Summa I, q.1, a.7–9: Christ as King, Arguing from Authority, and Metaphor in Scripture

Orientation #

He refers back to “this article we read last time,” whether this science is speculative or practical, and to Thomas’s proof that this science is above the rest (prev. lecture). He closes by saying they must stop here and will come back to the Trinity and “things about metaphors,” and may get into the next question. The previous class worked through aa.5–7 and the next concludes a.9 and treats a.10 before previewing the prologue to q.2.

The class, in order #

1. Opening aside: king, prophet, priest, and the unity of this science (“Gold, frankincense, and myrrh”) #

Point: the paradox that this science is neither speculative nor practical but one (reflecting the unity of God’s knowledge) can be seen in how Christ’s three offices collapse into two.

• Two ways he has seen Thomas divide the Gospels: (a) Matthew, Mark, Luke vs John on humanity/divinity; then, from “Christ” = anointed (kings, prophets, priests anointed in the OT), Matthew = kingship, Mark = prophetic role, Luke = priesthood (Luke has the sweat of blood, begins in and keeps returning to the temple; the Magi only in Matthew). (b) Sometimes Thomas puts Matthew and Luke (infancy narratives, human birth) against Mark and John (Mark begins with the adult and says “Son of God” in the first sentence). On that division the prophetic falls out and only kingship and priesthood remain.
• An encyclical (Leo XIII or Pius XI, he could not find it) divides Christian doctrine by Christ as King (commandments), Teacher (Creed), Priest (prayer and sacraments). But often only two appear: “a royal priesthood.”
• The Magi’s gifts bothered him for years: gold = kingship, frankincense = prayer ascending = priesthood, myrrh = death = his supreme priestly act. “Why didn’t they bring a book?” Where is the teaching role?
• Resolution: to Pilate’s “are you a king?” Christ answers he was born to give testimony to the truth. So witnessing to truth (teaching) belongs to Christ as king, as does commanding. Hence in philosophy theoretical and practical are two (Boethius’s Lady Philosophy with theta above pi, the commentator saying theoretical is above practical), but here they are one; “Christ as king” contains both, and to add “teacher” is superfluous.

2. Tail of a.7: “totum Christum, idest caput et membra” (“the subject of sacred what? Scripture”) #

Point: the phrase “the whole Christ, head and members” fits better as the subject of sacred Scripture than of this theology or of the Summa.

• Thomas divides the OT by law (law of the King, law of the Father) and the NT by grace: origin of grace, Christ (Gospels); nature of grace (Paul’s epistles); chief effect of grace, the Church, whose origin is in Acts, progress in the canonical epistles, and final state [transcript says “the Book of Acts”; likely a slip in the recording]. Vatican II divides the NT very nearly the same way.
• Thomas’s prologue to the Psalms: they are used at Mass because of their universality, containing the whole of sacred doctrine “in the form of prayer and praise.” [unclear in recording: what he names as the subject of the Psalms.]
• The subject of the Summa Theologiae is God: God in Himself and God as Maker and end; a fortiori the Summa contra Gentiles.

3. Replies of a.7 (“in place of a definition”) #

• Ad 1: we cannot know what God is, but use His effect, of nature or of grace, in place of a definition, as philosophical sciences demonstrate something about a cause through its effect. So this science knows more what God is not than what He is: unmoved mover, simple (not composed), infinite (not limited), one (undivided), unchanging.
• Ad 2: already answered in the body: other things are comprehended under God not as parts, kinds, or accidents of God but as ordered to Him as beginning (principium) or end (finis). Break.

4. a.8, objections and sed contra (“Take away arguments where faith is sought”) #

Point: a.8 opens the three articles on how (not what) the science treats; being argumentative is only one of many ways Scripture proceeds, but it is the way of this book.

