Jeff Vehige has posted a list of the books about St. Thomas that he has found most helpful. Interestingly, I’d only heard of one of them, Chesterton’s St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox. I won’t steal his thunder; go take a look.
In Chapter 57, Thomas continues to drill down into the theology of the Trinity.
Such being the number of persons in God, the properties whereby the persons are distinguished from one another must be of some definite number.
“Properties” is one of those words where I seem to understand perfectly well what Thomas means, and yet I have a suspicion that the word is carrying some freight with which I am unfamiliar. Be that as it may.
Three properties are characteristic of the Father. The first is that whereby He is distinguished from the Son alone. This is paternity.
Fair enough.
The second is that whereby the Father is distinguished from the other two persons, namely, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And this is innascibility; for the Father is not God as proceeding from another person, whereas the Son and the Holy Spirit do proceed from another person.
Innascibility: Now there’s a word you don’t run into every day. My attempts to find a definition of this have been fruitless; and Google simply directs me back to Thomas. The meaning is clear enough in context: the Father does not proceed from another person. I suspect that Thomas coined the term himself, so as to have a single word for this.
In any event, it’s clear that the intent of this chapter is simply to define some terms, not to prove anything.
The third property is that whereby the Father along with the Son is distinguished from the Holy Spirit. This is called their common spiration.
Common spiration: Another word you don’t run into every day. I presume it means simply that the Father and Son share a spirit.
But a property whereby the Father may be distinguished from the Holy Spirit alone is not to be assigned, for the reason that the Father and the Son are a single principle of the Holy Spirit, as has been shown.
Innascibility and common spiration. Next time one of my coworkers utters a non sequiter, I’ll cry, “What an innascible thing to say! What a common spiration!”
And then they’ll look at me funny.
OK, One God, Three Persons. I was expecting nothing less. But what’s to prevent there from being more than three persons in the Godhead? I confess, I’ve been wondering about this. God understands Himself; He loves Himself; are there no other relations by which one could distinguish a fourth person? Thomas covers this in Chapter 56. Be warned, this is another long ‘un.
There cannot be more than three persons in God.
Right, but how so?
For the divine persons cannot be multiplied by a division of their substance, but solely by the relation of some procession; and not by any sort of procession, but only by such as does not have its term in something outside of God. If the relation had something external as its term, this would not possess the divine nature, and so could not be a divine person or hypostasis.
God is One, simple, without part, and so you can’t “divide the substance”; that make God a composite of parts. So you can’t get additional persons in that way. So a Person within God has to proceed from God in some way, but that which proceeds also has to be within God or it isn’t God.
But procession in God that does not terminate outside of God must be either according to the operation of the intellect, whereby the Word proceeds, or according to the operation of the will, whereby love proceeds, as is clear from our exposition. Therefore no divine person can proceed unless He proceeds as the Word, whom we call the Son, or as love, whom we call the Holy Spirit.
I can see why the intellect and the will are the relevant faculties; and Thomas has shown that what proceeds from these is within God. I do not believe, however, that Thomas has shown that these are the only faculties with this property. Did I miss it? Does he talk about this in the Summa Theologiae?
Moreover, since God comprehends everything in His intellect by a single act of intuition, and similarly loves everything by a single act of His will, there cannot be several words or several loves in God. If, then, the Son proceeds as Word, and if the Holy Spirit proceeds as love, there cannot be several Sons or several Holy Spirits in God.
OK, I can buy this. Given that only intellect and will are involved, and given that God understands and loves perfectly, wholly, and all at once, this makes sense.
Again: the perfect is that beyond which there is nothing. Hence a being that would tolerate anything of its own class to be outside itself, would fall short of absolute perfection. This is why things that are simply perfect in their natures are not numerically multiplied; thus God, the sun, the moon, and so on. But both the Son and the Holy Spirit must be simply perfect, since each of them is God, as we have shown. Therefore several Sons or several Holy Spirits are impossible.
Warning! Bad example alert! It may in fact be true that things that are simply perfect in their natures are not numerically multiplied. But the sun and the moon are not examples of this. If fact, I’m not sure what would be. Angels, maybe? (Each angel being unique, one of a kind.) But sure, how could the Holy Spirit be God’s Perfect Love, without being all of God’s Love?
