Know Thyself, Act Before Ability, and the Precepts of the Old Law (Summa I-II Q.99 aa.5–6)

Orientation #

He says “let’s go back now to the third article, I guess it is, question ninety-nine, where we left off” and then in fact reads article 5, going on to article 6 — so he resumes q. 99 where the previous class stopped (prev. lecture). The class begins, before the text, with a long opening on self-knowledge, discourse and act before ability. The neighbouring classes treat q. 99 on the precepts of the Old Law and then q. 100 on the moral precepts.

The class, in order #

1. “Know thyself” as addressed to reason (“to whom is that addressed?”) #

Point: the maxim of the seven wise men is addressed to what can know itself, and that is reason, the only part of man that can know itself.

• Reason knows itself when it knows itself as the ability for large discourse, looking before and after.
• This is a likeness to God — a likeness of proportion — since God knows himself. Two differences:
  1. God in knowing himself knows the best thing there is to know; reason does not.
  2. God by knowing himself knows all other things; reason does not — “Do I know the Pythagorean theorem by knowing the definition of reason?” Still, reason by knowing itself knows how to come to know other things, by discourse and looking before and after.

2. The two arts of discourse: defining and reasoning (“Albert the Great divides logic”) #

Point: the two main kinds of discourse are defining and reasoning, and both go by causes.

• Albert divides logic into the art of defining and the art of reasoning; Thomas does not, following the order of Aristotle’s books. Hence in Albert there is a part on definition alongside the categories (Porphyry’s Isagoge); in Thomas’ first act you have only Aristotle’s Categories.
• Aristotle takes up definition only in the third part, at demonstration (Posterior Analytics II), where definition is the beginning of syllogism and especially of demonstration, and both definition and demonstration are through causes.
• “A complete definition differs from a demonstration by position only.” Example, the knife: demonstration takes one cause from another — a knife is a tool for cutting, a tool for cutting is made of blade and handle; a complete definition states all the causes at once — a tool composed of blade and handle for the sake of cutting.
• The famous questions of Posterior Analytics II: does it exist; if so what is it; is this that; if so why is this that. The what and the why both look for causes — the two main kinds of discourse — and causes are tied to before and after (cause and effect being senses of before and after).

3. The most important before and after: act before ability (“What’s the most important before and after to see?”) #

Point: of all before/afters, act before ability carries you furthest.

• He presses the class with candidates — coffee and tea, Mozart and Beethoven, man and woman, apple and orange — insisting on something very universal; a student answers “before ability… and act.”
• Aristotle shows act before ability in many ways in the ninth book [ed.: Metaphysics IX] — which he says is fittingly the ninth, in honour of the nine orders of angels (tomorrow is the feast of the Guardian Angels; Tuesday was Gabriel, Michael, Raphael); he places the nine orders in “the ninth book of wisdom.”
• His resolution of the appearance to the contrary: in the thing that goes from ability to act, ability is before act in that way; but it goes over by something already in act, so simply, haplōs, act is before ability.
• Whence the first cause sought is pure act — and from pure act almost the whole substance of God:
  1. Altogether simple — in composites one part is to another as act to ability (matter and form), or at least parts to whole as ability to act; so no composition, and no accidents, habits or qualities in him (“He used to be an angry God”).
  2. Perfect, therefore good — the perfection of a thing is its actuality.
  3. Unchanging, therefore eternal — to change is to have an ability to be other than you are. Infinity he groups with perfection, oneness with simplicity: keep to three, don’t depart too far from two or three — as with the three kinds of law.
• Further from pure act: God is immaterial, which is the root of knowledge, so God knows; and his understanding must be the same as his substance; then will, and so on.
• Aside: “Being a lazy son of a gun, I was always looking for killing many birds with one stone” — when teaching the Metaphysics he always makes sure the ninth book is seen.

4. Article 5, objections: precepts besides the three (“What heresy is this?”) #

Point: four objections that the Old Law contains something beyond moral, ceremonial and judicial.

1. Judicial precepts belong to justice (man to man), ceremonial to religion (worship of God); but there are many other virtues — temperance, fortitude, liberality — so there must be other precepts.
2. Deut. 11 lists praecepta, ceremonias, iudicia and mandata — a fourth.
3. Deut. 6:17 adds testimonia.
4. Psalm 118, “I will not forget for eternity your justifications,” glossed as the law: hence iustificationes too.

