Prima Pars
Lecture 110: Procession in God: Internal Emanation and Divine Generation

Transcript
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Now, about the procession. Now, procession, of course, is the Latin for what? Sometimes we transliterate proceeding. It means going forward, right? About the procession of going forward, five things are asked. First, actually it comes first, where there is a going forward, a proceeding in God. In other words, not only does the creature proceed from God, right? There's something outside of God, right? But is there a proceeding within God, right? That seems kind of surprising, you know, that there would be. But if there was no proceeding within God, there'd be no relations within God and no persons within God. And that's kind of a question of, does it exist, right? Such a thing in God. And then, where there's some going forward, some proceeding in divine things, can be called generation. And that's the, what's going forward that will give rise to the relations of father and son. And then, where there, besides generation, there is some other procession. But notice, Thomas doesn't have a word for it, right? Love is more obscure, right? And then, whether that other procession can be called generation. If it could be, then the Holy Spirit would be another son, right? Maybe the grandson, I see all these grandchildren. So, I'm very much aware of that, huh? Grand-nephews, too, when I was out there. A couple of my grand-nephews, yeah. So, trying to figure out what I was to them. Finding his father, finding his grand-nucle. So, notice, there's two articles there, dealing with this other procession, right? The one is, whether there is some other one, right? That's kind of more hidden, right? And there were, what? Heretics, right? Who admitted the divinity of the word. The son that denied it of the Holy Spirit, huh? And then, the final question. Whether, in divine things, there are more proceedings, or more going forwards, than two. Now, the answer to that question is going to depend upon seeing that there's only two kinds of operations of God. Understanding and, what? Willing, or understanding and loving. And, therefore, there can be only two proceedings, right? So, you'll see in many ways how this presupposes the understanding of the divine understanding and willing. Now, let's look at the first article here. Now, as Thomas often explains, huh? We name things as we, what? Know them, right, huh? And, what do we know first? Sensible things, right? So, the word proceeding or going forward, first name is something sensible. And, open the door and go forward. Right? And, so, but then, the same word is often carried over, right? And, if you can't follow that carrying over, you'll be like Monsignor D'Anne used to say, you know, you can't move the word. And, most people are like Monsignor D'Anne, and they will fall back upon an earlier, what? More sensible meaning, right? And, not see the one that we're trying to get them to, huh? Shakespeare likes to pun on the word understanding, right? And, so, one guy says to the other guy, I don't understand you. And, he says, well, my cane understands me. And, they start, well, it's kind of a lousy joke in a sense. But, it does call your attention to the fact that the original meaning of understand is to stand under, right? And, then, how does that come to name this thing that is an act of reason, huh? How does it come to do that? You have to be able to follow that along. So, Thomas will often, you know, go back to the first meaning of a word in some of these objections. But, that's where you have to begin, and then move the word slowly from there. For proceeding, or going forward would be the English for proceeding, signifies a motion to the outside. You go forth from your room in the morning, don't you? You're going not extra, right? Well, this proceeding that's going to be underlying or understanding of there being relations in God that are real, and therefore persons in God that are real, this is going to be a going forward that remains within God. And it's hard to see. But say, when I imagine something, right, there proceeds from my imagination an image of that thing, but that image remains within my, what, imagination, right? Unlike when I make a chair or a table, then that's a precision ad extra, right? What's more known to us than making chocolate chip cookies, which even my oldest grandchild is making, you know, piles of childhood cookies and other things that she's learning. That's more known than the proceeding of an image, right? But the proceeding of an image from the imagination is more alike to proceeding in God because it's a proceeding that remains within God. And because whatever is in God is God, that what proceeds remaining within God will be God. It's beautiful that Thomas begins there, right? Because he forces your mind to see this first distinction. And as you know, I often talk about the English word for error, which is what? Mistake, yeah? But we often say when somebody's mistaken, you're mixed up. And I'll mix up people, right? Mix up our names, at least. And forgive me, but anyway, that's my life. Story of my life. I'm mixed up very often. But mixed up is the opposite of what? Distinguishing, right? So in order to learn, the first thing you have to be able to see is distinctions, right? Like the distinction between what a thing is and its size. Or now the distinction between a going forward that remains within, like the going forth of the image from my imagination, right? And a proceeding which is more known to us than to the outside. Notice the objection. But in God, there is nothing mobile, nothing changeable, movable. So proceeding seems to imply motion, right? And the proceeding that's most known to us is to the outside. There's two reasons to say there's no proceeding in God. Therefore, indeed, there's any going forward in God. There's nothing extraneous in God. There's no motion in God. So how can there be a proceeding