Charity Never Fails, and How the Gifts of the Holy Spirit Differ from the Virtues (Summa I-II q.67 a.6, q.68 a.1)

Orientation #

He opens by continuing the question of what remains after this life (“Now, how about charity? Does that remain?”) and, having finished q. 67, says “starting a new question here, on the gifts.” He refers back to “the article on… the causes of love” and to Augustine’s definition of virtue “we had before” (prev. lecture, not specified). At the end: “I stopped now.” The previous class finished the reading of SCG IV (ch. 97, whether hope remains), and the next continues q. 68 (aa. 2-4).

The class, in order #

1. Objections: charity of the road seems not to remain (“charity does not remain after this life”) #

Point: three reasons why the imperfect charity of the via should be evacuated in glory.

1. 1 Cor 13:10: when the perfect comes, the imperfect is evacuated; charity of the via is imperfect.
2. Habits and acts are distinguished by objects; the object of love is a good grasped (he recalls the treatise: first cause of love is the good, second is knowledge, “they kind of go together” — Romeo had no love for Juliet before he saw her beauty). Other the knowledge of this life, other that of the next; so not the same charity.
3. Things of one ratio can, by continual growth, reach equality of perfection; but charity of the road never equals charity of the fatherland however much it grows.

• Student: Christ’s saying that none born of woman is greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom is greater — perhaps meaning the charity of one who sees God face to face exceeds even John’s charity in this life (“I don’t think I’m interpreting that right”); another notes an interpretation where Christ himself is “the least” and had the vision. Left open.

2. Sed contra and an aside on humility (“Caritas numquam excidit”) #

Point: 1 Cor 13:8, “charity never falls out / is cut off.”

• Aside: Warren Murray tells his students two things are needed for a philosopher, a good mind and humility, and one without the other is not enough. Kasurik, best in his department, said compared to Aristotle “I’ve got the brain of an angleworm”; De Koninck, far more famous than Dionne, made clear (even to Mrs. De Koninck) that Dionne was the greatest mind there. Contrast: David Hume, “Aristotle’s decay.”

3. Respondeo: imperfection not of the definition of the species (“charity is what amor”) #

Point: when imperfection is not of the definition of a thing’s species, the same thing in number can be imperfect first and perfect afterward.

• Man perfected by growth, whiteness by intensity: same in number, more perfect.
• Charity is love, and no imperfection is in the definition of love: it can be of something had and not had, seen and not seen. Examples: told he is being introduced tonight to a marvelous woman, a man is “already falling in love” with her unseen; “I’m already in love with that meal” before it is served.
• So charity is not evacuated by glory but remains the same in number. “Marvelous thing charity is.”

4. Ad 1: imperfection is per accidens (“a guess and understanding”) #

Point: the imperfection of charity belongs to it per accidens (not of the definition); remove what is per accidens and the substance remains.

• Guess vs. understanding: a guess has imperfection in its definition (guessing the angles of a triangle equal two right angles); understanding does not, yet one understands more or less — as he studies, the same understanding in number grows. Love is like understanding, not like a guess.
• He admits he had not seen why Thomas says per accidens: “it happens to be that way,” not the very definition.

5. Ad 2: the object is the thing known, not the knowledge (“substance of things hoped for”) #

Point: charity has for object not the knowledge itself (else it would differ on the road and in the fatherland) but the thing known, which is the same: God.

• The act of the will always presupposes knowledge; as knowledge of God grows, love grows, but the object stays the same. By theology he knows “the same thing that I’ll know in heaven” — “not the God of theology, God of the beatific vision, two gods.”
• Ties this to the first part of the definition of faith, “substance of things hoped for”: hypostasis in Greek, etymologically like substance (both sub/hypo + standing), so “substance” is even etymologically close. You believe the same thing you are going to see; it is already a foundation. Love of theology and love of the beatific vision are not the same love, but the love of God is. “Very subtle.”

