Prima Pars
Lecture 155: Notional Acts and Divine Uniqueness in the Trinity

Transcript
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Okay, this is the fifth article now, right? Whether the power or ability of generating signifies a relation and not an essence. To the fifth, one goes forward thus. It seems that the power of generating or breathing signifies relation and not the very essence of God. So, is the ability to generate the Son in the Father, is that his fatherhood? Or is it his what? It's the divine nature itself. Well, there's some distinction here, I'm sure. Well, potency or power, right, signifies a beginning, right? As is clear for its definition. For the act of power ability is the beginning of acting upon something. As is clear in the fifth book of wisdom, the fifth book of acting books of natural philosophy, right? But a beginning in God is said with respect to a person, right? Notion. Therefore, the power in God does not signify the essence, but the relation, right? So, he's saying that the divine nature is not the beginning of the Son, because then you would do something different than the Son, right? So, it must be then. It must be like divine nature as his mother. Well, it might be some distinctions. We'll see, yeah. I'm sure he has something like... Something up his sleeve, yeah. It must be very frustrating, you know, to somebody who's opposed to these things, you know, and say, oh, he's got a way out. He never... He's got something strong. He never accepts something against the faith, you know, as being unsolvable, right? I have distinctions. He's seen his distinctions. Yeah, he's complaining, yeah. It's better to say he's seen his distinctions and using them. Moreover, in God, pose, to be able and to do go different, right? But generation in God signifies what? Relation, right? Therefore, also the what? Power of generating signifies relation. So, he's saying the power of generating is the same thing as the act, and the act is the same as relation. So, I'm convinced. It's the same thing. Moreover, those things which signify the essence in God are common to the three persons. But the power of generating is not common to the three persons. But proper, what? To the Father. Therefore, it does not signify the essence, right? As you probably suspect, it's going to involve somehow the essence and the relation, but exactly how we have to see. But against this is that just as God is able to generate the Son, so also he what? Wills. Wills it, right? But the will of generating signifies the essence. Therefore, the power of generating. It's kind of a strange argument. Okay. Thomas says, I answer. It should be said that some said that the power of generating signifies relation in God. but this is not able to be. For that property is said to be power in some agent by which the agent acts, right? So, the agent is the one who does something, but that by which he does it, right, is the power. But everything producing something through its action, right, produces something like itself as regards the form by which it, what, acts. Just as the man generated is like the one generating him in human nature, by virtue of which the Father is able to generate a man, right? So, I didn't generate a son by my, what, knowledge of geometry. And so, let's say that my son won't need geometry, right? But I generated him by my human nature, right? And therefore, he's like that by which I generated him, right? His human nature. That, therefore, is the generated power in someone generating in which the thing generated is like the one, what? Generating. But the Son of God is like the Father generating him in the divine nature, not in his fatherhood, right? If he generated him by his fatherhood, then he would be, what, another Father. Okay? And the Holy Spirit would be another son and father. Whence the divine nature in the Father is the power of generating in him. Okay? But it's in the Father, right? Let's kind of bring it in a little bit here. Whence Hillary says in the fifth book about the Trinity that the birth of God is not able yeah for that does not subsist as God other than it is from something other than from God subsisted, right? Thus, therefore, it should be said that the power of generating chiefly signifies what? The divine essence. He didn't say only, right? He says chiefly, right? Which you probably tear now, principally. As the teacher says, right? In the seventh distinction of the first book of sentences. Not, however, only, what? The relation, right? Nor does it signify the essence in so far as it is the same as the relation, right? In the sense, therefore, that it would signify equally, what? Both, right? For although fatherhood signifies as the form of the father, right? It is nevertheless a personal, what? Property having itself to the person of the father as an individual form to some created individual. But the individual form in created things constitutes the person generating, not over that by which the one generating generates. Otherwise, Socrates would engender what? Socrates. Whence neither fatherhood is able to be understood as that by which the father what? Generates. But as constituting the person of the one what? Generating. Otherwise, the father would generate a father. But that by which the father generates is a divine nature in which the son is like him. It's assimilated to him. And according to this, Damascene says the generation is a work of nature. Not as of the one generating, but as of that by which the one generating generates. So if I teach you geometry, am I that by which I teach you geometry? It's the science of geometry. appropriate. whatever there's in the other science of geometry, by which I teach you geometry, right? But who's the teacher of you? Yeah, not the art of geometry, right? What is the art of geometry then? That by which I teach you, right? Not the same thing, right? So the father, who's a father by his fatherhood, right, is the one who generates the son, but is it by his fatherhood that he generates the son? Because then the son would be assimilated to the fatherhood, and then he'd be another father. So by what then does the father generate the son if it's not by his fatherhood? It's by the divine nature, right? And therefore the power of the one generating signifies, and I can't phrase you on that, in erectile, right, the divine nature, but obliquely, the relation, right? So what does that mean? How do you translate obliquely there? Relation indirectly. Yeah, not indirectly is the right way of saying exactly, but you might say it's the what? The divine nature of the father, right? Okay? But the divine nature may be insofar as in the father, right? Yeah. It signifies chiefly the divine nature, but insofar as it's in the father, right? Insofar as of the father. Now, the first objection is saying that power or ability signifies a beginning, right? This is clear from its definition. But a beginning in God is said with respect to what? A person is said notionally. Therefore power in God does not signify the essence, but a, what, relation, right? Now, I go back to the chapter on relation and categories. To the first, therefore, it should be said that power does not signify the relation of beginning, otherwise it would be in the genus of what? Yeah. And it's actually in the genus of what? Quality, yeah. Okay, it's the second species of quality in the categories of Aristotle, right? But it signifies that which is a beginning, right? Now, what does Aristotle do, huh? You know, well, when he first enumerates the categories, he says substance, and then how much? He says the concrete word for quantity. Quality, and then he says quality, how? And then he says relation, meaning towards what, right? Then he gives you the other six, okay? Now, after he does that, the next chapter is on substance. The next chapter is on quantity. Then you expect quality to be next, right? Now, the big porphyry, the encephalogy, does something like that, huh? Because in the beginning he says, Chrysarius, he says, it's necessary to understand what is genus, what is difference, what is species, what is property, what is accident, right? To know Aristotle's categories, but also to understand definition and division and demonstration. To understand this, okay? So notice what he says. What is genus? What is difference? What is species? What is property? What is accident, right? And it takes up genus. And it takes up species. And it takes up difference. The property and accident, right? So it's something similar to what these two guys do, right? Porphyry. And Aristotle did it first, right? And what's the reason for this, right? Well, this order here is the order of things themselves, right? Because substance stands under everything else, right? And substance receives accidents in a certain order, right? And quantity is presupposed to some qualities, especially the sense qualities, and shape, and so on, right? So quantity is presupposed to some qualities. Then relations are based some on quantity and some on qualities, so relation is put forth, right? Okay? The same way down here, see? Because genus is the beginning, right? And then you add the differences, and you get the species, right? And the property and thousands of species, and the accident just came in there from the outside, right? So they're ordered in some ways similar to these, right? But now, why does porphyry take up these two before a difference, right? Well, there's a good reason for doing that. And that is that genus and species are defined with reference to each other. So genus is what is said of many differing in species in answer to the question, what is it, right? But a species is what is placed under genus, in which the genus is said in answer to the question, what is it? So, because they're defined in a way of reference to each other, it's good to take them up together first, right? And then you come to the difference, huh? Well, the difference is defined as what the species has in addition to the genus, or the difference is said to be that by which species under the same genus are what? Separated, right? Okay? We can see that, in a way, you know genus and species then first, together, because they're kind of relative to each other, and then the difference is made known by the fact that it is that by which the species, the left of the species has in addition to the genus, right? So, animal is a genus, and man is a species, and rational is what man has, in addition to being an animal, right? Okay? Or it's that by which man differs from other species of animal, right? You know, being two-footed, as I was saying, ever since, right? Yeah, he says two-footed. Okay. Quite properly, it's like the effect of the species, so that's just, you know, some work. So, there's one shape, right? Now, hairstyle's a different reason why he takes up