Aquinas on the Will (ST I-II q.19 aa.8-9): How Much Good Intention Adds, and Conforming Our Will to God's

Orientation #

He opens straight on “to the eighth one goes forward” and closes after a. 9 with “then we get to our preaching, so we’ll see you next time.” He refers back to an article on God’s love in the Prima Pars (“that article that we saw”) and to what “has been said” earlier in the question. He does not otherwise say what came last time. The previous class covered aa. 5–7 of the same question and the next takes up a. 10 and the opening of q. 21.

The class, in order #

1. Article 8: the three objections and the sed contra (“the quantity of goodness in the will”) #

The point: it seems the will is as good as its intention is good — a view he notes the saints seem to hold (“the merit depends upon the purity of the intention”).

• Obj. 1: Matthew 12:35, the good man from the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things; the gloss: “so much of good does he do as he intends.” Intention gives goodness not only to the exterior act but to the will; so the will is as good as one intends.
• Obj. 2: augment the cause, you augment the effect; the good intention is the cause of the good will. He calls it “a good argument.”
• Obj. 3: in bad things, the more one intends, the more one sins — the man who throws a stone intending homicide is guilty of homicide. His gloss: aiming a car at you, missing, hitting a telephone pole: attempted homicide. So in good things likewise.
• Sed contra: the intention can be good and the will bad; so for like reason the intention can be more good and the will less good.

2. First reading of the body: a twofold quantity (“a twofold quantity can be considered”) #

The point: in both act and intention of the end there are two quantities, from the object and from the intensity of the act.

• Aside: this is why he prays to the guardian angel “to consider more correctly — because without Thomas we wouldn’t consider correctly.”
• Quantity on the side of the object: one wills or does a greater good. Quantity from the intensity: one intensely wills or acts — “more from the side of the agent than of the object.” He connects intensity with the saints’ “doing even little things with great love”, giving a cup of water.
• As regards the object, the quantity of the act does not follow the quantity of the intention; on the side of the exterior act this happens in two ways (developed in §5).
• On the side of the interior act it fails in only one way: the interior acts are in our power, the exterior are not. Aside: spending millions on attack ads — “if I don’t have millions of dollars to attack you with, it’s still without my power.”
• Yet the intention “in some way pertains to the act of the will, insofar as it is a reason for it”, so the quantity of good intention “flows back” on the will, insofar as the will wills some great good as end even though the means chosen is “not worthy of that good.”
• Intensity: the intensity of the intention redounds on both interior and exterior act, because intention “has itself formally to both”, though materially the acts can be less intense.
• But intending to will intensely does not make one will intensely; hence “not to the extent that someone intends to merit does he merit”, since merit’s quantity consists in the intensity of the act. He admits: “That’s confusing enough, isn’t it?” and promises to reread.

3. The replies (“the goodness of the intention is not the whole cause”) #

• Reply 1: the gloss speaks “as regards the reputation” — what God reputes it to be (not “reputation” in our sense), for God especially considers the intention of the end; another gloss says the treasure of the heart is the intention (a footnote refers to Rabanus). The good intention makes even the exterior act meritorious before God.
  • Example: the unjust judge and the widow in the Gospel. He renders her right, but intends only to silence her (or keep her from assassinating him); rendering it out of justice would be “much more meritorious.”
• Reply 2: the goodness of the intention is not the whole cause of the goodness of the will, so the argument does not follow. “Quite clear mind he had.”
  • Aside: the story of Thomas sitting down calmly amid hostile students and explaining; and Socrates, having seemed to speak badly of the great men of Athens, telling someone to go calm the angry hearer “for the good of Athens” — one of those who brought charges against him.
• Reply 3: badness of intention alone suffices for badness of the will, so the worse the intention the worse the will; “but it’s not the same about goodness.”

4. Second reading: God’s love and the two quantities (“Does God love us equally”) #

The point: the object/intensity distinction is the one Thomas uses in the Prima Pars on whether God loves some more than others.

