'In Him We Live and Move': Worshipping God, the Beatific Vision, and Devotion

Orientation #

He says nothing explicit about last time or next time; the one back-reference is to “the seventh sense of in” and “the eighth sense” and to “this distinction that the philosopher is making here, of that by which is the matter or the subject, or it’s the form” (the De Anima II text being read in the course). The previous class worked through De Anima II on soul as act of an organic body and the sense of “that by which” a body lives, senses and understands.

The class, in order #

1. The puzzle: three things in Paul’s text (“In Him we what live, move”) #

The point: he opens with Paul at the Areopagus — “in Him we live and move and have our being” (he notes the Greek zōmen, “we live”) — and confesses it always puzzles him.

• Why puzzling: living and motion “seem to be somewhat similar or overlap”, since life is spoken of as self-motion; so how do you distinguish the three, and why that order?
• Thomas quotes the text at times but never expounds it fully; he has no commentary on Acts.
• A student’s guess: “living” could refer to the higher powers, “moving” to motion, “being” to mere existence.

2. Thomas on latria and sacrifice (“we sacrifice only to God”) #

The point: a text he was reading “yesterday”, SCG III (third part, “one twenty something”), on latria, supplies the threefold division.

• Latria: a very precise word for Thomas; worship given to God only, not to angels or saints. Thomas gives many reasons; the last of his first group argues from sacrifice.
• Genuflection vs. sacrifice: genuflection was done before kings in the courts of Europe (though not for the same reason as before the tabernacle); sacrifice is done to God alone.
• Purpose of sacrifice: not for God’s sake (he needs none) but for ours; the exterior sacrifice represents and stimulates an interior sacrifice.
• Three things unique to God for which we sacrifice:
  1. He created us — shown in SCG II that only God can create the human soul, immediately, not even through angels; and our conservation in existence depends immediately on God.
  2. He is the author of our motions — God alone moves the will interiorly; angels can persuade “in an exterior way”, by proposing a good, but not move it inwardly; “the heart of the king is in the hands of God” (Scripture). Whatever creatures do, they do in the power of God.
  3. He is the end or goal of everything, God being the last end of man (shown earlier).
• He stresses: Thomas is not trying to explain the Acts text at all; he is proving latria is God’s alone, and only recalls what he has shown before.

3. Honor and glorify: two, not three (“beginning and the end of all things”) #

The point: when Thomas explains words of the Mass he usually divides into two, so the Acts text needs the different division into three.

• Honor God as the beginning of all things vs. glorify him as the end; Scripture’s “I am the Alpha and the Omega”.

4. Mapping the three onto the text (“even the order is good”) #

The point: the three reasons for sacrifice fit the three words of Paul exactly, and explain the order.

• Live = God as end: the ultimate end is eternal life (“I have come that they might have life… abundantly”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life” — the way is the route, truth and life the goal itself); Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics says happiness is a certain kind of life, a good life.
• Move = God as mover: God alone moves the will as efficient cause; angels only “in the sense of the end”, by proposing a persuasive good.
• Being = God as Creator and conserver; creation and conservation “go together”.
• Sense of “in”: our being is in God in the seventh sense — “I got you in my power”; and our doing too is in the power of God.
• Against the deists: they admitted God created the universe but let it run off by itself, like a parent whose child goes off and does what he wants. A child can act without the parents; “we can’t run off and do something without God” — Thomas spends time showing this.
• Order: the end is put first; what we do is closer to the end than mere being (by what we do we merit heaven); “our being is first in being, but it’s not first in dignity or worth” — we must be before we do, do before we reach the end. So Paul gives them in order of importance.

5. Living in God: the beatific vision (“by him we see him”) #

The point: “in whom we live” involves the seventh and eighth senses of “in”: God is the end, but we live in God only through God’s power.

• We cannot unite our reason to God so as to see him face to face; only God can unite our reason to himself as an understandable form. “In Thy light we shall see light.”
• Threefold “by which”: we see God face to face by our reason as subject; by the light of glory as disposition of that subject (both on the side of the subject); by God as the understandable form by which the reason, in act by that form, sees. No created understandable form could show God as he is, because God is unlimited.
• Student: do we reason in heaven? Not in the vision; there may be reasoning in other acts outside it, but the vision has no before and after — it is all at once, the eternal now. Aside: we criticise people who “live in the now”, but the eternal now is complete absorption in the present, with no past or future.
• Light of glory: differs from the light of faith and the natural light of reason; it does not make something understandable that was not (God is perfectly understandable) but is a disposition received in us making the mind a suitable subject to receive the divine nature as intelligible form.
• Student’s puzzle: we share God’s life by grace yet are not part of God — a mystery? Reply: many mysteries there, but God is joined to our mind as that by which we understand in the sense of form, not as subject; it does not become one nature. “Our mind is joined to him” as that by which it understands.
• Forward look: when we take up sense and reason, Aristotle will say both are a kind of undergoing — the senses must be acted on before sensing, and what is received is that by which we sense/understand. So the question arises what form we see God by, and Thomas answers: no created form, so God himself is that by which we see — higher even than grace, which is created.
• The disposition to receive a form is reduced to the genus of material cause (Thomas); so in the philosopher’s distinction of “that by which” as matter/subject or as form, reason and light of glory go on the side of matter, God on the side of form. He cites Boethius, heard as “unus substantia forma est” [unclear in recording; ed.: probably Boethius’s “omne esse ex forma est”].
• Student: how can anything created make the mind able to be united with the infinite? “It’s hard to understand, but Thomas does talk about it” — left there.

