Prima Pars
Lecture 153: Necessity, Nature, and Divine Generation

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Third objection said, nothing is more voluntary than love, but the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as love, and therefore he proceeds, what? By will, right? To the third, it should be said that the will also, insofar as there's a certain nature, right, wills something naturally, just as the will of man naturally tends to be added to it. And likewise, God naturally loves, wills, and loves himself. But about things other than himself, the will of God has itself to what? Opposites, right? To the side, in a way it has been said. But the Holy Spirit proceeds as love insofar as God, what? Loves himself. Whence he proceeds naturally, although he proceeds by way of will. So, okay, now, you could misunderstand this, right? I gave a paper on this one, so I panicked up on this a little bit. Okay? But the nearest novel is in the Ninth Book of Wisdom. And the Ninth Book of Wisdom is about ability and act. I can say potency, ability and act. And the Ninth Book of Wisdom, as you might expect, is divided into three parts. When Thomas Frisch divides the Ninth Book, he'll say, well, the first part is about potency or ability. The second part is about act. And the third part is about the order of ability and act. And I say, now, if you've got to write a book about marriage, you say, well, the first part is about the man, or the husband. The second part is about the woman and the wife. And the third part is about the relation between the two, right? It's kind of a good man's story. Now, that's a bit of a lower simplification. Because when Aristotle talks about ability in the first part, he doesn't talk about every ability. He talks about abilities in regard to motion and so on. So he's talking about a little more particular. But then when he gets to the second part, he talks about act. He talks about it completely universally. And then you see other senses of ability, right? And the third part, he shows the order of the two. And then you see the reason why God is going to be pure act. You find out that act is simply before ability. Now, in his first part, he's talking about ability. He begins by distinguishing between the ability to act upon something and the ability to, what, undergo. And he makes it for other distinctions. That's the most fundamental distinction. Or he sees that distinction, I should say. And he sees that the ability to act upon something is the first meaning of ability. I used to make that known by putting myself in the ring with Cassius Clare, some other famous boxer. And before they call this thing off, you might say, well, purpose doesn't have any ability at all. He's being destroyed by so the guy, right? But you can say that purpose is, what, beatable, breakable, bustable, right? Impressionable. So you do say the word, able, breakable, right? Able is by some ability to breakable. So in a secondary way, you can say, breakable is able to be beaten. And similarly, we say that the fire is able to burn the paper, right? But the paper is combustible. And so there's a second sense of ability to be acted upon. Then, Verstappen goes on a little bit later on, and he distinguishes more of the actability between the, what, the natural ability and the rational ability, which includes the will. And the distinction he makes now between the natural ability and the rational ability is the natural ability is, like Shakespeare said, determined to one. Determined to one of two opposites. So the fire is naturally going to heat things, right? It's not going to cool things as such. So it can't do both, right? Now you get the rational ability, like, for example, art, right? And the artist is capable of, what, opposite sum. So the doctor can, what, cure you or make you sick. Not saying you should do both, but he can do both, right? He's not limited to one. Okay? He knows how to make it thin. He knows how to make it fat. Okay? So, this is open to opposites. And there follows upon this all kinds of things, like, when the natural, the thing having a natural ability, when it's present to it, but it can act upon, it naturally acts upon it. So you bring the paper to the, what, fire, and it's going to naturally burn out the paper, huh? But the rational ability, since it's capable of opposites, you can't, well, say what it's going to do. And therefore, there's got to be a, what, choice there, right, huh? There's got to be some kind of appetite there to do one rather than the other, right? So, this is a very fundamental, what, distinction, huh? Which, in a sense, Shakespeare's touching upon me, too, in that passage. We've got an interesting word for mistake, which is mistake. And mistake is very close to mixed up, right? When you mistake, you take one thing in place of another. Take the good in place of the bad, or the bad in place of the good, maybe. So, kind of the beginning of our troubles, is not seeing some, what, distinction. Not understanding some distinction. We've seen it all along. It is, right? All kinds of distinctions you have to understand to understand these things. And if you don't understand those distinctions, you're going to make mistakes, right? Or if you misunderstand a distinction, right, you're going to, okay, no. There's a distinction, right? And I think the modern philosophers misunderstand this distinction. What kind of a distinction exactly is that? Is it like the distinction between virtue and vice? Or is it like the distinction between two and three? See, is there really a virtue and vice, and a vice and virtue? Or like hot and cold? But, in a way, there is a two and three, right? So, going back to the old way of naming things, right? You might say, call the number that is just two, two, and the one that is, what, two plus one. You get that a name, right? Remember that way of naming things? