Summa I-II Q.68 aa.4–7: How the Seven Gifts Are Distinguished, Their Connection in Charity, Whether They Remain in Heaven, and Their Order of Dignity

Orientation #

He opens by recalling a point “I was talking about last time” that struck him: Thomas’s comparison of the divine power generating the Son by nature and producing creatures by will (prev. lecture). The previous class covered q. 68 aa. 2-3 and began a. 4; the next finishes q. 68 and moves into q. 69 on the Beatitudes.

The class, in order #

1. The body of a. 4 and the “likeness of ratios” (“It comes back to that same what Likeness of ratios”) #

Point: the gifts are habits perfecting man to follow promptly the instinct of the Holy Spirit, “just as the moral virtues perfect the desiring powers to obey reason” — and this proportion is the engine of the whole question.

• Digression on the same tool from last time: Avicenna’s mistake was to think creatures proceed from God per modum naturae, one creature at a time; Thomas: the Son proceeds from the divine power through nature, creatures through the will — “the same power can be moved by different things.” Illustration: our reason is moved by nature to assent that the whole is more than the part, quantities equal to the same are equal to each other; moved by the will to believe (“no one believes unless he wills”). “Very subtle.”
• Aristotle in the book on the Poetic Art: the most beautiful metaphor is the one based on likeness of ratios. His example: Juliet apparently dead on her wedding morning and the father’s line “death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field” — death : Juliet :: untimely frost : sweetest flower. “Who could say it better than that?”
• The fourth tool of dialectic, likeness, is useful for definitions (seeing what way things are alike), for inductions, and for syllogisms ex hypothesi (“if-then syllogisms”); Aristotle often argues from one ratio to another by a likeness — and also uses it simply to manifest something.
• The moral virtues make one follow reason quickly; without them one is tempted not to — “the way most people are.”

2. Distributing the gifts over the powers (“Now, here it gets very subtle”) #

Point: since the desiring powers are by nature apt to be moved by reason as higher, so all human powers are apt to be moved by the instinct of God as a higher power; hence there are gifts in every power that can be a beginning of human acts (reason and desiring power — not the digestive power).

• Reason is speculative (“looking,” his English for the Latin; Greek theoretic) and practical (“doing”); in both there is the grasping of truth (discovery) and the judgment about it. Judgment = separating the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge; the senses are a beginning; in geometry, whether an acute angle can be called obtuse is settled by the definitions. One must first grasp what is said before one can judge it.
• Grasping: speculative perfected by understanding, practical by counsel. Judging: speculative by wisdom, practical by science. Student anecdote (Mark): “Sias” could think of all kinds of things to do but had no judgment; his brother said “this is the one to do” — each imperfect, having one without the other.
• On intellectus: “understanding” is equivocal — sometimes a kind of knowing divided against sensing, sometimes merely grasping what is said without separating true from false. He translates Aristotle’s episteme (a coming to a halt after the movement of reason) as “reasoned out understanding,” sometimes “reasoned out knowledge,” since understanding in the second sense is less than knowledge. Natural understanding (nous) carries judgment even more, since reasoned-out understanding depends on it for its judgment. Knowledge, too, is sometimes divided against wisdom, which “gets a special name because it excels” — looking knowledge is better than doing knowledge.
• Desiring power: towards another, piety (why piety rather than justice comes later); towards oneself, fortitude against fear of dangers, fear against disordered desire of pleasures — Proverbs 15 (through fear of the Lord everyone declines from evil) and Psalm 118 (“constrict your flesh with fear”). Aside: strictly one cannot be just to oneself, though we say “I owe it to myself”; likewise “be a friend to yourself” is loose speech. So the gifts extend to all that the intellectual and moral virtues extend to.

3. Replies of a. 4: art, temperance, justice vs. piety (“Why don’t you have something corresponding to art”) #

• Ad 1: the gifts perfect man for living well; art is ordered to exterior things to be made — right reason of things to be made, not done (Ethics VI). Yet as regards the pouring in of the gifts, art pertains to the Holy Spirit as chief mover, men being his tools (he notes both organa and instrumentum in the Latin). Fear corresponds to temperance: temperance recedes from depraved pleasures for the good of reason, the gift of fear for fear of God. Homework set: the integral parts of temperance (“skip that question”).
• Ad 2: “justice” is named from the rightness of reason, so it suits a virtue more than a gift; “piety” implies reverence to a father or fatherland, and God is father of all, so worship of God is called piety; the gift by which one does good to all out of reverence for God is piety. Asides: Socrates in the Protagoras adds piety to the four cardinal virtues; the Euthyphro discusses it; the epistle on caring for widows and orphans — strange, since they are not your father, unless through your order to God. A student reports Dr. Hansen: human mercy “sees the need in what is the image,” piety “sees the image in the need.” His teacher De Koninck wrote on la piété du fils, the Son’s filial piety toward his mother.

