De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 46: Divine Simplicity and Analogical Language About God

Transcript
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That's why Bwethius, you know, at the beginning of logic, in Albert the Great, he always quotes Bwethius, you know, a thing is singular when sensed, but universal and understood. And that's why Albert goes on and says, universal is therefore the first thing to be considered in, what, logic, right? Because logic is talking about the way things are when they're understood. Or you could say the first thing to be considered in logic is names said of many things. That's the title of the King of Rissell, to you, that Albert talks about, huh? Now, that's very interesting, huh? And he shows you a real defect in the modern philosophers, and in particular the modern magicians, right? Because when they try to do logic or something like logic, right, the thing that most of all suffers is the logic of definition. Now, if you read the dialogues of Plato, you'll see that almost all the dialogues are taken up with what is something, you know? What is virtue, he asks Mino, right? What is piety, he asks Yuthyfro, right? He's always asking somebody, what is something, right? And we're learning something about how to define and read the dialogues. And Aristotle says that the whole book, or the topics there, the book about places, huh? He'd say to some extent the whole book is about defining. So this is an enormous part of logic in ancient times, huh? And it's kind of, you know, put in it all in modern, you know, mathematical or symbolic logic books, it's kind of a footnote, you know? It's not the main thing, right, huh? Mill, John Stuart Mill, I guess, says that there's no definitions of things. And it's very strange. But once you understand what the object of reason is, see, in a sense that we're learning here, is that the object of reason, the object of reason is the, what it is of a natural or mathematical thing, as you can see on this example stage. Perhaps you can see it a little more generally, that it's the, what it is of a sensible, let's put it this way, what it is of a thing sensed or imagined. So you've got to see Aristotle's examples there, whether he takes flesh or water or something else, right? Example of a natural thing, right? More generally you can see it a sensible thing, yeah? Or he takes the mathematical examples, right? Something that you can imagine, right? Okay. So you could say that the proper object of our reason is the, what it is of a natural mathematical thing. The thing sensed or imagined. Now that's kind of the object that's proportioned to our, what? Mind, right? Okay. But, more generally speaking, the object is what it is, right? And so even when we discover, as a natural philosopher does eventually, that there are immaterial things, right? Things that cannot be sensed or imagined, right? Our reason naturally asks, well, what is it? And if you read the life of Thomas Aquinas, he was famous for, you know, good amount of times. What is God? Well, it shows that he was what? Using his reason, right? See? Knowing that there is a God, right? He naturally asks, what is a God, right? But notice, going back to the proper object here, it's a definition that makes what? Brings out distinctly what a thing is. It makes what that is, huh? So to say you're not interested in the definition of things, is to say you're not interested in using your reason, and your thinking, and that's basically what its object is, huh? So definition is really fundamental there. Now, I was giving you a little consequence of this for theology, right? And let's come back to that for a moment now. And say this is the object of our reason, the object that's kind of proportioned to our reason. When we try to think about what God is, we're kind of limited here by our own what? Kind of natural object here. And in both natural things and in mathematical things, you have a composition of matter and what? Form, right? Okay. And sometimes Aristotle will say that there's no matter in mathematics. Sometimes he'll say that there's a kind of what? Understandable matter, meaning the continuous, right? But the imaginable matter. So you have something like matter and form even in mathematics as well as in natural things. So we try to understand something that is not a composition of matter and form, right? Our way of, our natural way of understanding is kind of inadequate, huh? As Abuefi says, Divina Substantia, Forma Est. The form is something actual, it's pure act. No matter there. Now, notice, we think of matter as something that can be something and form as that by which it is that thing. So, when the wood has been formed, it's now a chair or a table or whatever form has been received, right? And the shape is not the chair, but the shape is that by which the wood is a what? Chair, right? So we think of being something as something different than that by which you are that something. And so when you think about God, we have these two ways of speaking about God, huh? We can say that God is, what? Good, right? Or God is goodness itself, huh? No. No, it's a material thing. It's what we sometimes call the abstract and concrete word, for want of a better name, right? But