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So is the distinction between the natural ability and the rational ability like this first distinction, like this second one? Now Thomas, in some texts, he talks about this. He says, well, in the rational ability, it presupposes the nature of the thing, right? And the nature of the thing enters into its abilities, right? So if the rational ability partakes, he'll say, right? Right? Okay? But sometimes he'll say directly. The reason itself is a kind of nature. Or the will itself is a kind of nature. So there's something that we, what? Naturally understand, and something that we, what? Naturally will. So we don't choose to be happy rather than miserable. But we naturally want to be, what? Happy, right? And we choose among what we think are the means to happiness, right? And there we're not determined, right? As far as happiness and misery, no. We naturally, what? Want to be happy, right? And likewise, in the reason, there are some things that we naturally, what? Understand, right? So, sometimes we speak of reason as reason, right? And reason as a, what? Nature. And likewise, we speak of the will as will. And then we're thinking of this difference here, right? And then we're thinking of the reason as, or the will as, what? The nature, right? Okay? Just like I can consider the number three, the two that's in there, right? In a way, there's a two in three. But three as three is not half a four, is it? But the two that is in three is half a four. Is that a contradiction? The three which is not half a four has in itself something which is half a four. It's not being said a three in the same way. To be half a four and not half a four, is it? So, this distinction Aristotle is making here, right? Can be misunderstood. You get to say Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, right? And for Jean-Paul Sartre, there's nothing that our will naturally wills. There's nothing that our will must will. Our will is as free in regard to the end as it is in regard to the needs. So, he's understanding, right, this distinction in a false way, right? Likewise, you find in John Stuart Mill, for example, there's nothing that our reason actually understands. There's nothing that it necessarily assents to, right? This arises partly from being accustomed to the experimental method, right? If you're immersed in experimental method, every thought is a, what, hypothesis, right? And so, if you read, you know, some of the scientists and they talk about their method and talk about human thinking, they actually seem to be saying that every thought is an hypothesis. And therefore, there's nothing that we can actually understand. I'm going to get into a little difficulty because when you test an hypothesis, you test it by seeing whether its consequences agree with observation or experiment. And if the consequences are contradicted by experiment or by observation, what you find there, then you're going to have to reject or modify your hypothesis. But is that not acceptance of a contradiction? Is that a hypothesis? You take the axioms about contradiction, that something can't both be and not be, and go out to test that to see whether it's true or not. And then you'd be testing it by itself, right? You'd be seeing whether it's contradicted, right? And therefore, you'd be saying, well, it's contradicted by something that seems to be, therefore, it is not so because it is so. So, you've got a real problem there, right? But nevertheless, this is their idea, right? That every thought is an hypothesis to be tested by its consequences. But as you know from elementary logic, the confirmation of an hypothesis by its consequence is not a syllogism. So, you never are, what, certain of the hypothesis, even after it's been confirmed. And so, Claude Bernard says that doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method. So, therefore, he sees all of our mental life as one that's open to, what, opposites, right? You can always call into question anything that, no matter how many times it's been confirmed or tested, right, with success. So, what you have in Sartre and in the mind scientists is denial of anything being, what, naturally understood, or anything naturally, what, willed. Everything's up for grabs, in a sense, huh? But this is not the position of our style. His position was that there are some things that we naturally understand and other things that we naturally will. And therefore, the distinction between nature and reason and will is like the distinction between two and three. Between nature that is just nature, right, and reason and will, which are nature but not just nature. There's something in addition to that, right? So, that beyond what they naturally understand or what they naturally will, they're open, to some extent, to multiplicity and opposites, right? So, you could say, in a way, the Son proceeds by way of understanding, but by way of what God naturally understands himself. And so, he naturally has this, what, thought of himself, huh? And he naturally, what, loves himself, right? And therefore, he has this natural love, right? Naturally breathes this love. So, look at the reply, then, to the third objection, the fourth objection of this in mind a little bit. To the third, therefore, it should be said that also the will, insofar as it is of certain nature, wishes something, what, naturally, right? Just as the will of man naturally tends toward the attitude, huh? And that's why those who