Aquinas on the Moral Precepts: Charity, the Other Moral Precepts Beyond the Decalogue, and Whether They Justify (ST I-II Q.100, aa.10-12)

Orientation #

He opens with the prayer and says “Up to Article Ten, I guess,” picking up q. 100 where he left off (prev. lecture). At the end he calls a break “before we start the ceremonial things.” Verified sources confirm the class treats q. 100, aa. 10, 11 and 12.

The class, in order #

1. Article 10, objections: does the mode of charity fall under precept? (“if you wish to enter into life, observe the commands”) #

Point: three objections that charity’s mode is commanded, and a sed contra that it cannot be.

• Obj. 1: Matthew 19 makes observing the commands suffice for entering life; but good works do not suffice without charity (1 Cor 13: giving all to the poor and one’s body to be burnt profits nothing without charity). So charity’s mode is under precept.
• Obj. 2: The mode of charity means doing all on account of God; and “do all for the glory of God” is commanded.
• Obj. 3: If not commanded, one could fulfill the precepts without charity, hence without grace, which is always joined to charity — the error of Pelagius (Augustine, On Heresies).
• Sed contra: whoever does not observe a precept sins mortally; so anyone without charity would sin mortally in every good act he does — which is “inconvenient,” which he glosses: “doesn’t fit.”

2. Article 10, the body: two opinions, both partly true (“the act of charity can be considered in two ways”) #

Point: Thomas does not choose between the opinions but distinguishes.

• Opinion A: the mode of charity is commanded; one without charity can dispose himself to receive it, and does not sin mortally each time, since the precept is affirmative — and affirmative precepts do not bind always. He generalizes: negative precepts cover all cases; affirmative ones bind when it is appropriate.
• Opinion B: omnino, altogether, it does not fall under precept.
• Thomas’s distinction: (i) charity as an act per se — here there is a special precept, “you shall love the Lord your God” and “your neighbor”; opinion A speaks truly. (ii) charity as the mode of the acts of the other virtues — the intention/end as formal mode of the act ordered to the end (1 Tim.); here opinion B speaks truly: “honor your father and mother” does not include “honor him from charity.”
• His test question to the class: am I disobeying the command to honor father and mother when I honor them without charity? No. He can still transgress the other precept, about the act of charity, and merit punishment for that.
• Student exchange: the act of honoring still falls under love of neighbor, since it is a good done to a neighbor — he agrees: “you’re not doing it out of charity,” but it is not a violation of the fourth command.

3. Digression: divisions of sin, and the missing command to love oneself (“you don’t love yourself unless you love God”) #

Point: something he found in the Sentences commentary that a student would not know where to look for.

• The logical objection: a genus has only one per se division into species, so sin cannot have many divisions. Thomas’s answer goes back to the treatise on division in logic: besides division of a genus by essential differences, there is division of a subject by its accidents, accident by accident. He admits he used to say such divisions “aren’t very important” — but here they work.
• The per se division of sin is according to the virtues; another division, from the Fathers, is sin against God, against oneself, against one’s neighbor.
• Objection: sin is against charity, and there are only two precepts of love — so why a third member, against oneself?
• Class discussion: love of self seems tied to the second precept (“as yourself”). A student proposes: if I love my neighbor for God’s sake, as image, the same reason holds for me. He replies by sharpening the question: is self-love part of the second precept or presupposed to it? If presupposed, it is not part of it.
• Thomas’s answer in the text: it is included in the command to love God — unless you love God you do not really love yourself. He flags this as the kind of thing he puts in his notes because “you wouldn’t know where you’d find that text.”

4. Aside: the suicide conference and the philosopher’s definition of natural law (“naturally known… naturally good or bad”) #

Point: a theological and a philosophical definition of natural law.

• At an Assumption conference on physician-assisted suicide (the bishop of Worcester and a Jesuit priest-physician), the bishop used the Summa’s definition: natural law as a partaking of the eternal law. That is the theologian’s definition — everything defined by reference to God.
• The philosopher’s definition takes things in themselves: natural in two senses — the law is about what is naturally good or bad (good to honor parents, bad to murder or steal) and is naturally known, without discourse.
• Student: Thomas earlier said some things are known modica consideratione, with the least little consideration. He grants it and says the next article returns to this.
• Asides: the 350,000 Planned Parenthood abortions a year, and his night job at the printing press with the morning press; a student asks about the baby-parts scandal.