• Books that do proceed argumentatively: Job (ordered to defending faith against the primary objection, the evil the just suffer) and Paul’s epistles.
• Obj 1: Ambrose: remove arguments where faith is sought; here faith is especially sought, per John [“twenty three one” in transcript; John 20:31 (inferred)]: “these things are written that you might believe” that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He notes this is Peter’s profession in Matthew 16, but John writes it in the third person; the Gospels’ subject is the Word made flesh, ascending from human to divine nature.
• Obj 2: an either/or: argue from authority (unfitting to its dignity; the place from authority is the weakest, Boethius) or from reason (unfitting to its end; Gregory: faith has no merit where human reason gives “experience”).
• Sed contra: Titus 1:9, the bishop embraces the faithful word so as to exhort in sound teaching and refute those who contradict.

5. Body of a.8: from the beginnings, not to them (“If he doesn’t concede anything”) #

1. Other sciences do not prove their principles (geometry does not prove the whole is greater than the part, or that all right angles are equal) but reason from them to other things.
2. So this teaching does not prove its beginnings, the articles of faith, but proceeds from them: Paul, 1 Cor 15:12ff, argues from Christ’s resurrection to the resurrection of the faithful.
3. Lower philosophical sciences neither prove their beginnings nor dispute with deniers, leaving it to a higher science; metaphysics, the supreme one, disputes with deniers if the adversary concedes something; if he concedes nothing one cannot dispute (Aristotle: he is like a vegetable), since dispute proceeds on what the opponent grants, but one can solve his reasons.
4. Hence sacred Scripture, having no science above it, disputes with deniers of its beginnings if they concede something revealed: through the authorities of sacred teaching against heretics, and from one article against one who denies another. If he believes nothing revealed, there remains only solving his reasons. Example: SCG book IV argues from Scripture against heretics on the Trinity, then in separate chapters solves philosophical arguments that three persons are impossible; he is not proving the Trinity by reason.
5. Since faith rests on infallible truth, and the contrary of truth cannot be demonstrated, proofs against faith are not demonstrations but solubilia, arguments that can be “untied.”

• Meno: knowing vs right opinion both get you to the good; fork in the road to Boston or Providence: the man who knows and the man who merely thinks correctly both take the Boston road. Meno asks whether knowing is any better; Socrates: only so long as you keep thinking correctly, but opinion can run away; what is tied down by knowledge of the cause cannot. Demonstration is an argument that ties something down: Euclid ties down that equal angles in a triangle face equal sides; opinions get changed by another book or conversation.
• Count: argumentative in three ways: (i) from articles to other things; (ii) from what the denier accepts; (iii) showing objections defective. Two concern its beginnings, one its conclusions; it does the first two because, like first philosophy and even more so, it is wisdom.

6. Digression: Scripture’s many modes; is the science “artful”? (“Sometimes it’s narrativus”) #

Point: this article is not Thomas’s whole account of how sacred doctrine proceeds.

• In the Sentences prologue Thomas asks whether this doctrine is artificialis, to be translated “artful,” not “artificial,” because (as Aristotle, NE I) an art must adapt itself to its matter. Scripture proceeds in many modes: narrativus, orativus and laudativus (Psalms), revelatory (prophets), commanding, threatening, urging; argumentative in only some books. Revelation means the mode is revelatory on God’s side and prayerful on ours.
• Student: why does Thomas care whether it is argumentative? Answer: he stresses it because it is the way he will proceed in this book, not because the teaching is only argumentative.
• John of the Cross resembles the Song of Songs, not Job or Paul; Thomas calls the Song of Songs (and one Psalm with the same subject) an Epithalamion, originally a marriage-day praise of bride and groom (Spenser imitates it; the best man’s toast is its diminutive form): praise of Christ and the Church.
• Christ himself argues in Matthew (“what do you think of the Christ, whose son is he?”), refuting from a Scripture they accept, which is one of the two ways; he also prays, praises, narrates, prophesies.

