Prima Pars
Lecture 109: Order of Teaching and Learning in Theology

Transcript
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He considers a person in general and in particular and so on, right? It's a very beautiful way he perceives. But at this point, I just want to see this division into what? Three, right? So the question that you ask yourself is, is it going to be into two or into three? Well, if you take the whole consideration of God, it's into two, right? And those two parts are more marked, as I say, in the subaconscientists, but they're in different books, right? You know? But here, they used to have the same distinction between, you know, consideration of divine existence, substance, and operation, and then the Trinity. But then the Trinus and the Trinity is going to be divided into these three. But it's a beautiful example of what he means in the beginning, right? According to the order of teaching or the order of learning. But he uses those as synonyms, I think. Because the order of teaching ought to be the order of learning, right? That's more obvious. I mean, sometimes we say, too, that the order of teaching ought to imitate the order of discovery. That's a little hard to see, but that's basically true, too. But obviously, the order of teaching and the order of learning should be the same. I should teach things in the order in which you can learn them. That would help, yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is what Thomas does right now. Okay? If you're going to talk about the Our Father, right? Would you divide the Our Father, the petitions? Say, talk about the seven petitions in particular. You can't obviously understand it. Division into seven, right? It's impossible. Okay. Would you divide the seven petitions of the Our Father into two or three? Okay? Now, if you divide them into two, what would be the basis for the division? Well, the more obvious division into two is into those about the good and those about the bad. And it's because when you divide into two, as they often do, you tend to divide by opposites, right? Okay? So you divide, you know, virtue, I mean, habits into virtues and vice versa, into two. But those are opposites, good and bad habits, yeah. So the first four petitions, Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Give us this day our daily bread, right? Those are all petitions about the good, right? Forgive us our trespasses, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from you or from the evil one. Those are about the bad, right? So you divide the first four against the last three in the basis of good and bad, right? Now, you don't have to worry about the last three because you've got three, then you don't have to worry about two or three. But the first four, why the mind can't understand the division into four, right? So how would you divide those first four into two or three? And the first two pertain to the end, and the last two to the means, right? That makes sense because the distinction of the good is into the end of the means, right? So you have the end, the word on the side of God, Hallowed be thy name, and our end, thy kingdom come, right? And then you have the means, the chief means, being that, doing God's will, and then the help there, give us this day our daily bread, right? Now, I think that's easy one to see in division into two. Now, I guess sometimes, I think going back to Augusta now, there's a division into two where they divide the first three against the last four, and this casts some light upon it. I think the basis of that division was that the first three are fulfilled completely only in the next life. God's name is Hallowed fully only there. Thy kingdom come, that's... Yeah, and even that will be done is done perfectly only in there. And then you can take those words, I will be done on earth as it is in heaven, as to some extent, characterizing all the first three. And then the other four are about, what, this life, right? Give us this day our daily bread. And whether you take that for our material bread or even for the Eucharist, right? That's for this life, not for the next life. And then all these bad things, and obviously tied up with this life, right? So you can divide the good one against the other three, but they're all concerned in the sense of this life. That makes sense too, right? I was, Mark, when I was a little boy, when we'd say the Our Father in church, the priest led, he'd say, Our Father who art in heaven, help be thy name, thy kingdom come, and will be done on earth as he is in heaven. And then we, the congregation, started with us this day. I said, well, that kind of fit Augustine's division, you know? I mean, maybe there's a reason, a physical reason for a pause at that point. But I mean, the three ones that are more perfect petitions, they'll be fulfilled only in heaven. That's given to the priest who's leading us. And then we, the laity down there, say, in the last four, which is more addressed in this life. I mean, that makes sense, right? Just like, you know, the priest reads the gospel, and then somebody lower, right? Maybe the epistle, or the, you know? So, now, it would make sense, though, to divide the Our Father's petitions into three, what Thomas doesn't assume. Now, of course, you can't divide it by opposites, you're going to divide it into three, right? But the way he divides it is, the petitions about the end, the petitions about the means to the end, the petitions about the impediments to the end. Well, that makes sense, too, right? So, the first two are about the end, the second two, about how to get there, and the last two, about how to avoid getting there, but the idea of removing those things. Going back to what I've discussed today, just to women here, what kind of struck me was, when