take an example of that from the mature world, huh? Take health and healthy. Health and healthy. What's the difference in the way health and healthy signify? In terms of health as abstract, healthy as concrete. Okay. But now what is actually the connection between health and healthy? Oh. Is health healthy? Or something else healthy? Something else is healthy. Yeah. Healthy by the health. Yeah, yeah. I would say something else. I would say a body, let's say. A body is healthy by what? Health, right? Okay. So health is that by which the body is healthy. So it's not the same thing to be healthy and to be health, right? So the body is like the matter or the subject and the health is like the, what? Form. And it's the body said to be healthy and health is not said to be healthy but that by which something else is healthy, right? But notice that implies, in that way of speaking, a distinction between health and what has the health, right? A distinction between those two. Now let's take another example, right? Suppose you say that, um... I don't know. I don't know. The mind, huh, of Thomas, or the mind of Aristotle, is wise, right, huh, okay? Say the mind is wise. Now, does wise mean the same thing there as wisdom? I wouldn't say if the mind of Aristotle is wisdom. I might say the mind of Aristotle is wise, huh? Why? Because it has some wisdom in it, right? Okay? The mind, in this case, adds wisdom. Wisdom is, again, like a form, right? The mind is the subject, huh? You could say the mind is wise by the wisdom it has, huh? Rather than the wisdom it has is wise, no, it's the mind that's wise. It's not the wisdom that is wise, but the wisdom is that by which the mind can be said to be wise. You get a little bit of the idea here, huh? Would you say that sugar is sweet? Yeah. Would you say that sugar is sweetness? No. It's incorrect, isn't it? But is there a connection between sweetness there and being sweet? Because the sugar has sweetness, that it is sweet, right? Well, the haver and the haver and the haver and the haver, are they the same? No. No. And it's by sweetness that the sugar is sweet, right? Okay? And is this book colored? Is it color? No. But it has a color, right? And color is that by which the colored is colored, right? So notice how what has the color, or what has the wisdom, or what has the health, right? What has the sweetness is like matter or like the subject, right? And the health, or the sweetness, or the wisdom, or the color is as a, what? Form, right? By which it is something, right? Okay. So, can we avoid using words of that kind in talking about God? Is God wise? He's not wise. You mean to say we're wise, and God is not wise? Remember the very beginning there, right? You know, they said to Pythagoras, you're wise, huh? Because he discovered these wonderful things, like the Pythagorean theorem, and other things, I guess. And he says, don't call me wise, right? God alone is wise, huh? And all the great Greek philosophers say, either God alone should be called wise, as Pythagoras said, right? Or only God in the four perfect senses wise, huh? So now we're saying God is wise. Wise, maybe the philosopher is wise in some imperfect way, right? But when you say wise of the philosopher, you don't mean that he's wisdom itself, do you? You mean that he has wisdom, and his wisdom is not himself, right? Maybe Heraclitus was trying to get this when he said, you know, the divine nature has, you know, judgment, you know, but the human nature does not, right? It's something that we're added to it, right? Okay? Oh, yeah. Okay? So anyway, the wisdom of Aristobo, or the wisdom of any philosopher, is not that philosopher. It's something that he may have, right? But what he has is not himself. There's a real distinction, right? And by it he's wise, huh? Okay? Now, could God be wise if he had no wisdom? So you're kind of forced to say that, you know, from, you know, it doesn't even make sense sense to say that God has no wisdom, yet he's wise, right? But on the other hand, if you say that God does have wisdom, like Socrates has wisdom, or Aristotle does, then you seem to be at the composition of God, right? Well, now, can you avoid these ways that all seem defective, right? In speaking about God? Or must you, like Dionysius and Thomas Aquinas say, both affirm and deny these words of God? So you can both say that God is wisdom, right? Because there's no distinction between God and his wisdom, right? There's no distinction between the haver and the had here, right? As Thomas often says, God is whatever he has. Which almost seems to be contrary to saying that he has something, right? Because that seems to signify a distinction, or imply a distinction, between the haver and the had, right? But we're forced to speak that way, right? Because of what Aristotle says here, right? That's the way our mind naturally, what, understands. It naturally understands, as a proportion, an object, you might say, what it is, right, of a thing sensed or imagined. And so as a way of thinking about things, it's not adequate to thinking about God, or even about an angel, for that matter. We might say about an angel, you know, does an angel have a nature? You see? Does Gabriel have a nature? Ah, in some sense, you have to say that, right? When