Summa I-II Q.101 a.4 and Q.102 a.1-2: Dividing the Old Law Ceremonies, and Their Causes in the Letter and in Figure

Orientation #

“Guess we’re up to the last article here in question one hundred one, article four. That’s where we left off.” He also refers back to q. 101, a. 2 (the ceremonies are figurative) as already settled, and at the end of q. 102, a. 2 points ahead to “the four points in particular” (aa. 3–6). The previous class worked through qq. 101–102 on the reason for the ceremonial precepts and their figurative character.

The class, in order #

1. Opening digression: the parts of the treatise on God (“a little bit of relief”) #

He took a break from moral theology — quoting the Sapiential books, “he who adds another science adds another pain,” which Thomas explains by two pains: the discomfort of learning (ethics is painful because uncertain compared to some), and the pain of seeing one’s own defects and the world’s. So after the second book of the Sentences he reread the Compendium of Theology.

• Contrast: Summa prima pars divides the substance of God into five (simplicity; perfection, with goodness attached; infinity, hence omnipresence; unchangeableness; unity); the Compendium into three — unity falls inside the treatise on simplicity, and infinity comes before perfection.
• Why infinity belongs with perfection: a straight line is infinite by privation, lacking an endpoint; God is infinite by simple negation — negating any potency that would contract his actuality.
• The question he leaves open: why five and not three, since the rule of two or three would allow three? His guesses: to fix the unity of God before the Trinity, so that the distinction of Persons is not taken as three gods; and to pull out infinity because it helps us understand how God can create, the next part after the Trinity. “I have to think about that some more.”
• Aside: he once planned a convention talk comparing all three works, cut it to the two Summas, and refused to say one order is correct or better — only “what do you see in proceeding in one order better.”

2. Before and after: Christ’s two natures (“looking before and after”) #

Student question prompts the senses of before: can this be before that and that before this? Only in different senses.

• Divine nature before human nature in being — the second sense — because it can be without the other.
• Human nature before divine in our knowing — the third sense: Peter’s confession (Matthew 16, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”) and doubting Thomas’s “My Lord and my God,” where Thomas comments that “my Lord” refers to the human nature, since even as man he is our Lord; Thomas had to be led through the senses, so his confession does not get the priority of “those who without this” believe.
• “The Father is greater than I,” said according to Christ’s human nature: in better, and the quasi-fifth sense, cause.
• Not the first sense (time), since the divine nature is not in time; but something alongside it — “before Abraham was, I am”; eternity is not before time in time, but you may say before time in duration.

3. Studying and passing the exam; virtue and its acts (“what’s the problem here?”) #

• Studying vs. passing the exam: both “ahead” of each other but in two different senses of cause — studying is the mover/maker of passing; passing is the end for which one studied (and “that’s not the best reason to study”).
• Aristotle in the Ethics: virtues acquired by repeated acts. Are you courageous because you did courageous acts, or do you do them because you are courageous? Distinguish the acts before and after the habit: before, it is a great struggle, done imperfectly and without stability; after, more perfectly and with greater stability.
• Student adds the four temperaments: some are courageous by nature, some fearful, so the habit is harder for the fearful. He allows that a natural gift comes before courageous acts in a different way than the habit does.

4. The Father and generation (“that’s a very subtle thing”) #

From the Compendium: did the Father generate the Son because he is Father, or is he Father because he generated? The Summa’s order is processions, then relations based on them, then persons who are those relations.

• Thomas’s answer: if by “Father” you mean the relation as relation, it is after the generation; if you mean the subsisting person, it is before, since having the ability to generate he can generate. In the case of the Son it is after in both cases, since the generation is naturally before the Son and before his being Son. “That’s a very subtle thing … very very very subtle.”
• Student: these are only senses of before in our understanding, not in the Trinity itself. He agrees: there is a before and after in our knowledge of the Trinity.
• Aside: and this is the Compendium, “the catechism for the brothers,” that Brother Reginald walked around with.

5. The five objections of q. 101, a. 4 (“Why do you do this to me, Thomas?”) #

The division into sacrifices, sacred things (sacra), sacraments and observances seems unsuitable:

1. The ceremonies figure Christ, but only sacrifices do that, figuring the sacrifice in which Christ offered himself as oblation and host (Ephesians 5) — so only sacrifices are ceremonial.
2. The old law is ordered to the new, and in the new the sacrifice itself is the sacrament of the altar (he notes Thomas’s De Venerabili Sacramento Altaris) — so sacrament and sacrifice should not be distinguished.
3. “Sacred” means dedicated to God, as tabernacle and vessels are sanctified; but all the ceremonial is ordered to God’s cult — so all are sacred, and sacra should not be one part.
4. Observances come from observing, and all the precepts are to be observed (Deuteronomy 8:11).
5. Solemnities are numbered among the ceremonial as a shadow of the future (Colossians), and so are offerings and gifts (Hebrews 9:9), which do not fit under the four.

