Summa I-II q.100 a.6-7: Why the Commandments Come in This Order, and Their Reasons, Promises, Punishments and Memory

Orientation #

He begins directly with article 6 (“the sixth one goes for it”) and, halfway through, announces “we get time for one more article” and takes up article 7, stopping mid-way through the replies of a. 7 for lack of time. He refers back to his own earlier insistence on the theology of the family and on the order of Peter’s confession of faith. The previous class read q. 100, a. 5 on the sufficiency of the Decalogue.

The class, in order #

1. Article 6, objections against the order (“the love of one’s neighbor seems to be a way before”) #

The question: are the ten precepts suitably ordered, the three of God before the seven of the neighbor?

• Obj. 1: love of neighbor is praevia (pre + via, “a way before”) to love of God, since the neighbor is more known to us; 1 John 4 — he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? He calls it “a beautiful objection” and jokes: “God didn’t look before and after when he gave them.”
• Obj. 2: affirmative precepts command acts of virtue, negative prohibit vices; but Boethius (on Aristotle’s Praedicamenta) says vices must first be rooted out, then virtues inserted — so among the neighbor-precepts the negatives should come first. Student objection: God himself says “Repent” first, and the first two precepts are negative. He allows the objection may be about the seven only.
• Obj. 3: the act of the heart is before mouth and exterior work, so the precepts against desiring should not be last.
• Sed contra: Romans 13, quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt — the Decalogue is given immediately by God, so its order must be suitable.

Digression (from his own reading of Thomas): the bad has no per se cause — (i) a per se cause aims at the good, (ii) a per se cause makes what is like itself, and one makes by actuality, which is good, (iii) what a per se cause produces has a definite order, and ordered things are good. He ties (iii) back to the Romans text: “look before and after, gentlemen. Proceed in order.”

Aside: the Ten Commandments monument taken down in Oklahoma as a church-state violation, though the precepts are what the mind of man accepts promptly, not something specifically Christian.

2. The body of a. 6: order from the end (“since the order of reason begins from the end”) #

A precept is the more received by reason as its contrary is graver and more repugnant to reason.

1. The order of reason begins from the end; hence the gravest disorder is to be disordered toward the end.
2. The end of human life and of society is God; therefore the Decalogue first orders man to God.

• He notes Aristotle does the same in the Nicomachean Ethics: happiness in book I, moral virtue in books II–V, and back to the end in book X.
• The army image: an army ordered to its leader requires first that the soldier be subject to the leader (its contrary gravissimum), second that he be coordinated with the others. Aside: Aristotle compares the order of the universe to an army rather than a city, the city being more chaotic.
• Within the things ordering to God: first faithful subjection, having no partaking with the enemy; second reverence; third service. In the army, being in cahoots with the enemy is graver than irreverence to the leader, and that graver than falling short in some service.

3. The order among the precepts to the neighbor (“more a debtor”) #

• Most repugnant to reason is not to keep the order owed to those to whom one is more a debtor; hence parents come first. He ties this to his earlier insistence on the family: “honor your father and mother” is the fundamental thing in society.
• Then by gravity: sin by deed graver than by word, by word than by heart.
• Among deeds: homicide (takes away the life of a man already existing), then adultery (impedes certitude of offspring), then theft, which touches only exterior goods.
• Example: explaining adultery to his small children — “stealing somebody’s mother or father.” And his joke on the ranking: “I’d rather you steal my car than steal my wife.”

4. Reply to obj. 1, and the two orders of teaching (“the love of God is the reason for the love of one’s neighbor”) #

Reply: secundum viam sensus the neighbor is more known, but the love of God is the reason for the love of neighbor; so the God-precepts are placed first. He expands with ST I, q. 117, a. 1 on the teacher (a text Monsignor always uses): teaching by leading by the hand (manuductio) vs. ordering principles to conclusions, giving the reason why. Here Thomas uses the second order — which does not exclude the other order elsewhere.

