Secunda Secundae
Lecture 8: Distinction, Order, and the Trinity in Thomistic Metaphysics

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the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order in our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, help us to understand all that you have written. Amen. The Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Let's just stop a minute here and talk a bit about the distinction in order, distinction in order. Got that? Distinction in order, distinction in order. Okay. So, what's the first distinction in distinction? What's the distinction in distinction? What's the distinction in distinction? Material and formal. Material and formal. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Dividing something that's continuous. Yeah. Yeah. So when Thomas is investigating the distinction of the Father and the Son of Holy Spirit, which is something to be careful about, right? Okay. Well, he begins from the distinction of what? You call it material distinction, which is by the division of the what? Continuous. Continuous. Remember when you studied the categories, huh? Some of you did anyway. In the category of what? Quantity, distinction between discrete and what? Continuous. And they both have parts, right? So the distinction is by opposites, right? And in the continuous, the parts meet that they come in a common, what? The boundary, right? The parts of the line and the point, right? Or the parts as a semicircle, right? You know? They put either the line, right? And two bodies meet that they put surface, huh? So you can divide the continuous, right, huh? Okay? So you divide the line the line and point and the semicircle, you know? And you play as a theorem, you know, to define bisect. And you can bisect a, what? Angle. Angle, yeah. And you can bisect the semicircle, right? And so on. And so, um, this gives rise to what they call material distinction, because the continuous is a property of the, what? Of matter. Okay? Then the other kind of distinction is what? They call it formal distinction. And that's by what? Opposites. Now, because Aristotle, among other places, right? In metaphysics, but also in the categories, right? The first post-distinction, right? I mean, the first post-predicant, predicate pin, um, is the distinction of what? Opposites, right? You've probably met that before, right? And there's four kinds of opposites, huh? There's contradictories between being and unbeing, right? And then there's the opposition of having and lacking, right? And then there's the opposition of contraries, huh? Okay? So you have to understand those three, right? And then kind of distinguish from those three is the opposite of what? Relatives, right? So Thomas, when he's doing something very profound, right, huh? What is the distinction between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? Is it by, well, is it either by material distinction or by formal distinction? It can't be by material distinction because God is not a body, right, huh? He's not continuous, right? Therefore, it must be by, what? A formal distinction. And then he says it can't be by contradictories or by having and lacking or by contraries because all these are kind of a distinction of being and unbeing, right? Conviction is simply being not a non-being. Having and lacking is non-being or something in the subject able to have something, right? He doesn't have it. And then even one of two contraries is lacking compared to the other, like vice is not just the lack of rich, it's a real, but it's lacking of something that it should have, right? So in God, who is I am, who am, right? Okay, now that kind of distinction. So you're forced by the truth itself to say it must be by what? Relatives, right? Okay. And sure enough, the name Father and the Son seems to, what, suggest that that's the truth, right? And so it's beautiful how he proceeds, right? So the first distinction of distinction is between what? Material or formal, yeah? Notice the first there, right? That's the name of distinction or the name of order. Order, yeah. This first means before all the rest, right? And then there's a second distinction, right? You can distinguish this according to what could be continuous, right? So it's one thing to divide a plane and then divide a body and so on, right? Then there's a divide of what motion is just the way itself. And then the distinction of form, right? Now what's the distinction of distinction and order? What's the distinction of distinction and order? Well, to say that things are distinct and to say they're ordered, is that the same thing? What's the distinction between saying they're distinct and saying that they are ordered? This is not that? Yeah, yeah. Things are distinct when one is not the other. That's simple enough, isn't it? Okay? If one is the other, they're not distinct, yeah? Yeah. And things are in order when one is before or after the other, right? Simple enough, right? Okay. Now, what's the the order of distinction and order? Yeah. Because you have to see that they're distinct when you see it right? Yeah. And I say that there's an axiom, right? A statement that's really kind of obvious if you understand what's poor and so on. That nothing is before or after itself. Today is before tomorrow and after yesterday. But can today be before or after today? Not as a whole, right? You can say morning is before, after, afternoon, but then there's a distinction between morning and afternoon, right? Yeah. You know, afternoon is before evening, right, huh? Okay. But there's a distinction between the afternoon and evening. So you can talk about, now, in the second post distinction, right? Or post-predicum, what does Aristotle do? He distinguishes the senses of what? Before, right? And now he's distinguishing the senses of what? Order. Looking mixed up in the word. You're distinguishing order, right? Okay. Just like when I say first distinction, second distinction, you're ordering distinctions, right? Okay. Okay. So you can distinguish orders, right? And you can order distinctions. That's nice and clear, right, huh? Not enough to drive the student, you know. That's what we ought to do, you know, huh? Time off. Yeah, yeah. I know professor at this earth used to say, you know, undergraduate now, this is the teachers that confuse the issue. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey distinction in the distinction of before it gives us the first meaning of before right before in now we'll see where that comes first in a minute he gives us the second meaning of before before in what being right now you all kind of know what before and time but what does before and being mean that's kind of subtle right now because i'm 81 years old right so i'm before a lot of you guys in in time right okay but now you sometimes see something strange about some things that are before in time that they could be without something later in time but what's later in time would not be without them let's take a simple example here bricks come before a brick what wall yeah or a brick house but not only are bricks before a brick house or a brick wall in time but they can be without a brick house right but a brick house can't be without them right now i might be before some of you guys in time but can you guys be without me so if i'm before some of you in time am i also before you in being i can be without you but you couldn't be without me no see so those are different meanings right you can see the closeness to the second sense because what is before and being might often also be before in time that's a different sense of before but before in being is another sense right now what's the third sense of before yeah before knowledge right and how does the name before get carried over to that right that's by a likeness between the two right a likeness of ratios so just as some things can be without other things some things can be known without knowing other things but those other things can't be known without knowing these what first yeah so that's the third sense of before right and that's really the sense of what better right Aristotle stops and he gets to those four senses right and then it's kind of almost funny because but there seems to be another sense he said you know it's they can't you know leave out and that's the sense in which a cause is before a what effect now um is that sense fifth in order or is it something a little bit like the second sense of before and being because what's before and being and what's after and being right what's after and being in some way depends upon what's before and being right and so the sense which the cause is before the effect is very much like what the sense of before and being but they're not exactly the same thing right in the sense of before and being what's before can be without what's after and being right without that theme right but can be have a cause without an effect so it's not really the same sense right okay now um i used to have fun with the students and i'd say now in what sense of before does shakespeare say that reason looks before and after what's the answer to that question all of them yeah okay and so sometimes you have to look at all the senses before right to understand the great definition of reason that shakespeare has in the best short education to use reason that we have where he says that reason is the ability right for a large discourse looking before and after right what does he mean by before and after just one of those five senses no in all if you go through each one of them you can see reason looks before and after you know all what all the senses i was looking again at the text of thomas there in the sentences coming here in the sentences of peter rambach which is a major work right at the university of paris and the name of the article is whether god the father is before god the son right and thomas says in no way is god the father before god the son so how many senses of before does he have to consider at least four yeah yeah and the way the body of the article right begins he says god i mean the father is not before the he's not before him in knowledge he's not before him in goodness or perfection right it's exactly the order of what carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel carousel 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And the first Maker, and so on, right? But when he talks about God being the first being, right? More directly, he argues from the, what? Two distinctions of being. So what are the two main distinctions of being? Being per se, now, because you have the distinction of being per se, as in being per se. What are the two main distinctions of being? Act and ability, yeah. Even the categories in Aristotle distinguishes between universal substance and singular substance, universal accident, singular accident. He calls this a distinction, tonam, tonam, beings, right? So in the 14 books of wisdom, right? First philosophy, as Aristotle calls it, he has two main distinctions of being per se. One by the figures of predication, substance, quantity, quality, and so on, and then act and don't do it. Well, then you end up with two, what? Ways of speaking of the first, what? Being. You see, if you know the categories, what's the first being at that point? Is it quantity, quality, relation, or substance? Substance. Yeah. Substance is the first, what? Being. That's not getting to the really first being, right? Yeah. Okay. Now, in the third argument, Summa Theologiae, right? In a different place than Summa Theologiae, right? It's in their chapter on the What is this next step, right? Well, it takes up some kind of a broad sense, right? Or even, analogously, it might be applied even to God, right? And he says, the substances that are