Summa I-II q.5 a.7-8: Are Good Works Needed for Beatitude, and Does Everyone Desire It? With the Logical Division of the Second Part

Orientation #

He notes that this article comes after the two articles asking whether man can reach beatitude by his natural powers and whether a creature can help him, and that “we just finished” questions 1–5, the first logical part of the Prima Secundae (prev. lecture). He does not announce next time’s matter beyond reading the prooemium of q. 6; he says he will be away in California next Thursday for a wedding. The previous class covered aa. 5–6 (natural powers; help of a higher creature), the next opens the treatise on human acts with q. 6, a. 1 on the voluntary.

The class, in order #

1. Article 7, objections: “gotta do something” (“It seems that there is not required any doings of man”) #

The point: three reasons for thinking no works of man are needed to receive beatitude from God, and the sed contra.

1. God is an agent of infinite power, so in acting he presupposes no matter and no disposition of matter but can produce the whole at once. Man’s works are not required as efficient cause (God alone gives beatitude), so they could only be required as dispositions; God does not require dispositions; therefore he can confer beatitude without preceding works. His gloss: you could take “a dummy who’s never studied philosophy and enlighten him more than me right now.”
2. As God is author of beatitude without intermediary, so he institutes nature without intermediary; in the first institution he made each creature perfect in its species with no preceding disposition or action of the creature (“when he created your soul or my soul, that was it”). So he could confer beatitude without preceding operations. “So why didn’t he do this? He could have done it.”
3. Romans 4: beatitude is that to which God confers justice without works.

• Sed contra, John 13: if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them; so one arrives at beatitude by action.
• Aside on baptism: a baby is baptized at once without preceding works; some delay baptism to “do my sins” first—“kind of dicey.”
• Aside on the ordering: “kind of interesting the way Thomas orders the articles”—natural powers, help of a creature (not in the sense of giving it), then “anything required?”

2. Article 7, body: without motion, by one, by many (“some have this without motion”) #

The point: works are required not because God cannot give beatitude at once but because divine wisdom keeps order.

1. Rectitude of the will is required for beatitude (said above); rectitude is nothing but the order of the will to the last end, required as a suitable disposition of matter is required for its form.
2. But this does not show an operation must precede: God can at the same time (simul) make the will rightly tending and give the end, as he can dispose matter and induce the form at once. So it is not necessary “in that sense.”
3. But the order of divine wisdom requires that it not come about thus. Thomas cites De caelo et mundo II: of things born to have a perfect good, some have it without motion, some by one motion, some by many.
   • Illustration of the three grades on natural knowledge: the angel is born with his natural knowledge complete at creation; we reach it through motion, “which motion is called discourse.”
4. To have the perfect good without motion belongs to what has it naturally; to have beatitude naturally belongs to God alone, who “is beatitude itself.” Since beatitude exceeds every created nature, no pure creature suitably attains it without the motion of some operation tending to it.
5. The angel, superior in nature, attains it by one motion—one meritorious operation—as laid out in the First Part. His gloss: the angels were not blessed at the moment of creation; those who referred their perfect natural knowledge to God’s glory received the vision, those who rested in their natural excellence were lost.
6. Men attain beatitude by many movements of operations, “which are called merits.” Also, per the Philosopher, beatitude is the reward of virtuous operations—the sense in which “virtue is its own reward”: virtue gives rise to happiness. Thomas often says virtue is the road to happiness and vice the road to misery; “read the daily newspaper” and see people suffering because of their vice.

3. Digression: the angel’s one choice and our life in time (“man is an animal that has a sense of time”) #

The point: the angel’s one-shot choice is not frightening once you see how perfect his knowledge was; we choose “half ignorant, half knowing.”

• Example: women who had abortions, some so ignorant “as to what this is all about.”
• Student: is God’s mercy only towards us and not the angels, who had one chance? His answer: mercy has to do with misery; the angels were not miserable; we need mercy because we are poor; “that shows off the mercy of God.”
• De anima III: man is an animal with a sense of time; our life is measured by time, the angels’ is not. Origen and others who thought fallen angels could repent were thinking of them as if in time like us.
• His son Marcus asked why we can’t be born knowing all we need; answer: “you want to be born an angel”—that’s why we need fathers, mothers and teachers; the liturgy prays for “our fathers, our brothers, our teachers,” and teachers are always included.
• Thomas on “all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named from God”: in heaven, insofar as one angel illumines another he is like his father.

4. Article 7, replies (“that there might be preserved order in things”) #

The point: each objection is met by the order of divine wisdom, with Christ as the singular case.

