Aquinas on the Ceremonial Precepts: Worship of God, Figures and Shadows, and Why There Were So Many (ST I-II Q.101, aa.1-3)

Orientation #

He opens the new question on the ceremonial precepts with a back-reference to what was said above, in q. 99, a. 3, where ceremonial precepts were distinguished from the others (prev. lecture material on the moral precepts). He states the division to come: the ceremonies in themselves (q. 101), their cause (q. 102), their duration (q. 103), and notes Thomas does not ask about their effect.

The class, in order #

1. Prologue and division of q. 101 (“first about these in themselves”) #

Four articles: (1) what is the reason (ratio) of the ceremonial precepts; (2) whether they are figuralia — “we got to get the word figure down”; (3) whether they ought to be many; (4) their distinction.

2. a. 1, objections: why “ceremonial” may not mean “pertaining to worship” (“the reason of the ceremonial precepts”) #

1. Precepts on abstaining from foods (Lev. 11), on clothing of two parts (Lev. 19), on fringes on the corners of garments — not moral (they don’t remain in the New Law), not judicial (not about judgment among men), so ceremonial; yet they don’t seem to concern worship. Aside: Thomas elsewhere uses such a law when asked whether Jews should dress differently — “it’s in their own law.” “I’d hate to be in a debate with this guy.”
2. (footnoted to Albert the Great) “ceremonial” from solemnities, said from the waxes/candles lit — but much pertains to God’s cult besides solemnities.
3. From Greek chere = salve: ceremonies are “norms/rules of salvation” — but all precepts are rules of salvation.
4. Rabbi Moses (Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed; born Cordoba 1139): ceremonial are those whose reason is not manifest — but Sabbath and Passover have manifest reason. Sed contra: Exodus 18, “show the people the ceremonies and the rite of worshipping.”

3. a. 1, body and the etymology from q. 99 (“determine the moral precepts in order to God”) #

Ceremonial precepts determine the moral precepts in the order to God, as judicial do in the order to neighbour; so ceremonial are properly those pertaining to God’s worship. The etymology from q. 99, a. 3: ceremonia as munia Cereris, Ceres said to be goddess of fruits, because offerings were made from the fruits; or, per Valerius Maximus, from a town called Caere. He calls this second more prudential and passes over it.

4. a. 1, replies (“the suitable preparation of those worshipping God”) #

• ad 1: worship includes not only sacrifices but the debita praeparatio of the worshippers — as what is preparatory to an end falls under the science of the end. Foods, clothing: making the worshippers suitable, like special observances in a king’s service. Examples: don’t drink wine before saying Mass; the doctor probably shouldn’t have one before an operation (after, maybe he needs one). Student aside: before seeing President Obama you probably need a drink.
• ad 2: the candle-etymology is unsuitable — the Law speaks not of candles at solemnities but of the lamp with olive oil (Lev. 24). Still, on solemnities everything of worship is most diligently observed, so all ceremonies are included in them. Aside: menorah has the root of light (nur), a participle — “something is lit.” Aside on vigil = staying awake; a student connects the “wake” for the dead.
• ad 3: also unfitting, since ceremonia is Latin, not Greek; still, since man’s salvation is from God, the precepts ordering man to God are most of all rules of salvation. He asks what Vatican II said of the Mass — its central role, its power.
• ad 4: Maimonides’ reason is “in some way probable” — not as defining, but as a consequence: precepts of God’s cult must be figurative, so something is hidden in them and their reason is not so manifest. “He’s being nice to Rabbi Moses.”

5. a. 2, objections: ceremonies not figurative (“it pertains to the office of any teacher”) #

1. A teacher should speak so as to be easily understood (Augustine, De doctrina christiana IV); law is proposed to the people and ought to be manifest (Isidore). Aside: a friend, Larry Brown, bothered by the parables — “why didn’t he just say it?”
2. Worship should have honestas — “we would call that transparency”; representing one thing by another is theatrical, poetic.
3. Augustine, Enchiridion: God is most worshipped by faith, hope and charity, and those precepts are not figurative.
4. John 4: God is spirit, adored in spirit and in truth; figure is not truth but divided against it. Sed contra: Colossians — food, drink, festival, new moon, Sabbaths are umbra of future things.

