Bodies, Animals, and Minds 13 --- Quote from Ockham

From Quod. 2.11 (Freddoso/Kelley translation, p. 137):

"When a human being or a brute animal dies, numerically the same accidents remain as were there previously; therefore, they have numerically the same subject. The consequence is evident from the fact that an accident does not naturally migrate from subject to subject. But the subject in this case is not primary matter, since if it were, then primary matter would be the immediate recipient of absolute accidents --- which does not seem true. Therefore, some form that was there previously remains, and this form is not the sentient soul. Therefore, it is the [form of] corporeity.

The assumption, viz., that numerically the same accidents are in the living animal and the dead animal, I prove from the fact that if the accidents [of the dead animal] were different, they would at least be the same in species as the accidents of the living animal. This is evident from the fact that they are so similar that a human being is not able to discriminate between them."

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 12 --- Ockham 4

What about the mind? Ockham also thinks that is a distinct thing too. But here, his reasons are theological. Like most Latin-speaking scholastics of his day, Ockham was a Christian, so he believed that the mind (or soul) survives after death.

If I were to die in the next few seconds, my mind would continue to exist, as a free-floating mind of sorts. But the animal in me would not survive, for animals cannot survive without a body. Hence, the mind that is doing all this thinking here, and the animal that is standing here now --- these must be distinct things too, just as the body and the animal that are standing here must be distinct as well.

For Ockham then, there are three distinct things here, and they all occupy the same region of space. There’s a body, there’s an animal, and there’s a mind. And this allows Ockham to easily explain things like why we leave a corpse behind when we die.

On the other hand, Ockham’s view doesn’t do justice to the intuitions that Aquinas heeded, namely the idea that here in this region of space, we normally think that there is just one thing here, namely a living organism who goes by the name of JT. So both Ockham and Aquinas do justice to certain intuitions we have about human beings, but they fail to do justice to all our intuitions.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 11 --- Ockham 3

However, even though my body must survive my death, Ockham thinks the animal that is standing here right now --- that would not survive my death. When I die, the animal dies too. And again, Ockham thinks we have good reason to think this. When you look at the place where I am now standing, you can clearly see something that is sentient, but if I were to die, nothing sentient would be left.

For Ockham then, it seems obvious that the body standing up here would survive my death, but the animal standing up here would not. And that, thinks Ockham, means that the body and the animal up here cannot be the same thing.

This also captures a deep-seated intuition that we have. We tend to think that if two things are actually one and the same thing, then whatever is true of one must also be true of the other. For example, the great Roman senator Cicero also went by the name Tully. Now, if Cicero and Tully are indeed the very same person, then whatever is true of one must also be true of the other. If Cicero were speaking in the Roman senate at this very moment, then Tully would be too. Conversely, if Cicero were speaking in the senate, but Tully were off drinking at the pub, then we would assume that Cicero and Tully could not be the same person.

So also, thinks Ockham, would this apply to the body and the animal that occupy this region of space where I am now standing. If I were to die in a few seconds, then one of them would end up lying on the floor, but the other one would be gone altogether. So surely the body and the animal you see here cannot be the same thing. Ockham thus concludes that they must be distinct things altogether. For Ockham, there is, in fact, a distinct body and a distinct animal standing up here in this very same spot.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 10 --- Ockham 2

For Ockham, the fact that my living body and my corpse are so similar implies that they must be the very same body (not different bodies, as Aquinas would say).

This captures another intuition that we have about material objects. When we watch something over a period of time, we assume that if it looks much the same at the beginning and end of that block of time, it must be the same thing.

For instance, a rusty old Jaguar has been sitting in my driveway for the past three years, and it looks much the same now as it did three years ago. I’ve seen it change a little (it’s become more rusty and discolored), but for the most part, it looks very much the same. And I assume that it is, in fact, the very same car. I doubt very much that anybody has stealthily replaced it with another, nearly identical looking car overnight.

