  This sort of worry about relations of reason helps to explain what is perhaps their most significant effect on the medieval discussion of relations—namely, a gradual shift away from the traditional Aristotelian characterization of relations. On this characterization, as we saw earlier, relations are identified at least partly in terms of their metaphysical function—that is to say, they are identified as items that actually serve to relate things. But in order to maintain that things can be self-identical apart from the activity of any mind, while at the same time maintaining that self-identity is a relation of reason, medieval philosophers have little choice but to move away from the traditional characterization. And of course the same thing is true in the case of God’s relation to his creatures. Thus, as Aquinas says in reply to the abovementioned doubt: