Dispensing from Human Law (q.97 a.4) and Whether the Old Law Was Good

Orientation #

He announces the transition himself: “Okay, so now we go into the old law” — after finishing the fourth article on dispensation he takes a break and begins q. 98 (“Start at ninety nine” is a slip; the six articles he lists are those of q. 98). He refers back to “the things said above, as back in question ninety six.” The previous class treated the immortality of the soul and then ST I-II q. 97, a. 3 on custom and law (prev. lecture).

The class, in order #

1. Three objections against dispensing in human law (“the rulers of the multitude cannot dispense”) #

• Obj. 1: law is laid down for the common usefulness (Isidore), and the common good must not be set aside for a private person, since “the good of the nation is more divine than the good of one man” (Ethics I).
• Obj. 2: those set over others are commanded to hear the small one as the great one and not to accept persons; to concede to one what is denied to all is acceptance of persons, against divine law.
• Obj. 3: right human law must agree with natural and divine law, else it is not “in harmony with religion” nor agreeing with “discipline” (Isidore); but no man can dispense in natural or divine law.
• Sed contra: the Apostle, 1 Corinthians — “dispensation was entrusted [credited] to me.”
• Asides (on “when I was very young”): Washington on bullets whizzing — “What a pleasing sound that is” — and later, asked if he really saw that, “I was very young then”; similarly Royce, “when I was young and foolish.” And Cheney: scholarship to Yale, thrown out, two arrests for driving under the influence, listed on the government form, later ran for vice president; asked how he turned his life around — “I got married and I stopped going to the bars.”

2. The body: dispensation is measuring out the common to individuals (“he distributes with weight and measure”) #

1. “Dispensation” properly implies the measuring out of something common to individuals — whence the head of a family is called a dispenser, distributing to each with weight and measure both the operations and the necessities of life.
2. To dispense in a multitude is to order how a common precept is to be fulfilled by individuals.
3. A precept commodious to the multitude ut in pluribus (he notes Aristotle says at the beginning of the Ethics that one must speak of many things thus) may not suit this person or this case — because through it something better would be impeded, or something bad induced (as shown above, q. 96).
4. But it is dangerous to commit this judgment to just anyone, except when an evident and sudden [transcript: “subtle”] danger occurs.
5. Therefore the one whose business is to rule the multitude has the power of dispensing in the human law subject to his authority, in those persons or cases where the law fails.

• Example he attaches to this: taking roll at the military academy when officers had come from Washington and his company was the escort; a latecomer was about to run up to formation — “Don’t, stay here. I won’t mark you absent.” He was praised by his battalion commander for good judgment.
• Student addition: in Thomas’s commentary on John, our Lord sometimes did things on the Sabbath and sometimes observed it, showing he has judgment on the case.
• Without such a reason, for his will alone, the dispenser is unfaithful (if he lacks the intention of the common good — it would have been bad for the school’s common good for the man to go running up) or imprudent (if he ignores the reason for dispensing). Hence Luke 12: “Whom do you think is the faithful and prudent dispenser?”

3. Replies to the three (“not in prejudice to the common good”) #

• Ad 1: when someone is dispensed with, the common good is indeed not observed in his case, but this is not done in prejudice to the common good — rather with the intention that it help the common good.
• Ad 2: it is not accepting of persons not to observe equal things in unequal persons; where the condition of a person reasonably requires something special, a special grace to him is no exception of persons.
• Ad 3: the natural law, as containing common precepts that never fail, admits no dispensation; but in the precepts which are as it were conclusions from the common ones, men sometimes dispense — as when a thing loaned is not returned to the betrayer of his country.
  • His examples: “I want my gun back, and I am mad at my wife.” And the party where beer runs short, a man lends his car, and on returning the driver is drunk and wants his keys — perhaps don’t give them back right away, drive him home. Student’s push-back: “but they’re his keys” — do you have a right to keep a man’s knife, gun, keys? (left as the difficulty).
  • As to divine law, a man stands to it as a private person to the public law he is subject to; as in human law only the one with authority (or from whom the law has authority, or to whom it is committed) can dispense, so in divine precepts only God or one to whom it is specially committed.
  • Aside: the priest asked in court about a confession — what he knows there he knows as God, not as a man; no human authority has any right over that knowledge, so he can say “I don’t know anything,” since God imposed the obligation of secrecy.

4. Digression: Thomas’s three divisions of sacred doctrine (“kind of amazing that you have these three”) #

Prompted by the move into the Old Law. He asks the class the basis of Thomas’s division of scripture.

1. By law and grace (John 1:17, “the law was given by Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ”): the Old Testament is about law — subdivided into the law of the king (Pentateuch, and the prophets who encourage men to follow it) and the law of the father (the Sapiential books); the New Testament on grace — the origin of grace (Gospels), the nature of grace (Epistles of Paul), the effect of grace (Acts, Canonical Epistles, Apocalypse: the beginning, the growth of the Church, its final stage).
2. Faith, hope, charity: Augustine’s Enchiridion, Thomas’s Catechetical Instructions and Compendium of Theology; the old Baltimore Catechism and the new Catechism keep it.
3. God in himself, God as beginning, God as end: the Summas — clearest in the Contra Gentiles, whose fourth book takes the same three things as knowable by faith alone, the first three as knowable by reason as well. He calls the order of the Summa Theologiae “kind of bloated” [transcript reads “bolted”]: the Second and Third Parts both fall under God as end (the Second begins with man’s end, then virtues, law, grace; the Third treats Christ as man, the way of tending to God) — because of “the moral mess we’re in.” Student joke that his guardian angel will hold “bloated” against him.

5. The six questions on the Old Law, and the first objection (“whether the old law is good”) #

The six: whether it is good; whether it is from God; whether it is from God by mediation of the angels; whether it was given to all; whether it obliges all; whether it was given at a suitable time. Aside on the third: a parallel article whether Eve’s soul came from Adam, and whether Adam’s soul came from God through the angels.

• Obj. 1: Ezekiel 20:25 — “I gave them precepts that are not good, and judgments in which they cannot live”; a law is called good only from the goodness of its precepts. He relishes it: “So from his own words, he’s condemning the law. That satisfies me.” Student recalls the heresy that the Old Testament comes from an evil God — “so Thomas is being dangerous here.”

6. Objections two and three (“more killing… and harmful”) #

• Obj. 2: goodness of law requires it be “proficient for the common salvation” (Isidore); but the Old Law was mortifera and nociva — Paul (called “the Apostle” by antonomasia), Romans 7: without the law sin was dead; when the command came sin revived and I died; and where the law entered in, crime abounded.
• Obj. 3: a good law must be possible to observe, according to nature and according to human custom; but Acts 15:10, Peter: “Why do you tempt to impose upon us a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?” — “I rest my case now.”
• Sed contra: Romans 7:12, “the law is holy, and the command holy and just and good.” “Talk about confusing the issue — I never was so confused myself about the Old Testament as I am now.” He repeats his line that it is the duty of the professor to confuse the issue — “that’s certainly what Thomas does.” Macbeth: “Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
• Aside on a Frenchman [name unclear in recording] who would learn the objections and then pose them to some ordinary Catholic, or to the clergy.

7. The body of a. 1: good because in harmony with reason, imperfect because it gives no grace (“without any doubt the old law was good”) #

• “Absque omni dubio” — “without all doubt,” where we would say “without any doubt.”

1. As a teaching is shown true from consonance with right reason, so a law is shown good from harmony with reason. (Aside: “I see a connection between music and philosophy” — harmony of reason with things.)
2. The Old Law is in harmony with reason: it represses concupiscence, which is contrary to reason (“thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s thing,” Exodus 20), and prohibits all sins against reason. Hence it was good — the argument of Romans 7:22, condelector legi Dei secundum interiorem hominem (the inner man = reason), and “I consent to the law because it is good.”
3. But good has diverse grades (Dionysius, Divine Names 4): perfect good, in things ordered to an end, is what per se suffices to lead to the end; imperfect good is what works something toward arriving but does not suffice. Example: a medicine perfectly good cures a man; imperfect, one that aids but cannot cure — “there are some things that impede cancer, but not cure it.” Aside: as a boy he thought everyone died of a heart attack; now, because people live longer, it seems everyone dies of cancer.
4. The end of human law differs from the end of divine law. Human law’s end is the temporal tranquillity of the city, to which it tends by preventing or restraining exterior acts that disturb the peaceful state of the city. (Aside: “Black Lives Matter” marchers chanting about frying police like bacon — “not making things too peaceful.”) Divine law’s end is to lead man to eternal felicity, which any sin impedes, interior as well as exterior. Discussion of “hate crimes”: is there a law against hating your neighbor? Human law reaches the exterior act — you are punished for striking, not for being angry. Interior acts are “especially seen in the last commandments.”

