On Illegal Moves

Many years ago when Lee Faber and I were in high school together we used to play chess. Good times were usually had by all, until one or the other got too wrapped up in the game and then started losing. More than once a game with Faber ended with him overturning the chess board in rage, scattering all the pieces. He may or may not have yelled, "How's that for checkmate, jerk!?" I may or may not have behaved in a similar manner on one or more occasions.

Later, back when I began college--still many years ago now--we stopped playing chess and moved on to the far eastern game Go, a much more complex, subtle, and nuanced game. In chess each player is trying to find the checkmate move or the path to checkmate at all times. Go is different: in Go if I can play a checkmate move that means that you have played a lot of boneheaded moves in a row. In a game with skilled players each side builds up his position step by step, carefully accounting for his opponents moves with each play and balancing his own position against them. In a good game the entire board remains balanced until the end, where finally one side proves to have been the (slightly) stronger.

So, when Faber and I grew up we abandoned chess and took up this new game. There was certainly a learning process to go through. It was a challenge to realize, and then to act on, the principle that the game is not about seeking death for the opponent, and that in fact this strategy usually ends up making one lose. And it's just possible that Faber and/or I may have overturned a board mid-game a time or two. But eventually we began to discover the pleasure of a game that was not so much about victory and defeat as about beautiful and elegant play--on both sides, ideally.

Grown-ups don't toss the board and call it checkmate. They don't demand to start over and then make the exact same moves all over again, acting as though the intervening moves never happened. They certainly don't claim to win based on the merits of insults directed at their opponents' mothers. Not, at least, if they want other grown-ups to play with them.

Scotus on Why the Son Does Not Generate, etc.

Time to bring the discussion back to the top. I've been meaning to post this for the last two days, but my blogging time is limited. Anonymous Commenter mentions the "momentous pauses on the blog when an entry doesn't come about until days or even weeks later," for which I apologize. The explanation is simple: both Lee and myself are working on our dissertations, and real work has to come first. In fact mine is nearly done and I hope to have a finished draft in to my director by the end of the weekend, which means I've been doing a lot of boring footnote work rather than the spirited polemics we all love best. Speaking of which, apologies to any and all for the acrimonious tone which always seems to creep into these discussions. I'll try to stick to the arguments. Meanwhile we appreciate our (tiny handful of) loyal readers!

Mr Jones comments in the Cross thread:

The rest of what you say is fine. Here is the problem: . . . What your saying is that the Son inherits the principle property of causing a divine person because "what he has is only the Father's, i.e. the substance of the Father"? So if the Son inherits the principle property of causing a person, so should the Spirit since He inherits the same substance. By your gloss Principle and to be Father are not co-extensive, since the Son shares it. So it is not an exclusive personal feature. On my view, principle is the exclusive personal feature of the Father.

I agree that some clarification is needed here. At the same time Mr Jones' objection seems ambiguous at best. I would not admit that there is any "principle property of causing a divine person"--first because this again seems to be equivocating on "principle" as it's being used here; second because, as EP have themselves rightly pointed out in past discussions, "causing a divine person" is not a personal property in divinis. It is a fact that both the Son and the Spirit are "caused", but there is no real generic property of which generation and spiration are species.

The real problem, namely why the Son does not inherit generation and the Spirit spiration, since they both inherit the divine substance which is the principle of all action, needs more elaboration. For my purposes I will use Scotus' Reportatio I-A, which has the merit of being published alongside an English translation by Allan Wolter and Oleg Bychkov, sparing me the trouble of making my own translations. I make some slight emendations, however, in the snippets which follow.

I turn then to Dist. 7 Q.1, "Is the principle of producing in the divine a relation or the essence, or is [it] something absolute or relative?" This is a long question, but the money quote is this:

the divine essence is the formal principle of producing some person--moreover, sufficiently without any determination--but it cannot proceed to function unless the personal property concurs. And if the formal principle of producing something is understood in this way . . . I concede that the relation concurs with the essence to produce the Son, not to determine the essence which is determined of itself, but in order that the latter may come to be in proximate potency for acting, in which i can only be insofar as it is an individual subject and person.

I.e., the essence is the entire sufficient cause for what is generated being God. But in order for generation to take place the personal property of the Father--generation--has to "concur" with the essence. It is not the essence taken all by itself that generates, but the essence concurring with Fatherhood, i.e. the essence precisely as existing in the Father qua Father. Therefore when Mr Jones says "On my view, principle is the exclusive personal feature of the Father," I say we must distinguish between the principium quod and the principium quo.