going forward? Now, what's important to realize is that these things you cannot sense or imagine, you can't name them except by taking words that you've used for things you can sense and imagine. You take these words and you carry them over, right? But in carrying them over, you change your meanings. But the new meaning has some likeness to or some connection with the earlier meaning. I take the word to see, right? What does the word to see first name? The act of the eye, yeah. Now, what's the second meaning of the word to see? Yeah. Now, most people will say, you know, the second meaning of to see is to understand. When I was a little boy, my mother would say, you know, I see, said the blind man. But he couldn't see at all. So you're kind of playing in those two meanings, right? But is there a meaning of to see between the act of the eye and understanding? Is there a meaning of the word to see, which is more like the act of the eye than understanding is, and therefore should be placed second? Well, again, I'd like to take Hamlet there because the friends of Hamlet have seen with their eyes, right, the ghost of Hamlet's father. And they decided to come and tell Hamlet about this. And before they're able to tell Hamlet about it, right, Hamlet says, I see my father now. I'm looking around for the ghost. The ghost is here to get, right? You see? And Shankara says, in my mind's eye, right? He can picture, he can imagine, remember, right? His father, the way he looked, right? You see, they're thinking of the original sense of the see, right? But a sign that, you know, to imagine something is more like seeing in the original sense than understanding is, is that in a dream, right, we often think we're seeing with our eyes and we're actually not, but imagining. But even in a dream, we don't confuse understanding with, like, seeing. So the second meaning of to see is to really imagine it, to picture and imagination. Now that second meaning is more like the first meaning than understanding, but at the same time, it's more like understanding than the act of the eye is. And so, when I imagine something, I form an image of it. And when I think about something, I form a, what? Thought about it, right? And in English, people tend to call, what? Either an image or a thought an idea. Okay? But that kind of shows the likeness in the two, right? You see? So, imagining is more like thinking than seeing with the eye is. But vice versa, imagining is more like seeing with the eye than understanding. So you have to gradually develop that, right? Now, if I could always, if I had always imagined something, right? There'd always be an image in me of that thing, right? Would there have been any change in me if I'd always imagined it? So if God always understands himself, right? He always has in himself a thought of himself, right? There's no change there, right? And because it's going forward, it's like imagining it remains within God, then you eliminate both of those parts of the scripture, right? Moreover, everything going forward is diverse or other from that from which it, what? Goes forward, right? But in God, there is no diversity, huh? But the summa, the highest simplicity, right? Therefore, in God, there is not any perception, right? Now, I think I mentioned before to some of you that these words, distinct or distinction, and division and definition are in a certain order, right? When you define something, right? Like I define a square as an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral, right? When I define something, in a way, I divide, right? I'm dividing, in a sense, the definition into its parts. But not every division is a definition, is it? When I divide number into odd and even, that's not a definition. So, division is more general than what? definition, right? But distinction is even more general than division, because when I divide, I distinguish things, but division in the strict sense implies that you have some kind of a whole there and some kind of parts, which you divide the whole way. Why distinction means simply that this is not that, not that this and that are parts of some whole. So when Thomas, he'll sometimes, you know, use division and distinction kind of interchangeably, right? When he gets precise about it, and especially in the Trinity, he will not ever say that God is divided into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because that would seem to imply that they're distinct as parts of God, right? And that's impossible because God has no parts, he's all together, what? But he will always say that there is a real distinction between the Father and the Son, and a real distinction between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And to deny that is to be, like Svelius, right? So, you've got to be careful here, right? In God, there's no diversity. But would Thomas say, in God there is no distinction? In a sense, the distinction of the three persons of the Trinity is the first distinction. And the distinction there would be even if God had not created anything. But this is where the problem is. How do you reconcile the summa sumphicitas, right, of God with the real distinction of the, what, person? So that's a hard thing to understand, huh? But as Augustine has taught us and Thomas teaches us, and so on, it has to be understood in terms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit being subsisting relations. But that's getting into the game of the year. Moreover, huh, to go forward from another seems to be repugnant to the notion of a first beginning. But God is the first beginning, as has been shown above. It goes back to the very arguments, this is the first beginning of all things. He's the Alpha and the Omega, right? The first and the last, the beginning in the end. Therefore, in God, going forward has no place, huh? Against all this nonsense, huh? Is what the Lord says, huh? In the eighth chapter of, I have what? Proceeded from God, come forward from God. Okay, let's see how