We make the same sorts of judgments about most things, including people. We watch our loved ones age, but none of us would think they ever get replaced by nearly identical clones. And the same goes for my corpse. Why would we ever think that it would be a different body from the one that is standing here now? Surely my body survives my death. Or so Ockham would say.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 9 --- Ockham 1

Aquinas was not the only medieval philosopher around back then, and his view about human beings was not the only view floating around either. In fact, it was a highly unpopular view. Most medieval philosophers disagreed entirely. Ockham, for example, finds the problem of the corpse decisive.

Suppose that I die a few seconds from now. As I said before, my body would fall lifeless to the floor, and you would be left with a corpse on your hands. But compare my body now with the soon-to-be corpse. How would they differ?

As Ockham sees it, they wouldn’t differ at all. On the contrary, they would be exactly similar in every way. They would have the same color, the same size, and so on. They would even have the same cells. Of course, the cells would start to decay after I die, but at the moment just before my death and the moment just after my death, there would be exactly the same cells (or very nearly). And that, thinks Ockham, gives us a very strong reason to think that they are, in fact, the very same body.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 8 --- Aquinas 6

On Aquinas’s view, when I die, I go away, and a new object (a corpse) pops into existence to fill the same region of space. That seems weird. Most people think that our bodies remain after we die, with the difference between my current body and the soon-to-be corpse on the floor being just that the one has life and the other does not. That is another deep-seated intuition many people have; when we die, most people think that what departs is my life, not my body.

Now, if you think that humans are composed of bodies and minds (or souls, as some call them), then you could easily explain this. For you could say that when I die, my soul goes away, but my body remains. And that would very nicely explain how my body continues to exist after I die.

But this is not an option that is open to Aquinas. Again, remember that he thinks there is just one thing occupying this region of space where I am now standing, not two. There are not two distinct things here, a body and a soul, one of which could go away at death and the other of which could remain.

Aquinas thinks there is just one thing here, and so when it goes away, there’s nothing else left to fill this region of space. Consequently, the corpse that we would see here would have to be something new, something that would have to pop into existence at the moment of my death, and which would fill the very same region of space.

Interestingly, Aquinas is aware of this consequence, and he doesn’t mind it. On the contrary, he completely accepts it. ‘Yes’, he would say, ‘when you die, you would cease to exist there (you would get whisked away to heaven), and a new thing --- a corpse --- would come into being’.

So there are some nice things about Aquinas, and some not so nice things. When he says that there is just one thing that fills this region of space where I am now standing, he does seem to do justice to many of our intutions about material objects and living organisms. On the other hand, his view does entail that when I die, a new thing (a corpse) pops into existence, and that seems odd.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 7 --- Aquinas 5

Even though Aquinas’s view does line up with certain intuitons we have about material objects and living organisms, Aquinas’s view does have some odd consequences. The most important of those runs as follows.

What would happen if I were to suddenly die in the next few seconds? Well, my body would fall lifeless to the floor, and you would be left with a corpse on your hands. But the question is: would that lifeless corpse be the same body as the living one that is standing here now?

Aquinas would have to say no. Remember: Aquinas maintains that here in this region of space that I am now occupying, there is just one thing, and that’s me. So, if I were to die, one of two things could happen. Either this one thing (me) would cease to exist altogether, or it would get whisked away to the ‘other side’ (heaven, hell, or wherever it is you think dead people go). Indeed, that’s what it means for something to die: it ceases to exist, or it goes away to the ‘other side’.

But either way, the thing that occupies this region of space right now would no longer be here. Consequently, the corpse would have to be something new, something that pops into existence at the moment of my death and then fills the exact same spot where I was standing a moment before. Crazy, eh?

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 6 --- Aquinas 4

A third intuition we have has to do with counting. Suppose I pointed to this region of space where I am now standing, and then I asked you, ‘how many things do you see here?’ Surely you would say ‘one’. If you said ‘two’ or ‘three’, I would probably think you weren’t seeing straight. I would think you were drunk and seeing doubles or triples. I would think that something was wrong with your vision.

So we tend to count each living organism as one thing, not more than one thing, and again, Aquinas really captures this intuition. You don’t count three objects standing here in this region of space. You just count one, and that’s me.