most known to us, they're contingent. They can be, and what? Not be. In the dream, Now, can those be the first beings of all? Things that can be and not be? Why would they even be? Don't explain to me, right? So before them, there must be something that is, what? Necessary being, right? Now, I know from logic that something can be necessary to another, but what is necessary to another, can that be the first being? Well, the first being must be a being then that is necessary to be, to itself. And that's, yeah, yeah, yeah. The being that can, it necessarily is to itself, can be without all the beings. But they can't be without it, huh? Because the beings that are necessary to another, are necessary to this being, right? And the poor beings like us, you know, it can be and not be, we're even more dependent upon it than the necessary beings, huh? So what's going to say, God's the first being? He's a being that must be through itself. He's a being that necessarily is, but not to another, but to itself. Thank goodness, huh? Amazing, huh? It's a little different than saying he's the first mover, isn't it? That's saying he's the first cause, in some way, right? Or he's the first maker, right? Now, what else, what other way could you speak of the first being? Well, there's another division of being, right? Into ability and act, right? Now, the early Greeks and so on, and the modern scientists, They all think, or thought, that matter was the beginning of all things, huh? And there's some probability to this, because the things that go from ability to act, they're in ability before they are in act, right? So it makes sense to say that what, ability comes before act, right? But then there's still points out in the great ninth book of first philosophy, that something goes from ability to act by reason of something, what, already in act. So, haplos, simply, what comes before in universe, ability or act? Act, yeah. And that leads on to the conclusion, eventually, that the first being must be what? A crack. Because it's parking ability you have something before it. It's kind of interesting, right? So he's showing, eventually, that not only is God but the first cause, more particularly, the first mover or the first maker or so on, but also that God is the first being, right? You know? What is the first being? The being that must be in itself, starting off from the categories, right? and then the being that is real rich and ready to talk now about the substance of God, huh? But again, it's good to know that distinction of what? Order, right, huh? Because he's showing not only that God is the first cause but that he's the first being, right, huh? What will it say? distinction and order and the distinction of order and the order of distinction, right? That doesn't fuse anymore, does it? Now, let's come down here, right? And we're talking about the, what, object of, what, faith and the act of faith, right? And then the habit of faith, right, huh? And Thomas is following, of course, again, what Aristotle did in the three books on the soul. He took up the abilities of the soul, huh? And he says that you have to know the abilities of the soul through their acts, right? And their acts through their what? Yeah, yeah. So now, let's just talk a little bit about the sense of sight and hearing, right, huh? Which distinction comes first, huh? Distinction between seeing and hearing or the distinction between color and sound. They're different distinctions, aren't they? But the distinction between color and sound is a distinction of what? The objects, right? Yeah. The distinction between seeing and hearing is a distinction of what? Know what? No? The acts. Yeah, yeah. But it's the distinction of color and sound before the distinction of seeing and hearing because we'd say both what? seeing and hearing are sensing, But what's the distinction between these two sensing? You've got to bring in the object, right? So the distinction between color and sound is before the distinction of seeing and hearing, right? Now, what about the distinction between the ability to see now and the ability to hear, right? Is that before or after the distinction of seeing and hearing? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, Aristotle follows that, right? I just looked at my emails this morning, you know, and some guy who's working on his doctor in philosophy is sending me an email right, asking me, you know? Is he out there for a reason to be? It's like a beautiful text to give him, you know, huh? But, we'll go into something. So, distinction of objects is before the distinction of acts, and the distinction of acts is before the distinction of the abilities for those acts, right? Makes sense, doesn't it? Thomas is following that same order here, right? He's distinguishing the object, right, of faith before, and then secondly, he's starting now, we're going to start today, distinction of the acts, the interior act, the interior act, and then, you know, he's talking about the habit, right, huh? So, he teaches Aristotle there again, right, huh? Aristotle does that, right? That's why also he said Shakespeare defines reason as the ability for a certain act, right? And then you get those acts, right, huh? The ability for large discourse looking before and after. So, it's good to review those fundamentals once in a while, you know, to keep your mind looking for the distinction that's fundamental, right? Let's look now at question two. Then we're not to consider about the act of faith. And first about the inward act of faith. Secondly about the exterior act, which is the confession of faith, right? Not the confession of your sins, but the confession of faith. Now about the first, yes, six things, or ten things rather, are asked, right? It's like he had that many before. About the first ten things are asked. First, what it is to believe, which is the interior act of