Aquinas, Summa I-II Q.65, Arts. 4–5 and Q.66, Art. 1: Faith, Hope and Charity as Friendship with God; Can Virtues Be Greater or Lesser?

Orientation #

He opens by noting that in Articles 4 and 5 Thomas “looked both ways” as he did in 2 and 3 (prev. lecture: moral virtues without charity, charity without moral virtues), and asks whether the answer will be the same in both directions. At the end he proposes going “at least to the prooemium” of the next question and then reads Article 1. The previous class covered q. 65, aa. 2-3; the next continues q. 66, aa. 2-4.

The class, in order #

1. Article 4 objections, sed contra, and the four senses of “before” (“belief generates hope, and hope generates”) #

The point: the objections say belief and hope cannot be without charity; the sed contra says they are before it, which forces the question of which sense of “before”.

• Obj. 1: faith and hope are theological virtues with God as object, so worth more than the moral virtues; but the infused moral virtues cannot be without charity; therefore neither can belief and hope.
• Obj. 2 (Augustine on John): “no one believes except willing”; reason is moved to believe by the will, not by its own object; charity is the will’s perfection; so faith cannot be without charity.
• Obj. 3 (Augustine, Enchiridion, written as a summary of the faith for an educated layman, as Thomas’s Naples catechetical instructions): hope without love cannot be; the love meant there is charity.
• Sed contra: the gloss on Matthew 1:2 (Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob) read spiritually: belief generates hope, hope generates charity. He notes Augustine is quoted to this effect at the end of the prooemium of Vatican II’s document on Revelation.
• On Paul’s “there remain these three… the greatest of these is charity”: this indicates more than one order. Charity is before in the fourth sense of before (the better); belief and hope are before in the first sense (time, order of generation), the second (being: one is before two, bricks before the wall, the letter C before “cat”—the one can be without the other but not conversely), and possibly the third (order of the discourse of reason: Augustine’s Enchiridion and Thomas’s catechetical instructions take up Creed, Our Father, then the commandments, “you have to kind of know what God is before you can hope in God”). “You got to know those senses” — Aristotle, Categories ch. 12, in order of imposition.
• Aside: his freshman professor who stopped explaining a play because the students had not read it; De Koninck teaching Plato since the 1930s and still full of wonder, never going through the text without seeing something new. “Thomas again is a guy who can see distinctions… That’s what the mind has to see first.”

2. Body of Article 4: doing good vs. doing it well (“not only is it good what comes about”) #

The point: faith and hope, like the moral virtues, can be considered as a beginning (inchoatio) or as perfect virtue; perfect virtue requires that the good work also be done well.

1. Virtue is ordered to a good work; it is perfect when it can produce a work perfectly good, i.e. good and done well.
2. Examples: paying a debt while regretting it; caring for a sick person, making soup, but irritably, so “they can tell you don’t want to be there”; the two sons in the Gospel, one refusing then going with some reluctance (“the beginning of virtue”); shaking hands after a lost game, done more or less graciously. (Aside: Catherine of Siena, “a tough gal”.)
3. Student: “If you don’t do it well, is it even virtue?” — it is an inchoatio, a beginning; good to do it even that way, but one should enjoy doing what is good.
4. So just acts without prudence (right choice) are not perfect virtue; likewise belief and hope without charity can be aliqualiter, in some way, but not with the perfect notion of virtue.
5. To believe is to assent by one’s own will; unless he wills suitably, it is not an opus perfectum; the will is perfected by charity, and every correct motion of the will proceeds from right love (Augustine, City of God XIV). Belief without charity is like temperance or fortitude without prudence — the young George Washington’s letter from his first battle, later excused with “I was young then”.
6. Hope: its act is to expect future beatitude from God; perfect if from merits one has, which requires charity (“why would God unite Himself to someone who doesn’t love Him?”); imperfect if from merits one proposes to acquire — the sinner’s hope, which can be without charity (some penitents, like Judas, despair instead).
7. Conclusion: belief and hope can be without charity, but then are not, properly speaking, virtues, since virtue requires doing good and doing it well (Ethics II).

