Prima Pars
Lecture 67: Five Senses of 'In' and God's Knowledge of Future Contingents

Transcript
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Huh? If you ask the other person what's happened, they'll say what? The shape has changed, right? So they're imagining the genus, which is shape, as going from one species to the other. That's really kind of a false way of looking at it. But they'll invariably say that, right? And you know, if somebody's sick or something like that, his condition changes. See? Well, has his condition changed or has his body changed? One condition changed or another. Yeah, yeah. You see, so the body has changed, right? It's not the genus, right? But people will say the genus has changed, right? So they're actually, in trying to talk about the fifth sense, form and matter, right, they fall back upon the, what? Fourth sense, species in, what? The genus. They think it's just the genus or like the matter that is changing from one species to the other. It isn't, huh? Okay? Because this is the first time I've understood this. You've said this year after year. Yeah. And it's like, I know you're right. But it takes a long time to get those senses down, you know? But you get an awful lot of mileage out of them once you get them down. They show up again and again. I mean, the word in shows up everywhere. And you're constantly getting confused and maybe even mistaken, right? I mean, when Kant Xavier is trying to understand matter, right? He imagines everything that comes out of matter to be actually in there. And then he has the problem of fitting it in there without making it fully small and it gets into all these difficulties. So he's falling back to an earlier meaning, right? When he should move forward to a later meaning, right? My teacher, Monsignor Dianne, would say, you know, about somebody, you know, he can't move the word. And Thomas speaks of, you know, the word is being placed first upon this and then being picked up and placed upon something else. Always the new meaning, right? Because you're moving along. But the meaning has some likeness or connection with the meaning that went before. If you can't move the word, then you're lost, right? But people will fall back upon the earlier sense. You know, Heisenberg's book there on Unified Field Theory of Alimentary Particles, right? Several places in there, he mentions the well-known formula, and he puts in quotes, every elementary particle is composed of all the rest. Because out of any elementary particle, you can eventually get all the rest. And so this is a well-known formula, I assume well-known among the students of elementary particles, that every elementary particle is composed of all the rest. But that isn't so. And if you said that, you'd be back in all the difficulties of Annex Hagrid. We're trying to make all these things to be actually in there that can come out of the potency of matter. You'd have particles and then particles and then particles and then particles forever getting smaller and smaller and smaller, which is contrary to our knowledge of the elementary particles where all electrons have the same mass. all protons have the same mass. So you're fouling back upon the second sense of Anne, when you should be talking about the fifth sense. I don't think that's what Heisenberg himself thinks, but he does refer to that formula several times. That well-known formula he calls it. But when Heisenberg is speaking more in his own mind there, he goes back to Aristotle's idea, right? That matter can be formed in various ways, right? But that matter is that kind of potency, huh? And so he compares energy a bit to Aristotle's matter. And the elementary particle is in a different form, which is that this matter can become. So it's very common, right? People say that. Even Michelangelo speaks, he knows if the form where the statue is already in the marble, right? And all he's doing is kind of, you know? It's kind of funny when you speak that way, you know, but everybody knows, you know, you find this in the popular treatment. So Michelangelo, he spoke that way, right? The form's already there. You know, I guess the Pietasso, you saw this big slab of marble, he said someday I'll make something out of that, you know? The Pietasso's already there in the marble, right? But that's the imagination of the man, right? And fight soccer, that student of Heisenberg, fight soccer, he says, you know, when you imagine something, you make it actual in our imagination, right? But he didn't see it, he wouldn't be able to make it. Yeah, yeah. And in a sense, it's already actual as imagination, you see? But it's not actual in the marble. And, you know, you're not unwrapping the statue, you know? You're not unwrapping it, you know? But imagination imagination is what deceives us, because imagination makes actual these things that are there only in what? Ability, huh? Now, you see, if you get hydrogen and oxygen out of water, our mind tends to assume that there's actually hydrogen and oxygen in the water. And that may not be so at all. See, they might be there only in what? Ability, right? Maybe they are an act there, but... But, you know, there are chemicals, though, isn't somebody telling me... Is it salt, I think? The two chemicals are deadly? But together, you know? It seems that they're both actually in there and they're both deadly even by themselves, right? That you would be... I