Prima Pars
Lecture 141: Essence and Person in God: The Fundamental Question

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Praise to you, Christ. And help us to understand how it's you written. Deo gracias. Let's recall now that the treatise on the Trinity is divided into three parts, because the divine persons are distinguished by relations of origin. And so, there was one question on the origin of processions in God. There was a second question on the relations in God. And then there are 15 questions on the persons. Now, those 15 questions on the persons were divided into ten and five, right? The absolute consideration of the persons, which we just finished. And then the comparative consideration of them, which will be the last five questions. Thomas begins, then, as though premium by saying, that after those things which have been considered absolute, absolute is the Latin word, right? About the persons. It remains to consider about the persons in comparison to, and he gives three things, right? To the essence, or the divine nature, the divine substance. And to the properties, or the relations, huh? And to the notional acts, like to generate, right? To breathe, right? What is that? I mean, if the act of generating is something different, really, from the Father, then you're going to have more than three things there in God, right? You see? Like me and my son, and I generated my son, there are three different things. So is the Father and the Son, and the Father generating the sons, three different things? No. So these comparisons have to be taken up, huh? Okay. And then the comparison of the persons, what? To each other, right? So Thomas kind of divides the first three against the last two, right? Because you're comparing the persons to something other, at least mentally speaking, than the notion of the persons, and then you're comparing the persons to, what? Each other, right? So that's according to the rule of three and two, huh? Thomas is not so pedantic as to point this out all the time. Okay. Now as regards the first of these, eight things are, what? Asked, huh? First, whether the essence, the nature of God, the substance of God, is the same as the person. Is there any real distinction between the Father and the divine nature, and the Son and the divine nature? There is a real distinction between the Father and the Son. But is there a real distinction between the Father and the divine nature? Well, in anticipation, you might expect the answer will be no, huh? And once you've seen that they all are one in the same divine nature, whether one can say that they are, what? Three persons of one nature, of one substance, of one essence. Then there comes a three, four, five, and six there. Some questions about how you can speak about these things, huh? And the first one is whether essential names should be said of the persons in plural or in singular. So, you see, the Father is God, the Son is God, right? The Holy Spirit is God. And that falls upon the first article, right? That they have the same thing, right? Well, now, I'm a man, you are a man, he's a man, right? And we're three men, right? So, can you say, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three gods? No, no. So, that's a strange way of being said, right? Here's something said of three that are really distinct, just as you and I are distinct, right? What's said of you and I, who are really distinct, is said in the plural, right? Why not in God, see? And as you see, sometimes I quote in these texts from the great Hillary, right, you know, that speech is subject to the thing. You have to know, but the thing is, to see how something can or cannot be said of something. That follows immediately upon the first thing. Then, whether notional adjectives or verbs or parsables can be predicated of the essential names taken, what? Concretely. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean, can you say that God generates? God breathes? See, notice how in St. John there, it's a little different thing, but, you know, he says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God, right? He doesn't say towards the Father, although he is towards the Father. Well, what is God standing for there? The Father, yeah. So, if the Father, if God can stand in that text for the Father, right, why can't you say that God generates? Like we say in the Creed, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, right? It's a little hard question sometimes to see how to speak, huh? And as Hillary again says, right, or as Jerome, I guess, says, Ex verbi sinori nati prolatis, some words put forth disorderly, heresy arises, huh? So, you have to be careful, huh? Because I tacked it up in the church and said, She shouldn't be called the mother of God, but the mother of Christ, huh? And they do things out of it, I guess. Yeah, yeah. But you've got to be careful with people, you know, saying things, huh? Sometimes they don't know what they're saying, and sometimes they're critical without knowing it. But if you speak this way, you're going to get in trouble eventually. It's going to influence your thinking, right? Don't know how to speak about things. In any way, you get in trouble not knowing how to speak. Shakespeare says something about stumbling in your own words. Okay. And the fifth one, whether they can be said of the essential names taken in the abstract. So, can you say that God, can you say that the divine nature is generated? I would guess not, right? We'll see what the master said. But you could say God from God, couldn't you? Would you say God generates God? It takes a while to get into these questions, to see exactly what they can say, that they're important. I think the thing that Thomas Aquinas says, if you're reading too fast, you get mental indigestion, right? Or as Father Goulet would say, mental constipation. And if you slow down and do it slowly, you know, then you say, well, I can see what he's saying, you know. But I have to do it slowly, right? I find myself now, I have to eat more slowly, you know. I think it's food stuck in my throat, you know. It's always true in your mind, you know. Being stuck, you don't get into the mind, right? Because you're trying to eat too fast, huh? Feast of reason, as Socrates says, right? You've got to eat moderately or slowly. Wisely and slow, they stumble and run fast. Wisely and slow, they choke and eat too fast. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. You've got to eat more slowly, you know. And the sixth article, whether the names of person can be said of the, what, central names and concrete names, huh? That's the name God, right? Can you say God is the Holy Spirit? You say the Holy Spirit is God, I think. Can you say God is the Holy Spirit? Wait to see what Thomas says, right? Would it be good to say, you know, she never discussed the work of art except in the presence of it? Well, I say we should never discuss the Trinity without Thomas in front of you. Now, the last two articles could be divided against the earlier ones. They're dealing now with this idea of appropriation. And the first article, of course, is obviously presupposed to the second one. Whether the essential attributes, like, say, God is wise or God is good or God is powerful, can these essential attributes of God be appropriated to persons, huh? You can see there's a danger in that, right? And sometimes I'll just take an example there, you know, the incarnation there. And you say, the Word was made flesh. Is that an appropriation? Is it really God who became flesh? No, no, that's not appropriation. It's only the Word that was made flesh. That's not appropriation at all. But when you say, the Holy Spirit will overshadow you, right? So they attribute the incarnation, the work of the incarnation, to the Holy Spirit. Is that an appropriation? Yeah. It's really a work of the whole Trinity. Or we attribute, say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. So I say that God the Father created heaven and earth. Well, was it just the Father, just like, it was just the Son who became man? No. But that's an appropriation. So you can see the Church does appropriate. So you can see Thomas is going to defend this as something and why it should be allowed, right? But when you come back and you consider these things, you don't realize that, you know, maybe some things that you learned as a child, right, were being said without appropriation and some other things were being said by appropriation, right? And then, in the eighth one, he's going to go into the various appropriations that the great Augustine or the great Hillary make, huh? And power to the Father and wisdom to the Son and goodness to the Holy Spirit. That's not too hard to understand, but some more strange ones, you know? Unity to the Father and equality to the Son and connection to the union to the Holy Spirit and so on. Could we go back again? In the beginning, you mentioned four things, right? But maybe some go together or something? When you said essence, property, actual notions, and purpose. Those are three different questions they'll be, right? Okay, but now how is it three? What goes together? Because there's four things there. Yes, essence, properties, notional acts, and comparisons. Well, no, no, you divide those first three against the last two, right? So here you're comparing the persons to the essence, to the properties, to the notional acts, none of which as such are names of persons, right? And then in the last two ones, you're going to be talking about the persons in comparison to each other. Okay, okay. So one person sends the other person, for example, right? Okay, so there's two things there. And then how is that? Then with our eight things, we have three, we divide that into three. Yeah, the first two kind of go together, and then the last two go together. Yeah. And I know sometimes, Thomas, like in the sentences, you'll have the last two and the first one, they're together in the same question, right? So Thomas kind of sees them as being parts of the same consideration. But these four in the middle seem to be dealing with various questions about naming, right? And how I can say something, actually questions of predication, right? This is the key thing in logic, by the way, right? In other words, it belongs to logic to consider the way this is said of that, right? So the first book in logic in Latin is called the predicabilia, which comes from the Latin word for being said of, right? And the second book is the predicamentis, right? And you get into the book on places, so I speak of the predicata, the four predicata. But they all have the same root, really, the idea of being said of, right? So to consider the way this is said of that is most proper to logic to consider that. And that's because logic considers things as they are in the mind. And it's in our mind or reason that one thing is what's said of another. And so one of the first things we learn in logic is the fact that a name can be said of many things univocally or equivocally, equivocally by chance or by reason and so on. And this is kind of something that's going to be done in every other science, right? So logic is helping a bit, right? But then when you get into the