• Application: those who think God’s “unconditional love” lets them live any life have an imperfect hope; a student asks whether it is a virtue at all if there is no intention to merit — he agrees it may be no virtue at all, presumption. Aside: Falstaff dying and the landlady telling him it was not time yet for ejaculations.
• Aside: a biography of Cardinal Newman [ed.: transcript “Cardo Luminum”] hesitating to become Catholic — the willing must be suitable.

3. Replies of Article 4 (“neither depend upon prudence nor upon charity”) #

• Reply 1: moral virtues depend on prudence, and infused prudence cannot have its notion without charity, since it would lack the due relation to the ultimate end; but belief and hope, by their own definitions, depend neither on prudence nor on charity, so they can be without charity, though not as virtues. “That’s a very subtle thing he’s saying there”: prudence is about means, so one must be well disposed to the end; but one can believe and hope in God without loving Him. Confirmed by the sed contra: one must believe there is a God and a beatitude before one can hope.
• Reply 2: the argument holds of faith with the perfect notion of virtue; the will can move reason to believe without charity, but not perfectly, since willing is perfected by love.
• Reply 3: Augustine speaks of hope as expecting beatitude through merits already had, which requires charity.

4. Article 5: charity is friendship, so cannot be without faith and hope (“a certain friendship towards Him”) #

The point: charity is not mere love but friendship with God, and friendship presupposes believing the friend and hoping to share his society.

• Obj. 1: God can be loved by us naturally, without faith or hope. Obj. 2: charity is the root (Eph 3:17, “rooted and founded” — radicati from nature, fundati from building), and a root can be without branches (ramis). Obj. 3: Christ had perfect charity but not faith and hope, being a comprehensor (in mind; in body still on the way, not yet glorified).
• Sed contra: “the Apostle” (antonomasia) in Hebrews 11:6, without belief impossible to please God, which pertains most to charity (Proverbs 8, “I will love those who are loving me”); and hope leads into charity.
• Body: (1) charity signifies not only love of God but friendship; friendship adds mutual loving back with a certain communication (Ethics VIII; Aristotle gives two books, VIII and IX, to friendship). (2) This applies to charity: 1 John 4:16, “who remains in charity remains in God”; 1 Cor 1:9, God is fidelis (“does God believe?”) through whom we are called into the society of His Son; “I call you no longer servants, but friends.” (3) This society of man with God, a familiar conversation, begun now by grace, perfected by glory, is held by faith and hope. (4) No one can have friendship with someone he does not believe, or despairs of having society with; so no charity without belief and hope, “in no way”.
• To Joshua: can you be a friend with someone you don’t trust? No. Student: can there be an imperfect friendship while trust builds? He answers with Bernard of Clairvaux’s four stages of love: loving self for own sake; turning to God in need and loving Him as useful (“not really charity yet”, but a kind of hope); becoming familiar through prayer, which is the act of hope, and loving Him for His own sake (start of friendship); loving self only for God’s sake, hardly realised in this life. Human parallel: the neighbour with the snow blower; his father going to ball games with the man who sold paint for the farm wagons — a friendship of utility that became liking for the other’s company. “Hope, kind of, disposing for love.”

5. Replies of Article 5: beatitude, root, and Christ (“likeness is a most slippery thing”) #

• Reply 1: charity is not any love of God but love of Him as object of beatitude, to which we are ordered by faith and hope. Hebrews’ definition of faith, “substance of things hoped for, conviction of what is not seen”: substance not as essence (then you would already have beatitude) but as foundation; you believe what you will see, Trinity and incarnate Son.
• Before reply 2, on “root”: Plato’s Sophist says likeness is most slippery; Aristotle opens Sophistical Refutations saying likeness is the cause of deception, so an error like the truth is more dangerous; among the four tools of dialectic, difference comes before likeness — the tool of likeness is not the ability to find but to consider a likeness, to see in what way things are alike.
• Reply 2: charity is the root of belief and hope insofar as it gives them the perfection of virtue, not before them in every way; by their proper definitions they are presupposed. Parallel: geometry and natural philosophy can be without wisdom (Andronicus of Rhodes named the fourteen books Metaphysica, coming after natural philosophy, mathematics, logic); Thomas on Boethius’ De Trinitate distinguishes mathematics, natural philosophy, wisdom; wisdom perfects the lower sciences yet they must be learned first. So charity perfects the belief and hope one already has; we hope most for good things from friends.
• Reply 3: belief and hope were lacking to Christ on account of what is imperfect in them (not seeing; not yet having); in their place, vision even in His human soul, and full comprehension; hence perfect charity. Seeing God face to face you love Him more: his reading of “none greater born of woman than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom is greater” — the lowest in heaven sees God and so loves more, knowledge being cause of love; the beautiful girl you have only heard of; Romeo forgets Rosalind on seeing Juliet, and “once he sees God, he’s going to forget even about Juliet.” Belief and hope pass away in heaven; “abandon all hope” in hell, but in heaven too, in a sense, as regards oneself (perhaps hope remains for others, purgatory).
• Digression on prayer: praying for a friend is more selfless than for oneself, for an enemy more still (a friend is another self); but not necessarily more heard, since the friend or enemy may have an impediment to grace; still we should pray for each other, being social, political animals (Aristotle).

