get up, you know to? Now the first objection, huh, is is heretic, huh, Arius, enumerating twelve ways in which something comes to be from something else, right? Mm-hmm. And in all of them, there's either what, not the same in time or not equal in in nature. To the first, therefore, it should be said that as Augustine says in the book about the words of the Lord, no way of going forward of some any creature perfectly represents the divine what, generation.

[10:50] Whence it is necessary, for many ways, to collect a what, likeness. Then what is lacking from one is in some way supplied by the other. And on account of this it is said in the Synod of Ephesus, right? Ephesina Synod, the Ephesian Synod. I guess that's the Council of Ephesus, right? Mm-hmm. To coexist, right, huh?

[11:21] To coexist, always co-eternal with the Father, the Son. The word what, splendor, right, huh? Because the splendor is proceeding from the what, light, yeah, and seem to be simultaneous, huh, as far as the senses could judge, right,

[11:41] huh? That's in Psalm what, one oh nine, isn't it? Among other things. Is it? Probably. A good Psalm by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Ex utero ante luciferum genui te The uh not suffering or undergoing of the birth is shown by the word what, word, huh, verbal, right? That's also where you see the immateriality of the generation of the Son. But the being of the same substance, the name of Son insinuates, right?

[12:25] That's kind of interesting to see those three three words, right? One word brings out the fact that the second person is co-eternal with the Father, right? He's the splendor of the light of the Father. And another one brings out that he's what of the same substance, because he's the Son of the Father, right? But Son might imply a little bit, you know, think of material sons, right?

[12:52] The kind of sons we're familiar with. And so you see, he's a Word, the thought of God, right? Then you realize the immateriality, right? And it's not a a material generation, undergoing, right? Impassibilitate he says, "Impassibilitate." But among all of these, nevertheless,

[13:22] more expressly represents what takes place: the proceeding of the thought from what the understanding, which is not posterior to that from which it proceeds, except in such an understanding like ours, which goes forth from potency in act, right? Which is not able to be said in God.

[13:51] I can know that as a student, you know. You get interested in something, you study it, you know, and then I get interested in something else too, and I want to go in there and kind of get your basic thoughts, you know, about the subject, you know, or form your basic thoughts, right? So my mind is an ability to knowing some subject I haven't studied really, and then I go to Euclid, and he's going to help me form my thoughts about the subject.

[14:19] So my thoughts are what posterior to my mind. That's because my mind didn't actually know anything to begin with, but it was able to know something, right? And so it went gradually from ability to act. But in God, He's pure act, right? So He's not only always understands, but He's understanding itself.

[14:44] So how can He be ever lacking in His what thought? So He has no ability. Not in the passive sense, right? He doesn't have to be actualized, right? Yeah. Okay.

[15:03] And. There's no real distinction between the ability of God to understand and His understanding. So, but if you want to, you know, go from us to Him, you say that when I finally succeed in actually understanding the Pythagorean theorem or some other thing, right? Then,

[15:30] when I finally actually fully understand it, I'm never without the thought of that thing, right? So if I had always understood fully and actually what I'm thinking about, I would always have had what this thought of that, right?

[15:48] So when I finally come to understand the definition of of square as an equilateral and right angle quadrilateral, I can't be in that state of actually and fully understanding what a square is, let's say, right? Without having this thought of what a square is, right?

[16:12] So what I'm in the situation I'm in at the end of my thinking out what a square is, which is quite an accomplishment, I guess. God is always in that fully actual understanding, so He's always with the thought, right? So there's no succession, right, in the act of what understanding Himself.

[16:39] And because He's producing this thought, I'm using the word produce, this thought naturally rather than by by will. There can't be any delay in that respect, and His natural ability to generate is always what perfect, right? So it doesn't have to wait until He gets the full ability to.

[17:17] So it kind of adds something, you know, to understanding the body of the what article, right? Because Thomas says at the end of the body of the article there, and again that the action by which the Father produces the Son is not successive, because thus the Son of God would be generated successively, and His generation would be material and with motion, right, which is impossible. But He's coming back upon the fact that the word thought there brings out the immateriality of the divine generation, which you have to realize that that thought is always there when the mind actually and fully understands something, and that's the way God always is.

[18:08] So we can, in a sense, reason from our mind to the way God is in this respect. When I finally actually and fully understand what a square is, I always have at that simultaneously at that actually and fully understanding what a square is, a what perfect thought of what a square is, right? And God is always in that actually fully understanding state, doesn't change. So He always has an actual thought.