5. Article 10, replies (“they can oblige one for diverse times”) #

• Ad 1: the Lord did not say observe one command but all, among which are the commands of love of God and neighbor.
• Ad 2: loving God with the whole heart includes referring all things to God; so one who honors parents is held to do it from charity — but by reason of the precept of love of God, not the fourth precept. And since both are affirmative and do not bind always, they can oblige at different times; so one can fulfill the precept about honoring parents at a moment when he is not then transgressing about the mode of charity.
• Student: “this I didn’t really understand it, but now I think I see.”
• Ad 3: one cannot observe all the precepts without fulfilling the precept of charity, which does not come about without grace; so Pelagius is impossible. Aside: reading his cousin Donald’s English volumes of Augustine in high school — “his name stinks in your mind.”

6. Article 11, objections: why other moral precepts besides the Decalogue? (“the whole law and the prophets are hanging”) #

• Obj. 1: the whole Law hangs on the two precepts of charity (Mt 22), and these are unfolded by the ten; so no others are needed. His comment: this objector is not looking before and after — some precepts are more particular than the ten. Aside: Francis de Sales wanted the Visitation sisters to take only one vow, of charity, and the Church said no.
• Obj. 2: determinations of the common moral precepts belong to the judicial and ceremonial precepts, and the common moral ones are in or presupposed to the Decalogue; so others are superfluous — “precepts should not be multiplied without necessity.”
• Obj. 3: moral precepts concern the acts of all virtues; yet the added precepts cover worship, liberality, mercy, chastity, but not fortitude or sobriety — a picking and choosing.
• Sed contra: Psalm 18, the law of the Lord is immaculate, converting souls; the superadded moral precepts keep man without the stain of sin.

7. Article 11, body: three grades of moral precept (“some are most certain… some only to the wise”) #

Point: moral precepts have force from natural reason’s dictate even if never enacted, unlike judicial and ceremonial, which have force from their institution alone.

• Boundary case raised by a student: is the priesthood being restricted to men like that? He calls it a good question — before institution, yes, though it might be a figure of Christ. Parallel: God could have instituted the sacrament in beer or fudge instead of bread and wine (“I would be kind of shocked”), as some churches use soda pop; but he instituted bread of this sort and wine of this sort.
• The three grades:

1. Certissima, most certain, needing no editing or establishing: the precepts of love of God and neighbor, which are the very ends of the precepts; in these no one can err by judgment of reason.
2. More determined, whose reason anyone can easily see, but in a few cases human judgment is perverted — these are the Decalogue’s precepts. His comment: where people go wrong in these, it is not by judgment of reason — “like the Supreme Court when the gay marriage.” Even “the old pagan Aristotle” sees this: in the Nicomachean Ethics, on virtue as a mean, there is no mean of adultery, and likewise theft and murder.
3. Those whose reason is manifest only to the wise — the more difficult precepts added above the Decalogue, given in order from God to the people through Moses and Aaron.

• Aside on manifestum: “Uncle Sirk’s story” [unclear in recording; likely a name] — manifest like catching a man with his hand on the money, no question of guilt.

8. Article 11 continued: the added precepts reduced to each commandment (“by way of a certain addition to them”) #

Point: what is manifest is the beginning for knowing what is not, so the added precepts are reductions of the Decalogue’s by addition. In order:

• 1st (strange gods): Deut 18 — no one who sacrifices his son leading him through fire, no evildoer, incantator (“it doesn’t mean an opera singer, I hope”), no consulting the python, no seeking truth from the dead.
• 2nd (perjury): blasphemy and false teaching (Deut 13).
• 3rd: all the ceremonial precepts.
• 4th (honor parents): honoring the old — Lev 19, rise up before the white-haired and honor the person of the old; and universally reverence to a greater, benefits to equals and to lesser.
• 5th (homicide): hatred and any violence against one’s neighbor — Lev 19, “you will not stand against the blood of your neighbor”; “you will not hate your brother in your heart.” He glosses molitionis as from grinding — grinding an axe, holding a grudge.
• 6th (adultery): prohibition of the loose woman — Deut 23, no harlot among the daughters of Israel, no fornicator among the sons; and the vice against nature, Lev 18, “with the male you shall not mix,” nor with a beast. He notes this is “not quite as obvious” and that such things are “edited out in the current edition.”
• 7th (theft): usury (Deut 23), fraud — Deut 25, “you shall not have in your bag diverse weights”; and all that pertains to calumny and stealing.
• 8th (false testimony): false judgment — Exod 23, do not acquiesce to the sentence of the many so as to deviate from the truth (“go with the poll”); prohibition of lying, “flee from the lie”; and detraction, “you shall not be a criminator and a whisperer among the people” — “that’s a beautiful word, Cicero.”
• To the last two precepts nothing is joined, since through them all bad desire is universally prohibited.
• Aside: a student’s line he calls his favorite — most men “have the mental stability of a wind sock.”