6. Question 66, prooemium (“the equality of virtues”) #

Six articles: whether virtue can be more or less; whether all virtues in one man are equal (“am I more courageous than I am temperate?”); moral compared to intellectual virtues; moral virtues to each other; intellectual to each other; theological to each other. “He considers them from every angle.”

7. Article 1 objections and sed contra (“virtue is the ultimate of power”) #

• Obj. 1: Apocalypse 21:16, the sides of Jerusalem are equal, signifying the virtues (gloss); virtues are square, cubic, solid, not a sphere rolling away.
• Obj. 2: what is defined by a maximum cannot be more or less; virtue is the ultimate of power (De Caelo I), and the maxima bona no one uses badly (Augustine, On Free Will II).
• Obj. 3: the effect is weighed by the agent’s power; infused virtues are from God whose power is uniform and infinite.
• Sed contra: where there is growth and superabundance there is inequality; Matthew 5 (“unless your justice abounds more than the scribes and Pharisees”), Proverbs 15. The medal of honour is for more courage, not less. Student: “But I thought they all grow together” — that is what Thomas will answer.
• Aside: why does Thomas always argue against what he thinks? To exercise our minds.

8. Body, first way: virtues differing in species (“the cause is more potent than the effect”) #

1. Cause is more potent than effect, and among effects the nearer to the cause is more potent.
2. The cause and root of human good is reason.
3. So prudence, perfecting reason, is better than the moral virtues, which are good insofar as they partake of reason (“is love good? a reasonable love”); what partakes is less than what is essentially so.
4. Among moral virtues, the nearer to reason the better: justice in the will over the rest; fortitude in the irascible over temperance in the concupiscible, which partakes of reason less (Ethics VII).

• Aristotle treats justice last (the others more known to us), but the Secunda Secundae goes prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance; in God there is prudence and justice, fortitude metaphorically, temperance not even metaphorically.
• Aside: his early insight that Mozart’s piano concertos excel, dealing with the irascible.

9. Body, second way: virtues of the same species (“in the highest disposed to virtue”) #

Distinction: virtue in itself vs. on the side of the subject partaking (cf. the earlier treatment of intensity of habits).

• In itself: magnitude is by what it extends to — your geometry may extend to more conclusions than mine, Euclid’s to more still. But whoever has temperance has it for all temperance extends to: not moderate in wine but not in beer or whiskey, chicken but not steak, cake but not candy. Not so with science and art: not every grammarian knows all of grammar. Hence the Stoics said well (Simplicius on the Predicamenta — he glosses predicamenta, the categories, vs. predicabilia, genus, species, difference, property, accident) that virtue, unlike science or art, does not receive more and less, its notion consisting in the maximum.
• On the side of the subject: virtue can be more or less at different times in one man or in different men, since one is better disposed to attain the mean of right reason by more custom, better natural disposition, clearer judgment of reason, or greater gift of grace (“to each according to the measure of the giving of Christ” — not the same to us, the apostles, Mary).
• Here the Stoics fall short, calling nothing virtue but what is disposed in the highest degree, as if the mean were indivisible like a point (“they must have been thinking mathematically”); it suffices to be near the mean (Ethics II) — “how many sips is too much?” — as archers aiming at a sign, one nearer and more promptly than another, with leeway in the bullseye.