• Ad 1: man’s operation is required not from any insufficiency of divine power but that order be preserved in things—sapientis est ordinare [ed.: transcript “ordinari”], it belongs to the wise to order. Aside: reading the SCG chapter on whether God punishes; one argument is that God leaves nothing out of order, so when you step out of order he must rebalance—even the wisest human laws cannot correct all disorder, not knowing men’s souls. Thomas’s simple example: one animal destroyed, the other has a meal. Dante: devils chewing the damned.
• Ad 2: God produced the first creatures perfect at once, without preceding disposition or operation, because through those first individuals nature would be propagated to later ones. Likewise, because through Christ, God and man, beatitude was to be derived to others (Hebrews 2: he brought many sons into glory), his soul was blessed from the beginning of his conception without preceding meritorious operation—“Christ did not merit his beatitude,” except on the part of his body; “this is singular in him.” Baptized boys reach beatitude by Christ’s merit though lacking their own, since through baptism they are made perfect members of Christ. Aside: Thomas’s prayer before communion asks to be made a member of Christ’s mystical body—the two principal sacraments, baptism and Eucharist, both make one a member of Christ.
• Ad 3: the Apostle speaks of the beatitude of hope, had through justifying grace, which is not given for preceding works; but this is not the end of motion, as beatitude is, but the beginning of the motion toward beatitude. The other text: “he gives grace and glory.”

5. Article 8, objections: whether every man desires beatitude (“no one is able to desire what he doesn’t know”) #

The point: three reasons some do not desire beatitude, and Augustine’s sed contra.

1. No one desires what he does not know, since the known good is the object of desire (De anima III); many do not know what beatitude is, since (Augustine, De Trinitate XIII) some place it in bodily pleasure, some in virtue of soul, some elsewhere. His addition: “some in money”—story of a woman with the same name as a lottery winner, hounded by callers; “if you win these things, you’re probably going to be hounded to death.”
2. The essence of beatitude is the vision of the divine essence; some think it impossible for man to see God through his essence, so they do not desire it.
3. Augustine (De Trin. XIII): the blessed man has everything he wishes and wishes nothing bad; but some wish bad things, and will to will them.

• Sed contra, Augustine in the same book, from a mime or actor speaking in jest: all wish to be blessed, none miserable; everyone acknowledges this in his will.

6. Article 8, body: the common notion and the special notion (“beatitude can be considered in two ways”) #

The point: “Thomas is going to answer this by a simple distinction.”

• Common notion: beatitude is a perfect good, lacking nothing; since the good is the will’s object, the perfect good is what wholly satisfies the will; to desire beatitude is to desire that one’s will be satisfied, which everyone wishes. So of necessity every man wills it.
• Special definition: that in which beatitude consists (he recalls the earlier movement from the general notion to the more precise). Not all know this, so not all will it.
• Examples: Romeo thinks Juliet is happiness (“I think he’s mistaken”); the end of Vanity Fair, “who in this life ever gets what he wants, or having gotten it, is satisfied?”; the child takes candy as happiness, later a woman, later money—“none of these things satisfy.”
• Ad 1 follows: they want to be happy but don’t know in what it consists. Beginning of Thomas’s Psalms commentary: all have in common wanting to be happy, but differ in the road and in where the road ends—“because not everybody is happy.”

7. Ad 2: same in reality, diverse in consideration (“know something in a confused way”) #

The point: since will follows the grasp of reason, one and the same thing secundum rem can be desired under one consideration and not under another.

• His gloss: the mind knows beatitude confusedly and all want it; not knowing distinctly what it consists in, they do not want true beatitude. Examples: young people dissatisfied because their parents’ idea of happiness will not satisfy them, “searching for this perfect good”; his own childhood idea that “there must be something that when you have it, you don’t want anything else”; men confused about whom to marry who, on meeting one woman, say “this is the one.”
• Restated: under the notion of a final and perfect good (the common notion) the will tends naturally and of necessity; under special considerations—on the side of the operation, of the operating power, or of the object—the will does not tend of necessity. He ties this to how Thomas worked out beatitude: an operation, not a mere ability; of our highest power; regarding the highest object.
• Aside: as a boy he wanted to be a politician—“I don’t think I would have found happiness there”—and the only book of Aristotle that first interested him in his brother’s Basic Works was the Politics.

8. Ad 3: Augustine’s definition, natural desire vs. reason’s apprehension (“has everything that he wants”) #

The point: “the blessed man has everything he wants” is good and sufficient in one way, imperfect in another.

• Understood of all a man wishes by natural desire, it is true: nothing satisfies man’s natural desire except the perfect good, beatitude.
• Understood of what man wishes according to reason’s apprehension, having some of these belongs to misery rather than beatitude, insofar as it impedes having what he naturally wants—as reason sometimes takes as true what impedes knowledge of the truth. On this consideration Augustine adds “and wishes nothing bad.”
• The first suffices if rightly understood; Thomas sometimes argues from Augustine’s definition to what true beatitude is, though by itself it is still a common notion: “I can’t help but want everything I want.”
• Examples: prayer—we ask for what we want, and sometimes want what is bad for us; a TV advertisement, “would you like your health? then you’ve pretty much got everything”; NE I, to the sick man health seems happiness, to the poor man money.
• Asides: feast of St Philip Neri, who wanted no sad people in his order—easier to perfect someone joyful; St Teresa, “a sad saint is a sorry saint”; “God loves a cheerful giver.”
• A student looks for a Pauline passage (“the things that I want, I don’t do,” Romans, chapter not found) where Thomas comments that everyone, even the sinner, wants the good in general—“everybody wants world peace”—but in particulars some want it and some don’t. Left unlocated.

