Summa I-II q.5 a.5-6: Can Man Reach Beatitude by His Natural Powers or Through an Angel?

Orientation #

He refers back to what “has been said above” and “shown in the first part of the summa” (that perfect beatitude is the vision of the divine essence, that higher creatures act on lower, that angels enlighten men), but says nothing explicit about last time. He ends with “Article seven here” after a break. The previous class worked through q.5 aa.2-4 and the next continues with q.5 aa.7-8.

The class, in order #

1. Article 5: the three objections and the sed contra (“nature does not fail in necessary things”) #

Point: whether man through his own natural powers can acquire beatitude; he reads the objections and calls them good arguments.

1. Obj. 1: nature does not fail in necessary things; nothing is more necessary than that by which man reaches his last end; so it cannot be lacking to human nature. “Pretty good argument.”
2. Obj. 2: man, more noble than irrational creatures, should be more sufficient; irrational creatures reach their ends by natural powers; so much more man. (He notes the reply will quote Aristotle’s De Caelo.)
3. Obj. 3: beatitude is a perfect operation (the Philosopher); beginning and perfecting belong to the same one; the imperfect operation, the beginning, is in man’s natural power, by which he is lord of his acts; so the perfect operation is too. His gloss: I think about something before I understand it, so thinking and understanding must both be in my power.
4. Sed contra: man is the beginning of his acts through understanding and will; but the beatitude prepared for the saints exceeds both (1 Cor 2, “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man”).

• “The sed contra is worth more than the three arguments”: the argument from faith is stronger than the argument from reason in theology, not in geometry.
• Aside: teaching his grandchildren geometry; Kate picks it up quickly, Sarah frustrated around the sixth theorem.

2. The response: no created knowledge reaches the divine essence (“according to the way of its substance”) #

Point: imperfect beatitude of this life can be acquired by natural powers, as virtue can (the happiness Aristotle spoke of); perfect beatitude, the sight of the divine essence, is above the nature not only of man but of every creature.

1. The natural knowledge of each creature is according to the mode of its substance, as the book De Causis says of the intelligence: it knows what is above and below it, but according to the mode of its substance (it knows lower things better than they know themselves, higher things less than they know it).
2. All knowledge according to the mode of a created substance falls short of the vision of the divine essence, which infinitely exceeds every created substance.
3. So neither man nor any creature, “not even my guardian angel, as he tells me,” reaches the last beatitude by natural powers.

• He recalls: you see God as He is only when your mind is formed by God Himself as the form by which you see (“In your light we shall see light”, Psalms). A created form cannot represent God as He is; one reason Thomas gives: the created form is not its own existence, so it cannot represent Him who says “I am who am.”
• De Causis: first thought to be Aristotle’s, later recognised as an Arab book following Aristotle; a few mistakes but a good book, a kind of completion of wisdom, written in epigrams. Thomas wrote a commentary on it.
• Aside: “brevity is a soul of wit” [ed.: usually “brevity is the soul of wit”], prompted by Netanyahu’s short speech to the US Congress and his “No” to returning to the 1967 borders.

3. Reply to obj. 1: reason and hands, free will, friends (“gives him reason and what Hands”) #

Point: nature does not fail man even though it gives him neither weapons and clothing (as to other animals) nor a beginning by which to reach beatitude.

• Weapons and clothing vs. reason and hands: with reason and hands man acquires these for himself; this is why habitus is called man’s category.
• Nature does not give a beginning sufficient for beatitude because that would have been impossible; but it gives free judgment/free will by which he can turn to God, who will make him blessed.
• Ethics III: what we can do through our friends we can in some way do. His example: what I understand through the help of my guardian angel I am able to understand, but not without his help; so one is able through God.

4. Reply to obj. 2: the nobler nature needs exterior aid (“through the aid of what medicine”) #

Point: more noble is the nature that can reach a perfect good, though it needs exterior aid, than the one that reaches only an imperfect good without aid.

• The Philosopher’s distinction in De Caelo II: he who can reach perfect health with medicine is better disposed than he who can reach only imperfect health without it. His version: I am better off taking my pills morning and evening with better health than a man with no medicine and inferior health.
• Applied: the reasonable creature who can reach beatitude with divine help is more perfect than the irrational creature who reaches an imperfect good by its nature alone.
• His example: he is better off than the man making hamburgers at McDonald’s who needs no instruction, because he can learn arithmetic from Euclid; a student objects the hamburger man “will serve billions” and that hamburgers are necessary; he replies the higher is a more spiritual good, good to the mind—a theorem of Euclid is better than a hamburger.
• Student: what about simple humble saints without learning? He: they had the love of God; and “Ubi humilitas, ibi sapientia”—humility disposes to wisdom because the humble man is disposed to think of God as the source of everything, the first cause, not relying on himself.
• Contrast: a quote from Hawking in the newspapers and Time magazine, that the human mind is like a computer which wears out with no afterlife; propaganda showing no idea of the soul’s immortality or of God, and some pride.
• Summary as he leaves it: we are not self-sufficient; the humble man recognises it; better to reach something higher with exterior help than only the lower by one’s own powers. Breathing he can do without help (“so far”), theology only with Thomas’s help.
• Aside: his prayer to the guardian angel while driving.

