Summa I, Q. 43, Arts. 3–5: Sanctifying Grace, Why the Father Is Not Sent, and the Invisible Sending of the Son

Orientation #

He opens with the invocation, notes it is the feast of St Thomas the Apostle (October 6), and says “we’re up to Article 3 now, in Question Forty-Three.” He refers back to “what we said before” about being-in and having, and about the five notions (prev. lecture). He promises to treat later “more explicitly” when the Holy Spirit comes, and stops at a break after a. 5. The previous class did aa. 1-2 of q. 43; the next does a. 6.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, the objections (“gratia gratum facientis, Sanctifying grace, we call it”) #

Point: four objections that invisible mission is not only by sanctifying grace.

1. To be sent is to be given; if sent only by the gifts of grace, the person himself is not given but only his gifts (the error of “those saying the Holy Spirit is not given but his gifts”).
2. Secundum (by, according to) denotes a relation of cause; but the person causes the grace, not the reverse (Romans 5:5, charity “diffused in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us”). He attaches his old question about the Hail Mary: is the Lord with her because she is full of grace, or full of grace because the Lord is with her? (Held over to reply 2.)
3. Augustine, De Trinitate IV: the Son is sent when perceived in time by the mind; but the Son is known also by gratia gratis data, faith and science. Aside on naming: all grace is gratis data; the grace that does not sanctify keeps the common name, the other gets the new name, “another example of that way of naming things.” Unformed faith without charity is still a gift of God, as Vatican I teaches.
4. Rabanus Maurus (c. 800s, “the guy who wrote that prayer” to the Holy Spirit): the Spirit was given to the apostles for miracles, which is gratis data. Sed contra, Augustine De Trinitate XV: the Spirit proceeds temporally to sanctify the creature; sanctification is only by sanctifying grace.

2. The body of a. 3 (“as the known in the one knowing”) #

Point: mission and gift both require sanctifying grace, because only it gives a new mode of God’s presence.

• Sent = exists in a new way in someone; given = is had by someone. As Aristotle says in the fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V], “in” and “have” go together: part in the whole, whole has the part. “Kind of strange to say God could be had.”
• Common way God is in all things: by essence, power, presence, as a cause in effects partaking its goodness. Special way, only in the rational creature: as the known in the knower and the loved in the lover; because by knowing and loving the creature attains God himself, God is said not only to be in him but to dwell in him as in his temple.
• So no effect but sanctifying grace makes a person be in a creature in a new way; and we “have” only what we can freely use or enjoy, and the power of enjoying a divine person is only by sanctifying grace (“but then you’re papists”). In that very gift the Holy Spirit himself is had and dwells: so the person himself is given and sent.

3. Replies 1-2, the Hail Mary, and a student’s objection (“two things can be causes of each other”) #

Reply 1: by sanctifying grace the creature is perfected so that it can not only use the created gift but enjoy the divine person himself; so the mission is by the gift of grace and yet the person is what is given. Reply 2, the Hail Mary answered: grace disposes the soul to having the person; this is what “given according to grace” signifies. Disposition is reduced to the material cause, not matter strictly but the subject made apt to receive the form (as an artist’s matter may be undisposed; as a professor looks for the dispositions by which the student is apt to receive). But the gift of grace is from the Holy Spirit as mover or maker, efficient cause, which Romans 5:5 signifies. So as Aristotle said, two things can be causes of each other in different ways. Fire example: warming a thing makes it apt to receive fire, yet fire causes the warmth; a box thrown in the fire seems to explode into flame from within. Student: doesn’t sanctifying grace not merely dispose but actually give the person, since by it we partake of God’s life? His answer: the Holy Spirit is not changed by being sent; the change is in us, but he is its cause; grace makes us a suitable subject, it does not give us the Spirit. Book example: judging you will profit from a book disposes you to receive it, but is not the giving. Relic example: Sister Gertrude gave him a relic of St Gertrude (his mother’s name) because of his interest, but his aptness is not the giving. There is no grace in God; grace, a partaking of the divine nature, is on the side of the subject, making us like God and disposed to receive him; the receiving is not distinct from grace but given with it, with “not really a time lapse.” St Bernard: he comes many times, especially at an increase of grace or a new advance. The Son is sent when God is in us as known, not without love; the Holy Spirit when God is in us as loved (“more explicitly later”).

