The Debt of Punishment after Sin: Names of the Holy Spirit, Satisfaction, Medicinal Punishment, and Sons Punished for Their Fathers (Summa I-II, Q. 87, aa. 6–8)

Orientation #

He opens by announcing “an exam” after the prayer, on the Gospel of Matthew, then takes up Article 6 of Question 87. He refers back to “that thing we were talking about last time about the connection between humility and charity” (prev. lecture). The class ends mid-way through the replies of a. 8 with “take a break now a little bit.”

The class, in order #

1. Exam: the names of the Holy Spirit (“Who is said to descend upon him like a dove?”) #

At the baptism in Matthew 3 the Spirit is not called Holy Spirit but Spirit of God; at the end of Matthew, in the sending forth, kai tou hagiou pneumatos, the Holy Spirit. Beginning and end of the Gospel give the two names. A student adds “Spirit of Jesus.”

• 1 John: to pneuma tēs alētheias vs. to pneuma tēs planēs (he notes planēs gives us “planet”). The spirit of error is the devil, by antonomasia, father of lies.
• Two readings of “Spirit of truth”: (a) he inspires truth, parallel to the spirit of error as source; (b) he is the Spirit of Christ, who is the Truth (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”). He says “our Greek brethren would not like” the second, but holds both: he would not be Spirit of truth in the first sense unless he proceeded from the one who is truth itself.
• Thomas, he notes, does not take up “Spirit of God” as a name in the Summa; of the Son he takes up three names — Son, Word, Image. Image is almost common to the other two; Son says procession by way of nature, Word by way of intellect, and in God these coincide because to be and to understand are the same. Not so in us: “my son Paul” and a definition he got from Shakespeare are both things he generated, but one is a son and the other a thought.

2. Article 6, objections: “whether the debt of punishment remains after sin” #

1. Remove the cause, remove the effect; sin causes the debt (reatus); so forgiveness removes the debt. He puts the translation question: “obligation of punishment” or “debt of punishment”?
2. Sin is removed by return to virtue; the virtuous man is owed reward, not punishment.
3. Punishments are medicinal (Nicomachean Ethics II) — and medicines are painful.

Digression on the title Nicomachean Ethics: why name a science after a person? Aristotle’s son and father were both named Nicomachus, so it may be the ethics he learned from his father or taught his son — striking, since no book of natural philosophy or wisdom is so named. This leads to the Bible’s division into two parts, law and grace (John: “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”); Thomas divides the New Testament by origin, nature and effect of grace, and the Old Testament by law of the king and law of the father — the latter (with its “my son…”) being the part most like ethics. Aside: De Koninck at St. Paul Seminary insisting with Aristotle that how a man is brought up makes “all the difference”; a good family can have a black sheep (Judas among the apostles), but that is not the rule. Students note Christ’s filioli, “little ones,” and a priest’s remark that Spanish muchacho carries the fatherly warmth the English misses.

3. Article 6, sed contra: David and Nathan (“the Lord has transferred your sin, and you will not die”) #

Sin forgiven, punishment still inflicted (the son of Bathsheba) — so the debt remains after the guilt is taken away. Asides: Thomas says David is the author of the Psalms for the most part so that a sinner, not an immaculate man, proposes prayers, since prayer is bound to hope and sins tempt to despair. A student notes Matthew’s genealogy does not name Bathsheba but says Solomon was born “of the wife of Uriah.”

4. Article 6, body: act of sin and stain (“two things can be considered in sin”) #

• Considering the act: the act ceasing, the debt remains in all actual sins (not in original sin — after baptism there is no “say ten Hail Marys”). The act puts a man beyond the order of divine justice; he indulged his own will against God’s commandment, so he must suffer something against his will, and this recompense restores the equality of justice, as with injuries between men.
• On equality: all our words come from the continuous (beginning of Book VI of the Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics], which he is teaching Tuesday nights); “just” means equal, neither more nor less; equality is taken from quantity and applied elsewhere. Aside: do people think of God as having a surface? — face to face is metaphor; “God is a spirit who cannot be seen with bodily eyes.”
• Considering the stain: it is removed only by the soul’s being joined to God, and man is joined to God by will; so the will must accept the order of divine justice, either spontaneously taking punishment on itself or patiently sustaining what God imposes. Either way the punishment has the character of satisfaction. (St. Bonaventure: in this life we do satisfaction, in purgatory we undergo passion.)
• Satisfactory punishment diminishes something of the notion of punishment: punishment as such is against the will, but this one is chosen — simpliciter voluntary, secundum quid involuntary. His classical example: the man throwing cargo overboard to save the ship; also consenting to have a leg amputated.
• Conclusion: the stain gone, there remains a debt not of punishment simply but of satisfactory punishment.