Besides, that whereby a subsistent thing is this particular thing, distinct from other things, cannot be numerically multiplied, for the reason that an individual cannot be predicated of many. But the Son is this divine person, subsisting in Himself and distinct from the other divine persons by sonship; just as Socrates is constituted this human person by individuating principles. Accordingly, as the individuating principles whereby Socrates is this man cannot pertain to more than one man, so sonship in the Godhead cannot pertain to more than one divine person. Similar is the case with the relation of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Hence there cannot be several Fathers in God or several Sons or several Holy Spirits.
That which gives a thing its identity must by definition be unique, or the thing doesn’t have an identity. This chair and that chair may be “identical”, but they are two different chairs, made of different matter. As Phil reminded me the other day, matter is the principle of individuation. Or one such; other principles are clearly possible, or Thomas wouldn’t have used the plural. I note also that he used the plural when speaking of Socrates, which makes sense: for Socrates must be unique not only in his body but also in his soul.
The individuating principle for the persons in the Trinity is the relation between them; if there were two Words, there would be no way to distinguish them one from another.
Lastly, whatever is one by reason of its form, is not numerically multiplied except through matter; thus whiteness is multiplied by existing in many subjects. But there is no matter in God. Consequently whatever is one in species and form in the Godhead, cannot be multiplied numerically. Such are paternity and filiation and the procession of the Holy Spirit. And thus there cannot be several Fathers or Sons or Holy Spirits in God.
This is sort of what I said previously, but I’m puzzling over the phrase whatever is one by reason of its form–is there anything that is multiplied by reason of its form? And if so, what?
Thomas has established that God is Three in One; in Chapter 55, he makes it clear that this means three persons:
Since distinction in the Godhead is accounted for by relations that are not accidental but are subsistent, and since among beings subsisting in an intellectual nature personal distinction is discerned, it necessarily follows that personal distinction in God is constituted by the relations in question.
Here’s Thomas’ definition of personality: a person is an intellectual being that subsists. (One imagines–no, one guesses–that were he referring to creatures, he would have said that a person is an intellectual substance.) He has established that In God are three distinct beings; and as God is His Understanding, all are intellectual. Hence there are three persons:
Therefore the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three persons, and also three hypostases, since hypostasis means something that is subsistent and complete.
The word hypostasis is Greek for “person”–at least, that’s how I’ve always seen it translated. Of course, I’ve only seen it at all in discussions of the Trinity and the Incarnation (the relation between Jesus’ divine and human natures is called the Hypostatic Union). There’s probably more to it than that.
Thomas has established at this point that the relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are real, and not simply in our minds; in Chapter 54, he’s going to show that they are not accidental, but rather are essential:
These relations cannot inhere in God accidentally, because the operations on which the relations follow directly are the very substance of God, and also because, as was shown above there can be no accident in God. Hence, if the relations are really in God, they cannot be accidentally inherent, but must be subsistent. How it is that what is an accident in other things, can exist substantially in God, is clear from the doctrine previously set forth.
These relations are subsistent in God because they are of His essence: if they were different, God would not be God. This is as opposed to, say, my hair line, the relation between my hair and my head, which has slowly shifted over the years without once calling my identity into question.
(Gosh, it’s nice when Thomas throws me an easy one….)
I had thought I knew what substances were, metaphysically speaking. A substance is a being, something that exists. (Please note, I’m speaking of primary substances here, not secondary substances.) From the examples I’d seen, I’d come to think of a substance as being a thing, an object, that has its own identity. Dogs are substances. People are substances. Chairs are substances. Laptop computers are substances. It turns out that I was mistaken, as Brendon explains in passing in a post about Artificial Intelligence.
Things that are physically composed of multiple pieces organized in a particular way, such as machines and other artifacts, are not substances; they are made of pieces which are substances, or which are themselves composites of substances.
Living things are different: they are alive by virtue of having a soul (vegetative, sensitive, or rational, as the case may be), and this soul is in fact their substantial form. Machines have no substantial form.
This leads me to a bunch of other questions:
I understood all this better last night, before I started thinking about it.
Is the Trinity simply a way of thinking about God–or are the relationships by which the members of the Trinity are distinguished from each other real? Thomas addresses this point in Chapter 53:
The relations by which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinguished from one another are real relations, and not merely mental relations. Those relations are purely mental which do not correspond to anything found in the nature of things, but depend on intellectual apprehension alone. Thus right and left in a stone are not real relations, but only mental relations; they do not correspond to any real disposition present in the stone, but exist only in the mind of one who apprehends the stone as left, because it is, for instance, to the left of some animal.
