Prima Pars
Lecture 41: God's Knowledge, Names, and the Structure of Theology

Transcript
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To third, it says about a substance of a thing being. To third, it should be said that although every being is one through its very substance, nevertheless the substance of each thing does not have itself, what, equally to causing unity, because the substance of some things is composed from many things, and of some not, right? So my substance is composed of my body and soul, right? My body's got all these different parts and so on, right? So I'm not as one as the angels are, right? But even then there's this composition of existence and substance, so I'm not as one as God is one. So that's the end of the consideration of the what? Substance of God, right? Now, come back a little bit here. In question two, what did you show? What existence of God? Existence of God, right? What did God exist, right? And then in questions three through eleven, right, we've been considering the substance of God, what he is. And Tom's divided that basically into five parts, right? That God is simple, that God is perfect, that God is infinite, that God is unchanging, and God is, what, one, right? Now, to some of these he, what, attached another attribute, like the perfect, that he's good enough, to infinite, that he's, what, everywhere, and so on. One, one, changing, that he's eternal, okay? And doesn't attach, I mean, the measure of all things, but he could to, it became one and simple. Now, the thirteenth thing, which we'll get in the fall, right? Is that the Alex decision? Okay. In the twelfth and the thirteenth, he's going to be talking really about our knowing God, right? And our naming him, right? And I think he takes up these things here, they might seem to be out of order, right, back in the first question, right? Okay. But you have to know a little bit about God before you can see fully, right, how we know him and name him, right? Okay. That, to some extent, is a little thing different, what he's doing here mainly studying God, right? Now, after that, he's going to take up the operations of God, right? What God does, and the doings of God, is what that way, huh? Okay. Turn this on to be what trinity, right? Why do we have, let us see the trinity out of the picture here, because that's going to comicate things too much. But why do we have these three here, huh? The existence of God, the substance of God, and the doing of God. Are they three different things in God? Is God's existence and his substance the same thing? Yeah. There's going to be no difference between the two reasons since we found out, right? And we take up the doings of God, his understanding and his willing and so on. Would they be something added to his substance? No. They would be the very substance of God, right? Okay. So, why do we have these three parts of our consideration of God, if there aren't three things, three different things that correspond to God? Why? Okay. What's the way we know God in this life? Through, through, you know, the simple through, and the simple. Okay. And basically, we know God for the things God has made, right? Now, is the existence of Dwayne Burquist, or your existence, and the substance that you are, are they the same thing? No. Because your substance received its existence from God, right? Okay. And is your substance the same thing as you're doing? You know, Dick Carcassel mixed up in this, you know, I think, therefore I am. And, uh, the early modern philosophers, you know, if I stop thinking, well, I cease to be, right? Well, the point is, your existence and your substance are not the same thing as your thinking, right? And most people would cease to be, though. And, uh, I think he was, there's substance, so there's substance. So, um, these are three different things in the preacher, right? Okay. Now, uh, go back to my little simple example here. Compare God to the point again, huh? You say from the one simple God, there are the sins, you might say, right? Right, huh? The multiplicity of things in the creature, right? And here we just speak of the existence of the creature, of the substance of the creature, and then the, what? The doings, huh? Operations. Doings, I suppose you say in English. God is the source of all these things, right? So, these three points here are really distinct. And this point is not this point, and this point is not this point, right? And now we're coming back in the opposite direction, right? Now, what does the great Heraclitus say, the way up and the way down are the same. But, in God, you're going from something one and simple to the, what? Many and composed here in the creature. And we're going in the opposite direction for the many to compose back to something one and simple, right? So, I can consider this point here as the end of this line, right? And as the end of this line. And as the end of this line, right? And so now I have a three-fold consideration of one point. And I first consider it at the end of this line, then at the end of that line, and then at the end of that line, huh? Am I being false? No. That three-fold consideration arises because of my starting point, right? Okay? But in order to not confuse my way of knowing with the way the center is, as I go along here, I will discover that the existence and the substance of this God, right, are the same thing, right? And then that His doings are, what? The same as His substance, right? And... One doing his willing and his reasoning and so on, or his understanding, I should say, are we in the same thing too? But they're the same as his substance. That's why we have these three parts in consideration. Because we're knowing God as the source of these things and creatures, right? So any of these thoughts that we have about God are going to be inadequate to expressing all that he is, right? And this will come up, you know, all the way through here, but it will come up in this treatise here coming up now, in questions 12 and 15. Thomas will have to stop