Aquinas on Beatitude I: Seeing God and Sinlessness, the Speculative Sciences, and Knowing the Angels (Prima Secundae q.3 a.6–7)

Orientation #

“As has been said above”: the twofold beatitude, perfect and imperfect, and the earlier point that there can be only one last end (prev. lecture); he also refers back to the definition of the good “we met before we even got into the definition of happiness.” He closes saying “we’ve got to wait until the [next] article to find out what it does consist in.” The previous class covered q. 3’s earlier articles (peace, will, practical vs. speculative intellect); the next takes up a. 8 and the vision of the divine essence.

The class, in order #

1. Why an angel who sees God cannot sin: reasoning by proportion (“It’s impossible for an angel”) #

Opening aside from his rereading of the treatise on the angels in the Prima Pars (article not identified): a rational creature that sees God face to face cannot sin, and Thomas shows it by a proportion, reasoning from the ratio more known to us to the ratio less known.

• Gospel examples of proportion: “which of you fathers, if your son asked for bread, would give him a stone” — as I am to my children, so God is to us; the first ratio is more known, so “how much more” will God give good things. Continuous proportion (three terms, the middle shared, “like four and six and nine”): the master forgiving the servant who then refuses the lesser servant; “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive.”
• Thomas’s proportion: as God’s goodness is to the one who sees God, so [the apparent good] is to one who does not see God as He is — “you and I, right now.”
• The fourth term rests on the “fundamental definition in ethics”: the good is what all want. Objection: some want bad things. Reply (Aristotle): real good vs. apparent good; we cannot will the bad as bad, only under some appearance of good.
• Examples of bad seen as good in some way: killing someone who annoys you (“it gets rid of an annoyance”); David and Bathsheba’s husband; taking money from a box in your bedroom (“I now have more money”). Contrary case: getting up early for Mass is good simply but “in some ways bad.” This is Aristotle’s second mistake, simply vs. not simply — “the mistake Meno makes.”
• Conclusion: the one who sees God sees goodness itself and sees nothing else as good except as partaking of and ordered to God; so, as the thief cannot act except under some appearance of good, the one who sees God cannot choose anything except in reference to God — “isn’t that a beautiful proportion.”
• Aside: Thomas was brought up with the liberal arts, so ratios and proportions were familiar from boyhood.
• Aside (recording drops): a wine-tasting comparison — one can tell Cabernet Sauvignon from Coke, but close things exercise the mind. [unclear in recording]

2. Article 6 objections: the “looking sciences” (“consideration of the speculative sciences”) #

He frames the article personally: has he been deceived all his life seeking beatitude in the speculative sciences — “maybe I should have become a monk.”

• Vocabulary: speculative (Latin), theoretical (Greek), “looking” (English): trying to see and understand, not to do; hence not practical.
• Obj. 1: Ethics — felicitas (Greek eudaimonia) is operation according to perfect virtue; the speculative virtues are three: science (episteme), sapientia (“savory knowledge,” Thomas’s etymology), and intellectus (“natural understanding, as I call it”); all pertain to the looking sciences. “I find this pretty convincing.”
• Obj. 2: what all desire for its own sake; first sentence of the proem to Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics I]: “all men by nature desire to know” — but the Greek is eidenai, not epistasthai, so “all men by birth want to understand”; Aristotle shows shortly after that these sciences are sought for their own sake.
• Obj. 3: beatitude is last perfection; perfection is reduction from potency to act; the understanding is reduced to act by geometry, arithmetic, natural philosophy, first philosophy.
• Sed contra: Jeremiah ch. 9, “let the wise man not glory in his wisdom” (read at his scripture reading that morning) — “that’s a put-down for me.”

3. Twofold beatitude, perfect and imperfect (“twofold is the beatitude of man”) #

Thomas will not “throw Aristotle on the dump heap of history”: Aristotle himself, aware of Solon’s “call no man happy till he be dead,” settles for “happy as men can be.”

• Student question: is a twofold beatitude contrary to there being only one last end? Answer: the last end is the perfect one; both are called beatitude because one partakes of, or is perfected by, the other.
• Digression on natural vs. supernatural love in the angels: some say God is loved above all only by charity; Thomas says the angel loves God above all even by natural love, because the part naturally loves the whole more than itself (the hand rises to protect the head, sacrificing itself for the common good). Thomas’s objection: if natural love loved self most, charity would not perfect nature but go against it — “grace would be contrary to nature.” Same for us; our love seems naturally selfish only in the emotions. Francis de Sales makes the same point on the love of God. So Aristotle, introduced to Christianity, would not find it unreasonable: charity is the source of the beauty of the vision, not just of our natural good.

