Prima Pars
Lecture 132: The Proper Names of the Father in Divine Theology

Transcript
================================================================================

to using it for that. So we speak of hypostatic union, we're thinking of something very high around Monsignor's article, The Grace of Mary is a hypostatic order, you know? Okay. Now, to the second, this is a little more obscure to us because of the language here. To the second it should be said that among the Greeks is found, said about the Son and the Holy Spirit, that they are what? Principienter. I don't know how to translate it exactly. That they have a beginning, right? And they have begun. But this is not in the, what? Custom of our doctors, some of the Western doctors. Because although we attribute to the Father something of, what? That word authority, right? Doesn't have the sense of quite of our authority, our word, right? But it means it's the source, the origin of something, right? By reason of a beginning, nevertheless, nothing pertaining to, what? Subjection, or lessening, right? To be, in any way, pertaining, to be attributed to the Son or the Holy Spirit, right? That you might avoid all, what? Occasion of error, right? Now, this is a very puzzling way that Hillary speaks, right? According to which way of speaking, Hillary says in the 9th book of the Trinity, that by the authority of the giver, the Father is mayor. He's saying here, not just the Father is greater than the Son by its human nature, but in his, what? But the Son is not minor. That's like, I almost said, you know, misuse of the words, right? To which one of the same being is given, right? The same nature, right? I would say, I wouldn't extend Hillary's way of speaking there, right? But you can see that a little bit of, he's not really mistaken, it doesn't really mean that the Father is greater than the Son, but he's trying to express the fact that he's the, what? He's the origin of that. I guess you see, sort of the struggle with the language. Yeah. That's what he has to say. It seems like I'm trying to fix it. Yeah. If I'm more than you, you're less than me. There's a lot of pitfalls here, right? Grabbing up here, I was watching, you know, the blood holes now because of that rain here yesterday, you know, because all of a sudden you've got it, you've got to watch out there's a bottle of another bottle. Yeah, I couldn't believe it today. I don't know the same thing. Everywhere I went, I don't know that it's a bottle of another bottle. Yeah, you were back here, your tires here. Yeah, I almost saw that. Because of the rain. Yeah, the rain, yeah. It flees it. I don't know. It's a little bit. The third objection, because I kind of restated, you know, but just giving our style definition of the common meaning of beginning, right? Beginning is what is first, and therefore it involves the idea of being before, right? What is first in being or becoming or in knowing, right? To the third, it should be said that although this name beginning, as far as that from which it was placed upon things to signify something, seems to be taken from, what? Beforeness. It does not, however, signify beforeness or priority, but what? Origin, right? That's almost the same thing as what he said in the body of the article that it signifies. That from which something goes forth, right? Or proceeds, right? I mean, whatsoever. But that is not the same thing that a name signifies and that from which the name is, what? Taken from, yeah. So, every time I teach that first reading in the fifth book of wisdom, I'm always saying, you know, don't worry when you think it's the Trinity, right? Whether it's to understand the beginning in the way Aristotle understands the beginning, right? Because that would be making the father before the son, right? That's how respectful Thomas is of Aristotle, right? Yeah. What? Yeah. Okay, Article 2, whether this name Father is a name properly of a divine person. The second one proceeds thus, it seems that this name Father is not properly the name of a divine person. Who's going to object to that? Sounds like a difficult thing to object to that. For this name Father signifies relation, but a person is a what? Individual substance. Therefore, this name Father is not properly a name that signifies a person. That's a pretty good objection, huh? Moreover, generons, generating, right, is more common than Father. For every Father is generating, but the reverse is not true. The more common name is more properly said in divine things, huh? Therefore, it's more a proper name of a divine person generating, or the generator, than the Father, right? I don't know why you say generons is more common than Father, except he's taking a baby for even unliving things, right? Moreover, nothing that is said by metaphor can be, what, the proper name of something, huh? But word or thought, metaphorically, among us, is said to be, what, generated or son. And consequently, that of which it is the word or thought is metaphorically called a, what, father, right? If I called my mind the father of my thoughts, my thoughts are my children. That'd be speaking metaphorically, huh? Therefore, the beginning of the word in divine things is not properly a, what, father, right? Of course, that which is, what, in God, the operation and the being are the same thing, right? So the one that proceeds by way