5. Reply to obj. 3: imperfect and perfect of different species (“not whatever is able to cause the disposition”) #

Point: imperfect and perfect of the same species can be caused by the same power, but not when they differ in species.

• Same species: through my same reason I both think about things and think them out. Different species: not whatever can dispose the matter can induce the ultimate perfection.
• The imperfect operation in man’s natural power is not of the same kind as seeing God face to face, since the species of an operation depends on its object; “ratio non sequitur.”

6. Article 6: the objections and the sed contra (“through the action of some higher creature”) #

Point: whether man can become blessed through a higher creature, an angel (“my guardian angel is too humble to make such a claim”).

1. Obj. 1: twofold order (Metaphysics XII, “the twelfth book of wisdom”): parts of the universe to each other, and the whole universe to the good outside it, God; the first is ordered to the second as to an end. The order of parts to each other is that higher creatures act on lower (first part of the Summa); so the angel acting on man renders him blessed. He admits some truth: angels help us to God, but whether to see Him face to face is not yet settled.
   • Chair: the parts have an order to each other (a slightly obtuse angle where the back meets the seat, one leg at each corner), but all on account of the whole chair’s order to something outside it, someone’s sitting. Army: order of the parts to each other on account of the order of the whole to the leader and to his end, victory.
2. Obj. 2: what is in potency is reduced to act by what is in act, as water is made hot by fire; man is in potency to beatitude, the angel in act; so the angel makes him blessed. He calls it a good argument, and when a student says “sleight of hand” he insists it rests on the fundamental of Metaphysics IX, act simply before potency. Example: Euclid, a blessed mathematician in act, makes him one by his reading (between two cube numbers two mean proportionals; between two square numbers one, in the duplicate ratio of their sides).
3. Obj. 3: beatitude is an operation of understanding; the angel can enlighten man’s understanding (first part); so the angel can make man blessed. This is why he prays before class that the angel enlighten us.
4. Sed contra: Psalm 83, the Lord gives both grace and glory.

• Which is stronger, three arguments or one sed contra? Thomas in the prooemium: the argument from authority is strongest in theology and weakest in philosophy. “Between two cube numbers there are two mean proportionals because Euclid says so” is the weakest argument, not accepted by mathematicians; but Scripture, and the Psalms, which contain the whole theology in the form of a prayer, is why Thomas says they are used so much in the liturgy.
• Aside: the bishops’ doctrinal committee’s twelve-page document criticising a Sister Johnson’s [ed.: ASR “Sir Johnson”] theology book for not seeing divine revelation as the foundation of theology; the strict censor Monsignor Dionne who said such things should not be printed.

7. The response: what exceeds created nature comes about by God immediately (“subject to what laws”) #

Point: every creature has limited power and limited action, so what exceeds created nature cannot come about by any creature’s power.

1. Whatever is above nature must come about immediately by God, as raising the dead or enlightening the blind.
2. Beatitude has been shown to exceed created nature; so it cannot be conferred by any creature; man becomes blessed God alone acting.

• Student: does that mean we don’t deserve it? He: if God says we deserve it, we deserve it; He gives the means, He must give grace.
• Imperfect beatitude: the same account as the virtue in whose act it consists; here a superior creature can help—Euclid, or one’s guardian angel.

8. Reply to obj. 1: lower powers dispose, the highest attains the end (“the lower powers aid for the achievement”) #

Point: in ordered active powers the last end belongs to the highest power, the lower aid by disposing.

• Shipbuilding is ordered to the governing (helmsman’s) art, which commands and to which the use of the ship, on account of which the ship exists, belongs. So man is aided by angels toward his last end in preceding things that dispose him, but attains the end itself only through the first agent, God.
• Kitchen: he the chef tells you to peel potatoes and defrost steaks; he makes the sauce; his wife in a hurry has him in the supporting role, “disposing.”
• Grade school prepares for high school, high school for college; the college professor should have something the others could not teach. His own teachers in the right order: Kasurik, then De Koninck (who came down and answered his questions, showing a visible superiority), then Dionne; had he had Dionne first it would have been too intense. Only later could he see how one had disposed for the next. De Koninck’s counsel: read Thomas and take just what he says.
• Same pattern: the St Joseph sisters who taught him to read and write prepared him for something further; the lower cause does not induce the ultimate perfection.
• Aside: Phi Beta Kappa stands for “philosophia biou kubernetes”—philosophy the helmsman of life.

9. Reply to obj. 2: natural being vs. intentional being (“cannot make another thing what white”) #

Point: a form in act in someone according to its perfect, natural being can be a beginning of action in another (the hot heats); a form present imperfectly, not according to natural being, cannot communicate itself.