think that was the example you showed, but it was some chemical that was made out of two chemicals which are both poisonous to us, right? And yet we use it every day, you know? The chemicals don't shake. And it shows you something about what our mind thinks, right? But see, what happened in the state of the elementary particle is that the elementary particles you got on one of them, right, are sometimes larger than the original one. Well, that makes no sense to say that they're actually in there because then, you know, they'd be bigger than the original particle, right? So it kind of forced the idea that they're hydrocised particles that they're only in ability, right? They're not actually composing it. And once you see that, how can you come back and you say, well, let's be careful even about water, right? You know? The fact that you can get hydrogen, oxygen out of water by itself, right? That alone, that fact alone doesn't tell you that water is actually composed of hydrogen and oxygen, right? Because I can get maybe out of the, what, wood, you know, a chair and a table and a, you know, out of the trees I can get chairs and tables and doors, right? Because in some sense even these things have come from the trees, right? But obviously I want to conclude from that that there are actually chairs and tables and doors and the trees out there, right? You know? In that case, you'd say they're their own inability, right? So from the mere fact you can get hydrogen and oxygen out of water which you can. That alone is not enough to tell you that they're actually in there, you see? But this, it might be that there's something in the water that's able to become those two, right? Okay? I'm saying that, saying what the truth is about that, right? But people just kind of assume that because you can get hydrogen and oxygen out of water then it must actually be composed of them, right? And they carry that same way of thinking when they started to stare at the elementary particles, right? So because out of any elementary particle you can get the other ones, right? Then they say, well, it seems like every elementary particle was composed of all the rest. And that gets you into all the difficulties of anxiety-acres again. Because inside the proton there would be, let's say, a positron, a neutron. And inside that neutron would be a, what? Proton, an electron. And inside that proton and another neutron and another pot, you know? But they keep it getting smaller and smaller. And that's contradicted by experiment which says, shows us that all protons have the same mass, the same size. And all electrons have it, right? Which is one of the difficulties Aristotle brings out with Anaxagros, right? Because Anaxagros is assuming, you know, that flesh and blood and bone can get smaller and smaller and smaller, right? And there's no limit. And Aristotle argues in the first book of Natural Hearing that if the parts can get smaller and smaller without any limit, then the whole animal or plant It gets smaller and smaller, right? And then he goes out to experience and says, yeah, but we see different kinds of plants, there's certain limits within which they're found, right? So if the parts could be just any sizes, then the whole which is put together from the parts could be just any size, right? And there'd be no limit in the direction of the large or the small. And that's going to strike me when Aristotle saw that, right? In the physical sciences, this came in in physics, in a more narrow sense. In physics, it came in really in the 20th century with the quantum theory, right? Because Max Planck introduced the idea to avoid a contradiction, I think there's terrible contradictions. Infinite energies and all crazy things. In order to save what he observed, he had to posit that energy could not be given or received in just any amount. But there's the smallest amount in these different types of phenomena that you give or receive, or some multiple of that, right? And that's contrary to what he had in Newtonian physics, where you could give, you know, half of what you gave before, and half of that, right? Like in geometry, right? And then Einstein introduced the idea in 1905 that there could be a, what, a limit as to how fast things can go. And part of his special theory of relativity is that the speed of light is the maximum speed in the, what, universe. And both of these are contrary, right, to what you had in Newtonian physics, where you could always, in principle, go faster and faster and faster, right? And then when the quantum physicists went on to study elementary particles, they were working with the idea that there's going to be a, what, minimum length in the universe, a limit due to the nature of these things. And then when they started studying cosmology with the general relativity, it seemed like the universe had a limit. The universe is limited. First of all, in size, in space, you might say. And then, you know, they began to get some evidence. Maybe it might be limited in time, too. You know? And this is, you know, very strange. But Weitzacker, the pupil there, Weinstein there, I mean, Heisenberg says that, he's a scientist, he explained why the sun can go on for centuries after centuries and so on. But Weitzacker describes giving a talk one time on modern physics and all these limits that they had discovered, right? And some older physicist getting very angry about this. And