are in hell are, what, naturally frustrated because they're frustrated of what they naturally want. And likewise, God naturally wills and, what, loves himself. But about other things from himself, the will of God has itself to both in some way because he wills other things for himself, right? And his goodness in no way depends upon other things. So, he doesn't necessarily know that. Now, the Holy Spirit proceeds as love insofar as God, what, loves himself. Whence he is said to proceed, what? Naturally, right? Even though he proceeds by way of the will, right? But of the will insofar as it's a certain, what, nature. Do you see the idea? And then he makes the same point about the sun, right? The sun is not like a thought that God spontaneously thought up, right? I mean, he could have thought differently, had other thoughts. He says, To the fourth, it should be said that all... So in the conceptions, the understanding, there is a reducing to the first, which are naturally, what? Understood. For God naturally understands himself. And according to this, the conception of the, what? Word, divine word, is something, what? Natural. So, what you find in the modern philosophers then is a, what? This understanding, this distinction in the ninth book of wisdom. Yeah, I mean, that's a very fundamental mistake. It's going to affect the whole of your thinking. So when you get to ethics, the most fundamental thing to be considered in ethics is the end of man, right? And man has a natural end, and he naturally wills that. And so you take Aristotle as a teacher, you're going to learn more distinctly what that natural end is. And how that natural end is to be, what? Achieved. Shakespeare says that, right? Part of philosophy that treats happiness by virtue especially to be achieved. I'm reading Robert E. Lee's and his son's recollections of his father. He's very much, you know, in his, more in his private life than his military life, you know. But he's a very religious man, huh? Yeah, exactly. Very strong, you know. And very much resigned to the will of God, right? And, you know, writing to his sons and daughters and nieces and everybody. And always this state of mind, huh? Yeah, he's very impressive. He's very, very impressive, yeah. I don't know. I mean, he's talking about Virginia and how Virginia, he says, was on the way to getting rid of slavery. And then these northerners started, but again, and irritating the southerners, right? I mean, that's a bit of an exaggeration, you know. But it's like, at least as far as Virginia was concerned, you know, he himself had been in favor of getting rid of slavery. And that's the way the sentiment was going, you know, until these northerners got in and said, now you've got to do this, you know. So, I don't know if the abolitionists, you know, were in some way responsible for the Civil War, right? You know, that you've got to have it now, you know. Now, in the fifth objection, right? Thomas will get into discussing a bit the senses of the word, but necessary, right? Now, to the fifth, it should be said that something is said to be necessary, per se and per adi, right? Now, as I mentioned before, Aristotle in the fourth book of what? Excuse me, in the fifth book of wisdom, right? He distinguishes the basic things that were necessary. And he distinguishes there four different senses. But, of course, nobody could understand a distinction into four, right? So, Thomas is taking those senses and distinguishing them into two, right? And then one of them is going to subdivide into three. And then he gets the four that Aristotle talked about. That wasn't as difficult as eight to ten categories, right? Because there he had to divide by two or three to get the ten, remember? He divides the ten into three. And he divides two of those further, right? He always divides by two or by three, right? Very limited in his thinking, right? I think there's something on the side of things where you should divide into two or three. And something on the side of our own mind, right? On the side of things, you know, Plato always divided into two. But there's something about that that you should divide by, what? Opposites. And opposites are, what, two. So, it makes sense to divide by two, right? But then there seems to be some completeness about three, beginning, middle, and end. And threes, therefore, in many languages, is the first number about which we say all. So, if I had just two children, I'd say both of my children, right? But since I have three, I'd say all my children. So, there seems to be some connection between three and all. So, there's some basis in things that three is enough, as Aristotle says in the first book of the actual hearing. But it seems that our mind goes beyond two or three. It seems to be enumerating rather than really, what, dividing, right? And, okay, now, sometimes Aristotle divides into more than two or three, but it's because he's aiming in brevity, right? So, he combines a division with subdivisions and so on. But the master, Thomas, comes in. Does it? So, he says, necessary, he said something per se and per aliyot, right? So, per se would be, what, through itself, meaning intrinsic, right? Do they translate that through itself or do they leave it in per se? Yeah, well, no, but per is through. Through itself, right? Okay? Or through another, right? Now, he subdivides through another in two ways. Now, notice, if you want to stop them before he gets to the subdivision of per aliyot, you say, what's per se, right? Well, is it necessary that two be half of four? Yeah, is that per se or per aliyot that two is half of four, necessarily? Yeah. There's nothing other than two that's forcing two to be half of