saying that an angel has a nature, you seem to be saying that what an angel is, and the angel are not identical, right? Like when you say Socrates has human nature. There's some distinction between Socrates and human nature, right? So, we have to, therefore, what, both affirm and deny that God is wise, huh? We have to affirm that he is wise, because he is wise. But we have to deny that the distinction between God and his wisdom, right? Okay? Which wise seems to apply to what he is wisdom, right? And then we can affirm that God is wisdom, right? Because God is whatever he has. Because God is altogether simple, right? So we say God is wisdom. But then we seem to be saying that God is that by which something is wise, and therefore he's not wise. It's like health is not healthy. But something else is healthy because of health, right? So if we say God is wisdom, we seem to be saying that God is that by which things or something is wise. He's not wise himself. So we have to, in that sense, we deny that God is wisdom itself, right? He's not just that by which something is wise. But he's also wise. But there's no distinction between himself and his wisdom. So he is wisdom. God is wisdom itself. That's what we come up in everything we say about God, huh? We say, is God just? Is God merciful? Isn't he just and merciful? Right? Okay? But does just signify, um... Justice, or does it have a different meaning, just? Well, just seems to signify what has justice, right? Not justice itself, right? But is there really a distinction between God and his virtue of justice, huh? There's no composition at all in God. So we're forced to say God is what? Justice itself, right? He is mercy itself, right? We can deny these. And mercy or justice itself, because he's not that by which something is just, right? And not just. But we can affirm that he's justice itself, because he's altogether simple, right? And he is whatever he has, right? Even that way of speaking, you know, looks back to this, right? Because why should you use the word has at all? We have to, though. And sometimes grammatically, you know, you don't see so clearly as those examples. That's why I took those examples, but when you say, does God love, huh? Yeah, well, he loves himself, he loves us, right? Okay. But now, when St. John says that God is love, right? See? Well, there, grammatically, it's a little harder to see, right? But in a sense, you're saying what? It's like saying that God is wisdom, right? It's like if I say, you know, by my love, I'm loving you. Okay? But in God, there's no, what? Distinction, right? Between his loving you and that by which he loves you. You see, the point is, can you avoid, in speaking about God, right? Avoid both of those words, right? When he takes up the goodness of God there, right? In the Summa Congenitilis, you have one capitulum, one little chapter there that shows that God is good, right? And then you have another one that shows that God is goodness itself. Can you invent, in other words, a word that would be adequate to God, right? Would you just be using words without any thoughts to correspond, no? In other words, in this life, at least, now, we can't transcend, right, our natural way of understanding. And so we're forced to use both ways of speaking and to see a defect in both, because of that. Even, you know, Thomas says a nice thing in Summa Congenitilis there was talking about the fact that we have statements about God. Now, if these statements that we show about God, that are true about God, if we're really learning something about God, and we show that God is good, or God is knowing, or God is just, or whatever you show about Him, right? God is simple. Is the subject and the predicate have the same meaning? When I say God is just, God is merciful, God is good, God is knowing. Yeah, we're saying something different in the initial case that way, right? So, there's some difference in meaning there between the subject and the predicate, isn't it? Let's just say the same thing over again. We've got roses, a rose, a rose, a rose, are we? See? See? But the multiplicity there, in meaning, I say God is good, God is just, God is merciful, right? The multiplicity in meaning there is in our mind. Multiplicity is not in God. But when we say that God is this, right? We say God is goodness, right? God is love itself, we mean that in the thing, they're identical. But nevertheless, we have two thoughts there. You see? What's one in God is multiplied in the creature. That's why, you know, Thomas quotes one of the Old Testament, I can't find like one of that book in the Old Testament, but he quotes one of the prophets saying, in that day, there will be only one name for God. He's referring, therefore, to what? The beatific vision, right? The beatific vision, there's going to be only unity there, even our knowledge, right? There won't be any multiplicity there, right? Because then you wouldn't be seeing God as he is, right? In this life, we know God through preaching, right? And therefore, through the multiplicity, which is the origin, right? But the origin, it has no multiplicity. And of course, I always compare that a bit to the circle, right? I think it's the simplest way of seeing a little bit the way you proceed there. And you