The Eternal Law as the Highest Reason in God: God as Maker and Mover, the Logos, and the Divine Ideas (ST I-II q.93 a.1)

Orientation #

He is beginning question 93 on the eternal law, having finished treating law in general (“what each one of the laws” now, singulis legibus). He refers back to the four-part definition of law already established (prev. lecture), and to the treatise on the Trinity and the treatment of the divine ideas in the First Part.

The class, in order #

1. The prologue of q. 93 and the six questions (“about what each one of the laws”) #

The division of the coming material: eternal law, natural law (“our partaking in some way of the eternal law”), human law, the old law, the new law of the gospel, and the lex fomitis — the “law in his members” that Paul sees opposed to the law of his reason; that last one was covered under original sin, so it can be dropped (“Thank God we don’t have it”). Then the six articles of q. 93: (1) what it is; (2) whether known to all; (3) whether every law derives from it; (4) whether necessary things are subject to it; (5) whether contingent natural things are; (6) whether all human things are. He notes a problem lurks in (4) and (5). Structure: one on what it is, one on who knows it, the rest on what derives from or is subject to it — “kind of divides into three, but Thomas is not so pedantic that he always does that explicitly.”

2. Digression: Thomas’s fourfold division of order (“order is compared to reason in four ways”) #

Illustrating tacit divisions. Reason “looks before and after” — Shakespeare’s definition, which is a definition of order; so knowledge is divided by the order it considers. Four orders: (1) the order reason does not make but only considers — the natural order; (2) the order reason makes in its own acts — logic; (3) the order reason makes in the acts of the will and our actions — ethics and practical philosophy; (4) the order reason makes in exterior matter, in wood or marble. But the last three are all orders reason makes, so it is really two, then three; Thomas doesn’t bother to say so, though he has it in mind — hence he begins with the natural order, which is most fundamental. Example of the natural order: his head above and feet below.

3. What ratio means (“It’s always a question how to translate ratio”) #

The article asks whether the eternal law is the summa ratio existing in God. Students offer “thought,” “rule,” “type.” He recalls a graduate-school question put to Jacques Maritain [ASR “Molénon”]: what does Thomas mean by ratio? It can’t be answered directly. In English “reason” means either the faculty Shakespeare defined, or the reason one gives for something. Here it is the second sense: as geometry gives the reason why the interior angles equal two right angles — he defines that kind of knowledge as “reasoned out knowledge,” knowing a thing by the reason you give for it; Euclid’s reasons for the Pythagorean theorem, for vertical angles being equal. So: the eternal law is the highest reason in God, not simply the divine mind.

4. The three objections (“the eternal law is one only”) #

1. The eternal law is one, but the reasons in the divine mind are many — Augustine, Eighty-Three Questions: God made each thing by its own reason. His illustrations: a reason for giving the bird wings and not giving him wings, a reason for two legs, a reason for choosing a virgin for Christ’s mother, reasons for the sacraments.
2. It belongs to the definition of law to be promulgated by a word; but Verbum in God is said personally, while reason is said essentially.
3. Augustine, On True Religion: above our mind appears a law called truth. But the reason of truth and the reason of a ratio are not the same. — “Don’t mess with Texas, we say, but don’t mess with Augustine, I say.” Sed contra: Augustine, On Free Judgment, the eternal law is the highest reason to which everything ought to be measured. He notes with pleasure that Augustine appears on both sides.

Aside (sacraments and the Hail Mary): “pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death” touches two sacraments — confession (now “reconciliation,” named from a different part of the sacrament) for sins committed, and extreme unction, “the last anointing,” for sins forgotten, unconfessed fully, or whose punishment is not worked off. Not baptism: as sinners we are named from acts committed, not from original sin, which we are subject to but did not commit. His teacher Kasurik always wanted to receive the last sacrament.