Thomas answers this in the body, and then we'll see how he replies to rejections. And that's the way Thomas begins here. I answer, it should be said, that divine scripture in divine things uses names pertaining to proceeding or going forward. So notice, Divina Scriptura is presupposed to what Thomas is doing here, right? And sometimes, you know, I say people should read maybe the Summa Congentiles first, right? About the Trinity before this, if they're not familiar with the scriptural passages, although it'll come up here. But there, he begins the scriptural passages and kind of establish that this is what scripture is saying, right? And then he'll say, now how can we understand that, right? But having done that already, and also done in his commentaries in scripture, then here he's trying to come down to understanding it, right? But nevertheless, the point is this divine scripture comes first. But given that scripture does use words like in the said contrary, that pertain to proceeding or going forward, different thinkers in diverse ways take this going forward. They understand in diverse ways. For some take this going forward according as an effect proceeds from a cause. And thus takes it Ares, who's a very famous, influential heretic, right? Saying that the son goes forward from the father as his first creature. Who's a great opponent of that? Athanasius, I guess, huh? I was in some religion class in college there, had to take some church fathers, so I took Athanasius. So I've always been a tactic of, you know. I think he is one of the, you know, chief fighters of this heresy, but not the only one by any means, of course. And Hillary's very much concerned with that too. And the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son as the creature of both. This is clearly ready for him. And against this, and according to this, then neither the son nor the Holy Spirit would be true God, which is against that which is said about the son in the first epistle of John, right? That we are in his, what? True son, huh? This is the true God. And about the Holy Spirit, it is said in 1 Corinthians 6, 19, do you not know that your members, meaning your body here, are the temple of the Holy Spirit? But only God has a, what? Temple, right? But there are many other passages in scripture, but these are two things in here, right? Sometimes he's more, 15 passages, you know, Augustine will do that, right? Augustine will do that, right? But to have a temple belongs only to God, right? So that's the first thing you don't want to understand. The proceeding of the son from the father is not a proceeding of an effect from a cause. There's a real diversity, right? A substance between the cause and the effect. Others take this going forward, according as the cause is said to proceed in the effect, insofar as it either moves it or impresses upon it its likeness. And thus, Sebelius, Sebelius, Sebelius takes it, saying that God the father can be called the son, according as he took flesh from the virgin, right? And likewise, the father would be called the Holy Spirit, according as he, what? Makes holy or sanctifies the reasonable creature, right? And moves him towards life, right? So Sebelius was, what? Not denying that the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit were one God, but they were denying what? Yeah, yeah. That one and the same person is called the father for one reason, and son for another reason, and Holy Spirit for another reason, right? A time to call it a husband, and a father, and a grandfather, and a brother, you know, same man here. That's for a certain reason, right? Now, when Aristotle takes up the moral virtues, he says that moral virtue is a mean between two extremes, even though it might be closer to one than the other. So courage is between cowardice and foolhardiness. Intemperance or moderation is between intemperance or turdidism or something, right? But to some extent, this is also true about the mind. So the truth and the virtues are concerned with truth. Truth is a kind of mean between two extremes. So King Lear, a character says, all my reports go with, Kent says, all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so. So, now, or Falstaff says, you know, if they say more or less than the truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness. He's the big liar himself. Takes one to know one. Yeah, yeah. What does it mean to say more or less than the truth? And then in a less clear way, the formula we have in court, right? I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, right? Now, some people don't understand that, huh? And they think that the second and the third phrases are just emphasizing, again, that you're going to tell the truth. But they're actually excluding the two ways of departing from the truth, to say less than the truth or more than the truth. So if I said, I went up to the monastery, you know, today, and I taught 30 brothers. I'd be saying more than the truth, right? If I said, I taught just two brothers, I'd be saying what? Less than the truth. To say more than the truth is to say that what is not is, or what was not was, right? To say less than the truth is to say that what is, or what was, is not or was not. So, when you come to Trinity, right? What you have is one substance, one nature, one divinity, but three persons, right? And some, like, in a sense, areas, right? He's saying you've got three substances here, right? Because you've got three persons. So he's saying what? More than the truth, right? Others, like Sybilis is saying, because you have one substance here, we do only have one person. So he's saying that what is, is not. So, in a way, there's two ways of departing from the truth, right? And he had the same thing with the Incarnation, right? Incarnation, but it's in a sense of reverse, right? Incarnation, you have one person, but two natures. So, some heretics say that because you have two natures, you have two persons here, like Nestorius, right? Others