• Two scriptural orders: Peter’s confession ascends from Christ’s humanity (“thou art the Christ”) to his divinity; John’s prologue descends from the Word who was God to “the Word was made flesh.” The angels at Luke likewise start from the humanity.
• His test question: would you ask “why is this man the Son of God?” or “why did the Word of God become man?” The second — and to ask it you must already know the Word in himself. Hence Thomas treats the Incarnation only in the Third Part.
• The reason for loving the neighbor: “Love me, love my children” — I care for my friend’s children, or my brother’s children, because I love my brother; so I love my neighbor because I love God.
• Student exchange: the abortionist on the last day — “when you did it to one of these little ones, you did it unto me”; joined to “whoever receives one child in my name receives me”; a student cites Fr. Hardon on Christian marriage being open to children, and that the pagans noticed the early Christians did not kill their children. Fr. Hardon’s line: “the old paganism was polytheistic, but modern paganism is strictly monotheistic.”

5. Replies to obj. 2 and 3 (“through the right is known the oblique”) #

• Reply 2: God is the universal principle of being; the father too is a principle of being for the son — so the precept about parents suitably follows those about God. The objection’s argument holds only when affirmative and negative concern the same genus of deed, and even then not with full force: in carrying out the work, vices are rooted out first (Ps. 33, “decline from evil and do good”; Isaiah, “cease from acting perversely and learn to do well”), but in knowledge virtue comes before sin, “because through the right is known the oblique” (Peri Hermeneias I) — and through the law is knowledge of sin (he cites Romans twelve; [ed.: usually Rom. 3:20 / 7:7]). But the real reason for the order is the one already given: in the first table the affirmative precept is placed last because its transgression induces less guilt.
  • Aside: “who knows the ignorance of the student better, the student or the professor?” The professor knows more what you don’t know than you do. Aside: Moses breaking the tablets over the golden calf.
• Reply 3: the sin of the heart is first in execution — you desire the woman before the adultery — but its prohibition comes later in reason, because one sees the exterior deed as evil more clearly: murder more evidently bad than being angry, though anger may lead to it.

6. Article 7, objections against the mode of treatment (“unsuitably treated”) #

“Feast of Reason,” he says, quoting Socrates.

• Obj. 1: since virtue and vice are opposed in every matter, each precept should have both an affirmative and a negative form (“same signs of opposites”).
• Obj. 2: Isidore — every law stands by reason; so a reason should be assigned in all, not only in the first and third.
• Obj. 3: promises should be attached to all, not only the first and fourth. He jokes about long life: “I’m 80 years old, I must have been under my father and mother.” He hunts for the promise in the first precept and finds it: doing mercy on thousands who love me and keep my precepts. Aside: De Koninck said to someone in Rome, how could I have missed that, a promise attached to the first and the fourth, having known the commandments since I was a child — the students suggest translations obscure it.
• Obj. 4: the old law is the law of fear, so a threat of punishment should be in all, not only the first and second.
• Obj. 5: Proverbs 3, “write them in the tables of your heart” — so memory should not be mentioned only in the third precept.
• Sed contra: Wisdom 11, God made all things in number, weight and measure; much more in the precepts of his law. He remarks that argument from authority is strongest in theology.

7. The body of a. 7: wisdom disposes mode and order (“maxima sapientia continetur”) #

In the precepts of the divine law the greatest wisdom is contained (Deut. 4, “this is your wisdom and understanding before the peoples”); it belongs to the wise to dispose all things in a suitable mode and order — order was the last article, mode is this one. Hence it ought to be manifest that the precepts are treated in the best way — “you guys are too dumb to see it,” and the objections will show it. Aside on the boy Christ growing in wisdom (Luke), “whatever that means.”

8. Reply 1: why only two affirmative precepts (“if it is white, it is not black”) #

Affirmation always entails the negation of the opposite, but not conversely: if it is white it is not black; not — if it is not black, therefore white. Negation extends to more things than affirmation. So the negative precepts (do no injury: don’t kill you, don’t steal your wife, don’t steal your car) extend to many persons, by the first dictate of reason that one should render what is owed. Among the dictates of reason: a man owes service to those from whom he has received benefits, if he has not recompensed them; and there are two from whom benefits can never be sufficiently repaid — God and father (Cicero; and Aristotle says it in Ethics VIII). Hence only two affirmative precepts: honoring parents, and the Sabbath in commemoration of the divine benefit. Aside: don’t envy Thomas — through the envy of the devil death came into the world; the devil’s original sin was pride, from which came envy of these rational animals getting heaven.

