Why the Beatitudes and Their Rewards Are Listed as They Are; the Fruits of the Holy Spirit (ST I-II Q.69 a.3-4; Q.70 a.1-2)

Orientation #

He opens by proposing “another article before we take our break,” continuing his reading of q. 69 (prev. lecture: the class had stopped inside a. 2). He closes: “we’ll be starting with Article 3 then, next time” (i.e., q. 70, a. 3). The previous class covered q. 68 on gifts and virtues and began q. 69 on the beatitudes; the next continues into q. 70 on the twelve fruits.

The class, in order #

1. q. 69 a. 3, the objections on both sides (“Unsuitably are enumerated the beatitudes”) #

Point: Thomas sets up objections that the list is insufficient (1–4) and, in the sed contra position, that it is superfluous (5–6); the class is “thoroughly mixed up.”

• Obj. 1: beatitudes are attributed to the gifts, some gifts (wisdom, understanding) belong to contemplative life, but no beatitude is placed in the act of contemplation — “I rest my case.”
• Obj. 2: the active life has directing gifts too (science, counsel); no beatitude pertains to their acts.
• Obj. 3: of the gifts carrying out the active life, fear matches poverty, piety matches mercy, but nothing matches fortitude. His gloss: four gifts dealt with the mind, three with the appetite; this objection says one of the three is left out.
• Obj. 4: Scripture has many other beatitudes — Job 5 (“blessed the man who is corrected by the Lord”), Psalm 1 (not gone after the counsel of the impious), Proverbs 3:13 (found wisdom).
• Other side: seven gifts but eight beatitudes (“can’t even count”); Luke 6 gives only four, so Matthew’s seven or eight are superfluous.
• Aside: medieval disputationes might have thirty objections a side and the master “has to untie all the knots”; today’s schooling is “playthings” (peace studies).

2. Body: threefold beatitude and the first three beatitudes (“blessed are the poor in spirit”) #

Point: the beatitudes are “most suitably enumerated” once one sees that some place beatitude in the voluptuous life, some in the active (Churchill), some in the contemplative (Aristotle).

1. Voluptuous beatitude is false and contrary to reason, so an impediment to future beatitude (Aristotle: a life suitable to beasts).
2. Active beatitude disposes to future beatitude.
3. Contemplative beatitude, if perfect, is future beatitude; if imperfect, a beginning of it (Mary listening to Christ). Illustration: the psalm “Sing joyfully to the Lord… serve the Lord with gladness” (active) followed by “know that the Lord is God” (contemplative) shows the order. Comparison to the Our Father: the last three petitions remove impediments, “thy will be done / daily bread” are the way, “hallowed be thy name / thy kingdom come” are beatitude itself (Thomas: the kingdom is the ordered society of those who see God as He is). “Feast of Reason, Socrates would say.” The Lord first removes the voluptuous impediment, which consists in two things:

• Affluence of exterior goods, wealth or honours (Boethius’s false happiness). Virtue withdraws a man so that he uses them moderately (magnanimity about honour; Mozart’s 36th Symphony moderate, Wagner not); the gift, more excellently, makes him totally disdain them. His parallel: Proverbs uses the goods of this life moderately, Ecclesiastes says “all is vanity.” Hence blessed are the poor in spirit, referable to contempt of riches or, through humility, of honours.
• Following one’s own passions, irascible (thumos) or concupiscible (epithymia). Irascible: virtue keeps a man from exceeding according to reason; the gift renders him totally tranquil according to the divine will — Francis de Sales, by nature given to anger, became very gentle. Hence blessed are the meek. Concupiscible: virtue uses the passions moderately; the gift, if necessary, assumes voluntary mourning. Hence blessed are those who mourn.

3. Body continued: active-life and contemplative beatitudes (“Blessed are those who thirst for justice”) #

Point: the active life concerns what we show our neighbours, owed or spontaneous; the contemplative beatitudes are placed as rewards, their dispositions as merits.

• Owed: virtue (justice) makes us not fail to render; the gift induces us to fulfil justice with fervent desire, as the thirsty man — fourth beatitude.
• Spontaneous: virtue (liberality) gives what reason dictates to friends and those joined to us; the gift, out of reverence for God, looks only to necessity — Luke 14, invite not friends but the poor and weak; property of mercy — fifth beatitude.
• Contemplative things are either final beatitude or its beginning, so they are placed as rewards, not merits; what is placed as merit is the effects of the active life disposing to contemplation. His parallel: Thomas on why Aristotle treats the moral virtues before the virtues of reason in the Ethics — more known to us, and they dispose us for the intellectual virtues.
• Effect in oneself: cleanness of heart, the mind not stained by the passions — sixth. Effect toward neighbour: peace (Isaiah 32, “the work of justice is peace”) — seventh. He self-corrects mid-sentence (“Oh no! Excuse me”) to the phrase “as regards the virtues and gifts by which a man is perfected in himself.”