• Sed contra: Deut. 6 — “these are the precepts and the ceremonials and the judgments which the Lord commanded you” — laid down at the beginning of the law, so all are comprehended under the three.
• His own parallel, given twice: the command to love God with whole heart, soul, mind — and “with your whole strength.” Is strength a fourth thing, or a quality to be observed in each of the three? He answers the latter: three things with an excellence to be had in each, not four things distinguished against each other.
• Aside on the objectors: “you got to watch out, these guys — they want to go beyond three; they’re a dangerous group.” Aside: Our Lady of Knots at church, which the Pope met in Germany and is pushing — “that’s just what we need.”

5. Article 5, the body: what is precept and what is ordered to precept (“as something ordered to the fulfilling”) #

Point: only the three are precepts; the other names are things ordered to fulfilling the precepts.

• A man is led to fulfil a precept from two things: the authority of the one commanding, and the usefulness of fulfilling (some useful, delightful or animal good, or flight from the contrary evil).
• Hence the law must propose (i) things showing God’s authority — “Hear Israel, the Lord your God is one” (Deut. 6:4), “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” — these are testimonia; (ii) rewards and punishments (Deut. 28, “if you hear the voice of the Lord your God, he will make you higher than all nations”) — these are iustificationes, as God justly punishes and rewards.
• Things to be done fall under precept only as owed. Twofold debt: by the rule of reason, and by the rule of the one determining the law — Aristotle’s twofold iustum, moral and legal (Ethics V).
• Moral debt itself twofold: what reason dictates as necessary, without which the order of virtue cannot stand — “you shall not kill,” “you shall not steal” — these are praecepta properly; and what is dictated as useful, that the order of virtue be better preserved — these are mandata, having a persuasive, inducing force: Exod. 22, return your neighbour’s pledged garment before sunset. Jerome: “in the precepts is justice, in the mandata charity.”
• What is owed from the determination of the law: in human things, iudicialia; in divine things, ceremonialia.
• Reward-and-punishment matters can also be called testimonia, as protesting divine justice; and all precepts can be called iustificationes, as carrying out legal justice.
• A second way to distinguish mandata from praecepta: precepts are what God orders through himself, mandata what he commands through others — “as the name itself seems to sound.” He says he will not complicate this.
• Conclusion: all precepts fall under the three; the rest lack the ratio of precept and are ordered to observing precepts.

6. Reply to the first objection, and duty in the modern world (“justice alone… implies the notion of something owed”) #

Point: only justice among the virtues implies debt, so only what belongs to justice is determinable by law.

• Hence moral matters are determinable by law insofar as they pertain to justice, of which religion is a part (Cicero); so the iustum legale is nothing apart from the ceremonial and judicial precepts. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
• He answers only the first objection; the others he passes over — “We’ll give you a pass in this article five here.”
• A student: what ails the contemporary world is rights-talk to the exclusion of duty (Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law); without duty, moral matters become amorphous and undefined.
• His digression on marriage, from a National Review review of Ryan Anderson (Heritage Foundation) on recent marriage decisions: a quoted definition of marriage as a profession of emotional attachment — “I’m married to my grandchildren… my dog.” At dinner he asked Rosio, “Is that what we got married? We were professing our emotional attachment?” The priest does not ask “do you have wonderful feelings about so-and-so?” but “do you take so-and-so” — an act of will, a choosing; feelings may dispose you, choice makes the marriage. Students add: it is open to life; redefining marriage forces redefining polygamy; the Supreme Court does not understand the definition — the commonest fallacy here is equivocation. Anderson begins from no-fault divorce, as the start of making marriage dissolvable.

7. Article 6, objections: temporal promises and threats (“the poison of charity is cupidity”) #

Point: three objections that the Old Law ought not to induce observance by temporal promises and threats.