of thought is the being of God. Moreover, everything that is properly said in divine things is said of God before, what, creatures. But generation before would seem to be said of creatures than of God, because it would seem generation to be more, what, true there, where something proceeds from another distinct, not by relation only, but also by its, what, essence. Therefore, the name of father that is taken from generation does not seem to be proper to, what, any divine person. Against all this nonsense is what is said in Psalm 88, he, what, yeah, you are my father. I answer it should be said that the proper name of each person or any person signifies that to which that person is distinguished from all others. Now, just as it is of the notion of man, both the soul and the body, so it is of the understanding of this man, this soul, and this body, as it is said in the seventh book of Wisdom. But, and by these, this man is distinguished from all other men. Now, that by which the person of the father is distinguished from all others is fatherhood. Whence the proper name of the person of the father is this name father, which signifies what? Eternity, right? And why does he say that by which the person of the father is distinguished from all others is fatherhood? Isn't that just a distinction from the son? Is it a distinction from the Holy Spirit? It doesn't explain that here, does it? At least, bear that in mind. Well, I guess, didn't he say that then? It has to do with the fact that this is, what, a personal notion, right? The one that constitutes the father, right? Some more things to be understood about that, huh? Because someone might object and say, well, isn't he distinguished from the Holy Spirit by common breathing, right? Another relation, huh? Okay, let's look back now at the first objection here. That the name father signifies relation, but person, an individual substance, right? Okay? To the first, it should be said that among us, a relation is not a subsisting person. So my being a father or a husband is not this person, right? It's a relation that falls upon some activity of mine. And therefore, this name father among us does not signify a person, but the relation of a person, huh? But is not thus in divine things, as some have falsely, what, thought, huh? For the relation which this name father signifies is a, what? Subsisting person. Whence above it has been said, that this name person in God signifies a relation as subsisting in the, what? Divine nature. So it signifies a relation per modem, what? Substantia, right? Per modem persona, huh? Signifies a relation as something subsisting in the divine nature. That's not what it signifies in us, huh? So my fatherhood is quite different from us. What subsists here in human nature is not my, what, relation of being a father or a son, for that matter. Now, the second objection. Wouldn't it be better to call him the generator? Okay? To the second it should be said that according to the philosopher, now he's back, quoting Aristotle with authority here, that according to the philosopher in the second book about the soul, the naming of a thing, most of all, ought to come about from, what? Its perfection and from its end. Now, generation signifies as, what? In coming to be. But fatherhood signifies the completion of the generation. And therefore more is it a name of a divine person father than the one, what? But, you know. Serious thing, right? Yeah. It's not false. No. We say it's better because a begetter signifies more in the manner of coming to be, right? And fatherhood signifies the completion of the act, right? So you ought to name things from their perfection and from their end. Well, Could you say that a plant can generate another plant, but it's not? That was an rejection of things. Yeah, so why do you call me a lover of wisdom? Yeah, that's the most perfect and the end of it all, right? So it's better to call me a lover of wisdom than a lover of natural philosophy. It would be better to call me a lover of natural philosophy than a lover of logic, and that's just a tool. So you name something by what? The most complete thing in it, right? The most perfect thing and what's most the end. That's why we're rational animals. The only animals which are rational is the most perfect part of us. Yeah, yeah. If the girl says, do you love me or my money? I say, well, to be honest, I love you for your money. I think you say more than that, but then you love yourself rather than me. You say, that's the end, right? Or you love money. You're a lover of money, not a lover of me, as you could say, right? So I'm a lover of wisdom because that's the end. That's the most perfect area in the series, huh? That's the way you name things. You better name God the Father and the Generator, you could say he's the Generator. Okay, now the third one is saying, well, in us, to say that my thought is my, what? My son, right? Seems to be kind of speaking metaphorically, right? He says, well, the verbum or the thought is not something subsisting in human nature, huh? Whence it cannot properly be said to be generated or to be a, what? Son, right? But the divine word or thought is something subsisting in the, what? Yeah. Whence properly and not metaphorically it is said to be a, what? Son, right? And his beginning a, what? Father. That's the same nature there, right? But my reason