Right. The stone is to the right or left, from my point of view; or I might speak of the right or left side of the stone, from my point of view; but there’s no part of the stone which is inherently and unequivocally the left side of the stone. So it’s a mental relation–it’s in my mind.
On the other hand, left and right in an animal are real relations, because they correspond to certain dispositions found in definite parts of the animal.
Animals–deer, let’s say–have a definite front and back, top and bottom, left and right. It’s not just in my mind. You and I might disagree about which side of the stone is the left side, but not about which of a deer’s antlers is the left antler. Unless you’re one of those people who get left and right mixed up.
Accordingly, since the relations whereby the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinguished really exist in God, the relations in question must be real relations, and are not merely mental relations.
It’s not a question of where we stand, or of point-of-view: the Father really does understand Himself; and He really does love His Word.
We’ve got house guests this evening, so I’ll be moving on to Chapter 53 of the Compendium Theologiae (and looking at and responding to comments) tomorrow.
So yesterday Thomas gave some objections to the notion of God being somehow Three yet also One. Today, in Chapter 52, he resolves the problem–he says. Hold on to your hats, as this is a long ‘un.
The principle for solving this difficulty must be derived from the fact that, among different classes of beings, the various ways in which one thing may arise or proceed from another, depend on the diversity of their natures. Among lifeless beings, which do not move themselves and are capable of being moved only from outside, one thing arises from another by being, as it were, outwardly altered and changed. In this way fire is generated from fire and air from air.
OK, one lifeless thing arises from another by being outwardly altered and changed. Stones can be worn down by a flowing stream, but they don’t change on their own. Got it.
But among living beings, which have the property of moving themselves, something is generated within the parent; for example, the young of animals and the fruits of plants. Moreover, the different manner of procession in living beings must be viewed according to their different powers and kinds of proceeding. Among such beings, there are certain powers whose operations extend only to bodies, so far as they are material. This is clear with regard to the powers of the vegetative soul, which serve nutrition, growth, and generation. In virtue of this class of the soul’s powers, there proceeds only what is corporeal and what is bodily distinct although, in the case of living beings, somehow joined to that from which it proceeds.
The soul, as “a thomist” has recently discussed, is that which a living thing has that it loses when it dies. Plants have a “vegetative soul”; this kind of soul, according to Thomas, and presumably to Aristotle, can only produce physical things, i.e., leaves and more plants.
There are other powers whose operations do not transcend the limits of bodies and yet extend to the species of bodies, receiving them without their accompanying matter. This is the case with all the powers of the sensitive soul. For sense is capable of receiving species without matter, as the Philosopher says [De anima, III, 4, 429 b 21]. But such faculties, although they are receptive of the forms of things in a sort of immaterial way, do not receive them without a bodily organ. If procession takes place within these powers of the soul, that which proceeds will not be something corporeal, nor will it be distinct or joined to that faculty whence it proceeds in a corporeal way, but in a certain incorporeal and immaterial fashion, although not entirely without the help of a bodily organ. Thus the representations of things imagined, which exist in the imagination not as a body in a body, but in a certain spiritual way, proceed in animals. This is why imaginary vision is called spiritual by Augustine [De Genesi ad litteram, XII, vii, 16; xxiv, 50].
Animals have a “sensitive soul”. That is, they have the senses of sight, smell, and so on. The dog sees, or perhaps smells, a fire hydrant, and an image of the hydrant forms in his sense–it proceeds from his sensitive soul. Animals–and people too–make use of this capability as well when imagining something that is not currently present. This image (is it, perchance, a form? a secondary substance? or is that reserved for the intellect?) is immaterial. Thus, we have a case of something immaterial proceeding with the aid of something corporeal. OK; and so?
But if something proceeds in a way that is not corporeal when the imagination is in action, this will be the case much more in the operation of the intellectual faculty, which can act without any bodily organ at all; its operation is strictly immaterial.
People have an intellectual soul: to the sense we add the intellect. And the intellect is completely immaterial; it is a function of the soul, not of the body.
Jacques Maritain, in his Introduction to Philosophy, has a good example of the difference between the sense and the intellect. Think of a square. Your sense gives you the image of some square you have seen, or perhaps a fuzzy amalgam of many squares you have seen. Your intellect tells you, “a plane figure with four equal sides which meet at right angles”. To make this even clearer, Maritain suggests that you ponder a myriagon, a regular polygon with 1000 sides. Any image you have is going to be woefully fuzzy, and well-nigh indistinguishable from a circle…but the concept of a 1000-sided polygon is perfectly crisp in your intellect.
