Summa I-II q.62, a.3–4: Why Faith, Hope and Charity Are Three, and How They Are Ordered

Orientation #

He opens by saying that “he” (Thomas) has already separated the theological virtues from the natural virtues of man, the intellectual and moral, and now separates them among themselves (prev. lecture). He closes: “we’ll find out about the infused virtues here in the next question, De causa virtutum.” The previous class treated q. 62 aa. 1-2, the next treats q. 63 on the cause of virtues.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, objections: one, two, or three? (“I would think there be just two”) #

Point: it seems unsuitable that there be three theological virtues; he sets up the puzzle and reads the three objections.

• His own first guess: two, one in reason, one in will. “But it’s going to be three.”
• Obj. 1: theological virtues stand to divine beatitude as natural inclination to the connatural end; but for the connatural end there is only one natural virtue in reason, the understanding of beginnings (the axioms); so only one theological virtue.
• Obj. 2: theological virtues are more perfect than intellectual and moral; but among intellectual virtues fides is not placed, being imperfect knowledge (“taking somebody else’s word for it — call that a virtue?”); among moral virtues hope is not placed, being a passion (the lover has hope; football players hope to win). So much less should they be theological virtues. He notes: this objection takes the two that seem lower than the natural virtues, the other objections the reverse — “really all mixed up.”
• Obj. 3: the soul is ordered to God only through the intellectual part, understanding and will; so two, as Boethius says. His gloss: “the Greeks say nothing too much” — if one perfects reason, why two for the will?
• Sed contra: the Apostle (Paul, “by antonomasia,” like “the poet” for Homer or Shakespeare): “now there remain faith, hope and charity, these three.”
• Aside: Augustine took these three as the plan of his work for the educated Catholic [ed.: the Enchiridion (inferred)]; Thomas does the same late in life in the catechetical instructions at Naples.
• Aside: he prefers “belief” for fides, since “faith” picks up a note of hope and trust (“a faithful person, I can trust you”).

2. Body of a. 3: two things fall short (“eye has not seen, and ear has not heard”) #

Point: man is ordered to the connatural end by two things, both of which fail for supernatural beatitude, so something must be added supernaturally on both sides.

1. By reason, containing the first universal beginnings known by the natural light, from which reason proceeds in speculative matters and things to be done (do good and avoid evil; do unto your neighbour; a thing cannot be and not be at the same time in the same way).
2. By rectitude of will, naturally tending to the good of reason.
3. Both fall short of the order to supernatural beatitude: 1 Cor 2:9, “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it gone up into the heart of man” — eye and ear are the natural road from sense into reason; “heart” here includes the mind, not just the will. (Romeo standing holding the torch, lost over Rosalind, not knowing what fate awaits him inside.)
4. So added to the understanding: supernatural beginnings grasped by a divine light, the believable things (credibilia), the object of belief; added to the will: (a) the motion of intention toward the end as something possible to obtain — hope; (b) a certain spiritual union by which the will is in some way transformed into the end — charity.

• Asides: De Koninck thought he lacked the faith because he could not tell where his certainty came from; Mortimer Adler, asked why he was not a Catholic, said faith is a gift — and later became one.

3. Hope vs. charity: intention vs. union (“our union is already complete”) #

Point: the distinction of hope from charity, and the question which is greater, faith or hope.

• His question once at Laval: Paul says charity is greatest but does not rank faith against hope. Thomas’s simple scheme — by faith we know the end, by hope we tend toward it, by charity we are already in a way joined to it — makes hope higher than faith; Warren Murray pointed out Thomas says explicitly in the De Spe that hope is after charity and before faith.
• Thérèse of Lisieux near death: “what more could I have in heaven? our union is already complete” — compare Augustine, for whom “the vision is the whole reward.” That union is charity. (Pius XI: greatest saint of modern times.) He recalls from the treatise on love that union is one of the effects of love [ed.: transcript unclear on the word “effects”].
• Connaturality: each thing tends to its connatural end by a conformity to it; by sanctifying grace the soul is made connatural to the supernatural end, partaking of the divine nature, so it wants to see God as God sees God — “in thy light we shall see light.” He admits the hope/charity line may still seem hard to see.
• Where Augustine and Thomas treat sacred doctrine by faith (the creed) and charity (the two commandments, the ten), hope is expounded through the Our Father: “hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come” — not joined to the kingdom yet, but intending it as possible; “forgive us our trespasses” — forgiveness as possible (Judas thought he could not be forgiven).