4. Replies 3-5: theological virtues as roots; fear; wisdom as director (“these virtues are presupposed to the gifts”) #

• Ad 3: the soul is moved by the Holy Spirit only if united to him, as a tool by the artist through contact; the first union is faith, hope and charity; hence these are presupposed to the gifts “as certain roots,” and all the gifts pertain to them as derivations. “That’s very interesting what he says.” Student: this seems to put the theological virtues above the gifts; he agrees (“root … derivations”). Student: Bonaventure has grace ramifying into virtues, gifts, beatitudes; he adds Scripture: charity is diffused in our hearts by the Holy Spirit — the connection to the Spirit’s moving us. Aside: “we got a little beyond the Baltimore Catechism,” whose answers are still good; students’ stories of confirmation classes unable to name the seven sacraments; he has just got Bellarmine’s catechism, “very good.”
• Ad 4: love, hope and pleasure have the good as object, and the highest good is God, so their names are carried over (“transferred”) to the theological virtues that join the soul to God; fear’s object is the bad, which in no way belongs to God, so it implies withdrawal from things out of reverence for God — a gift, not a theological virtue, withdrawing us from evil more eminently than a moral virtue.
• Ad 5: wisdom directs both understanding and affections, so two gifts correspond to it as director: understanding (intellect) and fear (affections); the reason for fearing God is taken from the divine excellence, which wisdom considers. Asides: the joke that Monsignor Dionne’s principal passion is fear; Socrates’ fear of thinking you know what you don’t; “my principal passion is despair — I despair of knowing anything.” Break.

5. Article 5: are the gifts connected? (“the gifts of the Holy Spirit are connected together to each other in charity”) #

• Objections as read: 1 Cor 12 — speech of wisdom to some, of science to others (he asks: “Is that simply equivocation? the most common fallacy” — these are gratia gratis data); Augustine, De Trinitate XIV — many faithful do not shine in science though they shine in faith, yet faith brings at least fear; Gregory, Moralia I — wisdom less without understanding, counsel vile without fortitude, science nothing without piety, fear without the virtues rises to no good work, so one gift can be had without another. Sed contra: Gregory on the banquet of the sons of Jacob feeding each other.
• Body: the same likeness again (“the man who can see a likeness of ratios”): as the appetitive powers are disposed by moral virtues to the rule of reason, all powers are disposed by the gifts to the Holy Spirit moving them; the Spirit dwells in us through charity (Rom 5:5); so as the moral virtues are connected in prudence, the gifts are connected in charity: whoever has charity has all the gifts, none without charity. “Solves it.”
• Ad 1: wisdom and science as gratia gratis data (abounding so as to instruct the faithful and refute adversaries — the Apostle’s sermo sapientiae/scientiae) vs. as gifts, perfections disposing the mind to follow the Spirit in knowing divine or human things, present in all who have charity. On the terminology: gratia gratis data is opposed to gratia gratum faciens; even the latter is given gratis, but the first keeps the common notion and the other gets a new name for what it adds.
• Ad 2: Augustine is expounding the Apostle, so speaks of science in that sense — knowing how to bestow on the pious and defend against the impious, as against merely knowing what one ought to believe. Equivocation: “the most common mistake in thinking,” per the Sophistical Refutations.
• Ad 3: as the cardinal virtues’ connection is proven by one being perfected by another, Gregory proves the gifts’ connection by one being imperfect without the other: understanding without wisdom is not a gift, as temperance without justice is not a virtue. He adds: union through charity, and also each confirms the other. Aside: you can tell a man’s unorthodoxy by his attitude to the Blessed Virgin; the story of the man who doubted he could stay if the Assumption were defined — “don’t worry, you’re already out.”