As for the assertion that the intellect is completely immaterial…I dunno, it kind of makes sense to me.
For in intellectual operation a word proceeds in such a way that it exists in the very intellect of the speaker, not as though contained therein locally, nor as bodily separated therefrom, but as present there in a manner that is conformable to its origin. The same is true in that procession which is observed to take place in the operation of the will, so far as the thing loved exists in the lover, in the sense described above. However, although the intellectual and sensitive powers are nobler in their own scale of being than the powers of the vegetative soul, nothing that subsists in the nature of the same species proceeds either in men or in other animals according to the procession of the imaginative or sensitive faculties. This occurs only in that procession which takes place through the operation of the vegetative soul.
In other words, members of our own species only proceed from us through the operation of the vegetative soul, i.e., sexual reproduction does not necessarily involve the imagination or the intellect.
There are a vast number of smart-ass remarks I could make at this juncture, but I’ll keep them to myself.
The reason for this is that in all beings composed of matter and form, the multiplication of individuals in the same species is effected by a division of matter. Hence among men and other animals, composed as they are of form and matter, individuals are multiplied in the same species by the bodily division which ensues in the procession that is proper to the operation of the vegetative soul, but that does not take place in other operations of the soul. In beings that are not composed of matter and form, no distinction can be discerned other than that of the forms themselves. But if the form, which is the reason for the distinction, is the substance of a thing, the distinction must obtain between subsistent things. Of course, this is not the case if the form in question is not the substance of the thing.
Niggardly Phil and I spoke about some of this in yesterday’s comment thread. Beings not composed of matter and form, pure spirits, in other words, are each unique in their essence: their forms are distinct. But the above seems to be something of an aside.
As is clear from our discussion, every intellect has this in common, that what is conceived in the intellect must in some way proceed from the knower, so far as he is knowing; and in its procession it is to some extent distinct from him, just as the conception of the intellect, which is the intellectual likeness, is distinct from the knowing intellect. Similarly the affection of the lover, whereby the beloved is in the lover, must proceed from the will of the lover so far as he is loving.
That which I know exists in form in my intellect; and that which I love exists in form in my will. But these forms, while proceeding from my intellect and will, are nevertheless distinct from me: they are not essential to me, and in any event derive from another.
But, as Thomas reminds me, I’m not God:
But the divine intellect has this exclusive perfection: since God’s understanding is His existence, His intellectual conception, which is the intelligible likeness, must be His substance; and the case is similar with affection in God, regarded as loving. Consequently the representation of the divine intellect, which is God’s Word, is distinct from Him who produces the Word, not with respect to substantial existence, but only according to the procession of one from the other. And in God considered as loving, the same is true of the affection of love, which pertains to the Spirit.
The things that proceed from God, the Word and the Love for the Word, are distinct from God in that they proceed from Him; and yet must be the same in substance, as God’s will and His understanding are His existence and his essence.
It seems to me that Thomas could simply have said this, without going on about vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual souls; though it does, indeed, illustrate a nice progression of faculties, and also shows how our faculties differ from God’s.
Thus it is plain that nothing prevents God’s Word, who is the Son, from being one with the Father in substance, and that, nevertheless, the Word is distinct from the Father according to the relation of procession, as we have said. Hence it is also evident that the same thing does not arise or proceed from itself; for the Son, as proceeding from the Father, is distinct from Him. And the same observation holds true of the Holy Spirit, relative to the Father and the Son.
In short, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are different in one sense, and hence three, but the same in another, deeper sense, and hence one.
And St. Augustine’s little boy is still trying to empty the Mediterranean Sea with a seashell.
In some of the earlier chapters of the Compendium Theologiae, Thomas refers to various principles of science involving the four elements, air, earth, fire, and water. I passed over these rather quickly; Jacques Maritain in his Introduction to Philosophy tells me that I was right to do so. Maritain says that it’s appropriate for metaphysics to draw on the “special sciences,” i.e., physics, biology, and so forth, for illustrative examples, while not in fact depending on those examples for purposes of proof. In this way, though Thomas often alludes to contemporary notions of science, he only uses them for examples, and so this is not a problem for his philosophy or theology.
This, Maritain says, was the mistake of the “decadent Thomists” of the 18th century: they were determined to hang on to all of Aristotle and Thomas, including the parts belonging to the “special sciences”, and consequently were laughed out of court.