4. Digression: one is not a number; dropping the genus (“one is not a number, right”) #

Point: how names become equivocal by keeping the difference and dropping the genus.

• Shakespeare: love makes two one; one is not a number — “if it were, it would be an odd number.” Euclid’s two definitions of odd (not divisible into two equal parts; differs from an even number by one) both fit one, but the genus, multitude composed of units, does not. So calling one a number is equivocal: genus dropped, difference kept. Hence “you can’t look out for number one”; “you don’t have a number of heads.”
• Fr. Boulay hammered in: names applied to God become equivocal the same way, dropping genus, keeping difference.
• Order in the Trinity: reading the De Potentia he first thought “order of this from that” was a second kind of order beside “this before that,” since the Father is in no way before the Son yet the Son is from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from both. The fuller text in the Sentences shows order in general is always before-and-after, and only in a species of order is this from that; Augustine’s “order of this from that” keeps the difference, drops the genus. Moral: the earlier Sentences spells out what later works assume.
• Aside: Dion’s “forgotten text” of the Sentences comparing logic with grammar and logic with natural philosophy — logic, though of the trivium with grammar, is closer to natural philosophy; Dion held the class in suspense over the locus.

5. Why two for the will, one for reason (“more unity in reason”) #

Point: not surprising, since the moral virtues are many (in will and sense appetite) while one prudence corresponds to them all — more unity in reason. One general commands many; more lieutenant colonels than generals, more captains than colonels, more sergeants still.

6. Replies of a. 3 (“the understanding needs understandable forms”) #

• Ad 1: the understanding needs intelligible forms; in the beatific vision the form is God himself; so even naturally a habit (Aristotle’s nous, Thomas’s intellectus, the natural understanding of the axioms) must be added to the power. But the will’s very nature suffices for its natural order to the end, both as to intention and conformity. Above nature, neither power’s nature suffices, so a supernatural habit is added to both.
• Ad 2: belief and hope imply imperfection — belief is of things not seen, hope of things not had (“I have no hope to have a wife — I already have one”; the fellow whose wife is “the best wife I ever had”). Paul’s definition of belief: “the argumentum of things not seen” — “evidence” is a bad translation (evidence is from seeing); best is “conviction” (Greek elenchos, also “refutation”); “substance of things hoped for”: a foundation, since one already learns of the Trinity one will see — left for the treatise on faith. But to believe and hope about things above human nature exceeds every virtue proportioned to man: 1 Cor, “what is weak of God is stronger than man.”
  • Aristotle agrees (De Anima proem): all knowledge good, but one better in two ways, by a better object or by being more certain; knowledge of the soul excels in both. Elsewhere Aristotle makes the object the stronger criterion: simply speaking, knowledge of a better thing is better, more certain knowledge better secundum quid — counting the chairs in the room is very certain and no big deal; a glimpse of someone we love beats a leisurely view of someone we don’t care about (staring at the boss all day vs. the girlfriend across the window). So imperfect knowledge of the Trinity beats perfect knowledge of the triangle — the Catholic-radio caller who got “same nature, three persons.”
• Ad 3 (the “piercing” objection): two things pertain to appetite, motion toward the end (hope) and conformity to it through love (charity); hence two virtues. Love as conformity of the heart to its object (“two-to-one,” from before). SCG: hope of receiving from someone is the stepping stone to loving him for his own sake; then friendship strengthens hope; so the more you love God the more you hope and the more you move toward him. Student: don’t both exist together, love and hope of greater union? Yes — but in the order of generation “Abraham begot Isaac”: faith begets hope, hope charity (quoted at the opening of Dei Verbum); once charity comes it perfects both. Human parallel: a man’s heart conformed to a woman vs. his hope of winning her, greater when she returns it, still two things; loving steak vs. hoping the steakhouse is still open driving late across country.

