Summa I, Q.19, Arts. 10-12: God's Free Choice and the Will of the Sign (Command, Counsel, Prohibition, Operation, Permission)

Orientation #

He says the body of a.10 “goes back to what we saw before” (God necessarily wills his own goodness, other things not of necessity), and that a.11 depends on the earlier article on when metaphors are appropriate in Scripture. He ends by proposing a break “between that and the next question.” The previous class covered q.19 aa.7–9 and the next takes up the passions and q.20 on love in God.

The class, in order #

1. Article 10, objections: “it seems that God does not have free judgment” #

Point: the Latin is liberum arbitrium, “free judgment,” not “free choice”; our freedom rests on reason’s ability to judge things in an infinity of ways, so freedom of will goes back to free judgment.

• Obj. 1 (Jerome, homily on the prodigal son): God alone is the one in whom no sin falls nor can fall; the others, who are of liberum arbitrium, can bend to good or bad. So Jerome seems to deny free will of God.
• Obj. 2: free judgment is a faculty of reason and will by which good and bad is chosen; God wishes nothing bad; so no free judgment in God. (He: God can’t judge the bad to be good.)
• Sed contra (Ambrose, On Faith): the Holy Spirit divides to each as he wills, by free judgment of the will, not by service of necessity.

2. Article 10, body: “free judgment we have with respect to those things which we do not necessarily will” #

Point: free judgment is about what we do not will by natural instinct.

1. We naturally will to be happy and cannot will to be miserable; this is not free will but natural instinct (hence animals moved by natural instinct are not said to move by free judgment).
2. God of necessity wills his own goodness (earlier article), but other things not of necessity (shown above).
3. Therefore about those things he has free judgment, or free choice. Application: he chose you in himself before creating the world, not because you were more willing (you weren’t at all) or more deserving than countless others who could have been — so thank him.

Asides on English words (one language sometimes has the better word, as Monsignor Dion used to say):

• thanks and think are related in origin (Chesterton makes the connection; he checked it years ago and “it’s a logical thing, not coincidence”): if you think, you’ll be thankful.
• like/liking: one cause of loving is likeness — “I like you because you’re like me” shows both senses.
• want = desire and lack, and the two meanings are connected (you desire what you lack). Hamlet: “a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer” — wants means lacks. Strictly there is no wanting in God, since want implies not having (to be taken up later). Physics I: matter is said to desire form; the lack of form does not desire form, but “matter wants form” implies matter also lacks form.

3. Article 10, replies: “not simply, but only as regards” #

• Ad 1: Jerome excludes liberum arbitrium from God not simply, but only as regards the possibility of being deflected to sin. (Aside: Jerome, one of the four great doctors of the Western Church; in Latin Hieronymus.)
• Ad 2: the evil of guilt is a turning away from the divine goodness through which God wills all things, so it is impossible for him to will it; yet he holds himself to two opposites, able to will this to be or not to be — God could will that you are or are not — as we, not sitting, can will to sit or not will to sit. He stresses: nothing new here; it goes back to what God wills of necessity (his own goodness) and what he wills only in willing that goodness, which is not necessary for it — hence freedom to choose you to be or not, in the whole creation.

4. Lead-in to the “will of the sign”: “thy will be done” #

Point: the last two articles concern the voluntas signi; a.11 asks whether one should speak this way at all, a.12 divides it.

• The Our Father’s third petition, “thy will be done”: God’s will is God, unchangeable, immovable; so it is not God’s will that is done but what God wills that is done — and that is called “will.” Thomas says this is like speaking metaphorically; it is a sign of his will.
• Same with Christ in the garden, “not my will but thine be done”: not that God’s will itself is done, but what God wills, Christ wills.
• Student: is this analogous to distinguishing our faculty of will from the object we will? — Yes; and we speak so of humans too: “do your parents’ will” means do what they will.

5. Article 11, objections and sed contra: “ought not to distinguish in God the will of the sign” #

• Obj. 1: God’s knowledge is a cause of things as much as his will, yet no signs are assigned on the side of knowledge; so none on the side of will.
• Obj. 2: a sign not agreeing with what it signifies is false; if the signs conform to the divine will they are superfluous, if not, false.
• Sed contra: God’s will is one, being the divine essence, yet Scripture speaks in the plural — “Great are the works of the Lord, exquisite in all their wills” (he says “Psalm 1:10”; Ps. 110:2 Vulgate, inferred) — so sometimes a sign of the will is taken for the will.

6. Article 11, body: “some things are said properly and some things according to a metaphor” #

Point: “will” is said of God both properly and metaphorically; the metaphorical use is the will of the sign.