you say, give us this day our daily bread, we're kind of talking about the present, and forgive us our trespasses, well, that's something I've done in the past, and then, at least not into temptation, that's about the future, right? You know? It's kind of a beautiful way that it goes, like in Thomas' thing, the Sacrum Convivium, you know, where he speaks of recalling Christ's death on the cross, and then he speaks of the fullness of grace given in this, and then it's a pledge of, what, eternal life. So, it takes in the past, the present, and the future, right? And thus, what you see in those divisions is, it makes sense, I think, to divide the seven petitions, both into two and three, right? And, in this case, maybe they can be divided into two in two ways, right? But now, you take up the seven sacraments, right? Would you divide those into two or three? Yeah, yeah. And so, you divide the Sacrament of Orders and Matrimony against other five, right? Because, in a sense, the first five are ordered to the good of the soul receiving them, right? And the last two are kind of ordered to the community, right? Okay? So, I don't see any way of dividing the seven sacraments into three. But then, the five you divide into the three, right? And to the two, right? So, that's clear, right? So, you're dividing by two, and then you're dividing the five into three and two. That's the way it goes. I was looking at the 17th chapter of John. And, of course, if you look at those whole chapters there, 13 through 17, Thomas says, Christ is preparing the apostles, right? And how does he divide those chapters? I mean, there's what? 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. There's how many chapters there are? Five, yeah. So, how does Thomas divide it into two or three? Well, he divides it into three, right? He first shows them by his example, right? Next, in the... What? You want to show them to be? Yeah, yeah. Here's an example of the two. Then he instructs them by his words, 14, 15, 16, right? And then 17, he what? Praise. Okay. Now, I used to make an application of this to fatherly, right? Or in any sense, that you first have to give good example to your sons or your flock, right? But then you have to, what, instruct them by your words, right? And finally you've got to pray that your example and your words will bear fruit in them, right? There's something very complete about that, right? And Aristotle says three is the first number about which we say all. Yeah, yeah, see? And it's not enough. You must give good example to your children, right? Or to your, you know, the priest has to be involved in the scandals, right? That we had here in the church. He's got to give good example to the flock, right? But then he's got to instruct them by the word, you know, the spoken word. And written word maybe too, but. And then he's got to pray for them. This will bear fruit, huh? It's a beautiful way. The things you can learn kind of from that, not from the example of Christ, right? Everything Christ said and did is an example for us, right? Now when he gets to the 17th chapter, the prayer, how's that divided, right? Well, there's three prayers in there, basically. And first he prays for himself, although he doesn't need it. And then he prays for the apostles. And he prays for everyone who's going to believe the apostles, right? And that's very interesting, division to three. But in a sense, I suppose you should first of all be concerned with your own salvation. And then of those that you're in contact with, right? Whether you're friends or relatives or in some way close to you, right? And then to some extent derivate the church or the world, right? And that's just kind of a beautiful way to set up, right? I think those prayers are not analyzed, you know, obviously as much as the Our Father, right? But I mean, you don't have too many, you know, full-blown prayers in Christ, right? Besides the Our Father, right? So these are the biggest prayers, more or less, than I can think of in the Gospels. Now, in the prayer for the apostles, and in the prayer for those who don't believe the apostles, both of those prayers divide into two parts, right? I was kind of struck by it, because in the prayers for the apostles, the first part, he's praying about the bad, right? That they, being in the world, will not be corrupted by the world, and so on and so on. And then the second part of his prayer for the apostles is that they will be full in their apostles and so on, right? So it's just the reverse order from the, what? Our Father. In the Our Father, he prays for the good and the good and the bad, right? Now, Thomas, you know, points out that Scripture sometimes says, do good and avoid evil. Other times it says, turn away from evil and do good. And this is the exact reverse order, right? And he explains the difference in the one case, the orders of intention, what you're aiming at. That's because you're aiming at the good and the good in, that you want to avoid the evil, so you talk about the good first, right? But then the other order is the order of carrying things out. So you've got to stop killing people or stop fornicating or stop stuffing yourself. Whatever it is, if you're doing what you shouldn't be doing. And then you can turn to the good, right? And I noticed a long time ago, if you look at the commentary on the Psalms, right? Where the Psalms are divided by Augustine and Thomas. The agreement with Augustine is two pretty good minds to follow. The three parts of the Psalms correspond to the three parts of the Our Father, according to that division, but in the exact reverse order. So as Augustine says, the first 50 end up, according to the correct number now, with the Psalm of Penance, right? The 50th one that Teresa of Avila likes so