Dei Filius III: The Church as a Sign of Credibility, the Canons on Faith, and the Two Kinds of Knowledge of God

Orientation #

He says “last time” they looked at part four of chapter 3, the necessity of faith for salvation (“bottom of page ten”), and the three reasons for believing a teacher; he also refers back to the definition of faith and the two senses of revelation “as we mentioned last time” (prev. lecture). Verified sources: ten minutes match Summa Contra Gentiles IV, ch. 15 and ten minutes are read from the handout “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 5; the transcript itself names only “the Summa Contra Gentiles” and reads the Vatican I text and canons. The previous class covered Dei Filius chs. 2–3 and the definition of faith; the next takes up the role of reason with respect to the mysteries.

The class, in order #

1. Two revelations, two banquets, one definition of faith (“O sacrum convivium”) #

Point: three things line up: the two meanings of revelation, Thomas’s two uses of the banquet metaphor, and the definition of faith.

• Revelation (a) answered on our side by faith; (b) the “full revelation”, seeing God face to face, answered by the beatific vision.
• Thomas’s communion prayers: O sacrum convivium for the Eucharist, which is the pignus, pledge, of eternal life; O ineffabile convivium in the prayer after communion, asking for the beatific vision. Banquet = metaphor for “every good” (God’s word to Abraham/Moses, “I will show you every good”, which Thomas says is “myself”). Aside: the California brunch with two plates, and the package-store man spending three hours at brunch, to show a banquet is a meal that has everything.
• Psalm 62 (correct numbering, he says): the soul “in a banquet”; can be read of the Eucharist or of eternal life; one is a foretaste of the other.
• Definition of faith: “substance of things hoped for”. Greek hypostasis (not ousia), same etymology as substantia, sub-stare: a foundation for what is hoped for, i.e. eternal life = “to know you and Him whom you have sent”. Thomas sometimes divides the articles of faith by those same two, divinity and humanity of Christ. Adoro te devote: “In cruce latebat sola deitas”, on the cross only the divinity hidden, here the humanity too; he asks for what the penitent thief asked.
• “Things hoped for” refers back to the will: hope is in the will, and the assent of reason to what it does not see is due to being moved by the will, helped by the internal gift of faith and by external signs.

2. Recap of part four: belief before knowledge (“named from the student”) #

Point: requiring faith before full knowledge does no violence to our nature.

• Text: without faith no justification, no eternal life unless one perseveres “to the end”.
• Thomas: even a human science requires a “kind of human belief” in the teacher before wisdom. Dependence on the teacher grows as you go up the philosophical sciences. Mathematics, most proportioned to our mind, is named from the student; theology is called sacra doctrina or doctrina Christianitatis (Augustine’s title), named from the teacher: “two opposite extremes”.

3. Part five: twofold necessity of the Church (“whether you’re a wit, whether you’re a dim wit”) #

Point: we need the Church both as teacher and as witness.

• Reminder: thick black = official text; the rest is “that nitwit or dimwit commentator” dividing it.
• “Know thyself” (seven wise men, Delphi) applied to the mind: wit, dimwit, nitwit; most of us are dimwits and must believe the wits. Even wits learn from wits: Aristotle twenty years with Plato; Mozart from Haydn and the two Bachs.
• The three reasons (from last time) for believing the wit, restated:
  1. He knows the road; you won’t know it is the road until far along it (Euclid: 46 things to reach the Pythagorean theorem; afterwards “now I know, I don’t need you anymore”).
  2. He sees the fundamental, fruitful things and insists you get them distinctly; you see later how many doors they open (Empedocles: press them firmly into your mind and you’ll get many other things; his own reuse of a memorized Shakespeare line in class after class).
  3. Difficult things need long thinking; you persevere only because you believe it will lead to understanding.
• Text: God founded the Church with “clear notes” to be recognised as guardian and teacher of the revealed Word; so the Church is not only teacher but “a great witness”, a motive of credibility.

4. The Church herself as a motive of credibility (“greater perpetual motive of credibility”) #

Point: the Church, by its propagation, holiness, fertility, catholic unity and stability, is itself an incontrovertible sign of its divine mission, and this fits our age.

• Text: to the Catholic Church alone belong all the things ordained for the manifest credibility of the faith (miracles, saints, fulfilled prophecies); and in particular “astonishing propagation”. Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles: unlike Muhammad, who promised material things and used the sword, the Church spread while teaching things above the mind and a way of life not pleasant to the flesh.
• Why the two recent councils treat the Church (Vatican I unfinished, Vatican II’s two dogmatic constitutions, on revelation and on the Church)? Student: people question more. He: if the Church is a great and perpetual motive of credibility, an age of doubt (ours, not “the age of faith”) should meditate on the mystery of the Church; councils answer their age ad hoc. Aside: two successive heads of medieval history converting; in medieval history you meet the mystery of the Church concretely.
• Text: “like a standard lifted up for the nations” she invites unbelievers and assures her children their faith rests on the firmest foundation; so faith in them is not “a blind assent”.
• Example of attraction from outside: a convert drawn because the Church alone consistently taught pro-life, known reasonable by natural reason, while Protestant sects equivocated. Aside: the Episcopal service (Boy Scouts) that dropped Christ’s hard words on marriage from the gospel reading; Anglicans watering it down “to be nothing to anybody”.