he went to see the physicist afterwards and talked to him privately why he was so upset. And did he have some objections to the new theories? I mean, some scientific objection? Well, no, he didn't have any scientific objection, but he just didn't like the idea of all these limits. And then Weitzacker had a very interesting little essay in there where he said that this idea that the universe is infinite and so on, right, came in at the time of the Renaissance, huh? Because Aristotle thought the universe was what limited, right? So on. And it's at the same time they gave up God that they started to attribute the universe infinity, right? And so it suggested to Weitzacker that the infinity of the universe was to be a substitute, right, for the infinity of God because our mind cannot be satisfied without something infinite. And so if you give up the infinity of God, you've got to find a substitute for the universe. But then the universe turns out to maybe not be infinite. They're kind of panicking, you know, huh? And so that's kind of interesting. Just to finish this article there, if you can here, right? Okay. So we're in the reply to the first objection here, right? The first effort should be said that the notion of infinite belongs to quantum. It's the first meaning of infinite, right? According to the philosopher in the first book of the physics. But of the notion of quantity is the order of parts. We're at primo here, okay? Impired in the first objection. So to know the infinite in the way of the infinite, right? Is to know part after part, right? Okay. It should be like, you know, counting to the end of all numbers when you're never going to get to the end because there isn't any end, right? And thus in no way is it possible to know the infinite, right? Because no matter what quantity of parts is taken, always remains something outside of it to be taken, no? But God does not thus know the infinite or infinite things, right? As we're enumerating part after part, right? That's really a mind that is what? Discrissive, as Shakespeare calls our mind, right? The bilatory discourse. And counting is a kind of discourse, right? Since it knows all things at once, right? Which is the opposite of before and after, right? Not successively one after another. Whence nothing prevents him from knowing what? Infinite things, right? Now, the second objection is similar to that about the transition. You can't go over the infinite. To the second it should be said that transition implies it's certain succession in parts. And in this way is not possible to go through the infinite, huh? Neither from, by the finite thing nor by the infinite thing, huh? But to the notion of comprehension suffices, what? Equalness, huh? Because that is said to be comprehended or grasped, nothing of which is outside the one grasping it, huh? Whence it is not against the notion of the infinite that be comprehended by the infinite, huh? And thus, what is in itself is infinite can be said to be finite to the knowledge of God in the sense that it is, what? Comprehended by it, huh? But not in the sense that he goes through it one by one, right? You know? Even eternity would not suffice to go through it one by one, huh? But he sees them all at once, huh? It's marvelous that Aristotle in the category says that one chapter on before and after, the successive, and then the following chapters on the semo. Together, it was. Okay. Now, the third question is about the measure of things, right? God is a measure. Now, you know the divine Plato, right, huh? In his last work there, the laws, he begins by rejecting, you know, Protagoras who says, man is a measure of all things. Okay? And you can kind of see, you know, in the recent addresses of John, I mean, of Benedict XVI, right, huh? That this idea that man is a measure of all things is very much in the mind of these technically facile people. To the third, it should be said that the knowledge of God is a measure of things. Oh, excuse me. Plato says, but man, God is a measure of all things, right? That's what he says in the thing. Okay? That's kind of what distinguishes the Greek thinkers and the modern thinkers, right? Because the Greek thinkers think that God is a measure of all things, right? And Plato thinks, and the humanists and the moderns there think that man is a measure of all things. But, you know, I sometimes thought, you know, Thomas could have another question on God is a measure of all things attached to his being, what, one. It's a property of the one that Aristotle says to be a measure. So you might have attached to that a consideration. To the third, it should be said that the knowledge of God is a measure of things, but not a quantitative measure. Thomas has stated to this thing on a consideration of the knowledge of God. Which kind of measure the, what, infinite things lack, right? Okay? But each thing has to that extent the truth of its nature as it imitates the, what, divine, what, knowledge, right? Just as in the artificial thing insofar as it agrees with, what, art, right? But given that there were some things infinite in act, according to number, as, for example, an infinity of men, or according to what? Continuous quantity. You know, even if this is, be granted, but Thomas doesn't think that this is so, right? that this is so, right, that this is so, right, that this is so, right, that this is so, right, As if, for example, there