The Old Law: Given by God, Given Through Angels, and Given Only to the Jews (Articles 2-4)

Orientation #

He opens by saying “that’s where I left off” and moves straight to article 2 of the question on the Old Law; at the end of article 3 he says “time for another article now” and at the close of article 4, “time to quit now.” The previous class ended by transitioning to “Article Two” of the text under study.

The class, in order #

1. The four objections of article 2 (“the old law was not made by God”) #

He reads the objections that the Old Law is not from God:

1. Deuteronomy 32: the works of God are perfect; but the Law was imperfect (said above); therefore not from God.
2. Ecclesiastes (he first says Ecclesiasticus and corrects himself): all the works God has made persevere in aeternum; but the Old Law does not persevere — Hebrews speaks of the “reprobatio,” the setting aside, of the preceding command on account of its weakness (infirmitas) and uselessness.
3. It belongs to a wise legislator to take away not only bad things but the occasions of bad things; but the Old Law was an occasion of sin; and no legislator is like God (Job 36).
4. 1 Timothy 2: God wills all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth; but the Old Law does not suffice for salvation; so God would be failing to reach his end.

He keeps up the pose of being persuaded: “I’m convinced, don’t you, gentlemen?” Aside: he wonders how Thomas taught this orally — give one objection and let students struggle; and he shows a photograph of his own first teacher, Kasurik [ASR uncertain], “the smile of wisdom.”

2. Digression: politics, the last end, and the Ethics (“that this in a way belongs to political knowledge”) #

Prompted by objection 4 (God not reaching his end), he recalls why Aristotle says the Nicomachean Ethics is in a way the beginning of political philosophy: it treats the last end of man, and government commands everything else. Examples of the commanding art: you cannot practice dentistry, medicine, cooking or even driving without a license from government; a college grants degrees “by virtue of authority” of the Commonwealth; the restaurant inspector who closes you down for cockroaches (and the Quebec restaurant with cats in the trash). Aristotle’s own example: government commands the army, since victory is not the ultimate end but is ordered to the good of the city. Shakespeare’s description of that part of philosophy “that treats the happiness by virtue especially to be achieved” is a good description of the Ethics. His complaint: politicians and the Supreme Court should be made to learn the virtues before running for office; Common Core sex education directs the young to vice, so legislators are incompetent as to the end they should direct people toward.

3. Sed contra and the tying of the knot (“you’re tying the knot, right”) #

Sed contra: Matthew 15, the Lord reproaches the Jews for making void the command of God for their traditions, just after citing “honor your father and mother,” which is manifestly in the Old Law; therefore the Old Law is from God. Aside on the Pharisees and hand-washing: his own churchmen count the collection money and eat donuts without washing their hands. Then Aristotle’s image: a desis and lusis — the tying and the untying of the knot; untying is the discovery of something hidden. Comparisons: legs tied cannot walk forward, so a tied mind cannot go forward; a game “tied up” and untied by a home run in the bottom of the ninth, untying the knots in the fans’ stomachs. Critics of Cymbeline count up to twenty knots tied and untied in one closing scene.

4. The body of article 2: two ways the Law orders men to Christ (“the old law was given by the good God”) #

The Law was given by the good God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Aside on appropriation as good exegesis: the Father is not alone the giver, but kingship is appropriated to the Father, prophecy/teaching to the Son (the Word is “the light that enlightens every man who comes into this world” — “that’s one hell of a teacher”), priesthood and sanctifying to the Holy Spirit. He notes it is Bellarmine’s feast, and marvels at the title “doctor of the Church” — a teacher for the whole Church.

The Old Law orders men to Christ in two ways:

1. By giving testimony to Christ — Luke 24:44, all things written in the law, the psalms and the prophets about me; John 5:46, Moses “wrote about me.” Aside on the divisions of the Old Testament: sometimes two (law of the king, law of the father, with prophets under the latter as reminding the people), sometimes three (law, psalms, prophets), the psalms standing for the sapiential books by synecdoche — he corrects himself from “metonymy.”
2. By way of a certain disposition — withdrawing men from idolatry, enclosing them under the cult of one God; Galatians 3, before faith came we were “contained,” shut up under the faith to be revealed. A remote disposition for the Church.

Then the argument: it is the same thing to dispose to the end and to lead to the end, either per se or through one’s subjects. It was not the devil’s work to take away the law by which men were brought to Christ, by whom the devil would be cast out — for if Satan cast out Satan, his kingdom is divided. Therefore the Old Law is from the same God who works salvation through the grace of Christ.

He stresses that the commandments are “almost all of the natural law,” so the disposing brings men back to what is natural. Asides: “nature” comes from the word for birth, so abortion and homosexual marriage go against birth; Shakespeare calls the devil “the common enemy of man” — who else would want us killing our own offspring? A student adds the inconsistency of an age that wants to “get back to nature” while living the most unnatural lives.