Henc, there is something very nice about Aquinas’s view that there is just one thing in this region of space where I am now standing. It certainly lines up with the three aforementioned intuitions we have about material objects and living organisms.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 5 --- Aquinas 3

Another deep-seated intuition we have is that two material objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time. Take any two material objects and try to get them into the same space. You can’t do it. They bounce off each other; they repel each other. And indeed, this is precisely why we don’t try to park our cars in spots that are already occupied by other cars.

The same goes for human beings. As Aquinas sees it, if there were a distinct body and a distinct animal in this region of space where I am now standing, then there would be two material objects in the same place at the same time, and surely that’s impossible. Aquinas’s view captures this intuition nicely as well: there can only be one thing here in this spot right now, and that’s me.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 4 --- Aquinas 2

In the last post, I explained that for Aquinas, there is just one thing occupying this region of space where I am now standing, and that’s me, a human being. Aquinas thinks it would be ludicrous to say that there is a distinct body, animal, and mind in this same region of space.

Now, at first sight, that probably sounds right to most people, and for good reason: it lines up with a number of intuitions that we have about material objects, and especially about living organisms.

For example, one intuition we have is that living organisms exhibit a very tight kind of internal unity. That is, the parts and functions of an organism are tied together very tightly and integrated into one single entity. It’s not as if I’m made of a bunch of lego bricks that can be pulled apart at will. If you pulled off my leg, it would be incredibly painful, and I would very likely die from blood loss, if the shock didn’t kill me first. I’m not a loose blob of parts; there’s a very tight connection between everything within me.

So we tend to think about living organisms as tightly unified individuals, and Aquinas’s view captures this intuition very well. When asked what it is that occupies this region of space where I am now standing, there’s got to be just one thing here, namely a single living organism (me).

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 3 --- Aquinas 1

In the last post, I pointed out that if we look at the region of space where I am now standing, we can identify at least three different sorts of things: an organic body, a living animal, and a mind. The question is, though, how are these three things related? Are they three distinct things in the same region of space, or is there just one thing here?

According to Aquinas, it would be ludicrous to say that here in this region of space that I now occupy, there are three entirely distinct things. As Aquinas sees it, there’s just one thing here, and it’s me, a human being.

Aquinas gives a number of arguments for why this must be so, but the one that really gets to the heart of his view is this: if a ‘human being’ were actually just a bunch of other individual things that just happened to occupy the same spot, then a ‘human being’ would really just be an aggregate of those other things. As Aquinas himself puts it:

‘Many . . . things do not make up one [larger] thing unless something unifies them and ties them together. So, for example, if Socrates were both an animal and a mind . . . , those two things would need to be united by some link that would make them into one thing. But since there is no such link [ex hypothesi], Socrates would just be an aggregate or a heap of many things’. --- From Quaestiones de Anima, in the Responsio to question 11.

And Aquinas clearly thinks that would be absurd. A human being is one individual thing, not a conglomerate of many things occupying the same region of space.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 2 --- The Aristotelian Background

As with most medieval issues, the place to start is Aristotle, for he really set the terms of the debate. To start, consider the spot where I am now standing. Now let’s ask this question: what occupies this region of space? Aristotle thinks we could give a number of different answers here.

(1) For instance, one thing that fills this region of space is a body, i.e., this chunky lump of tissue bumbling around up here. And this is not just any old body. It’s not made of clay, or steel, or any other sort of inorganic material. It’s made of flesh and blood, bones and organs. In short, it’s an organic body. So one option is that there’s an organic body in this region of space.

(2) A second answer might be that there’s an animal here. For Aristotle, the defining characteristic of animals is that they are sentient, which is to say that they are aware of and responsive to the outside world. And indeed, I have five senses through which I access the outside world: I can see things, smell things, touch things, and so on. So here we have another option: there’s an animal standing here in this region of space.

(3) A third answer you might give is that there is a mind here, i.e., something with an intellect and will. Of all the animals on our planet, only humans are able to think in complicated ways, love our spouses and children deeply, take stands on moral issues, and so on. These are the sorts of things that can only be done by a mind (or at least by a thinking thing). So here we have yet another option: that there’s a mind which in some sense or other resides in this region of space.

