Death and Defects Natural to Man (Q85 a6): Universal vs. Particular Nature; Scientia in God and Words Taken from the Body

Orientation #

He opens by saying “we look at article six here again just to refresh our minds a bit” — q. 85, whether death and defects of this sort are natural to man — so the article was begun earlier. At the end he moves to “the macula peccati”, the stain of sin, but gets no further than naming it. The previous class treated earlier articles of q. 85 on the effects of sin.

The class, in order #

1. Nature as matter and nature as form (“the beginning and cause of motion and rest”) #

The point: the article’s objections split along the two senses of nature, so the two senses must be fixed first.

• Aristotle in Physics II works out the definition: nature is the beginning and cause of motion and rest in that in which it is first, as such and not by happening.
• Nature is said both of matter and of form; of matter first because more obvious, but of form more truly: by matter a thing is a natural thing only in ability (in potency); through form it is actually this or that natural thing. If nature is that by which something is natural, then that by which it is natural actually is more nature.
• He notes ahead: the first three objections take nature as matter, the objections on the other side take nature as form. Metaphysics V brings this out again among the names of causes.

2. The three objections from matter (“perfectly convincing, right, to me”) #

1. Corruptible and incorruptible differ in genus (Metaphysics X); genus is to difference as matter to form (Porphyry, Isagoge); man is in the same genus with other animals, which are naturally corruptible — “animal” is said univocally of man and dog (living body with senses), though sometimes we reserve “animal” to the beasts, since we have something godlike, namely reason. Therefore man is naturally corruptible.
2. Everything composed of contraries is naturally corruptible, having in itself the cause of its own corruption — change is between contraries (Physics I). The human body is composed of hot and cold, wet and dry.
3. The hot naturally consumes the moist, and the operations of life are carried out by natural heat (De Anima II). He comments on the force of these: “If you weren’t convinced by the first argument, you’re soon convinced by the second.” And the summary judgment: if nature meant only matter and not form, we’d be completely mortal.

3. The three on the other side, from form (“God did not make death”) #

1. Whatever is natural to man God made in man; but Wisdom 1:13 says God did not make death. Death came by Adam or the devil.
2. What is according to nature should not be called a punishment nor something bad, since what is natural is suitable to each thing; but death and such defects are the punishment of original sin. “I’m getting thoroughly tied up.”
3. Matter is proportioned to form, and each thing to its end; man’s end is perpetual beatitude, and his form is the rational soul, which is incorruptible — so only an incorruptible body would seem to fit such a soul.

4. Digression: the continuous, and that reason is not a body (“divisible forever”) #

Prompted by “first book / sixth book”, he reports beginning Physics VI with his Tuesday-night students: the first four readings as Thomas divides them are the philosophy of the continuous; Aristotle argues the continuous is never put together from indivisibles.

• Two definitions: (a) the continuous is that whose parts meet at a common boundary — two halves of a circle at the diameter, two parts of a line at a point, parts of a body at a surface; this is the definition in the Categories, distinguishing continuous quantity from number (in seven, the three and the four meet nowhere); (b) in Physics VI, that which is divisible forever.
• The argument he draws from them: take the definition of square, “equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral.” Do the parts of that definition meet at a point, a line, or a surface? No. And a definition is not divisible forever — you can see this from the reason why there are highest genera. So a continuous thing is known, and known very distinctly, in a non-continuous way. That cannot be due to the thing known, which is continuous; therefore it is due to the knower. Hence the power that knows the universal is not continuous, not a body, not the brain. “Kind of a marvelous thing to see.”
• Aside: he first said “Washington Irving” and corrected himself to Shakespeare.

5. Digression: scientists who will not admit that nature acts for an end (“it’s pride”) #

From a phone call that morning with Warren Murray: competent scientists refuse to admit nature acts for an end though they use it in their thinking — e.g. vestigial organs, which by the very name means an organ that no longer serves the purpose it once had (like something kept around the house that no longer works). Pinned down, they say: then we would have to admit there is a God — and then it turns to rhetoric. Murray’s diagnosis, fitting the humility they were discussing: pride; their freedom of thought and life would be narrowed if someone had made them and held them responsible. Pride is really a cause of deception.

• He adds: reading Thomas that morning on the Prologue of John, Thomas takes for granted that the ancient philosophers knew nature acts for an end — no revelation needed, it is had through nature.
• A modern scientist’s quoted “conviction that everything is material” he calls a faith, indeed an anti-faith: Christ worked miracles so that our faith would be reasonable, but these men demand faith without reason, contrary to reason.

