Prima Pars
Lecture 111: Divine Procession and Generation: Internal Operations in God

Transcript
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Let's look at our objections here now. The first objection said that going forward signifies emotion to the outside, but in divine things there's nothing, what, emotion and nothing, what, extraneous, right? So he says, to the first, therefore, it should be said that that objection proceeds about the going forward, which is a local motion. You know, so Thomas, in every article, by the way, uses the word proceditor, right? The first one precedes us. Yeah. I'm mentioning Mancini D'Andre, you know, talking about the ways of going forward. So he says that objection proceeds about the going forward, which is a local motion. Well, imagining or understanding is not a local motion, is it? Or that going forward, which is an action tending to some exterior matter or an exterior effect. He says both of them, because that doesn't mean an exterior matter. That's an effect of him, too, the exterior matter. But such a going forward is not in God, right? Okay. So I say, you know, as I say, we approach it from something which is more like what is in God, right? But very different, as we'll see, from God. But the two examples are what? The going forward of the image, you imagine something, and the going forward of the thought, you think about something, right? And the second objection, everything going forward is diverse from that from which it goes forward, right? To the second, it should be said that that which goes forward, according to the going forward which is to the outside, is necessarily diverse from that from which it proceeds. It's other in substance, right? It's not the same thing. But that which goes forward to the inside by an understandable going forward is not necessarily that way diverse. Nay, rather, the more perfect it is, the more it is one with that from which it, what, proceeds, huh? I was looking a little bit at Thomas' text there in the compendium there. It's kind of a beautiful way he does it, huh? And he says, if I think about the dog I've seen, the cat I've seen, and I get the thought about what a cat is, well, we call this a concept, right? Now, in this, the cat outside of there, he's really the father of my thought. Can somebody act upon my senses, right? And my mind, he says, is more like the mother. Just as the man acts upon the female, right? The female can seize, right? So the exterior object, like the cat, acts upon my senses and to them, acts upon my reason. And so it's more like the father, and my thought is, my mind is more like the mother, right? But, if the mind thinks about itself, then in a way, it's the father of its own thought, right? That's probably Shakespeare's definition of reason, right? Because reason, from reason is preceding a thought of what reason is. And therefore, reason is not as much like the mother here, but like the, what, father. And more like what you have in, what, God, huh? And, of course, the son is like the, what, father, right? So the definition, like the image, right? You can see it with the word image. Image is the Latin word for what? Like the son. And so the thought is like an image. It's a likeness of it. So the better reason understands itself, the more its thought is like what reason is. But as Thomas would point out later on, the being of my reason and the being of my thought is not the same. Because I had reason before. I had the thought about what reason is. The reason wasn't, I was so much more. One case of God, as you know from the treatise on the apparition of God, to be and to understand the same thing, God. And that's why the word of God will be God. Why my thought of what reason is is not reason. Although it's the likeness of reason. But the image of God, right? Which is the second person of us, the Trinity, is God, huh? Because the understanding of God, of what is in the understanding of God, is God, huh? Because the understanding of God, as we know from the previous treatise, you see the order of learning here, we know in the previous treatise that the understanding of God is the being of God, huh? The thought of God is God. Or the thought, my thought, even my quick definition of Shakespeare, definition of reason. The definition of reason is not reason. Although it's very much like reason. I mean, reason has, as Thomas would say, natural being, and then this intelligible being, my definition has, right? But in God, the natural being of God, the understanding of God are the same. Therefore, the thought of God is God, huh? It's been an amazing thing. Sometimes it makes me nervous, and people think I'm holy, because I have to think about God. Think about that, so I can't think of anything better than about it. Anything more interesting to think about, right? You know? So let's go back to the pious and second objection. Let's look at it from the beginning. That which goes forward, by the going forward, which is to the outside, is necessary to be diverse, right? To be other in substance, you would say, huh? From that from which it proceeds, right? But that which goes forward to the inside, by a, what? Understandable going forward, is not necessary to be diverse. Nay, the more perfectly it goes forward, the more it is one with that from which it goes forward. For it is manifest that the better we, what? Understand something, right? The more the concept, the intellectual concept, is more, what? Inward to the one understanding, huh? And more one with it. For the understanding, according as it understands and act, in this way becomes one with the thing understood. That's what Aristotle had pointed out, already in the third book about the soul. When, since the divine understanding is, what? In the end of perfection, right? Is necessary that the divine word be perfectly one with that from which it goes forward, right? Without any, what? Diversity, right? Thomas would not say without, but now without some distinction, right? But diversity seems to imply, what? A distinction of substance, right? And that's what he's denying, right? Now, the third objection, that to proceed from another seems to be repugnant to the notion of the first beginning, right? To the third, it ought to be said that to proceed from a beginning as something extraneous to that thing or outside of it, right? And diverse or other in substance, right? Is repugnant to the, what? Notion of a first beginning. But to go forward as intimate or inward, huh? And without diversity, to an understandable way, is included in the notion of the first beginning. That's how I was turning the tail of it, right? It's a little bit like, like, Wathius, you know, he talks about the objection to God's existence from the evil world, right? He says, they don't know how to reason. He says, they should reason that if there's evil in the world, then God is. Because he said, there wouldn't be evil in the world without, what? An order of the good, which the evil is opposed to, and the order of the good is from God. So they should argue, if there's evil in the world, there must be an order of good, therefore there must be the God. They're all mixed up. So Thomas, the sense of the saying here that to the procedure. from another in this way he's been talking about right to proceed from another uh inwardly right and without any diversity of substance right is not only not opposed to being the first beginning of things but it's involved in it yeah now why is that well we learn when we talk about god's um operation god in a sense is like an artist with respect to creatures right and that's what he goes on to say for when we say that the house builder is the beginning of the house in the notion of this beginning is included the conception of his art you've got to have a thought about what he's making he has no thought about what he's making he's not a house builder and it would be included he says in the notion of the first beginning if the house builder was the first beginning right but god who is the first beginning of things is compared to created things as an artist to artificial things well the same thing could be said about the holy spirit it doesn't begin at this point yet right but um as as aristotle first pointed out but thomas follows aristotle in this regard uh reason doesn't what make anything without what the will right and the reason for that is what plato and aristotle saw that there's the same knowledge of opposites so my knowledge say of grammar enables me to say i am your professor you are my students i can speak correctly or incorrectly right and it's not by chance that i speak incorrectly once i have the art of grammar a little child might do this by by by chance but it's by the same knowledge right and by the medical art i could heal you or make you sick right save your life or end your life right and some people you know misuse the medical art so medical art doesn't determine whether you should what that you will save the man's life or end it right the art is capable of either so you need the will to determine and you'll make this rather than that do this rather than that it doesn't you know go into that and think it's not necessary right he's kind of you know approaching it to what the proceeding uh that takes place in god's understanding himself right and then later on we get into this uh other proceeding which is more less known to us but first we have to in the second article here get into in called generation You've got some vague idea now of what kind of going forward there is in God, and how to approach it, right? And I guess that's very much at length in the Trinitate, right? It's got to go to the image of the Trinity in us, right? So in my own teaching here, going back to Shakespeare there, right, when your reason formed a definition of reason, right, you had some likeness to the Father and the Son. There'll be many differences we'll find out, so like this. And if you were delighted in knowing, you know, your love, you know, what does Augustine say? Intellectum valde ama, love the understanding very much, right? You realize what the understanding really is, and what makes you capable of it, that you really love this thing, right? Now you've got a little image of the Trinity in you, right? Augustine goes on, on, you know, trying to, you know, develop this image. But for our purposes right now, it's sufficient to just think about the fact that when you imagine something, there's a proceeding, right, that's to the inside, not to the outside, right? Okay? And when we understand something and form a thought of it, there's a going forward that is to the inside, not to the outside, right? And then that the image or the thought is a likeness of that of which you're imagining when you start to see a little bit of, what's going on in God, huh? You know, the Mohammedans, they think that we act there, pre-Moses it. The second one proceeds thus. Thus, it seems that the procession which is in God cannot be called, what, generation, right? For generation is a change from not being to being, and supposed to corruption. And the subject of both is matter. Well, none of this belongs to God, right? None of this is found in God. There's no change from not being to being, huh? And I am, who am, and there's nothing, there's no matter there, right? That's why Thomas begins the objection with what is first called a generation by us, right? Our first experience of a generation, right? And we have to transcend the imagination, as we say, right? Moreover, in God, there is a, what, going forward according to an intelligible way, right? But in us, such a going forward is not called a generation, and therefore neither in God. You know, so the solution to that will require us to go back and realize that the understanding of God is the being of God, right? When the understanding of you or me is not you or me, right? I wouldn't be very, I wouldn't have been very long in the beginning, but I don't understand anything at all. We're always coming to understand something more for us, studious, right? So our being is not our understanding, but in God, you have the same thing, right? Moreover, everything generated, right, gets its being from the one, what, generating, right? But the being of anything generated is a being that is, what, received, huh? But no being that is received is subsisting to itself. Since, therefore, the divine being is being subsisting to itself, and this is back in the substance of God, I am who I am, right? It follows that the being of no one generated is the divine being. Therefore, there is no generation of divine things. If the objectory got to me first, you know, I would have lost faith, right? But against all this is what is said in Psalm 2, verse 7, I today have generated you, right? Answer, it should be said that the going forward of the word or the thought in divine things is called generation, right? Thomas is just asserting that, right? Now he says, to the evidence of this, right, it should be known that the name of generation is used in two ways, huh? In one way, generally, to all things that are generable and corruptible, and thus generation is nothing other than a change from non-being to being, huh? In another way, properly, or in particular, in living things, right? And thus generation signifies the origin of something living from a beginning, a living beginning that's conjoined to it. And this properly is called, what? Nativity, right? But not everything of this sort is said to be generated, but properly what proceeds by way of what? Like the sun. Whence your what hairs, right? And not your sun's, right? What's a pile of sun? Skin. Skin? Okay. Okay. You do not have the notion of one generated or a sun, but only what proceeds by way of what? Like the sun. Not of any sort whatsoever, because worms, which are generated in animals, do not have the what? What was the word? Pilate still, is it? Generation. What is it? The aspect? No, what is it? Is it flesh from? Was it flesh? He was like a thing. I think I got that. Yeah. Which word is it? For a worm, which is generated from animals. Well, the first thing is, he's saying that, yeah. He's eliminating the proceeding of hair from me, right? Or is it pilate's flesh? It might just be a sun. Okay. Skin doesn't sound right to me. Yeah, okay. I'm thinking how old. Yeah. Herod has used the example of Thomas. He didn't see her. So Herod does not have the notion of something generated in the sun, because there's a real likeness to me, right? But only what proceeds according to the notion of likeness. And not of any kind of likeness for the, what? Worms, the generated animals, do not have the notion of generation from that, or of what? Sun would, right? Although they have a likeness in genus, right? But there's required for the notion of such generation that it proceeds by reason of likeness in the nature of the same, what? Species in particular. Just as man proceeds from man and horse from what? Horse, right? Now, I know Thomas is going to make it too explicit here, but notice he's been distinguishing two senses here, and one is more general, and one is more particular, right? And which one is he going to use in admitting this in God? That's going to be the more particular one, right? Okay? But this kind of fits into a more general thing, where, going back to the logic here for a moment, you distinguish between the genus and the difference, huh? Any definition? Going back to what even Porphy would teach us. that the genus is to the difference, as matter is to what? Form. Form, yeah. So just as wood, say, is able to be formed into a chair, or maybe a table, or a door, or something else, right? So the genus can become... this or that species, right? By this or that difference, right? So the difference is said to be to the genus, like form is to matter, right? Now you may recall too, when we talked about the natural philosophy there, the difficulty of understanding what? Ability, right? And the inability, say, of Anaxagoras to understand it. And so Anaxagoras falsely imagined that everything that the wood, let's say, could be made into, chair, table, and door, were already in the wood. Why the wood was only able to be a chair, table, and a door, and there was not actually a chair, a table, or a door in the wood. And we mentioned before how John Locke, he's having difficulty understanding triangle in general, right? And since a triangle is a three-sided figure, are there three sides equal, or there's two of them and none of them? And then he says, well, it's all and none of these. And then Barclay says, well, if it's all and none of these, there can't be any general ideas. There aren't any general ideas. So neither of these British empiricists, famous ones, can understand the genus triangle, right? So if you say, the genus triangle means a plane figure contained by three straight sides. Are those three sides equal or not? What would you say? Well, it's neither in act, but it's both an ability. Okay? And the difference of equilateral or a sausage or skating determines, right? So the difference is a little bit to the genus, like form is to matter, right? Is wood a chair, a table, or a door. Let's say, it's actually none of these, but it's able to be all of these, right? So in a sense, Locke was right in saying it's all and none of them, but he didn't see a distinction. It's all of them in ability, none of them in act. Okay? Now, because of this beautiful proportion, when we come to understand that God is pure act, and that comes very early in the treatise when you get into the simplicity of God, right? Especially. In the Summa Theologiae, it comes up in the first article, I think, in the simplicity of God. In the Summa Concentitas, it comes up in the consideration of the unchangeableness of God. But there's a whole chapter where it kind of shows that. So it's more explicit in the Summa Concentitas, which I think is very good, huh? But if God is pure act, can God be in a genus? And not a genus is to differences as matters to form, and therefore something in ability rather than an