Prima Pars
Lecture 117: Equivocation, Opposition, and the Four Real Relations in God

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is double of two, and therefore it can't be two. Two is half of four, so it can't be four. So in a way, one posits the other, right? But there's still one that can't be the other, right? So he distinguishes it into two, and then he subdivides this into three. So he followed the purpose of the rule, two and three, which is purpose discovered, right? No, no, kind of a rule that I've come to from reading accounts over the years, right? And seeing that, at least for the most part, he'll divide into, what, two or three, and then subdivide or crisscross two and threes to get more of it than three, right? So he divides the Gospel of St. John into two parts, the Gospel of Matthew into three parts. And it comes in Psalms, right? There's 150 Psalms, well, the mind can understand it. Division in 150. And so Thomas follows the suggestion of Augustine there, in the 150th Psalm, I guess, that the Psalms are divided into three parts. Of course, bind into three stages of charity, right? And Augustine notices the correct number, and I've got to go back to the correct numbering. The 50th Psalm, the Psalm of Repentance, 100th Psalm of Good Deeds, and the 150th Psalm of Resting in God, right? And then when Thomas will subdivide them, he will divide into two and three all the way down. Ultimate one. We saw the tradition on the Trinity here. 17 questions, but it's divided into three parts. Now, the 15 questions will be divided into two parts, right? And so on. So this is one kind of opposites, but it's different from other kinds. And that would be important for understanding Trinity. And why the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one is not before or after the other. Why they're together. So in the 50th Psalm objection, he says, there's a likeness here. Remember how he said likeness is a slippery thing, or the great Plato said that. He didn't say that. There's a likeness here. In power and goodness sake, as an example, right? Being the same thing as the divine substance, right? And fatherhood and son would be the same thing as the divine substance, right? But there's a difference between that, right? Because although God is truly powerful, he's truly good, what belongs to power, what belongs to goodness, belongs most of all to God, right? Yet there's no opposition there between the two, right? As you can see, they're going through the opposite. I remember reading a doctoral thesis when I was at Laval there. We used to sometimes go to the library and read doctoral theses just to see how people did them. If you're interested in a topic, you can see what you did with this. Of course, back in the 50s and so on, 60s, there was more interest in refuting the communists or the Marxist philosophers and so on. And I remember reading this one thesis on Marx and so on. And of course, the Marxists make a big deal about opposites, right? But they never distinguish the various kinds of opposites, huh? And they lump them together and they don't really have that distinct knowledge that Aristotle has, huh? So the guy towards the end of the thesis, right, is bringing in the teaching about the various kinds of opposites and trying to make a little bit of clarity about what the Marxists are saying or trying to say, right? I was thinking of imitating the great Porphyry, right, huh? This great heater of the church, right? And of course, his books against the church were burned by one of the emperors, huh? And Augustine speculates as to why Porphyry was so anti-Christian, right? But despite that, his book called The Ice of Gogian has a great deal of respect, huh? Among the later philosophers, whether they be Greeks, even pagan Greeks, or whether they be Mohammedans, right? Or whether they be Christians, right? And as I say, the first book I read by Albert the Great there, in Laval there, was his paraphrase of The Ice of Gogian Porphyry, and Cajetan is a commentary, Cajetan, the cardinal there, who hoops enough to refute Luther. He has a commentary on the Ice of Gogian, right? But the Ice of Gogian, actually the original title was the Ice of Gogian to the Categories of Aristotle, right? Ice of Gogian is a Greek word for introductionist and etymological thing. And Chrysorius had asked Porphy, I'm having difficulty reading Aristotle's categories, and what do these words, genus, species, difference, property, and accident mean, that Aristotle's using. So Porphy is a beautiful premium, right? Where he says, it's necessary to know what genus is, what difference is, what species is, what property is, what accident is. Not only, he says, to understand the categories of Aristotle, but to understand definition, he says. We define a species by genus and difference, right? To understand division, he says, because one of the most important divisions is that of a genus into its species by differences. And to understand demonstration, where you prove a property of its species by its definition. That's magnificent, huh? You realize how important the Ice of Gogian is, huh? And I was saying to my colleagues in philosophy, how many of you guys have read the Ice of Gogian? Well, none of them had. And some didn't even know what it was. And of course, eventually, it got kind of contracted to being called the Ice of Gogian, right? And kind of antonio-macia. It's introduction to logic, it's introduction to the, what? To the whole of philosophy, in a sense. Logic is a tool. Now, in my favorite book by Thomas, the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas, when he's arguing and trying to show that no name is said univocally, right, of God and creatures, one of his arguments says that every name said univocally of many things is a genus or a difference or a species or a property or an accident. And then he goes through and eliminates all five of those in terms of God and man, right? And therefore, concludes that there's no name said univocally of God. Well, that was a clue, right? That in a way, the book that