Summa I-II Q.21 a.4: Merit Before God; Why Thomas Treats Human Acts Before the Emotions; Faith, Hope and Charity and the Senses of 'Before'

Orientation #

He opens with “we’re down to question twenty-one, article four,” finishes it, and says the treatise on the emotions “is beginning now”; he closes by proposing a break “before we begin this” (the passions). He refers back to his own earlier remark, made before class, on the two ways a teacher leads a student. Verified sources: the text-matching system found q. 21 a. 4 itself, and two handout pages, “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument” p. 2 and “Friar Laurence on Stumbling” p. 3 (the latter’s use is not evident in the transcript). Last time finished malum/peccatum/culpa and began merit and demerit; next time opens q. 22 on the passions.

The class, in order #

1. Q.21 a.4, the objections: can man help or harm God? (“merit and demerit imply the order to a recompense”) #

The question: does a man’s good or bad act have the character of merit or demerit “in comparison to God”?

• Obj. 1: merit/demerit imply an order to recompense, a gain or loss to another; but man’s act gives God no profit or damage: Job 35, “if you sin, what is it to harm him? and if you act justly, what are you giving him?” Aside: like a child giving his parents a present out of the allowance they gave him.
• Obj. 2: an instrument merits nothing before the one who uses it, since the whole action is the user’s (“should I thank the knife for cutting the bread, or my hammer for driving the nail?”); but man in acting is an instrument of the divine power, Isaiah 10, “should the axe glory against the one who cuts with it, or the saw exalt itself against the one who draws it?” He notes the soul is defined as the first act of a body “composed of tools” (organic). A student: “that’s confusing to me” — answered at the reply.
• Obj. 3: acts have merit/demerit insofar as ordered to another; not all human acts are ordered to God.
• Sed contra: Ecclesiastes, “all things … God will bring into judgment, whether good or bad”; judgment implies retribution, with respect to which merit and demerit are said.

2. The body and the three replies (“otherwise it would follow that God has no care”) #

Point: acts have merit or demerit before God in both ways distinguished earlier — by reason of the act itself and by reason of the community.

1. By reason of itself: God is the last end of man, to which all should be referred; who does an act that cannot be referred to God fails to keep the honour owed to God as last end.
2. By reason of the community of the universe: in any community the ruler has care of the common good and it belongs to him to pay back what is well or badly done; God is ruler of the whole universe (first part of the Summa) and in a special way of rational creatures. “Otherwise it would follow that God has no care about human acts.”

• Ad 1: nothing can be added to or lost from God in Himself, but man, “as far as lies in him,” subtracts something from God or shows something to Him, by observing or not observing the order God has set. His illustration: the objection “why punish anyone for crucifying Christ, since He wanted to lay down His life?” — they did what lay in their power to harm Him; and Thomas More thanking his executioner (“he’s sending me straight to heaven”) does not excuse the executioner.
• Ad 2: man is moved by God as an instrument, but not so as to exclude his moving himself through free choice. So “tool” is not said univocally of the hammer and of me: the hammer is a tool in the first sense, I in a second sense — not only a tool. (This answers the student’s confusion.)
• Ad 3: man is not ordered to the political community according to the whole of himself, so not every act of his is meritorious or demeritorious before the community (aside: “the bishop saying that to Obama now”); but the whole of what man is and has ought to be ordered to God, so every human act, good or bad, has merit or demerit before God “from the nature of the act itself.”

3. Back to the proemium of q.6: why the passions come next (“acts which are common to man and the other animals”) #

Point: the division of q. 6’s proemium locates the treatise now beginning.

• Beatitude is the last end; since one arrives at it through acts, human acts must be considered, to know by which acts one reaches or is impeded from beatitude.
• Because operations are about singulars, every practical science is perfected in a particular consideration. He recalls Aristotle criticising Socrates for defining virtue only in general, not the virtue of a man, a woman, a father, a mother — closer to the end of the science, which is action. So morals are treated first in universal, then in particular.
• Universal consideration: first the acts themselves, second their principles (that second part begins at q. 49, “long ways to go”).
• Of human acts, some are proper to man, some common to man and the other animals. Because beatitude is man’s own good, the proper acts are nearer to beatitude and come first (qq. 6-21, just finished); then the common ones, “the passions of the soul, or the emotions.”