was infinite air, right? I feel that the universe went on forever, as some of the ancients thought, right? Nevertheless, it is manifest that they would have, what? A determined kind of being, right? A finite kind of being. Because their being would be limited to some determined, what? Natures. Whence they would be measurable according to the knowledge of God. So guys, now, with his moon, they're measuring the, you know, or looking at your thoughts and counting them, right? But he's seeing, you know, in the scriptures, in the Psalms, you know, he knows my thoughts before I have them, right? You know, so past, present, future thoughts, they're all actual God's knowledge now, right? He knows them all at once, not waiting for us to have the next thought. Because then he'd never get through, right? Because we always have a new thought, huh? Well, I guess we should stop here, huh? Because it will be up to the knowledge of future contingents and then the noncibles and so on. So a lot to think about this here, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? This God, huh? 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 and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Amen. And help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So, we're up to the thirteenth article, which is another article on these special difficulties of what God knows. And this is the question, whether the knowledge of God is also a knowledge of future contingent. Now, what do we mean by future contingents? Well, first of all, what do you mean by contingent? Contingent is what is able to be and not be, right? Now, when the contingent is present, it has a kind of stability, right? So, I'm able to be sitting, or not sitting at this time, but now that you see me sitting, you know I'm sitting. Right? You know I was sitting a minute ago or something, right? Okay? But, in the future, will I be sitting or not sitting? You can't really know that, can you, huh? So, there's a problem for us to know future contingents. You know, Shakespeare's plays there before a great battle, and that guy is going down to take his rest, you know. Where will I lie tomorrow night, you know, after the battle? Maybe he'll lie in your grave. But he doesn't know, huh? He doesn't know. So, how can God know future contingents? That's the problem, right? So, he says, from a necessary cause, proceeds a necessary effect. But the knowledge of God is a cause of things, what? No. Since, therefore, ipsa, what does ipsa refer back to? Knowledge of God, right? Since the knowledge of God is necessary, it follows that things known by it must be, what? Necessary. Therefore, the knowledge of God is not of contingent things, huh? Okay? Since it's like saying, how could you have a necessary knowledge of things that are not, what? Necessary. We certainly can't have that, right? Moreover, every conditional statement, that means every if-then statement, right? Whose antecedent is necessary absolutely, the consequent is absolutely necessary. So, in a conditional statement, you're saying, well, if A is so, then B is so, right? So, if, in fact, A is necessarily so, then it seems that B must necessarily be so, right? For thus, the antecedent has itself to the consequence, just as beginnings or premises to conclusions. For from necessary beginnings or necessary premises, there does not follow a conclusion except a necessary one, as is proven in the first book of the posture analytics. That's Aristotle's book on, what, demonstration, right? An argument where the, what, conclusion follows necessarily and is necessarily, what, true, right? Or it follows necessarily from premises that are necessarily true, right? And so the conclusion is necessarily true. But this conditional statement, this if-then statement is true. If God knows this thing to be future, God knows this to be in the future, we would say, this will be. That's true. Because the knowledge of God is not except about things that are true. But the antecedent, that's the part of the ifs, part of the statement, the antecedent of this conditional statement is necessary absolutely. Because it is eternal, right? And because it's signified as being, what, in the past, huh? Therefore, the consequence is necessary absolutely. Therefore, whatever is known by God is necessary. And thus, the knowledge of God is not of contingent things. Moreover, everything known, you might say, or known scientifically, right, by God necessarily must be. Because also, everything known scientifically by us necessarily is. And the science of God is even more certain than our science. But nothing contingent, no future contingent, is necessary to be. Therefore, no contingent thing is known by God scientifically. But against all this nonsense. It's what is said in Psalm 32, huh? Who fixes, what? Bit by bit, right? Or one by one? The hearts of them, right? Who understands all their, what? Doing's, huh? He knows all my doings of men, Thomas says, right? Okay. But the doings of men are contingent, huh? As being subject to, what? We'd say free will, but they say free judgment. Therefore, God knows, what? Future contingent things, huh? So, Thomas says, I answer. It should be said that has been shown above, huh? That God knows all things, not only those things which are in act, huh? But also those things which are in his ability, right? Or in the ability of the, what? Creature. But of these, some