and point out again that he's talking to the Trinity and so on. So you say, you know, God the Father, we'll talk about his being the Father. The name Father expresses something about him, but not all, right? And the name God expresses something, but not all. All, so no name is going to be adequate to God, okay? And the Trinity, more, right? But when you take the Trinity, you'll see that it has to come after the consideration of the divine doings, right? Because the Son proceeds from the Father by way of his, what, understanding. Okay? Okay. And something like this in us, like when I, even when I imagine, right? When I imagine something, I, what? In my imagination, there proceeds in image, right? And when I think about something, there proceeds in my reason, a thought of that, right? Okay? That's kind of the starting point to see that. And then, when I love somebody or something, right, that person has made an impression upon my heart. So something of that person is in my heart, huh? Okay? So when God loves himself, he proceeds by way of love, too, huh? So you have to really understand that God understands and wills before you can understand the Trinity. And when the question comes up, you know, can there be more than one son or more? You know? You have to realize what you learned in talking about the apparition of God, that he understands everything by one act. So there's only one thought. Only one son, right? And there's only one act of will in God, right? So you have to really understand that, huh? This is perfectly well-ordered than Thomas does, huh? And it helps you to think about it. I think he uses this analogy, right? Thomas used that comparison of God to the center of the circle when he was talking about eternity. You know, where the points of time are before and after each other, but they're all exactly opposite or crossed from, so to speak, the eternal now, right? So the past and the present and the future are all present to God, but they're not all present to each other. So you can make a little use there, but all these things kind of fall short, huh? Okay? It's kind of interesting. I was mentioning how I was reading Louis de Broglie, I was talking about the electron and so on, huh? And the difficulty in knowing the electron is just the opposite of the difficulty in knowing God. The difficulty in knowing God is that he's to what? Yeah. So it's through the weakness of our mind, huh? The difficulty in knowing the electron is that it already exists, huh? Okay? And remember what Thomas was saying about the metaphor before? You know, the comparison. Why should sacred scripture use metaphors? And isn't this something proper to the poet, right? So why should the infima doctrina, the lowest teaching, should be used in the highest teaching, in sacral doctrina? And Thomas says, well, the reason why they both use metaphor is because you're talking about something that is beyond our mind today, right? Okay? But in a way, it's just for the opposite reason that's beyond our mind, right? Okay? But nevertheless, it's kind of similar to that, right? So in the case of sacred scriptures and metaphors, you're trying to bring something down to our level, okay? But in the case of the poet using metaphors, he's trying to bring something up to our level, okay? It's interesting, huh? Because Niels Bohr, most explicitly, said that in talking about these material things, we have to use complementarity with an E rather than an I there, right? And we have to have, what, different images of these things that sometimes it behaves like a particle, sometimes like a wave. And these are not all together, what, the same thought at all about the thing. But we have to use both of them, right? Neither one seems to be adequate to describe it, right? And it's kind of interesting to see the way it's developed, you know, in modern physics and they first discovered it about light, right? And they had, in the 19th century, they had pretty well determined that light was a wave-like phenomenon. And then Einstein, in the 20th century, right, got the Nobel Prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, where he had to show that you have to consider light to behave like an stream of particles sometimes. Well, is it a particle or a wave, right? Is it? Well, neither one seems to be adequate. And in some experiments we feel like a particle, in some experiments you feel like a wave. So the joke used to be on Monday, Wednesday, Friday talking about it as if it were particles. Well, you know, but there's a little dislikedness between that and God, right? That no one of these thoughts that we have about God seems to be adequate to express Him the way He really is. We don't know Him as He is by any one of these thoughts, right? But they all, in some imperfect way, correspond to God. Okay? Do you see? And there's something like that at the other level when you get down to the elementary particles and so on, to the photon, the electron, and so on, that you have different thoughts about them that in some way correspond to the reality of the electron, but no one of which seems to be adequate to understanding what the electron is. There's a major little similarity there like the use of the metaphor in the Thomas's explanation, right? But in a way, it's just for the opposite reason, right? That we do these things, huh? Bohr used to recommend, you know, to his physics students to read Washington, not Washington, but Kirkegaard, right? To read the symposium of Kirkegaard, where these men go out to the countryside to have dinner and so on, and everybody's supposed to give a talk about women, right? One man, you know, is a married man. He sees women in a certain way. Another guy is a professional seducer. Another guy is a tailor. Another guy is a young student, you know. But they all would view a woman that don't seem to be the same human, right? But they all have some correspondence to the reality, right? We used to recommend that they read this, you know, to get an idea of complementarity in that kind of