4. Replies 3-4: knowing vs. dwelling; the spirit of miracles (“not said to be given simpliciter”) #

Reply 3: the Son can be known through some effects, but does not dwell in us or is had by us through just any effect, only by grace. Reply 4: working miracles, like prophecy and each gratia gratis data, is manifestive of sanctifying grace (1 Cor 12:7, “manifestation of the Spirit”); the apostles received sanctifying grace with a sign manifesting it (“they went out and converted the world”). Where the sign is given without the grace, the Spirit is not given simpliciter (Aristotle’s old distinction) but with a determination: the prophetic spirit, the spirit of miracles. So miracles do not assure salvation (“we worked miracles in your name”); student’s example: the high priest who prophesied that Christ would die for the people.

5. Article 4: the Father cannot be sent (“the beginning that has no beginning”) #

Point: the first three articles said what mission is; now who can be sent. Objections: (1) the Father gives himself, since he cannot be had except by giving himself, so he sends himself (“a good interesting objection”); (2) by grace the whole Trinity dwells in us (John 14:23, “we will come and make our dwelling”); (3) what is not a notion or person is common to all, and mission is neither (only five notions). Sed contra, Augustine De Trinitate II: the Father alone is never said to be sent. Body: mission in sui ratione implies procession from another, in God by origin; the Father is not from another, so nullo modo is he sent; only the Son and Spirit. Student aside: like the first mover that cannot be moved? He: rather, mission means proceeding from someone to someone, and the Father is the beginning without beginning, non aliud. Reply 1, a distinction in “give”: as liberal, free communication of oneself to be enjoyed, the Father gives himself (“that’s really liberality”); as implying authority, i.e. origin of the giver with respect to the given (as an author is the origin of the book), only a person from another is given. So dari is more multiple in meaning than mission. Reply 2: the Father dwells in us through grace like the Son and Spirit, but is not sent, “for he does not have one from whom” (a quo/ex quo) he proceeds (Augustine IV). Reply 3: mission includes notion in general, not one in particular: being from another is common to two notions, which he names as “the paternity of the Father and the being breathed of the Holy Spirit” [ed.: as he says it; the two notions of being-from-another would be filiation and passive spiration]. He stresses the beauty of the article: it speaks of a person sent to us, yet looks back to the distinction of the persons.

6. Article 5: is the Son sent invisibly? the objections (“just reverse for these two persons”) #

Point: why a. 5 asks about the Son invisibly and a. 7 about the Spirit visibly: we have the incarnation in mind, so the Son’s invisible sending and the Spirit’s visible sending stand out less. Also, since the Son’s sending concerns God as known, one might think he could be sent without charity, “but that may be mistaken.” Objections: (1) all gifts of grace pertain to the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12, worked by one and the same Spirit; aside: he read this morning in Metaphysics V on unus atque idem, one and same per se and per accidens, “very much tied up”); (2) gifts perfecting the understanding can be had without charity (1 Cor 13; Vatican I: faith without charity is not strictly a virtue but donum Dei), so if I have faith without charity, has not the Son been sent to me? “Think twice.” (3) the Son’s procession differs from the Spirit’s, so two missions, one superfluous. Sed contra, Wisdom 9:10, “send her from heaven to the saints.” Body: by sanctifying grace the whole Trinity dwells in the mind. Mens means not reason against will but both, the spiritual part (as Aristotle sometimes puts will in reason). To be sent invisibly signifies two things, a new indwelling and origin from another; both fit Son and Spirit, only the first fits the Father. This precise exclusion of the Father rests on the very words of Scripture; still the Father is our guest too, “these three … that came to Abraham.”

7. Reply 1: appropriation of gifts (“he has the notion of the first gift”) #

All gifts as gifts are attributed to the Holy Spirit, who is the first gift since he is love: what I give first is my love, other gifts because I love you (the two Our Father accounts: “good gifts” in one, “the Holy Spirit” in Luke). So thank God first for his love. But gifts with special reasons are appropriated (now the precise word) to the Son: those pertaining to understanding; John 1, “the light that enlightens every man”: not only the Son enlightens, but it is appropriated to him who proceeds as the thought of God. Augustine IV: the Son is sent when he is known and perceived. Aside: his wife’s kitchen plaque, “God is the best thought,” which he first doubted, then found in John.

8. Reply 2: a knowledge breathing love (“cum amore notitia est”) #

Point: faith without charity is not the Son’s mission.