The Son, then, does not generate, and for the same reason the Spirit does not spirate. Here is Scotus in Dist.7 Q.2 on why it is impossible for the Son to generate:

If the Son had the potency to generate, either he would generate by the same generation as the Father does, or by another. Not by the same; for if he did, the Son would generate himself, just as the Father generates him. Not by another generation, because there is no more than one production of a given sort in God because each is of itself just this, as was proved above in distinction 2, and also each production is suited precisely to its productive principle; therefore in no way does the Son have the potency of generating.

There can only be one generation and one spiration in God. If they were two generations, there would have to be something to distinguish them. But what would this be? There is no "principle of individuation" in God besides Himself. The Son cannot generate because, if he did, his generation would be identical with the generation of the Father, and thus what the Son would generate would be the Son, and thus the Son would generate Himself, which is contradictory and absurd. It is not contradictory and absurd for the Son to spirate, because the Son is not the Spirit. The Son receives his ability to spirate from the Father along with everything else pertaining to His Sonship. But the spiration of the Father and the Son is one spiration, not two, for there can only be one spiration in God. It is contradictory, however, for the Spirit to spirate, because what is spirated in God is the Spirit, and thus the Spirit would spirate Himself.

Also relevant is this bit later in Dist. 7 Q.2:

It must be said that this is not a precise expression: 'the essence is the principle of generation.' Indeed it is a truncated version unless it is specified 'the essence is the principle of generation for this one, namely the Father'; therefore it does not follow that there will be a potency to generate in the Son, indeed that is a fallacy of accident. For the essence is in the Son under such an aspect, under which the minor extreme, the potency to generate, is repugnant to him, as has been shown.

For divine generation both divinity and Fatherhood are required; in one sense divinity is the principle, since it is God which is generated, and in another Fatherhood is the principle, because it is the Father Who generates by His divinity; the Son does not have generating divinity but generated divinity. Similarly with the Spirit.

One final quote, from Dist. 12 Q.3:

This action of spiration can be considered in three ways: either in itself or towards another, or as it is in supposits acting. In the first two ways there is uniformity, just as if it were of one supposit. But in the third way, this action would not be uniformly from these supposits. For the Father has nothing that has been born, and whatever the Son has was received through generation. In this way, therefore, they would have the spiration action according to a certain order, and by reason of this a certain diversity could be asserted. And in this way one should understand the authorities; for I don't understand them in any other way.

There is only one spiration in God in itself. There is only one Spirit spirated. But there are two persons spirating, and the way they spirate is different, for the Father is the "principle" of spiration in this sense, that he spirates in virtue of his fontal plenitude, his being the source of everything in the Godhead, whereas the Son spirates in virtue of receiving everything He has from the Father. The Father spirates from Himself alone, then, whereas the Son spirates only through the Father and with the same spiration as the Father.

A very great deal more could be said, but perhaps this post is long enough. On final note. Mr Jones says "as far as explanation goes I don't find anything proffered by Bonaventure and Scotus that wasn't already covered by Alcuin and Ratramnus." I admit I don't know how to take this. Do Alcuin and Ratramnus really say what Scotus says in this post? If so I would be astonished. The increase in theologians' explanatory power from the beginning to the end of the thirteenth century alone is incredible, and also obvious to anyone to anyone who reads both early and late scholastics.

St Thomas on Existence/Essence and Identity

Mr Jones at Energetic Processions offers the following from St Thomas:

“Therefore that thing, whose existence differs from its essence, must have its existence caused by another. But this cannot be true of God; because we call God the first efficient cause. Therefore it is impossible that in God His existence should differ from His essence.” - ST Ia. Q.3 A.4

“Therefore “suppositum” and nature in them are identified. Since God then is not composed of matter and form, He must be His own Godhead, His own Life, and whatever else is thus predicated of Him.” - ST Ia. Q.3 A.3

“The truth of this question is quite clear if we consider the divine simplicity. For it was shown above (Question 3, Article 3) that the divine simplicity requires that in God essence is the same as “suppositum,” which in intellectual substances is nothing else than person. But a difficulty seems to arise from the fact that while the divine persons are multiplied, the essence nevertheless retains its unity. And because, as Boethius says (De Trin. i), “relation multiplies the Trinity of persons,” some have thought that in God essence and person differ, forasmuch as they held the relations to be “adjacent”; considering only in the relations the idea of “reference to another,” and not the relations as realities. But as it was shown above (Question 28, Article 2) in creatures relations are accidental, whereas in God they are the divine essence itself. Thence it follows that in God essence is not really distinct from person; and yet that the persons are really distinguished from each other. For person, as above stated (29, 4), signifies relation as subsisting in the divine nature. But relation as referred to the essence does not differ therefrom really, but only in our way of thinking; while as referred to an opposite relation, it has a real distinction by virtue of that opposition. Thus there are one essence and three persons.” - ST Ia. Q.39 A.1