So Aristotle thinks we can identify at least three things in this region of space. At the very least, there’s a body here, there’s an animal here, and there’s a mind here (or at least a thinking thing).

But how are these three related? Are they three entirely distinct things that all occupy the same region of space simultaneously, perhaps like how if we look at a wet sponge, we could say that the water and the sponge occupy the same region of space as well? Or is there just one thing occupying this region of space, and it has the characteristics of a body, an animal, and a mind?

That’s the basic question. Next, I’ll turn to Aquinas.

Bodies, Animals, and Minds 1

One of the things that medieval philosophers debated was this: how many substantial forms do material substances (especially human beings) have? This is known as the controversy over the plurality of forms. The debate can seem rather abstract and archaic, what with all the matter and form stuff. It may be abstract, but it’s not at all archaic. It still occupies philosophers today. In this series of posts, I want to introduce the topic in a way which I hope will make the basic problems and issues clear. So here goes.

One way into the debate is to think about this question: what exactly is a human being, or perhaps even a (human) person? Most of us would agree that we have bodies, we are all living animals, and we have minds. But which of those is crucial for being a (human) person? All of them? Just one of them? Some combination of them? Or perhaps none of them at all?

To help bring the issue into focus, consider the following. Sometimes people suffer severe head trauma, and as a result, they lapse into a vegetative state. Sometimes the damage is so bad that they require life support. They need machines to keep the heart beating and the lungs breathing.

What do we want to say about the person then? When I have my students deal with this question, many of them start off by arguing that when the mental activity stops, the person stops too, so to speak. And that suggests that the body is not that important for personhood. ‘It’s the mind that matters’, my students tell me.

But we can further push the point. Philosophers sometimes hypothesize about science-fiction sorts of scenarios, one of which is brain transplants. Imagine if we could take my mind --- all of its abilities, knowledge, memories, personal quirks, and so on --- and then transfer it into another body. Where would I be then? Would I go with my mind into the next body, or would I have left an important part of me behind in the old body?

In the next post, I’ll start digging into how the scholastics dealt with these sorts of questions.

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.

Duns Scotus against Henry on the Creation Problem

Even though Henry of Ghent garnered a healthy group of followers (see the last post for details), there were some dissentors. Scotus was one of the students that grew up under Henry. In fact, Scotus may have even sat in Henry’s classroom. But unlike many of his classmates, Scotus was not happy with Henry’s theory. Scotus was against it.

Scotus’s real problem with Henry’s view is this: it makes the divine essence the subject of incompatible properties. I mean, fatherhood and sonship are incompatible. In logic, we would call them irreflexive relations. Someone can be the father of someone else, and someone can be the son of someone else. But nobody can be the father and son of himself, right? So if the divine essence were like a lump of matter that exemplified both fatherhood and sonship, then the divine essence would be both the father and son of itself! And that’s just flat out impossible.

Indeed, that’s like saying that a lump of clay is shaped like both a statue and a vase at the same time. But that’s crazy. A lump of clay has got to be one or the other, it can’t be both.

So Scotus thinks we cannot say that the divine essence is like a lump of matter or subject of fatherhood and sonship. On the contrary, says Scotus, the divine essence has got to be more like a form that the persons share.

Henry of Ghent on How the Son is Produced 'From Materials'

As I explained in the last post, Henry of Ghent argues that the Son must be produced from materials in some sense, for otherwise the Son would quite literally be created 'from nothing'. Still, Henry recognizes that he needs to explain how that is possible.

To do that, Henry points out that according to Aristotle, you produce things by taking a lump of matter and giving it a form. As an analogy, a sculptor makes a clay statue by taking a lump of clay, and giving it a statue shape. Similarly, says Aristotle, anything that gets produced is made by taking a lump of matter and giving it a form.

Henry likes this model. He points out, “look, the matter is not produced, but the form is”. A sculptor doesn’t produce the clay. She simply gives it a shape. Something similar happens in the Godhead.