6. God moves the will without coercion (“he moves all things in accord with their natures”) #

The point: God really moves our will, yet the will remains free.

• Most people cannot understand this; but God moves each thing according to its nature, so he does not coerce the will — it freely wills. One should pray that God move one’s will in the right direction.
• Related text, SCG III on the divine law: why love of God is the first commandment. First reason: the king or leader moves everyone to his end; God moves all things to himself. A later, secondary reason: the more a secondary agent partakes of the motion of the primary agent, the more perfectly it reaches its perfection; God does everything from loving himself, so the more we love God the more we are moved as God moves all things, and the more efficacious we are.

7. God as both what and by which; degrees of glory (“star differs from star”) #

The point: in the vision God is both what we see and (primarily) that by which we see; in God these are absolutely identical, which is why he perfectly understands himself.

• Student: does the light of glory determine the degrees of glory? Yes — “star differs from star in magnitude”; the light of glory is greater in some; but that depends on how much you love God.
• Metaphor to understand it: Osee (Hosea), quoted by Thomas, “I have espoused you in faith” — a betrothal of soul and God in faith; the vision is then a kind of marriage of minds (“marriage of two minds”, Shakespeare). Human marriage: the two become one flesh, but only because they love; so the more charity, the more God unites the soul to himself — a union more intimate than any bodily one. As with friends we reveal more to those we are closer to (Greek proverb: what you say to your friend you say only to yourself).
• Same prophet: God’s jealousy; Osee told to marry a prostitute to convey Israel’s infidelity. Forced marriage (the daughter beaten until she marries “old money bags”) — union without love; God will not unite himself without love.
• Aside: Christ’s word that he dwells in the heart of Gertrude the Great, who appeared to her in the Benedictine garden; devotion to the Sacred Heart was not new with Margaret Mary Alacoque but prepared by earlier saints. These women saints love Christ more and will see him more clearly; “all this study is going to be straw” compared with what they see.
• Aside: Augustine said there was more in the Bible he did not understand than he did; he would not quite say the same of Aristotle, though after a lifetime much remains not fully understood, and even Thomas did not fully understand everything in Aristotle. Whatever we naturally desire to understand we shall understand in the vision, else it would not be our last end. Mentions Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, read at table.

8. Devotion and theology (“does not extinguish the spirit of devotion”) #

The point: from a student’s article on devotion, he recalls St Francis’s permission to teach theology in the Franciscan order “provided it does not extinguish the spirit of devotion” (he has seen the Latin).

• Devotion is the principal act of the virtue of religion, the moral virtue closest to the theological virtues; the danger: “knowledge inflates” (St Paul), occasion of pride.
• Faith is ordered to hope, hope to charity; Thomas argues hope is a greater virtue than faith. At the start of the Summa Theologiae, theology is a science by which faith is “engendered, nourished, strengthened, and defended” (Augustine); so theology is ordered to faith, faith to hope, hope to love.
• Devotion (in the will, the heart) vs. prayer (an act of reason commanded by the will), religion’s first and second acts. Augustine and Thomas, treating doctrine by faith, hope and charity, always consider prayer with hope.
• Thomas on the Our Father: five things required in prayer — recta (asking the right things, not “make me wealthy”), ordinata (in the right order, as Christ assigns them), devout, humble, confident (hope); two on the side of reason, three in the will. The Enchiridion of Indulgences mentions devotion, humility and hope in this sense.

9. Defining devotion; “spiritual theology” (“hope seeking love”) #

The point: a student asks for a definition of devotion; he begins from the word.