act, right? And so it's, if you read through the, say, the sentences of Thomas, the commentary on the sentences, you'll often be pointing this out, huh? That when a name is carried over from creatures to God, and the name is applied to creatures as a genus and a difference, and so on. You drop the genus, which comes from matter and what is potential, and you keep the difference, which refers to form and what is in act, huh? Form is something God-like, as the philosopher says, huh? And so, um, you know, say, like a definition is speech making known what a thing is, huh? There's no speech in God, or no making known of anything, but he just has what's actual there, knowing what things are. Okay? And, uh, uh, Father Goulet used to turn this in to us, you know, and I thought the ball. So, um, it's significant that Thomas here is taking, um, approaching this through the more particular meaning of generation, huh? Instead of living things, huh? He's going to keep there what is a perfection of this and drop, uh, what is an imperfection there, right? Now, when Aristotle talks about science example, I'll take a better example and make more clear. He says, well, science is an effective demonstration. And what's demonstration? Well, it's a syllogism making us know the cause, he says, and that of which it is a cause, and it can't be otherwise. Well, does God have a syllogism that makes him know? No. So you drop the, the genus there, syllogism making us know, right? And just keep the difference there, knowing what, knowing the cause, and that which is a cause again, otherwise, he knows that. He doesn't need a syllogism to make him know it, right? So you drop the genus, right? So there's a very general notion of generation as a change from non-being to being. That's not in God. He is, I am who, right? But this idea of generation of something proceeding from something in likeness to it, and specific likeness, right? That's found very much in God, right? Okay. As man proceeds from man and horse from horse. In living things over, which proceed from ability, the passive sense, to act, down to the active life. As are men and animals, generation includes both generations, right? The change from non-being to being. When I was generated, there was a change in me from, you can say me if I wasn't there. There was a change, though, from non-being of vain breakfast to the being of vain breakfast, right? Okay. And I proceeded from my mother and father, not as a dog or a cat from them, but as a human being, the same specific kind of thing, right? Okay. But that's because we proceed from poetry to act. But there's none of that in God, right? It's pure act. If, however, there is something living whose life does not go from ability to act, right? The going forward, if there is one found in such a living thing, excludes altogether the first notion, generation, which is the more of the generic notion, right? But it can have the notion of generation, which is private, appropriated, to living things, right? You'll keep the idea of one thing going forward from another, in a likeness of the same kind, exactly, right? But without this, what? Going, being changed from non-being to being. Thus, therefore, he says, the going forward of the word or the thought in God has the notion of a, what? Generation, right? It goes forward by way of a, what? Understandable action, which is an operation of life. And from a beginning that is joint. And according to the notion of likeness, because the conception of the understanding is a likeness of the thing understood, right? Now, later on, when you get to the names of the second person above the Trinity, there'll be three names, huh? Son, Word, and Immigil. Likeness, huh? But the same word we use, we talk about the imagination, right? And by reason of likeness, because the conception of the understanding is a likeness of the thing understood. And in the same nature existing, why? Because in God, unlike us, the same is to understand and to be. That's my condition. For me to be is to understand. Because if that were the same, you know, then I would have, what? Understood everything that I understand and now, and then I came to be, right? But in God, they are the same, right? Whence the going forward of the word in divine things is called generation, and the word itself proceeding is called, what? Son, right? So, what proceeds in God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. God is the thought of God. 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Move the word, right? From word to thought, in the sense of a word. So when you say, you know, in the beginning was the word, and the word was towards God, and the word was God, now you could have translated that and said, the beginning was a thought. And of course, in the Greek, which is better than the Latin, because we don't have the article, right? But this is by Antonia Messiah. This is the thought. Why is it the thought, huh? Well, for many reasons, but among many reasons, it's the only thought that is a, what? Substance, huh? Right? Okay? The thought that the creatures have is an accident, right? And what's a thought of? And how it's being a perfect thought of that, right? Okay? But it's interesting, we didn't translate that way, right? In the beginning was a thought, and the thought was towards God. So you're forced to move the word, what? Yeah, in English. Even though in daily speech, if you look up in a dictionary, you probably won't find a word, one of the names of word being thought. But if you looked up the Greek word in the Greek dictionary, logos, you'd find thought and reason and so on, as well as the meaning of word. And that's good for us, you know, to be forced to do that, right? And most people can't go back and move the word. Once and beyond say, you can't move the word. He's stuck with the first one, huh? Time to look a little with objections here? Now, the first objection is taking the generic meaning, right? The genus, right? A generation is a change from non-being to being, right? And