Porphyry has written is a, what? Complete distinction, you might say, of names said univocally of many things. And that univocally means, what? Said with one and the same exact meaning of all, right? But there's also names that are said with many meanings of many things. And then we distinguish between two kinds of those. We use the term equivocal for a name that has many meanings, right? But we distinguish between a name that is equivocal by chance and one that's equivocal by reason, right? Now, why am I saying all this? Well, I think it's very important and necessary to consider name equivocal by reason, but to imitate now, to the term imitation, imitate the brevity of Porphyry, right? We could say, why is it necessary to understand names equivocal by reason? This is an example of a name equivocal by reason, right? Okay? But what Aristotle discovered is that the names that are said of all things, like names like being and one and so on, and the names that are said of very many things, act and ability and so on, that all of these names are equivocal by reason. So to understand the names said of all things, the names said of very many things, right? You have to understand names equivocal by reason, right? But then, a second reason why it's necessary to understand these names is that the statements that all thinking and reasoning are based on, the so-called axioms. To understand those axioms, you have to understand... you have to understand the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the names of the The name is equivocal by reason. Because the words in the axioms are all what? Yeah, yeah. And then the third reason, right? Why it's important to understand the name is equivocal by reason. As Aristotle points out in the book on statistical refutations, the most common mistake in thinking is from mixing up the different senses of a word. Now, we're not apt to mix up the senses of a word that's equivocal by chance. Roger Marius hits 61 hormones with a bat. The bat is a flying rodent. Therefore, you just laugh at that, right? It's so obvious that the equivocation there. But words that are equivocal by reason. There's a likeness, a connection between the meanings, and it's easy to mix them up. You've heard me talk about one of the most common axioms, a common example. The whole is more than a part, right? And how I get my students, you know, to temporarily deny it. By a sophisticated argument, right? You've heard my argument? I'd say, well, I'd say, man is an animal, right? My mother didn't like me to say man is an animal. I'd say, well, Mom, I don't mean just an animal. He's an animal that has reason, right? Okay, well, that's better, she said. Okay, so I'd say, animal then is a part of what man is, right? Okay, good for that, okay? Then I'd say, but animal includes, besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant. So sometimes what's only a part includes more than the whole. Oh, yeah. Now here they are thinking that it's not always true, that the whole is more than a part, huh? But I deceive them, right? By the most common mistake, huh? I can deceive them about something as obvious as a whole is more than one of its parts. Because they're mixing up two different meanings of the word whole and part. When I say that animal is a part of man, I mean it's a composing part. One of the parts is put together to define man, right? But when I say that man or dog or cat is a part of what? Animal, I mean universal whole, right? Aristotle will distinguish those two senses of whole and part in the fifth book of wisdom, right? And you say, so in one sense, you know, animal is a part of man. In another sense, man is a part of animal, right? There's no contradiction there, right? So that's the third reason you have to understand names equivocal by reason. The most common mistake in thinking is mixing up the different senses of a word, right? And this is a danger mainly with names equivocal by what? Reason. The fourth reason why it's important to understand such names, huh? Is to know what wisdom is about and what political philosophy is about. To take the two highest kinds of philosophy, looking philosophy, wisdom, and doing philosophy, political philosophy. Because political philosophy is about political things, right? But the word political there is equivocal by reason. So you can't understand what political philosophy is about without understanding names equivocal by reason. Wisdom is about being and one. But they are equivocal by reason. Being and thing and one. We saw the word res here. Something of equivocation, the word res. Now the fifth, the last, and not quite the least, reason I would give why it's important to understand names equivocal by reason is that to name and to talk about and even to understand things you can't censor or imagine, right? You have to understand names equivocal by reason, right? I've got an example right here, right? Because opposite is a name equivocal by reason. And when I say that virtue and vice are opposed, and when I say that blindness and sight are opposed, it's not exactly opposed in the same way, right? And then if it's your own, you say double and half are opposed, right? Now, of course, Thomas talked about this. If you go back to the treatise on the substance of God, right? It's very talked about how the fact that the names we use in talking about God are analogous, which is another way of saying equivocal by reason. So this is very important, right? So Thomas, when you apply the second objection here, is going back to his understanding that he had from Aristotle, right? Of the name equivocal by reason called opposites, right? And this is part of the understanding of it, right? And then, say, well, potencia and bonitas, power and goodness, are not, what? One of these kinds of opposites. But father and son are, right? Okay? Okay, now, the third objection. In divine things, there is not a real distinction except by origin. But one relation does not seem to proceed to another, right? So we wouldn't say that sonhood proceeds from fatherhood. We'd say the son