4. Manuductio: the order of theology against the order of what is more known to us (“leading by the hand”) #

Point: Thomas’s theological order (God, angels, soul) is the reverse of the order of manuductio, in which the passions, “more proportioned to us,” might come first.

• The teacher leads from known to unknown in two ways: manuductio, leading by the hand from what is more known; and leading from principles to conclusions.
• In the prima pars Thomas treats God, then angels, then the soul — but the soul is most known to us; “the knowledge of the soul is the gateway to the study of the separated substances.” One could teach the soul first, then angels, then God. Thomas’s own text of the order among objects: I think about the body to think about the soul, the soul to think about the angels, the angels to think about God.
• Our soul knows itself only through its powers, its powers through its acts, its acts through its objects — “this is what we call discourse.” The angel knows its substance through its substance, so is more like God, who knows everything through Himself; but angels do not know everything through themselves and must have other forms filled in. Aside: his old teacher [name unclear in recording]: when you die and meet your guardian angel, don’t say “oh, good, God.”
• Summa contra Gentiles: philosophy starts from creatures and reaches God last; theology, partaking of God’s knowledge, imitates it and treats God first, then things as coming from God and ordered to Him as end. He illustrates the philosophical order with the end of Metaphysics XII: is the good in the universe or outside it? — the army comparison (the order in the army is its internal good, but the whole army is ordered to the victory of the leader, outside it); Aristotle’s criticism of his predecessors’ disjointed accounts as an “episodic plot” (back to the Poetics: no beginning, middle, end); and the closing quotation of Homer, “the rule of many is not good; let there be one.” (Thomas’s text apparently lacked this last part.) Monsignor Dionne’s observation: Aristotle gives a deep argument and then returns to something most known to us, fiction, as a sign.
• Same in moral theology: prudence (foresight), justice, fortitude, temperance — but Aristotle’s Ethics takes fortitude and temperance (in the emotions) first, justice in book V, foresight in book VI: “just the reverse.” Something like foresight and justice is in God; the virtues of the emotions are not, properly speaking; yet fortitude, metaphorically, is more like God than temperance.
• Contra Gentiles separates (books I-III what natural reason too can know of God in Himself, as Maker, as End; book IV Trinity, Incarnation, known only by faith); the Summa Theologiae does not separate but follows the theological order throughout.
• “So excuse me for talking about the acts of the will before the emotions.”

5. Two further cases of manuductio (“closer to the senses”) #

• Monsignor Dionne’s course on the four arguments (syllogism, enthymeme, induction, example) began with example, an argument from one singular to another of the same kind, because closest to the senses; induction goes from many singulars toward a universal; the syllogism needs something wholly universal in at least one premise — one is led up gradually.
• Porphyry on genus gives first the two meanings from the Metaphysics: one man from whom many descend (“I am a genus, if you look at my grandchildren”), or the multitude descended from one — both sensible; only then genus as one said of many, neither the singular nor the multitude.

6. Names carried from the emotions to the will and to God (“we drop off the bodily aspect”) #

Point: the names of the emotions are the foundation for naming acts of the will and, in theology, things in God.

• Contra Gentiles: we take the names of the emotions, carry them over and lay them on the acts of the will, dropping the bodily aspect and keeping the formal; some can be carried all the way to God — “really only two” (love and delight); not desire (as if He lacked something), not sadness.
• Examples of the difficulty: as a child hearing a sermon on the love of God, when love meant what you had for candy; college students in his love-and-friendship course struggling to distinguish love as emotion from love as act of will; the logic professor’s question “do you have an emotional attachment to the syllogism?” — one loves the syllogism for its rigour; “philosopher” means lover of wisdom, and that love is an act of the will.