are, what? Future contingents for us, huh? Therefore, it follows that God knows what future contingent things. That's kind of a general reason to say that he does, right? But now trying to understand this a bit, huh? How does Anselm define theology sometimes as Fides quaerens intellectuma, belief seeking understanding, right? Why does he say seeking understanding? He never fully understand it, right, huh? He says, to the evidence of this, it should be considered that something contingent can be considered in two ways, huh? In one way in itself, right? According as it is now already in act. And thus, it is not considered as future, but as present, right? So, am I sitting right now, right? Or you're sitting right now. That's something contingent. You could be standing now or laying down or something. But now it's present, right? And therefore, it's not, what? Contingent to either one, sitting or not sitting, in my example. But it's determined to one, huh? So, even though it's contingent that I'd be sitting now, you can know that I'm sitting, right? Okay? And on account of this, it can be infallibly subject or under some certain knowledge, huh? Sure knowledge. Knowledge in the sixth sense. As example to the sense of, what? Sight, huh? Just as when I see Socrates to be sitting, right? In another way, one can consider the contingent as it is in its cause. And thus, it is considered as something in the future, and as something contingent, not yet determined to one or the other, right? Because the contingent cause has itself to, what? Opposites, right? Should I have this for dinner or not have this for dinner? Okay? And in this way, the contingent is not subject by certitude to some, what, knowledge. Whence whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause. Whence whoever knows a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a contingent effect only in a Does not have of it anything except a, what? Conjectural knowledge, right? Now, you've got to realize that the word cognizio in Latin is a little broader than our word knowledge, right? Or we're a little more limited for our words in some ways. You know, when somebody says something, you say, now, do you know that or do you just think that's so? And it's just asking whether you're sure or not, right? And in that case, you know, knowing as opposed to thinking means something certain, right? But the Latin word cognizio is a little looser than that, a little broader than that, right? And so when he says conjecturalis, that means really a, what? Guess, right? So I could translate it by one word English, you might say. It's not really knowledge in a strict sense as opposed to a guess. It's a guess. Now, a guess can be, what? Reasonable guess, right? A guess can be an educated guess. It can be an uneducated guess. A loud guess. But in any case, it's still a guess, right? I used to tell the students, you know, there are people who are paid to guess. The weatherman is paid to guess. Stockmarket man is paid to guess, right? The economists are paid by government and industry, you know, to guess. Even the doctor guesses. What's wrong with you, right? He's going around this test because he's guessing. This may be your problem, right? But Einstein says that scientific theory is a system of guessism, and it never passes over from being a guess. And even when it's confirmed, it's a confirmed guess, but still a guess. So Thomas is saying here very differently, that whoever knows a contingent effect, only in its cause, right, does not have of it except a what? Yeah. So, what am I going to order when I go to the restaurant tonight? Well, not going to the restaurant tonight, but take that example, right? What, I could have steak or not have steak, right? Knowing my will, could you, no? I used to go to a little restaurant in Quebec, you know, and I would get a little petite steak, you know, and the waitress would see me coming in and she'd say, But, uh, that's a pretty good guess, but I don't know. Sometimes I just get fed up with it, you know, the same thing, you know, so, even though I like the food, huh? So, you really can't know what Brooke is going to order tonight. But you can, what, guess he's going to order a steak, right? But you don't really know. Now, God, however, this is the interesting thing now. God, however, knows all contingent things, not only insofar as they are in their causes, but also insofar as each one of them is an act in itself. That's hard to understand, right? But you have to remember that God's knowledge is not in time. God's knowledge, as we learned already in this question, is the same thing as his substance, right? And we learned in the treatise on the substance of God, that it's eternal. And do you remember the definition of eternity? It comes from what great thinker? Oathius. Oathius, yeah. I mean, the elements of it are, of course, already found even in Plato. Because Plato realized that in eternity there's no before and no after. And that's kind of, you know, pretty good for him. But the definition of eternity has to be understood through the definition and knowledge of time and of the now of time, right? So, just recall the definition of eternity, eh? Tota simo, et perfecta possessio, viti interminabilis, right? The all at once, eh? Perfect possession, right? Of unending life, eh? So there's a negation of before and after in, what? Eternity, eh? There's a negation of any beginning