relation for quality, and that is because his master, Plato, right, said that a relation is what is said to be of another in some way or other, right? Okay? And there are some qualities, right, that are said to be of another, like knowledge, right, which is in the first species of quality, but there falls a certain relation upon knowledge, right? So, knowledge is knowledge of something, right? But, knowledge is fundamentally a quality and not a relation. When Sarastasia begins a chapter in relation with Plato's definition and he proceeds sometimes, and then he runs into these problems, right? And then he realizes he has to distinguish between something whose whole nature is to be towards something like double, right? What is double? It could be four, it could be six, you know, absolutely you can't say what it is, right? It's nothing, you see? So the whole being, as I said, the whole nature of double is to be towards something, right? Nothing is double in itself, is it? Only towards another, right? See? Why, knowledge is something in itself, right? and so on. And so on. And so on. And so on. And so on. So you have to distinguish between, you know, those two relatives, right? Because the one would be in this category and the other would be in this, right? And then he goes on to quality, right? So it's kind of because of a subtle thing there, right? Well, it's like with power, right? Is power its whole nature to be a relation? Because power is basically a quality, right? But there follows upon this quality of civilization to be a beginning of what? Another, right? That's not its whole nature, right? So since Thomas knows this distinction, right? And that part of Kajetan's commentary on the categories is good because he sees what Aristotle is doing in the chapter on relation, right? It's kind of striking, you know, when you see this Aristotle and you see, for a different reason, right? But the difference between the order in what? In the things there, which is given first, and then the order in our knowledge, right? Because there's difficulty with the word relation, right? And the fact that, you know, not only is the double said to be double of something, right? But knowledge is essentially knowledge of something, and you kind of put these in the same bag, and they don't belong in the same bag, they are in the same genus, right? In the same predicament. Okay? I was touching a little bit upon this here. Well, power does not signify that relation of principle, right? Of beginning. Otherwise, it would be in the genus of what? Relation. See, the same thing about knowledge in Aristotle's example, and so on. But it signifies something, nevertheless, that is a beginning, right? And then he makes another distinction. Oh, excuse me. He sees another distinction. See? But clearly not seeing this distinction between these two, right? Okay? Kind of lump them together, right? Not as the agent himself is said to be beginning, right? But it's a beginning as that by which the agent acts, right? So, my teaching of geometry proceeds from me. See, it also proceeds from my knowledge of geometry. But does it proceed from me and my knowledge of geometry in the same way? It proceeds from me as, as your teacher! And it proceeds from my knowledge of geometry as that by which I teach you, huh? Okay? And he says, the agent, however, is distinguished from the thing made and the generating, generator, the one generating from the one generated, huh? Yeah. But that by which the one generating generates is common to the one generated and the one generating. In the sense that they, what? Well, no. In the sense that they, they, they have the same, what? Yeah. One is like that. And, more so perfectly, the more perfect is the generation, right? Now, when I generate a man, he's like me in species, right? He doesn't have the same individual nature that I have, right? But in God, it's the same individual nature, right? So, he's even more alike than we are, right? Our parents. Maybe I can just call it the mind. When, since the divine generation is most perfect, right? That by which the one generating generates is common, right? To the one generated and the one generating. And the same in number and not only in, what? Not species, as is in the case of what? Created things, right? So, the cat nature, the mother cat and the, and the kitten is the same in speech, species and, you know, in kind, but not the same in, what? Number, right? So, my son might have, you know, so you say the son, he has my nose. Well, that, that was picked a sense, yeah. That's right. We don't breathe through the same nose. But God the Father, God the Son, breathe through the same nose, right? Understand by the same. To this, therefore, that we say that the divine essence is the beginning by which the one generating generates, it does not follow that the divine essence is, what? Distinguished. As it would follow if we said that the divine essence, what? Generates, right? Okay, you see the distinctions there? Reminds me of, I was thinking a little bit of Mozart there. You know, the mark of Einstein, you know, about Mozart and Beethoven. He said, Beethoven seems to have made his music, right? Mozart seems to have found it. Mozart's music seems to have been, what? Always a part of the universe, right? Oh. That's kind of interesting, huh? Yeah, sure. And so, but I was saying, you know, do you make these distinctions, or make them up? To