According to Henry, and indeed all his scholastic contemporaries, each divine person includes two ingredients: first, there’s a shared divine essence. This is a single item that all three share. So it’s not like sharing a piece of cake where you cut it up into pieces and dish it out. The divine essence is one, undivided thing that exists in all three persons.

Second, each person has a unique ingredient that belongs only to them. These are called ‘personal properties’. So to take the Father and Son, the Father’s unique ingredient is called fatherhood, and the son’s is called sonship. So the Father and Son each share one divine essence, but they also each have their own unique ingredient, fatherhood or sonship.

Henry then says, “look, the divine essence is shared by the Father and Son. So the Father doesn’t produce it in the Son. He just shares it. Sonship, on the other hand, does get produced with the Son. It is unique to the Son, so it only exists when the Son does. So the divine essence is not produced in the Son, but his sonship is.”

And that’s just like a clay statue. The clay does not get produced, but its shape does. So Henry concludes that the divine essence is like a lump of matter, and the personal properties are like forms.

If you can imagine three gold statues all made from the same lump of gold at the same time, that’s very close to what Henry has in mind.

Now, if you think about the medieval context here, this might seem like a really wild idea. This is the age of high scholasticism and perfect being theology, so surely Henry would get condemned as a heretic, and denounced as a crazy man.

But amazingly, that’s not the case. Henry actually ended up with a number of loyal supporters on this issue. Among his students, and even among the next generation of students after that, a number of them thought Henry had hit the nail on the head.

Henry of Ghent against Peter Lombard on the Creation Problem

Henry is acutely aware of the Creation Problem, and this comes out very clearly when he disagrees with Peter Lombard.

Peter Lombard lived at the beginning of the 12th century (1100-1160), and he is a very important figure for medieval philosophy. The reason is this: he wrote a very long book on theology called the Sentences. It is essentially a compilation of quotations from church fathers on a variety of topics. Lombard arranged all this material into a series of ‘yes/no’ questions, with quotations on the ‘yes’ side, and quotations on the ‘no’ side. And occasionally, Lombard would give his own opinion too.

Before long, the Sentences became the standard textbook in theology. In the 13th and 14th centuries, if you were a doing a PhD in theology, you had to lecture on the Sentences. And his was like your dissertation. It was your big theological magnum opus. So Peter is very important simply because he wrote the major medieval textbook for theology.

Now, at one point in the Sentences, Peter asks if the Son is created from nothing. Peter of course says no. The Son is not produced from nothing. He is produced from something.

To back this up, Peter appeals to the Nicene Creed, the earliest Christian Creed. The Nicene Creed says that the Son is produced from the Father’s substance, so Peter says, “the Son is not produced from nothing, he’s produced from the Father’s substance.”

But what does that mean? Peter explains it like this: he says the Son is produced by the Father, who is a substance.

Well, Henry points out that that’s all well and good, but creatures are produced by a substance too, namely God. And creatures are created. So just saying that the Son is produced by a substance does not tell us that the Son is not created.

As Henry sees it, in order to show that the Son is not created, we have to say that the Son is produced from materials in some sense. Otherwise, the Son would be produced from nothing, in which case he would be created.

So Henry really seems to buy into this Avicennian idea that if you produce something without materials, then you create it. And since Henry doesn’t want to say that the Son is created, he says the Son must be produced with materials in some sense or other.

Now, Henry knows this would have sounded absolutely crazy to his contemporaries. I mean, this is the age of high scholasticism. This is the age of perfect being theology. God is the most supreme being, he is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”. And the greatest conceivable being is going to be totally perfect, and that means God is going to be totally good, totally perfect, and totally immaterial. He won’t be limited by material dimensions, or anything like that. So Henry knows that his contemporaries are going to say, “Whoa! God is not material in any way!”

So Henry needs to show exactly how or in what sense we can say that the Son is produced ‘with materials’. That is what I will discuss next.

Another argument of Scotus against Henry of Ghent (translation)

From the Lectura

‘If the [divine] essence is that from which the Son is produced, then this can only be in virtue of some being that belongs to that essence, for that from which the Son is generated must have some being if a form is imprinted on it’.