much, right? The 100th Psalm is a Psalm of good action. And then the last Psalms there is Rest of God, the Kingdom of God. So it's appropriate that the Psalms should be in that order, because we carry these things out, and it's much more at length than the Our Father. But the Our Father being concise. It's interesting that our Lord here, in the prayer, not in the Psalms, but in the prayer for the Apostles, He follows the Word of the Psalms, insofar as He prays against the bad and then for the good of them, right? And what does He do when He gets to pray for the others? For us, who are going to believe the Apostles, in the third part of the 17th chapter. Well, before I come to that, one more thing about that psalm I like so much. It's a very good psalm. Unless the Lord build the house, the neighbor in vain will build it. Unless the Lord guard the city, in vain does the car keep vigil, right? There it's in the order of the Our Father, right? You pray for the good, and then against the bad, right? You have the same two parts in the prayer for the Apostles, but exactly in reverse order, right? Okay. Now, what's the two parts of the prayer for the faithful, in some of the way? The third part, the third prayer in the 17th chapter. It's not good and bad. It's all good. I mean, basically, you're still in the bad there, you can say too, but basically it's divided according to... Yeah. Yeah, the first part is praying for the unity, right? Okay. And the second part is what? Eternal life. Now, I was kind of struck, because there's one psalm, what is it, 132. It says, Behold, how good it is and how pleasant for brethren dwell at one. It talks about that being one, right, doesn't it? Well, coming down from the... For there, the Lord has pronounced his blessing, life forever. So it goes to the unity, to the life eternal, right? Well, the unity, of course, is primarily by, what, love, right? Okay? And then by love, you are, what? I guess to his beloved. I guess I'm eternal life, right? I guess I have this charity. But notice, in these things there, can you have division into three, and then in these two prayers, they have to be divided. But in a way, that prayer, unless the Lord builds a house that he brings in, it's basically into two, right? He gives those two, and then he kind of elaborates in both of them, in the same order, right? So, I mean, in the fall, huh? I don't know where I'll be in the fall, but... I hope you've been here. Well, yeah, we've got to meet them as a grandchild. I mean, you understand that. Yes, of course. Yes. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. In 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're written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So since we haven't been together for a while, let's come back to something we were touching upon at the last class, if I remember. If you look at the premium here, to the Treatise on the Trinity, in the beginning of this question 28, we have that. He says, Having considered those things which pertain to the unity of the divine essence, it remains to consider about those things which pertain to the trinity of persons in the divine. And then he says, and this is a very key thing now for us, And because the divine persons are distinguished by the relations of origin, by relations that are understood from the origin of one person from another, like the origin of the Son from the Father, or the origin of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Then Thomas says, and this is a very precise statement, Because of that, because the divine persons are distinguished by the relations of origin, according to the order of teaching, the order of doctrine of it, that's Latin word for teaching, according to the order of teaching, we're going to have to first consider about origin, or about the going forward, the proceeding. Secondly, about the relations of what? Origin. And third, about the what? Persons. So, in this first question, he's going to be talking about the origin of processions, and then the next question about the relations, and then you have all these questions about the persons. But he calls that the order of what? Teaching. Now, if you leave one hand in that part, and go back to the premium at the very beginning of the Summa here, the prologue, as it's called, which is etymologically the same as the word forward, but it's a more precise thing than what we call forward. A lot of Thomas' commentaries in Scripture, they have what they call a prologosum, and Thomas says many things there about why he wrote this work, and in the, maybe it's the second paragraph, at least in my text of this prologue, we have considered, he says, that beginners in this doctrine, we call sacred doctrine, in those things which have been written by many, are impeded a lot. Okay? Now, why are they impeded? Well, one thing is an account of the multiplying of useless questions, articles, and arguments. But then the second thing he says, partly because those things which are necessary for them to know are not treated, and the Latin says, according to the order of learning, tishtina. Now, here he speaks of the order of learning, and in the beginning of the treatise on the Trinity, the order of teaching. Now, the teacher and the learner are not the same person, but is there any difference, really, between the order of learning and the order of teaching? That is to say, is there any difference between the order in which the student should learn, right, and the order in which the teacher should teach? It seems to me that would be the same thing, right? That the teacher ought to teach things in the order in which the student can learn them, in the order in which the student can best learn them. And so, I take these two phrases, order of learning and the order of