1. The divine law intends to subject men to God by fear and love (Deut. 10:12 — he notes Thomas keeps the order of the text, timor before amor); but covetousness of temporal things leads away from God — Augustine, Eighty-three Questions: “the poison of charity is cupidity.” So temporal promises are contrary to the legislator’s intention (Politics II).
2. Divine law is more excellent than human law; in the sciences the higher proceeds through higher middle terms; human law already uses temporal threats and promises, so divine law must use something greater. “Yeah, very good, Thomas… something like a purist, a real purist.”
3. What comes equally to good and bad cannot be reward of justice or punishment of guilt; Ecclesiastes says all temporal things happen evenly to just and impious, clean and unclean, to the one sacrificing and the one holding such things in contempt. (He first says “Ecclesiasticus,” then corrects: Ecclesiastes.) “Well, I’m convinced, aren’t you? Got to follow the argument right to where it leads.”

• Sed contra: Isaiah — “if you wish and hear me, you shall eat the goods of the earth; but if you do not wish and provoke me to wrath, the sword shall devour you.” Aside: “Sounds like Allah, doesn’t it? No — Allah would say the sword will devour your enemies.”

8. Article 6, the body: leading a boy by the hand (“men are led… through punishments and awards”) #

Point: as in the looking sciences middle terms are proposed according to the hearer’s condition, so in law men are led by what is already in their affections.

• Parallel: in the scientiae speculativae — “in English we say the looking sciences, in Greek the theoretical sciences” (whence the theorems of Euclid) — men are led to assent to conclusions through syllogisms; the Latin inducuntur is the common word for leading in, and does not mean induction: here it is the higher way of the syllogism.
• But middles are proposed according to the hearer’s condition, so one must proceed in order, that learning begin from what is more known — “it’s looking before and after; it’s an order road.”
• So the one who wishes to lead a man to observe precepts must begin from what is in his affections, as boys are provoked by little puerile gifts. Aside: “with the dog you call it a treat.”
• The Old Law disposes to Christ as imperfect to perfect, given to a people still imperfect; hence compared to the boy under the pedagogue (Gal. 3:24 — the comparison is Paul’s).
• Man’s perfection is to hold temporal things in contempt and adhere to spiritual (Phil. 3: forgetting the things behind, extending himself to those before — “that’s more like Homer, right? Before and behind”). The imperfect desire temporal goods, but in order to God; the perverse constitute their end in them. So it was suitable that men be led by the hand to God through temporal things which were in the affections of imperfect men.
• Aside: punishments and rewards in law — “if I drive 30 miles an hour in the city, I don’t get any award”; insurance companies speak of awards for not offending, and have many punishments for speeding. Aside: Euclid, Ohio, on a licence plate, and the Hotel Euclid in downtown St. Paul — “I can’t avoid this Euclid in my life”; and a Euclid in the parish whose name he confuses when counting envelopes.
• He refers the teaching-parallel to Thomas on teaching, q. 117, a. 1: the teacher leads the student from the known to the unknown, one way being by sensible things.

9. Digression: the shortest way to make someone think about abortion (“What’s probably the best short way”) #

Point: begin from the golden rule rather than from “you are taking human life.”

• Starting from human life leads at once into argument over when it is human, whether it is a blob of tissue. Instead: do you accept doing to others as you would have them do to you? — they say yes. Then: would you have wanted to be aborted? And retroactively, now that you escaped, would you want to be eliminated? “They really can’t handle it.”
• A student recalls Pope Francis to Congress on the same rule; he adds Reagan’s remark that nobody who is already born is in favour of abortion.
• The golden rule is proportionate to what is more known to people now — even parents use it: a boy nasty to a neighbour boy is asked, would you want this done to you? “He doesn’t have much answer to that.”
• Students: the arguments for abortion abstract, depersonalise and dehumanise; the golden rule makes the person himself involved — “what were you, if this is just a clump of cells?”

10. Article 6, the replies (“their heart is far from me”) #

Point: the three objections answered in order.