• God loves more the one for whom he wills a greater good: a greater good for Mary than for the apostles, for the apostles than for other saints. But God’s act of love is not more intense for them than for us — “I think he says no.”
• In us both quantities occur: I will the same good (recovery) for a stranger in the hospital and for my child, but more intensely for my child; I could even will a lesser good more intensely for my child and a greater good less intensely for someone else. Not in God.

5. Second reading: the two failures of the exterior act, intensity, merit (“someone gives ten pounds”) #

• Failure of proportion: someone gives ten pounds when he intends to buy a thing worth a hundred. He likens it to the man in Our Lord’s parable who sets out to build a tower and does not calculate what he needs. (Student exchange on the pound sign “L” from Latin libra / “lb”.)
• Failure by impediments not in our power: one intends to go as far as Rome and impediments supervenire — “arise”, “come upon.”
• The interior act: the will can will an object not proportional to the end; that will, absolutely considered, is not as good as the intention — though the intention, as reason for it, flows back on it.
• Intensity, material vs. formal: one does not so intensely wish to take the medicine as to have health (“if you’re gonna have to cut off an arm or a leg”); yet intensely intending health redounds formally on intensely willing the medicine.
• Merit example: intending to gain a plenary indulgence is “a big thing”, but the conditions (repugnance even to venial sin, sorrow, praying for the pope) may not be met — “want to go on eating candy nevertheless” — so “your intention is greater than your act.”
• He leaves it: “let that rest in the mind … when I come back I’ll understand that article better some other day.”

6. Article 9: objections and sed contra (“Not as I will, but as you will”) #

The point: whether the will’s goodness depends on conformity to the divine will — “I suspect that’s so from the Our Father.”

• Obj. 1: Isaiah 55, as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so my ways above your ways; so conformity is impossible, and a good will would be impossible. His gloss: “you don’t know God’s will, it’s above your weight.”
• Obj. 2: our knowledge derives from God’s but need not be conformed to it, since God knows many things we don’t; so neither our will.
• Obj. 3: the will is a principle of action; our action cannot be conformed to divine action; so neither our will.
• Sed contra: Matthew 26 (the passion), “not as I will, but as you will”, said because he wishes to be directed to God, as Augustine expounds in the Enchiridion; rightness of will is its goodness. Hence “thy will be done” is something we need to pray.

7. Body of a. 9 (“that which is first in any genus”) #

1. The goodness of the will depends on the intention of the end (as said).
2. The last end of the human will is the highest good, God (said above); so the will must be ordered to God.
3. That good is first and per se the object of the divine will — God wills nothing except in willing his own goodness.
4. What is first in any genus is the measure and reason of all in that genus (“sounds like the tenth book of Wisdom” — Aristotle); each thing is right and good insofar as it reaches its measure. Conclusion: for the will of man to be good it must be conformed to the divine will.

8. Reply 1: equiparantia vs. imitation; wisdom as divine knowledge (“but by imitation”) #

• Man’s will conforms to God’s not by equiparantia (equality) but by imitation. Example: “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” cannot mean being as perfect as God; it means imitating his perfection as far as you can.
• Likewise man’s knowledge conforms to God’s insofar as he knows the truth. Digression on Aristotle: wisdom is “divine knowledge” in two ways — about God (shown in the proemium: wisdom is about the first cause, which is God) and the knowledge God alone or most of all has.
• Origin of “philosopher”: Pythagoras, called wise for the Pythagorean theorem, refused it — “God alone is wise” — and asked to be called a lover of wisdom; a humility in the word.
• His own phrasing: wisdom is “the knowledge of God” in both senses, whose object is God and which God has; we imitate, “however remotely.” Parallels he likes: Shakespeare’s definition of reason as knowledge of reason (about reason, and reason’s knowledge of itself); theology as knowledge of God in both senses; the three books On the Soul as knowledge of the soul in both senses — the soul knowing itself through its powers, powers through acts, acts through objects. “Most souls don’t get to the point.”