and any end, eh? Now, sometimes people think of eternity as a kind of endless time, eh? And in so doing, they have a part of what eternity is. It is endless. That is to say, it has no beginning and it has no end, right? But that's not a complete knowledge of what eternity is. It's not only endless, as he says, viti interminabilis, but it's what? Tota simo. Simo is the opposite of before and after. In the category, as you may recall, Rastal takes up the chapter 12 there, and the meanings of before and after, right? And then he follows that in chapter 13 by simo, together. Hama in Greek, right? So, you know, even if, I'm 71 today, but even if I was alive last year and I'm alive next year, and every subsequent year I'm still alive, and every year before last year I was alive, right? I would still not be eternal. Because one of my years would be before and another one after. Okay? So, you need both of these negations to understand eternity. There's no, what, beginning and no end to eternity, but there's no before and after. It's all at once. It's completely actual. So, God is not in time. And that's very hard for us to, what, understand. As we mentioned before, we saw a little bit when we studied the third book about the soul. Our reason doesn't think without, what, images. And that's because the proper object of our reason is that what it is is something we can imagine. And the images involve, what, the continuous and they involve time. And so, it's very hard for our mind to understand something that isn't continuous and in time. And so, all of our statements involve the verb, which as Aristotle points out in the Perihermeneus and Logic, the verb signifies with time. So, we can't speak without doing that, huh? And so, when we come to talk about something that is without time, we seem to, what, know it only negatively by saying it's without time. What does that mean, huh? Well, it means that contrary or opposite to the things that are in time, the things that are measured by time have a beginning and an end in time, and they have a before and after in time. And eternity has neither one of those, right? So, God is not in time. And Bwetis, as I mentioned before, when he gives that great definition of eternity in the fifth book of the Constellation of Philosophy, he begins the book by having the leader of the conversation, who is Lady Wisdom, come down to console him, call Aristotle her true, what? Fowler, right? And Bwetis has to understand how God's knowledge, even of temporal things, is what? Eternal, right? And he has to go back and realize that Aristotle was the first man to really think out. And that is that truth does not require it. That the way we know be the way what? Things are, right? And you can see a little shadow of that in us, where we can talk about the past now. And are we false in thinking about the past now? But the past is not now. So how can we truly think of the past now? Because it exists, right? Yeah, the past, yeah. But our knowledge is now, and the known is not now, it's past. So, we can truly know when the way we know is not the same as the way the thing is. The thing we know... is past and we're knowing it now but that's the way god knows the future the future is present to god in his eternal now and when the future contingent is present like now i'm sitting here right then but before i came in here you know i could have stood up here and doing a stand-up lecture or something like that gone to the blackboard here to be standing or something like that um you couldn't know for sure whether i was going to be what sitting or not right you might guess that he's a lazy old son of a gun and he'd be sitting down again but you wouldn't know for sure right he gets carried away sometimes and jumps up and goes to the board or something right so um but now that it's present you can know it right you can be sure i'm sitting right even though it's a contingent things so god knows the future as what present to him in his eternal now uh the great boethius you know sometimes in contrasting the the now of time the now of what eternity he says the the now that flows along it's always different the now that flows makes time and the now that stands still makes eternity so he says although contingent things come to be and act successively one after another nevertheless god does not what successively know contingent things one after another insofar as they are in their own being as we know them right as they come up because our knowledge is derived from things so i gotta sit down before you know that i'm going to sit down and then i'm not down the future anymore but he knows these things what semo right i think it's kind of marvelous that aristotle in the categories as i mentioned in chapter 12 he takes up what before and after and then semo in what the next chapter and he does the same thing again in the fifth book of wisdom it takes up before uh prior imposter um and then he takes up what semo because you know semo as what by the negation of before and after when two events are together one is what either before and or after the other this guy's kind of a subtle thing yeah actually aristotle when he talks about more or less than equal he says that really we know equal by the negation of more and less you have two lines and if one is neither longer or shorter than the other then they're equal and so um this fits very much in our knowing god's you