proceeds from the father, right? Now, Preston Aristotle talks about relations there in the fifth book of wisdom. He says they're based either upon quantity, right? Including the one, not the quantity. Or upon, what? Action. Doing, right? Well, the origins, then, is what? They're going to be the foundation for understanding what there's relations here. But it's not going to be the same thing, right? So, I'm a father because I generated my son. But the relation now of fatherhood and sonhood is based upon this act of generation. And the same way, in our way of understanding the relations in God, right? We see them. We understand them as being based upon one member generating another one, right? And the two of them breathing another one. So he says, although the relations, properly speaking, do not arise or proceed from each other, nevertheless, they are taken by opposition according to the perception of one from another, right? So the father is the one from whom another proceeds, right? And the son is the one who proceeds from another, right? Okay? So they are distinguished, ultimately, by what? Perception, right? As I say, if you know that, if you understand relations, you just as hard creatures, you realize that, right? If you know relations based on quantity, right? Double and half, right? Was four double or half? That's not something absolutely said of four, right? You can say, if you take something absolutely said of four, is it an odd number or an even number? Yeah. And it's never going to be an odd number, right? But four can be both double and half, but towards different things, right? So the relation is not the same thing as the quantity, but it's based on the quantity, right? Because four is four, it's double of two. And because four is four, it's half of what? Eight. So because I generated my son, it's in relation to me, and I have it in relation to him, right? But that's not, that relation is generated, right? It's based upon that, right? So, that's the way we're proceeding here now. We're ready to go to the fourth article. Do you want to take a little break, or does it be natural to take a break here? But just, you know, see where we are, as Lincoln would say, where we're going. The first article was saying that there are, what, real relations in God, right? Then what did he do? He compared these real relations to the divine substance, right? And to each other, right? So that's kind of the second part, right? But you could subdivide that into two comparisons, right? Okay. And there we discovered that in comparison to the divine substance, there's a distinction and definition, right? But no distinction, secundum rem, to use Thomas's word. But when you compare them to each other, there is not just a distinction in meaning, but a real, what, distinction. Not according to a rem absolutum, but a relative thing, right? Now what remains, the third part, right, is, well, how many of these relations are there, right? And of course, I guess we're going to find out that there's going to be four relations, right? And we'll have to wait to the treatise on the persons before we find out why four relations doesn't give you four persons. So let's take a little break here before we do that, before it's an actual place. So let's take a little break here before we find out why four relations don't give you four relations, right? So let's take a little break here before we find out why four relations don't give you four relations, right? So let's take a little break here before we find out why four relations don't give you four relations, right? So let's take a little break here before we find out why four relations don't give you four relations, right? So let's take a little break here. Article 4 here, to the fourth one proceeds thus, it seems that in God there are not only the four real relations to it, fatherhood, sonhood, and notice the problem in naming as he says, you know, the relations, right, for the second kind of proceeding. So they borrow words taken from the procession itself, right? So speratio and then procession are just taking a common name there because there's no name for that, because so unlike what's in the creature. For one can consider in God the relation of the one understanding to the understood, right, and the one willing to the will, which seem to be a real relation, right, nor are they contained under the four set, right, therefore there are not only four relations, real relations in God, India there, multiply these things, okay, so why isn't that a real relation? He really understands himself, right? Moreover, real relations are taken in God according to the, what, understandable going forward of the word or thought. But understandable relations are multiplied forever, as Avicenna says. Therefore, in God there are, what, infinite real relations, huh? Now what Avicenna was talking about is that I can know what a triangle is, and then I can know that I know what a triangle is, and I can also know that I know what a triangle is. I can know that, too. This goes on forever, right, then? In Aristotle, if you look at his consideration there of the infinite in the third book of natural hearing, right, he gets through talking about acting upon undergoing, right? Then he has a number of reasons why people think that the infinite exists, right? And some are taken from the fact that the straight line is divisible forever, and so on. But others that the mind never gives out, right? So, it seems then that in God there's going to be an infinity of real relations, right? Because, as Avicenna says, understandable relations multiply forever, right? Moreover, there are ideas in God. This is what Augustine, you know, because it's a batonic background, right? Right. But the relations are not distinguished from each other, except by their, what, respect to creatures. So, God made the dog by one idea, and the cat by another idea, right? Okay. Therefore, in God there are many, what, eternal relations, huh? Moreover, equality and likeness and identity are some relations, right? And they are in God from