5. Reply 1: perfect for its time (“a boy is not perfect simpliciter”) #

Nothing prevents something from being not perfect simpliciter yet perfect according to its time; a boy is not perfect simply but according to the condition of his age, and precepts given to boys are perfect for those to whom they are given. Galatians: lex pedagogus. He glosses the pedagogue as usually an educated slave who saw that the boy did his studying.

Greek aside: paidia and paideia from the word for child — one the play of the boy, the other his education under tutelage. Aristotle says every methodus has two stages, paideia (learning the method) and episteme (going down the road to the end and coming to rest). Shakespeare wrote “plays” — better for us than “drama.” Thomas on the scriptural “run into your house and play there with your thoughts”: play is pleasant and for its own sake, so the life of the mind is like play.

Aside on memorizing as proper to that age: he still remembers the catechism definition, “a sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace”; his son Marcus memorized “The Raven”; he himself memorized Milton’s Lycidas in one sick day on a bet with his friend Richard.

6. Reply 2: which works persevere (“works which God makes that they might persevere”) #

Not all God’s works persevere in eternity, but those which he makes in order that they may persevere. What you give a child is aimed at the child; you do want him to love God forever, you do not want him to remain a child forever — St. Paul: when I was a child I thought as a child, and I put away the things of a child. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets on a poet who “remained a child all his life.” So the Old Law is reproved in the time of the perfection of grace, not as something bad but as weak and useless for that time, since “the law brought nothing to perfection”; Galatians 3: when faith comes we are no longer under the pedagogue. Aside: an adult may read fairy tales to rouse wonder (the Dover collections, the coloured fairy books); a student notes traditional tales are being rewritten so that the ogres and witches are good and the knights evil.

7. Reply 3: humbling the presumptuous (“that they might be made humble”) #

God sometimes permits some to fall into sin that they may be humbled — Augustine on virgins who became proud, whom it benefited to fall into sins of the flesh, since pride is the graver sin. So God wished to give a law which men could not fulfil by their own powers, that the presumptuous might find themselves sinners and, humbled, have recourse to help. He sets out Thomas’s three stages of man: left to himself without the law; under the law but unable to fulfil it; the age of grace, where he knows the law and has grace to fulfil it. Against the first stage: the Supreme Court and society today do not see the natural law, and ask “what do you feel” rather than “what do you think.” Personal illustrations of being humbled: he beat everyone at checkers until his father’s cousin beat him (“I thought it was good for you to lose,” said his mother); his grandchildren at chess, where young Miles copied one of his own moves — “imitation is the highest form of flattery.”

8. Reply 4, and his question back to the class (“the faith of the mediator”) #

Though the Old Law does not suffice for saving man, another aid was given by God along with the law: the faith of the mediator, by which the ancient fathers were justified as we are; so God did not fail them. He then puts the question: what in the body of the article corresponds to this reply? With the students (he names Mark) the class answers: the twofold ordering to Christ — the testimony to Christ answers to faith in the mediator; the disposing is the remote way, and is what objection 3 was really about (being disposed, needing humility). So things were more difficult for them, not impossible.

9. Article 3: was the Old Law given through the angels? (“given by God through the angels”) #

Objections that it was given immediately by God:

1. “Angel” means messenger, implying servant and minister, not lord (Psalm 102: bless the Lord, all you his ministers); but the Law was given by the Lord — Exodus 20, “the Lord spoke these words… I am the Lord your God,” a formula often repeated.
2. John 1:17, the law was given by Moses; but Moses received it immediately from God — Exodus 33, the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.
3. It belongs to the prince alone to bring forth law, and God alone is prince of the salvation of souls; angels are “administering spirits.” Aside: princeps is related to principium, the beginning or source, as archē later comes to mean the head of government; “minister” is the lowering name — hence “Prime Minister,” first servant of the people.

Sed contra: Galatians 3, the law was given by angels in the hand of a mediator; Acts 7, Stephen says the law was received “by the disposition of angels.”

Body: the law was given by God through the angels. Besides the general reason from Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4 — divine things are carried down to men by means of the angels, the higher illuminating the lower down the line — there is a special reason: the Old Law was imperfect, disposing to the perfect salvation to come through Christ; and in all ordered powers and arts the superior does the chief and perfect act by himself, while what is dispositive to the ultimate perfection is done through ministers. Examples: the chef does not peel or cut the potatoes but tells them how he wants them cut, for French fries or rounds; his father’s wagon company bought steel and wood from others but produced the final form, his father specifying the steel and its size (his wagons never broke — Green King wagons; the Minnesota State Fair story of competitors hiring a young lady to draw the farmers, “they go over there to see the girl, and they come over here to see the wagons”); the shipwright puts the ship together himself but prepares the matter through subordinate artists. Hence the perfect law of the New Testament was given immediately by God himself made man, the Old Law through angels — as Hebrews 1 proves the eminence of the new law, since in the new God spoke to us in his own Son.