take the circle, right? And you take as many radii as you want to. And the beginning of all these radii is one point, right? But the end point of all these is what? Different, right? Well, these many end points correspond to what? The creatures, right? What's one in God, when it proceeds from God to the creatures, it's what? Necessarily multiply them. But our mind is, of course, as Sherlock Holmes says, naturally backwards, right? So we're starting with the multiplicity of creatures, and we're going back to the one, what? Origin of it, right? You see? So that's why there's a multiplicity of thoughts in our mind corresponding to the one God, right? Just like if I knew each one of these points here on the circumference of the circle by itself, right? It's what we do when we know any creatures, right? And then we said, now, God is the beginning of this line. He's also the beginning of this line. He's also the beginning of that line. I'm talking about one and the same point, but I'm what? Defining it or understanding it as the beginning of a different line in each case. Because God is the beginning of all the many perfections in the creatures. But there's no multiplicity in God of those perfections, right? So you say, God is the beginning of all true love, right? Or God is the beginning of all true knowledge. Or God is the beginning of all true justice. And so on, right, huh? You see? And these things are multiplied in creatures, right? But I could speak at the one and the same point. You can say, it's the beginning of this line. It's the beginning of this line. Right? And these lines are not the same. So when Thomas is trying to understand how we speak about God and how we can and cannot use words like good and goodness, right? Just and justice, right? Wise and wisdom, right? Et cetera, right? He sees why we have that multiplicity, right? Going back to what Aristotle said here. And then he realizes how, like Dinesha says, right? We can affirm and deny these names, right? Of God, huh? We can affirm and deny these names, right? We can affirm and deny them, right? We can affirm and deny them, right? We can affirm and deny them, right? We can affirm and deny them, right? We can affirm and deny them. That's the way we have to know God so far as we can know him in this less-than-perfect world. Now, of course, Plato thought that not only that there was a mathematical world, but also that there was a world of universals, which he called the forms. And again, because he thought the truth required, right, that the way we know be the way things are. So if we truly know the universal, as we do in separation from the singulars, then it must truly exist in separation from the singulars. See, doesn't it make the universals particulars in that line? Is there a reason that it's like sensing? Yeah, well, you see, for Plato, you see, the universals would exist in separation from the singulars and in separation from our mind, right? Yeah. In some way, you know, not fully explained by Plato, matter can partake of these forms, right? Right. And our mind can be in contact with these forms. Right. But Plato thought, if you read the Republic there, that, you know, we're kind of turned in the direction of sensible things, and we've got to turn the soul around, right? And the midway point is to turn the way to the mathematical world, which is sort of in between. It's more immaterial than the sensible world, but still somewhat material, because you have the continuous there. And then turn the soul all the way around to the, what? Forms, huh? Uh-huh. Okay? Now, as if you could know the forms as a word directly, but you had it turned away from all these sensible things. That's why Plato had a certain, maybe, attraction for the Church Fathers, when they're talking about what really is a supernatural now, right? Uh-huh. You know, what they call the dark night of the soul, and so on. Uh-huh. Where the soul, in a way, is turning away from the sensible world, right? Uh-huh. So, Aristotle shows in the physics, what a man is, can't really exist outside the mind, in a world by itself, because then you'd have no, what, matter there at all, right? And so, what a man is, would not really be an animal with reason. Um, but if you bring in matter, then you've got to bring it back in the individual, right? So, Aristotle says the universals exist only in the mind, as universal, right? But nevertheless, when Plato thought this way, in the forms, the world of forms is only one of each kind. And so, in a way, he's enabling us to see something, he's suggested there in a sense, right? That there really are a world of immaterial things, right? In those immaterial things, what they are, in the individual, would be the same. And so, there'd be no two individuals in the immaterial world of the exact same kind. And Plato saw that, and they kind of falsely understood the nature of those immaterial things. One point I saw, kind of makes a little fun of Plato, he says, it's a little bit like the Homer and the poets that he criticized, you know, who couldn't be to understand God, so he made Zeus a kind of a superman, right? And, you know, in some ways, Homer's gods and goddesses are very anthropomorphic, you know, how Zeus and his wife pair on opposite sides of the