7. Article 4, objections: is charity first? (“the root is before that which is from the root”) #

• Obj. 1: charity is the root of all virtues (Eph 3, “rooted and founded in charity” — “root” taken from nature, “foundation” from art); so charity before all.
• Obj. 2: Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I: one cannot love what he does not believe to be; if he believes and loves, by acting well he brings about what he hopes; so faith, then charity, then hope — “the plot thickens.”
• Obj. 3: love is the beginning of every affection (affection = an act of the appetitive power); hope is an affection, a passion; so charity before hope. “Are you confused enough?”
• Sed contra: the Apostle’s order — “he doesn’t write the way I do.”
• Aside: those who studied Categories ch. 12 know “before” has several senses and are prepared for order.

8. Body of a. 4: two orders (“twofold is order”) #

Point: order of generation and order of perfection give opposite answers.

1. Order of generation (corresponds to the first sense of “before” in the Categories, time/motion; touched on at the end of the proem to the De Fide, Spe [ed.: transcript garbled]): matter before form, imperfect before perfect, in one and the same thing.
2. In generation, belief before hope before charity — according to act; the habits are poured in together. His account: sanctifying grace is in the soul itself, and as reason and will flow from the soul so the virtues flow from grace into the powers, all at once.
3. Reason: the appetite cannot hope or love what is not grasped by sense or understanding; belief grasps what we hope and love, so belief first.
4. A man loves what he grasps as his own good; by hoping to obtain a good from another he regards him as his own good; so from hoping in someone he proceeds to love him — hope before charity. Bernard’s [ed.: transcript “Benedict”] stages of love: self for self; then, finding oneself not self-sufficient, God for one’s own good; then, coming to know him, God for himself; finally self for God’s sake, achieved fully in the next life. Buttering people up, then coming to love them apart from what they do for you.
5. Order of perfection: charity before both, since both are formed by charity and get from it the perfection of virtue; charity mother and root of the virtues as their form, “as will be said below.”

• Ad 1: root in the order of perfection; Paul speaks of generation.
• Ad 2: Augustine speaks of formed hope, hoping from merits already had, which follows charity; one can hope before charity from merits one hopes to have. SCG III again: hope to receive, then love for his own sake, then friendship, then hope increased — formed hope.
• Aside: his mother bathing him and his brothers — “what if something happened to you?” — reassured they’d be cared for by the aunts, the children were a little let down: we first seek “what’s in it for me”; the mother coming home to hear only that the meals weren’t done.

9. Ad 3 and the student exchange: what love precedes hope? (“the love of wanting”) #

• Ad 3: hope regards two things — its principal object, the good hoped for, and love always precedes this (one never hopes for a good unless he desires and loves it); and that from which one hopes to attain it, and here hope precedes love, though afterward love increases hope.
• Student objection: then love necessarily precedes hope. Reply: not a love that is fully charity; loving God as one’s own good, not for his own sake. Student: doesn’t charity include love of concupiscence as well as of benevolence? Reply: not charity in the strict sense without amor amicitiae for God; the love before hope is a love of concupiscence, of wanting (vs. love of friendship, of wishing well). Student: is it supernatural? Reply: yes, it proceeds from belief and exceeds our nature, but is not a perfect virtue in the genus; if the hope that flows from it only disposes for charity, that love is “twice removed” from charity. His own example: SCG III — seeing God you will understand all you naturally want to know, all at once, without going through theorems, astronomy, botany, zoology — “I want that; is that charity, or loving him for the satisfaction of my mind?” Charity does not cancel the love of wanting, but it is not its defining aspect. “What’s new to me is that you can have a supernatural love that’s not charity” (student); he lets the point stand.
• Our Father order (Augustine and Thomas): everything one should want, and in the right order — first two petitions the end (hallowed be thy name before thy kingdom come: praise God before the vision; the kingdom defined by Thomas as the ordered society of those who see God), third and fourth the means, the last the removal of impediments. The Anima Christi runs parallel: Anima Christi, sanctifica me to “hallowed be thy name,” Corpus Christi, salva me to “thy kingdom come,” and the last petition (in hora mortis meae voca me … ut cum sanctis tuis laudem te) circles back to praise. Aside: his daily prayer to the saint of the day to see God face to face and praise with them.