6. The body of the article: universal nature vs. particular nature (“Natura naturans”) #

The distinction: of any corruptible thing we can speak according to universal nature or according to particular nature.

• Particular nature is a thing’s own active power, which preserves the thing; according to it every corruption and defect is against nature, since such power intends being and its own conservation. Example: in kindergarten Sister Aquinas (“my first teacher was Aquinas”) could not crack open a coconut, banging away — the thing resists being destroyed.
• Universal nature is an active power in some universal principle, e.g. a heavenly body such as the moon, or some superior substance; according to this God is called natura naturans. It intends the good and conservation of the universe, which requires the alternation of generation and corruption — animals eat plants, bigger animals eat smaller.
• Boundary case given first: the tides. It is not natural to water in its particular nature to rise so, but natural under universal nature, by the moon — natural in one sense, not both.
• Conclusion: corruptions are natural not according to the inclination of form, which is the principle of being and perfection, but according to the inclination of matter proportioned to such a form by the distribution of the universal agent. Every form intends to be perpetual as far as it can, but no form of a corruptible thing achieves its own perpetuity — except the human soul, since it is not wholly subject to bodily matter and has an operation remaining within it, understanding. So on the side of his form incorruption is more natural to man than to other things; but from matter composed of contraries corruptibility follows in the whole man, not in his soul. Man is naturally corruptible according to the nature of the matter left to itself, not according to the nature of the form.

7. Replies to the last three: the artisan’s chosen and unchosen matter (“rather he would reject it if it were possible”) #

The rational soul, by its very incorruptibility, is proportioned to its end, perpetual beatitude; the body is in one way proportioned to its form and in another way not. The explanation goes through art, which is better known:

• Two conditions in matter — one the agent chooses, one not chosen but following the natural condition of the matter. The knife-maker (he first said hammer, corrected to knife) chooses iron as hard and ductile, able to be made fine, apt for cutting; but that it is breakable and rusts follows from iron’s natural disposition, is not chosen, and the artist would reject it if he could.
• Student example: a piano goes out of tune — not chosen (“that’s the end of music, to be out of tune” — joke); the maker chooses material for the sound and tension, and puts up with the rest; hence the tuner and tuning forks. A student suggests the wooden frame moving with the weather; he had not thought of that.
• Likewise nature “chooses” the human body as of a temperate complexion — Shakespeare’s praise of Brutus at the end of the play, “so well mixed” — so that it may be a most suitable organ for touch, the foundation of all the senses, and for the other sense powers and motive powers; and bones for supporting the body. That bones break, and the body corrupts, is a condition of matter, not chosen; nature would choose incorruptible matter if it were possible.
• But God, to whom all nature is subject, at the very institution of man supplied the defect of nature and by the gift of justice gave the body quandam incorruptibilitatem — “a certain” incorruptibility. He stresses the quandam: in Eden it held as long as you ate of the right tree; that is not the same incorruptibility as with the beatific vision, where no eating is needed. Hence God did not make death, and death is the punishment of sin. “Now all things are clear… It’s a marvelous guy, this Thomas — Houdini of the mind.”

8. Turning to the stain of sin, and scientia in God (“So now we go to the macula peccati”) #

He names macula peccati, “the stain,” and immediately digresses to his morning reading of De Veritate q. 2, a. 1, whether there is scientia in God.

• Why choose scientia? An objection: there is no discourse in God, God does not syllogize from one thing to another as Euclid does. Thomas’s rule: when a term is carried over to God you drop what is imperfect. Scientia implies discourse and also certitude — in demonstrating that the interior angles equal two right angles you are certain. Carried to God, drop the discourse, keep the certitude.
• The sed contra is from St Paul — he says “the First Epistle to the Colossians, chapter eleven, verse 1” [ed.: the “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God” text is Romans 11:33; his citation is garbled] — Latin sapientia et scientia. He checked the Greek, expecting episteme, and found sophia and gnosis, the common word for knowledge; so the difficulty about discourse does not arise in the Greek. “Oh Thomas, now I’ve got you there.” A student: before you retire you’ll have to produce the new improved Berquist edition. The Latin for gnosis would be notitia.
• Aside on his order of reading: he read the De Veritate backwards — q. 10 on the human mind, then 8 and 9 on the angelic mind and the conversation of the angels, now q. 2 on God’s mind. He would teach the Summa the same way to beginners: treatise on the soul, then the angels, then God, since the De Anima III is for us the gateway to understanding God and angels — you need some understanding of understanding, and of its immateriality, first.