[18:36] So the Son must be co-eternal, right? And God is the same way for the Holy Spirit to be co-eternal with the Father and the Son, because again their breathing is something what natural, right? And they're always breathing.

[18:55] Because Peter's confession of faith, the Son of the Living God. He has a word living there. Maybe a little more distinct than sometimes we do, right? Well, breath and living, right, go together. Yeah. He's always alive. He's always breathing. So they're always breathing the Holy Spirit.

[19:20] Now the second objection was the one that was mixing up what different senses of the word beginning, right? So he says, "The second should be said that eternity excludes a beginning of what duration,

[19:41] but not a beginning of what origin, right? So the definition of eternity was what tota and perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis. So it's the altogether once, right? Possession of a life that has no beginning and no what end, right? So denying that kind of a beginning, right? So if God is always actually and fully understanding Himself,

[20:19] there's no beginning of the duration of the thought He has of Himself. But nevertheless, the thought proceeds from the thinker. But I say, if you go back, Aristotle pointed out how Melissus was mixing up two different senses of beginning. It's very commonly done with senses. Aristotle begins the fifth book of Wisdom with the word beginning.

[20:55] As they say, a very good place to begin. St Bonaventure has at the beginning of the mind's journey to God. He says, "In the beginning, I call upon the first beginning."

[21:13] Now the third objection: What is corrupted ceases to be; therefore, what is generated begins to be, right? He says, "To the third, it should be said that every corruption is a certain what? Change, mutatio, and therefore everything that is corrupted begins not to be, right, and ceases to be, huh? Now the generation that is opposed to corruption is also a what? mutatio or change, right? But he goes on to say, 'But the divine generation is not a what?

[21:51] Changing over, transmutatio. Trans means over, right? Whence the Son is always generated, right? And the Father always what? Generates. I might say the Father and the Son always breathe, and the Holy Spirit always is breathed.

[22:39] Now the fourth objection. Let's look at the fourth objection again. If the Son is generated from the Father, either always He is generated, or you can give some instant of His generation. If He is always generated, then when something is being generated, but whenever something is being generated, it is what? Imperfect, just as is clear in successive things, which are always in coming to be, right, as time and motion.

[23:16] Then we'd follow that the Son is what imperfect, which is unfitting. So we say the Son is always being generated. He's always coming to be. He's always what imperfect, right?

[23:37] Therefore, you must give some instant of his what generation, and therefore before that instant the Son would not be right. Well, this is partly a problem in the grammar in the first part there a little bit. What's the best way of expressing this? And he's going to, you know, say something about that, quoting the way origin speaks and the way Augustine speaks and so on, but also misunderstanding the what the now the instant of time and the now of what yeah.

[24:14] So he begins by saying to the fourth, it should be said that in time, other is what is indivisible, namely the instant, right? Another what is what enduring, to wit the what time. But in eternity, the indivisible now is always what standing, as has been said above, right? So that kind of goes back to the way that the great Boethius, on explaining eternity, he says that the the now that flows makes time, right?

[24:52] A little bit like the point you know by supposed making a line, right? But he says the now that stands still makes what eternity. So the big difference between these two nows.

[25:09] Now the generation of the sun is not in the now of time, or it's not in time, right? But it's in what eternity. Just reading Aristotle there in the treatise on time there, you know, saying what's what's in time, right? And he says, well, to be in time is to be in a number, to be contained in a number, and so he says something that always is isn't in time, because it can't be measured by time.

[25:43] It's not. And then he says that a sign that you're in time is that you are what you change in time, right? You you grow up, you get old, you wear away in time, so the eternal things don't wear away at all. So that's a sign of not in time, right? But the first reason he gives is that you have to be contained in time, right? Like I'll say Kittredge was born eighteen sixty and he died in nineteen forty one 1860.

[26:14] So his life is that's beginning and end in time, right? Yeah. If something was eternal, it would have no beginning or end in time. It couldn't be contained by time, so it wouldn't be in time, right? And Aristotle says, you know, to be in time doesn't mean to be when time is. More than to be in place is to be when that place is, because then the universe would be in this room, because the universe is when this room is, right?

[26:44] So, so for God, you know, to be when time is is not for God to be in time. So, so the generation of the sun is not in the now of time, or in time, but it's in eternity. And therefore, to signifying the being present and the permanence of eternity, it can be said that he is always what born, as Origen says. But as Gregory and Augustine say, right, it is better to say he is always what born, right?