He doesn't here actually make an argument, but the implications, he thinks, are clear. In his comments he writes:

The whole thomistic tradition says that the persons of the trinity are identical to the divine essence. What does that amount to? Chicken scratch? Goody for you if you can prove that some Franciscans don’t make this mistake, bad for you that you commune with heretics that do. . . . Oh so when Aquinas says that essence and existence are identical in God it means they are not something other but actually the same thing, but when he says that one of the person’s of the trinity is identical to the essence that use of identity means something different. Okay…more Roman Catholic sophistry to document.

Respondeo: Yes, the identity of essence and existence in God and the identity of person and nature in God are not exactly the same. The quotes in Mr Jones' latest post show this clearly.

The identity of essence and existence, due to God's simplicity, is such as to make each of God's essential attributes really identical with each other and only notionally distinct (for Thomas, let's be clear, not for me). God's existence, goodness, eternity, are all really one and the same "item".

The identity of the persons with the essence is not the same. They are identical in the sense that there is in one sense one "item" and in another sense three "items". In no sense are there four "items": essence, Father, Son, and Spirit, such as there would be if any or all of the divine Persons were *really* distinct from the essence in any way. This is in fact precisely Thomas' denial of E.P.'s "God in general" accusation--the divine essence is not a universal property to which is added an individuating difference, i.e. Divinity+Paternity=God the Father. Thomas denies this. Rather, the Person who has God's Paternity=God. In that sense, God the Father (the supposit) is the same "thing" or "reality" (rem) as the divine existence/essence. There is no actually existing reality in God other than the divine ousia--God the Father is not something other than God, more, less, or different. There is no composition of personal properties with nature in God which would produce an additional something.

BUT the divine existence/essence and God the Father are NOT identical in the sense that referring to the single divine nature refers to a single divine supposit or person. God the Father is God (the existence/essence, ousia), God the Son is God, but God the Father is not God the Son. The Persons are really distinct from one another, not notionally. Because of this we have to say that the identity of the persons with the nature is not the identity of the = sign, as is the case (for Thomas) with God's essence and existence and essential properties.

God the Father cannot be really distinct from the divine essence because he is wholly God and in no way something other than God. There is no reality in God the Father which is not God. Nevertheless, it is not the case that, simply, Divinity=Paternity, the way that Divine Immensity=Divine Eternity, because God the Son is God, he has all Divinity, but he has no Paternity. There are two related but distinct senses of identity in play. All three Persons are identical with the essence (and with each other) in the sense that there is only one SOMETHING. There are, however, really three SOMEONES. All three persons are really distinct from each other, because the Father is not the Son is not the Spirit. To the extent, then, that Father/=Son, or Paternity/=Filiation, and yet Father=God and Son=God, there is a difference between the *kind* of identity Thomas postulates between the Person(s) and the essence and that between the existence and the essence/attributes.

I think this is clear enough in Thomas, although it could be clearer. And it is not my position--I don't think Thomas has the conceptual tools to adequately express the different kinds of identity he has in mind, which makes him a bit confusing and occasionally sounds almost contradictory--but I don't think it's heretical and I don't think it falls prey to Mr Jones' objections. Rather, I think he misunderstands and misconstrues Thomas, because he gives him the least possible sympathetic reading. He's looking for heresy and so he finds it. But everyone should know how easy it is to apply the same trick to any of the Fathers.

In any case, it's easy to call something sophistry when one makes no attempt to understand it on its own terms and shows no inclination or ability to think through difficult distinctions.

This will be my last response to Mr Jones.

The Finitude of Trinitarian Persons

Now that I have finished two of my three major papers for the semester I have gone back to studying for exams. In the middle of a detailed series of questions on the nature of the status of the accidents in the Eucharist following the conversion (in which Scotus argues that inherence is not part of the essence of an accident, and that therefore accidents inhere only by a further addition of inherence, which leads to a twofold distinction of accidents into accidens intrinsecus adveniens and accidens extrinsecus adveniens), I came across the following quote in which the subtle doctor argues for that the Trinitarian persons are finite. This view of course as far as I can tell is the standard view; having come from an almost non-creedal (at least in the traditional sense of creed...they were quite fond of the 'no creed but the bible' line although they held numerous extra-biblical doctrines) branch of Christianity I found this fact quite surprising, but it does make sense once one thinks about it. The persons are finite in the sense that one is not the other; they themselves are the boundaries of the others.