teaching, as we refer to the same thing. So, it's interesting that Thomas repeats this emphasis upon the order of learning, or the order of teaching, as he calls it here, at the beginning of this thick section, but it runs through the whole summa. One thing I did on my vacation here, these three weeks, I took along my copy of Augustine's work on the Trinity, and of course, you're struck by the fact that Augustine will go into talking about, let's say, the Incarnation, right, greatly, in the case. So, it's not just about the Trinity, it's got all kinds of things mixed up in there, right? While here, you hardly hear about the Incarnation, you have to go to the Territia of Paris, right? So, Thomas' way of proceeding there is much more ordered than Augustine's, although, you can see that he keeps on pulling things in from Augustine. I was making a comparison of some of those talking to out there, that Augustine is to Thomas a bit like Plato is to Aristotle. And the more you know Aristotle, and then the more you read Plato, the more you see, oh yeah, here's something that Aristotle developed and used over here, and here's something else that he used here, but in Aristotle, they're ordered, in a way they're not ordered in Plato. And Plato's works of course have come down to us in the form of a conversation, and in a conversation, we aren't always stick to the subject, or stick to one subject, we tend to go from one thing to another. So, now, let's just stop a little bit and talk about the order of learning, or the order of teaching, about God. Okay? And what I think is pretty hard to avoid, and things that are, even in Thomas sometimes, in a little different order, right? Okay? I think what's pretty clear from the two Summas, and from the opinion of theology, is that you talk about the existence of God before you talk about the, what? Substance of God. Now, when you talk about order, we mean before and after, so what is exactly the before and after in learning about God, or learning about God according to the order of religion? Well, you first learn about the existence of God, and then secondly about the substance of God, third about the operations of God, and fourth about the Trinity. And to some extent, the Trinity is before the Incarnation, because it's a word made flesh, right? So, this word you're talking about, so in a sense, the treatise about the Trinity is presupposed to the treatise about the Incarnation. And I see it very strikingly. I was thinking of, again, what we have in the Companion of Theology, and the Tedeum, right? In the Tedeum, you first praise the Trinity, then you go to the Incarnation, and then you kind of give the Our Father again. It's almost the same order there. The prayer is at the end, then. But when the transition takes place from the Trinity to the Incarnation, it comes back upon the fact that he really is the Son of God, and he became man, and so on. Now, I think that order is pretty, what, necessary, right? As Thomas would say, if God doesn't exist, the whole theology is removed, right? So, in a sense, the first thing you have to consider is the existence of God. Now, is there a reason, though, why you consider the substance of God before it's being, what? It is understanding and willing. Is there a reason to do that, huh? Okay? Now, I think if you went through, like we did, the understanding and willing of God, you can see that he borrows things, right, from the consideration of the substance of God. Now, that you have to consider the operation, that he borrows things, that he borrows things, that he borrows things, of God, what God does, he has understanding and is willing, before the Trinity, will become clear when he goes through the Trinity. Because the Son proceeds from the Father by way of God understanding himself, so that God is in himself as understood. And because we learn in the treatise on the undoing of God, that the understanding of God is not something added to God, but it is his very being, his very substance, then God is understood, must also be God. And then, you take up the, what, you see, the Holy Spirit, and he proceeds by way of God's, what, loving himself. So God is in himself as loved. So you really have to understand the doing of God, right? The operations of God, his understanding and his willing, before he can understand the, what, Trinity, right? And it comes up in all kinds of ways. Particular things, huh? I mean, you learn, you take up God's understanding that he's not like us, where my understanding of a triangle, my understanding of a dog, my understanding of justice, they have three different understandings of me. But God has only one act of understanding. That's shown in the treatise on the understanding of God. And that's why you can, the only one word of God, right? Only one thought of God, huh? You heard my little poem, I was beginning to know me. God the Father said it all in one word. No wonder when that word became a man, he spoke in words so few and said so much. He was the gravity and soul, but a little borrowed there from Shakespeare. So, unless you understand God's understanding, you wouldn't be able to understand why there's only one word, right? Only one son. And likewise, that God's loving or God's willing, there's only one act, right? By my love of wisdom and my love of wine and my love of candy and my love of Shakespeare, my love of Mozart, these are all different loves in Gwynn Berkwes. I don't have one love of which I love both, sir. And they have all these, my love is very divided, right? I love my grandchildren and my wife and everything and my brothers and so on. But you have to understand that there's only one act of will of God, only one love. So I think that order, that before and after, the existence of God before the substance of God, the