Henry of Ghent on real relationships

According to Henry, all real relationships are ultimately based on the absolute features, parts, or constituents of the things that are related. For instance, the fact that Peter is taller than Paul is based on the fact that Peter and Paul have certain heights, and the fact that the chairs in my kitchen are similar in color is based on the fact that they are all white. The same goes for any relationship: there is always some absolute basis for it.

Nevertheless, Henry does not believe that a real relationship consists simply in some x and y having the right sorts of absolute features, parts, or constituents, for if that were the case, then the only connection between x and y would be something we draw in our minds. But as Henry sees it, real relationships are real, so there must be some sort of genuine ‘relatedness’ that exists outside the mind.

However, Henry does not think this relatedness can be a distinct thing in its own right. After all, if it were a distinct thing, then it would have to be related to its basis by some further relatedness, and if that relatedness were also a distinct thing, it too would have to be related by yet another relatedness, and so on ad infinitum. But that is absurd, so Henry concludes that the relatedness we are seeking cannot be a distinct thing in its own right.

Instead, says Henry, it is just a special ‘way of being’ for the absolute basis in question. In particular, it is a way of being which ‘looks outwards at’ (respicit), and so points towards, something else. And this outward-looking characteristic (respectus) transforms, as it were, the absolute basis into a ‘pointing thing’. Hence, on Henry’s view, some x is really related to some y because it really has something in it that points towards y.

More on Ockham against Henry's Solution to the Creation Problem

The interesting thing about Ockham’s argumentation here is that it highlights the precise point of comparison that Henry draws between the divine essence and matter. For Henry, the divine essence is like matter because it is not produced in the Son. But that’s the only reason that Henry really has to say that the divine essence is like matter at all.

Ockham points out that it is at least logically possible that the form is unproduced. God could take an already existing form, and create new matter under it.

I don’t know, let’s construct an example. Suppose an ancient king has his servants build a giant gold statue of himself. God doesn’t like the king’s arrogance, so he destroys the gold, and replaces it with rusty iron, but he keeps the statue’s shape throughout the whole process.

Then the king becomes the laughing stock of his people. They’re all standing around, pointing, pushing each other over in the bushes and laughing.

Maybe something like that.

There we would have a case where the matter is produced but the form is not! So as Ockham sees it, it’s at least logically possible that the form is the constituent that is unproduced, not the matter.

Consequently, thinks Ockham, Henry has no reason to say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter. It could just as well be like a form.

So Ockham rejects Henry’s view just like Scotus. But Ockham takes a different approach. He rejects the whole idea of drawing an analogy between the divine essence and matter. That’s just too slippery a slope for Ockham.

But again, what’s amazing here is that Ockham doesn’t label Henry as a heretic, neither does Scotus. I mean, in their day, Scotus and Ockham are the minority. They’re the dissentors. Henry’s view was fairly popular, and Scotus and Ockham were the ones sitting there telling their classmates, “you guys got it all wrong.”

Ockham against Henry on the Creation Problem

Now, let’s turn to Ockham. Ockham essentially agrees with Scotus’s conclusions. He agrees that the divine essence is not material, and he agrees that it is a pre-existing ingredient in the Son, and therefore the Son is not created from nothing.

But Ockham attacks Henry’s view in a different way than Scotus. Ockham points out, “Okay Henry, so you say the divine essence is a lump of matter. Either you mean that literally, or figuratively.”

Well, obviously the divine essence is not literally a lump of matter. Everybody agrees that the divine essence cannot possibly be material in any literal way. So Henry must mean that the divine essence is like a lump of matter.

But, says Ockham, if you want to say that two things are alike, they must have something in common, and that commonality is what you base your comparison on.

So, for instance, let’s suppose that Socrates had the embarassing social habit of chewing his cud. Well, then we could say that Socrates is like Beulah the cow, because both chew cuds.

So also in the divine case. If Henry wants to say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter, then Henry is going to have to identify some feature that the divine essence has in common with matter.

However, says Ockham, sometimes two things share their commonalities with other things too. For instance, it’s not just Socrates and Beulah that chew their cuds. Camels, llamas, giraffes, and other such things chew their cuds too.

So if the only basis of comparison that we have for Socrates and Beulah is that they chew their cuds, well then we could just as easily say Socrates is like Elsie the Giraffe, or Hank the Llama.

Likewise in the divine case, says Ockham. Everything imitates God in some way, so we could say that the divine essence is like all sorts of things. We could say the divine essence is like a stane, or a warrior, or a guardian angel, or whatever.

If we want to say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter rather than something else, we’ve got to identify something that the divine essence has in common only with a lump of matter.

So Ockham says: “Fine. Let’s suppose that we can identify something that the divine essence has in common only with a lump of matter.”

But then, what if the divine essence has something in common only with something else too? For instance, the divine essence has certain things in common only with forms. Forms make things certain kinds of things. A human form makes something human, a bovine form makes something a cow, and so on. Similarly, the divine essence makes the divine persons divine, so it’s like a form in that very sense. And that’s something the divine essence has in common only with forms.

So even if we can say identify something that the divine essence has in common with matter, we can also identify something that the divine essence has in common with forms. So why should we say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter? We have just as much reason to say it is like a form!

As Ockham sees it, Henry is really on a slippery slope. Ockham’s a very literal kind of guy. He doesn’t like this analogy stuff. It doesn’t really do much philosophical work. So Ockham not only rejects the idea that the divine essence is literally a lump of matter, he also rejects the analogy.

Scotus on the Creation Problem

As I explained in the last post, Scotus argues against Henry of Ghent: the divine essence is not like 'materials' that the Son is made from. It's more like a shared form. Still, that leaves the question that Henry was grappling with: what about the Creation problem? Wouldn't the Son be created if he were not produced without any 'pre-existing materials'?

To that, Scotus says that the Son is not created. In order for something to be created, Scotus says it must be produced with at least one pre-existing ingredient. But that doesn’t have to be some kind of material. It could be a form, or any other sort of constituent. What matters is simply that it is a pre-existing ingredient, so to speak.

So as Scotus sees it, we don’t need to say that the Son is produced with materials in order to avoid the Creation Problem. All we need to say is that the Son is produced with some sort of pre-existing ingredient. And of course, the divine essence is a pre-existing ingredient in the Son, because it already exists in the Father.

But it’s not like a lump of matter or any other sort of material. We don’t need to appeal to materials to solve the Creation Problem.

What’s interesting here is that Scotus accuses Henry of being incoherent. Scotus doesn’t say to Henry, “you’re a heretic,” or anything like that. There’s nothing religious about this. This is purely philosophical. Scotus rejects Henry’s view simply on philosophical grounds.

This is amazing to me. You would think that one of the first things people would say to Henry is that he is heretical. God is not material in any way. But that wasn’t the case. Henry garnered a healthy group of followers. So these scholastic Christians didn’t see Henry as a heretic or a nutjob. Henry’s view seemed to many as perfectly sane.

So this tells me that we need to be very careful about our pre-conceived ideas of medieval philosophy. We need to be careful about thinking of medieval philosophy as an era of superstition, or the Dark Ages, or everybody just bowing to the Pope. There was some really imaginative philosophical thinking going on here.

But again, this is all stuff that we’re just learning about. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff here in the medieval period, and we’re only just starting to learn about it.