6. Ad 3: vision is a cause of love (“For vision is a cause of love”) #

Point: charity of the road cannot grow to equal charity of the fatherland because of a difference on the side of the cause: vision is a cause of love (Ethics IX).

• Recalls the orderly causes of love: good, knowledge, likeness — “beautiful.”
• Vision is knowledge superior to that of faith, hence a greater cause of love: the more perfectly God is known, the more perfectly loved. Knowledge as cause does not make a different charity, only a more perfect one. “It’s very subtle to see that.”
• Aside: the saints “talk tough to God”: give me the vision and I’ll love you the way you should be loved.

7. Opening q. 68: the gifts, like heroic virtue (“De donis, question sixty-eight”) #

Point: Thomas treats the gifts after the virtues as Aristotle, in Ethics VII, treats what is less and more than human virtue (bestial vices, heroic virtue) after the virtues; Thomas sometimes compares the gifts to heroic virtue.

• A hero in Greek fiction: one parent immortal, one mortal (Achilles’ mother divine).
• The eight things asked: whether gifts differ from virtues; their necessity (“I’m afraid we do” need them); whether they are habits (important, since virtues are habits); which and how many (seven); then, as for the virtues, whether connected, whether they remain in the patria, their comparison to each other, and to the virtues.
• Observation: how far man’s perfection differs from God’s in simplicity — all these virtues, infused virtues, gifts, “and you need the angels too.”
• Aside: calling on his angel when driving as he gets old; Warren Murray’s grandfather’s car and the gas pedal; older drivers and license tests.

8. Objections: gifts seem not distinguished from virtues (“seven sons born to him”) #

Point: four reasons the gifts are just virtues.

1. Gregory, Moralia I, on Job’s seven sons: seven sons are born to us when, through the conception of good thought, the seven virtues of the Holy Spirit arise in us; he adduces Isaiah 11 and enumerates the seven gifts — so the gifts are virtues. (Gregory “a master” in moral theology; Thomas often draws on the Moralia, e.g. capital vices.)
2. Augustine, on Matthew 12:45 (“seven other spirits”): these seven vices are contrary to the seven virtues of the Holy Spirit, i.e. the gifts; but seven vices are contrary to the virtues commonly so called.
3. Same definition, same thing: Augustine’s definition of virtue — bona qualitas mentis qua recte vivitur, which no one uses badly, which God works in us without us — fits each gift; and the definition of gift (per the Philosopher, a giving not to be returned) fits the infused virtues.
   • Shakespeare’s “looking before and after” includes looking for distinctions: from the axiom that nothing is before or after itself there is always a distinction between before and after; distinction is fundamental for reason, and this question is about distinction (the handout page).
4. Many gifts are virtues: wisdom, understanding, science are intellectual virtues; counsel pertains to prudence; piety is a species of justice (toward God); fortitude a moral virtue.
   • Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations: the commonest mistake is mixing up senses of a word; perhaps these names are equivocal as said of virtues and of gifts, “like Sophia said of a little lady I know, and wisdom.”

9. Sed contra: Gregory against Gregory (“four corners of the house”) #

Point: Gregory, Moralia I, distinguishes the seven gifts (seven sons) from the three theological virtues (three daughters of Job); Moralia II distinguishes them from the four cardinal virtues (four corners/angles of the house, which the wind smote and killed them all).

10. Respondeo: the search for the right distinction (“twofold moving beginning”) #

Point: by the ratio of the names, gift and virtue are not opposed; the true difference lies in what each disposes man to be moved by.