and my thoughts don't have the same nature, even a thought that I have about what my reason is. Shakespeare's definition of reason, right? That's not reason. Definition of reason. Now, what about which comes first, right? And the objection is saying that isn't fatherhood and sonship found more in creatures, right? Because they're distinct not by relation only, but also by their substance or nature. To the fourth, it should be said that the name of generation and of fatherhood, just as other names which are properly said in divine things, are said before about God, then they are of, what? Creatures. As it regards the things signified, right? Although not as far as the way is signifying, right? Whence the apostle says to the Ephesians, chapter 3, I bend my knee, right, to the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is, what? Named. Thomas comes back to that, because in Shelo refers to the angels, right? In terra, to us, and so on. And, well, there's no fatherhood of the angels. But Thomas says, well, yeah, but this, the higher angel illuminates the lower angel, right? Now he says, it is manifest that generation takes its species, its form, from the, what? End, which is the form of the thing generated. And as this is closer to the form of the one generating, so more truly and more perfect is the, what? Generation, huh? Just as univocal generation is more perfect than a, what? Univocal. For it is of the notion of one generating that he generates another, like himself, in form. Whence this very thing, that in the divine generation, there is the same in number, right? Not just the same in kind or species, the form of the one generating and the one generated. In created things, there is not the same in number, but the same in kind only. It shows a generation, and consequently, fatherhood is more found in God and found in God before it's found in creatures. So me and my son share the same nature, not individually, but in kind and species, huh? But the father and the son and God, right, have the same nature individually. Not two divine natures, right? Whence the fact that in divine things there is a distinction of the one generated from the one generating by relation only pertains to the truth of divine generation and fatherhood. Everything that is the father's is mine, right? Grace says, huh? That's not quite true about the human son and the human father, right? Yeah, had the same mind, the same, you know, heart and so on. It may have a similar mind or heart, but not the same mind or heart, right? But God has the same minded will, right? The son that the father has. So it belongs to the idea of generation that you make another one like yourself, right? What's more like yourself than yourself? That's why you're that thing where Augustine, I mean, that quote from Boethius, that in a way, it's like the relation of a thing to itself in God. It's not really the same thing exactly, because there's a distinction there, right? But it's like saying, you know, I am myself. Socrates is Socrates. So in Dionysius wrote those books, right? He wrote one book about, what, metaphorical names, symbolic theology, right? That symbol meaning metaphor. And there the name is properly set of the creature and carried over to God metaphorically, right? So God is, or is a rock or something like that, right? Or a lion or something like that. But then he wrote another book, the Divini Dominibus, they call it Lapton, right? Which is about those names, which as far as the thing signified, is found most fully in God, and then in some lesser way in creatures, right? So just to reverse, order those two, huh? The symbolic theology book, and then the book on proper names, you might say, of God, huh? So we might place these names first, you know, the word wise or knowing upon something we find in creatures, right? Yet the thing signified, the word knowing is found much more in God than us. We're practically, what, dead intellectuals, the God I could say, you know, we're practically nothing going on upstairs. Yeah? So I mean, you know, less than nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, Socrates gets to be this kind of model, you know, oh, he's a guy who knows what he doesn't know, right? That's how our knowing is, you know, more of that. Or Einstein, you know, went to England and praised Luton for knowing what he didn't know. He had very good more for knowing what he didn't know. That's kind of knowing in a lesser sense, isn't it? Knowing that you don't know. Yeah. Supposed to knowing everything, right? See, wisdom is a knowledge of all things, huh? The wise man knows everything, but in some way. My God knows everything simply without qualification. All things are naked or open to his eyes. And my students would say, you know, I'm going to run home and tell my dad that I know everything now. Well, you do, in some way, right? But not simply, right? That's the first attribute of the wise man, he knows all things. But then Aristotle shows later on, then, that either God alone is wise or God in the full sense. Knowing, you know, I know what a thing is. I know what something is. Something includes everything, right? Just something that isn't something. You know? So I know what is said of everything. So in some way, everything. But simply speaking, you don't know that, huh? I'd always take a girl in class and say, do you know my brother Mark? And she'd say, no. She says, well, do you know what a man is? Do you know what a brother is? Yeah. So that's what brother Mark is. So you do know him. In some way, you know every man. You don't know what a man is, right? You know every brother. You know what a brother is. So in some way, everybody knows my brother Mark. But you wouldn't say simply as you know my brother Mark. You're doing anything better? Does the Lord speak that way? And he says, go preach the gospel. Every preacher? He speaks. Well, there's something of every preacher. He became a man. Yeah. The spirit, the matter. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what he's got. Yeah. So he's kind of speaking that way. Yeah. He doesn't mean God preached for the frogs in time. That's given as a reason then why he became man. Because the way he's taking the whole creation into him. Material as well as material. Okay. So. Now we've got this question. of, still we'll deal with the word father, right, because it's a name now that's proper to the one person in eternity, but you also use the word father sometimes in the name God, right? God is our father. Even Homer has that, right? Zeus is the father of mortals and immortals, right? Now which do you think is more fundamental, huh? Well, let's see what the objections are, right? To the third one proceeds thus, it seems that this name father is not said in God before, according as it is, what, taken personally. For the common, by understanding, according to the understanding, is before the proper, huh? That goes back to the beginning of Aristotle's physics, right? We know things in a confused way before we know them, what, distinctly, right? And therefore the general is known before the particular by the understanding, because it's more confused, right? But this name father, according as it is taken personally, is proper to the person of the father. According as it is taken, essentially, it's common to the whole trinity. For to the whole trinity we say, our father, right? He seems to be touching upon their father, right? Therefore, before, um, father said essentially then, before it said what? Personally, huh? That's a good, good section, huh? Moreover, in those things which are of the same reason, there is not a predication of before and after. But fatherhood and sonship would seem to be, according to one reason, one meaning, according as, what, a divine person is the father of the son, and according as the whole trinity is our father or of, what, even the creature. Since, according to Basil, huh? To, what, take or receive is common to the creature and to the son. So the father, what? The son gets from the father and we get from God, right? So I think, huh? Therefore, it's univocal, right? And that's the difference on it, because in an equivocal word, by reason there's a before and after in the meaning, right? But here it seems to be saying that it's univocal, right? Now, among those things which are not said by one reason, there can be no comparison. Okay, so you can't say, which is sharper, the knife or the flavor of this, you know, because they don't mean the same meaning, right? Okay? You can say, which is sharper, these two knives, right? Because sharp means the same thing in both, huh? But the thought with the son is compared to the creature by reason of, what, sonship or generation, according to the text of the epistle to the Colossians, who is the, what, image of the invisible God, the firstborn of, what, all creatures, right? Therefore, fatherhood is not said, what, before in creatures, taken personally and essentially, but according to the same, what, reason, huh? So the second and the third arguments are trying to argue that, what, when you say that the first person is the father, the son, and we say God is our father, the word father has the same meaning, okay? And that second is saying that very explicitly, and the third one is saying, hey, we can compare this and say, well, he's kind of the, he's more a son, right? So he must be a son in the same sense, right? So if I'm more of a philosopher than you are, it's because I love wisdom more than you, right? But then we're both being called a philosopher for the same reason, that we're all over wisdom, right? But against this is that the eternal is before the temporal. But from eternity, God is the father of the, what, son. In time, he's the father of the, what, creature. Therefore, fatherhood is said before in God with respect to the son, respect to the creature, son. So what do you think? So he says, I answer it should be said that before a name is said of that in which the whole meaning of the name, right, the whole definition of the name is found what? Perfectly or completely, right? Then of that in which it is saved by something, right? But not by the whole. That's why in logic, when you define property, you have that full meaning of property, right? Then you say we can use property in a lesser sense, as something that is always but not only, and so on. And about this latter, it is said, as it were, by likeness to that in which it is perfectly found. Because all imperfect things take their origin from perfect things. Go back to the ninth book of wisdom for the reason for that, huh? Because the actual is more perfect than what? Potential, right? The potential becomes actual if the world is already actual. And