four, is it? There's nothing extrinsic to two, right? You say two, two being two, is half of four, right? That's necessary. Per se, right? Or a triangle has its interior angles to the right angles. Is that necessary? Yeah. It's necessary, what? To itself, right? Okay. But now, there are two kinds of extrinsic causes. The mover or maker and the end, right? And so, per aliyot is going to refer it out to the extrinsic causes. That's where Aristotle takes up the word necessary right after it takes up cause. Cause and element. Okay. But per aliyot is said in two ways. In one way through the agent cause and the one who is kind of forcing you, right? And thus, the necessary is said what is violent, right? Well, that can't be found in God because there's no violence in God, right? Another way through the final cause, right? If something is said to be necessary in those things which are towards the end, in so far as without them, the end cannot be, or it cannot be what? Well, and those are two different senses that Aristotle distinguishes. So, Aristotle distinguishes the necessity which is due to something intrinsic, per se, and then the, what, one that comes from the mover cause, right? So, if, you know, five guys came here and grabbed you, you know, one got your arm, one got your other arm, one got your leg, one got your leg, and they took you out of the room, you would have to go out the room, right? But that necessity is through another, right? Right, huh? Okay? But this is force, right? Okay? That's one sense of necessary. Okay? Yeah. When I say food is necessary, right? Oh, you can't, what? Live. But do you necessarily get food? It's not necessary in the way that it's necessary that two is half a four. It's necessary for me to have food. But is it necessary for me to have food in the way it's necessary for two to be half a four? No. It's kind of an absolute necessity of two being half a four, right? Why, the kind of necessity that there is of my having food is kind of from the supposition. If I'm going to live, then I must have food, right? Okay? The other things are necessary. For achieving the end well, right? Thomas' example is, a horse is necessary for a journey. Okay. So can I go to the Cape without a car? I could walk down there, but it wouldn't be very convenient. Something might be over by the time you get there. Yeah, yeah. Thomas says, I say, you know, is logic necessary for philosophy? A lot of people don't want to study logic. I think it's kind of dull or something. It's dull and difficult. Okay. It's the way to study something more interesting, right? But is logic necessary for philosophy? Well, as Albert the Great points out, you know, the first philosophers made a lot of mistakes because they didn't know what? Logic, right? So can you philosophize without logic? Yeah. In fact, logic was one of the last parts of philosophy to be what? Investigated, right? So I often point out how in the great dialogue, the Phaedo, right? The dialogue called the Phaedo takes place on the last day of Socrates' life. He's going to die that day by sentence of the city of Athens. And they get into a discussion of whether the human soul is immortal. And Socrates makes a joke. He says, they're always saying we're talking about something irrelevant to be philosophers. You can hardly say it's irrelevant, this question, on the day I'm going to die. But strictly speaking, it's relevant to your whole life, right? Because you're not going to live your life the same way presumably if you think your soul is going to go on. If you think this life is all there is, you know, you might live a little bit differently, huh? And Socrates starts to develop arguments that seem to indicate that the soul is going to be immortal, right? Or is immortal. And then Simmias and Sebes comes in with some objections and all of a sudden Socrates' argument seems to collapse, right? And it's around this time that Socrates says, we need an art about arguments. An art that would help us distinguish between a good argument and a, what? Bad argument. And among good arguments, between one that is necessary and one that is only, what? Probable, right? And here he's anticipating what the father of logic, as we usually call Aristotle, does do, right? Because he has the prior and the posterior analytics about the arguments that are necessary. In the book about places, the so-called topics and the rhetoric about arguments that are only probable or likely. In the book called Non-Satistic Refutations about the arguments that are, what? Bad, right? But notice Socrates is saying, you know, that we need such an art, but we don't, what? Have it, right? So you need the art about arguments, you need the art of logic to do philosophy, what? Well, yeah. You can philosophize badly without it. Why, food is absolutely necessary for my life. I can't live without my life, right? See? But is steak necessary for a living? Maybe to live well? Well, it's why it's necessary to live well, but, uh, to eat well, but you don't, uh, have to have these things, right? See? So Aristotle distinguished those two senses of what is that without which the end cannot be had, period, right? And that without which it cannot be had, what? Well. Well, do you have that kind of necessity in God? Does God, is there some end that God has? No. Okay. But he is the end of all things, right? In neither of these ways, in neither of these ways is a divine generation necessary, because God is not an account of an end. Nor does, what, coercion fall on him. So you don't have the necessity from the mover or agent, right? Where somebody forces you, right, to do something, right? Nor do you have necessity from, what, the end, right? But