Trinity, you get into ways that one thing is said of another that the philosopher did not anticipate, because he knew nothing about the Trinity, right? And so you have to make some special considerations, right, about what can be said of what in theology. Okay? So let's look at the first article now, which is really the fundamental article. The most important of the article is in some of the sentences, right? Underlies everything else. To the first one proceeds thus. It seems that in God the essence is not the same as a person, right? But Thomas always thinks absolutely what he thinks before he thinks what he thinks. He says, in whatever things, the essence or nature is the same thing as a person or the individual substance on this, usito, it is necessary that there be only one individual, right, of that nature, as is clear in all the separated, what, substances, huh? So when Thomas talks about the angel son, he maintains that no two angels have the same, what, nature, right? That the difference between two angels, to use a geometrical comparison, is like the difference between a circle and a square, not like between two circles, right? The distinction between you and me is like between two, what, circles, right? Okay? Now why is that, right? So there's no matter, right? And therefore, you don't have the continuous, right? Now you say, in the first theorem in geometry, right, you have, what, two circles, right, intersecting. And these two circles are exactly in the same diameter, same radius, huh? Because you could want to construct an equilateral triangle, right? So he takes a straight line, on top of a straight line, and he rotates it around like that, makes one circle, then he takes the other end point, and, okay? But how do those two circles differ now? In kind? Yeah, just a number, and they're exactly the same kind of thing. But they differ because one is here, and one is there, right? But even before that, the two different end points that you use, you know, as a sentence of these two circles. How do those two points differ? Exactly the same kind of thing, but because one's here, and one is there, right? And when we study this in wisdom a little bit, we find out that matter, as subject to quantity, to the continuous quantity, is the source of the multiplication of individuals at the same time. So how is it possible to have many chairs here? Exactly the same in this room, huh? The simplest answer is to say you have enough wood. So it involves wood, one kind of matter, subject to quantity, wouldn't I say enough, right? How can you have many windows, right? Exactly the same kind. The simplest answer is you have enough glass, right? When you get to the immaterial things, the immaterial substances, there's no matter there, right? And there's nothing continuous. So therefore there can't be many of the same, what? Kind. So each one is different, right? My old teacher gets to say, you know, you see your first angel, you know? And then you see a second one, you're not going to be counting that. You see your second angel. The great angel is what you're going to see first, right? And you always say, you know, this is God. You know, the angel will say, no, no, I'm not God. But he's going to be so wonderful, right? You see, you think he's God, right? And then when you see your second angel, you won't say that. No, it's the second angel I see him. It's going to be so different, the first one. But what do you think of there being two, you know? Okay. Now, it's interesting that Plato, although he made the mistake of thinking that there's a world of the natures of man and dog and cat and horse, right? The world of the forms, as he called them. There's only one form of each, what? Kind. So, in a sense, Plato realizes that if there is a kind of thing that is immaterial, it's sui generis. One of a kind, right? There's only one of that kind. Now, this seems to be a contradiction here with what you're finding here in the Trinity, right? Because if you have, you know, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are immaterial, right? And if there's no distinction between them and the divine nature, you should have only one person, really, huh? And so people get into this business of thinking there's only one person, that's just only one nature. So how's Thomas going to get out of this? Seems to contradict, you know? For those things which are the same in Ray, in reality, in the thing, one cannot be multiplied without the other being multiplied, right? So if the divine nature was the same thing as these, right, they'd all be one and the same, right? But in God, there's one essence and three persons. Therefore, the essence is not the same as the, what, person, huh? That's something to chew on, right, huh? Don't tell it to your mother. Don't tell it to your mother. Don't tell it to your mother. Don't tell it to your mother. Okay, now the second objection is very powerful, too. Affirmation and negation together at once are not verified in the same thing. But affirmation and negation are verified of the essence of the person. For the person is distinct, right? The essence is not distinct. That seems to be a syllogism then in the, what, second figure, right? You affirm one thing which you deny of the other, right? You know how we're syllogizing there all the time in the substance of God. We say, you know, God is pure act, we show. And we say, well, what is composed as some ability, right? God has no ability in the passive sense. It's pure act. So we affirm, what, of one which you deny of the other, right? Yeah. It's like the same thing, right? It's pretty