4. Replies 1–3: merits and rewards; science and counsel; matter vs. motive (“the acts of the gifts pertaining to the active life”) #

Point: three replies, each flagged as “subtle.”

• Reply 1: acts of active-life gifts are expressed in the merits, acts of contemplative gifts in the rewards: to see God corresponds to understanding, to be conformed to God by adoptive sonship to wisdom. Student: “I don’t understand the distinction.” Answer: the active life is concerned with getting merits; the contemplative already shares the reward — Christ does not criticise Martha, but Mary “has chosen the better part” which shall not be taken from her.
• Reply 2: in the active life knowledge is sought not for itself but for operation (the Philosopher, Ethics II — “he’s got to have respect to the Philosopher wherever he is”: antonomasia). Since beatitude implies something last, the elicited acts of the directing gifts (taking counsel, judging) are not counted; instead science and counsel are attributed to the actions they direct — science to mourning, counsel to mercy. “Very subtle.”
• Reply 3: two ways to attribute beatitudes to gifts. (a) Conformity of matter: the first five can all go to science and counsel as directing; among the executing gifts, hunger for justice and mercy go to piety (toward another), meekness to fortitude (Ambrose on Luke: fortitude conquers anger and coerces indignation; fortitude is about the irascible, where anger is), poverty and mourning to fear. (b) Motive: meekness is moved by reverence for God (piety); mourning by science, whereby a man knows his defects and the world’s vanity (Ecclesiastes 1, “who adds knowledge adds pain” — his gloss: ethics showed him how bad men are, logic how unreasonable, Mozart how ugly, Shakespeare how ill-spoken); hunger for justice by fortitude of soul; mercy by counsel (Daniel 4, “redeem your sins by almsgiving”). Augustine follows this second way in On the Sermon on the Mount.
• Aside: part of Thomas’s Matthew commentary on the Sermon on the Mount is missing and filled in by another Dominican.

5. Replies 4–6: other beatitudes, the eighth, Luke’s four (“the eighth beatitude is a certain confirmation”) #

• Reply 4: all scriptural beatitudes reduce to these, as merits (active life) or rewards (contemplative). “Corrected by the Lord” → mourning (his example: Christ’s look at Peter, who went out and wept); “not gone after the counsel of the impious” → cleanness of heart; “finds wisdom” → reward of the seventh.
• Reply 5: the eighth is a confirmation and manifestation of all the preceding — no persecution makes him recede from these goods — so it pertains to all seven; “like a summary of all.”
• Reply 6: Luke reports the sermon to the crowds, numbered “according to the capacity of the mobs,” who know only voluptuous, temporal beatitude; his four exclude four things of earthly beatitude: abundance of exterior goods (poor), bodily well-being in food and drink (hunger), joyfulness of heart (weep now), exterior favour of men (hated by men). Ambrose: poverty to temperance, hunger to justice (the one who hungers suffers with and is generous to sufferers), weeping to prudence (to flee perilous things), suffering men’s hatred to fortitude — “that’s what the 40th Symphony is about.” Aside on Mozart kicked down the stairs and the emperor’s remark on his opera (“says more about who the swain is”).

6. q. 69 a. 4: the rewards, objections and body (“these rewards are most suitably assigned”) #

Objections: the kingdom of heaven contains all goods, so no other reward need be listed (Augustine: not “satisfied” but “will be satisfied”); the kingdom is given in the first and eighth, so should be in all; the beatitudes ascend (Augustine) but the rewards seem to descend, possession of the earth being less than the kingdom. “My head is confused again.” Sed contra: the Lord’s own authority — “the argument from authority is the strongest, in theology.” Body, by the three beatitudes:

• The first three withdraw from voluptuous goods, in which man seeks what he naturally desires but not where he ought (in God); so their rewards are taken from what men seek in earthly beatitude. Wealth and honours seek excellence and abundance → kingdom of heaven (excellence and abundance in God). The fierce seek security by destroying enemies → secure, quiet possession of the land of the living (solidity of eternal goods). Pleasures seek consolation against labours → consolation for mourners.
• Two belong to the active life, from which a disordered love of one’s own good withdraws men: those who leave justice to seize others’ goods for temporal fullness → the thirsty are filled; those who leave mercy lest they be mixed up in others’ miseries → mercy, liberation from all misery, even their own.
• Two belong to contemplative beatitude; rewards follow dispositions placed as merit: cleanness of eye disposes to see clearly → vision of God; establishing peace in oneself or among others imitates the God of unity and peace → glory of divine sonship, perfect joining to God, consummated wisdom (1 John, “now we are children of God”).