that is said to be per se necessary, which is not able not to be, right? See? Well, somebody might not force you into something, right? And you don't always have the means to achieve an end, right? But what is per se necessary is not able not to be, right? And this, and in this way, is necessary for God to, what, be. And in this same way, the Father generates the Son is, what, necessary, right? Because God, what, naturally and necessarily, right, understands himself, right? You've got to be kind of careful that text from Hillary, right? Because it might seem like he's denying that the Father generates the Son by a natural necessity. But that's true that he does, right? But not by a natural necessity when he doesn't wish it if you take that larger quote that Thomas says, huh? The all natural in the chesitate inductus cum knowlet. He wants to separate from him what you find in us miserable creatures where some things happen by natural necessity like I, by natural necessity I grow old, right? And it might be unwilling, you know, that I can't enjoy the things I enjoyed when I was younger or something like that, see? Shakespeare represents the woman there in Twelfth Night there, you know, that the woman as she grows older she loses her, what, beauty, right? Well, but by natural necessity the older woman loses the beauty she had when she was younger, right? It's against her will, though. Okay? Okay. So he doesn't want to posit in God some unwillingness to what takes place by natural necessity. That shouldn't be understood to mean that there is not natural necessity in God because God naturally, what, understands himself and the word of God proceeds from God's, what, naturally understanding himself and God naturally loves himself and therefore the Holy Spirit naturally proceeds from God. You see how important that chapter on necessity is in Aristotle? It's necessary to have it, yeah. What sense is necessary? Then it's a finish to do things like that. Yeah, yeah. I say, I say, you know, is it necessary to understand the senses of necessary? And if the answer is yes, then I say, what sense is it necessary to understand the senses of necessary? And to think, well, right, it's necessary to understand the senses of necessary. It's like my question about when he used to use the four senses of before, and I say, in what sense of before does one sense of before come before another sense of before? It's over. But, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think about this guy who was teaching philosophy in the University of Colorado, I guess it was, and describing the looks on the faces of the students, you know. why are you doing this to me? It's because your parents came in. The, uh, where we leave, he was, he, after the war, he became the president of Washington College, which became Washington and Lee there, Lexington, Virginia, right, so it's kind of interesting to see what he's doing, but, uh, he really built the place up. So I guess we have to stop now and go on to another article. Three articles, that's, um, all. That's enough. It's a teaching moment. Yeah. Spirit, amen. God, I love you, amen. Carden angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Praise the Lord. Help us to understand eligibility. I was thinking the day, you know, I wonder how I'd better greet my guardian angel, right? You can't hug him, you know, you can't just about that. You know, in Dante's Divine Comedy, right, when he stopped seeing people in purgatory and so on that he knew in real life, he recognized them by the shape of their airy soul. But then he tries to embrace them, and of course it's the air, and you can't embrace them. So, I mean, you can't embrace your... How do you show your affection for your guardian angel, huh? In fact, how do they show their affection for each other, right? They don't have that. So, knowledge of the soul is better than knowledge of the body, no? Because the soul is better than the body. But knowledge of the angels is better than knowledge of the soul, because the angels are better than the soul. But knowledge of God is better than knowledge of the angels, because God is what? It's really better than the angels. So we're in the best knowledge, right? Anything after this will be stepped down, right? If we go down to the humanity of Christ, I mean, Christ says, you know, the Father is greater than me, and explain that it's being said according to his human nature, right? Because we'll find out in the quality there in the divine verses. But as man, he's less than himself as God. To the third, though, in the third article of question 41, the notional acts are from something, right? Did the Father generate the Son from nothing, or did he generate him from something? What do you think? Well, if he had generated him from nothing, he'd be like a what? Creator. Creator, yeah, creation. But if he generated him from something, what was that something he generated him from? To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that the notional acts are not from something. Because if the Father generated the Son from something, either from himself or from something other than himself. If from something other than himself, since that from which something is generated is in that which is generated, it would follow that something alien from the Father is in the Son, which is against what the great Hillary says in the seventh book in the Trinity, where he says, there is nothing in them but that is diverse or alien. If however the Father generated the Son from himself, that however, all of which or from which something is generated, if it is remaining, we see what? It's a predication. What is generated, right? Just as we say