9. Truth and the first cause (“the cause is more true than the effect”) #

• Aristotle, second book of Wisdom: wisdom is most of all the knowledge of truth, because the cause is more true than the effect — propter quod unumquodque tale et illud magis. His expanded form: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. Sugar and coffee (which is sweeter), dishcloth and water (which is wetter), cause and effect (which is more true). So the first cause is most true.
• Hence, he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” would make sense to Aristotle — as man the way, as God truth itself — a motive of credibility, as “I am who am” in Exodus was for Hilary of Poitiers: “here’s a religion that makes sense.”
• Heraclitus on Greek religion: praying to statues is like talking to one’s house; Homer’s gods commit adultery and theft, shameful among men — how can they be true gods? Greek religion is “based on the imagination”, imagining gods like us with our faults; Christianity lacks “those irrational things.”

10. Replies 2 and 3 (“through imitation and not through equality”) #

• Man’s action conforms to divine action insofar as it befits the agent, by imitation, not equality; this answers both the second and third objections, since both rest on the impossibility of equalling God.
• Example: the standard meter bar in Paris, to which everything is made equal — that is equiparantia; no such conformity to God’s will, knowledge or action, but by imitation. St Paul: “be imitators of me as I am of Christ” — we imitate Paul insofar as he imitates Christ.

His words #

• quantity of goodness in the will — the subject of a. 8; “quantity” both of object (greater good) and of intensity.
• intention of the act — his first rendering, corrected to “intensity” of the act; the quantity “from the side of the agent.”
• redounds / flows back / comes back upon — his renderings of the intention’s effect on the will and act.
• reputation — in reply 1, “what God reputes it to be”, not reputation in our sense.
• supervenire — impediments that “arise”, “come upon.”
• equiparantia — equality; contrasted with imitation.
• tenth book of Wisdom / second book of Wisdom — Aristotle [ed.: Metaphysics].
• propter quod unumquodque tale et illud magis — his expanded form: what belongs to two things, to one because of the other, belongs more to the cause.
• knowledge of God / of reason / of the soul — in both senses, objective and subjective.
• motive of credibility — what makes a religion “make sense” to a philosopher.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 19, a. 8 (whole article, body read twice)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 19, a. 9 (whole article)
• Matthew 12:35 and its gloss (in a. 8 obj. 1); Isaiah 55, Matthew 26 (in a. 9)

Mentioned

• Augustine, Enchiridion (sed contra of a. 9)
• Rabanus (footnote to reply 1 of a. 8)
• Thomas, Prima Pars, article on whether God loves some more than others (no locus given)
• Aristotle, “tenth book of Wisdom” (first in a genus is measure), “second book of Wisdom” (wisdom knowledge of truth), the proemium; the three books On the Soul
• Gospel: the unjust judge and the widow; the man building a tower; “be perfect as your heavenly Father”; “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; Exodus “I am who am”; Paul, “be imitators of me”
• Pythagoras, Hilary of Poitiers, Heraclitus on Homer, Shakespeare’s definition of reason

His questions #

• Why isn’t it the same about goodness as about badness? Badness of intention alone suffices for a bad will; good intention is not the whole cause of a good will.
• Does God love us equally, or Mary and the apostles more? He wills them a greater good, so loves them more; but his act is not more intense.
• Is the unjust judge doing what’s just? He does it, but does not intend it; out of justice it would be more meritorious.
• Why would we pray “thy will be done”? Because goodness of will depends on conformity to God’s will.
• What does “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” mean? Not equality but imitation as far as you can.
• In what way is wisdom divine knowledge? About God, and the knowledge God alone or most of all has.
• Sugar and coffee, dishcloth and water — which is sweeter, which is wetter? The cause; so the first cause is most true.
• “Let that rest in the mind” — how does merit follow intensity rather than intention? Left open; he promises to understand it better another day.