faith. Secondly, in how many ways is it said? Third, whether to believe something above natural reason is necessary for salvation. Fourth, whether to believe those things that natural reason is able to arrive at is necessary. Fifth, whether it's necessary for salvation to believe some things explicitly. Whether, six, whether to believe in explicitly or equally held, right, huh? Seven, whether to have an explicit faith about Christ is always necessary for what? Do the Jews have an explicit faith about Christ, huh? It's not implicit what they're saying, but it was explicit, I don't know. We'll see what he says. Eight, whether to believe the Trinity explicitly is a necessity of salvation. A little different kind of questions here. Whether the act of faith is what? Yeah. There was somebody praising the early church fathers that they held firmly to the faith, right? Even they weren't able to answer all the objections, right? So there's a temptation to, what? Not believe, right, huh? But they were strong enough to continue to believe, right? Before they had fully figured out how to answer all these objections, right, huh? You know? So that Frenchman there, what's his name? But, no, no, no, I mean, the French, famous French writer, huh? Oh, Voltaire. Voltaire, yeah. He was supposed to look at the objections, you know. He went around and poked them at Catholics, right, huh? How he thought he was on his deathbed and he called for a confessor. Well, he said God, you know. He called, he used the name God. I'll figure a speech. Do you really believe in God? Why? It's like when Roosevelt, Winston Churchill talks about, you know, the soldier, you know. You pretty have to believe out there, you know. He said God. And the seventh article, or tenth article, whether human reason, right, diminishes the merit of faith. Now, that's a very important question. Thomas is very explicit, right, huh? He seems to start in the right place, right? Quid sit, create, right? Now, he's going to be, what, taking over Augustine's great definition of to believe, huh? As far as I know, Augustine and Thomas seem to be the greatest minds of the church, huh? To the first, then, one proceeds thus. Thus, it seems that to believe is not to what? Yeah. It seems to me, when you take the Latin word, cogitare, right, how should you translate that into English, right? Because it's a little different etymology than ours, huh? It's a little bit like in English, speaking of what? Thinking about something, right? Mm-hmm. So it's almost like Augustine had defined the act of belief as to ascend to something while thinking about it, you know? It's a little bit like that, the definition, huh? Now, I ask people sometimes, why do you think about something? What's the purpose of it? Why do you think about something? Yeah. The short answer, I would say, is to understand it, right, huh? So understanding something is the end or purpose of what? Thinking about it, right, huh? Now, sometimes they say a little longer answer is to say that you think about something, you think out something about it, right? And maybe thinking out a distinction, right? Thomas is thinking about distinction and thinking out a distinction of distinction, right? Okay. Or you might be thinking out a, what, division, right? Which is a kind of distinction, too, right? Or you might be thinking out a definition. Or you might be thinking out an order. Or you might be thinking out a beginning statement, like the axiom of before and after. Or you might be thinking out a, what, conclusion. Okay. So when I pick up my Euclid there, this guy's really thought about numbers and angles and figures and so on, right? And he's thought of all kinds of distinctions, right? Definitions and axioms and so on. Oh, boy, yeah. He's always thinking out a new conclusion from the, from the theorems he knows already and then, you know, the ones he discovers, right? Okay. So cogitoxio, huh? Implies a certain, what, investigation, right? For that is said to cogitare, as it were, simu agitare, huh? See, I guess it's as good a thing he's thinking about, anyway. But Damascene is a big authority, too, now, in theology, right? Says in the fourth book, huh? Defeat the Orthodox, I guess it's called. That faith is a non-inquisitorist consensus, right? It's not the result of investigation, right? Therefore, cogitare doesn't pertain to the act of faith. You've got, what's his name? Yeah, Damascene, yeah, yeah. Second, whoever faith is laid down to be in reason, as will be said below. Well, but cogitare is the act of the, what, they call the cogitative power, right? Which was the name of one of the sense powers, right? As he said in the first. Therefore, what, cogitare does not pertain to, what, faith, right, huh? I mean, we sometimes use the word, what, same word to name the act of the senses and to name the act of, what, of reason, right? No. When I was a little boy, my mother said, I see, said the blind man, but he couldn't see at all. My mother didn't want to college, but she thought it was a very clever statement, right? But it's playing upon two different meanings of the word, what, to see, right, huh? We'll see how, Thomas. We'll see. Yeah. Not just with your eyes, we see, but. Moreover, third objection. To believe is an act of the understanding, right? Because its object is the truth. But to assent does not seem to be an act of the understanding, but of the will. Just as to consent, right? As has been said above. Therefore, to believe is not with, what? Cogitare. Wasn't Thomas living proof of what my teacher Kusurik said? This is the teacher to confuse the issue. But against all this nonsense, right? Is that Augustine thus defines it in the book on the predestination of the saints. It's better to think twice before you disagree with Augustine, huh? Now, Thomas begins by pointing out a distinction, right? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.