1. Ratio of virtue: perfects man for acting well; ratio of gift: comparison to the cause from which it is (given expecting nothing in return). Nothing prevents what is given by another from perfecting one to operate well — that is exactly the infused virtues. So by name no distinction; “that doesn’t really tell you what the difference is, if there is a difference.”
2. Hence quidam say gifts are not distinguished from virtues. But a not lesser difficulty remains: why only some virtues are called gifts, and why some gifts (fear) are not counted among virtues.
3. Others say they ought to be distinguished but assign no suitable cause — nothing common to all virtues that is in no way common to the gifts, or the reverse. “Giving you quite a history here.”
   • (a) Four gifts in reason (wisdom, science/knowledge, understanding, counsel), three in the appetitive power (fortitude, piety, fear); so gifts perfect free will as faculty of reason, virtues as faculty of will, since only faith and prudence are in reason. Fails: it would require all virtues in appetite and all gifts in reason.
   • (b) From Gregory, Moralia II (the gift of the Spirit in the mind forms temperance, prudence, justice, fortitude, and guards the same mind against temptations by the seven gifts): virtues ordered to operating well, gifts to resisting temptation. “Kind of weird”: as if drinking moderately and avoiding excess were not the same perfection. Fails: virtues also resist temptations, each thing naturally resisting its contrary — especially charity, Canticles 8, “many waters cannot extinguish charity.”
   • (c) Since Scripture treats the gifts as in Christ (Isaiah 11): virtues ordered simply to doing well, gifts to conforming us to Christ, especially in what he suffered, where the gifts shine. Fails: the Lord induces conformity especially in humility and meekness (“learn from me…”) and charity (John 15, “love one another as I have loved you”; “greater love than this hath no man”), and these virtues also shine in the passion.
4. Thomas’s way: follow Scripture’s way of speaking, where they are treated not under the name of gifts but of spirits (Isaiah 11, “rested upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding”) — so they are in us from divine inspiration, and inspiration signifies a motion from outside. (Aside: “this might be a whiskey bottle. Spirits” — the student who works in a liquor store.)
5. In man there is a twofold moving beginning: one within him, reason; one outside, God — said above and by the Philosopher in the book on good fortune (Eudemian Ethics, where Aristotle has God move the will, “a kind of unmoved mover in the will as well as in the material world”; De Koninck: “Aristotle is somebody”).
6. Everything moved must be proportioned to its mover (a corollary Aristotle gives about causes); this proportion is the perfection of the mobile as mobile, the disposition to be moved well. The higher the mover, the more perfect the disposition needed: as a student must be better disposed to grasp higher teaching — hence, he says, being taught by Kasurik, then De Koninck, then Dionne, each preparing for the next. Student’s material example: a master craftsman needs better tools to follow his motions; a dull tool cannot do his work.
7. Human virtues perfect man as apt to be moved by reason; so there must be higher perfections disposing him to be moved divinely. These are called gifts, not only because infused by God (so are the infused virtues) but because by them man is promptly movable by divine inspiration — Isaiah 50, “the Lord opened to me an ear, and I did not contradict / go backwards.”
   • John XXIII insisted he was moved to call Vatican II; Cardinal Wright (at Assumption) explained John’s image of grain under the soil, seeds that sprout later — and distinguished the “so-called spirit of Vatican II” from the Spirit’s gift and from the letter of the Council.
8. The Philosopher again (chapter on good fortune): those moved by divine instinct should not take counsel by human reason but follow the interior instinct, being moved by a better beginning. “That’s Aristotle.”
9. So some (a footnote names Albert and Bonaventure) say the gifts perfect man for higher acts than those of the virtues. He queries: “there is no higher act than charity”; perhaps a higher act than charity normally has — to be seen as Thomas goes into detail.

11. Replies: why the names overlap (“a certain heroic virtue or divine one”) #

Point: the gifts may be called virtues in the common sense, and the names of gifts and virtues are equivocal.