7. a. 4 replies: one reward, the eighth, ascending rewards (“the eighth beatitude is the firmness of all beatitudes”) #

• Reply 1: Chrysostom — all rewards are one in reality, eternal beatitude, which understanding cannot grasp, so it is described through diverse goods known to us, matched to the merits; “we need to break it down.” Aside: dispute in class whether it was Chrysostom on John or on Matthew that someone wished to trade the city of Paris for; left unresolved (“you can check it out”).
• Reply 2: the eighth is the firmness of all, so the rewards of all are owed to it; Ambrose: kingdom promised to the poor as glory of the soul, to the persecuted in body as glory of the body. Aside: Thomas quotes Augustine that the soul will not enjoy God as fully before the resurrection as after, since then it is perfect in its nature; for Plato, who took the body as clothing or dead weight, resurrection would be “a horrible thing.”
• Reply 3: rewards stand to each other by addition: to possess is more than to have (many things we have but not firmly and peacefully); to be consoled is more than to possess (many possess with pain); to be saturated more than consoled; mercy exceeds satiety, one receives more than one merits or can desire; to see God is more, as the one in the king’s court not only eats but sees the king’s face; highest dignity is the king’s son.

8. Into q. 70: felicitas and fruit; a. 1 objections (“happiness is the fruit of good deeds”) #

Point: the Latin felicitas (unlike English “happiness”) carries the idea of fruit — happiness the fruit of good deeds, misery of bad. Four questions listed: whether the fruits are acts, whether they differ from beatitudes, their number, their opposition to works of the flesh. Aside: Thomas against Eutychius on “flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom” — flesh and blood taken for their corruption; this is not arbitrary, since one has a real text where “flesh” means the corruption of flesh; and a father’s remark that if living according to the flesh is bad, thinking according to it is too. a. 1 objections: (1) what has a fruit should not be called fruit, else one goes on forever, and our acts have fruit (Wisdom 3, John 4:36); (2) Augustine, De Trinitate X: we enjoy things in which the will rests, but the will ought not rest in its own acts; (3) among the fruits Paul lists virtues (charity, mildness, faith, chastity), which are habits not acts. Sed contra: Matthew 12, the tree known by its fruit, i.e., a man by his works.

9. a. 1 body and replies: the name carried over (“the name of fruit is carried over”) #

Point: “fruit” is translatum from bodily to spiritual things. Aside on translatio nominis: etymologically the same as Greek metaphora, but by chance “translation” in English has been limited to carrying over meaning and “metaphor” to carrying over the word; Thomas uses translatio for the latter.

1. In bodies, fruit is what the plant produces when it reaches perfection and has a certain sweetness.
2. Fruit is compared to two things: the tree producing it, and the man who obtains it.
3. So spiritually, fruit of a man is either what he produces or what he obtains; not everything obtained is fruit, only what is last and having pleasure — his link to Ethics X, where Aristotle completes happiness with pleasure, since happiness is perfect operation. Field and tree are not fruits, only what man intends to have from them (aside: his daughter’s ten acres of fruit trees). So the fruit of man is his last end, which he ought to enjoy.
4. As produced: human acts are fruit, since operation is second act (form the first) and has pleasure if suitable to the one operating (Mozart “convenient to hear”). From the faculty of reason → fruit of reason; from a higher virtue, the Holy Spirit → fruit of the Holy Spirit, as the work of a divine seed (1 John 3, “his seed remains in him” — “very concrete”). Replies: (1) fruit has the notion of something last and an end, and one end can be ordered to another (Aristotle: an end of an end); as effects of the Spirit our works are fruits, as ordered to eternal life they are rather flowers — Ecclesiasticus 24, “my flowers are the fruit of honour and honestas” (he never knows how to translate it: honourable good, integrity). (2) “on account of itself” can mean final cause — then only the last end — or formal cause — then whatever is delectable by its form: the sick man delights in health as end, in sweet medicine for its savour (his cinnamon-coated pill licked like candy), in bitter medicine only for another; so a man delights in God as last end, in virtuous acts for the uprightness they contain, delightful to the virtuous (Aristotle: no virtue unless you rejoice in its act; Ambrose: works of virtue are fruits because they refresh with holy pleasure). (3) names of virtues are taken for their acts, as Augustine’s “faith is to believe what one does not see” and “charity is the motion of the soul to loving God” — acts, not habits; so in Paul’s list. Example: putting you in jail is justice, the act, not the virtue.