5. The inward aid and the two corollaries (“author and finisher of our faith”) #

Point: to the Church’s witness is added grace from on high.

• Text: the Lord stirs up those who stray and confirms those translated into His light, “not abandoning them unless He is first abandoned”.
• Corollaries: the situation of those who embrace Catholic truth by the gift of faith is not that of those who follow a false religion on human opinions; those who accepted the faith under the Church’s guidance can never have just cause for changing it or calling it into question.
• “Author and finisher”: He is both the beginning and the end.

6. The canons on faith (“let him be what? Anathema”) #

Point: each canon read with a reason.

1. Reason not so independent that faith cannot be commanded by God. St Paul’s “obedience of faith” answers God’s command; obedience touches the will moving reason. Can a human teacher command belief? “Not prudently”: Kasurik to De Koninck at Laval, “if you teach the way I was taught I’ll leave”, De Koninck: “Fine”. God can command because we belong to God more than to ourselves: children belong to parents in some sense, wife and husband to each other, but God gives the soul, the parent only has to do with the body. Aside question: do grandchildren belong more to parents or grandparents? (he thinks parents; either way, far more to God). Against this the common “axiom” of parents who won’t raise a child in any religion until 21.
   • “Canon”: rule, measure (student: as in canon of scripture); something you must be measured by.
2. Divine faith distinct from natural knowledge of God and morals; revealed truth believed because God’s authority reveals it. Adoro te: “credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius; nihil hoc verbo veritatis verius”, nothing truer than the word of truth itself; the alliteration is lost in English.
3. Revelation can be made credible by external signs; not only private inspiration. Augustine’s definition of sign (taken over by Thomas): what strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself. A miracle is sensible and brings God to mind as author; a fulfilled prophecy is sensible. Being moved by signs is most natural for man, an animal that has reason and begins with senses; the same reason as for the sacraments, grace under a sensible likeness. Hume named as the modern attacker of miracles (student: as of causality).
4. Miracles possible, knowable with certainty, and the divine origin of the religion provable from them; they could not make faith credible otherwise. C. S. Lewis’s “sinking feeling” when a professor said the evidence for the resurrection is pretty good; Alexis Carrel’s little book, admitting against his scientific reputation that something had happened.
5. Assent to faith is free, not necessitated by arguments of reason (else it would be like geometry); grace needed not only for living faith. No merit in assenting that no odd number is even or every whole is more than its part, since reason is forced by the truth. Student: meritorious requires state of grace, but one can assent without it. He: yes, unformed faith; formed faith (by charity) is what saves. Dei Verbum’s preface ends with Augustine: by believing come to hope, by hoping to love; in the order of generation faith before hope before charity, but charity then forms both (“charity believes all, hopes all”). The corollary earlier in the text (page 10/13): faith even without charity is a gift of God and its works belong to the order of salvation, as its beginning.
6. Catholics have no just cause to suspend assent until a scientific demonstration of credibility is completed. Aside: how poorly instructed people are in the articles; Thomas’s Naples sermons on the articles packed the churches; his mother asking why the priest never explains the gospel; the four-volume Dominican set with Thomas’s catena aurea and seven to ten patristic sermons per Sunday; seminaries teaching that Jesus never said those things; the Baltimore catechism memorised and returned to later.

7. Chapter four, part one: the twofold order of knowledge (“distinct not only as regards its source”) #

Point: the two orders differ by principle (natural light of reason vs light of faith) and by object (mysteries hidden in God, unknowable unless revealed), but some things are known by both.

• Ten Commandments: knowable by faith and by reason. Fourth commandment: Aristotle in the Topics says doubting whether snow is white is no dialectical problem (the man lacks sensation), and one who questions honouring parents needs punishment, not argument. Nicomachean Ethics: no mean of adultery, murder, theft; the extreme is in the definition.
• Contemporary confusion: if faith knows abortion or homosexuality wrong, “then it’s only a matter of religion”. Plato’s Laws: the Athenian Stranger’s law against homosexuality as contra naturam. “People don’t realize that two different ways of knowing can sometimes know the same thing.”
• First example: the mug’s roundness known by touch (through hardness) and by sight (through colour); a rubber ball felt spherical with eyes shut, seen spherical untouched. De Anima: proper sensibles (colour, hot/cold) known by one sense only; common sensibles (shape, surface) by more than one, each as a modification of its proper sensible. If two senses knew the same thing the same way they would be the same sense. Knowing in two ways gives more certitude even in sense (hand–eye coordination).