4. Perfect prudence vs. imperfect prudence in animals (“perfect foresight is found in man”) #

Perfect beatitude attains the true definition of beatitude; imperfect beatitude does not, but partakes a particular likeness — as prudence (English “foresight,” Thomas deriving prudentia from providentia) is perfect in man, who has right reason about things to be done, and imperfect in brute animals through particular instincts to deeds like those of prudence.

• Tabitha the cat, shut off from her box, used the bathtub drain rather than the rug — “a little bit of foresight”; and she went from nice to clawing at the first step toward the stairs. Animals partake of something like foresight; biologists who say only a matter of degree are “mixed up.”

5. The core argument: sciences cannot pass beyond their sense-principles (“cannot extend beyond the power of the beginnings”) #

Beatitude cannot consist essentially in the looking sciences.

1. The consideration of a science does not go beyond the power of its principles, since the whole science is contained in them in virtue — the seed comparison (acorn and oak: “I don’t believe that, but it does”). He translates episteme as “reasoned-out knowledge,” which comes from natural understanding.
2. The first principles of the looking sciences are taken through the senses (beginning of Metaphysics; end of Posterior Analytics, “the book about episteme and demonstration”).
3. So the whole consideration cannot go farther than knowledge of sensible things can lead.
4. But the last perfection cannot consist in knowledge of sensibles: a thing is not perfected by what is lower except as the lower partakes of the higher. The form of a stone (“even Tabitha”) is lower than man; the intellect is perfected through it not as such a form but as it partakes some likeness of what is above human understanding, “as the understandable light.”

• Aside: Physics I calls form “something divine,” like God, because form is a kind of act and God is pure act. Plato and Aristotle: animals and plants reproduce trying to be immortal as far as they can, in their kind. He quotes Shakespeare on a mother’s glass calling back “the lovely April of her prime.” The prefix “re-” in reproduction: your parents are re-produced, “because you’re not going to last too long — not as long as a tree”; Greek proverb, “whom the gods love dies young.”

6. Through itself and through another; the separated substances out of reach (“everything that is through another”) #

Axiom: everything that is so through another is led back to what is so through itself (per se, one of the words Aristotle takes up in Metaphysics V, attached to “perfect”); equivalently, what is so by participation presupposes what is so essentially — as Thomas says of the angels’ being vs. God, who is being per se.

• Applications: Aristotle knows through himself, “the rest of us are per aliud”; every moved mover is a mover through another, so there must be an unmoved mover, “the first argument for God”; coffee sweet through the sugar; dishcloth wet through the water.
• It has been shown that through sensibles one cannot arrive at knowledge of the separated substances; Aristotle: to these our mind is like the bat’s eye to daylight; Plato: the cave and shadows. Hence beatitude is not in the speculative sciences — which sets up a. 7 (“maybe it’s seeing those angels I’m studying”).
• But as sensible forms partake a likeness of the higher substances, so the sciences are a partaking of true beatitude: “I wasn’t pursuing true and perfect beatitude all my life, but a partaking of that.”

7. Replies to article 6 (“the philosopher speaks in the book of the ethics”) #

• Ad 1: Aristotle speaks of imperfect happiness — Solon, the Greek tragedies (Oedipus the King), “happy as men are.” Aside: his brother Mark’s version, “call no man a bachelor till he be dead — unless he’s a monk.”
• Ad 2: nature desires not only perfect beatitude but whatever likeness or partaking of it there can be.
• Ad 3: the sciences do reduce to act (knowing proportional numbers, a third proportional), but not to the ultimate and complete act.

8. Article 7 objections: contemplation of the angels (“knowledge of separated substances”) #

Separated substances = angels, separate from matter; he suggests the article concerns the soul separated from the body knowing angels directly.

• Obj. 1: Gregory’s homily — nothing to be mixed up with the feasts of men if one cannot be among the feasts of the angels, to which our beatitude is destined. Fra Angelico’s judgment scenes of men and angels dancing; Teresa of Avila told by Christ “I would have you converse with angels and not with men”; the Guardian Angel prayer.
• Obj. 2: the last perfection is to be joined to its beginning (the circle, same beginning and end); man’s knowledge begins from the angels who enlighten him (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4).
• Obj. 3: each nature is perfected by joining a higher nature (body joined to the human soul); the angels are above the human understanding in nature. “Well, I’m convinced now.”
• Sed contra: Jeremiah — “let him glory who glories in knowing me”: the last glory is knowledge of God.

9. Body of article 7: only God is truth essentially (“God alone is truth essentially”) #

1. Perfect beatitude consists not in what perfects the intellect by partaking but in what is such by its very essence: a power’s perfection is measured by what pertains to the definition of its object.
2. The object of intellect is the truth (he anticipates “I am the way, the truth, and the life”); so what has only partaken truth does not perfect the intellect ultimately.
3. Same disposition in being and in truth (Metaphysics II): beings by participation are true by participation.
4. Angels have partaken being; God alone is His own being — “I am who am,” from the Prima Pars, “we study things in the proper order.”
5. So God alone is truth essentially, and His contemplation makes one perfectly blessed; the angels give an imperfect beatitude, though higher than the sciences (not the angel-knowledge one gets reading qq. 50-64 of the Prima Pars, but the separated soul’s).