• Etymology aside: metaphor (Greek, meta over + fora carry) has exactly the same etymology as translation (Latin). Yet we use translation for carrying over the meaning (homo rendered “man,” not the word carried over), metaphor for carrying over the word itself while the meaning changes (“the girl is sweet”; “taste and see how sweet is the Lord” — God can’t be sweet to taste).
• The connection in metaphor is usually likeness, but a word can also be carried over by an effect: God is said to be angry, though there is no anger in God properly, because the angry man punishes, and when God punishes he is metaphorically said to be angry.
• Thomas’s argument: (1) human passions are said of God metaphorically by likeness of effects; what in us is a sign of the passion is, in God, signified by the passion’s name (punishing is a sign of anger, so it is called anger). (2) Likewise what in us is customarily a sign of will is metaphorically called God’s will: when someone commands, it is a sign he wants that to come about; hence the divine precept is called the will of God, as in the Lord’s Prayer.
• Aside: the Our Father is in Matthew and Luke, not Mark or John; fuller in Matthew (seven petitions, in the Sermon on the Mount) than Luke (five).
• Difference from anger: anger is never said properly of God, since its chief meaning includes a passion, an undergoing; will is sometimes said properly. So in God one distinguishes will properly said, the voluntas beneplaciti (what pleases one), from will metaphorically said, the voluntas signi, the will of the sign — an unusual way of speaking, but found in Scripture and the Fathers.

7. Article 11, ad 1: “knowledge is not a cause of those things which come to be except through the will” #

Point: why knowledge cannot cause anything without the will.

1. Knowledge and love are opposites in this: truth is in us, goodness is in things; and there is the same knowledge of opposites, since knowledge is perfected in the knower and knowing one opposite helps know the other (teaching ethics: knowing virtue helps know vice and vice versa; King Lear, where Cordelia’s goodness stands out against Goneril and Regan, and the father with a good and a bad son; black and white).
2. But it is not the same love of opposites: love of virtue impedes love of vice, and vice versa — “an amazing thing.”
3. So knowledge as such is open to good and bad; if something came automatically from knowledge you would be doing opposites at once. That you do one rather than the other depends on the will, which determines to one and excludes the other.
4. Hence a sign taken from the effect is attributed to will, not knowledge. Aside: a student in California objected that they shouldn’t teach ethics, since the same knowledge teaches how to be bad and students are inclined to be bad — “the most reasonable objection to teaching ethics I ever heard,” though the goodness of virtue shines the more by seeing vice.

8. Article 11, ad 2: “not because they are signs that God wills” #

The signs are called divine wills not because they are signs that God wills, but because what in us is customarily a sign of willing is called in God the divine will — as punishment is not a sign that anger is in God, but is called anger in God because in us it is a sign of anger. He: “kind of a subtle thing.”

9. Article 12, objections: “there are placed five signs about the divine will” #

The five: prohibition, precept (command), counsel, operation, permission.

• Obj. 1: what God commands or counsels is sometimes done in us, and what he prohibits he sometimes permits; so they should not be divided against one another.
• Obj. 2: God does nothing without willing it (Wisdom 11); but the will of the sign is distinguished from the will of complacence; so operation should not fall under the will of the sign.
• Obj. 3: operation and permission pertain to all creatures, but command, counsel and prohibition only to the rational creature; so they are not of one order and don’t belong in one division.
• Obj. 4: the bad happens in many ways, the good in one (Ethics II; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 — one way to hit the bullseye, many ways to miss); so it is unsuitable to give the bad one sign (prohibition) and the good two (counsel, command).

10. Article 12, body: “either through himself or through another” #

Point: the signs are the ways we customarily declare that we will something.

• Through himself: directly, by doing something himself — sign of operation; indirectly, per accidens, by not impeding — permission; for the removens prohibens, the one removing what prevents, is a mover per accidens (Physics VIII). Samson pushing the pillar: he causes the roof to fall per accidens, removing what held it up.
• Through another, by ordering the other to do something: either by necessary induction — precept (commanding what he wishes) and prohibition (the contrary) — or by persuasive induction (persuasoria inductione) — counsel. Paul: “I have no command here, but I have a counsel,” which the Church picked up; the young man who has kept the commands is told “sell everything and follow me” — not a necessity for salvation but the better way.
• Aside on Thomas’s word: induction, inducement, introduction all imply something not forcing you. Induction as argument: a hundred frogs with three-chambered hearts → all frogs; in darkest Africa one might induce that all men are black, or that none are green — probable, but if green men turn up on Mars, surprised, not refuted in what one knew. Inducement: the car dealer throwing in four tires and free oil changes inclines but doesn’t force. Persuasion comes from sweet — sweeten the deal. The book on giving a cat a pill: hide it in one of several cat-sized meatballs; the cat won’t take the one with the pill.
• So the five divide into two and three (one into two, one into three): not violating “the rule of two or three.”
• That command, counsel and prohibition are called God’s will is clear from Matthew 6:10 (“thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth” — honour father and mother, don’t kill; but he puts counsel there too). That permission and operation are called God’s will is clear from Augustine: nothing comes about unless the omnipotent one wills it, either by doing it or by allowing it (sinendo ut fiat).
• Alternative account: permission and operation refer to the present (permission to the bad, operation to the good); prohibition, precept and counsel to the future (prohibition to the bad, precept to the necessary good, counsel to the superabundant good).
• Digression on threes: the Church’s three counsels answer the Greek (Socratic) division of goods — exterior goods (poverty), goods of the body (chastity), goods of the soul/will (obedience). Thomas explains the articles of faith after Christ’s death (Te Deum) by the same three: descent into hell gave vision to the prophets (soul), resurrection most openly the body, ascension the proper place (exterior good). Psalm 8: the son of man rules beasts, birds, fishes — sheep and oxen the good, small and great in the Church; the bad divided by John’s “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life”: birds the proud (Shakespeare’s Henry plays, proud men watching their birds), fish money (the sea for trade), beasts the lust of the flesh.