• Devotion: related to “vow” — bound in your heart to God, wanting to render to God what is due him. Fr Hardon: willingness to do what God wants at any time (a student objects this is rather obedience). Thomas, in the Our Father, has devotion proceed from love (“Our Father” — love of the Father and of neighbour); as in human affairs we are devoted to those we love.
• Devotion is the fundamental act of religion (prayer second; sacrifice and others after), and closely tied to hope through prayer. In the Secunda Secundae, religion falls under justice (giving God his due) and Thomas makes devotion its first act — “a big statement”.
• Spiritual theology: the theology dealing with hope, prayer and charity. Is the Summa spiritual theology? Probably not the name he’d give it. Why “spiritual”: Thomas explains “Holy Spirit” sometimes as merely the common names kept for the less-known Person, but sometimes as fitting — wind and breath fit love and its power to move; Spirit goes where it will; the Spirit’s groans in our prayers; “Come, Holy Spirit… kindle in them the fire of thy love”. So “spirit” fits hope, prayer and love.
• Anselm’s definition of theology, fides quaerens intellectum; his imitation for spiritual theology: “hope seeking love”.
• Which Scripture is exclusively about charity? Song of Songs — and the title shows the connection of music and love: Paul VI’s talk (a collatio of Augustine texts: we want to sing of the one we love; singing a natural sign of love); Italian opera’s love arias; Kierkegaard: Don Giovanni is to opera what the Iliad is to epic, the classic with perfect correspondence of form and work, representing every kind of love (Washington Irving: “the opera of operas”). Second, the Psalms, musical in origin, but rather a book of prayer; bis orat qui cantat — he prays twice who sings. The musical mode differs from the mode of the Summa, so spiritual theology’s way of proceeding differs; part of Francis’s “danger” is this difference of procedure. Shakespeare on music and love understands the connection perfectly.

His words #

• zōmen; “we live”, the Greek of Paul’s “in Him we live”.
• latria; the worship given to God only; “a very precise word for Thomas”.
• sacrificium, sacrifice; exterior act representing an interior sacrifice; offered to God alone.
• “author of our emotions”; his rendering for God as author of our motions/acts [ed.: motions].
• seventh sense of “in”; “in the power of” (“I got you in my power”).
• eighth sense of “in”; in God as end (not restated in detail here).
• light of glory; a supernatural disposition rendering the mind a suitable subject to receive God as understandable form.
• “that by which”; either the subject/matter or the form (the philosopher’s distinction).
• “unus substantia forma est” (as heard); Boethius, on being from form [ed.: usually “omne esse ex forma est”].
• recta, ordinata; asking the right things, in the right order (conditions of prayer).
• devotion; from “vow”: bound in the heart to God, rendering him his due; the fundamental act of religion.
• spiritual theology; theology ordered to hope and charity; his definition “hope seeking love”.
• fides quaerens intellectum; Anselm’s definition of theology.
• bis orat qui cantat; he prays twice who sings.

Texts #

Read in class

• Acts, Paul in the Areopagus: “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17, inferred).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, on latria and sacrifice (“one twenty something”, his estimate), three reasons.
• Thomas, exposition of the Our Father: five conditions of prayer.
• Francis of Assisi, permission to teach theology “provided it does not extinguish the spirit of devotion”.

Mentioned

• SCG II, only God creates the human soul; SCG III, divine law and the first commandment.
• Scripture: “the heart of the king is in the hands of God”; “I am the Alpha and the Omega”; John, “that they might have life… abundantly”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; “In Thy light we shall see light”; “star differs from star”; Osee, “I have espoused you in faith”, the prostitute wife; Paul, “knowledge inflates”; Song of Songs; Psalms.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (happiness a kind of life); De Anima (sensing and understanding as undergoing; “that by which”).
• Boethius; Augustine (on the Bible; theology quote in ST opening; on singing and love); Anselm; Thomas, ST II-II on justice and religion; Enchiridion of Indulgences.
• Shakespeare (marriage of minds; music and love); Kierkegaard on Don Giovanni; Washington Irving; Paul VI on music and love; Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life; Fr Hardon on devotion; Gertrude the Great; Margaret Mary Alacoque.

His questions #

• How do you distinguish the three things, live, move, have our being, and why in that order? Live = God as end, move = God as interior mover of the will, being = God as Creator-conserver; ordered by dignity, the end first.
• Sacrifice is given to God only — in recognition of what? Of three things only God does: create and conserve us, move our will, be our end.
• “In whom we live” — what sense of in? The seventh (in his power) and the eighth (as end), since we live in God only through his power.
• We see God face to face by our reason, by the light of glory, or by God himself? By reason as subject, light of glory as disposition, God as the understandable form.
• Are we reasoning in heaven? Not in the vision itself: all at once, the eternal now.
• Does the light of glory determine the degrees of glory? Yes, it differs as star from star, but depends on how much one loves God.
• Is the Summa Theologiae spiritual theology? Probably not the name he would give it; spiritual theology is ordered to hope and charity.
• Have you formed a definition of devotion? Starts from “vow”: bound in the heart to God to render his due; devotion proceeds from love; definition left open.
• Which works of Scripture are exclusively about charity? Song of Songs, then the Psalms (though these are more a book of prayer).
• Who prays twice? He who sings (bis orat qui cantat).