get out of difficulty, right? Or do you, what? See them. See them, yeah. That they're already, in some sense, there, right? But you hadn't seen them. Yeah. See? But if you make something up, well, then it wasn't really there, you know, before, right? It's not as old. Interesting. You remarked that, I think, about Mozart. Was it Albert Einstein? Albert Einstein, yeah. He liked Mozart and Mozart, so. He didn't get his cousin or whoever was out to write that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh. That book, yeah. It's kind of classical, you know, Mozart. But Einstein played Mozart, you know, the violin and the song, right? Oh. You heard the time he was at one of these kind of public talks, all these stupid questions you get afterwards. You know, and finally some woman asked, you know, what do you feel about all this? You know, you know, they want to kind of put it up there. Yeah. And so rather Nancy took out his violin and played. Yeah. You see, you know, Heisenberg was known as a very good pianist, right? And, you know, in his hometown he was more known as a pianist than a physicist, right? Oh, right, right. And his wife, you know, was first kind of attracted to him because he was playing the piano and so on. And of course he had all his whole family, you know, playing instruments too, you know, so I mean they would play together and so on. And it kind of runs through these guys, huh? Yeah. Because it's a mathematical character, huh? And you see, the reason why Mozart, you can be a kind of a child prodigy in music, Mozart was, just like you have kind of child prodigies in mathematics. Don't we have child prodigies in the drama or something like that? I mean, the crisis didn't, you know, maturity, but because of the imagination there, right? Yeah, I think when I'm going to Euclid, but Mozart was actually quicker than I do. Faster, I understand Euclid, you know, faster than I would, huh? Yeah, a lot of scientists, they like Bach a lot, huh? But Einstein organized Mozart was the one. And Benedict XVI was too. Yeah. You're incredible. I just got to kind of prod, Benedict, to make some ex-Cophilus Davis, you know. Finish off my enemies, you know. Mozart is a doctor of something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something to proclaim, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of amazing when you see, you know, how people like Haydn and Bach, I suppose, and, you know, people lived much longer than Mozart did, you know, that he could have done so much, you know, mid-time he died in his 30s, 60s, or 35s, you know. Yeah. He lived another 20, 30 years if he had that, you know. Yeah. You know, it would have been over the rest of them. It would have been swallowed up, you know. He had got the right, you know, position and so on. But that was the answer to the first one, right? Yeah. Okay. The second objection says, And God posses an adjoe, right? To be able... and to do don't differ, right? But generation in God signifies relation, right? Therefore, the power of generating is going to be the same as the generation and the same therefore as the relation. The second should be said that thus in God the power of generating is the same as generation as the divine essence with what? Generation and fatherhood is the same in the thing but not in the what? Definition. How simple Thomas sees these things, huh? Come again, Thomas. I remember that distinction he had before where he said that although the fatherhood is not something different than the divine essence, right? The fatherhood is in the divine what? Nature and in the father in a different way, right? It's in the father as what? Constituting the father and distinguishing him from the son. It's not in the divine nature as constituting it and distinguishing it, right? But something like that here, right? It's a similar distinction that he's seeing here. You see, when Shakespeare defines reason as ability for large discourse looking before and after, he's including distinction, right? Because before and after presupposes distinction. So in a sense, what reason is chiefly trying to see is what? Before and after, but in order to see before and after, he has to see distinction, right? So he's chiefly trying to see distinction and order. You can see this, Thomas goes through here, right? There's an order, but there's also, before that, you have to see these, what? Distinctions. Distinctions, huh? Would you say he's trying to see distinction with order? Hmm? Distinction with order. Yeah, but I mean, distinction is kind of before order. I mean, there can be, or as soon as you can see a distinction, you can see the order, right? You can't see the order unless you see the distinction. You can't distinguish between Mozart and Haydn, and you can't say that Mozart is better than Haydn, right? But a man might see some distinction and not realize it's better, right? Oh, it's his name. The poet, Laurie D'England, there said, you know, he was a young man, right? There's as many plays of Beaumont and Fletcher or more plays performed by Shakespeare, right? So in some sense, he distinguished between the two, but it took him some time before he realized that Shakespeare was better than Fletcher, which he summed up by saying Fletcher was just a little Shakespeare. An arm or leg, right? You know, any part of excellence that Shakespeare had, huh? Hmm? Most of us are like who's Fletcher. You know, I read a