powerful, right? Yeah. It seems even God, you know, in his knowing and willing can't overcome that, right? And we say God is all-knowing, and that's true. Now someone came and said to you, okay, but I know something God doesn't know. What is that? That two is half of three. Yeah. He doesn't know that. See? He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. He doesn't know it. The point of one is denied of the other, right? You know, if I say a dog is four-footed, a man is not four-footed, and therefore sugar is sweet, salt is not sweet, salt is not sugar, right? So he's saying that the nature is not distinguished, right? The person is, right? If I could say that nature is not generated, the divine nature is not generated, the sun was generated, therefore the sun is not the divine nature. You can see all those problems. Well, this changes everything. It's going to all unravel now, you know? Now, the third objection is not as powerful, but it's taken from the way we speak of these things. Nothing is subject to itself, right? But the person is subject to the essence of nature. Whence in Latin is called the symposium, which means placed under, right? Or in Greek, hypostasis, which means what? Stand under, right? Okay. Therefore the person is not the same as the, what? Essence, huh? Let's always speak of form as being what? In matter, right? And the matter being under the form. And the nature is a bit like the form. He's in the form of God, right? But not against all this nonsense. It's what the great Augustine says in the seventh book about the Trinity. When we say the person of the Father, we do not say something other than the, what? The substance of the Father, huh? Now, the answer should be said, Thomas, that to those considering the divine simplicity, this question manifestly has truth, huh? For it has been shown above that the divine simplicity requires this, that in God be the same, the essence, and the, what? Suppositum, right? Suppositum is the name there for the individual substance, right? Which, in understanding substances, is nothing other than the, what? Person. But it seems to engender a difficulty, as it does, when the divine persons are, what? Multiplied, in fact, there's three of them. And the essence, or the nature, the substance, retains, what? Unity, right? And because, as Boethius says, huh? That seems to be almost the third guy he quotes after Augustine and Hillary, huh? About the Trinity. Whereas Boethius says, Boethius is very much following Augustine, if you read him. As Boethius says, the relation, right, multiplies the Trinity of, what? Persons. Persons and God. Some lay it down, right, huh? And this is that terrible guy, Gilbert Portanus, right? No, he's not so terrible, because he got off, but then he was corrected over the consuls, and he confessed his mistake, and so on, right? Okay. But, some laid down, in this way, differs the essence of the person, in that the relations are said to be assisted, right? And therefore, they're really the same thing, right? Okay. Okay. Okay. That's the divine essence. Considering in relations only that they are towards another, right? And not that they are things themselves. Remember that weird thing you spoke about in God, right? Are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one thing or three things? Once you have that question, what to say, right? What would you say? One in nature, three in person? Yeah. You can see they're both one thing and you're speaking what? Absolutely, right? But if you're taking relations, they are what? They're in three, huh? So are these things in the same way? Aristotle had already seen that, right? He speaks in the categories, right? So substance, quantity, quality, relation, and the other six, right? Are not things in the same sense? So nothing prevents you from, in one sense, them being one thing, and another sense of thing being, what? Three things, huh? But anyway, Gilbert Poitonus is not wanting to call them things, apparently. But, just as has been shown above, as relations in created things exist in something, what? Accidentally. There's something added to it, huh? But in God, as we saw, there are no, what? Accidents, right? But in God, they are the very, what? Divine nature, huh? Okay? This is a common thing. You know, we have two ways of speaking about God. Sometimes we say, God has something, right? So God has wisdom. God has justice. God has mercy, and so on. And then we say, whatever God has, he is. And sometimes we take the reverse of have, and we say something is in God. There's wisdom in God. There's mercy in God. There's goodness in God, right? And then we say, whatever is in God, is God, right? You say, well, why do we have to speak that way, right? Because our mind isn't actually adapted to talking about things that are composed of matter and form, and the matter has a form, and the form is in the matter, right? And so we have these two ways of speaking, and we have to negate the real distinction in the things we know from God when we use these ways of speaking about God, huh? So whatever is in God is God, and whatever God has is God, huh? So he says, the three relations in God are the very divine nature, huh? From which it follows that in God, in the thing itself, huh? In things, the, what? The relation, the person, rather, and the essence are not, what? Something other. They're exactly the same. And nevertheless, the persons are really, what? Yeah. And why are they distinct to each other? Because they're relative to each other, right? As Aristotle had already seen, relatives is one kind of, what? Opposition. And opposition is the beginning