7. Replies of a.8 (“most proper to this teaching”) #

• Ad 1: agrees with Ambrose: reason does not prove the articles; from them the teaching argues to other things. Aristotle (NE I) says Plato was right to ask whether we are on the way to the beginnings or from them; here, from them. Heraclitus: beware the man who does not know which way the road goes; Descartes reasons from God’s existence to nature’s, the opposite direction.
• Ad 2, first horn: to argue from authority is maxime proprium to this teaching, since its beginnings are had by revelation and one must believe those to whom revelation was made. Aside: Rahner mocked “Denzinger theology”; on this text, that is what theology should be (though not only that), the Enchiridion Symbolorum collecting the Church’s most authoritative pronouncements. Authority founded on human reason is weakest; authority founded on divine revelation is most efficacious, since He can neither deceive nor be deceived.
• Second horn: it uses human reason not to prove faith (that would remove its merit, Gregory) but to manifest other things treated in it: e.g., from Christ being God and man to Mary being Mother of God; to deny the latter is to deny an article. Grace does not take away nature but perfects it, so natural reason serves faith as the will’s natural inclination follows charity (“charity begins at home”: there is an order in charity). 2 Cor 10:5, taking every understanding captive to Christ (cf. “fishers of men”).
• Three grades of authority: philosophers, used as extraneous and probable arguments (Paul in Acts quoting Aratus, “we are of the genus of God”); canonical Scripture, properly and of necessity; the other doctors of the Church, properly but probably (the Church saying Augustine’s mind on grace is its own adds authority). Faith rests on revelation to apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, not to other doctors. Augustine to Jerome: only canonical books does he believe to have no error in the writing; others, however holy and learned, are not true because they held it. Canon = measuring: these books measure us. Note: the usefulness of Aristotle’s philosophy in theology is a sign that it is true, not the reason it is true; it is useful because it is true.
• Asides: the new Catechism quotes Augustine and Thomas heavily; a same-issue letter of Cardinal Ratzinger to Fr. Curran (“decision holds”).

8. a.9, objections and sed contra (“The Lord is my rock”) #

Point: after argument, Thomas seems to go to the opposite extreme, metaphor, though Aristotle says you cannot define or reason by metaphors (“you’re a pig, therefore four-footed”; “honey lips, you’re sticky”).

• Obj 1: proceeding through likenesses is proper to poetics, the lowest of teachings; the highest should not proceed as the lowest. (He notes Lewis, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Homer, Sophocles are nonetheless teachers.)
• Obj 2: this teaching is ordered to manifesting truth, with reward promised to those who elucidate it; likenesses hide truth.
• Obj 3, more particular: the more sublime a creature the more it approaches divine likeness, so metaphors should come from the higher; but Scripture says “the Lord is my rock”; a cat is at least alive and closer, yet God is not called a cat, dog or tree.
• Sed contra: Hosea (“Osee”): “I have multiplied visions, and in the hands of the prophets I am likened.” Parables are extended metaphors.
• Dionysius wrote Divine Names and a Symbolic Theology on the metaphors; one does not reason from metaphors; both kinds are found in Scripture.

9. Body of a.9: two reasons for metaphors (“come through sensible things to understandable things”) #

1. God provides for each according to its nature; it is natural to man to come to intelligibles through sensibles, since all our knowledge originates in sense (as Thomas says of grace given through sensible signs in the sacraments, conformed to the Word made flesh and to man). Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 1: the divine ray cannot shine on us unless circumvelatum, surrounded by sacred veils (kingdom of heaven like a pearl, a treasure in a field).
2. Scripture is proposed to everyone: Romans 1:14, indebted to the wise and the foolish (insipientibus; sapientia as sapida scientia, savoury knowledge; Romeo’s “unsavoury guide” = foolish). So spiritual things are proposed under bodily likenesses so even the rustics may grasp them (St Patrick’s shamrock: distant from the Trinity, but acceptable to them; nearly all Christ’s parables).

• His gloss: first reason regards all men, second the simple; perhaps a further reason for the wiser, who look under the figures: the Fathers on the burning bush (fire = divine nature, bush = human nature not consumed) and on “render to Caesar”: what bears God’s image is the soul, so give God the soul.