• Etymology aside: felicitas — a student offers “fruitful”; he distinguishes fecundus (fruitful) from felix, “like fortunate but on the good side of fortune”; dictionary: happy, blessed, fertile, favorable, lucky, successful.

5. Therefore what suffices for the perfection of human law — prohibiting sins and applying punishment — does not suffice for divine law: it must make man holy and fit to partake of eternal felicity, which comes only through the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which charity is poured out in our hearts, which fulfils the law (“the grace of God is eternal life,” Romans 6).
6. But the Old Law could not confer grace; that was reserved to Christ (John 1:17). Hence the Old Law is good but imperfect — the grade of goodness set out above — according to Hebrews 7:19, “the law brought nothing to the perfect.” “Sacred scripture is the soul of theology”: Thomas will use a text for one authority here and ten books later have it saying something else, as things come together in a different order.

• He notes Thomas here makes a second use of John 1:17 (the division of scripture), and that Dei Verbum seems to follow Thomas’s order on the New Testament — Gospels, then Paul, then the Church and its growth, so Acts goes with the later things rather than right after the Gospels. Student: this connects with the two exterior helps, law and grace. He adds that Thomas says the Psalms contain the whole of sacred doctrine.

8. Reply to the first: the ceremonial precepts (“non bona, quia gratiam non conferebant”) #

• The Lord in Ezekiel speaks of the ceremonial precepts, one division of the Old Law, called not good because they did not confer grace by which men are cleansed from sin, though through them men showed themselves sinners. Hence “judgments in which they do not live” — they cannot obtain the life of grace. And “I polluted them in their gifts”: they showed their gifts polluted, since they offered everything that opens the womb [transcript: “wound”] on account of their sins.
• Attached to this: in Mark, “Good Master, what is necessary to enter life?” — “Why do you call me good? God alone is good.” If Christ can speak so as man, one can see how the Old Law, or part of it, could be called not good. Thomas’s reason why God alone is good: God is goodness itself, nothing else is goodness itself; other things partake of the good. “You can misuse that, obviously.”
• Aside (on Thomas’s respect for authorities): in the Sentences commentary he often brings in Avicenna or Averroes, sometimes using one against the other; they have big mistakes but wonderful things too — the third way is taken from Avicenna, and the De Veritate account of the transcendentals leans on him. Against the Latin Averroists Thomas says they speak “as if wisdom began with them.” His graduate-school teacher joked that Descartes, “the father of modern philosophy,” has no children, since each modern says something different, yet each speaks as if he alone discovered the beginning of the road to wisdom.

9. Reply to the second: the law kills occasionally, not effectively (“not effective, but occasionally”) #

• The law is said to kill not effective but occasionaliter — a name for a kind of accidental causality — and this from its imperfection, because it does not confer grace by which men could fulfil what it commands or avoid what it forbade. The occasion was not given but taken by men: “sin, taking occasion by the command, seduced me and through it killed me.” So “the law entered in that sin might abound” — held as occasion, not as cause.
• Test case on before-and-after vs. causality: Shakespeare, “it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man” — “this above all, to thine own self be true.” Being true to yourself does make you true to others, a causality; but night following day is mere before-and-after. His own: “I went to graduate school, then I got married” — consecutive, not therefore causal.
• Three ways sin abounded after the law: men taking occasion from the law sinned more abundantly; sin was graver after the law’s prohibition (worse for Catholics who know the law than for those not brought up with it); and concupiscence grows, since we desire more what is prohibited.
  • Examples: chewing gum in school; parents forbidding drink making you tempted to drink; as boys taking root beer downstairs with shot glasses, pretending to drink, dropping a glass — his mother suspecting they were “down for booze.” Student notes home-brewing as a custom left from Prohibition, and bottles exploding.
  • He generalizes: the prohibited seems a greater good because you have to struggle for it — “we love more what we make an effort to get.”