• The intention of colour in the pupil cannot make another thing white; “Very subtle, Thomas”: this is intentional being as opposed to natural being. His example: the taste of wine in my mouth is intentional being, and my tongue cannot communicate that taste to other things.
• Nor can everything enlightened or heated enlighten or heat, else heating would go on forever and nothing would be cold.
• The light of glory by which God is seen is in God perfectly according to its natural being; in each creature imperfectly, by likeness and partaking. Hence no blessed creature can communicate its beatitude to another.
• Human likeness (which he flags as only a partial likeness, since it stays within the mind’s capacity): a student who somewhat understands the class cannot explain it to someone outside it, because he possesses it imperfectly; he himself can follow a complicated Euclid theorem but could not go to the board and prove it, unlike college matter taught without notes that became second nature; a good talk he could not repeat convincingly.
• The difference: the participation of divine light remains His light essentially and naturally (“in your light we shall see light”), only partaken; so I cannot comprehend God—never know Him as much as He is knowable, nor love Him as much as He is lovable.

10. Reply to obj. 3: angels enlighten about the divine works, not the vision (“all are immediate”) #

Point: a blessed angel enlightens man’s understanding, or a lower angel’s, about some reasons of the divine works, but not about the vision of the divine essence.

• Higher angels enlighten lower ones about things they see in God that the lower do not, never about seeing God face to face; for seeing Him all are immediate, without a middle, enlightened by God. So his guardian angel may enlighten him about things he sees in God more clearly, but not give the vision.
• Sometimes saints enlighten angels about some things, since some saints are higher than some angels. Then a break; “Article seven here.”

His words #

• beatitudinem / beatitudo: beatitude, the last end; perfect = seeing God as He is, face to face; imperfect = that of this life, Aristotle’s happiness.
• sed contra: the “against this” argument; in theology worth more than the three objections.
• book De Causis: an Arab book following Aristotle, in epigrams, on immaterial substances; the “intelligentsia” there is the understanding substance.
• “In your light we shall see light”: God as the form by which the blessed see Him.
• “I am who am”: God’s own existence, which no created form (not its own existence) can represent.
• habitus: the category of having, “man’s category,” because of reason and hands.
• Ubi humilitas, ibi sapientia: where humility, there wisdom.
• ratio non sequitur: the argument does not follow.
• twelfth (ninth) book of wisdom: [ed.: Metaphysics XII, IX].
• second book about the universe: [ed.: De Caelo II].
• ability: [ed.: potency]; “in act” its correlative.
• gratia: grace, which God must give.
• governing art: [ed.: helmsman’s art], which commands shipbuilding.
• intentional being vs. natural being: colour in the pupil, taste in the mouth vs. the hot thing that heats.
• light of glory: that by which God is seen, natural in God, partaken in creatures.
• immediate: without a middle.
• Philosophia biou kubernetes: philosophy helmsman of life (Phi Beta Kappa).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 5, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, response, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 5, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, response, replies)
• 1 Corinthians 2 (eye has not seen), in the a.5 sed contra
• Psalm 83, “the Lord gives grace and glory”, in the a.6 sed contra
• Liber de Causis, on the intelligence knowing according to the mode of its substance (quoted via Thomas)

Mentioned

• Thomas’s commentary on De Causis
• Summa Theologiae, first part (vision of God above every creature; higher creatures act on lower; angels enlighten men) and its prooemium (authority strongest in theology)
• Psalms, “In your light we shall see light”; Exodus, “I am who am” (inferred)
• Aristotle, Ethics III (friends); De Caelo II (health and medicine); Metaphysics XII (two orders, army), IX (act before potency)
• Scripture, “Ubi humilitas, ibi sapientia”
• Euclid, Elements (mean proportionals between cube and square numbers)
• Hawking quoted in USA Today / Time; the bishops’ doctrinal committee document on Sister Johnson’s book

His questions #

• Which is stronger, the three objections or the sed contra? The sed contra: in theology the argument from authority (faith) is strongest, in philosophy or geometry weakest.
• What is the book De Causis? An Arab book following Aristotle, once taken for Aristotle’s, on the immaterial substances, with a Thomas commentary.
• Why does nature not fail man though it gives him no weapons or clothing? It gives reason and hands to acquire them, and free will to turn to God.
• In what sense is the theorem of Euclid “higher” than the hamburger? A more spiritual good, good to the mind.
• What about the simple humble saints without learning? They had the love of God; where humility, there wisdom.
• Does beatitude exceeding nature mean we don’t deserve it? If God says we deserve it we do; He gives the means, grace.
• What kind of being does the taste of wine have in my mouth? Intentional being, which cannot be communicated to other things.
• Can my guardian angel give me the vision of God? No; he may enlighten me about things he sees in God, but for seeing Him all are immediate to God.