the human way. So, the same woman, say, could be a mother and a sister and a daughter and a lover and so on, right? And you'd look upon her differently in each of these ways and all of a sudden they'd do with what the woman is, right? She's all of these things, but it's kind of hard to put that together, right? You can't look upon them in the same way. I can't look upon my wife and my daughter in the same way even though my wife was a daughter and my daughter is a wife, right? Somebody, right? And so, Bohr was trying to take that idea of complementarity, right? That you had to not say, this is what woman is. No, each of these is imperfect but partially true, right? Understanding what woman is, right? In the same way the wave and the particle corpuscle picture of the electron, they both correspond the way to the electron. Either one seems to adequately express what it is, huh? In the same way these things here, right? It's kind of interesting to see that. It's kind of struck by what an objection that I was studying the Trinity there. The guy was talking about the relations there and so on. And, of course, the objection is from the absente, right? That relations of reason are multiplied forever, right? And, therefore, there must be more than, you know, just a couple of relations or two, four relations, as Thomas says. And Thomas says, well, you're thinking of the human mind, of course, huh? And so, if, by an act of my reason, if I know what a triangle is, let's say, by that same act, do I know that I know what a triangle is? That's another act, right? And if I know that I know, if I think about my knowing that I know what a thing is, I've got another act in my mind, right? This is what I said I was talking about, right? Why God understands everything by one act, right? That's amazing. You know, usually what you usually think of, you know, it's what God understands, what a dog is, what a cat is, what a horse is, what a dragon is. All by one act. That's one thing that's remarkable, that we can't do that, right? God just knows what is. Yeah, but he knows it all by one act. He knows it distinctly, right? But also, he knows his very act by the same act, right? Well, how can he do that, you know? You see? Because basically, Thomas would say, what God understands is himself, right? But understanding himself, he understands his, what? Understanding himself, because his understanding is himself, right? I say, well, see who is. We can't do that, you know? That's kind of amazing, right? In the same way, you know, you take up God's understanding and his willing, I say, well, I understand to some extent what wisdom is, and I think I love wisdom to some extent. I say, but my understanding what wisdom is is not my loving what wisdom is, right? But God's understanding what he is and loving himself are the same thing. You see? I say, how can this be, you know? I say, well, I won't really understand it until I see him as he is, which I hope to do someday. But it's kind of interesting to think that in God, understanding God and loving God are the same thing, you know? I'm always so nervous when people say, well, gee whiz, Perkis, you must love God an awful lot because you understand God more than other people. I say, well, no, they're not the same thing. I wish they were, but they're not the same thing, right? I say, okay, but I have to know so far as I can God's understanding and loving himself, starting from my understanding and loving God, which are not the same thing. So I'm going to have a different thought about God's understanding and loving. But if there really is not because we can show the same thing, there's no multiplicity in God at all, well, then I realize that no thought I have about God is really adequate to expressing his perfection. So that will come out in this next video, see, right? But you're in a better position to see it here after seeing the substance of God than you would in the first question, right? So we're going to start on the first, what, Thursday of September? Is that the idea or what? Well, it will be after the 8th because that's our big feast day. It's our foundation day. So, okay, so the second Thursday? Whatever Thursday comes after the 8th. Okay, the 8th is a Thursday? I don't know. Oh, I don't know, okay. I have to look at the calendar. Yeah. Yeah. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us, and help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Those three things that I ask the angels to do, you know, as Thomas does talk about those in various places, but they're all free right together there in his thing on the sentences. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. In that order, yeah. Okay, let's look before and after here as Shakespeare urges us in his exhortation to use reason. And he talked about things and our knowledge of things, right? Right? And the names that we give to things or place upon things, right? What's the before and after of these three? That before, after the things. Things first. Yeah, the things are before our knowledge of things, and? Knowledge of things. Is before? Naming them. Before naming them, right? Okay. And so you often see Thomas stating this rule that we name things as we, what? Know them, right, huh? Okay. But if you unfold them in terms of the order, right, and see that our knowledge of things comes between the things and the names that we place upon them. And if you go back to the first book that's come down to us from the philosopher, I mean, the first book in the order of learning, the categories, huh? The Greek commentators, when they first thought about the categories of Aristotle, they said, well, some guy said, he's talking about things. Because there are some, something said about things in the categories, huh? And others said, no, he seems to be talking about our thoughts, the universal thoughts we have, and so on. And others said, no, he seems to be talking about words, right? And each of these opinions as to what the book is about, they eventually decided is a part of