5. The body: art and exemplar versus government (“in any what artist there preexists the reason”) #

The argument as Thomas gives it:

1. In any artist there preexists the reason of the things to be made by art; this reason is called art, or the exemplar of artificial things — an exemplar being “the form that is outside of the thing that the thing is modeled on.” (Mozart’s early symphony this morning: “He knew what he was doing.”)
2. Likewise in anyone governing there must preexist the reason of the order of the things to be done by those subject to his governance; and this obtains the definition of law, given the other things belonging to law’s definition (for the common good, promulgated, by one having authority).
3. God through his wisdom is the maker of all things, compared to them as artist to artifacts; but he is also governor of all actions and motions in individual creatures.
4. Therefore the reason of the divine wisdom, insofar as by it all things are created, has the definition of art or exemplar; but insofar as it moves all things to a fitting end, it has the definition of law. Conclusion, the last sentence of the body: the eternal law is nothing other than the reason of the divine wisdom “not according as it is making things, but according as it is directive of all acts and motions.”

He anchors this on Aristotle’s distinction of art — right reason about making — from foresight [ed.: prudence] — right reason about doing; law concerns what is to be done, not made, so it falls on the side of foresight. Also on maker vs. mover: things in motion catch the eye, but of God we say “maker” in the creeds, and having made us he moves us toward himself — “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” His mother at the dinner table with the dishes waiting: “I’m waiting for the Spirit to move me.” Degrees of foresight, widening: the individual man over himself, the father or mother over children (boys and girls are not ruled the same way), the king or legislator over the city — and God’s foresight over the whole universe, “a kind of universal prudence.” The rational creature is directed to this end in a special way, because he alone can know and love God in himself; the dog cannot.

6. Digression: logos and “In the beginning was the thought” (“En archē ēn ho logos”) #

Logos first means word, then thought, then the mind having the thought — “equivocal by reason” [ed.: analogous/equivocal a consilio]. In English “word” has not been carried over to mean thought, so the customary translation of John’s prologue is awkward; “thought” is arguably the better translation. The definite article makes it a case of antonomasia — as Homer is “the poet” (so Aristotle and the Greeks; the Federalist Papers call Shakespeare “the poet”), and Aristotle “the philosopher.” Why is this the thought? Unfolded in stages: one thought is better than another by being of a better thing; this is the thought of the best thing; it is the only thought adequate to that thing, expressing it fully; and it is itself the best thing, itself God, a person. “This is a very unusual thought.” Aside: as a college student he told his English professor, whose book said words spoken or written are thoughts, that strictly this is false — they signify thoughts; though the very slippage shows the connection.

7. Reply to the first objection: the divine ideas and the one common good (“God knows in what way a tree can imitate Him”) #

Augustine was speaking of the ideal reasons, which regard the proper natures of singular things; hence distinction and plurality in them, according to diverse respects to things. This does not mean many thoughts in God — “there is only one thought in God.” By understanding himself fully, God understands every way in which he can be imitated: by tree, dog, stone, lion, man, woman, angel, seraphim, cherubim — each differently — and chooses which of these ways to make. But law is directive of acts to the common good, and things diverse in themselves are considered as one insofar as they are ordered to something common — e pluribus unum on the dollar bill. Therefore many ideas, but one eternal law: the reason of the order of all things to the one common good of the whole universe. “That’s a beautiful teaching there.” Imitation asides: Christ became man partly to give us something to imitate — Augustine: God should be imitated but cannot be seen; men can be seen. Different saints suit different lives (he would imitate Thomas more than Francis, being a philosopher-theologian; someone in her order would imitate Mother Teresa). The Imitation of Christ was a favorite of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Aristotle in the Poetics: man is the most imitative of the animals, we learn by imitation and all delight in it — hence fiction and plays.

8. Reply to the second: the eternal law is expressed by the Word, appropriated to the Son (“the word itself, and those things expressed”) #

Of any word two things are considered: the word itself, and what is expressed by it. The vocal word is put forth from the mouth and expresses what human words signify; the same holds of the mental word, a thing conceived by the mind by which a man expresses mentally what he thinks. So in divine things the Verbum, the conception of the paternal understanding, is said personally, because it proceeds from the Father. But all that is in the Father’s knowledge — essential, personal, and the works of God — is expressed by that Word (Augustine, On the Trinity XV; “Thomas follows Augustine most of all in studying the Trinity”). Among these is the eternal law; but it does not follow that the eternal law is said personally, any more than creatures are, though it is appropriated to the Son because of the agreement reason has with word. Sometimes art is appropriated to him too — the art by which the Father made the world. Analogy for the procession: from the imagination proceeds an image, from the mind a thought; so when the Father thinks what he is, there proceeds a mental Word — called Verbum for one reason, Son for another, since he proceeds both as thought and naturally. He notes the order of the treatise on the Trinity: processions, then relations, then persons. His own poem, quoted: “God the Father said it all by one word. No wonder when this word became a man, He spoke in words so few and said so much. He was the brevity and soul of it.” — “A little borrowing there from my master Shakespeare.”