10. a. 2: fruits differ from beatitudes (“more is required for the notion of beatitude”) #

Objections: beatitudes attributed to gifts, gifts perfect man as moved by the Spirit, so beatitudes are fruits; as fruit of eternal life is to future beatitude (of the thing), so fruits of the present life are to present beatitudes (of hope) — “likeness is a slippery thing, as the great Plato says”; both are last and delectable, so same ratio. Sed contra: different species, different things; fruits and beatitudes are enumerated as diverse subject parts. His aside: “distinction is the most basic thing of the reason.” Body: fruit requires only something last and delectable; beatitude further requires something perfect and excelling. So all beatitudes are fruits, but not conversely: fruits are any virtuous works in which a man delights; beatitudes only perfect works, therefore attributed more to the gifts than to the virtues. “We keep the word fruit for the ones that are lesser.” Replies: (1) proves beatitudes are fruits, not that all fruits are beatitudes; (2) the fruit of eternal life is simpliciter last and perfect, so undistinguished from future beatitude, but present fruits are not; (3) something amplius is in the definition of beatitude. His comment: this distinguishes differently from how beatitude was distinguished from virtues and gifts (habit vs. act); here it is like wisdom and knowledge — knowing how many chairs are in the room is knowledge, not wisdom.

His words #

• vita voluptuosa; the voluptuous life, a life of pleasure.
• thumos / epithymia; irascible and concupiscible appetite.
• mitis; mildness [ed.: meekness].
• antonomasia; “the Philosopher” for Aristotle.
• felicitas; happiness with the idea of fruit in it.
• translatum, translatio nominis; carrying over of a name [ed.: metaphor], vs. English “translation.”
• suave; sweetness of fruit.
• ultimum; last, of what has the notion of fruit.
• second act; operation, form being the first act.
• honestas; untranslatable for him: honourable good, integrity.
• propter quod se; on account of itself [ed.: propter se], as final or as formal cause.
• simpliciter; simply last and perfect.
• amplius; something in addition in the definition of beatitude.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 69, a. 3 (objections, body, replies 1–6)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 69, a. 4 (objections, body, replies 1–3)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 70, a. 1 (whole article)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 70, a. 2 (whole article) Mentioned
• Job 5; Psalm 1; Proverbs 3:13; Luke 6; Luke 14; Isaiah 32; Ecclesiastes 1; Daniel 4; Matthew 12; Wisdom 3; John 4:36; 1 John 3; Ecclesiasticus 24; Galatians 5
• Aristotle, Ethics II (knowledge for operation); Ethics X (happiness and pleasure); the end as end of an end
• Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount; De Trinitate X
• Ambrose on Luke; Chrysostom (on Matthew or John, disputed)
• Boethius on false happiness; Plato on likeness as slippery
• Thomas’s commentary on Matthew (partly by another Dominican); Thomas on Proverbs vs. Ecclesiastes

His questions #

• What are the three ways a threefold beatitude stands to future beatitude? Voluptuous is an impediment, active disposes, contemplative is it (perfect) or its beginning (imperfect).
• Why is no beatitude placed in the act of contemplation? Contemplative gifts are expressed in the rewards, active ones in the merits; Mary has already the better part.
• Why are science and counsel not given beatitudes of their own? In the active life knowledge is for operation, so they are attributed to the acts they direct: mourning and mercy.
• Which gift does meekness go to? By matter, fortitude (Ambrose: it conquers anger); by motive, piety.
• Seven gifts, eight beatitudes, Luke’s four — how? The eighth confirms all seven; Luke numbers by the capacity of the crowds.
• Do the rewards descend while the beatitudes ascend? No: they stand by addition — possessing more than having, consolation more than possessing, up to seeing God.
• Is “fruit” said of what a man produces or what he obtains? Both: acts he produces are fruits; what he obtains is fruit only if last and pleasant.
• How can one delight in a virtuous act for its own sake if only the last end is enjoyed? As formal, not final cause — like sweet medicine for its savour.
• Are fruits the same as beatitudes? All beatitudes are fruits, not conversely; beatitude adds “perfect and excelling.”