10. Replies of article 3 (“sometimes as angel, sometimes as Lord”) #

• To 1: Gregory, at the beginning of the Moralia: the one appearing to Moses is called sometimes angel, sometimes Lord — angel because he serves by speaking outwardly, Lord because he presides interiorly and gives efficacy to the speaking by enlightening. Comparison: the preacher says the words and God enlightens you to receive them. Aside: the three men who come to Abraham are really angels, yet he addresses them as God.
• To 2: Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII: after “face to face” it is added “show me your glory” — he sensed what he saw and desired what he did not see; so he did not see the essence of God. “Face to face” is said according to the opinion of the people, who thought Moses spoke mouth to mouth with God, when it was through the subject creature, the angel in the cloud; or “vision of the face” means an eminent and familiar contemplation below the vision of the divine essence. He notes that this does not deny what Augustine and Thomas hold elsewhere, that Moses and St. Paul (caught up to the third heaven) did at one passing moment see God as he is, on account of their pre-eminence in the Scriptures.
• To 3: It belongs to the prince by his authority to institute the law, but he sometimes promulgates the instituted law through others. So God instituted the law by his authority but promulgated it through the angels. He asks the class, “are you men scandalized?” — no — and cites sapientis est ordinare. Even in the world an influential man need not do everything himself; aside on Trump: “I know the men who can get things done,” his comparison of himself to Reagan and the hostages released before Reagan took office.

11. Article 4: why to the Jewish people alone (“only from the gratuitous election”) #

Objections:

1. The Old Law disposed for the salvation to come through Christ, which was for all the Gentiles too — Isaiah 49, “it is a little thing that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob… I have given thee for a light to the nations, that thou be my salvation to the end of the earth.”
2. Acts 10:34, God is not an accepter of persons; in every nation whoever fears him and does justice is acceptable to him. (Aside: “who am I to judge, as the Pope says.”)
3. The law was given through angels, whose ministry is for all nations — Ecclesiasticus, in each nation he set a rector; and God gives temporal goods to all nations, which are less his care than spiritual goods.

He praises the objections: “that’s really marvelous the way Thomas does this. He makes you think.” Aside: he and his brother Mark joked of taking professors captive, dropping the objections into their cell and making them think out the answer — “that’d be the ideal way to teach.” A student adds the saying that the devil fears most of all Catholics who understand the Bible.

Sed contra: Psalm 147, “he has not done so to every nation, nor has he manifested his judgments to them”; and Romans 3, “what then is more for the Jew? Much in every way. First, because the eloquent words of God were entrusted to them.”

Body: One reason could be given — that other peoples declined to idolatry while only the Jews remained in the cult of the one God, so the others were unworthy, “lest the holy thing be given to dogs” (what Christ said to the woman). But this reason does not seem suitable, because that people also declined to idolatry after the law was given, and more gravely, since they had received it: Exodus 32 (the golden calf, right after Moses got the law); Amos 5, did you offer me sacrifices in the desert forty years, and you carried the tabernacle of your Moloch and the image of your idols, the star of your god; Deuteronomy 9:6, “not on account of your justices has the Lord given you this land, since you are a people of a most stiff neck.”

The true reason given there is that the Lord might fulfil the word he swore to their fathers. Galatians 3:16: the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed — not “seeds,” as of many, but “thy seed,” which is Christ. So God gave the law and other special benefits to that people on account of the promise that Christ would be born of them; and it was fitting that the people from whom Christ was to be born be marked by a special sanctification — Leviticus, “be holy, because I am holy.” But the promise to Abraham was not from his merit, but from gratuitous choice and vocation — Isaiah 41, who raised up the just man from the east and called him to follow him; Deuteronomy 4:36, you heard his words from the midst of the fire, because he loved the fathers and chose their seed after them. If it is asked further why he chose this people rather than another, there remains Augustine’s answer on John: “why he draws this one and not that one, do not wish to judge if you do not wish to err.” He approves Thomas simply quoting his predecessor, citing Aristotle: we should try to improve on some things our predecessors said, but some things we should try to say as well as they said them.