know we know is uh being semo all at once or together uh by the negation of before and after and of course when you get down to the uh to the uh treatise on the uh trinity you know you're going to be kind of amazed by that huh because thomas will explain why athanasia says in the creed the athanasian creed says there's no before and after god even though the son proceeds from the father right and the holy spirit is breathed by the father and the son the father is in no way before the son and the father and the son are in no way before the holy spirit and he'll eliminate all the senses of before that aristotle distinguishes and uh that's kind of the um what did shakespeare say you know looking before and after and that's the reason does when we look at god we have to do what negate before and after yeah but you still got to understand before and after to negate them that's amazing the categories are going to be very important for the trinity yeah you just ask yourself a simple question are the father the son the holy spirit one thing or three things that's right you got both yeah but not in the same meaning of of what thing but in the in the categories you have distinction between an absolute thing like substance or quantity and quality and then a what relative thing right and so there are three well actually four relations but there's three persons right so uh if by thing you mean relation yeah there are three things there if you mean the substance of god the nature of god there's one thing yeah but unless you see the um how the word thing is equivocal by reason which aristotle saw there you can't what understand it can't answer that question right it's it's it's incredible of course that book of aristotle is in us there's not by chance that thomas calls him the philosopher which is a figure of speech right by the way are we reading thomas now what would you say that's figure of speech though you're not reading thomas see yeah yeah you're reading the words of thomas right but we say you're reading thomas you know the words that's a very common figure of speech so we say you know read aristotle or read kant whatever the author is but um in a figure of speech the meaning of the speaker the meaning of the words of the speaker is not his meaning so when i say we're reading we're going to read thomas this semester or something like that um that's not what i mean that's that's by sight i mean we're going to read the words of thomas you see and i think i think that figure of speech there is the metonym and the metonym where where it contains the container and the signifies this you know i did it's kind of catch off in those ones it's the name metonym right okay um it's very common so let's go back to this paragraph and although contingent things come to be an act successively one succeeding another one after another right nevertheless god does not know contingent things successively one after another as they are in their own being right which is the way we know them right so we know the the the new so to speak right day after day right and that's why we're always saying what's new you know but these are all present to god and this is because his knowledge is measured by what eternity just as his being we found out that his knowing and his being are the same thing yeah so his being is eternal and then he kind of quotes part of the definition eternity but eternity tota simul existence right all at once uh takes in the whole of time as has been said above whence all things which are in time are to god by eternity present right not only uh by that reason by which he has the reasons of things present before him as some say but because his what insight bears from eternity upon all things insofar as they're in his what potential in his present presentiality yeah now sometimes you know thomas you know compares that to what the circle the circle one he says that now of time are like the coins and circumference and circle and one is what comes after the one and before the other one right okay okay but the now eternity is outside of time and it's towards each one of these things or they're towards it in exactly the same way they're across which you might say right so all these things which are not present to each other right but are before and after each other are all present to god in his eternal knowledge so that's really that's really important to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to It's an incredible thing that God acknowledges of that sort, and that's why the great Wethys picked out the definition of eternity, to show how God can know these things in the fifth book of the Constellation of Philosophy. Quences manifest that the contingent things are known infallibly by God, and that's why insofar as they are subject to the divine sight in their presentness. And nevertheless, they are future contingents compared to their, what, causism. And so, this is why one of the motives of credibility is the fulfillment of prophecies, right? That God can be sure, right, and reveal something that's going to take place in the future that is, what, contingent compared to its causes, but God, in fact, he can reveal those things with certitude, is a sign that he's speaking to us, huh? We saw that a little bit in that first Vatican Council, right? The motives of credibility, their proportion to all, are the miracles and the fulfillment of prophecies, huh? So it