that man is what? White, because man remains, when from none white, he becomes white. It would follow either that the Father either does not remain when the Son is generated, or that the Father is the, what? Son, which is false. Therefore, the Father does not generate the Son from something, but from nothing. Put that in the pipe and smoke it for a while. Moreover, that from which something is generated is the beginning of that which is generated. If therefore the Father generated the Son from his essence or his nature, it would follow that the essence or the nature of the Father was the beginning of the Son. But it can't be a material beginning, because matter has no place in God. It would therefore be a beginning that was active, as the one generating is the beginning of the one generated. And thus it would follow that the, what? Essence generates, which above or before was, what? Disproven, huh? Because then there'd be a real, what? Distinction between the Son and the, what? And the nature, yeah. Obviously they're the same. Moreover, Augustine says that the three persons are not from the same, what? What? Yeah. Because they are not other, the essence and the, what? Person. But the person of the Son is not other from the, what? Essence of the Father. Therefore the Son is not of the, what? Yeah. This gets me really tied up in a knot, doesn't it? Yeah. I hope the yoke, you can untie the Son. You know, you see that comparison I make now, because there are still two places I can think of using the word knots, right? And in the book on the Poetic Art, he says that a good plot has two parts, tying the knots, and then, what? Untying them, right? And then when he's in the third book of Wisdom there, which is all dialectical, he speaks of dialectical arguments on opposite sides as tying the mind in a kind of knot. But then he says in the book on the Poetic Art, he says that the inferior poets are better at tying the knots than, what? Untying them. You all have that experience, maybe even seeing a movie, you know, that it got kind of interesting, and then the guy didn't know how to untie it in a way that was appropriate. Well, I think the same thing we said about philosophers, right? They're better at tying their own mind, and maybe the minds of other people do, you know, not, than they are to untie the knots that they tie, and, like a kid, they're trying to untie a knot in this place, it's hoping you've got to bring the mom or daddy to untie it, because they can tie the knot better than they can, what? Untie it. You can see here, right, how much easier it would be to tie yourself or someone else into a knot than it would be to untie his knot. So I say, I hope he can do it. I hope he can do it. Further, every creature is from nothing, but for some strange reason, the Son in Scriptures is called a, what? A creature. This is a hard way of speaking, right? You know, when they heard the words about the Eucharist, they found this a hard teaching, right? This is a hard way of speaking, right, to say that the Son is a creature. For it is said in Ephesians 24, from the mouth of wisdom generated, right, that I went forth from the mouth of the Most High, right? The firstborn before every creature. And afterwards, from the mouth of the same wisdom, it is said, from the beginning and before the ages, I was created. I don't know. Therefore, the Son is not generated from something, but like any other creature. I like the creatures, I should say, from nothing, yeah? And likewise, it can be objected about the Holy Spirit. On account of what is said in Zacharias chapter 12, the Lord said, extending the heavens and founding the earth and creating the spirit of man in him. Well, of course, that's pretty easy. The spirit of man is not the Holy Spirit. And Amos says, forming, I was forming the mountains and creating the spirit. Well, I suppose I don't want you to interpret that. Not quite so worried about that, but he's still worried about that first being called a creature. But against all this nonsense is what Augustine says in the book about faith to Peter, that God, the Father, from his own, what? Nature. Without a beginning, generated a son equal to himself. That's quite a generation. So Thomas begins by giving his answer, right? What he thinks. An answer should be said that the son is not generated from nothing, but from the substance of the father. For it has been shown above that fatherhood and sonship and birth are truly and properly speaking in God. But there's this difference between true generation, through which or by which someone proceeds as a son, and making, that the one making makes something out of an exterior, outside matter. As the, what? Stool? Scun? As Jars makes a stool from wood. But man generates a son from himself. From his own substance. Now, just as the created artist makes something from matter, so God makes something from nothing, as will be shown below. Not that nothing becomes part of the substance of the thing, but because by him the whole substance of the thing is produced. Not just the form that we do, right? Nothing other being what? Presupposed. If, therefore, the son who sees from the father as existing from nothing, in this way he would have himself to the father, as an artificial thing has itself to the artist, which manifestly cannot have properly the name of what? Sonship. But only according to some what? Like this. Like Dickens says, you know, every father's got his favorite child. I've got my favorite novel I wrote, you know, and it's David Copperfield, you know, and so on. But he kind of always say, you know, you can't regard your opinions as your children and defend them, you know, no matter what. Must be