12. Replies of article 4 (“acceptance of persons does not have place”) #

• To 1: Though salvation through Christ was prepared for all nations, Christ had to be born of one people, which therefore had prerogatives before others — Romans 9:4, to whom belongs the adoption of sons, the testament, the legislation, the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh. A student raises that obviously many of that people were not holy, and connects this to the mark of holiness of the Church: not only because Christ is holy and this is his body, or because some members are holy, but because the teaching is holy and gives holiness — the means of holiness entrusted to this one Church. He lets the parallel stand as “something analogous.”
• To 2: Acceptance of persons has place in what is given ex debito, as owed; not in what is conferred from a gratuitous will. He who from his liberality gives of his own to one and not another is no accepter of persons; but a dispenser of common goods who does not distribute according to merits is. God’s benefits to the human race are gratuitous; Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints: whom God teaches, he teaches by mercy; whom he does not teach, by judgment he does not teach — this coming from the damnation of the human race for the sin of the first parent. Aside: “that describes our country today”; and the Pope would be in trouble if he used these words when he comes here.
• To 3: Benefits of grace are subtracted from men on account of guilt, but natural benefits are not; among these are the ministries of the angels, which the order of nature requires — that the lower be governed through the middle ones — and the other subsidies which God administers not only to men but to beasts, Psalm 35, “men and beasts thou wilt save.”

His words #

• “reprobatio” — the giving up, the setting aside, of the preceding command (Hebrews).
• in aeternum — persevering forever.
• “tying the knot / untying the knot” — Aristotle’s image for a difficulty and its solution; untying is the discovery of something hidden [ed.: aporia / lysis].
• Appropriation — Father as King, Son as Prophet/Teacher, Holy Spirit as sanctifier and priest; “good exegesis naming and attribution.”
• Synecdoche — the psalms standing for the whole sapiential part (he corrects “metonymy” to this).
• lex pedagogus — the law as pedagogue, an educated slave who made sure the boy studied.
• paidia / paideia — the play of the boy / the education of the boy, both from the word for child.
• paideia and episteme — the two stages of every methodus: learning the method, and coming to rest at the end.
• simpliciter vs. “according to its time” — not perfect absolutely, yet perfect for the age it was given to.
• princeps / principium / archē — prince as source or beginning; minister as the lowering name.
• Sapientis est ordinare — it belongs to the wise man to order (so he may work through others).
• ex debito — given as owed; contrasted with what is given from a gratuitous will.
• “gratuitous election / choice and vocation” — the ground of the promise to Abraham, not his merit.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 98, a. 2 (whether the Old Law was from God) — objections, sed contra, body, four replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 98, a. 3 (whether the Old Law was given through angels) — objections, sed contra, body, three replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 98, a. 4 (whether given to the Jewish people alone) — objections, sed contra, body, three replies.
• Scripture quoted within those articles: Deuteronomy 32; 4:36; 9:6; Ecclesiastes; Hebrews (reprobatio); Job 36; 1 Timothy 2; Matthew 15; Luke 24:44; John 5:46; 1:17; Galatians 3 (incl. 3:16); Exodus 20; 32; 33; Psalm 102; 147; 35; Acts 7; 10:34; Hebrews 1; Romans 3; 9:4; Isaiah 49; 41; Amos 5; Leviticus; Ecclesiasticus.
• Pseudo-Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 4; Gregory, Moralia (beginning); Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter XII; Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints; Augustine on John.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, opening (inferred); Poetics on the tying and untying of the knot (inferred).
• Shakespeare, Cymbeline; Shakespeare on the devil as “the common enemy of man”; Shakespeare’s description of moral philosophy.
• Thomas Aquinas, a short work on “play there with your thoughts.”
• Milton, Lycidas; Poe, “The Raven”; Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets; the Dover fairy-tale collections.

His questions #

• How would Thomas have taught this by the spoken word? Give one objection and let the student struggle — which he calls the ideal way to teach.
• Why is the Ethics in a way the beginning of political philosophy? Because it is about the last end of man, and government commands all the other arts.
• Why is the giving of the Law appropriated to God the Father? By appropriation: kingship to the Father, teaching to the Son, sanctifying to the Spirit — not that the Father alone gives it.
• In how many ways does the Old Law order men to Christ? Two: by giving testimony to Christ, and by disposing men away from idolatry to the cult of one God.
• Do all God’s works persevere in eternity? Only those he makes in order that they may persevere; the Law was for a time, like precepts given to a boy.
• What in the body of article 2 corresponds to the reply to objection 4? The first of the two ways — giving testimony to Christ — which is tied to the faith in the mediator by which the fathers were justified.
• Why should the Old Law be given through angels rather than immediately? Because in ordered arts the superior does the chief work himself and leaves what is dispositive to ministers, as the shipwright or the chef does.
• Was Moses instructed immediately, since he spoke “face to face”? No — that is said according to the opinion of the people; he spoke through the angel in the cloud, though Augustine and Thomas hold he once saw God in a passing way.
• Why was the Law given to the Jews alone? Not for their merit — they too fell into idolatry — but to fulfil the promise sworn to Abraham, that Christ would be born of his seed, from gratuitous election.
• Why did God choose that people and not another? Left open with Augustine: “why he draws this one and not that one, do not wish to judge if you do not wish to err.”