Digression on poetry. Recalling the objection at the beginning of the Summa about Scripture’s metaphors: the poet uses metaphor to raise what is below our mind up to it; Scripture uses metaphor to bring what is above our mind down to it. Hence Dante is imitating what Scripture does with metaphor rather than what Homer or Shakespeare does. The Trojan War may have been some pirate raid, but Homer makes it a symbol of all human life, giving it more meaning than such things have in real life — “a little bit like what Mozart does in music.” (A friend challenged him: “Duane, you think that has more meaning than it does?”) He used to tell his children, that clarinet, Mozart is talking to you. Paul VI’s favourite poets were Dante and Shakespeare. Warning: people say the Psalms are poems — be careful; they are basically prayers, as is Thomas’s Adoro te devote, called a rhythmus; Shakespeare’s sonnets are really poetry, representations. Aside on Shakespeare calling actors “shadows” — “the best of these are but shadows.”

6. a. 2, body: interior and exterior worship (“the soul worships by an inward worship”) #

1. Worship of God is twofold, interior and exterior, because man is put together (compositus) of soul and body, and both ought to be applied to worshipping God: Psalm 83, “my heart and my flesh exult in the living God”; also “for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts.” As the body is ordered to God through the soul, so the exterior worship is ordered to the interior — “that’s beautifully said… magnificent, in fact.”
2. Interior worship is the soul’s being joined to God by understanding and affection; the exterior acts vary according to the diverse ways understanding and affection are joined to God.
3. In future beatitude the understanding sees divine truth in itself, so the exterior cult is not in figures but only praise proceeding from inward knowledge and affection: Isaiah 51, “joy and gladness are found in it, thanksgiving and the voice of praise.” Aside: so worship in heaven will be vocal — and everyone sings on key; in purgatory they can’t. C. S. Lewis called hell the kingdom of noise.
4. In the present life we cannot look on divine truth in itself; the ray of divine truth must enlighten us under sensible figures (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 1 — a text Thomas often quotes; he notes the Areopagite is now doubted).
5. But diversely in diverse states. In the Old Law neither was divine truth manifest in itself nor the way of reaching it (Hebrews) — Christ, secundum quod homo, est via tendendi in Deum (cf. Summa III prologue, inferred), was not altogether manifest. So the Old Law’s exterior worship was figurative both of the future truth to be manifest in the patria and of Christ the way. In the New Law the way is revealed: it is commemorated as past or present — “Do this in memory of me” — and only the future truth of glory is prefigured. Hebrews 10: the law had the shadow, not the image, of future goods; the umbra is less than the imago, image pertaining to the New Law, shadow to the Old. He recalls Thomas quoting “Isaac” on the overshadowed mind, since we know by discourse and under sensible things. He notes the Council’s sacramentary text: Christ’s passion commemorated, grace received now, pledge of future glory — past, present, future — under the form of bread and wine, because we are nourished by the sacrament.

Digression on the burning bush (illustrating that even imagination should be subject to God, one of Thomas’s reasons for metaphor): flame = the divinity of Christ, bush = humanity, united without one swallowing the other; fire’s simplicity for the divine substance, its light for divine understanding, its warmth for divine love; and the fire a metaphor of the Trinity — light and heat proceeding from fire as Son and Holy Spirit from the Father. As the feet are subject to God in genuflecting, so imagination in metaphor. Thomas: those who ignore this “confess themselves not to be men,” since composed means put together, of soul and body. Also: why did God give us hands to serve our minds? — and a mind to serve God.