8. Fideism, the preambles, and the articles proper (“preambula, walks before”) #

Point: reason can know some things about God; the articles proper are the Trinity, the Incarnation, and what is defined by them.

• Student: a diehard Calvinist professor claims Aquinas, by saying reason cannot know the things of God, opened the way to rationalism, Descartes, and the denial of objective truth (from total depravity?). He: that is fideism, contrary to St Paul (Romans 1:20, quoted by Vatican I) and to the Church.
• Preambles: things about God knowable by reason as well as faith. Articles proper: Trinity and Incarnation, touched in the sign of the cross (aside: which would get him jailed in Saudi Arabia); and whatever is defined by them, e.g. the Church defined as the mystical body of Christ is a mystery too.
• Student objection: a young man believes God exists with the infinitely greater certitude of faith; after understanding the proof he no longer holds it by faith, so his certitude is infinitely less? He: the light of faith still extends to those things, but not in the same way; compare the beatific vision, where faith disappears and you see, yet certitude does not dwindle. Left partly open (“to what extent do people understand the proof?”).
• Anecdote: talk to the American Association of University Women; a Catholic woman asks “is it just enough to do what the Church says?” — “Yeah, that’s enough.” The reasons faith is needed a bene esse even for the preambles: known by few, after a long time, with errors mixed in.
• Summa Contra Gentiles divided the same way: books I–III on what is known by reason and faith, book IV on what is known by faith alone.
• Scripture references in the text: Romans (invisible things known from creation); “we impart a secret and hidden wisdom… none of the rulers of this age understood”; the Father has hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little ones. So faith requires littleness, humility; the demand for independence of reason “comes from a kind of pride”.

His words #

• revelation: two meanings, answered by faith and by the beatific vision.
• convivium: banquet, metaphor for “every good”; pignus = pledge.
• substance of things hoped for: hypostasis/substantia, what stands under, a foundation.
• doctrina: theology named from the teacher; mathematics named from the student.
• wit / dimwit / nitwit: his ranking of minds under “know thyself”.
• motive of credibility: a sign making faith credible; the Church herself is one.
• obedience of faith: the will moving reason to assent, corresponding to God’s command.
• canon: rule, measure.
• sign (Augustine’s): what strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself.
• unformed faith / formed faith: faith without charity, still a gift of God; faith formed by charity, the faith that saves.
• fideism: only faith can know anything of God.
• preambula (fidei): what “walks before”, knowable by reason and faith.
• proper and common sensibles (De Anima): known by one sense only vs. by several as modifications of their proper sensible.
• a bene esse: for the well-being; why faith is needed even for the preambles.

Texts #

Read in class

• Vatican I, Dei Filius, ch. 3 part 5 (necessity of the Church), the six canons on faith, ch. 4 part 1 (twofold order of knowledge).
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote (two lines quoted).
• Summa Contra Gentiles IV, ch. 15 (verified source; transcript cites the SCG for the propagation argument and for the I–III/IV division).
• Handout “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 5 (verified source).

Mentioned

• Thomas, O sacrum convivium and prayer after communion; Psalm 62 (his numbering); Hebrews 11:1 (inferred); John 17:3 (inferred).
• Aristotle, Topics (dialectical problem); Nicomachean Ethics (no mean of extremes); De Anima (sensibles).
• Plato, Laws (Athenian Stranger on homosexuality).
• Augustine, De doctrina christiana (title only, “doctrina Christianitatis”); Augustine quoted in Dei Verbum’s preface.
• Thomas, Naples sermons on the articles; catena aurea.
• Romans 1:20; 1 Corinthians (hidden wisdom) (inferred); Matthew (hidden from the wise) (inferred).
• Tocqueville, Hume, C. S. Lewis’s biography, Alexis Carrel’s book, Baltimore catechism.

His questions #

• Why is it providential that the mystery of the Church is clarified in the councils of our time? Because in an age of doubt the Church herself is a great and perpetual motive of credibility, so people should meditate on it.
• Can a human teacher command belief? Not prudently; God can, because we belong to Him more than to ourselves.
• What does “canon” mean? Rule, measure; something you must be measured by.
• What is Augustine’s definition of a sign? What strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself.
• Why is grace given under sensible likenesses, and why external signs? Man is an animal that has reason and starts from the senses.
• Are the Ten Commandments known by faith or by reason? By both; the fourth commandment is naturally known (Aristotle).
• Can two ways of knowing know the same thing? Yes, as touch and sight both know the mug’s roundness, in different ways.
• When you see the proof for God’s existence, does faith and its certitude vanish? (student) The light of faith still extends to it, not in the same way; certitude does not dwindle — partly left open.
• Is it enough just to do what the Church says? Yes, that’s enough.