Digression on Matthew’s metaphors: John baptizes with water, Christ with the Holy Spirit and fire — strange, since in the four elements fire (hot and dry) and water (wet and cold) are opposed, and fire also names the punishment of the wicked; so the same thing can be a metaphor for good and bad, like the lion, used of God and of the devil “going about.”

5. Article 6, replies (“the wound of sin is healed as regards the will”) #

1. As the stain remains when the act ceases, so can the debt; but when the stain ceases, the debt of punishment simply does not remain, because you are willing to undergo it satisfactorily. Purgatory is of that sort: you are willing to undergo it because you want to see God. A student compares martyrs who do not want torture but accept it to witness; another recalls St. John of the Cross asking friends to pray he have his purgatory on earth (“pay me now or pay me later”; Prince Hal to Falstaff, “thou owest God a death”).
2. Punishment is not owed the virtuous man simpliciter, but he may owe himself satisfaction — it belongs to virtue itself to satisfy for offences against God or man.
3. The stain removed, the wound is healed as to the will; but punishment is still required to heal the other powers of the soul, disordered by the sin and cured by contraries, and to restore the equality of justice and remove scandal — “that those be built up in punishment who were scandalized in guilt” (ut aedificentur boni qui sunt scandalizati in culpa), a phrase he calls beautiful and would “send to every bishop in the United States.”

6. Article 7, objections: is every punishment on account of guilt? #

1. John 9, the man born blind: “neither he sinned nor his parents”; and baptized children suffer grave things (fears, oppression by demons) though without sin.
2. Sinners prosper and innocents suffer: Psalm 72, Job 21:7, Habakkuk 1:13 (“why do you regard those who do evil and keep silent while the impious tramples the just underfoot”).
3. Christ “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” yet suffered for us. Sed contra: Job 4 — who ever perished being innocent? — and Augustine, Retractations I: every punishment is just and is paid out for some sin. Aside on Augustine’s humility: “how many guys have written a book of Retractions? Kant, Descartes — their whole writings would have to be retracted.”

7. Article 7, body: punishment simply, and punishment as medicine (“a species of the bad”) #

• Satisfactory punishment is voluntary, and those differing in debt of punishment can be made one in will “by the union of love” — the first effect of love, which we studied long ago, is union. Hence one who has not sinned can carry another’s punishment, as a man goes surety for another’s debt.
• Punishment simply always has order to one’s own guilt: either actual guilt, or original guilt — chiefly, that human nature is left to itself destitute of original justice, and consequently all the penalties that follow from nature’s defect.
• But some things seem punishments without being such. Punishment is a species of evil, and evil is privation of good; and man’s goods are three, of soul, of body, and exterior (the famous Greek division, in Aristotle). One may lose a lesser good to gain a greater: money for bodily health; money and body for the health of the soul and the glory of God. Such detriment is evil only secundum quid — “if you leave this room you cease to be… in this room” (a student: “unless there’s a man out there with a knife”).
• Hence it has the definition not of punishment but of medicine: doctors give bitter potions to the sick to confer health. “Is that a punishment? I’m going to punish you now — take your punishment.” Such things trace back to guilt only insofar as needing punishing medicine at all comes from the corruption of nature, which is the punishment of original sin: in the state of innocence virtue would not have been developed through painful exercise. Hence “no pain, no gain” is reduced to original guilt — an exercise program should be called “Return to Eden,” “the road back.”