7. a. 2, replies (“under the veil of certain figures”) #

• ad 1: divine things are revealed to men only according to their capacity, else they are given matter for falling — they despise what they cannot grasp; better the mysteries be handed over to the rude multitude under the veil of figures, so they may at least know them implicitly, and the figures serve the honour of God.
• ad 2: as poetic things are not grasped by reason because of the defect of truth in them, so divine things are not perfectly grasped because they exceed; in both cases representation by sensible figures is needed, but for opposite reasons. “It’s very subtle, you know, very subtle” — and people get confused, talking of the Psalms as if they were poems. Student: an English professor built a career on the Bible as literature; that misses the point. He: that’s how the Bible was smuggled into public schools — “killing it with faint praise” — since literature can be taught but the Word of God cannot. Aside: a Catholic teaching in a public school with Planned Parenthood down the hall used to tell pupils, “when you were conceived, you were a piece of trash in your mother’s womb” — “I was never a piece of trash” — “Don’t forget.” He refers the class back to the first question of the Summa for comparison.
• ad 3: Augustine speaks of interior worship, to which nevertheless the exterior ought to be ordered.
• ad 4: similarly — through Christ men are more fully introduced to the spiritual worship of God.

Digression on ascending from humanity to divinity. Peter’s profession ascends from Christ as man (“who do men say that I am?”) to “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Fathers note the temptation is recounted in Matthew, Mark and Luke but not in John, because John stresses the divinity and the others, by comparison, the human nature, to which being tempted obviously pertains. From the Catena aurea, Chrysostom on loving God with whole heart, soul, mind: soul as the more spiritual love, heart as the more sensual. Hence St. Alphonsus Liguori’s three meditations on the Passion, written about ten (or twelve-thirteen) years apart, with beautiful quotations from Augustine on learning to love God by meditating on the Passion — which is more sensible. Illustration: a film beginning with a man visiting a grave with his family — “this guy died for me, and I could go home, marry, have children.” Student: Mozart’s baptismal name was John Chrysostom, Wolfgang Amadeus — appropriate to the musician, who represents the emotions and gives them more meaning than they have in life. He plays students Mozart’s D major quintet, which he takes as a representation of the emotions of the philosopher, with his discovery in the second movement. Student story: Leo Albers in Korea, the commanding officer — “Are you married? No, sir. Well, I am, and I have three children. Stick your head out and see who’s shooting.” His uncle Jim volunteered underage for the First World War and over-age for the Second, being a bachelor with no family to care for; candy in the bowl; small-town Minnesota basketball rivalries.

8. a. 3, objections: there ought not to be many ceremonial precepts (“proportioned to the end”) #

1. What is ad finem ought to be proportioned to the end — “that’s a good key word,” a relative distinction; but the end is one God and one Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor.), so the ceremonies ought not to be multiplied.
2. Multitude of precepts is occasion of transgression — Acts 15, Peter: “why do you tempt God, imposing a yoke neither we nor our fathers could bear”; transgression is against salvation, and every law ought to be suitable to men’s salvation (Isidore). “That’s a powerful argument.”
3. Ceremonies belong to exterior, bodily worship, and this worship ought to diminish, since the Law orders to Christ, who teaches worship in spirit and truth. Student: that is very Protestant — an angelism, misunderstanding human nature as body and soul in one unit, which Descartes furthered. Sed contra: Wisdom 8, “I will write for them my many laws”; Job 11, “manifold is his law.”

9. a. 3, body: two kinds of men in a people (“some are prone to evil”) #

Every law is given to a people, and a people contains two kinds: those prone to evil, to be coerced by the law’s precepts, and those inclined to good by nature, custom, or grace, to be instructed and promoted to what is better.

• For the first: this people was prone to idolatry, so they had to be called back to true worship; since men serve idols in many ways, many things had to be instituted a contrario to repress each; and many things imposed so that, weighed down with divine worship, they would have no leisure for idolatry. (The golden calf while he was on the mountain, and the broken tablets.)
• For the second: multiplication refers their minds to God in diverse ways and more assiduously; and the mystery of Christ figured in them brings many utilities to the world, with many things to be considered, needing diverse figures. Aside: the Fathers took pleasure in finding all these figures in the Old Law — “it stays their mind.” A student adds Jacob of Serug (Syriac) reading Elisha’s bowl of salt cast into the water as a figure of the Blessed Mother; neither can recall the reason.