9. Article 11, replies (“ex vi institutionis, not by natural instinct”) #

• Ad 1: the Decalogue’s precepts are ordered to love of God and neighbor by the manifest notion of what is owed; the others by a more hidden reason. Parallel in philosophy: some things manifestly follow, others are hidden. Example: finding the center of a circle — draw a chord, bisect it, erect a perpendicular, bisect that; you see it though you haven’t proved it, and Euclid does prove it; whereas the angle at the circumference being half the angle at the center is more hidden.
• Ad 2: the ceremonial and judicial precepts determine the Decalogue ex vi institutionis; the added moral precepts by natural instinct. Student exchange: these added ones still have the force of natural instinct, but have to be made known — he agrees.
• Ad 3: the law is ordered to the common good; virtues ordering one to another, and chastity (since generation serves the common good of the species), directly pertain to it, so precepts are given about these. Fortitude’s act is commanded by the one leading into battle (Deut 23, the priest: do not fear, do not give way); gluttony’s prohibition is left to paternal admonition, being contrary to the domestic good (Deut 21, the parents complain of the son who will not listen, giving himself over to eating and luxury and banquets).
• Asides: Dickens’s city dinners; the Rheims New Testament’s gloss on commessatio — “immoderate banquets and belly cheer with wanton riotousness,” which he calls “worth remembering.”

10. Article 12: do the moral precepts justify? (“the letter kills”) #

• Obj. 1: Romans 2 — doers of the law are justified.
• Obj. 2: Lev 18 — keep my laws and judgments, which a man doing will live in them; spiritual life is by justice.
• Obj. 3: divine law is more efficacious than human law, and human law justifies. His comment: “it seems equivocation is running through this somehow here.”
• Sed contra: 2 Cor, litera occidit, the letter kills — understood by Augustine (On the Spirit and the Letter) of the moral precepts. Aside: “the devil can quote scripture.”

11. Article 12, body: “justify” as equivocal by reason (“just as healthy is properly and first said”) #

Point: sorting out the equivocations, first in “justification,” then in “justice.”

• Logic recalled with the class: equivocal vs. univocal; then equivocal by chance vs. equivocal by reason. Equivocal by chance: his visitor Richard and the student’s brother Richard — nobody named them for something they share. Equivocal by reason: there is an order, prior and posterior, among the meanings. Aristotle’s stock example in the Metaphysics: healthy said first of the body in good condition, then of what signifies it (a healthy complexion), what produces it, what preserves it (a diet, exercise).
• So: justification is first and properly the doing or making of justice; secondarily and quasi-improperly, what signifies justice or disposes to it. In these two ways the precepts of the law do justify: they dispose men for the grace of Christ and signify it — Augustine, Contra Faustum: the life of that people was itself prophetic and figured Christ. Aside: Augustine could not judge whether Faustus spoke truth or falsehood, but discovered he did not know the liberal arts — “what if Augustine hadn’t introduced the liberal arts? How would he have seen through Faustus?”
• Justification properly said, two ways: (a) man becomes just by acquiring the habit of justice; (b) he does works of justice, the carrying out of justice. And the habit may be acquired (caused by our works) or infused (caused by God through grace). The infused is the true justice in question, by which one is called just before God (Rom 4: if Abraham was justified from works he would have glory, but not before God). This the moral precepts cannot cause, since they are about human acts.
• But taking justification as the carrying out of justice, all the precepts justify, in different ways: ceremonial precepts contain justice only in general, as exhibited in worship, and in particular only from the determination of divine law — hence they justify only from the devotion and obedience of those doing them. Moral and judicial precepts contain what is in itself just.
• Moral precepts contain what is just according to general justice — “which is all virtues,” Aristotle, Ethics V. Digression on Plato: temperance in the concupiscible, courage in the irascible, prudence in reason — leaving no part for justice, since he did not see the will as separate from reason; so he makes justice the coordination of the parts. This resembles what we call the justice of Adam and Eve before the fall, the parts in harmony, an effect of each part having its virtue. Hence Aristotle has to distinguish the senses of justice, having spent all that time in Plato’s school — “great guy that Plato. First man to show by word and deed that the happy life is the virtuous life,” which he says Aristotle put up to honor his teacher.
• Judicial precepts pertain to special justice, about the contracts of human life, men toward each other.