substance of God before the what? Yeah. And when you study the substance of God, you'll study like the simplicity of God, right? And there's nothing added to God's substance, right? And then when you come to talk about God's understanding, you realize how it must be simple, right? And you can't have many, you can't be thinking from one thing to another and so on, right? Okay? Or you realize, for example, when you talk about the substance of God, that God is pure act, and therefore there can't be something unknown to him because then he'd be in potency, able to know something. There can't be any reasoning in God, right? If he understands reasoning and so on. Now, in the study of the doing of God, in both Summas and in the compendium and so on, God, or not God, Thomas will take up the understanding of God before his willy. And of course, our coming to know the understanding and the willy of God from our own understanding of the willy, you have to realize what? The understanding has to be understood before the willy can be understood. And that's going to be reflected, again, in the Treatise of the Trinity, that we know the proceeding of the Son before we know the proceeding of the Holy Spirit. And in fact, in the case of the Holy Spirit, we don't have names, right? In the same way that we have for the Father and the Son. We can't appropriate the name Holy Spirit, but the Father and the Son are spirits and they're holy, right? And so you have to kind of invent words, right, to talk about the Holy Spirit. But that's because this proceeding by way of love is in some ways less known to us. But it goes back to the fact that in the Treatise on the Operations of God, you have to take up the understanding before the willy. There's no way to get around that. Unless you know that what God primarily understands is himself, you wouldn't be able to see why what he primarily loves is himself. Because if the good is understood, it is the object of the will. Now, is there a before and after in consideration of the substance of God? Well, as you have been with me going through that part of the Prima Pars, in the consideration of the substance of God in the Summa Theologiae, and also in the Summa Cantor Gentiles, that consideration of the substance of God is divided into five parts. And the order of those five parts in the Summa Theologiae is you consider first the simplicity of God, and secondly the perfection of God, which is attached to the consideration of his goodness, and then the infinity of God, and then the unchangeableness of God, which is attached to consideration of his eternity, and so on, and finally the unity of God, right? Okay. Now, is that order of those five? Is that in the final part? You must consider this before that, and the order in which he does in the Summa Theologiae. Did Thomas say you can't do it otherwise? You have to see yourself as otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. One time I gave a talk on the order of the consideration, the substance of God in the two Summas. And I was going to bring in the compendium too, but I just limited myself to the two Summas. And, but now with my further reading of the compendium and so on, what seems to be necessary, right, is that you consider the simplicity of God before the perfection of God. He does that in both Summas and in the compendium, right? Okay. But the place of the other three. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, and in the compendium, he considers the unchangeableness and eternity of God as being eternal before even his, what? Simplicity. Or in the Summa Theologiae, he considers it not only after the simplicity, but after perfection, and after the, what? Infinity, right? Okay. Now, in my paper, what I tried to show is not that one way is correct and the other order is incorrect, right? I tried to show that something is brought out in one order that is not brought out in the other order. Now, you've heard me with my famous rule two or three, right? And you say, well, what is Thomas doing here? I mean, here in the treatise, in the Trinity, you just saw, he divides that treatise into three parts, right? And yet, in both Summas, he divides the consideration of the divine substance into, what? Five. Well, it's interesting, huh? Because in the compendium of theology, the consideration of the unity of God is part of the consideration of the simplicity of God. And so you realize those two kind of go together, right? And in the, when you consider the infinity of God, you know, the first thing you have to learn is not infinite in the way in which quantity is said to be infinite, right? But as Augustine says, this is where more means, what? Better. So you realize that the infinity of God, in a sense, refers to the fact that there's no limit to his perfection. He's universally perfected. So the infinity of God actually in the Summa, in the compendium of theology, he's taken up before he's perfection. So those two kind of run together, right? The unchangeableness of God, right, is not changing in any way whatsoever. In the Summa Conocentiles, when you go back to the arguments for the existence of God, there's two arguments of God, and they're much more developed than in the Summa Theologiae. He'll give, you know, the basic argument and the two premises, and there's three arguments here for this premise, and three arguments for that premise, is that you don't get into that development there. So you spend so much time on the argument for the unmoved mover, the first mover, he's unmoved, that seems kind of appropriate to take up God's being unchanging and eternal before anything else. And in that consideration, you bring out, more naturally I think, that God is pure act. And that kind of helps us understand the whole substance of God, and