• Grace is in the soul itself, a partaking of the divine nature; as the powers flow from the soul, the theological virtues flow from grace into the powers: faith in reason, hope and charity in will; by them we partake even of the divine operations of knowing and loving.
• Grace conforms the soul to God; for a person to be sent, the soul must be assimilated to that person by some gift. Charity likens to the Spirit, who is love. “This is the important distinction”: the Son is the Word, not any thought but one breathing love (Father and Son naturally breathe the Spirit), so assimilation to the Son requires love. Augustine IX: the Word is notitia cum amore. So not any perfection of understanding, but an instruction that breaks forth into love (John 6:45; Psalm, “in my meditation fire was kindled,” exarsit).
• Percipitur means experimental knowledge, properly sapientia, sapida scientia, savory knowledge, not without charity. Romeo’s “unsavory guide” = foolish; the fifth quatrain of Adoro te devote, “te illi semper dulce sapere,” the same idea.
• Student: so one with faith without charity? He: strictly speaking the Son is not sent to him; “very precise, in Augustine.”

9. Reply 3: two missions, one root (“come together in the root of grace”) #

As regards origin, the Son’s mission is distinguished from the Spirit’s as generation from procession (the Spirit’s going-forth had no proper name, so it kept the common one). As regards effect, both come together in the root, grace in the soul, and branch into two effects: enlightening the understanding (Son, likeness to his procession) and inflaming the heart (Spirit, love). One cannot be without the other, since neither is without sanctifying grace and the persons are not separated. Break.

His words #

• gratia gratum faciens (“grace making one pleasing/graceful to God”): what “we call sanctifying grace.”
• gratia gratis data: grace freely given that does not sanctify; keeps the common name.
• “to be in” / “to have”: correlative, as part in whole and whole having part.
• “dwell as in his temple”: God’s special presence in the rational creature.
• “disposition” of the subject: reduced to the material cause; vs. mover/maker, efficient cause.
• simpliciter vs. “with some determination”: Aristotle’s distinction, applied to the Spirit given.
• “authority”: in the sense of author = origin.
• “the beginning that has no beginning,” non aliud: the Father.
• dari “more multiple in meaning” than mission.
• mens: both reason and will, the spiritual part of the soul.
• “appropriation”: used now “more precisely.”
• “the first gift”: the Holy Spirit as love.
• notitia cum amore: the Word, “a thought breathing love.”
• perceptio: experimental knowledge; sapientia = sapida scientia, savory knowledge.
• “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V].

Texts #

Read in class

• Summa Theologiae I, q. 43, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 43, a. 4 (all)
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 43, a. 5 (all)
• Scripture quoted within them: Romans 5:5; 1 Cor 12:7; John 14:23; 1 Cor 13; Wisdom 9:10; John 6:45; Psalm “in meditatione mea exardescet ignis”; John 1 (“light that enlightens every man”) Mentioned
• Augustine, De Trinitate II, IV, IX, XV; Rabanus Maurus; First Vatican Council on faith without charity; Aristotle, Metaphysics V (on “in”/“have” and unus atque idem); Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (“unsavory guide”); Thomas, Adoro te devote, fifth quatrain; St Bernard; the Hail Mary; Matthew and Luke on the Our Father; Genesis, three men at Abraham’s tent

His questions #

• Is the Lord with Mary because she is full of grace, or is she full of grace because the Lord is with her? Both, in different ways: grace disposes the subject (material cause), the Lord is efficient cause of the grace.
• Does sanctifying grace only dispose the soul, or actually give the divine person? It disposes; it makes us a suitable subject; the receiving is given with grace, with no time lapse.
• Why is the Father alone never sent? Mission implies proceeding from another, and the Father is from no one.
• Can the Father give himself? Yes, as free communication of himself to be enjoyed; not if giving implies origin.
• Why does a. 5 ask about the Son invisibly and a. 7 about the Spirit visibly? The incarnation makes those the less obvious cases.
• If I have faith without charity, has the Son been sent to me? Not strictly: the Son is a thought breathing love, known “cum amore.”
• What does percipitur mean in Augustine? Experimental, savory knowledge (sapida scientia), not without charity.
• Is the Holy Spirit alone the giver of grace, or is this appropriated? Appropriated: as first gift (love) all gifts are attributed to him; gifts of understanding to the Son.
• If both are sent, is one mission superfluous? No: distinct by origin, one in root (grace), distinct in effects (enlightening, inflaming), neither without the other.