12. Article 12, replies (“he does not incur the punishment of death”) #

• Ad 1: the Apostle takes justification for the carrying out of justice.
• Ad 2: the doer of the precepts “lives in them” because he does not incur the death penalty inflicted on transgressors.
• Ad 3: the precepts of human law justify by acquired justice, about which we are not asking here, but only about the justice [infused]. He closes: “that’s a bit of do justice that text” — one must distinguish a number of senses of justice; then calls a break before the ceremonial precepts.

His words #

• “mode of charity” — charity as the formal mode of acts of other virtues, i.e. the end/intention, distinguished from the act of charity per se.
• “inconvenient” — his gloss: “doesn’t fit.”
• “looking before and after” — his recurring praise/criticism: seeing what is prior and posterior to a thing (used of the objector at a. 11 obj. 1 and of Thomas’s three grades).
• omnino — “altogether,” of the second opinion in a. 10.
• modica consideratione — “with the least little consideration” (student’s contribution).
• certissima — “most certain, most sure,” of the first grade of moral precepts.
• “manifest” — like catching a man with his hand on the money.
• molitionis — from grinding; “grinding an axe,” holding a grudge.
• commessatio — Rheims gloss: “immoderate banquets and belly cheer with wanton riotousness.”
• ex vi institutionis — “by way of the institution,” contrasted with natural instinct.
• “equivocal by reason” — meanings in an order, prior and posterior [ed.: pros hen, a term he utters].
• dupliciter — “in two ways,” which he jokes is “with duplicity.”
• acquisita / infused — virtue caused by our repeated acts vs. poured in by God through grace.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100, a. 10 (whole article)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100, a. 11 (whole article)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 100, a. 12 (whole article)
• Scripture read within these articles: Matthew 19; 1 Corinthians 13; “do all for the glory of God”; Matthew 22; Psalm 18; Deuteronomy 13, 18, 21, 23, 25; Leviticus 18, 19; Exodus 23; Romans 2; Romans 4; Leviticus 18 (“live in them”); 2 Corinthians (“the letter kills”)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the Sentences — divisions of sin; love of self included in love of God
• Augustine, De haeresibus; De spiritu et littera; Contra Faustum; the English volumes read in high school
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics — no mean of adultery; Book V on general justice
• Aristotle, Metaphysics — “healthy” as equivocal by reason
• Euclid — proof for the center of a circle
• Rheims New Testament gloss on commessatio; Cicero (criminator); Dickens and James Herriot on banquets

His questions #

• Does the mode of charity fall under the precept of divine law? — In one way yes (charity has its own precept), in another no (it is not part of “honor your father and mother”).
• Am I disobeying the command to honor father and mother when I honor them without charity? — No; but one may transgress the distinct precept about the act of charity.
• Why is there no commandment to love yourself, and with which of the two is it tied? — Thomas includes it in the love of God: unless you love God you do not really love yourself.
• What is the philosopher’s definition of natural law, as against the theologian’s? — What is naturally known about what is naturally good or bad, rather than a partaking of the eternal law.
• Was the restriction of the priesthood to men a matter of institution alone? — “That’s a good question” — before it was instituted, yes, though it may be a figure of Christ; left open.
• Why are precepts added beyond the Decalogue for chastity and worship but not for fortitude and sobriety? — Because law aims at the common good; fortitude is commanded by the leader in battle, gluttony left to paternal admonition.
• What is the distinction between equivocal and univocal, and between equivocal by chance and by reason? — Equivocal by reason has an order of prior and posterior among meanings, as in “healthy.”
• Do the moral precepts of the old law justify? — Not by causing infused justice, but they dispose to and signify it, and all precepts justify in the sense of carrying out justice.