little bit of Fletcher, you know, but I told you one of my colleagues did his doctoral thesis on Fletcher, you know, because you can't do doctoral thesis in Shakespeare because there's too much realm, you know. And someone asked him one time, you know, how can he Fletcher plays, you know, perform nowadays? And, well, he's not really that good. He's been your doctoral thesis on some. Listen. I mean, he was very popular for a while there, right? Yeah. You know, what's his name? Samuel Johnson. And the rule was it takes a hundred years to tell a poet. People are still reading him and so on. A hundred years after he's been dead, that's prima facie evidence that maybe there's something to him, right? Of course, he's a very firm man. It's still being read, you know, a thousand years later. I was reading about the First World War there and, you know, the Manchester biography there of Churchill. Of course, they're talking about this Dardanelles invasion, you know, about that. It's all going to be carried away, you know, the Eastman because they've all read Homer and they all know about where Troy was. They're really getting, you know, very excited about this. And all their schoolboy lessons, you know, are playing back in there. Really enthusiastic about, you know, going and fighting the same place where Achilles did and the rest of the great heroes. So these things are the same in reality, right? But the generation is more the same as the fatherhood, right? And the ability to generate is more the same as the U.S. Yeah. Because they're assimilated, right? The father is more distinguished from the son by generation than by the power generating, right? Evolved, too. To the third objection. Those things should signify the essence in God and common to the three persons. But the power of generating is not common to the persons, but proper to the father. Therefore, does it signify the essence? To the third, it should be said that when I say the power of generating, it signifies power in recto, when I actually translate that as directly, right? Okay. And generation in what? Obliquely, right? As if I were to say the essence of the, what? Father, right? Whence, as regards the essence which is signified, the power of generating is common to the persons. But according to the notion which it, what? Connotes, huh? It is proper to the, what? Person of the father, right? So if you say the nature of the father, right? And you put the father into the notion of the nature of the father, right? Then it's, what? Private to the father, right? So does the son have the nature of the father? You have to make a little distinction there, right? No, it's not the same one. Yeah. Who am I saying it without qualifying with it, right? Say not in the same way. Yeah. So, it's got to stop here, huh? So you're going to run the machine next, next, uh... He hasn't even stopped yet. Mm-hmm. the father and the son of the holy spirit amen god are enlightened guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds order and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly saint thomas aquinas angelic doctor pray for us help us to understand what you've written father and the son holy spirit amen so i guess you're up to the sixth article there in question 41 to the sixth one goes forward thus it seems that a notional act can terminate at many persons thus that there would be many what persons generated and breathed in god to whomever there's found the power generating is able to generate but in the sun there's the power of the power of the father right there he can generate but he can't generate himself therefore another son and therefore there could be many what sons in god or grandson huh or just we human beings can have grandsons and not god moreover augustine says against maximinus that the son did not what generate the creator not that he is not able but that it was not suitable not not to do so he seems to say he's got the power right i don't know but i guess there's words there sometimes moreover god the father is more powerful to generate than a created father but one man can generate many sons i get two sons therefore god especially since the power of god having generated the sun is not diminished he's not exhausted you know by this but against all this is that in god to be and able to be don't differ if therefore in god there could be many sons there would be many sons and thus there would be more persons than three in god which is what you're ready i answer it should be said as athanasia says and that's in the famous athanasian creed which may go back in some way to athanasius it has that name anyway if i remember rightly that's the creed that has the um divinity and then humanity that division rather than according to the father the son and the holy spirit but thomas often refers to it it's pretty authoritative creed four or five main creeds in god there's only one father one son and one what holy spirit but thomas is going to give four reasons why this is so and any one of them would be enough maybe but thomas going to be what very strong first on the side of the what relations themselves by which alone the persons are what distinguished as we've seen before the divine persons are these relations subsisting or sensitive the divine persons there cannot be many fathers or many sons in god unless there are many fatherhoods and many what relations which cannot be except according to a what material distinction of things for forms of one kind cannot be multiplied except according to what matter which in god is not whence in god there cannot be except one only one subsisting just as whiteness subsisting could not be except what one so let's go back to the point we've seen before you in the course i think um why is it possible to have many chairs in this room exactly of the same kind yeah the simplest answer is you have enough what why do you have many window panes they're exactly the same kind and so on because you have enough what so it's matter is subject to quantity that enables you to have many individuals of the same what kind and that's true even in a way in mathematics right because you keep the idea of the continuance right so how are the two uh endpoints um either into the line how are they two not one because they're exactly the same thing but because one's here and one's what there so matter is subject to quantity to extension right is what enables you to have many individuals of the same kind and because there's no matter in the angels for example thomas will argue that no two angels are the same what kind okay and the same thing is going to be two way for it's here about god so can there be two fatherhoods in god can there be two sonships no because then there'd be a material what distinction there's only formal distinction in god okay now we've seen this distinction before but distinction of distinction right which isn't opposing right there's a distinction just like there is a definition of what definition yeah and this reflects part of the nature of our reason that reason can know itself that's why thomas says there could be an art of logic because reason can think about its own act and not just about what the hands do you know you're making a chair or something they can think about thinking itself right okay that's kind of reflected in the fact that there can be statements about statements and there can be definitions of definition and even distinctions of distinction right so thomas sometimes when he's talking about this and we've seen this before he'll see this distinction between a material distinction and then what he calls a formal distinction this material distinction is due ultimately to ultimately to matter as subject to what quantity okay matter is subject to quantity and to continuous quantity right which is extension so one difference another because it's here and another there first theorem in euclid says what on a straight line to construct an equilateral triangle what he does is to draw this circle and then he draws this circle right and draws the line to the thing why do you have two circles there right well one's here one's there right um but formal distinction is by what it's not by here and there right well more general by opposites okay okay formal distinction is by opposites and then um it's aristotle in the uh categories before he takes up before and after who talks about there being four kinds of opposites contradictories right and having and lacking and then contraries and then relatives and he does that same he teaches the same fourfold distinction of opposites in the fifth book of wisdom you may remember thomas you If the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit for that matter, are really distinct in God, it's got to be either by a material distinction or a formal distinction. But it can't be by a material distinction, because there's no matter in God or quantity. It'll come up again when it comes to equality, whereas I mean in God, right? And then it's got to be by formal distinction. And then you'll go through the four kinds of opposites. He says, well, it can't be by contradictory opposites, because that's the opposition between being and unbeing. But God is, I am what? Who am, right? So one person can't differ from the other by not being. He wouldn't be God. He wouldn't be either, right? And likewise, he can't be by having and lack, right? Because lack is a kind of non-being, non-being and a subject, right? It can't even be by contraries, because as we learn in the first book of natural hearing, and in the tenth book of wisdom, one contrary is kind of lacking with respect to the other. Like love and hate, right? Where hate seems to be missing something. Or hot and cold, right? And so on. Or white and black, right? One contrary has got a little bit of lack in it. So the only kind of distinction there can be in God, by opposites, would be by what? Relatives, right? And of course, you can subdivide those two, right? It can't be by relatives based on quantity. It's got to be relatives based upon what? Some kind of activity, right? And it goes into the idea of origin, right? So again, it comes back here, right? The distinction between God the Father and God the Son is by these relations of fatherhood and sonship, right? And so it can't be a material distinction. It's only a formal distinction. But there can't be two sonships, right? Because then you're back into a material distinction, right? So, now you have to distinguish the distinction. So that's his first argument, huh? Now, as you know, these relations are based upon the origin of one person from another, right? On the way that one person proceeds from the other, right? And it's got to be a proceeding that remains within God, right? Well, that can only be understanding and what? Willing, right? God's understanding or knowing himself and