[Scotus, Lect., 1.5.2.un., n. 83 (Vat. 16: 441.22-25): ‘si essentia sit illud de quo producitur Filius, oportet quod hoc sit secundum aliquod esse ipsius essentiae, quia illud de quo generatur Filius oportet habere aliquod esse prout sibi imprimitur forma eius’.]

‘Therefore, I ask what is this “being” that the essence has, in virtue of which the Son is produced from it? It is either the being which the essence has in itself, or it is the being it has unshareably in some person’.

[Scotus, Lect., 1.5.2.un., n. 84 (Vat. 16: 442.1-3): ‘Quaero igitur quid est illud esse quod habet essentia, secundum quod de ea producitur Filius: vel est esse quod est essentia de se, aut est esse incommunicabile in alia persona?’]

‘If in the first way, then the Son would truly be generated from the essence of the Son just as [he is generated] from the essence of the Father [for the essence is shared by the Father and the Son]. But they [viz., Henry and his followers] concede that this cannot be admitted, for they say that the Son is [produced] from the [divine] substance as it is in the Father and not from the substance as it is in the three persons’.

[Scotus, Lect., 1.5.2.un., n. 84 (Vat. 16: 442.4-7): ‘Si primo modo, igitur ita vere Filius erit genitus de essentia Filii sicut de substantia et essentia Patris; unde et ipsi concedunt quod hoc non potest dici, dicentes quod Filius sit de substantia ut est Patris et non de substantia ut est trium personarum’.] [The reference is to Henry of Ghent, SQO, 54.3 (Bad. II f. 84rF): ‘Dico autem [Filius generat] de substantia generantis cum reduplicatione, in quantum scilicet generans est: licet enim eadem sit in tribus, non tamen habet rationem potentiae ut de ea generatur aliquis, nisi secundum quod habet esse in Patre’.]
‘But if it is said that the Son is [produced] from the essence of the Father insofar as the being [of the essence is unshareably] in another person (e.g., in the first existent [viz., the Father]), then I argue like this: the being [of that] from which something is [produced] by imprinting [a form in it] cannot be understood without the being [of that] in which that [same] something is [produced by imprinting a form in it], nor can the being [of that] in which that [same] something is [produced by imprinting a form in it] be understood without the former [viz., that from which that same something is produced by imprinting a form in it]. If, then, there is something from which the Son is [produced] by imprinting [a form in it], e.g., the substance insofar as it is in the Father, then that substance insofar as it is in the Father will necessarily be that in which the Son is [produced]. For if a surface is that from which whiteness [is produced] by imprinting [the whiteness in it], then that surface [will be that] in which the whiteness [is produced], and so by consequence, just as that surface will have whiteness, so also the essence as it is in the first person will have filiation’.

[Scotus, Lect., 1.5.2.un., n. 84 (Vat. 16: 442.8-18): ‘Sed si hoc dicatur, quod Filius est de essentia Patris secundum esse in alia persona, ut in prima exsistens, tunc arguo sic: esse de quo est aliquid per impressionem, non potest intelligi sine esse in quo est aliquid, nec esse in quo est aliquid potest intelligi sine hoc quin sit illud. Si igitur est aliquid de quo per impressionem est Filius, ut substantia secundum quod est in Patre, tunc substantia secundum quod est in Patre necessario erit illud in quo est Filius; sicut si superficies sit illud de quo per impressionem est albedo, superficies est illud in quo est aledo, — et per consequens sicut superficies est habens albedinem, ita essentia ut est in prima persona erit habens filiationem’.]