10. Reply to the third: the yoke needs grace (“cannot be observed without grace”) #

• The yoke of the law cannot be observed without grace, which the law does not give: Romans 9:16, “not of the one willing nor of the one running” — that is, to will and to run in God’s precepts — “but of God who has mercy.” Psalm 118:32, “I have run the way of your commands when you widened [expanded] my heart” — the expansion of the heart is the gift of grace and charity.
• He closes by naming the next question: now that it is good, whether it is given by God — “because some good things are often given by God.”

His words #

• “dispensation” — the measuring out of something common to individuals, as the head of a family distributes with weight and measure.
• ut in pluribus — “in most cases,” what a law is commodious to.
• “unfaithful” / “imprudent” — the two failures of a dispenser: lacking intention of the common good; ignoring the reason for dispensing.
• “acceptance of persons” — his rendering of acceptio personarum; refuted by “not observing equal things in unequal persons.”
• mortifera, nociva — “killing,” “harmful,” of the Old Law in the objection.
• “by antonomasia” — why Paul is simply “the Apostle.”
• absque omni dubio — “without all doubt,” English “without any doubt.”
• “grades of good”: perfect (per se sufficient to the end) vs. imperfect (helps but does not suffice).
• condelector legi Dei secundum interiorem hominem — “I delight with the law of God according to the inner man,” the inner man being reason.
• effective vs. occasionaliter — proper causality vs. “a name for a kind of accidental causality.”
• “Sacred scripture is the soul of theology.”
• “It’s the duty of the professor to confuse the issue.”
• “bloated” [transcript: “bolted”] — his irreverent description of the order of the Summa’s parts.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 97, a. 4 (whole article: three objections, sed contra 1 Cor., body, three replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 98, a. 1 (whole article), with the list of the six articles of q. 98.
• Quoted inside these: Ezekiel 20:25; Romans 6; 7:12, 7:22; Acts 15:10; Hebrews 7:19; John 1:17; Luke 12; 1 Corinthians (dispensation entrusted); Romans 9:16; Psalm 118:32; Exodus 20 (thou shalt not covet); Dionysius, Divine Names 4; Isidore; Aristotle, Ethics I.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on John (Sabbath); commentary on the Sentences; De Veritate (transcendentals, from Avicenna); Catechetical Instructions; Compendium of Theology; Summa contra Gentiles (four books); ST I-II q. 96 (referred back).
• Augustine, Enchiridion; Baltimore Catechism and the new Catechism; Vatican II, Dei Verbum.
• Mark 10, “Why do you call me good?” (inferred chapter); Shakespeare, Hamlet (“to thine own self be true”) and Macbeth (“fog and filthy air”) (inferred titles).
• Avicenna, Averroes, the Latin Averroists; Descartes.

His questions #

• Can the rulers of a multitude dispense in human laws? — Yes, in those persons or cases where the law fails, by whoever has charge of the multitude.
• When is a dispenser at fault? — Unfaithful if he lacks the intention of the common good; imprudent if he ignores the reason for dispensing.
• Can one dispense in the natural law? — Not in its common precepts, which never fail; sometimes in the conclusions drawn from them.
• Do you have any right to keep back a man’s own keys, knife, gun? — Raised by a student against the drunk-driver example; left open.
• What is the basis of Thomas’s division of scripture? — Law and grace (John 1:17), the Old Testament on law, the New on the origin, nature and effect of grace.
• Was the Old Law good? — Yes, without any doubt, because it is in harmony with reason — repressing concupiscence and prohibiting sins against reason.
• Why then is it called “precepts not good” in Ezekiel? — The words are of the ceremonial precepts, not good because they did not confer grace.
• How does the law kill? — Not effectively but occasionally, from its imperfection; the occasion was not given by the law but taken by men.
• Is “as the night the day” a causality? — No, only before and after; unlike being true to oneself, which makes one true to others.
• Why do we desire more what is prohibited? — Because it seems a greater good for the struggle — “we love more what we make an effort to get.”