10. a. 3, replies (“many remedies are given to the infirm”) #

• ad 1: when the means suffices to lead to the end, one suffices — one efficacious medicine sometimes induces health, and then one need not multiply it: “why take three pills morning and night? Unless your HMO says otherwise.” But because of weakness and imperfection in the means, it must be multiplied, as many remedies to the sick; the Old Law ceremonies were imperfect both for representing the super-excellent mystery of Christ and for subjecting men’s minds to God — Hebrews 7, “a reprobation of the preceding commandment because of its infirmity and uselessness, for the law brought nothing to perfection.”
• ad 2: it belongs to the wise lawgiver to permit lesser transgressions that greater be avoided; so, to avoid idolatry and the pride that would be born in Jewish hearts if they fulfilled the precepts, God did not omit to give many ceremonial precepts. He works through the sense aloud and leaves it somewhat tangled — God allows the lesser to avoid the greater.
• ad 3: the Old Law did in many ways diminish bodily worship — sacrifices not in every place, not by just anyone — as Rabbi Moses the Egyptian says, though he affirms the contrary elsewhere; yet worship must not be attenuated so far that men decline to the worship of demons. He asks, unresolved: why is Maimonides called “the Egyptian”? Left open. He stops here rather than start a. 4: “maybe better stop there.”

His words #

• secundum se — “about these by themselves”; the ceremonies considered in themselves.
• figuralia — figurative; “we got to get the word figure down.”
• ceremonia — from munia Cereris (Ceres, goddess of fruits), or from the town Caere.
• debita praeparatio — “the suitable preparation” of those who worship.
• honestas — decency; “we would call that transparency.”
• umbra / imago — shadow (Old Law) vs. image (New Law); the shadow is less than the image.
• patria — “the fatherland,” the state of glory.
• coniungatur — the soul “joined to God” by understanding and affection, which is interior worship.
• ad finem — “what is to the end,” a relative notion; “that’s a good key word.”
• a contrario — many institutions set against the many ways of serving idols.
• “put together” / compositus — his rendering of man as composed of soul and body.

Texts #

Read in class

• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 101, prologue; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies); a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies); a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 99, a. 3 (the etymology of ceremonia, revisited)
• Exodus 18; Leviticus 11, 19, 24; Colossians 2; Hebrews 7, 10; John 4; Psalm 83 (Vulgate); Isaiah 51; 1 Corinthians 8; Acts 15; Wisdom 8; Job 11 — as quoted within the articles

Mentioned

• Augustine, De doctrina christiana IV; Enchiridion; a catechetical work “for the rude” (De catechizandis rudibus, inferred)
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 1
• Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed
• Albert the Great (footnote on the solemnities etymology); Valerius Maximus
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 1 (on metaphor in Scripture); Summa III prologue (Christ as via, inferred)
• Thomas, Adoro te devote; Catena aurea on Matthew (Chrysostom)
• Alphonsus Liguori, three meditations on the Passion
• Jacob of Serug (Elisha’s salt as figure of the Blessed Mother)

His questions #

• What makes a precept “ceremonial”? — That it pertains to the worship of God, determining the moral precepts in the order to God.
• Do food and clothing rules pertain to worship? — Yes, as the debita praeparatio of the worshippers; what is preparatory to the end falls under the knowledge of the end.
• Is “ceremonia” from candles at solemnities, or from Greek chere, “salve”? — Neither is fitting: the Law speaks of the oil lamp, and the word is Latin, not Greek.
• Is Maimonides right that ceremonial means “whose reason is not manifest”? — Probable but not the definition; the reason is hidden because the precepts must be figurative.
• Why must the ceremonial precepts be figurative? — Because in this life divine truth reaches us only under sensible figures, and the Old Law figured both future glory and Christ the way to it.
• How do poet and Scripture differ in using metaphor? — The poet raises what is below the mind up to it; Scripture brings down what is above it.
• Why must both soul and body worship? — Because man is composed of soul and body; the exterior worship is ordered to the interior as body to soul through the soul.
• Why so many ceremonial precepts? — Because of the imperfection of the means, the people’s proneness to idolatry, and the many utilities of the mystery of Christ to be figured.
• Why is Rabbi Moses called “the Egyptian”? — Left open.