his simplicity, and his perfection, and so on. Now Thomas, in the Summa Conocentiles, though, he takes up the infinity of God last. And after he's taken up the simplicity of God, and the unity of God, right, and of course, having done it in that order, he says, well, God is not infinite in the sense that he goes on forever, like a big body, right? Because we've already seen that he's all together in the Summa. And he's not infinite in the sense that there's an infinite multitude here, because he's one. So he eliminates any sense of infinite tied to quantity in the strict sense, huh? And then he goes into the sense in which God is infinite, huh? And so it's kind of natural to put that last. So, if someone says to you now, does it make any difference in what order you consider God? I mean, Thomas is very insistent upon, what, things have not been taught in the order of, what, learning, right? And here again, things have to be taught in the order of teaching, right? Okay, there is an order there, right? But maybe there's something necessary about considering this before that, but then you get down to some of the smaller points, so to speak, more particular things, there can be some, what, yeah, yeah, okay? So I say, in all these three works that I've mentioned, the two Summas and the Compendium of Theology, I think I was mentioning before class, by the way, that the Compendium of Theology, they have an English translation of it, that, you have it, you know. In all three, in all three works that I mentioned here, Thomas will take up, for example, the understanding of God before his willy, right? In all three, he'll take up the simplicity of God before his perfection. So I'd be very hesitant to not proceed in that order, right? But as far as the other three, there seems to be a little variation in the order which Thomas does these. And in the paper I gave on the two Summas, I try to bring out that there's something shown by one, not by the other, right? And sometimes, you know, if you show one thing before the other, then you use that to reason to the other. But sometimes we show the reverse, you might reason in the reverse order. So, you know. So, the order of learning, the order of teaching, is very important, as you can see, for Thomas, right? But since order means before and after, you've got to be careful as to how strict you make that before and after. So I say the existence of God before the substance of God, the substance of God before the operations of God, the operations of God before the Trinity, that to me seems kind of necessary in the order of learning, in the order of teaching. But now you descend into the parts, right? I mean, in the arguments of God, Thomas always gives the argument for motion first. And in the compendium, that's the only one he gives. Because he's saying briefly, but it's not. So I think there's a reason why that argument comes first. And it's because motion is most known to us. You know, you always heard me quote Shakespeare there, right? Things in motion sooner catch the eye of what not stir us. And so if you want to get somebody's attention, you wave or something like that, right? You don't want somebody to notice you. You're very quiet and very still, and maybe they won't notice you, right? And so I think at least as far as that argument for motion, when you make one or more than you make, but that, I think, naturally comes before the other one. And then the argument from that God is the first maker, the first efficient cause, unmade maker, put it that way. That naturally comes after motion, because the mover and maker are very similar. And Aristotle reduces them to the third kind of cause. He begins with the mover, though, and then he talks about the maker, right? So the mover or the maker is the third kind of cause, but Aristotle always begins with, to find the third kind of cause is once there is first a beginning of motion or rest, right? But then he kind of brings in the maker. So there's something about that order, right? So I would say in the argument existence of God, the argument for motion comes first. The argument for the unmoved mover, whether you develop it more or less, right? And the argument from, for the first maker, first efficient cause, and actually comes second, and then the other ones come, right? In the substance of God, what seems to be most determinate is that the simplicity of God is considered before the, what, perfection of God, right? Of course, you go back to the first thinkers, right? They thought that the beginning of all things was matter, right? Which isn't perfect. But they took a matter that they thought was simple. Like Therese took water, right? And Eximenes took air. Heraclitus took fire, right? They took a matter that at least to our senses appears to be homogenous of the same kind. So it's the idea at the beginning of things is the simplest of all, right? It's kind of more known to us. And even the modern scientists, I mean, you know, they'll see, you know, the proton, electron, neutron or something that's before the atoms, right? The atoms before the molecules and so on. So they, they'll look for the simplest thing, huh? The principle of simplicity, they call it in modern science sometimes. So maybe, you know, it makes sense to consider the simplicity of God before it is what? Perfection, right? Because people think of the beginning of things as being what? Simple, right? And, but those who think of the beginning of things as being matter don't really see the perfection. They're trying to be everything from the least perfect. Okay? So I think that that's, that's a follow in both summas and compendium, right? But then as far as the other three are concerned, there seems to be a certain what? Variation, right? And as I mentioned before, in my