6. Article 6: do the gifts remain in the fatherland? (“about the gifts we can speak in two ways”) #

• Objections: Gregory, Moralia II — the seven gifts instruct against temptations, none in the patria (Isaiah 11:9); habits are in vain without acts, and Gregory (Moralia I) gives acts — penetrating what is heard, not being precipitous, not fearing adversity, works of mercy — that don’t belong to heaven; the active life (piety, fortitude) ends with this life (Gregory, Moralia VI). Sed contra: Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit — the heavenly city is washed not by an earthly river but by the font of life, the Spirit, whose brief taste satisfies us and who fills the celestial spirits with the seven spiritual virtues.
• Body: as to essence, the gifts will be most perfectly in heaven, since they perfect the mens (which “involves the will as well as the reason”) to follow the Spirit’s motion, which will be most of all when God is all in all (1 Cor 15); as to the matter they act on, some present operations will cease — as said above of the cardinal virtues.
• Ad 1: Gregory speaks of the present state; there we are protected against evil, in glory perfected in the good. Ad 2: in each gift Gregory names something that passes and something that remains — wisdom: hope of eternal things passes, certitude remains (“if you have the beatific vision you’ll be certain it’s going to remain forever”); understanding: hearing passes (no man will teach his brother, Jer 31), illumination remains; counsel: guarding against precipitousness passes, filling the soul with reason remains; fortitude: not fearing adversity passes, “the food of confidence” remains; science: overcoming the fasting of ignorance passes, filling the stomach of the mind with knowledge remains (“we’ll be stuffed with knowledge”); piety: works of mercy pass, intimate affection (the “viscera”) remains — “the affection of congratulation”; fear: guarding against pride passes, strengthening with the food of hope pertains to both, “here hoped, there attained.” Ad 3: works of the active life won’t be the gifts’ matter; their acts will be about what pertains to the contemplative life.

7. Article 7: the worth of the gifts and the order of Isaiah 11 (“the dignity or worth of the gifts can be observed in two ways”) #

• He renders dignitas as “worth/worthiness.”
• Objections: fear is most required (Deut 10, “what does the Lord ask of you except that you fear”; Mal 1, “if I am the Lord, where is my fear?” — “pretty clever text”), yet listed last; piety is a universal good, useful for all things (1 Tim), yet penultimate; science perfects judgment, counsel pertains to inquiry, and judgment is preeminent; science is in reason, fortitude in desire, yet fortitude is listed first. Aside: in the De Potentia Thomas has 30-40 objections per article, “wearing the man out.”
• Sed contra: Augustine — the sevenfold operation of Isaiah is congruent with the grades and sentences of Matthew 5, the beatitudes, but there the enumeration begins from the inferior, here from the more excellent (a student had suggested this). Aside: John Paul II and the Catechism single out Augustine, quoted ad gloriam Augustini.
• Body: worth simply (by comparison to their acts as proceeding from their principles) vs. secundum quid (by comparison to matter) — “curious distinction.” Simply, the ordering is the same as among the virtues, since the gifts perfect the same powers: intellectual above moral, contemplative above active; so wisdom > understanding > science, as with prudence, synesis (judgment) and eubulia (counsel) — prudence being command; the four intellectual gifts above piety, fortitude, fear; piety > fortitude > fear as justice > fortitude > temperance. As to matter, fortitude and counsel are preferred to science and piety, having place in difficult things. So the order corresponds partly simply (wisdom, understanding first), partly by matter (counsel, fortitude before science, piety). “It takes a while to absorb that.”
• Ad 1: fear is required most as a beginning, in the order of generation — the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; first one recedes from evil (Proverbs), then does good. Illustrations: the young man told to give away all (removing sources of temptation) and then follow him (the perfection); Socrates’ fear of thinking he knows precedes knowledge but is not better than knowledge — “you’re so damn sure of yourself, you’re going to get nowhere in philosophy”; a teacher must first remove a student’s mistake (“scare him”) before teaching the truth — more necessary, not better. Anecdote: Father Bodet sought a teacher, found one in Montreal who rattled off answers to everything, then Monsignor Dionne who puzzled carefully — took him as teacher.
• Ad 2: the Apostle compares piety not to all gifts but to bodily exercise, which is “a little useful” (“that’s what I tell exercise nuts”). Ad 3: science is preferred by reason of judgment, counsel by reason of matter, since judgment of science has place in all things, counsel only in difficult ones. Ad 4: directive gifts (reason) are worth more than executive ones as ruler to ruled, considering acts from their powers; but by reason of matter counsel is joined to fortitude and science to piety, so counsel with fortitude is numbered first. “I really got confused … this guy ties you up all the time.”
• Close: this needs digestion — ruminating animals in the Old Testament are better; Boethius: the philosopher is a ruminating animal, chewing one sentence for a day or a week.
• Aside (in the body): Mozart’s last symphonies — 40 and 38 fortitude, 41 and 36 magnanimity, 39 rejoicing.