say, you know, like a man of physites, because you have one person, you only have one nature. So the truth is between two extremes, right? The man who says there are two persons, as there are two natures, is saying more than the truth, for being false. He's saying what is not, name that second person, is. And the person who says that because there's only one person, there's only one nature, he's saying less than the truth, because he's saying what is, the two natures, is not. Okay? So, it's kind of significant that Thomas takes these two guys, Arius and Sibelius, right? But, at the same time, you know, as the philosopher says, Aristotle, the truth also explains error, right? So, if there's only one nature, and one person in Christ, why would anybody think that there were two persons and two natures? Or, if there are two persons and two natures, why would anybody think there's one person and one nature? But, if there's one person, you might make the mistake of thinking there's one nature too. Or, if there's two natures, you might make the mistake of thinking there's two persons. So, both of the errors have a part of the truth. But, the two errors can't explain each other. And, only the middle position, which has the whole truth, can explain it. Yeah, but why he thought this was, because he saw this part of the truth, but he couldn't see the whole truth. He saw another part of the truth, right? Like the great Greek philosopher, Petipi says, you know, having seen only a part, they boast of having seen the whole. I said the whole truth about the Trinity, or I said the whole truth about the incarnation. Well, they saw some part of the truth. They thought that was the whole truth. But to this taking, he says, on Sebelius, are repugnant the words of our Lord saying about himself that the son is not able to do anything by himself, right? From himself. And many other things through which it is shown that the father is not the same as the son, right? As I mentioned in the Summa Congenitius, Thomas will go much more into scripture to show up, at least more briefly, right? as it fits the beginning, right? As it fits the beginning. But Augustine, of course, will go through, you know, all these scriptural passages too before Thomas, as well as the other great defenders. Now, Thomas says, if our father is someone that diligently considers, right? Now here we, that's why we prayed before, right? About our guardian angel, right? Strengthen the light of our mind, order the way of our mind, and arouses to consider more correctly, right? Think about it again now, you know? If one diligently, lovingly, considers this thing more deeply, both take proceeding according as it is to something, what? Outside. That's the mistake, huh? Whence neither lays down a going forward in God himself, huh? Okay? But, now Thomas makes a distinction, but since every going forward is according to some, what? Action, some doing, just as according to the action which goes or tends to some exterior matter, there is some proceeding to the outside, right? So, according to the action which remains in the, what? One doing it, there is to be noted a going forward, ad intra, the inside. We went back to something as close as you could get to the senses to imagine, right? And there you begin to see a little bit of a going forward that is ad intra, right? The image goes forward from my imagination, but the image remains in my imagination, unlike the chair or the fried egg, whatever it is, that goes forward from my activity and it's something outside of me that is perfected, huh? And Thomas, now he jumps, you know, from imagination, you can go through that, he sometimes does, right? But he says, and this, most of all, is clear in the understanding. It's more clear in the understanding than it is in the heart, although it's there too, right? But the going forward in the reason is more known to us than the going forward in the heart. And this, most of all, is clear in the understanding whose activity to wit, to understand remains in the one, what? Incidentally, Thomas takes the word inteligerea, he understands it as being intuslegerea, to read within, huh? So my eyes read the words on the outside and my reason reads within, the meanings inside those words, huh? And Shakespeare said, what's in a word? Well, one day, Lisa's saying, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes there's a lot of a word. For whoever understands, from this very fact that he understands, there goes forward something within him, which is the, what? Conception, concept of the thing understood, right? Notice the word concepcio, because we say that, we say concept, that shows a connection between calling the second person of the Trinity sometimes a word and sometimes, what, call him the son, right? But the word or the thought is something that's called a concept, right? From the understanding, the understandable power going forward and, or coming, and proceeding from its, what? Knowledge, right? Which thought or concept the exterior voice or voice, word, signifies, right? And it's called, in Latin, the, what? The word of the heart. And signified by the, what? Word of the voice, yeah. Now, again, in Greek, if you look in Greek, the word logos first means something like word, right? And then later on, it means thought, and then maybe later on, it means what reason, right? But the first meaning of it is something sensible, the word that is spoken, right? And even later on, the word that is written, but originally the spoken word, right? And then it signifies a thought which is not sensible, but is signified by the sensible, right? So it's not purely by chance that we call the thought logos in Greek, right? And then reason that has thoughts is called logos in Greek, right? Sometimes, in English, the word is not moved as much. And, of course, part of this comes from the fact that we learned our philosophy from the Greeks and the Romans, and sometimes we borrowed the Greek or Roman word and then