7. 1 Corinthians 13:13 and the three-part divisions of doctrine (“the greatest of these is charity”) #

• Text: “now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (meizōn de toutōn hē agapē).
• Thomas quotes it at the start of the Compendium of Theology for Brother Reginald: three parts, faith, hope (unfinished), charity. Augustine’s Enchiridion has the same three: under pistis the Creed; under elpis the Our Father (“the prayer of prayers”; sometimes the Hail Mary); under agape the two commandments of love and the Ten. This is a different division of sacred doctrine from the Summas, whose basic division is God in Himself, God as Maker, God as End; faith-hope-charity is “much more proportionate to people.”
• His puzzle to the class: if charity is greatest, why does Paul put it last? (Not “the last shall be first” — “you’ve got to be careful.”) A student: “order of generation.” Yes — a different ordering is at work.

8. Categories ch. 12: the four senses of “before” (“equivocal by reason of a likeness”) #

Point: “before” is equivocal by reason, with four chief senses given in order.

1. Before in time: today before tomorrow.
2. Before in being: this can be without that but not vice versa; Aristotle’s one before two; his sensible examples, bricks before the brick wall, the letter C before the word “cat.”
3. Before in the discourse of reason, or more generally in knowledge.
4. Before in goodness, “better”: “you come first with me”; Cabernet Sauvignon before Zinfandel, steak before salmon. Aristotle calls this sense remote; the Metaphysics treatment of “before” keeps the first three and leaves this one out — but “the Categories is where you should begin.”

• Affinities and distinctions: the first three tend to go together but not necessarily (C before A and T even in time, but a stamp makes “cat” and its C together; “I’m before some of you in time — could you be without me? of course”). Second and third are most alike (as this can be without that, so this can be known without that), but not always: hydrogen may be able to be without water, yet in our knowledge water is before hydrogen — “that’s why we named hydrogen from water.”

9. Applying the four senses to faith, hope, charity (“in a way already joined to our end”) #

• Paul’s stated order is the order of time, being and knowledge: if you do not believe there is a God you will not hope in Him; belief that He is and loves us disposes to hope; hoping, you pray, He hears, and you begin to love Him. St Bernard’s stages: we first turn to God in trouble, loving Him for our needs; getting to know Him (“he’s not a bad guy when you get to know Him”) we love Him for His own sake; finally we love ourselves for God’s sake, “hardly ever fully achieved in this life.” So faith is before hope and hope before charity in time and in being.
• Also the order in knowledge, as the two greatest minds of the Church, Augustine (Enchiridion) and Thomas (the catechetical instructions at Naples, for common people), both teach in this order.
• Then Paul touches Aristotle’s fourth sense: charity is better. He once asked at Laval which is greater, hope or faith — nobody had asked; Warren Murray found Thomas’s answer in the disputed questions on hope: in goodness, charity before hope, hope before faith. Thomas’s simple reason: by faith we know our end; by hope we tend toward it (desire of a good difficult to achieve); by charity we are “in a way already joined to our end.” St Thérèse of Lisieux: “I don’t know what more I can have in heaven; our union is already complete now” — hard to square with the vision being the whole reward, but intelligible from this priority of charity.
• “It’s like he studied the twelfth chapter of the Categories — or else he didn’t have to, and all the more credit to him.”

10. What this has to do with the treatise on the emotions (“carrying over of the name”) #

• Faith will not appear there, but elpis and agape will: agape, though it came to mean charity, has in the Greek dictionary the idea of love, and love is originally the name of an emotion (passio animae); elpis is the name of an emotion. Plato and Aristotle divided the emotions into epithumia (where agape falls) and thumos (where elpis falls); the Latin names, concupiscible and irascible appetite, are each taken from one outstanding emotion in the group. We learn these names now so as to carry them later onto the theological virtues.
• Agapēma means “darling” — funny to think of God as one’s agapēma, but the word had that sense; C. S. Lewis’s Four Loves uses agape as charity; Dionysius the Areopagite applies even eros to God for the intensity of love, though eros is nearer sensual amor.
• Elpis in his dictionary means first hope, but later also fear: interesting, since the theological virtue of hope must be balanced with fear of the Lord. Thomas on the Psalms (which mention both): hope without fear of divine justice becomes presumption, fear without hope leads to despair. Philosophical parallel from the Phaedo: the philosopher needs hope of overcoming difficulties and knowing the truth; Socrates leads the company out of despair when the arguments for immortality seem weak, then checks their cockiness (“not as easy to answer Cebes as Simmias”). Most universities despair of truth — Whittaker Chambers on his Columbia friends knocking ideas back and forth like ping-pong balls; the Communists at least believed what they said.
• Thomas’s Latin: translatio nominis, a carrying over of the name, and impositio nominis, a placing upon, like putting a label on; the meaning changes but keeps a connection to the first. The emotions are the foundation for naming the acts of the will and then for theology.
• Closing: “should we take our break before we begin this? … thinking is like number, not like lines.”