God's loving himself, right? Well, as we saw in the treatise on the activity of God, there's only one act of understanding in God, huh? Only one loving in God, right? So it can only be one person proceeding by way of understanding, namely the Word, and one proceeding by way of love, namely the Holy Spirit, huh? So he says, second from the way of processions. For God understands all things and wills all things by one simple, what? Act. Whence there is not able to be except one person going forth in the manner of a thought or word, right? Which is the Son. And one going forward by the way of love, which is the, what? Holy Spirit. He said, now I have two thoughts in my head, in fact, more than two thoughts. But then what? Is there one thinking in mind? I can think of what a triangle is, and I can think of what a square is, right? When I think of a triangle, I'm not thinking of a square, and vice versa. So I can have two thoughts because I have more than one thinking. But if I had only one thinking, how many thoughts would I have? One thought, right? So you're a disadvantage, it's advantageous for me. But in God, he has one thinking, right? Where he thinks of himself, and thinking of himself, he thinks of all other things. Even of us. Right? So there could be only one thought in God. The same thing for his love, right? By loving himself, he loves whatever else he loves, right? And so it's by one simple act that he loves himself. First, all of a sudden, or he said so. So that's the second good reason, right? For saying that you can't give, you can't say more than one word in God. You can't breathe more than one, what? Spirit, yeah. The third reason is taken from the way of going forward. Because the Christians, as we saw before, they go forward, what? Naturally. As has been said before, right? God the Father didn't say, I choose to have a son today. And the Father and the Son say, chose to have a Holy Spirit? No. The Son proceeds naturally from the Father, right? And we talked last time about the distinction, even in us, between reason as a what? Nature, reason as a reason, right? We talked about even Shakespeare's all this, right? Nature not being able to be more than what? One thing, he says in Coriolanus. Because the persons proceed naturally, but nature is determined to what? Just one. And the fourth reason he gives is from the what? Perfection of the divine persons. For from this he is a perfect son, that the whole sonhood of God, right? The whole divine sonship is contained in him, right? And that there's only one, what? Such son. And similarly for the other person's son. Perfect is that which is what? Lack of nothing, right? So there's nothing more, right? He is the whole perfection now. So how would another son differ from him, right? He wouldn't be different at all. It reminds me a little bit of the argument they give sometimes, you know, that there can't be more than one God, right? Because God is everything. And if there's another God, he'd have to be lacking in something, and then he wouldn't be God, right? There can't be two ones that have everything. There can't be two sons if one son has everything that he takes to the son. That's why he's loved so much by the Father, right? In that case, the Holy Spirit. Okay, to the first objection, right? The first objection, I suppose, is based on the idea that the Father can't be more powerful than the Son, kidding? So therefore, if the Father has the power to generate a son, then the Son must have that same power that the Father has, right? So why can't he generate the Son, right? The first, therefore, it should be said that although simply it should be conceded that the power which the Father has, the Son also has, right? Nevertheless, it ought not to be conceded that the Son has the power of what? Generating. If generating is a gerundi of the what? Active verb, right? Because that brings an manipulation of the Father to the what? Son, right? So that the sense would be that the Son has the power to generate. For just as there is the same being of the Father and the Son, nevertheless, it does not belong to the Son to be the Father, on account of the what? Notion joined to the Father, right? If, however, this word generandi, the generandi, is a gerundi of the passive word, the power of generating is in the Son. So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father. So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? So that the Son is a gerundi of the power of the Father, right? that is he's what able to be generated right so the ability of the father to generate the son and the ability of the son to be generated they're the same what ability but distinguished right by the one being in the father and the other being in the what so the son has the same ability the father has but the father has this ability to generate and the son has this ability to be generated kind of a something right you can see how much trouble that would have given people right this particular thing and likewise he says if the gerundive i use the impersonal verb that the sense would be the power generated right that is by which from some person someone is generated right that distinction is kind of acting passive there is kind of a grammatical distinction right because you don't really strictly speaking have a passive ability in god right just like if you said you know god is what um able to know and god is able to be known