His words #

• instinct of the Holy Spirit; what the gifts make man follow promptly, as moral virtues make desire obey reason.
• likeness of ratios; the proportion tool (Poetics metaphor; fourth tool of dialectic) that Thomas reuses through the question.
• per modum naturae; how Avicenna wrongly has creatures proceed from God.
• looking reason / doing reason; his English for speculative and practical (speculari = look; Greek theoretic).
• judgment; separating the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge.
• reasoned out understanding / reasoned out knowledge; his rendering of episteme (a halt after reason’s movement) [ed.: science]; nous = natural understanding.
• organa / instrumentum; men as tools of the Holy Spirit, the chief mover (ad 1 of a. 4).
• transferred = carried over; names of the passions carried to the theological virtues.
• roots / derivations; the theological virtues as roots of the gifts.
• gratia gratis data vs. gratia gratum faciens; charismatic knowledge vs. grace making one acceptable to God; the latter is also given gratis but gets a new name for what it adds.
• fatherland; his rendering of patria.
• mens; the mind as involving will and reason.
• worth / worthiness; his rendering of dignitas.
• synesis, eubulia; judgment and counsel, parts alongside prudence (command).
• simply vs. secundum quid; by comparison to acts from principles vs. by comparison to matter.
• order of generation; why fear is first though not most worthy.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q. 68 a. 4, body and ad 1-5
• ST I-II q. 68 a. 5, objections, sed contra, body, ad 1-3
• ST I-II q. 68 a. 6, objections, sed contra, body, ad 1-3
• ST I-II q. 68 a. 7, objections, sed contra, body, ad 1-4
• (within them) Proverbs 15; Psalm 118; 1 Cor 12; Romans 5:5; Augustine De Trinitate XIV; Gregory Moralia I, II, VI; Ambrose On the Holy Spirit; Isaiah 11:9; 1 Cor 15; Jeremiah 31; Deuteronomy 10; Malachi 1; 1 Timothy (piety useful for all things, bodily exercise a little useful)
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, “death lies on her like an untimely frost” (handout “On Dividing Shakespeare’s Plays,” p. 3, per verified sources)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Poetic Art (metaphor by likeness of ratios); Topics, fourth tool of dialectic (inferred locus); Ethics VI (art); Sophistical Refutations (equivocation)
• Plato, Protagoras; Euthyphro
• Thomas, De Potentia (many objections); treatise on grace (division of gratia gratis data)
• Avicenna (creatures proceeding by nature)
• Bonaventure (grace ramifying) — student’s mention
• De Koninck, La piété du fils
• Baltimore Catechism; Bellarmine’s Catechism
• Boethius (ruminating animal)
• Matthew 5 (beatitudes, via Augustine); the young man told to sell all and follow
• Isaiah 11 (enumeration of the gifts)

His questions #

• What is the greatest kind of metaphor? The one based on likeness of ratios (Juliet and the untimely frost).
• What does judgment mean? Separating the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge.
• Why is there no gift corresponding to art? Gifts perfect living well; art is about things made — though art belongs to the Holy Spirit as chief mover, men being his tools.
• What are the integral parts of temperance? Left open — set as homework.
• Why piety rather than justice? Justice is named from rightness of reason (a virtue’s name); piety names reverence for a father, and God is father of all.
• Why nothing corresponding to the theological virtues? They are the first union with the Spirit, presupposed to the gifts as roots.
• Why is fear a gift and not a theological virtue, when love and hope are? Its object is evil, which is not in God; it withdraws rather than joins.
• Are the gifts connected? Yes, in charity, as the moral virtues are in prudence; the objections rest on equivocation on “wisdom” and “science.”
• Do the gifts remain in the fatherland? In essence, most perfectly; as to some present matter, no.
• Is fear, listed last, the least gift? It is first in the order of generation (receding from evil), not in worth.