10. Purgatory aside (“could hardly wait for Christmas”) #

Its suffering may be the intense, undistracted wanting to see God, prolonged and purifying — like children on Christmas Eve while the grown-ups talk, talk, talk; souls there are not distracted by bodies or the stock market. John of the Cross asked friends to pray he have his purgatory on earth; Catherine of Genoa and St. Bridget on purgatory (“see what they do to priests”).

His words #

• belief — his preferred rendering of fides [ed.: faith], to avoid the note of trust
• beginnings / axioms — the first principles known by natural light [ed.: principia]
• natural understanding — Aristotle’s nous, Thomas’s intellectus, a natural habit of the axioms
• connatural — fitting to a thing’s nature; by grace the soul is made connatural to the supernatural end
• believable things — credibilia, grasped by a divine light
• motion of intention — hope’s tending to the end as possible to obtain
• spiritual union — charity, by which the will is quodam modo transformed into the end
• conviction — his translation of argumentum / elenchos in Paul’s definition of faith; “evidence” rejected
• secundum quid — in some respect; more certain knowledge is better only thus
• order of generation vs. order of perfection — matter/imperfect before perfect vs. charity as form of the others
• formed hope — hope following charity, from merits already had
• love of wanting — amor concupiscentiae; love of wishing well — amor amicitiae
• kingdom — Thomas’s definition: the ordered society of those who see God

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 62 a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 62 a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Paul, 1 Cor 2:9 (quoted in a. 3 body)
• Paul, “there remain faith, hope, charity” (sed contra of both articles; 1 Cor 13 inferred)
• Anima Christi (lines recited in Latin)

Mentioned

• Boethius (obj. 3, a. 3)
• Augustine’s work built on faith, hope, charity (Enchiridion, inferred); Thomas’s catechetical instructions at Naples
• Thomas, De Spe (hope ranked after charity, before faith)
• Paul, definition of faith (Hebrews 11:1, inferred); 1 Cor, “what is weak of God is stronger than man”
• Aristotle, De Anima I proem; another text making the object the chief criterion
• Aristotle, Categories ch. 12 (senses of “before”)
• Euclid, two definitions of odd number
• Thomas, De Potentia and Sentences (order in the Trinity); Sentences on logic, grammar, natural philosophy
• Ephesians 3; Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I
• Vatican II, Dei Verbum (faith-hope-charity at its opening)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles III (hope disposes to love; seeing God one knows all one naturally wants)
• Bernard’s stages of love (inferred; transcript “Benedict”)
• Thérèse of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Catherine of Genoa, Bridget

His questions #

• Why should there be three theological virtues and not one in reason and one in will? Reason has one habit for the supernatural beginnings; the will needs two, for motion of intention (hope) and union (charity).
• Which is greater, faith or hope? Thomas in the De Spe: hope after charity and before faith; here too charity joins, hope only tends.
• If one is not a number, why can it be called odd? It keeps the difference of odd (differs from even by one) but drops the genus, multitude — an equivocal use.
• Is it surprising there are two virtues for the will and one for reason? No: many moral virtues, one prudence; more unity in reason.
• How translate argumentum non apparentium? Not “evidence” (from seeing); “conviction.”
• Is it better to know a better thing imperfectly or a lesser thing perfectly? The better thing imperfectly, simply speaking; the glimpse of the beloved.
• Is it love or hope that moves you toward God? Hope, though informed and strengthened by love; two different things.
• Does love precede hope, and is that love charity? A supernatural love of wanting precedes hope in generation; not charity strictly, which requires the love of friendship.
• What is the order of the petitions of the Our Father? End (hallowed, kingdom), means (third, fourth), removal of impediments (last); praise before vision.