hence it is that this name, the lion, huh, is said before of the animal in which there is saved the whole meaning of lion, right? But it's properly called a lion. Then of some man, right? Which is the lion-hearted, right? And which has found something of the meaning of lion as audacity or fortitude, right? Or something of this sort, huh? And about this, he just said, through what? Likeness, huh? But it's manifest from what has been said before, that the perfect definition of fatherhood and sonhood is found in God the Father and God the Son. Why? Because of the Father and the Son, there is one nature and one, what? But in the creature, sonship is found with respect to God, not by a perfect, what? Definition, right? Or will be definition. Since there is not one nature of the creature, of the creator and the creature, but according to some kind of what? Likeness, huh? Likeness we have to God by nature makes us in some sense of the Son of God, right? The likeness we have through grace makes us even more like him, right? The likeness that we have when we get the light of glory makes us even more like him, right? Okay. Which the more perfect it is, the more closely it exceeds the true notion of what? Sonhood, right? Now he starts to give the whole breakdown of this, for more or less. For God is said to be the father of some creature, on account of a likeness of what? The footprint only, huh? As if irrational creatures, according to that of Job 3d8, verse 28. Who is the father of the rain, right? Or who generated the what? Two, yeah. Yeah. This sounds like the way St. Francis spoke, right? Okay, brother and sister, right? Okay. Because we're all sons and daughters, right? Of God. But this is taking into account this very distant likeness of the footprint. Another is that of the, what? Rational creature, right? Which is the likeness of the image, right? According to that of Deuteronomy 32, verse 6. Is he not your father who possesses and made and created you, right? Of others, he is the father according to the likeness of grace, which is a kind of, what? Sharing the divine nature, right? They use that text sometimes from St. Peter's Epistle, right? Consortism. So, let's do this. divine nature, who also can be called adoptive sons, right? According as they are ordered to the inheritance of eternal glory, taken through the, what? Received through the gift of grace, according to that of Romans 8, verse 16, 17. For the Spirit renders testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God, and if sons, also Heirs. And finally, this is the most one, of some according to the likeness of what? Glory. Insofar as they now already possess the inheritance of glory. According to that of Romans 5, 2, let us glory in the hope of the glory of the sons of men, right? Sons of God, yeah. Do you think that's why you mentioned glory earlier, when you said that, the perfect meaning of eternity of sonhood in God, the father, the son, nature, and glory? Yeah. But nevertheless, our glory is not the glory of God. Right. Thus, therefore, before fatherhood is said in God, according as it regards the relation of person to person, then according as it implies a respect or relation of God to what? Preacher son. So the father is more the father of the son, right? Than he is our father, right? Okay. Now, what about the first objection, though? It says the common is before the what? Particular, right? To the first, therefore, it should be said that the general things, huh? Absolutely said, according to the order of our understanding, right, are before the things that are what? Or particular, because they are included in the understanding of the what? Proper or the more particular. But the reverse is not true. Now, in the understanding of the person of the father is understood what? God. But it's not convertible, right? Okay. So you can't understand the father unless you understand God. But you can understand God, to some extent, without understanding the father, right? Like even the philosophers did, right? Okay. But those common things which imply a regard to the creature are what's said afterwards, right? Than those proper things which import or regard personal relations, right? Because the person proceeding in God recedes also as a beginning of the production of creatures, huh? For just as through the, what? Thought conceived in the mind of the artist is understood to, what? Proceed before there proceeds from the artist the thing that is, what? Artificial, huh? Which is produced to the likeness of the thought conceived in the mind, right? Thus, Periprius, before, the son proceeds from the father in the creature, of whom the name of sonship is said, according as he partakes something of a likeness to the son. As is clear through that which is said, Romans 8, 29. Whom he foreknew and predestined to become conformed to the image of his, what? Son. So just as the artist now has an idea of what he's going to make, right? He makes something like what he conceived, right? So God, huh? Makes something like what he has conceived, huh? In his, what? Thought, huh? But of course what he makes is, falls far short of what he understands, right? But in some way like it, huh? So just as in the artist, his thought precedes the exterior thing he makes, right? So in God, right, you have to understand the thought proceeding before something is being