11. Article 12, replies: “the rational creature is the lord of his own act” #

• Ad 1: nothing prevents someone declaring in diverse ways that he wills the same thing, as many names signify the same thing; so the same thing can fall under command and counsel, operation and prohibition or permission.
• Ad 2: as God can be signified metaphorically to will what he does not will properly, so he can be signified metaphorically to will what he does will properly; so the same thing can be under voluntas beneplaciti and voluntas signi (as God’s justice is said properly and God’s anger metaphorically of the same thing). Operation always coincides with the will of complacence; command and counsel do not, because operation is present and per se an effect of the will, they are future and through another.
• Ad 3: the rational creature is lord of his own act, so there are special signs about him insofar as God orders him to act voluntarily and through himself; other creatures act only as moved by the divine doing, so for them only operation and permission.
• Ad 4: every evil of guilt, though it happens in many ways, agrees in being discordant from the divine will — hence one sign, prohibition. Goods relate diversely to the divine goodness: some are those without which we cannot attain enjoyment of it — precept; some those by which we attain it more perfectly — counsel (Paul: the man who marries off his daughters does well, he who puts them in the convent does better). Or counsel is also about avoiding lesser evils (de minoribus malis vitandis). Asides: the counsels remove impediments to the perfection of charity, in which perfection consists (Francis de Sales, “the Doctor of Divine Love”); de Sales on cultivating the little virtues, so too avoiding the little vices; a famous priest at Assumption on eating between meals; his brother Richard on candy: “If you can’t say no to the things that are okay, you’ll never say no to the things that are not okay.”

His words #

• liberum arbitrium; “free judgment,” not “free choice”; freedom in the will goes back to reason judging in infinite ways.
• natural instinct; what we will necessarily (happiness), as opposed to free judgment.
• “want”; desire and lack, connected; no wanting in God strictly.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• metaphor; carrying over the word (not the meaning, as in translation), by likeness or by effect.
• voluntas beneplaciti; the will properly said, “what pleases one” (also “will of complacence”).
• voluntas signi; the will of the sign, “will” said metaphorically of what in us is a sign of willing.
• removens prohibens; the one removing what prevents, a mover per accidens.
• persuasoria inductio; persuasive induction, which pertains to counsel; induction/inducement as non-forcing.
• sinendo ut fiat; Augustine’s “by allowing it to come about.”
• de minoribus malis vitandis; counsel as about avoiding lesser evils.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I, q. 19, a. 10 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas, ST I, q. 19, a. 11 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas, ST I, q. 19, a. 12 (objections, body, replies)

Mentioned

• Jerome, homily on the prodigal son; Ambrose, On Faith; Augustine (quoted in a.12)
• Psalm quoted in a.11 sed contra (“Psalm 1:10” as he says it; Ps. 110:2 Vulgate, inferred); Psalm 8; Matthew 6:10 and Luke (Our Father); Wisdom 11; 1 John (three lusts); Paul on command vs counsel and on marrying off daughters; the rich young man
• Aristotle, Physics I and VIII; Ethics II; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4
• Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear, the Henry plays; Chesterton on think/thank; Francis de Sales; Te Deum; Socrates’ division of goods

His questions #

• What does “free” in liberum arbitrium actually mean? Free judgment; our freedom rests on reason’s judging things in infinitely many ways.
• What does “will” mean in “thy will be done”? Not God’s unchangeable will itself, but what God wills that we do — a sign of his will.
• What is the etymology of “metaphor”? Carry over (meta + fora), the same as “translation,” but metaphor carries the word, translation the meaning.
• Is there anger in God properly speaking? No; he is said to be angry because he punishes, as the angry man does.
• Why can’t knowledge cause anything without the will? Knowledge is the same of opposites, so it would produce opposites at once; the will determines to one.
• Is it the same love of opposites? No: love of virtue impedes love of vice, and vice versa.
• Is Samson causing the roof to come down? Per accidens, as removens prohibens.
• Does the conclusion of an induction follow necessarily? No; it is probable (frogs, “no green men”).
• Is Thomas violating the rule of two or three with five signs? No; he divides into two, then one into two and one into three.
• What do the three counsels refer to? The three goods: exterior (poverty), body (chastity), soul/will (obedience).