eternity, huh? So, the Father is like the Son, and the Son is equal to the Father, right? Okay. Therefore, there are more relations eternally in God than those four that we have talked about, huh? I mean, it exercises your mind, huh? Nero Stahl's talking about dialectic, huh? In the book on dialectic, he says that the first thing it's useful for us to exercise the mind. Gumnasia, he says. But now, the said contrary is a little different, huh? Instead of being on the side of the truth, it's the opposite, what? Here. But, against this, it seems that there are fewer, right? Because, according to the philosopher in the third book of actual hearing, the physics, there is the same road from Athens to Thebes and from Thebes to Athens, right? Therefore, it seems for the same reason, there is the same relation of the Father to the Son, which is called fatherhood, and of the Son to the Father, which is called sonhood. And thus, there are not four relations in God, huh? And notice, we were talking before, you know, about the way the philosopher names this category of being. He doesn't call it relation, he calls it towards something, right, huh? But in daily life, we speak of a relation between us, right? And you might think, well, it's just one relation between us, right? A relation between me and my son, or between me and my student, right, huh? Okay. It's two relations. But if you think a relation as being towards another, right? Well, I am towards my son in a different way than my son is towards me, right? Okay, I'm towards my wife in a different way than my son is towards me, right? I'm towards the student in a different way than the student is towards me. The double is towards the half in a different way, and the half is towards the double. But notice the way this goes now. This is a different way that you've, you know, you tend to find this more in the disputed questions of Thomas, because you have armies on this side and that side. And sometimes he'll say there's no matter of truth on both sides, right, when the truth is in between these two. And so this said country here is not an authority defending what Thomas is doing to say, but taking the opposite error. Now, what are the two ways of making a mistake, huh? Yeah. And so, as Shakespeare says, right, all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so. Well, the first four objections are saying more than the truth, right? And the same contrary is saying less than the truth. So, like Falstaff says, right, if they say more or less than the truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness. But it's also in the pledge there, you know, where he says, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Now, you know, to understand this fully, you go back to what Darstaff has taught us on it, that when reason says that what is, is, it's speaking truly. And when it says that what is not, is not, it's speaking truly. But when it says that what is, is not, it's speaking falsely. But when it's saying what is not, is, it's also speaking falsely. So saying what is not, is, is adding to the truth, saying more than the truth. And saying what is, is not, is saying less than the truth, right? So the first objections are saying that what is not, another real relation, in other words, besides the for, is, so it's adding to the truth. And the same contrary is saying, no, there's less than the for, right? So it's saying that what is, is not, okay? So, I answer, it should be said, that according to the philosopher, and he calls him the philosopher, by Antonio Messiaen, that's the way, that's the way the Isogogia of Porphyry got. Original, it meant the introduction to the categories, right? But then just, we're shorted to the Isogogia, the introduction, by Antonio Messiaen. Well, Thomas calls Aristotle the philosopher, right? He was, as Decanic said, a very humble student of Aristotle. I answer, it should be said, that according to the philosopher, in the fifth book of wisdom. Now, what is the fifth book of wisdom, of metaphysics? Now, that's the book where Aristotle takes up the words used most of all in wisdom, right? But also used in the axioms, right? And to some extent, everywhere, because it's the most common words, right? And he realized that all these words are names, or words equivocal by reason, So what he does is to distinguish the meanings of those words, right? In the fifth book, right? Among those words, this is a very common word, relation, right? Proustia, and so he teaches us a lot about this, right? Like, re-relations, relations are reasonable. Amazing, right? So according to the philosopher, in the fifth book of wisdom, all relation is founded, either upon quantity, right? as double and half, right? Or I'm taller than you, or I'm shorter than you, right? Okay. Or upon acting and undergoing, right? As making or made, father, and Son, Lord, Master, and Servant, and others of this sort, right, huh, okay? Since however, quantity is not found in God, huh, for he is great without quantity, as the great Augustine says, it remains, therefore, that a real relation with God cannot be except one founded upon some kind of, what, action, some kind of activity, okay? Now he's going to subdivide, huh, those actions. Now, however, upon actions, according as there goes forward something outside of God, or extension to God, huh, because the relations of God to creatures are not really in him, huh, God is said to be, what, related to the creature, because the creature is related to him. Aristotle had first seen that there was this odd situation of relations, huh? He says that the known is related to the knower, because the knower is related to, what, the known, right? The relation of the knower to the known is real, but not the reverse, huh? Whence it remains that the real relations in God cannot be taken, except according to an action, and activity, according as there is precession in God, not to the outside, but one that remains within him, right? Now he said that's a little bit like, you know, if you want to take something, you know, infinitely different from it, right? But