made according to that thought. So the word has, in some sense, a relation to what? Creatures, right? Because God, in understanding himself, understands all the things. He understands principally himself, right? Now, because you have one word here, a cheaper, eh, to take, yeah. It's said to be common to the creature and to the son, not by one meaning, right? But according to a certain remote likeness, huh? By reason of which he is said to be the firstborn of what? Three creatures, huh? Whence in the authority induced, there is subjoined that he is the firstborn in many brothers, right? After he said that they would become conformed to the image of his, what? Of the son of God. But the son naturally has something singular before others, namely to have by nature that which he, what? Accepts. And according to this, he is said to be the unigene twist, the only begotten, huh? As it's said in John 1.18, the only born who was in the, what? The Torah's bottom, right? And Thomas says, well, the same thing can be said in the third. You can probably expand upon it a bit, right? Can you say more or less when things are not of the same kind, huh? Can you say, for example, that the end is better than the means? But are the end and the means good in the same way? So that the end is better because it has more? No. They differ in what? Kind, yeah. But sometimes you can compare things of that sort, right? Okay. Can you say that substance has more being than accident? Yeah, but you can still say that it has more being, even as being a different kind, huh? Because it's not purely equivocal, is it? It's purely equivocal, you couldn't say. You couldn't say that the cheese is sharper than the knife or something, right? Because that would be purely equivocal, right? Yeah. Yeah. But if one is like the other, right, even though they're different in kind, huh? You say the one, you know, they say that that statue of George Washington down in the Virginia Assembly or something down there, House of Bridges is what they call it now, you know. I guess when Lafayette came back in the United States many years after his fortunes in Europe, and he saw these, you know, paintings and statues of Washington, you know, and he'd say, you know, well, this one is more like Washington than that one, you know. Well, that's a man, right? You see? So could you say that one statue is more like Washington than another? If you'd known the real man, huh? Yeah. Same. Yeah. But is the statue, you know, kind of Washington in the same sense? But you still say that it's made as a likeness to Washington, right? That man who makes a statue is trying to make a likeness of, you know. It's a likeness, you know, quite different from the sun. So, you can speak of more or less, even though things are, what, not the same in kind, but there's some, what, likeness of one to the other, right? There's some order among them, right? Let me say, for example, that the inside goods of man are better than the outside goods of man. So you can say one thing is better than the other, even though it's not good in the same way. It's order to the other. It's not purely equivocal, right? So there's something in between being purely equivocal where no comparison is possible, right? And being inimical where there can be a strict comparison. Who's better, Shakespeare, I won't say. So if you're comparing, you know, you know, one time we used to have Beaumont and Fletcher, you know, their plays were being performed as much as Shakespeare's or even more so, right? And now it's come about that nobody already ever sees a play of Beaumont and Fletcher, right? I had a colleague who did his doctor thesis on Fletcher, you know. Someone asked him, how come you don't see Fletcher's plays very often? Well, I said, maybe not very good. But Dryden said, you know, as he started to see these plays more and more, he realized how much better Shakespeare was. And then he said that Fletcher was just a limb of Shakespeare, right? Like an arm or a leg of Shakespeare, you know. But now, could you compare a Mozart symphony in a Shakespeare play and say which is better? Kind of hard to do, right? You know, Aristotle, in the book of the Poetic Art, though, he argues that tragedy is better than epic, huh? Because it produces the same effect of pity and fear, but with, what, fewer, more briefly, huh? Sylvain is better than what, induction, right? Because it more forces the mind, right, to accept the conclusion. It's going to be tricky there, right? But you've got to be careful there, you know, to see that when there's, when somewhat comparing things that aren't of the same kind, right? Because there's some order and likeness between them, nevertheless. So I don't know if there's any likeness between Mozart symphony in it. My mother-pop, though. Monks do, too. You know, most of you will think, you know, why can I have a dinner tonight? And thinking, you know, there's going to be chicken or what's going to be, you know. My mother's going to have a dessert tonight, you know. And then she went back to the rest of the meal. That's what she said, anyway. I don't know. I don't know what we're going there, what we're preparing there. I don't know what we're going there, what we're preparing there. I don't know what we're going there, what we're preparing there. I don't know what we're going there, what we're preparing there.