Trojan War, if you want to win, right? And he's terribly concerned, Zeus, about the domestic frictions of him between him and his wife, if he too openly, you know, supports the one side, you know, against the side that she's supporting, and he's deep to toes, the way a husband, you know, realizes he's terribly upset about this, you know. And so, there's a lot of likelihood in terms of human beings. And so, and of course, some of the early philosophers like Xenophon had said, you know, that if horses could make statues, they'd make their gods look like horses. You're making fun with the poets, right? Because you can't really understand the nature of them. So, Aristotle said, in a way, Plato, not really understanding, you know, the natures of these immaterial things, right? He imagined them to have in a way the natures of material things, but kind of, like, elevated in some way, huh? So, it's a little bit like what he's doing, right? It's kind of a fighting criticism there on Aristotle's heart. But, nevertheless, Plato is helping us to see, in a way, right, that if there were natures that were not material, and not in the continuum, and those natures, the individual, the nature, what it is, would be identical, right? And there wouldn't be two of the same kind. So, Plato, in some sense, is always mistaken in other ways, is seeing something about the way these things will be, huh? So, in this world of forms, you would just have, like, a form of man, not a form of Socrates. Right, right, right. Just what a man is, yeah. A man would be, partake of this form of man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But see, it's the right nature of man to be material. Yeah. And so, if we really had a man outside of our mind, it'd have to be material. In the same way, if we really had a triangle outside of our mind, right, but it'd have to be in the continuous and therefore singular. Yeah. So, does it mean that the angels are perfectly simple and not composite? No, there is a composition of what they are in their existence, okay? But there's not a composition of matter and form. They are composite, but they're not composite the way we're composite. Yeah, yeah. See, in us, there's a double composition of matter and form, and then of our whole nature with our existence. But in the angels, the nature is altogether simple, but the existence is not identical with the nature. Only in God are the existence and the nature identical. So, when God says, I am, who am, right? He's pointing out that his nature and the existence of his nature, the being of it, are the same. But that's where we're ahead of ourselves, another part of philosophy, right? So, we don't even know that now. Okay? Like the old teacher Kassarik used to say, you know, when your soul needs your body and you see your guardian angel, right? God! It's going to be your first impression. This is God. I mean, this is so wonderful. I mean, this must be God. And your guardian angel is saying, no, no, I'm way down. You've got a long ways to go. So, yeah, an angel is really something, huh? He's a really... And that's why when Thomas talks about the reasons of incarnation, one reason is so we won't, what, have devil worship, right? Because the devil is extremely evil in his will. His nature is something really, what, tremendous, right? And so man can say, I'm so, you know, inferior to this creature, you know, that I have to, you know, subordinate myself to him. And that's a real temptation, see? So what would God do is come down and what? Become man, right? To give us a proper respect on it for human nature and not to submit it to the devil, right? Now, in the remaining part, starting in 331, time in 335, Aristotle is going to raise two objections and give an answer to both objections. At the same time, I think these objections and the answers to them are going to be kind of a bridge into what he's going to talk about in the beginning of the next chapter. That there is, in man, in addition to what we think of as our reason understanding, this understanding that undergoes, right? There's going to have to be another ability or power, which he's going to call the active understanding, huh? Or in Latin, the agent intellect, they call it, huh? And the reason for that is that those universals that act upon our reason directly, they don't exist in any world out there to act upon us. And the images and the sensations that we have are all of the, what, singular. And those material singulars cannot directly act upon the immaterial understanding. So Aristotle, in a sense, is forced, once he rejects, once he rejected the idea of Plato, that there's a world of universal forms that can act upon our, what, reason directly in the same way that sensible things act upon senses. There is no world of universal forms out there, right? So there's a kind of a hiatus there, kind of a gap there, between the material or sensible and imaginable things, which are all singular, right? And the universal forms, which the reason that we talk about so far, we see, right? And so he saw the need to recognize that man has another ability besides this, an active ability, an ability to separate the universal from the, what, singular. and therefore an ability that makes actually, what, understandable.