10. Replies of Article 1 (“according to the order of his wisdom”) #

• Reply 1: the equality of Jerusalem’s sides is by proportion, not absolute quantity, since virtues grow proportionally, “as will be said below”.
• Reply 2: the ultimate of virtue admits more and less in the four said modes, not being an indivisible last point like the end of a line.
• Reply 3: God acts not by necessity of nature but by the order of His wisdom, giving diverse measure: more to the apostles, on whom the Church is founded (bishops descend from them — “Stoic succession”, a slip for apostolic), more still to Mary (“by their fruits you shall know them”: the fruit of her womb). A student proposes founders of religious orders have more grace; he thinks it probable that Dominic, Benedict (patron of Europe, per Paul VI and John Paul II) exceed their followers, though “I wouldn’t be all too sure” — the Legionaries, who had to be refounded, are a problem case.
• He ends by proposing to read a letter from a friend next.

His words #

• belief — his rendering of fides/faith throughout [ed.: faith]
• foresight — his rendering of prudentia [ed.: prudence]
• four senses of “before” — time, being, discourse of reason, the better (Categories ch. 12)
• inchoatio — a beginning of virtue, doing good without doing it well
• aliqualiter — “in some way”; faith and hope can be without charity in some way
• opus perfectum — a perfect work, requiring suitable willing
• comprehensor — Christ, seeing God as He is in His mind while His body is still on the way
• antonomasia — “the Apostle” for Paul
• radicati / fundati — rooted (from nature) / founded (from building)
• ramis — branches
• fidelis — God is faithful (“does God believe?”)
• familiar conversation — the society of man with God, begun by grace, perfected by glory
• substance of things hoped for — “substance” as foundation, not essence
• tool of difference / tool of likeness — the latter is the ability to consider, not find, a likeness
• Metaphysica — Andronicus of Rhodes’ name for the fourteen books of wisdom
• per visionem — vision in place of belief, in Christ
• predicamenta / predicabilia — the categories / genus, species, difference, property, accident
• maxima bona — the virtues, which no one uses badly (Augustine)
• Stoic succession — his slip for apostolic succession

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 65, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 66, prooemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 12 (four senses of before); Ethics II (doing well; near the mean), VII, VIII-IX (friendship); De Caelo et Mundo I; Sophistical Refutations (opening); the four tools of dialectic
• Augustine, tract on John (“no one believes except willing”); Enchiridion; City of God XIV; On Free Will II
• Thomas, catechetical instructions (Naples); commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate; Secunda Secundae (order of virtues)
• Plato, Sophist; Simplicius on the Categories; Bernard of Clairvaux on loving God (inferred title)
• Matthew 1:2 with gloss; 1 Corinthians 13 (“remain these three”); Hebrews 11:6 and the definition of faith; Proverbs 8; Ephesians 3:17; 1 John 4:16; 1 Corinthians 1:9; Apocalypse 21:16; Matthew 5; Proverbs 15; the two sons; John the Baptist and the least in the kingdom; “I call you no longer servants”; “to each according to the measure of the giving of Christ”; the Hail Mary
• Vatican II document on Revelation (prooemium); Shakespeare (Falstaff’s death; Romeo and Juliet)

His questions #

• Is the answer in Articles 4 and 5 the same in both directions, or only one way? No: belief and hope can be without charity in some way; charity cannot be without them in any way.
• If you don’t do it well, is it even virtue? It is a beginning, inchoatio, not perfect virtue.
• Why would God unite Himself to someone who doesn’t love Him? He would not; so perfect hope, from merits, requires charity.
• Is hope in God’s “unconditional love” with no intention to merit a virtue at all? Perhaps not at all — presumption.
• Can you be a friend with someone you don’t trust? No; so no friendship with God without believing and trusting Him.
• Can geometry and natural philosophy be without wisdom? Yes, as before it; wisdom then perfects them, as charity perfects faith and hope.
• Which prayer is more apt to be heard, for yourself, a friend, or an enemy? Praying for others is more selfless, but not necessarily more heard, since the other may have an impediment to grace.
• Am I temperate if I drink wine moderately but not beer or whiskey? No; whoever has temperance has it for all it extends to.
• How many sips is too much? The mean is not indivisible; it suffices to be near it, like archers at a target.
• Would any Dominican have as much grace as St Dominic? Probably not; the founder likely has a certain excellence, though he is not sure.