paper, I didn't try to say that this is the correct order. And that is the wrong order. I tried to show that something is brought out in the one, not by the other, right? You follow me? Okay. Now what about this order here in the treatise on the Trinity? Well, Thomas is very explicit, huh? Because the divine persons are distinguished according to the nations of origin. According to the order of teaching and the order of learning, right? You ought to learn first about the origin or the proceeding, going forward from one person from another person in the Trinity. And then secondly, you ought to understand the relations that are understood according to its origin. So, if one person generates another, right, then we seem to have a relation to father and what? Son, right? Okay. And if the father and son breathe... Son, right? Son, right? The Holy Spirit, and you have another relation, right? Them to that third person, and that third person to them, right? And then finally, you talk about the persons. And of course, Augustine, it was in the fifth book of the De Trinitati, where he talks about the persons and how they're really subsisting relations and so on. We will come to that time. But also, I might, you know, as a teacher of the categories, I sometimes ask people this question. Are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Are they one thing, or three things? Do you mean you deny a real distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? What in nature? Well, if you go back to categories, we distinguish between the substance of the thing, meaning what it is, right? And relation, right? And what Aristotle actually saw is that the word being, or the word thing, right, has more than one meaning. So in one meaning of thing, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one thing. They're one God, right? One substance, huh? Consubstantial. But in another sense of thing, relation, there are what? Three subsisting relations, yeah. So there's one thing there and three things, and there's no contradiction, because the word thing doesn't mean one thing. Just to review that a bit for you, if you're a little bit hazy on that. If I asked a man in the street, is the nose and the ear one thing, what would he say? Two things, huh? Or is a man and a dog one thing? So if you have a man and a dog in a room, and you take the dog out, how many things do you have left in the room? One thing, right? Okay. And then if I come back and say, no, you've got two things. You've got the man and his shape. Well, he'd say, you're playing with words or something, right? Or to take an example of the nose and the ear, right? You've got a nose and an ear, you've got two things, it seems, huh? Now, if you take away the ear, you've got one thing left, right? He'd say, yeah, I've only got one thing left. I'd say, yeah. No, you've got two things. You've got the nose and the shape of the nose. And if he denies it, then I'd say, well, then it's nothing to me if I flatten your nose. So, or a man and his shape, right? People worry about their shape, right? Kind of funny, I was reading Spear, you know, with the associate of Hitler, right, there in the industry. And Hitler was always worrying about his shape. And he had a liking for little sweets and things. He says, take these away, I like them too much. He says, if I've got potbelly, he says, it'll destroy my image, right? You know, he can't go out there, potbelly, right? Like Goring was, you know. So people do worry about their shape, but their shape then is something other than them, right? But notice, you say that a man and a dog are two things. And when you say that a man and the shape of a man are two things, you're not using the word thing in the same sense, are you? And so, the substance is one thing and the accident is something else, right? Now, you don't have accidents in God, right? But you do have relations in God. And so, what you learn, in a sense, in the categories, is that the word thing is equivocal, not by chance, but by reason. But there's more than one meaning of the word thing. And a lot of times, you know, people don't realize that they know these things because of the words, huh? Charles Deaconate used to always take that movie or play, where this guy, you know, runs into somebody and he says, well, you're speaking prose rather than poetry. All my life, I've been saying prose. I didn't know it. Well, it's a problem with the word, right? And you say, you know, well, does a man know the difference between substance and quantity? You might say, well, I'm not sure if I know the difference, right? But if you go back to something like the original Greek and so on, you'd say, well, is what a thing is, and its shape, and its size, rather, the same thing? Is a dog what a dog is and the size of a dog the same thing? Even the man who speak with, does it take to say the same thing, right? There's different dogs of different sizes, but they're still what a dog is, right? Or different men of different sizes, right? But they're still what a man is. So they make a distinction between the first two kinds of things. But the size of the dog or the shape of the dog is not a thing in the way that the dog is. It's something of another, as Aristotle says, rather than something by itself. So you can see in the order of learning, the categories comes even before. It's the only work that Augustine knew, right? I noticed in reading the De Trinitatis, Augustine would use exactly the Latin words that correspond to the Greek words. You won't say relation, but you'll say, ad aliquid. Which is exactly what we do in logic. We translate Aristotle's name for that category, pros, ti, towards something. Ad aliquid. So let's look now at the first question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.