a little bit like it. It's like the way that there proceeds from my imagination, when I imagine a gold mountain, let's say, there proceeds from my imagination, or a unicorn, an image of a gold mountain, right? But the image remains within my imagination, right? It's a little bit like this proceeding in God. What proceeds remains within that in which it proceeds, right? Father's in I, and I am in the Father, he says. And even more is it like the, what, when I think about something, there proceeds, or goes forward from my reason, a thought, right? But the thought remains within the reason, right? So notice what he's doing now. He's dividing into two, following Aristotle, right? Relations are based either upon quantity or upon some activity you're doing, right? There's no quantity in God, so it's got to be one based upon an activity, right? But either one to the outside, or one that remains within God. It can't be one to the outside, because those are these, like, relations of reason, huh? Okay? So it's got to be within. But the going forwards within are two only, right? So for example, he's dividing always by two, right? Okay? But he's going to end up with four, right? One of which is taken according to the activity of the understanding. And that's the going forward, or perception, of the word, the thought. Now, as I mentioned before, when St. John says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was towards God, and the word was God. The Greek word there is logos, right? And it's to be understood in the, not in the first sense of the word logos, which is word, but in the, what, sense of thought, right? But it's interesting that in English we have kept the word, word, right? So that you're forced to move, as Monsignan said, the word, word, to mean thought. And therefore the word, word becomes, like the Greek word logos, equivocal by reason, right? Now, it's equivocal by reason of, what, the ratio of the spoken word to the thought, right? It's a sign of that thought, right? Like Albert was saying there about the statement, right? And the other is according to the, what, action of the will, which is the going forward of, what, love, right? Now, by each of these, what, going forwards, is necessary to take two, what, opposed relations, huh? Of which one is of that, what, going forward from the beginning, right? And the other of the, what, beginning itself, right? Now, when Aristotle talks about beginning and Thomas talks about, that's the first word in book five, by the way, beginning. And beginning is that from which something goes forward in any way whatsoever, right? And so later on, Thomas will have a question here. Is the father a beginning, right, of the son? Well, he is, in one sense, because the son proceeds from the father, right? Just like I was saying in the beginning of class here, quoting my teacher, Albert, the great one of my teachers, where he says that premise means, what, a beginning, right? By statement means simply signifies, right? But the premise is the beginning, because something proceeds from it in the conclusion, right? Now, the procession of the word, right, or the thought, is called, what, generation, right? According to the proper notion by which it belongs to living things, right? Now, the relation of a beginning of generation living in perfect things is called, what, fatherhood, right? Relation of the one proceeding from a beginning is called, what, sonhood, right? Now, the going forward of love does not have its own name, right? And that's because I think I like the same creatures, right? Whence neither the relations which are taken according to it, they don't have a name, right? But the relation of the beginning of this going forward can be called, what, breathing, spiroxy, right? But breathing names, strictly speaking, more the activity, right, than the relation, right? So we borrow the name of the activity to name the relation, but you've got to know what you're doing, right? Okay? Well, in the case of generation, you could say, you know, the generator and the generated, but we also have a name, father and son, right? And the relation of the one going forward, well, for lack of a name, we keep the common name, right? Perception, right? But Thomas explains, although these two names, what, pertain to the, what, the perceptions themselves, or the origins, and not relations, right? So we borrow the name, right? So it can be only, Thomas says, what, four real relations in God, because those relations have to be based upon an activity that remains within God, and there's only two kinds of that activity, that's understanding himself and what, loving himself, right? And so according to God's understanding himself, there proceeds the word, right? And so you have the relation of the father and son, the speaker and the word, right? And then this other one, proceeding according to love, doesn't have a name, right? But likely to have the one proceeding and the one from whom he proceeds, right? Now, of course, to dissipate a bit, if there's four real relations, why aren't there four, what, persons in God, right? Well, the relation that, for want of a better name here that is called breathing, is, what, distinguishes whoever's breathing from the one who's breathed, the Holy Spirit, but it belongs, what, to the father and son, right? There's no opposition between breathing and being a father and a son, so it belongs to both of them. But there's an opposition to the one breathed. So there's a real distinction between the father and the son, the one breathed. So that the relation, though, of being the breather, right, doesn't distinguish the father from the son. They're distinguished by the father and the son, right? They all come out when you get into the treatise on the divine christians, right? So notice what Thomas has done at this point, right? He's talked about the processions or the origins or the going forwards in God, right? And now he's talked about the relations based upon those, right? And then he'll talk about, after this article, about the persons who are distinct.