says in the Bible, you know, declare it to us the future and we'll call you gods. Now, going back to the first dejection, huh? From a necessary cause precedes a necessary effect. But the knowledge of God is the cause of, what? The things known, right? Therefore, it seems that if God's knowledge is necessary, or infallible, as he said, right? It would follow that the things known by him are necessary, and therefore they're not, what? Contingent, right? Okay. So he says, the first, therefore, it should be said that although the highest cause is necessary, nevertheless, the effect is able to be contingent on account of the contingent cause that is proximate to it, huh? Just as, and this is kind of an example of the old science, just as the germination of the plant is something contingent on account of the, what, contingency of the proximate cause, although the motion of the sun, which is the first cause here, is something, what? Necessary, right? Okay. And likewise, the things known by God are contingent on account of their proximate causes, although the knowledge of God, which is the first cause, is what? And sometimes Thomas compares that to just reverse in us, huh? Because sometimes the thing that in itself is necessary is known by us only for probability. That's because things are a cause of our, what, knowledge, right? But due to our defect, we don't know necessary things as necessary. Well, God is reverse. God is a necessary thing, and the effect, though, can be, what? Contingent, huh? Because of what's proximate. Now, the second objection is talking about an if-then statement, where the antecedent is necessary, it seems, the consequent is necessary, huh? And Thomas' reply is quite long, as you can see. And there's a, there's a, a sophism that's easily made here, huh? To the second it should be said, that some say that this antecedent, God knows this future contingent. Some say it's not necessary, but contingent, right? Because, although it is in the past, God's knowledge, nevertheless it implies a respect to the future. Okay? But that this does not take away necessity, they say, because it has respect to the future, right? It's necessary that for it to have been, although the future does not follow sometime. Others say that this antecedent is contingent because it is composed for the necessary and the contingent. Just as this saying is contingent that Socrates is a white man. But this also is nothing, because when it is said, God knows this future thing to be contingent, the contingent is not placed there except as the matter of the, what, verb, and not as a principal part of proposition. Whence the contingency or necessity has nothing to do with the proposition being necessary contingent, true or false. Thus it is able to be true for me to have said that man is an ass, just as for me to have, what, said that Socrates ran, or God is. And the same reason is there about the necessary and the contingent, huh? Whence it should be said that this antecedent is necessary absolutely, right? It does not over-follow, as some say, that the consequence is necessary absolutely, because the antecedent is a remote cause of the consequence, which in account of the approximate cause is contingent. But this is nothing, he says. For the conditional would be false, whose antecedent was a, what, necessary remote cause, and the consequent a contingent effect, as if, I should say, if the sun moves, the plant will, what, germinate, huh? It doesn't follow, um, it isn't true. Because in if-then statement, the then part has to follow necessarily. The then part, right. And therefore it ought to be said otherwise, huh? That when in the antecedent there is placed something pertaining to the act of the soul, the consequent ought to be taken, not according as it is in itself, but according as it is in the soul. For other is the being of a thing in itself, and the being of a thing in the soul. As if, I say, if the soul understands something, that is immaterial. It ought to be understood that that is immaterial, according as it is in the understanding, not according as it is in itself. And likewise, if I say, if God has known something, it will be, the consequent ought to be understood, insofar as it is under the divine knowledge, insofar as it is in its, what, presentness, huh? And thus it is necessary, just as the antecedent. Because everything that is, when it is, necessarily is. As it is said in the first book of Perihemoneus. That's very subtle, huh? You've got to think about that for a while, huh? Okay, everything known by God, go back to the third section here. Everything known by God necessarily is. It's necessary to be. Because also everything known by us must be. Knowing in the strict sense there. Now let's use the word shittan there rather than cognitum, right? Because that's a stricter word there. You get the word science. Since this knowledge of God, or the science of God, is more certain than our science. But no, what? Future contingent is necessary to be. Therefore, no future contingent is known by God, huh? To the third he said, it should be said, that those things which are reduced in act in time, are known by us excessively in time, but by God in eternity, in the eternal now, which is above time. Whence, to us, because we know future contingents, as they are such, we cannot be, what, certain, right? But only to God, whose understanding is in eternity above time.