its subject is matter. To the first, therefore, it should be said that that objection proceeds about generation in its first, what? First to meaning to distinguish. Insofar as it implies a going forth from ability to act, right? And thus it is not found in divine things. Because as we learned in the treatise on understanding of God, God always actually understands himself, right? So he always actually has a thought of himself. So this thought never went from non-being to being. But my parents are not always, what, conceived me, right? And I went from ability to act. And from non-being to being. Well, but the word of God never did. Because he always understood himself. So he always had, what? This thought of himself. You see, yeah? Beautiful. And thus it is not found in divine things. That's the more generic notion. And the second objection is, well, if in God there is a procession according to an understandable way, but in us such a procession is not generation, therefore it shouldn't be in God, right? It's only kind of metaphorical if I say my thoughts are my son. It's kind of funny to say, you know, my thoughts are my son, right? You may have put it in some metaphorical way. But the difference is that, what, my being, for me to be, for me to understand is not the same thing. But in God, to be and to understand is the same thing. So what proceeds by way of understanding is also ayahuya. To the second, it should be said that to understand in us is not the very substance of our understanding or reason. Whence the word that goes forward by an understandable operation in us is not of the same nature with that from which it proceeds. Whence not properly and completely belongs to it the notion of generation. There's some likeness, though, because we do call it the thought of concept, right? That's it. I conceived of this, we say, right now. But if you want me to introduce to my children and my grandchildren, it won't be my thoughts. If that's what I think, I might tell you about my thoughts, but not... But the divine understanding, the divine to understand, is the very substance of the one understanding as has been shown above in the treatise on the operations of God. So that treatise, I think, must come before this treatise on the Trinity in the order of what? Learning or in the order of teaching. And an account of this properly, whence the word proceeding in God proceeds as subsisting in the same nature. An account of this is properly called generated, right? A son. Whence about those things which pertain to the generation of living things. Scripture uses them to signify the procession of the divine wisdom. To wit, by conception, right? And by giving birth and so on. Practition. For it is said from the person of divine wisdom, Proverbs 8.24. The abysses were not yet, right? And I already was conceived, huh? Before the what? I came forth, yeah. But in our understanding, we use the name of conception. According as in the word or thought of our understanding is found a likeness of the thing understood, even though there's not found an identity of what? Nature, right? And the third objection here. If you receive something, the receiver and the receiver are not the same thing, right? To the third, it should be said that not everything taken is received in some what? Subject. Otherwise, one could not say that the whole substance of a thing created is taken from God. Since of the whole substance, there is not some what? Thus, therefore, that which is generated in divine things, takes being from the one generating, not over that that being is received in some matter or in some subject, huh? Which should be repugnant to the what? Subsistence of the divine being. Now that again goes back to the treatise on the what? Substance of God, right? The previous objection is going back to the treatise on the operations, right? But in this way, it is said to be taken insofar as the what? One proceeding from another has divine being. Not as existing other from the divine being. So in the very perfection, the divine being is contained both the word or thought proceeding in an understandable way and the beginning of that word or thought, huh? The one from what we see. Just as whatever things pertain to his what? Perfection, huh? Well, that's a mouthful, Thomas, huh? He gave you something to think about, right? I remember one time when Charles Taconic came down to his lecture tour, you know, and this guy knew and he'd hear the Taconic lecture for maybe 40, 50 minutes or less. Gee, he gave me enough to think about for a whole week, you know? You had a guy once a week like that, you know? When Taconic would teach Thomas, he says, now he says, you think you've understood everything now. It means you've understood nothing. If you had understood something, you would have seen that. I don't fully understand this. You see that even the great physicists there, you know, when you read Heisenberg's account of Bohr and so on, that he was more aware of the fact that he had not understood the thing fully than the people who were, you know, spouting the ideas that got it from him, right? It's kind of interesting. The first time when Heisenberg met Bohr, Bohr came to Germany and he's going to lecture on the atom of the day, the German physicists were so impressed they called it the Bohr Festival. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got him in the history of the Bohr Festival. And in the question period there, Heisenberg, who just got me on as a student, really, at the time posed an objection, right? And Bohr gave some kind of reply to it, you know, because I'm looking over at Heisenberg, you know. And then when he got to the stuff, he says, let's go for a walk. Heisenberg talks about their conversation and how it influenced all its subsequent thinking, you know. I mean, it's an effect that Bohr had upon these physicists, you know. But Bohr was more aware, you know, he said, you know, the German physicists were, right, in the incompleteness of his understanding of his understanding.