[27:33] So that the word semper, right, Latin is a defective language, doesn't have any article, right? And so you'll find in the medieval ones they try to, you know, put in L Y there, you know, as a what? Isn't that article? Yeah, yeah. I've seen it in Cajetan, you know, so you find it too, you know, these things. So that's going beyond classical Latin. Sometimes I've seen they use the Greek neuter "to" for some reason.

[28:10] I forget where I've seen it. my thing on the book I. I thought, you know, maybe "la" in French came from this "ly," but they tell me that's not the origin. Ille, ille, yeah, yeah. I said, "It's not 'ly, ' you know. You're different than 'la, ' 'la. '"

[28:28] So that the word "semper," right, designates the what permanence of eternity, the now that stands still, right? And the "natus," born, signifies the what perfection of the thing generated, right? Thus, therefore, the Son is neither imperfect, nor was there a when he was not, as the Heretic Arius says, the chooser. Arius says, right. Doctor Berquist, I don't understand the difference between "semper natus" and "semper nasciturum." They're both passive and.

[29:09] Well, since when I think is saying, he is always being born. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Oh okay The other is a present He's always born He's always being born Very good Thank you.

[29:26] Like it's an eternal process like process theology Do you see, You see the the verb there. You know, reflects what's most known to us, right? In motion. And when I'm walking home, I haven't walked home yet. It's again the problem we use our grammar, right, to talk about God, right?

[29:56] When I'm thinking out something, haven't thought it out yet. Okay we're on. to Article 3 now. Whither in the divine persons there is the order of what nature, right? To the third, then one proceeds. Thus, it seems that in the divine persons there is not an order of what nature.

[30:40] Now, whatever is in God is either what the divine essence, right, or a person, right, or one of those notions, right. But the order of nature does not signify the essence, nor is it what one of the persons or what notions. Therefore,

[31:07] there is no order of nature in God. That's going to be solved fairly easily by Thomas, right? Huh? It's going to be signifying what he says in reply there: the notion of origin in general, right? Not in particular, right? So that's not to be a great problem. But now the second one I think is important.

[31:35] Moreover, in whatever things there is an order of nature, one is before the other, at least by nature and understanding. But in the divine persons, nothing is before and after, as Athanasius says in the Athanasian Creed.

[31:57] That's kind of a precious thing in Athanasian Creed. So the Father is not before the Son, and the Father and Son are not before the Holy Spirit.

[32:16] Therefore, in the divine persons, there is not an order of what nature. I told you before. I think I have my own problem there with order, right? Because

[32:33] when I first got thinking seriously about order, it seemed to me that order means before and after, right? And after right and then, as I began to read about the Trinity, you know, here in the disputed questions, Thomas would say

[32:55] there is not an order of this before that in God, but an order of this from that. Okay. Well, then I said, gee, I must have been mistaken. When I said that order means before and after, that's one meaning of the word order. But the other meaning is this from that, right? That that's the way Thomas seemed to speak, right? It's not the order of this before that, but the order of this from that.

[33:30] So like two different meanings of order, right? Well, then I was sitting in Warren Murray's office office at the vault, and this is before I had an edition of the sentences, so we didn't know the sentences, so I'm looking at the sentences there. What it says about these things, and there Thomas says three things pertain to order, right? First is distinction. I talked to you that nothing is before or after itself, right?

[34:07] Or he says distinction is really presupposed to order, right? That's the first thing happening. Then order means before and after, he says. And then he says there are what species of order, right? Okay.

[34:24] And I can be before this in time, or I can be before this as a cause before an effect in a different species, so on.

[34:36] And then he says when you carry this word order over to God and speak of an order in God, like you speak of the order of order in the phrase of Augustine of Augustine, you drop the genus which is before and after, and you keep the what specific difference, right? Okay. So I'm before my son, and my son what? I'm the origin of my son in some way, right?

[35:05] Okay. Um. So when you carry it over to God, you drop the idea of the idea of being before, but you keep the idea that's the specific difference, right? So that was a great. My first thought was better than my second thought. I was being misled, you see. But Thomas, in the text they had, like in the I think maybe the De Potentia um, doesn't make those distinctions, right?

[35:34] Okay. But the idea that when you carry something over to God, that you drop the the genus and keep the difference, is a common what thing in the names of God. Okay. And I just want to think the Boethius is dropping into us all the time, right? How we drop the genus and keep the what difference. Well, of course you can see the reason for that is going back to Porphyry that the genus is to the difference like matter is to what form, as ability is to act, right?