• Kasurik: when you meet your guardian angel you will say “this is God” — it is a creature, but overwhelming; like the sun in a mirror held to your eyes, one looks like the other; the angel says “no, I’m not God”; the devil may say “I’m God.”
• The Metaphysics II argument, “interesting use of that text”: what belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, belongs more to the cause — fire and the air around it; coffee and sugar; water and dishcloth; effect true because of cause, so the first cause is most true. Aristotle would find “I am who am” and “I am truth” make sense. His communion prayer term “lux severa” [likely garbled; reading uncertain] and “gaudium sempiternum … consummata.”
• Aside: the angels’ essential beatitude does not increase (“contrary to the notion of end to be endless,” Metaphysics II); the accidental reward increases until the last judgment — your guardian angel rejoices when you turn from wickedness; after that day “you’re really finished.”

10. Replies to article 7 and where this leaves us (“the feast of the angels”) #

• Ad 1: we partake the feast of the angels not only by contemplating them but by contemplating God together with them, and chiefly God — “I didn’t want to say it, but okay.”
• Ad 2: for those who hold souls created by the angels (Avicenna [ASR “Avicent”] and such), beatitude in the angels would fit; but that is erroneous (refuted at length in both Summas) — otherwise we would be made in the angels’ image. God is the first beginning of the soul’s creation and illumination (“enlightens every man who comes into this world”); the angel enlightens as minister and aids man toward beatitude but is not its object. Kasurik: open your mind to your guardian angel in prayer to give him more access.
• Ad 3: a lower nature attains a higher in two ways: by grade of the participating power (man contemplates as the angels contemplate) or as object attained — and the last perfection is attaining that in which the notion of the object is found plene, “full.”
• He closes: “we’ve got to wait until the [next] article to find out what it does consist in”; break.

His words #

• proportion: four terms; continuous proportion: three terms, middle shared
• the good is what all want; real vs. apparent good
• simply vs. not simply (in some way): “Aristotle’s second mistake,” Meno’s mistake
• speculative / theoretical / looking sciences [ed.: speculative sciences]
• felicitas / eudaimonia: operation according to perfect virtue
• episteme: “reasoned-out knowledge” [ed.: science]; sapientia: “savory knowledge” [ed.: wisdom]; intellectus: “natural understanding”
• eidenai vs. epistasthai: “want to understand,” not “want to know”
• Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]; proem (first sentence)
• foresight: prudentia from providentia [ed.: prudence]
• beginnings [ed.: principles]; in virtue, in power (seed)
• through itself / through another (per se / per aliud); by participation / essentially
• understandable light [ed.: intelligible light]
• separated substances: angels, separate from matter
• accidental reward vs. essential beatitude
• plene: full; “we are led by the senses”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 3, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 3, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Jeremiah 9 (sed contra of both articles; read at that morning’s scripture)

Mentioned

• Summa Theologiae I, treatise on the angels (qq. 50-64): angels seeing God cannot sin; natural love of God; angels’ beatitude not increasing; souls not created by angels
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (definition of happiness; three speculative virtues; Solon)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (all men desire to know), II (truth and being; cause truer), V (per se)
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, end (principles from sense)
• Aristotle, Physics I (form as something divine)
• Plato, Meno; the cave
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4
• Gregory, homily on the feasts of angels
• Gospel parables (bread/stone; unforgiving servant); Our Father; Exodus “I am who am” (inferred); John “I am the way, the truth, and the life”
• Francis de Sales, on the love of God; Shakespeare sonnet on the mother’s glass; Thomas’s communion prayers; Fra Angelico; Teresa of Avila

His questions #

• Which is more known to us: how I am to my children, or how God is to us? How I am to my children — so the proportion argues from that to God.
• What is the fundamental definition in ethics, the definition of the good? The good is what all want.
• If somebody annoys you, should you kill them? Is it good in some way? No, not simply; but in some way it gets rid of an annoyance — the simply / not-simply confusion.
• Is a twofold beatitude contrary to there being only one last end? No: the last end is the perfect one; the imperfect partakes of it.
• Is a moved mover a mover per se or per aliud? Per aliud; so there must be a mover through itself, the unmoved mover.
• Who is reproduced — you or your parents? Your parents are re-produced; you are produced again.
• Can you tell the difference between the sun and the sun in a mirror held to your eyes? No — so the guardian angel will look like God, and must say “I’m not God.”
• What, then, does beatitude consist in? Left open: “we’ve got to wait until the next article.”