8. Article 7, replies (“defects of this sort are ordered by divine providence”) #

1. The defects of the newborn and of children are effects and punishments of original sin, remaining after baptism for the cause given; their unequal distribution follows the diversity of nature left to itself; and they are ordered by providence to the salvation of the sufferers or of others admonished by them, and to God’s glory — as when a family’s character is formed by caring for a defective child.
2. Temporal goods are parva, small goods; spiritual goods are magna (aside on seminarians raising their voices at magna when the bishop comes). Divine justice gives spiritual goods to the virtuous, and such temporal goods and evils as suffice for virtue — Dionysius, Divine Names 8: it belongs to divine justice not to soften the strength of the best. To others, temporal things given give rise to spiritual evil: Psalm 72, “therefore pride held them.” Hence his thought on humility and charity: the two prayers he grew up with — “Come, Holy Spirit… kindle in them the fire of thy love” and “Jesus, make my heart humble, make a heart like unto thine” — should be put together in a prayer book, since you cannot have one without the other.
3. Christ bore satisfactory punishment for our sins, not his own.

Long student discussion follows on Islam: whether Muhammad took Christians for polytheists; a student suggests he knew only a heretical (Nestorian) Christianity in which the Son is not God, so never met the orthodox position. Berquist reports a phone conversation with Warren Murray: Avicenna held the heavenly bodies have souls and man’s end is union with one of them; Thomas does not argue against it by reason there but says it is against what the Church teaches, since man’s end is to be joined to God in the beatific vision. Muslims, on this account, deny that man can see God as he is, so their paradise is “more material creation” — Thomas criticizes it as of that sort. A student adds the claim that Mormonism too traces to Nestorianism, and the story of the Lutheran seminary PhDs asked how many Gospels there are: “four” — “no, fifteen, counting the apocryphal ones; so how do you weed them out?”

9. Article 8: is one punished for another’s sin? #

Objections: (1) Exodus 20:5, visiting the fathers’ iniquity on the sons to the third and fourth generation; Matthew 23, “that upon you may come all the just blood poured out upon the earth.” (2) Human justice derives from divine, and in human justice sons are punished for parents, as in the crime of treason — the son loses the title. (3) If the son is punished only for imitating the father’s malice, that would be no more true of sons than of strangers who imitate the same sins. Sed contra: Ezekiel 18:20, “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.”

Body, using the two distinctions already made:

1. Satisfactory punishment, voluntarily assumed: one can bear another’s, insofar as they are one by the bond of love.
2. Punishment as punishment, inflicted for sin: each is punished only for his own sin, because the act of sin is something personal.
3. Punishment as medicine: here one can be punished for another’s sin — detriments of bodily and exterior things are ordered to the soul’s health, so sons may be so punished for fathers, and servants for lords, insofar as they are “things of” them. If the son or subject shares the guilt, it is punishment in both respects; if not, it is punishment only as regards the one for whom he is punished, and medicine as regards himself — except per accidens, insofar as he consents to the other’s sin — and ordered to his soul’s good if he bears it patiently.

• But spiritual punishments are not merely medicinal, since the good of the soul is not ordered to a further better good; hence no one suffers detriment in the goods of the soul without his own guilt. So Augustine, Epistle to Avitus: in these one is not punished for another, “because as regards the soul the son is not a thing of the father” — whence the Lord gives the reason, “all souls are mine” (Ezekiel).

10. Replies of Article 8, and the digression on marriage (“what’s the purpose of marriage, anyway?”) #

Reply 1: the Exodus and Matthew texts refer to temporal and bodily punishments, insofar as sons are things of their parents and successors — “foreign to our modern way of thinking: I’m my own man”; but “a chip off the old block,” “the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.” If referred to spiritual punishment, they are said on account of imitation of the guilt — hence “of those who hate me,” and “fill up the measure of your fathers.” Sons nourished in their parents’ sins are more prone to sin by custom and example, following their fathers’ authority (“so Kennedy [ed.: name uncertain in recording] was after a woman like his father”), and deserve more punishment if the sight of their fathers’ punishment does not correct them. “Third and fourth generation” because men live long enough to see the third and fourth generation, so that fathers and sons may see each other — sons imitating the fathers’ sins, fathers weeping over their sons’ punishment. (Aside: “today they don’t get married till they’re too old to have kids.”)

Parents immortalize themselves in their offspring — he quotes the sonnet: “this were to be new made when thou art old, and see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold… thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime.”