we lost sight of it. And therefore, there's a real difficulty for the modern thinkers that if they don't go back and know the Greek and the Latin, then they begin using a word in its later meanings without the earlier meanings. And then they're out of order. Simple as that, huh? I admire the way the great Shakespeare there, he moves the word nature, right? And you see, in Latin, or the Greek word, fousis, the first meaning of nature, fousis, is birth, right? Now, it's not surprising we should have a name for birth. That's a very striking thing when the baby comes out. But then the word for birth was carried over to the source of the baby within the mother. And then it was generalized in a third meaning for any source within, not just of birth, but of any change. And then to matter and form, which breaks down to that. And then finally it was carried over to what a thing is. Now, Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, Fyre Lawrence there, he seems to be using the word birth to mean what a thing is. It was something like, For not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give. Not so good, but straying from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Beautiful way he says it, right? Well, what does he mean? Revolts from true birth. Revolts from its true nature. Stumbling on abuse, huh? That's the way he says it. But Shakespeare's moved the word birth, like the Greek or the Latin words, fousis or natura, all the way, right? Now sometimes, you know, we use the word nature in English because the word birth is not moved that way, right? And we can still see some connection between nature and birth with prenatal, postnatal, nativity, native, and so on. So Thomas assimilates the going forward that is in God, right? To the going forward in our reason, huh? When we think about something, we, what? Form a thought, that thing, right? And as I said, though, but even more known than that is that when you imagine a gold mountain, we form an image of a gold mountain. And Thomas explains how sometimes the Arab philosophers would call the first act of reason, which Thomas usually calls simple grasping or understanding, imaginatio per intellectum, imagining, you know? But notice the idea that the word image has got the idea of a likeness of something, huh? And a thought is a likeness of the thing thought about. So you have that very similarity to the two there, huh? Now, he's pointing out a distinction now, hasn't he? Between two going forwards, huh? A going forward, which is to the outside, not extra, and a going forward that remains inside, right? He's saying the going forward that is in God is it going forward where what goes forward remains inside, right? You say, well, what is that? Well, we have something like that, right? Although most unequal to it, but something like it in a way when we imagine, right? An image goes forward, right? An imagination. Or when we think about something and a thought goes... Now, he says, the next paragraph. Since, however, God is above all things, those things which are said to be in God should not be understood according to the way of the lowest creatures. Remember St. Thomas' critique of David Dinant, huh? He said that God was the first matter. He says he most stupidly taught. He wasn't just being, you know, in bad language about somebody, but he couldn't take anything further away. If he'd say he has a stone, he'd be closer to the truth. Because a stone is more perfection than the first matter. So he says, since God is above all things, those things which are said in God should not be understood according to the way of the lowest creatures, which are bodies, but according to the likeness of the highest creatures, which are the, what? Yeah. And I see that comes out very much in Augustine's work on the Trinity, huh? Because he spends a long time talking about the image of the Trinity in us, right? Trying to help us ascend, right? To what is in God from something that is more like him, but still falling short of him. And Thomas goes on. From which likeness taken will still fall short from the representation of divine things. And we've talked a little bit about that text in the 4th Latter-on Consul, is it 1215? Paul VI first called to my attention one time. But you could never, what? Know the likeness of the creature to God without a greater, what? Unlikeness, huh? And so in some of the psalms, say, who is like God, right? There's always an infinite distance there, huh? And I told you some of you about my experience there with the Shakespeare's definition of reason and the exhortation of his reason. And he said that reason is godlike, right? And I had a guy from Saudi Arabia. He objected to reason being called godlike. And so I talked to him afterwards and I said, as I explained in the text there in the Latter-on Consul, that never can you know the likeness of the creature to God without at the same time the greater, what? Unlikeness, huh? I'm going to appease them a little bit or not. There's got to be some likeness because every agent makes something like itself in some way. Every cause is such. We're not, therefore, not to take proceeding or going forward according as it is in bodily things, right? Or through a locomotion. That's the first meaning of going forward. I went forward from my bedroom this morning, right? Went forward from my house. Went forward from my car, right? I go forward from this room. Okay? So we're not to understand it in the manner of locomotion, change of place, or by the action of some cause in an exterior effect, right? As heat from the heater in the heating, right? But according to a, what? Emanation, yeah, flowing out. As of an understandable word from the one, what? Saying that. Which remains in him, right? And in this way, the Catholic faith lays down that there is a going forward in God, huh? Not locomotion. But it's a going forward that remains within God, right? And doesn't go into anything exterior. Want to take a little break here? Yeah.