of distinction. So because the father is the father towards the son, and the son is the son towards the father, then they really distinct, the father from the son, and the son from the father. But the father is not the father of the divine nature. So he's not towards the divine nature, right? And so, likewise, at the beginning of John's great gospel there, he says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was toward God, right? He doesn't say towards the divine nature, right? He says, because that would get you into a mistake there, right? He says towards God, and God there is standing for the, what? Father, right? Okay? So he's relative to the father, and therefore, since relatives are really distinct, he's really distinct from the father, but he's not relative to the divine nature. He's not the son of the divine nature. In other words, the father, the father of the divine nature, right? If the father were the father of the divine nature, then he'd be really distinct from the divine nature. It would be even a worse position they were in. Yeah. So, the relation of father, and that is son, compared to the divine nature, no difference whatsoever in things. There's a difference in our thinking, right? Okay, we need two thoughts, because we can't express in one thought what this is, but towards each other, they're really, what? Opposed, relatively, and therefore, they're really, what? Distinct, eh? For a person, as has been said above, signifies a relation, but insofar as it's subsisting in the divine nature. Person, you remember that word? Was it relative or not? Remember that? What's one of those mixed things? It's signifying, what? A relation, per modem substanti, in the manner of a substance, right? It's signifying relation insofar as it's something subsisting in the, what? Divine nature, right? Of course, it's subsisting in the divine nature is the divine nature. Okay? So, he says, relation compared to the essence does not differ in the thing or reality, but in thought only. You don't have a thought adequate to God, huh? See, there are two thoughts here. That's not something that's not something altogether, what, unique to the consideration of the Trinity. You can say that I have a thought about, let's say, the divine understanding, right? And I have a thought about the divine love. But is the divine understanding and the divine love two things in God, like they are in me? My understanding and my loving are not the same thing in me. And yet, my understanding and my loving are something like God. I'm very distant, but something like God, right? And so I speak of God as understanding and loving. But are they two things in God? But there's a distinction in my thought between, what? The understanding of God and his loving, right? Okay? There's even order in my thoughts that I say that because God is one who understands, then God is one who has a will, right? Rather than emotions, which I tie up with the senses and the body, huh? You know, a little kind of a homely comparison I make there. And I say that we compare sometimes God's simplicity to the point that is the center of a circle, right? And so we'll call this point here the understanding of the creature, right? And we'll call this point here the love of the creature, right? And the understanding of the creature and the love of the creature come from God. But in God, they're what? One, right? Okay? So I can speak of this one point as the center of a circle, as the end of this line, or the beginning of this line. And I can speak of it as the end of this line, the beginning of that line. So I have two thoughts about that point. It's a telling point. As opposed to these two points, right? Which is really two points, huh? In reality, huh? Or an imagination. But this is one point even in my imagination, right? But because our thoughts come from creatures, that's why we have these thoughts. So when Thomas was talking about how we can make statements about God, we know the simple in a composed way. And so when I say God understands, or I say God loves, I'm understanding a simple thing in a composed way. And actually, I have two compositions here. So when I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves, I say God loves statements. But then when I say, but in God, God's understanding is God's love, right? The same thing. Then I negate the composition in my mind of two thoughts and don't attribute to the thing in itself. So I've got to be pretty much on your toes. Why in God it's just the reverse. He understands statements and we composed creatures in a, what, simple way. And if you put those two together, what do they have in common? God understands the composed in a simple way, and we understand, except we do, the simple in a composed way. And what's the, come to this too? Well, that the way you understand and the way things are, yeah. And that's why I mentioned before, talking about the great Boethius here, in the Consolation of Philosophy, which is the work that, if I remember right, the Benedict singles out in the, you know, address there on Cassiodorus and Boethius. There's one, I think, five in Augusta. There's one devoted to Cassiodorus and Boethius. You mentioned the Consolation of Philosophy, right? When he gets to the fifth book there, he's trying to understand God's eternal knowledge of temporal things. So God knows time, eternal life. But we know eternity, what? Through time, you see? Now our definition of eternity, which goes back to Boethius in the work of the Consolation of Philosophy, it's what? The totesimo. That perfecta possessio vitae eternity in time. If you examine