From the Ordinatio

‘It is necessary to assign some being to the [divine] essence insofar as it is that from which the Son is generated, for to be the principle — whatever kind of “principle” — of some real being only belongs to a real being. Therefore, I ask: what “being” belongs to the essence as it is that from which the Son is generated by an impression? If it is precisely its absolute being, which belongs to the essence qua essence, then the Son will be [produced] from the essence qua essence, and in this way the Son will be of three persons. Alternatively, if the “being” [I’m asking about] belongs to the [divine] essence insofar as it exists in some subsistent [person], then I ask: in which person? If it’s the ingenerate person [viz., the Father], then the concept of “the being from which something is produced” includes the notion of “the being in which the form is induced”, and so in that concept the “being in which” includes “that which is in it”, and by consequence the being that comes along with it formally. Therefore, if the [divine] essence as it is in the Father is tha from which the Son is generated (and by an impression, according to them), then it follows that the essence itself as it is in the Father will be that in which begotten knowledge [viz., the Son] is imprinted, and so the essence as it is in the Father will formally by the Word or “that which knows begotten knowledge”, which is inappropriate’.

[Scotus, Ord. 1.5.2.un., nn. 72-73 (Vat. 4: 50.15-52.4): ‘essentiae ut de ea generatur Filius necesse est assignare aliquod esse, quia principiare aliquod verum ens — in quocumque genere principii — non convenit alicui nisi realiter enti. Quaero igitur, quod esse convenit essentiae ut ipsa est de quo per impressionem generatur Filius: aut praecise esse ad se, quod est essentiae ut essentiae, — et tunc Filius est de essentia ut essentia, et hoc modo est trium personarum; aut convenit sibi esse in aliqua subsistentia. Et tunc quaero, in qua: aut ingenita, — et si hoc, cum in intellectu eius quod est “esse de quo aliquid producitur” includatur hoc quod est “esse illud in quo forma inducitur”, et in intellectu eius quod est esse in quo includatur habere illud quod est in eo, et per consequens esse formaliter per ipsum, — ergo si essentia ut est in Patre sit de quo Filius generatur (et per impressionem, secundum eos), sequitur quod ipsa ut in Patre erit illud in quo notitia genita [viz., Verbum vel Filius] imprimitur, et ita essentia ut in Patre erit formaliter Verbum [viz., Filius] sive noscens notitia genita, quod est inconveniens’.]


From the Reportatio

‘Every real principle of a real entity has real being in virtue of which it is a principle, for otherwise it would be the principle of a non-being. The [divine] essence is a real principle of a real entity, namely insofar as it is a quasi material principle of a real being, namely the Son. Therefore, it gives some real being to him. But it either gives him absolute being or relative being. It does not give him absolute being, because then the Son would be from the substance of the Father insofar as [the Father’s substance] has absolute being, and then the Son would be from the substance of the three persons, for the absolute being of that substance does not belong to one person more than to another. Therefore, it is clear that the essence is not the principle from which the Son is produced insofar as it has absolute being. However, if the essence, as a quasi material principle, were to give relative being [to the Son], then this will be in the first person . . . . But it does not give relative being in the first person, because that which is the material principle of generation and that which receives the form are the same according to this “relative being”. Therefore, the being of this quasi material principle in the first person would receive the property of the Son, and then filiation would be received in the Father, so that in this way the Son [would be the Son] of [the Father’s] substance’.

[Scotus, Rep. 1.5.2.un., nn. 68-69 (Wolter, 276-278): ‘omne principium reale entis realis habet esse reale secundum quod principiat, alioquin illud quod principiat esset non-ens; essentia est principium reale et entis realis, scilicet in quantum est principium quasi materiale, et entis realis, scilicet Filii; ergo dat sibi aliquod reale esse. Ergo vel dat sibi esse ad se vel esse ad; sed non dat sibi esse ad se, quia tunc Filius esset de substantia Patris secundum esse ad se; ergo de substantia trium, eo quod substantia ad se non est plus unius personae quam alterius. Sic ergo patet quod essentia secundum esse ad se non est principium de quo principiatur Filius. Si autem essentia ut est principium quasi materiale det esse ad, ergo hoc erit vel in prima persona . . . . Nec dat “esse ad” in prima persona, quia secundum idem “esse ad” istius aliquid est principium materiale generationis et recipit formam; ergo secundum esse istius principii quai materialis in prima persona recipitur proprietas Filii, et sic filiatio recipitur in Patre et sic Filius substantiae’.]