9. Anger as metaphor, mercy said properly (“very subtle use of these words”) #

In the same article Thomas rejects the view that scientia is said of God as anger is. Anger is said of God only metaphorically, by likeness in the effect — punishing. Thomas puts anger and mercy alongside each other there, both names of passions, said of God by likeness of effect. But in the Summa, where mercy and justice in God are treated, mercy is no longer a metaphor: it names God’s will to relieve the misery of the creature. Anger always remains a metaphor — we never say anger becomes the name of divine justice; mercy becomes the name of God’s will. “So you’ve got to pay attention to these words.”

10. Discourse, stumbling, jumping — words taken from the legs (“taken from what part of our body?”) #

• Discourse, in the definition of reason, comes from the word for running; “course” is in it — taken from the legs and feet.
• Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet says two things about stumbling: “wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast,” and “revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.” Both stumbling and discourse are named from the legs.
• The two are two ways of going wrong in thinking: your starting point may be sound but you run too fast; or there is corruption in the very beginning of your thinking, the worse case — as in calculating, you err either by going too fast or by having the wrong numbers. He notes Friar Lawrence uses running for action, not discourse — as in “the course of human events.”
• Jumping to a conclusion: also from the legs. Grasp is taken from the hand — but grasping is not going from one thing to another, just getting hold of it; most people don’t go from here to there by their hands. A student adds seeing and looking.
• A student recalls Friar Lawrence’s “don’t bite off more than you can chew,” and “ruminate”: from another part of the body, saying a similar thing — the animals bring it up and chew it again.

His words #

• “Natural Hearing” — his rendering of the title Physics: “But people call the Physics.”
• “in ability” — by matter a thing is a natural thing only in ability [ed.: in potency].
• particular nature — a thing’s own active power, conserving it; against it every corruption is unnatural.
• universal nature — active power in a universal principle (a heavenly body, a superior substance), intending the good of the whole universe.
• natura naturans — “nature giving the nature”; God as source of nature.
• quandam incorruptibilitatem — “a certain incorruptibility,” Adam’s, conditional on eating of the tree, not that of the beatific vision.
• macula peccati — “the stain,” of sin.
• scientia — implies discourse and certitude; carried to God, discourse dropped, certitude kept.
• gnosis / notitia — the plain Greek and Latin words for knowledge, without the note of discourse.
• “Houdini of the mind” — of Thomas resolving the article.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 85, a. 6 — objections, body, replies.
• Aristotle, Physics II — definition of nature; nature as matter and as form.
• Wisdom 1:13, quoted in the objection.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics I (change between contraries); Physics VI, first four readings as Thomas divides them (the continuous); Categories (continuous quantity vs. number); Metaphysics X (corruptible and incorruptible differ in genus); Metaphysics V (names of causes); De Anima II (natural heat), De Anima III (the human mind).
• Porphyry, Isagoge (genus to difference as matter to form).
• Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate q. 2, a. 1; also qq. 8, 9, 10; Summa Theologiae on mercy and justice in God; commentary on the Prologue of John (inferred).
• Pauline text of the sed contra, cited by him as “First Epistle to the Colossians, chapter eleven” [ed.: Romans 11:33].
• Dionysius, on metaphor not being proper to argument.
• Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (Brutus “so well mixed”); Romeo and Juliet (Friar Lawrence on stumbling, on ruminating).
• Euclid (definition of square; demonstration).

His questions #

• If nature is said of both matter and form, which is more nature? Form, because by matter a thing is natural only in ability, by form actually.
• Why does Thomas’s article divide as it does? The first three objections proceed from nature as matter, the last three from nature as form.
• Do the parts of the definition of a square meet at a point, a line, or a surface? No — so a continuous thing is known in a non-continuous way, and the knower is not a body.
• Is it natural for water to rise and fall in the tide? Natural according to universal nature (by the moon), not according to water’s particular nature.
• Does the artisan choose that iron rusts and breaks? No; that follows the natural disposition of the matter, and he would reject it if he could.
• Is man naturally corruptible, then? Yes according to the nature of the matter left to itself, not according to the nature of the form; and God supplied the defect by the gift of justice.
• Why does Thomas choose the word scientia for God, given that it implies discourse? Because in carrying a term to God you drop the imperfection (discourse) and keep the perfection (certitude); and in Paul’s Greek the word is only gnosis.
• Is mercy said of God metaphorically, like anger? No — anger always remains a metaphor named from its effect, but mercy names God’s will to relieve the creature’s misery.
• Discourse, stumbling, jumping — from what part of the body? The legs and feet; grasping, by contrast, from the hand.