Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been talking about the doctrine of God and been going through the Summa Theologica in our attempt to understand it. This, of course, is the work by Thomas Aquinas which can be found for free at NewAdvent.org. We’re discussing unity now and tonight, we’re going to be discussing still not the unity of God but what unity is. Before that however, my usual prayer requests. First, for my Christlikeness and tonight I’m thinking of the need to eliminate black and white thinking. Second, I ask for help for my financial situation, which is going better, especially since I had a nice tax return. Finally, I ask for prayers for a third related area in my life. Now let’s get to the question.
What about the topic of the One and the Many? Are they opposed. Now I’m not speaking about the One and the Many in relation to the Trinity, which is a whole other topic. I’m talking about the concepts on their own? Aquinas says they are for the concept of One speaks of that which is not divided while the concept of many speaks of that which is divided.
But an opposite can’t be predicated of its opposite can it? We can’t speak of the hot that it is cold. We can’t speak of the light that it is dark. However, it was agreed when we looked at the question yesterday that we do speak of the multitude in a certain way as being one. Therefore, they cannot be opposites.
However, one is an absolute term. Multitude is a relative term. When we have a multitude of fish for instance, there is absolutely one kind of fish there, but the distribution of that kind is an accident to the subject. It is then something relative. If there was just one fish, it would not change the nature from if there were 2, 12, or 2,400.
Opposites aren’t constituted by their opposites either, but the multitude is constituted by one. Therefore, they are not opposites. For this, Aquinas gets into the difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous substances. I have a glass of Sierra Mist next to me now as an example. The liquid in there is homogeneous. Whatever part you take out of it, it is soda. The glass that it’s in is heterogeneous. It is made of many parts and each part by itself is not a glass. A better example would be a house. The wood or bricks that make up a house are not the house, but they form the house when they come together. In this case, you have many unities coming and thus, a multitude of unities to form one unity.
But doesn’t each thing only have one opposite? However, the opposite of many is few. Not one. Therefore, one cannot be opposed. This is confusing absolute and relative again. In an absolute sense, they are opposed. In relation to an excess however, it is the few and the many that are opposed.
We shall look at this more tomorrow.
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