[36:12] So, since God is pure act, you can see why you might have to drop the genus, and you might keep the difference because of the actuality.

[36:25] So, when Aristotle talks, example about episteme, you know, well, it's basically a demonstration, except the episteme. What's a what's a a episteme? What's a demonstration, rather? Well, it's a syllogism, making us know the cause and that of which it is a cause, and it cannot be otherwise. Now, if you carry over this to God, what do you keep? Syllogism making us to know God's got a syllogism making us know he's he's going to Euclid like I am, coming to know things.

[37:03] No, you keep the the difference, right? It's a syllogism making us to know the cause and that which is a cause cannot be otherwise. God knows the cause and that which is a cause cannot be otherwise. He doesn't need a syllogism to make known to him the cause, right? So you drop the genus and therefore the imperfection of our way of knowing, right? You keep the difference, huh?

[37:28] So that was to me kind of a lesson too in the importance of going back maybe in reading sometimes the earlier works of Thomas, right? Because although the later works have more authority, sometimes in an earlier work he might be more explicit, huh? Then later on he's he's less. Sorry.

[37:50] I've seen people do that with Aristotle too. You know, there's not the categories kind of a thing I've made a study of, and the best I know is now there's only two places that I've seen where Aristotle enumerates all ten categories, and one is in the categories itself, and the other is in the book about places, what they call the topics in English. Other times he refers to them and gives you all three or four of them, and doesn't he's incomplete, right?

[38:22] So I remember one guy, you know, saying, "Well, Aristotle wasn't too sure how many there were, you know, and that sort of thing, you know." And so, and I know sometimes Thomas will not give the complete distinction or the sub distinction, just the part that's most relevant to his text, and people would take off as this is a complete explanation or a complete teaching about this, huh?

[38:46] So, but also it struck me too, you know, that the the I know myself my own writing that sometimes I'm more explicit in developing a point more fully, and sometimes when I come back to this point in a later work, I'm more brief and not as expansive and so on. So that when I heard, you know, scriptural scholars saying, "Well, Saint Mark's gospel is the shortest." Therefore, it came first, and other people kind of added things, you know, to what he had said.

[39:19] You know, we read the Gospel of Saint Mark in the parish one time because we figured we could get through it in the time we had. He wanted to, you know, we part of the gospel, the whole gospel. This is the choice to make, right? But I mean, sometimes a person does write something, and then he later on expands on it, you know. Other times, just reverts, and so you can't argue, you know, one way or the other.

[39:43] I see it again and again. So, order nauture is dropping the genus, what order means in general, before and after, but keeping something that pertains to some species, you might say, of order. Right. A lot of lessons there, you know. I mean, I think so delighted to see Warren's office there. You know, and he was caught out, or he had, a so he was asking a question, what it was.

[40:18] I was just kind of, you know, filling in there. You know, I was sitting in his office there and look at his book that Doctor Mede had access to. You know, just trying to get hold of copies of the of the sentences. You know, and

[40:34] what before the internet? Yeah, yeah, before yeah, before you know, the revolution. You know, technical and scientific. Yeah. Warren is saying something. Doctor Mede understands computers. Really, he's really impressed with your computer room or something. Yeah, I showed him all Brother Augustine's way. Got the printers all set up there. Yeah.

[41:04] Wow! Wow! So that seems to be you know going back to what order means in general. So how can there be an order of nature in God if if there's no before and after?

[41:22] Moreover, whatever is ordered is what distinguished. That goes back to the thing I mentioned also, where Thomas says that distinction is the first thing that we find in order, or maybe better to say, it's presupposed to it, right? And I use the axiom of before and after to to show you know distinction comes first. So whatever is ordered is distinguished, right?

[41:49] This is before that. There must be some distinction between this and that. But the nature in God is not what. Yeah. Therefore, it's not ordered, right? Therefore, there's not there an order of nature. So the second objection, in a sense, is maybe attacking order of nature from ordo, and the second objection, yeah, the third objection from from nature. That's beautiful, huh? What I like about these objections is sometimes they concentrate upon each word of the thing.

[42:25] Just like you go back to the the article on eternity, each objection is kind of attacking some part of the definition. Now, the last objection is more objection to the word. order Moreover, the divine nature is his what essence. But there is not said in God an order of what essence. Therefore, neither an order of nature.

[43:00] So Thomas is going to illuminate us about the choice of the word nature, even by the great Augustine.