• Ad 1: gifts are sometimes called virtues by the common ratio, but have something rising above it as divine virtues perfecting man as moved by God; so the Philosopher, Ethics VII, places above common virtue a heroic or divine virtue by which some are called divine men. Naming principle (from before): what adds something noteworthy may get a new name (dona), the others keep the old (virtue) — as man is an animal, yet some refuse the name because of what exceeds the other animals (“man is an ape, but an unusual one”).
  • Aside: the Harvard professor wanting personhood and rights for chimpanzees, an “imprisoned” ape; jokes about chimps on juries, bananas, and evolution; “likeness is a very slippery thing.” Aristotle’s heroic/ordinary distinction disposes one to see this one.
• Ad 2: vices as against the good of reason are contrary to the (human) virtues; as against the divine instinct, contrary to the gifts. The same thing can be contrary to God and to reason, whose light is derived from God (“enlightens every man who comes into this world”).
• Ad 3: Augustine’s definition is of virtue in its common mode; restricted to virtue as distinguished from gift, qua recte vivitur means rightness by the rule of reason; and gift, as distinguished from infused virtue, is what God gives in order to his motion, making man follow the divine instincts well. (Aside: the new pope, who may be following the divine instinct — treat what he does with respect.)
• Ad 4: wisdom is an intellectual virtue as proceeding from the judgment of reason, a gift as operating from divine instinct; similarly for the rest. “So the word is equivocal.” He stops here.

His words #

• excidit: “falls out”; charity is never cut off / extinguished (1 Cor 13:8).
• via / patria: the road vs. the fatherland (this life vs. glory).
• per accidens: not of the very definition, “it happens to be that way.”
• substance of things hoped for: hypostasis, both etymologically “under-standing.”
• dona: gifts; “a gift that is not to be returned” (the Philosopher); Thomas’s own: what God gives in order to his motion.
• bona qualitas mentis qua recte vivitur: Augustine’s definition of virtue, “which God in us without us.”
• science: what translations usually call knowledge; intellectus, understanding.
• spirits: Scripture’s name for the gifts; inspiration, “a certain motion from the outside.”
• twofold moving beginning: reason within, God without.
• divine instinct: the interior instinct one follows rather than human counsel.
• heroic virtue: Aristotle’s virtue above the common, by which some are called divine men.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 67 a. 6 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies) — verified.
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 68, prologue and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, four replies) — verified.
• Handout “The Before and After in the Acts of (Looking) Reason”, p. 7 — on Shakespeare’s “looking before and after” and distinction.
• Isaiah 11 (“rested upon him the spirit of wisdom…”), Isaiah 50 (“opened to me an ear”), Canticles 8, John 15, Matthew (“learn from me…”) — as quoted within the articles.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII (bestial vice, heroic virtue), IX (vision a cause of love); Eudemian Ethics, chapter on good fortune; Sophistical Refutations (equivocation).
• Gregory, Moralia I and II; Augustine, Questions on the Gospels (Matthew 12:45); Augustine’s definition of virtue.
• Thomas, the earlier question on the causes of love (good, knowledge, likeness) — locus not stated.
• Albert and Bonaventure (footnote); Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet; “looking before and after”); Luke on John the Baptist (student’s question).
• Printed volume: DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 954 (listed as verified source; not named in transcript).

His questions #

• Does charity remain after this life, or is the imperfect evacuated when the perfect comes? It remains the same in number: imperfection is not in the definition of love; it is per accidens.
• Doesn’t a different kind of knowledge give a different kind of love? No: the object of charity is the thing known, God, not the knowledge; the same on the road and in the fatherland.
• Why can charity of the road never grow to equal charity of the fatherland? Because vision, a higher knowledge than faith, is a greater cause of love; more perfectly known, more perfectly loved.
• Does a guess by definition have imperfection in it? Does understanding? A guess yes; understanding no, yet it grows — love is like understanding.
• What is a hero in Greek fiction? Half god: one immortal parent (Achilles’ mother).
• If gift means given and virtue means perfecting for acting well, are they opposed? No; the same thing can be both, so this gives no distinction.
• Why are only some virtues called gifts, and fear counted a gift but not a virtue? The three prior distinctions fail; the gifts dispose man to be moved by God, virtues by reason.
• Is there any higher act than charity, as Albert and Bonaventure’s view suggests? Left open — “we have to see how he gets into more details.”
• Are the names wisdom, understanding, counsel etc. equivocal between virtue and gift? Yes: as from the judgment of reason, virtue; as from divine instinct, gift.