His words #

• the notion / aspect / character of merit (ratio); his renderings of ratio meriti.
• recompense; pay back: retribution owed within a community.
• tool: his word for instrumentum; said non-univocally of hammer and man.
• foresight [ed.: prudence].
• manuductio: “leading by the hand,” from what is more known to us; opposed to leading from principles to conclusions.
• discourse: knowing the soul through powers, powers through acts, acts through objects.
• episodic plot: Aristotle’s image for a disordered universe (from the Poetics).
• example (argument): from one singular to another of the same kind.
• genus (Porphyry’s first senses): one man from whom many descend; the multitude descended from one.
• before in being / in knowledge / in goodness (“better”): senses 2-4 of Categories 12; “equivocal by reason.”
• pistis, elpis, agape: faith, hope, charity (Greek, from 1 Cor 13).
• passio animae: passion of the soul, emotion.
• epithumia / thumos [ed.: concupiscible / irascible appetite, as he gives the Latin].
• agapēma: “darling.”
• translatio nominis / impositio nominis: carrying over / placing upon of a name.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 21, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies) — verified by text-matching.
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 6, proemium.
• 1 Corinthians 13:13 (quoted in Greek and English).
• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 12, on “before” (expounded, four senses).
• Handouts found by text-matching: “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument” p. 2 (the Dionne discussion of example, induction, syllogism, enthymeme); “Friar Laurence on Stumbling” p. 3 (its use is not evident in the transcript).

Mentioned

• Job 35; Isaiah 10; Ecclesiastes (12:14 inferred) — cited within the article.
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, on God as ruler of the universe; I-II q. 49 (start of the principles of acts).
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles (order of philosophy vs theology; names of emotions carried to will and God; division of its four books).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII end (army, episodic plot, Homer); Metaphysics on “before” and on genus; Poetics; Nicomachean Ethics V, VI; Aristotle on Socrates’ general definition of virtue.
• Porphyry, on genus.
• Thomas, Compendium of Theology; Thomas, catechetical instructions at Naples; Thomas, Disputed Questions on Hope; Thomas, Commentary on the Psalms.
• Augustine, Enchiridion.
• St Bernard of Clairvaux on the stages of love; St Thérèse of Lisieux; Pius XI on her.
• C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves; Dionysius the Areopagite (eros applied to God).
• Plato, Phaedo (Simmias, Cebes); Whittaker Chambers on Columbia.
• Printed volume listed by text-matching: DHB Vol III, “The School of Aristotle,” p. 1047 (not identifiable in the transcript).

His questions #

• Does the good or bad act of a man have the notion of merit or demerit before God, given that we can neither harm nor help Him? Yes: God is our last end and ruler of the universe; man “as far as lies in him” subtracts from or shows something to God.
• Should I thank the knife or the hammer? Is man a tool in the same sense? No; “tool” is not said univocally — man moves himself through free choice.
• Which of God, the angels, the soul is most known to us? The soul; it is the gateway to the separated substances.
• Where did Monsignor Dionne begin the four arguments? With example, closest to the senses.
• What’s wrong with St Paul, putting charity last if it is greatest? Nothing — he gives the order of time, being and knowledge first, then the order of goodness.
• One is before two — in which sense of “before”? In being: one can be without two, not vice versa.
• Which is greater, hope or faith? Hope, per the disputed questions on hope: by hope we tend toward the end, by faith we only know it.
• What does all this have to do with the treatise on the emotions? Love and hope are first names of emotions, carried over to acts of the will and to the theological virtues.