9. Two divisions of the Second Part (“the editorial or reference division”) #

The point: the division into Prima Secundae and Secunda Secundae is editorial/reference; the logical or understandable division is different.

• Editorial or reference division: which volume, which question, which article—useful for finding a text, tells you nothing about the matter.
• Logical or understandable division, “usually in two or three”: prooemium of q. 1—first the last end of human life, then the things by which man arrives at it or deviates from it. So qq. 1–5 stand against the rest of the Prima Secundae together with the Secunda Secundae.
• Prooemium of q. 6 subdivides the second member: since one must arrive at beatitude through acts (touched in q. 5, a. 7), we consider human acts, to know by which one arrives at beatitude or the road is impeded; and since operations are about singulars, every operative science is perfected in the consideration of particulars—so moral consideration first in universale (rest of the Prima Secundae), then in particular (Secunda Secundae, longer than the whole Prima Secundae).
• “Moral matter is divided into the first of the second and the second of the second—that really enlightens your mind, doesn’t it? No.” Divided into the end and how you get there—“that enlightens your mind.”
• Parallel: Matthew’s 28 chapters and verses, a reference division made in the Middle Ages at the University of Paris so all could cite alike; it tells you nothing. Thomas’s commentary: Matthew stresses Christ’s human nature (represented by the man among the four animals); as a man he came into the world, proceeded through it (sermons, parables, healing), and left it by death and resurrection—three parts, further subdivided (his birth, the manifestation of his birth to the Magi).
• Remark: the arrangement is “marvelous”—had we not reached the end of q. 5 we would have been “in suspense for the rest of the summer”; he is surprised he never heard anyone point out this distinction, though it is obvious.
• Aside: a question whether [unclear in recording] is still teaching; he is away next Thursday for his son James’s wedding to Lisa in California (both went to TAC—“dangerous going to school there”).

His words #

• “doings”/“works” of man; what is asked whether required for beatitude [ed.: opera, works]
• “rectitude of the will”; the order of the will to the last end
• simul; at the same time (God disposing matter and inducing form)
• “the order of divine wisdom”; the reason works are required
• “discourse”; the motion by which we reach our natural knowledge
• “many movements of operations, which are called merits”
• “virtue is the road to happiness, vice is the road to misery”
• sapientis est ordinare; “it belongs to the wise to order”
• “beatitude of hope”; the beatitude Paul speaks of, had through justifying grace, beginning not end of motion
• “common notion” vs. “special/particular definition” of beatitude
• secundum rem; the same in reality, diverse according to consideration of reason
• “confused” vs. “distinct” knowledge of beatitude
• “editorial or reference division” vs. “logical or understandable division”
• in universale / in particular; the division of moral consideration in the prooemium of q. 6
• “premium” [ed.: prooemium]; the prefatory division before q. 1 and q. 6

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 5 a. 7 (objections, body, replies)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 5 a. 8 (objections, body, replies)
• Thomas, ST I-II prooemium to q. 1 and prooemium to q. 6 Mentioned
• Aristotle, De caelo et mundo II (three ways of having the perfect good)
• Aristotle, De anima III (man has a sense of time; the known good is the object of desire)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (sick man/health, poor man/money)
• Augustine, De Trinitate XIII (as cited in the objections and sed contra)
• Romans 4; John 13; Hebrews 2; Romans (chapter not found; “the things I want I don’t do”)
• Thomas, ST I (angels’ one meritorious operation, “laid out in the first book”)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, chapter on whether God punishes (book not stated)
• Thomas, Commentary on the Psalms, beginning
• Thomas, Commentary on Matthew, division (inferred: prologue)
• Thomas, prayer before communion; Dante (devils chewing the damned); Vanity Fair, ending; Aristotle, Politics

His questions #

• “So why didn’t he do this? He could have done it.” Not from insufficiency of divine power but so that order be preserved; God alone has beatitude without motion.
• Is God’s mercy only towards us and not towards the angels, who had one chance? (student) Mercy has to do with misery; the angels were not miserable; we need mercy because we are poor.
• “What’s this [fatherhood] in heaven?” One angel illuminating another is like his father.
• How can baptized boys reach beatitude lacking their own merits? Through baptism they are made perfect members of Christ, so Christ’s merit comes to them.
• “Who in this life ever gets what he wants, or having gotten it, is satisfied?” Candy, a woman, money—none of these satisfy; only the perfect good does.
• “I can’t help but want everything I want. Can you?” No; hence everyone wills beatitude under its common notion.
• Does God hear a prayer for something bad for you? “He does if you’re punished enough.”
• “How would you divide the second part of the Summa?” and “what distinction is being overlooked here?” Prima/Secunda Secundae is the editorial or reference division; the logical division is end (qq. 1–5) vs. how one gets there or not.
• “What does twenty-eight chapters tell you about the Gospel of Matthew?” Nothing for understanding; it serves for reference; Thomas’s three-part division (coming into, proceeding through, leaving the world) is the understandable one.