9. Replies 2 and 3: reasons and promises (“purely moral precepts have a manifest reason”) #

• Reply 2: purely moral precepts have a manifest reason, so none need be added; but where something ceremonial or determinative of a common moral principle is added — not making a sculpture (first precept), determining the Sabbath day (third) — the reason is less manifest and must be assigned.
• Reply 3: men for the most part order their acts to something useful; so a promise of reward is added where no utility appears, or where an apparent utility is impeded. From parents, already old, one expects no usefulness — hence the promise of long life. And idolatry seems to impede the apparent usefulness men think they get from a pact with devils. (He gestures at Saul and the witch; the passage is garbled.)

10. Replies 4 and 5: threats and memory (“men were prone to idolatry”) #

• Reply 4: punishments are especially necessary against those prone to evil (Nicomachean Ethics X); threats are added to the precepts where there was such proneness — men were prone to idolatry by the general custom of the nations, and prone to perjury by the frequency of [unclear in recording]; so the threat is added to these first two.
• Reply 5: the Sabbath precept is a commemoration of a past benefit, so memory is mentioned there especially — I need no reminder of homicides I committed, but I may forget the benefit I should thank God for. He mentions offering a Mass of thanksgiving. Also the Sabbath precept has a determination joined to it that is not of the law of nature (this particular day), and so needs a special admonition.
  • Aside: the Catholic who thought God punished him for skipping Mass — “I think he will too.” Students add that people need to be reminded of the reason, since they find Mass boring, the church ugly, the people annoying. He stops here: “we don’t have time now.”

His words #

• praevia — “a way before,” pre + via; he notes it does not translate well into English.
• peccatum — more general than culpa; found in nature and in art, so not simply “sin”; he proposes “failure,” a student “defect.”
• culpa — peccatum in the will, in man.
• quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt (Rom. 13) — what is from God is ordered.
• statim/promptum — the Decalogue is what the mind of man accepts at once, promptly.
• gravissimum — the contrary of subjection to the leader.
• secundum viam sensus — “according to the road of the senses,” the way the neighbor is better known.
• manuductio — teaching by leading by the hand, opposed to ordering principles to conclusions.
• ratio — he glosses it here as “the argument,” and once as “the order.”
• maxima sapientia continetur — the greatest wisdom is contained in the divine precepts.
• modus et ordo — mode (a. 7) and order (a. 6), what the wise man disposes.
• ut plurimum — “for the most part.”
• lex timoris — the old law as law of fear.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–5)
• 1 John 4 (obj. 1); Romans 13 (sed contra); Psalm 33 “decline from evil and do good”; Isaiah “cease from acting perversely”; Wisdom 11 “number, weight and measure”; Deuteronomy 4 “this is your wisdom”; Proverbs 3 “write them in the tables of your heart”

Mentioned

• Boethius, commentary on Aristotle’s Praedicamenta (Categories)
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias I (“through the right is known the oblique”); Nicomachean Ethics I, II–V, VIII, X
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 117, a. 1 (on the teacher); the Third Part on the Incarnation; a commentary on the Sentences he had been reading (on peccatum and on the bad having no per se cause)
• Isidore, “every law stands by reason”; Cicero on the son’s debt to his father
• Peter’s confession; the prologue of John; the angels’ announcement in Luke; Luke on the boy Christ growing in wisdom; “whoever receives one child in my name”; Matthew’s last judgment (“you did it unto me”)

His questions #

• How do you translate praevia? — “a way before”; it doesn’t go well into English.
• How do you translate peccatum when it is broader than culpa? — perhaps “failure” (a student: “defect”); left as a problem of words.
• Why must the precepts ordering man to God come first? — because the order of reason begins from the end, and the end of man and society is God, so the contrary is gravest.
• Which is graver, adultery or theft? — adultery, since theft touches only exterior goods.
• How can the God-precepts come first if the neighbor is better known? — because love of God is the reason for love of neighbor, and this is the order of giving reasons, not of leading by the hand.
• Would you ask “why is this man the Son of God?” or “why did the Word become man?” — the second; and it presupposes knowing the Word in himself.
• Should the negative precepts come first, since vices are rooted out before virtues are inserted? — that holds in execution, not in knowledge, and the real reason is that the affirmative precept of the first table is placed last because its transgression induces less guilt.
• Why are there only two affirmative precepts? — because negation extends to more persons than affirmation, and only two benefactors, God and father, can never be sufficiently repaid.
• Where is the promise in the first precept? — “doing mercy on thousands who love me and keep my precepts.”
• Why is memory mentioned only in the Sabbath precept? — because it commemorates a past benefit, and because its determination of the day is not of the law of nature.