Incidentally, In all this reading on the Eucharist I have gotten quite the dialectical experience. I started with Thomas. But in the Leonine edition the text of Thomas is accompanied by that of Cajetan's commentary, most of which is simply an attack on Scotus and Durandus. Moving to Scotus, however, one finds that his text is printed next to 16th or 17th century commentaries, who spend a lot of time attacking Cajetan and the Thomists. So it makes for exciting reading.

In any case, here is what Scotus says about the Trinity.

Ordinatio IV d. 12 q. 2 (Wadding XVII 574-5):

"...nulla enim perfectione formaliter infinita caret aliqua persona divina, quia tunc non esset simpliciter perfecta; sed quaelibet caret aliqua relatione originis; ergo nulla relatio est formaliter infinita, et hoc patet ex ratione perfectionis simpliciter, quia secundum Anselmum Monol. 15 'Est illud quod in quolibet melius est ipsum quam non ipsum' non autem potest relatio esse simpliciter nobilior suo opposito, quia relativa sunt simul natura."

translation: For a person does not lack some formally infinite perfection, because then he would not then be absolutely perfect; but whichever person does lack a relation of origin. Therefore no relation of origin is formally infinite, and this is clear from the definition of perfection unqualifiedly, because according to Anselm in chapter 15 of the Monologium "[perfection] is that which it is better to have than not to have"; relation, however, cannot be unqualifiedly more nobler than its opposite, because relatives are simultaneous in nature

De constitutivo divinarum personarum

Today's snippet is from Scotus's discussion of whether the divine persons are consituted by something relative or absolute. In the Ordinatio he doesn't explicitly side with one opinion or the other, but gives thorough replies to objections for both positions. The vat. editors say that he holds the absolute side as being more probable than the common opinion. As far as I could tell, it comes from considering the intellect and will as principles of the processions and in same way as quasi effective causes. The part I'm posting is actually part of his defense of the absolute position, where he talks about Scriptural and Ecclesiastical authority with respect to theological opinion. It's too long to type out the latin too.

Ord. I d. 26 q. un. nn.70-72 [vat. ed. 6 p. 29]:

It seems therefore that it can be said that if the New Scriptures expressly preferred that those persons are relative, and this is of the substance of the faith, nevertheless it is not found expressly that relations are the primary forms [primae formae], primarily constituting and distinguishing the persons, -the church has not declared this. It was not declared in the Apostle’s Creed, nor in the Nicene Creed, nor in the general council under Innocent III, nor in the general council under Gregory X in Lyon, nor in any other council, because still some authentic things are clearly handed down in the Scriptures [I’m not sure how to take this last bit; it almost seems contradictory: “quod adhuc manifeste videatur traditum in Scriptura aliqua authentica].

If therefore Christ did not teach this nor the Church declare it, namely, that the persons are distinguished primarily by relatins, it does not seem then that this should be asserted as being of the faith, because if that is not true, it does not seem to be reverently said about the divine persons that they are "subsistent relations"; nevertheless if it is true, but not handed down as if it were a certain truth, it does not seem safe to assert this just as if it must be held as a certain truth. And although it may be true that the persons are distinguished by relations (et by standing in this generally, the saints labored how distinction of persons could stand with unity of essence), nevertheless it is not fitting to deny that some distinction quasi prior can be posited, which also grants that distinction [ie, that the persons are constituted by relations] -so that every way holds that affirmative true, that namely the divine persons are distinguished by relations, although some way might say that some real distinction quasi preceeds that distinction. Nor is it fitting to bind an article of faith handed down in general, to one special meaning, as if that general meaning cannot be true unless in that special: and just as that article, that the "Word of God is made man", is not fitting to be limited to one determinate mode (which is not expressed in the canon nor by the Church), so that it cannot be true unless that mode whould be true; for this is to reduce an article of faith to uncertainty, if something might be uncertain which is not handed down just as an article of faith (for it seems uncertain that it cannot be held without another uncertain one).

If that position be held, it should be said that that absolute reality, - constituting the persons and distinguishing them - would not be a reality to itself [ad se] just as essentials are to themselves, but a personal reality and to itself in the second mode [1st mode=quid, 2nd =aliquem], according to the distinction of that master [Bonaventure-this has incensed various Bonaventurian editors] posited in the beginning of the opinion.