9. Reply to the third: the divine intellect measures, and so is truth itself (“our knowledge is derived from things”) #

The reason of the divine understanding stands to things otherwise than the human. Ours is measured by things: the concept of man is not true of itself but by being consonant with things — Aristotle: from the fact that a thing is or is not, an opinion is true or false. His examples: “two is half of four” and “two is not half of five” are true; “two is half of five” and “two is not half of four” are false. (“My thoughts are not — a modern philosopher thinks that way.”) But the divine understanding is the measure of things, each thing having truth insofar as it imitates the divine understanding; therefore it is true of itself, and its ratio is truth itself. He invokes the Fourth Lateran Council, quoted by Paul VI: you can never find a likeness of the creature to God without a greater unlikeness. Closing: “Kind of amazing thing… To put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

His words #

• singulis legibus — the several particular laws, as against law in general.
• lex fomitis — the “law in his members” of St. Paul, treated under original sin.
• “ratio” — sometimes reason (the faculty), sometimes the reason given for something, sometimes definition; here the second. He translates it variously as reason and as definition.
• “reasoned out knowledge” — his name for geometry-type knowledge, knowing a thing by the reason you give for it.
• “exemplar” — the form outside the thing, on which the thing is modeled.
• “foresight” [ed.: prudence] — right reason about doing, against art, right reason about making.
• “maker” vs. “mover” — his English pair for God as artist of things and as director of their motions.
• “equivocal by reason” — his description of logos [ed.: analogous / equivocal by design].
• “antonomasia” — the use of “the thought,” “the poet,” “the philosopher.”
• “mental word” — the thought conceived by the mind, model for the divine Verbum.
• “appropriated” — said of the eternal law and of art as attributed to the Son without being said personally.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 93, prologue; q. 93, a. 1 — objections 1-3, sed contra, body, replies 1-3.
• Augustine, Eighty-Three Questions — God made each thing by its own reason (obj. 1).
• Augustine, On True Religion — a law above our mind called truth (obj. 3).
• Augustine, On Free Judgment — the eternal law is the highest reason (sed contra).
• Augustine, On the Trinity, bk. XV — all things expressed by the Word (reply 2).

Mentioned

• Thomas, prologue to the Commentary on the Ethics — the fourfold division of order (inferred).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I — the divine ideas; the treatise on the Trinity; God as governor.
• St. Paul — the law in his members.
• John 1:1 — En archē ēn ho logos.
• Aristotle — art vs. foresight; mover and maker as the third cause; truth measured by things; Poetics on imitation; the common good of the universe.
• Fourth Lateran Council, quoted by Paul VI.
• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (author not named).
• Shakespeare — reason “looks before and after”; “brevity and soul.”

His questions #

• What does Thomas mean by ratio, and how should it be translated here? Not the faculty but the reason given for a thing; so the eternal law is the highest reason in God, not simply the divine mind.
• Is the eternal law the highest reason existing in God? Yes — the reason of the divine wisdom, not as making things but as directive of all acts and motions.
• What is the difference between calling God maker and calling him mover? As maker his wisdom is art and exemplar; as mover it is law, directing what he has made to their ends and to himself.
• If there are many reasons in the divine mind, how is the eternal law one? The many are the ideas, the ways creatures imitate him; law is one because all are ordered to one common good.
• Is there multiplicity in God’s mind? No — only one thought in God, understanding many ways in which he can be imitated.
• Why does John say “the thought” and not “a thought”? Antonomasia: it is of the best thing, adequate to it, itself that thing, and a person.
• Is the eternal law said personally in God, since it is promulgated by the Word? No — it is expressed by the Word as creatures are, and only appropriated to the Son.
• Why is the divine understanding’s reason truth itself? Because our intellect is measured by things, but the divine intellect measures them, so it is true of itself.
• What two sacraments does the second half of the Hail Mary touch? Confession and the last anointing, as we are sinners now and at the hour of death.