right was able to be known a passive ability actualized by the ability to know grammatically able to know is active right and able to be known is what passing is there really an undergoing there in god no so thomas would say he said earlier it's something like that that this is what grammatically it's passing right god the father generates the son is able to be generated yeah isn't there though in other words the father is doing an activity the son is just is receiving yeah but it's not strictly speaking with aristotle would call acting upon undergoing right because the son is what pure act as well as the father right so though we use the active and passive verbs here right it doesn't correspond to act and passability in god right explaining it to make sense for ourselves but really i mean we have to describe it in some way yeah yeah that was like limitations of language yeah yeah but it's the same ability the father has that the son has right but it's in the father with his relation yeah and therefore it's called in the father the ability to generate and in the son it's with his relation right so in the son it's the ability to be what generated right you can see that's a difficult thing right it would be right to say that he's active upon because that would preclude his existence and then he gets active yeah yeah or he has a passive ability right like god is pure act and i mentioned before how in the ninth book of wisdom aristotle in the first two parts he talks about ability and act and the distinction of them right and the various kinds of ability various kinds of act and then the third part he talks about what the order of act and ability right how packed is before ability in definition right how active before building our knowledge right how act is better than ability right but then he gets to which is before in time he sees a distinction he says in the thing that goes from ability to act ability is before act in time so the wood is able to be a chair in time before it's actually a chair but since what goes from ability to act does so the reason of something already an act because ability can give itself the act it doesn't have then aristotle says simply act is before ability and from that he's going to reason in the 12th book that what's first in reality reality is pure act but the moderns right uh see that ability is before act and then they're deceived into thinking that ability is simply before act and therefore the beginning of all things is what is most of the ability daily matter and so they conclude that matters beginning of all things but they made the second kind of mistake outside of speech which is the mistake for mixing up the what what is so simply and fully so right with what is so not simply but in some imperfect or diminished way and this is a very common mistake right i used to tell my students i'd say you're making a mistake all day long because generally speaking you're doing something bad all day long right and so you choose something what that is bad because in some way it's good or you choose uh not to do something good because in some imperfect way it's bad right you don't have to go to mass on sunday because it prevents you from sleeping in on sunday right or my favorite example of the other one was you know if you annoy me would it be good to get rid of you no no no no no see but in some diminished sense it would be good right it would remove an annoyance from my life right you see and this famous dialogue the the mino of plato when socrates says we're going to investigate what we don't know and mino says well how can you aim and direct your thinking to something you don't know well what's the answer to that yeah you've got to know it in some way what you don't know is that a contradiction no and an example is to always give in class which is a very simple example right to show how high can direct myself to what i don't know which at first sight seems impossible right but i'd say how many students are in class today i said i don't know i don't but i know how to get there it's by counting and then i count one two three four five six seven eight ah now how did i direct myself to eight when i didn't know i was trying to get to eight well eight is the number of students in class today and i knew i was looking for the number of students in class so in a way i knew eight didn't i but not simply and then knowing that i was looking for the number of students in class i knew the road to take which was to count and then i got to eight which i didn't know so i didn't know the number of students before i counted but in some imperfect way i did know it that's hard for us to get a hold of that distinction a little bit right but then socrates and he replies to this right um he makes the same mistake that meno made the same kind mistake because he takes um he gives the idea that um he's heard that you know the soul preexisted the body right and maybe the soul has picked up knowledge but the shock of being shoved into this ugly body right uh makes us you know forget what we know and that we could recall what we know if we just tried and mina says well that's interesting but you got any evidence and socrates then takes the slave boy of mina right and he asks him how do you double a what square and the slave boy says you double the side right but then socrates by asking him very simple questions and using the answers to the slave boy the slave boy