1. Cupidity that constitutes its end in temporal goods is the poison of charity; but attaining temporal goods desired in order to God is a road leading the imperfect to the love of God — Ps. 48, “I will confess to you when you benefit me.” His example: people pray when the husband cannot find a job; when he finds one they are disposed toward God, their prayer answered — they have not put their life’s end in the job. And Christ went about curing people, sometimes forgiving sins before curing — “how can you be forgiving sins?… which is easier.”
2. Human law leads men by temporal rewards and punishments exhibited by men; divine law by those exhibited by God — and so it does proceed from something higher.
3. To one considering the histories of the Old Testament, the common state of the people was prosperity so long as they observed the law, and on departing from it they fell into many adversities. Particular just persons did meet adversities, either because they were already spiritual, that they might be drawn away from temporal things and their virtue proved, or because while fulfilling the works of the law exteriorly their heart was elsewhere and far from God — Isaiah 29, “this people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me,” which Christ says to the men of his own time.

• The recording breaks off as he begins the next article (“Now he’s…”).

His words #

• large discourse, looking before and after — his rendering of the definition of reason, by which reason knows itself.
• likeness of proportion — how reason’s self-knowledge resembles God’s.
• ability / act — [ed.: potency and act]; “act is before ability.”
• haplōs — simply, absolutely; the sense in which act precedes ability.
• pure act — what the first cause must be; the one root from which simplicity, perfection, unchangeableness follow.
• the ninth book of wisdom — his phrase for Aristotle’s ninth book, said to hold the nine orders of angels.
• the looking sciences — [ed.: speculative/theoretical sciences]; Latin speculativae, Greek theoretical.
• testimonia — things proposed showing the authority of God commanding.
• iustificationes — rewards and punishments, as God justly punishes and rewards; also all precepts as carrying out legal justice.
• mandata — what is commanded not as precisely owed but as better; persuasive, inducing; or what God commands through others.
• iustum legale / moral — Aristotle’s twofold just, from the twofold debt (reason; the law’s determination).
• inducuntur — “leading in”; he warns it does not mean induction.
• an order road — his gloss on proceeding in order, from the more known.
• pedagogue — Paul’s comparison; the Jewish people as the boy under him.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 99, a. 5 — objections, sed contra, body, reply to obj. 1 only.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 99, a. 6 — objections, sed contra, body, all three replies.
• Scripture read within these: Deut. 6, 6:4, 6:17, 10:12, 11, 28; Ps. 118; Ps. 48; Exod. 22; Isaiah (sed contra of a. 6, verse not given); Isaiah 29; Gal. 3:24; Phil. 3; Ecclesiastes.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II (definition, the four questions, definition and demonstration differing by position only).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (inferred) — “the ninth book,” act before ability.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics V (twofold iustum).
• Aristotle, Politics II (intention of the legislator).
• Aristotle, Categories; Porphyry, Isagoge; Albert the Great’s division of logic.
• Augustine, Eighty-three Questions; Jerome (precepts/justice, mandata/charity); Cicero (religion a part of justice).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 117, a. 1 (teaching from the known).
• Euclid, Elements (theorems) — as example.
• Ryan Anderson on marriage, reviewed in National Review; Mary Ann Glendon on rights and duty.

His questions #

• To whom is “know thyself” addressed? To what can know itself — especially reason, the only part of man that can know itself.
• Does reason, by knowing itself, know other things, as God does? No; but it knows how to come to know them, by discourse and looking before and after.
• What is the most important before and after to see? Act before ability — from which pure act, and thence nearly all we say of God’s substance.
• If God is pure act, can he be composite, or have accidents, or change? No to all three: composition and accidents require ability with act, and change requires ability to be other than one is.
• Is “with your whole strength” a fourth thing beside heart, soul and mind? No — an excellence to be observed in each of the three.
• Are there precepts in the Old Law besides moral, ceremonial and judicial? No: testimonia, iustificationes, mandata lack the ratio of precept and are ordered to observing the precepts.
• Why is only what pertains to justice determinable by law? Because justice alone among the virtues implies the notion of something owed.
• Ought the Old Law to induce observance by temporal promises and threats? Yes — the people was still imperfect, a boy under the pedagogue, to be led by hand from what was in its affections.
• Why did just men under the law still meet adversity? Either because, being already spiritual, they were to be drawn from temporal things and their virtue proved, or because their hearts were far from God while they kept the law outwardly.
• What is the best short way to get someone thinking about abortion? Begin from the golden rule — would you have wanted it done to you? — rather than from when life is human.