10. Replies ad 1 and ad 2 (“the poet uses metaphors on account of representation”) #

• Ad 1: the poet uses metaphor for representation, which is naturally delightful (Aristotle, Poetics: man is the most imitative animal and first learns by imitation; his animal noises for the grandchildren); sacred doctrine uses it from necessity and usefulness. His expansion: the poet raises something below our mind up to it, the theologian brings something above our mind down to it; common to both is disproportion to our mind, but from opposite sides, the thing’s weakness vs our mind’s weakness. Dante is set aside as doing what Scripture does. The Trojan War was probably a pirate raid; Homer makes it, like Job, the whole warfare of human life; the portrait painter puts more character into one expression than any real face carries.
• Ad 2: the ray of revelation is not destroyed by the sensible figures veiling it but remains in its truth and elevates minds to knowledge of intelligibles; others are instructed by them, and what is metaphorical in one place is expounded expressly elsewhere. Two further reasons: the hiding is useful for the exercise of the studious (exercitium studiosorum) and against the mockery of unbelievers (contra irrisionem infidelium), Matt 7:6, “do not give what is holy to the dogs.” Jerome (he thinks, or Augustine) at first found Scripture unworthy beside Cicero. Example: “God is fire” is a metaphor both for the divine nature (light = understanding, warmth = love and power to transform) and for the Trinity (from fire proceed light and warmth; from the Father the Son as light and the Spirit as love). Class stops here.

His words #

• “artful” for artificialis; an art adapts to its matter [ed.: not “artificial”]
• “beginnings” for principia [ed.: principles]
• “understandables” for intelligibilia
• “solubilia”, arguments that can be “untied”; demonstration “ties something down”
• “the place from authority” [ed.: locus ab auctoritate]
• “maxime proprium”: arguing from authority is “most proper” to this teaching
• “circumvelatum”: veiled around
• “sapida scientia”, savoury knowledge; “insipid” = foolish
• “exercitium studiosorum”, “contra irrisionem infidelium”
• “Epithalamion”: marriage-day praise of bride and groom
• “canon” as measuring; the canonical books “measure us”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I q.1 a.7 ad 1, ad 2
• Thomas, ST I q.1 a.8 (whole)
• Thomas, ST I q.1 a.9, objections, sed contra, body, ad 1, ad 2
• Scripture quoted within: John 20:31 (inferred), Titus 1:9, 1 Cor 15:12ff, 2 Cor 10:5, Acts (Aratus), Romans 1:14, Hosea (no verse given), Matt 7:6
• Augustine, Epistle to Jerome (as quoted by Thomas) Mentioned
• Thomas, Commentary on the Sentences, prologue (whether the doctrine is artificialis)
• Thomas, Prologue to the Psalms; Thomas on the Song of Songs as Epithalamion
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles, book IV
• Plato, Meno; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I; Aristotle, Poetics
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (Lady Philosophy, theta and pi)
• Dionysius, Divine Names, Symbolic Theology, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 1
• Ambrose, On the Catholic Faith; Gregory, a homily; Matthew 16 and 22 (Peter’s profession; “whose son is he”)
• Enchiridion Symbolorum (Denzinger); Catechism of the Catholic Church; Spenser, Epithalamion; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

His questions #

• Why did the Magi bring no book for Christ’s teaching role? Testimony to truth belongs to Christ as king; “king” already includes teacher.
• Is “the whole Christ, head and members” a good way to name the subject of this theology? Better as the subject of sacred Scripture; the Summa’s subject is God in Himself and as Maker and end.
• In what sense and in how many ways is this teaching argumentative? Three: from articles to conclusions; from what the adversary concedes; by solving objections; two concern its beginnings, one its conclusions.
• Are we reasoning to the articles of faith or from them? From them (as Plato’s question in NE I; Descartes gets the road backwards).
• Why should Thomas care whether it is argumentative? (student) Because that is how he will proceed in this book, though Scripture proceeds in many other modes.
• Is Aristotle’s philosophy true because it is useful in theology? No: its usefulness is a sign of its truth; it is useful because it is true.
• Why say “the Lord is my rock” when a cat is more like God? Raised as objection 3; his reply not reached in this class (left open).
• What is common to poet and theologian in using metaphor, and what differs? Both handle what is disproportionate to our mind; the poet raises what is below it, the theologian lowers what is above it.