the truth, right? But that the scopas, the aim of the book in some way, involves all three, things and thoughts and words, huh? But then they tried to say more exactly how these three come together, and they came to the idea that it's about words naming things through thoughts, okay? Now, later on, they make that more particular than that, but in general, right, it's about names signifying things through thoughts. But you have that same order, right? But, of course, it's kind of easier to see it that way, because the words are the most sensible of these three, right? And some things that signify by words are also sensible, but the thoughts are more, what, hidden in the mind, right, huh? So you kind of get at the character of the thoughts through the way the words signify things, huh? Because the words signify things through thoughts. So, three is enough, as they say, right? These three go together in the book called The Categories, right? And they go together in naming things, huh? So when you have a word, for example, that is equivocal by reason, huh? And especially when you have a word that is equivocal by likeness of ratios, like the famous word before in the categories, right? Or like the famous word beginning, the beginning of the fifth book of wisdom. Or like the word to see, right? Or like the word in there, in the eight meanings of the word in. Then, when Thomas explains the order of these words, huh? The order of these meanings, you'll come back to the idea that we name things, we put names upon things as we know them, right? And since our knowledge starts with our senses, we place names upon things that we can sense first. And sometimes we carry the word to things we cannot sense. Sometimes by likeness of ratios, sometimes by the ratio of the later things to the former things. So the Greeks might have placed the word logos upon something sensible, like the spoken word, right? And then put the word logos on the thought, which is not a sensible thing, but it's connected with that word. The word in some way signifies the thought. And then they place it upon the thing that has thoughts, the reason, right? That's called logos too. Or the word to see is placed upon the act of the eye first, and then upon imagining, and finally upon understanding, right? So, Thomas here, in a way, is pausing here, right? After knowing something about God, not only that he is, but something about his very substance, right? That he's simple, right? But perfect, then, and infinite, in a certain way, and unchanging, right? And altogether one. Now he's going to pause and talk a little bit about our knowing, this unusual substance, huh? And that's what he does in question 12. And then in question 13, he's going to be talking about how we, what? Name the substance, huh? So you see, I have that same three things, right? In the questions we just finished before vacation, we were talking about the thing, about the very substance of God. Now we're going to talk a bit about our knowledge of that substance, and then we're talking about our naming of that substance. Now he does the same thing in the Summa Contra Gentiles, although he doesn't wait until he's gone through the complete consideration of the substance of God. But he does talk about the simplicity of God, and the perfection of God, and then he pauses and talks about how we know God, and may know Him, and so on, right? So, because in the things above, he says, he's a little premium here, we have considered in what way God is by Himself, in Himself. It remains to consider how He is in our, what? Knowledge, right? That is, in what way He is known by creatures, huh? It reminds me a little bit of the things in the Summa Contra Gentiles when he's talking about why God has made creatures like you, and I, and the angels, right? Why He's made intellectual creatures, and that's so He can, what? Communicate a likeness of Himself in a new way? Because, in a sense, the material things, even, and not knowing things, are like God in some way. At least there's a vestige of Him, right? But in our minds, we can get another likeness of Him, huh? Now, when it gets to the 13th, if you just look at the beginning of the 13th one there, you'll say, just to tie things together there, the premium to the 13th question. Having considered those things which pertain to the divine knowledge, or our knowledge of God, he means, right? We're not to proceed to consideration of the divine, what? Names, right? For each thing is named by us according as we, what? Know. Yeah, okay? I usually state that principle in English by saying, we name things as we know them, right? You have to at least be aware of things. That's not all perfectly, but you have to be aware of them in some way at least. And then kind of a direct consequence of that is that the order in naming follows the order in knowing, see? It's more approximate to that, right? And not only when you take one name and carry it over, but I always take the example in class sometimes of water and hydrogen, right? As far as naming is concerned, water is named before hydrogen. And hydrogen is named from water. Because hydro means water, right? And I suppose it's gin that generates water, huh? Water is H2O, they say. Okay? So we name hydrogen from water. And so in our naming, water is before hydrogen. But in things, if water is in fact H2O, then hydrogen is before water, right? That's the order in things. But the order in naming doesn't follow the order in what? Things. It follows the order in what? In our knowledge, yeah. So because water is sensible in a way that hydrogen is not, and much more known to us, therefore, it's been known since the beginning of man's life, right? Beginning of human history. Well, this hydrogen was discovered until, I don't know, Leboisier in the 18th century. Discovered it before they chopped his head off in the French Revolution. Terrible thing. But you see, the knowing is closer to the way where you actually name things, the order, right? Okay? So the first principle you see is that we