Then the digression: the purpose of marriage in one word is children — their generation, feeding, clothing and education. Husband and wife should love each other and their children very much, and without that love the purpose will be hard to achieve; but that love is not the purpose. Today a young couple will say “we love each other”; the good of the children is “too selfless for the fallen human race,” especially today. Defences of “traditional marriage” as between a man and a woman cannot give the reason why without saying its purpose is children — otherwise it is blind adherence to tradition. A student: when Christ repeats Genesis, “the two shall become one flesh,” the one flesh is the child — a divorced couple cannot each take their part of the child, though he could take his books.

Reply 2: punishments human justice inflicts on one for another’s sin are bodily and temporal, and are remedies against guilt, either of those punished or of others deterred from like guilt. Reply 3: we are said to be punished for the sins of those near us rather than of strangers, because the punishment of those near redounds upon the one who sinned — like the rich man wanting his brothers warned, which would make him more miserable — insofar as the son is a thing of the father according to body, not soul; and because domestic examples and domestic punishments move more (“charity begins at home”). One nourished in his parents’ sins follows them more vehemently, and if not deterred by their punishment deserves greater punishment. A student adds a saying attributed to Cicero: the son is always in debt to his father.

His words #

• reatus — “the obligation of punishment” or “the debt of punishment”; he leaves the choice of rendering open.
• Stain (macula) vs. act (actus culpae) — the two things considerable in sin.
• “Cleanness” — he glosses it as having a sense of brightness.
• Satisfactory punishment — punishment chosen or patiently borne; simpliciter voluntary, secundum quid involuntary.
• simpliciter / secundum quid — simply / in a certain respect; “a helpful distinction Thomas has in mind.”
• Punishment as medicine — painful things lacking the proper definition of punishment, ordered to a greater good.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics], Book VI on the continuous.
• parva / magna — small goods (temporal), great goods (spiritual).
• ratio — “notion,” “definition,” “reason” (he uses all three for the same word).
• Antonomasia — naming by preeminence, as the devil is “the spirit of error.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 87, a. 8 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–3)
• Matthew 3 (baptism; Spirit of God; Holy Spirit and fire); end of Matthew (sending forth)
• 1 John: spirit of truth, spirit of error
• 2 Samuel 12 (“second book of Kings”): David and Nathan
• Exodus 20:5; Matthew 23; Ezekiel 18:20; Job 4; Job 21:7; Psalm 72; Habakkuk 1:13; John 9; 1 Peter 2

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II (punishments medicinal); Eudemian Ethics
• Augustine, Retractationes I; Augustine, Epistle to Avitus
• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 8
• Aristotle’s three goods (soul, body, exterior)
• Thomas on the Son’s three names (Son, Word, Image); Thomas’s division of Scripture
• Shakespeare (the sonnet quoted; Prince Hal and Falstaff)
• St. Bonaventure on satisfaction and purgatory; St. John of the Cross
• Avicenna on the souls of the heavenly bodies (via Warren Murray)

His questions #

• Who is said to descend upon him like a dove — and what is he called there? — “Spirit of God,” not “Holy Spirit”; at the end of Matthew, “Holy Spirit.”
• Who is to pneuma tēs alētheias? — The Holy Spirit, both as inspiring truth and as proceeding from Christ who is Truth.
• How should we translate reatus? — “Obligation of punishment” or “debt of punishment”; left open.
• Does the debt of punishment remain when sin is forgiven? — Yes: the debt of satisfactory punishment remains, though not of punishment simply.
• Why should a science of ethics be named after a person? — Because of father and son (Aristotle’s father and son both Nicomachus); left as a suggestion.
• Why is the baptism of Christ described by fire rather than water? — He leaves it as striking: the same thing can be a metaphor for good and for evil, like the lion.
• Is a bitter potion a punishment? — No: it has the definition of medicine, not of punishment.
• Is every punishment on account of guilt? — Punishment properly so called always is, of one’s own actual or original guilt; medicinal detriment need not be.
• Can one be punished for another’s sin? — Yes, satisfactorily (by union of love) and medicinally; never in the goods of the soul, since there the son is not a thing of the father.
• What is the purpose of marriage? — Children: their generation, feeding, clothing, education — not the love of the spouses, though that love is needed to achieve it.