the definition, you'll see that totesimo is negating what? The before and after in time. And then in terminogulis, the beginning and end that things have in time, huh? You know, the word, the terminogulis is in the definition. So your understanding, kind of negativity, you can perfectly, eternity through time. Right? God, in his eternal knowledge, understands time, and everything in time is present to him. And so Boethius has written the Consolation of Philosophy is a good patinist in the form of a dialogue. But between himself and Lady Wisdom, right? Who's come down to console him, right? The commentator says, because women are better at consoling than men. So Lady Wisdom, of course, sapientia, is feminine in Latin. So I call my little grandchild Sophia there, called her Lady Wisdom. Kind of picked up the stick name, you know, she's Lady Wisdom. But he introduces Aristotle as a true follower, right? Because that's the thing that Aristotle and Plato slid on, that Aristotle saw that the way you know didn't have to be the way things are, in order for there to be true. What you say about things has to be in agreement, yeah? But you can say it in a way other than they are. You gotta be careful what you're saying there, right? You can see how people get followed up in that. Thomas was talking about how there is a distinction in order of the attributes of God, right? But it's in our thought, not in the things, right? While the Trinity is a real distinction in the kind of order, one from the other, right? In the things themselves, right? But when we do this appropriation, we kind of use one to focus a little bit on the other. So he says at the end of this body then, relation compared to the essence, to the nature, the divine substance. Non-deferred ray doesn't really differ. In things there is no, there's not two things there. Like this is the divine nature and this is the sun. No, they're one and the same. But they differ ratione tantum, right? In thought only. But compared to the oppositum, it's clear that the relation is a kind of opposite. Compared to the opposite relation, it has, by virtue of the opposition, a real, what? Yeah. Was it Sibelius, I guess? Yeah, Sibelius, who denied the real distinction of the persons. He made them just distinguished, you know, by... Yeah. If we call the same person the father because he created the world, they call him the son because he became man, and call him the Holy Spirit because he sanctifies us. Yeah. So is he behind modalism, which we just learned about today? Is that... Unless there remains one essence, nature, substance, and three, what? Persons, huh? Now, the first objection was a very powerful one, if you know what Plato began to see about immaterial substances, right? Plato, in his theory of the forms, although he was mistaken as to the nature of these immaterial substances, nevertheless, he had this insight, right? That in immaterial substances, there's only one of a kind, of each kind. That no two immaterial substances have the same, what? Exact nature, okay? They differ like circle and square and triangle, not like two circles or two points, okay? And Aristotle saw this, huh? When Thomas, following Aristotle, talks about the angels and so on, he'll say the same thing, huh? That there can't be two angels of the same kind. Thomas sometimes raises the objection there, you know, of, would the angels, what, love each other more if they are of the same kind? Because, you know, that's a good love, right? And Thomas answers no, and he gives a very good reason why they love themselves more because they're not the same kind. And he says that the higher a creature is, and the better he is, the more he loves the common good, right? And the common good is served more by distinction of kinds than of what? Individuals of the same kind. What's that criticism they make of poor Vivaldi, you know? Say he wrote the same concerto a hundred times? It's kind of, you know, exaggeration, you know, huh? You know? And even to some extent, you know, even with Handel, you know? To some extent, you know, one piece sounds a little bit like the other one, you know? Sure. Why, somebody like Mozart, there's much more of a distinction between the pieces, right? You see a certain perfection there, right? Or you go to Shakespeare's play, you know, and each play seems to be kind of, what? Different, you know, sui generis almost, right? You see a kind of perfection of that, huh? And suppose these guys used to go to these philosophical meetings, you know? Some guys see, you know, year after year, he came to talk on the same subject here. He's repeating himself, you know, with these things much new, you know? He just differs numerically from the talk last year. He's not a new thought or kind. So the angels love each other more in their distinction, right? Because of their love of the common good. And you see how this contributes to the common good, to the world of the universe, huh? It's like, you know, talking about odd numbers and even numbers before, but different numbers, right? Rather than two twos, three twos and four twos. Now sometimes they talk about this mere mental multiplicity, right? If I can say Socrates is Socrates. And now Socrates appears twice in my statement, right? Then I can say the statement Socrates is Socrates is a statement Socrates is Socrates. I get four Socrates. I can go on multiplying these infinitum, you know? You know, that's the sense of it. You know, that's the sense of it. You know, that's the sense of it. You know, that's the sense of it. You know, that's the sense of it. You know, that's the sense of it.