prepared to give up your opinion when it shows not being very reasonable. Once it remains that if the son of God was seated from the father, as we're existing from nothing, he would not be truly and properly a son. The contrary of which is said in the first epistle, I guess, to John, right? At the end there. That we might be in his true son, Jesus Christ. The son, therefore, God, the true son of God, therefore, is not from nothing, nor is he made, but he's only, what? Generated. It's almost a quote from the, what? Creed, huh? Genitum non factum in the Latin, huh? Now, if some are made by God from nothing, are called sons of God, right? Every son is called sons of God. This will be, what? Metaphorically, right? According to some likeness, right? To the one who truly is the son, right? Whence insofar as he alone is the true and natural son of God, is said to be unigenitus, unibigaten. And according to that of the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 18, the only begotten one, the unigenitus, was in the bosom, I guess, of the father, he will, what? Announce his sins. Right, everything. Insofar as to assimilation or likeness to him, others are called adoptive sons or adopted sons. As it were, metaphorically, right? He is said to be, what? Firstborn, right? According to that of the epistle of the Romans, chapter 8, whom he, what? Foreknew and predestined to become conformed to the image of his, what? Son. That he might be the firstborn among many, what? Many brothers. It remains, therefore, that the son of God is generated from the substance of the, what? Father. But in a different way than the son of a man is. For a part of the substance of a man generating, that makes a transition, right? Into the substance the one generated. So we have an expression in English that chip off the old block. Okay? That's what he's saying here, huh? Part of the substance, huh? But the divine nature is what? Not divisible into parts, right? In partibides. Unpartible. I don't know if that's a word in English. Whence it is necessary that the father, in generative the son, transfers not a part of the nature to him, right? But the whole nature he communicates to him, right? There remaining a distinction only according to, what? Origin, right? So it's exactly the same nature, and the whole of that nature, that the son receives. He receives it from the father. So I have still the basis for a distinction, right? Because the son has the divine nature from the father, and the father is the one from whom the son has the whole divine nature. So they remain, what, distinct by the origin, but they have one in the same number, nature. So let's look now at these terrible objections. The first objection, which we've called a little bit here. The father generated the son from something, either from himself or from something other, right? If from something other, since that from which something is generated is in that which is generated, it would follow that something alien, huh, from the father is in the son. And this is contrary to what the great Hilary says. If I were the son, if the father generates the son from himself, and that from which something generated, if it is, what, permanent, receives its predication, right? Receives its predication of what is, what, generated, huh? And also he says it remains, right? If you say that the cold becomes hot, then you don't say the cold is hot. But if you say that the water becomes hot, water remains, then the water is hot, right? Okay? As we say that man is white because man remains when he becomes white from not white, it'd follow either that the father either does not remain, the son being generated, right? The cold doesn't remain when the hot is generated, or that the father is the son, which is false, okay? So Thomas says, to the first therefore it should be said that when the son is said to be born of the father, this preposition, day, huh, it's not ex, it's day in Latin, signifies the what? Yeah. The beginning generating consubstantial, right? The same substance. Not over a, what? Material principle, right? For what is produced from matter comes about through the transformation, right? Of that for which it is produced, right? Into another form. But the divine essence is not, what? Changeable, nor is it susceptible of a, what? Another form, right? So, a principle, a generating, that's of the same, what? Substance, huh? You can see, substance is a number, huh? Okay. Now look at the second objection here. That from which something is generated is the beginning of that which is generated. If therefore the father generates the son from his essence or nature, it would follow that the essence or nature of the father is the beginning of the son. But not a material principle, because there's no matter in God. Therefore it says we're an active principle. And it's the one generating, it's the beginning of the one generated. And thus it would follow that the essence generates, right? This is disproven before, because then there could be real distinction between the essence and what. Yeah. Thomas says, The second should be said that when it is said that the son is generated from the essence or the nature or the substance of the father, according to the exposition of the teacher, I don't know if it's the other, that's the C.P. Lombard, it designates the relation of a, what, beginning or source as a word that is active, huh? Where it's expounded thus, the son is generated from the essence of the father, that is, from the father, what? An account of this that Augustine says in the 15th book about the Trinity. Such it is that I say from the patria essentia, from the father in the essence, huh? That's right. That's right.