name things as we know them, and then the order in naming follows the order in knowing. That's why we tend to use the word sense for the meaning of a word, because our knowledge begins with our senses, huh? So you kind of see how 12 and 13 then relate it to what's gone before, right? In the order among those two, huh? And about this, he says, we ask 13 things. How unlucky. And the first thing is, whether some created understanding is able to see what? The essence of God, the substance of God, the nature of God, is able to see what God really is. Is that possible? That's going to be the first article. And if you find out that it is able to do so, then it comes a second article. Whether the essence or nature, substance of God, what he is, is seen by the understanding through some created, what? Form. Okay? Species. And we'll see that it cannot. Okay? But God has to, what? Join himself to our mind, right? Or join our mind to him. So that he is both in the beatific vision, what we see, and that by which we see him. Okay? And then whether God, the nature of God, the essence of God, what he is, is able to be seen by the bodily eye, huh? Some people are disappointed when you tell them you don't. You're not going to see God up here. You're high, yes, huh? Now, the fourth article. Whether some created intellectual substance is sufficient or enough from its own natural powers to see the very, what? Essence of God, and as you might suspect, no. This is natural only to God to see himself as he is, right? So, before the created intellectual substance can see God as he is, it has to be raised by something above its nature. And this is called the light of glory, right? It's a created light. Not to make God understandable, because he doesn't need to be made understandable. He's fully understandable. But to raise up the power of the mind, right? To be able to receive God as the form by which you see God as he is. Now, what's it that, in the Catholic epistles there, about the Father of Lights, he's called, right? And I really like that, huh? It says, every perfect gift, you know, descends down from the Father of Lights. And I think it's in the plural, Lights, right? What's he talking about? Well, he's talking about the mini-lights, the natural light of reason, right? And then the light of faith, right? And then the light of glory, right? These are the most perfect gifts, right? Coming down from the Father of what? Lights, huh? Okay. Like it says in St. John's Gospel, this is the light which enlightens every man who comes into this world, right? Well, that's maybe referring, first of all, to the natural light of reason. Not everybody's enlightened by the light of faith. But the light of faith is another light that raises us to seeing some things that you wouldn't see, but kind of obscurely, right? And then finally, the light of glory. And they'll have that famous words there in the Psalms, in your light, you shall see light, right? Now, whether one of those, right, seeing the nature of God sees it more perfectly than what? Another, right? Okay. So, you know, when you say the Our Father, in English we say, Our Father who art in heaven, right? But I think in the Greek or in the original, it's in the what? Heavens. Yeah, yeah. Well, one meaning of Our Father who art in heaven, in addition to, you know, the power that He shows in the heavenly bodies, but in the, what? Saints and in the angels, right? We're seeing Him as He is. But He's in the heavens because there's many heavens, right? And when St. Paul speaks of a man who's carried up in the third heaven, right? Yeah. There are various ways of understanding that, but there's different levels, you might say, right? Of seeing God and He's up to the level of the Seraphim, I guess. So, so you might suspect one of those seeing the nature of God sees it more perfectly than the other, right? But, as Thomas will say elsewhere, everyone is satisfied with what? Seeing God, huh? He sees God as much as he wants to see God. As much as he loves God, right? Proportional to his love of God. But now, given that some see better than others, does any creator to understand man, even Seraphim, or St. John, does it comprehend the divine nature? Does it see the nature of God as much as it's knowable? No. Only God sees the divine nature as much as it's knowable. Now, God, by knowing Himself, knows all the things, right? And then the question naturally arises, when we see God as He is, do we know all the things? Well, yes and no, depending on what you mean by all the things, right? Okay? But, but the whole created real, you see, not everything that God could have made, because that's still into that. What are the things that it knows there, meaning, in seeing God as He is? Does it know them through some likenesses? No. It's a divine substance itself that is, what? A likeness of all things. Because all things are insofar as they have some likeness to God. It's back to the fundamental principle that every maker makes what is like itself. So everything made by God is in some way like Him. So He's a form by which all things can be known. So there's not many thoughts or many likenesses there. And then, whether we know all these things together when we see God. Okay? And that's only going to be one act there. We're going to see them all at once, together. So I won't be thinking about, you know, what a dog is and what a cat is and then what a triangle is and then what courage is and so on. But I'll see all of these things together, at once. It's in God. So, this is the thing about us. Our knowledge is all stretched out and I go from one thing to another, right? I read a couple, you know, chapters of the Summa Contagentiles today, you know, and the next day I'm reading some other chapters and I, you know, I won't be thinking about the things I thought about the other day but I think about something new and keep on going, you know, but I'm barely staying alive, right? On my mind, you know. We'll take up the knowledge of God himself there and get into the... of God.