• Sed contra: all four are called ceremonia in Scripture — sacrifices (Numbers 15, offering the vitulum, its sacrifices and libations); the sacrament of order (Leviticus 7, the anointing of Aaron and his sons); the sacred things (Exodus 38, the tools of the tabernacle of testimony and the ceremonia of the Levites); observances (“not observing the ceremonies which are proposed to you”).
• Asides: he tells the joke of his brother describing students looking up as if to say “why are you doing this to me?” — “He has another science, he has another pain.” On translating ceremonia: English says “ceremonies,” but “there’s no way to do it.”

6. Digression: eagle, calf, lion; Mozart (“guess what animal represents the irascible”) #

Prompted by the vitulum, he recalls from the Sentences (on whether the spark of reason can be extinguished — it can be obscured, not extinguished) a Church Father’s animal likenesses: the spark is the eagle, flying above all birds; the calf is the concupiscible; the lion, king of the forest, the irascible. Thomas: the irascible shares in reason more than the concupiscible, because it works “I’m going to get even with you” — doing this for that, a connection with reason, however imperfect; whereas with the concupiscible you just put the candy in your mouth without thinking.

• Application: Mozart’s last five symphonies — the two extremes, first and fifth, both in C major, both representing magnanimity, a virtue of the irascible; the 40th and the 38th represent fortitude, again irascible. So the set is dominated by the irascible; the Jupiter (a name given by an English critic) is “the lion,” not the concupiscible.

7. Dividing into four by the rule of two or three (“one and three… two and two”) #

A division into four must be reduced. One way: one and three — as when Thomas divides order relative to reason into four (the order reason does not make but considers, studied by natural philosophy; the order reason makes in its own acts, logic; in the acts of the will, ethics and practical philosophy; in exterior matter, the mechanical arts, cooking, carpentry) — where the first, not made by reason, stands off against the last three. The four cardinal virtues likewise: prudence in reason, the other three in the appetite. But here the division is two and two, also allowable under the rule of two or three.

8. The body of a. 4 (“the worship itself and the tools of worshiping”) #

The ceremonial precepts are ordered to divine worship, in which two things can be considered:

1. The worship itself — chiefly the sacrifices offered in reverence of God.
2. The instruments of worshipping — the sacra: tabernacle, vessels and the like. Then two things on the part of those worshipping:
3. Their being instituted for divine cult by a consecration, of the people or of the ministers — the sacraments. He brings it close: at Mass the priest has been consecrated, and the people baptized, are to receive communion; “so, get the people sometimes too.”
4. Their conversatio — “not just conversation, but way of life” — by which they are distinguished from those who do not worship God: the observances, in food, vestments and the like.

9. The replies of a. 4 (“they retain the common name of sacred”) #

• ad 1: sacrifices are offered in some places and by some men; the whole pertains to worship. As sacrifices signified Christ offered up, so the sacraments and sacra figured the sacraments and sacred things of the new law, and the observances figured the way of life of the new people — all of which pertain to Christ.
• ad 2: the sacrifice of the new law, the Eucharist, contains Christ himself, the author of sanctification, who sanctified the people by his own blood (Hebrews) — therefore it is also a sacrament. The old law’s sacrifices did not contain but only figured him, so are not called sacraments; apart from them there were sacraments of the old law, figures of the future, and to some consecrations sacrifices were joined. On the word Eucharist: sometimes explained as thanksgiving, but Thomas also takes it as “good grace,” the plenitude of grace, the sacrament containing the very source of grace, the end of all the sacraments. Aside: “Behold the Lamb of God — was he a lamb or what?”
• ad 3: sacrifices and sacraments are sacred too, but some things dedicated to worship are neither, and these retain the common name of sacra. Parallel from logic: Aristotle sometimes divides disposition against habit, sometimes says habit is a disposition — disposition can be the genus or one species under it; a habit is a firm disposition. Boundary case: a mood is easily changed (a joke changes it; a drink on the way home from work is a “mood changer”), a habit is not — “one swallow does not make a summer.” The member with nothing special beyond the common meaning keeps the common name; the other gets a new name. Asides: his mother disliked his saying man is an animal (“animal” in two senses); “you don’t have to treat the girl like a thing — treat her like nothing, then”; if the biologist says you’re an animal that’s not insulting, if your girlfriend says it, it is.
• ad 4: things pertaining to the lifestyle of the worshipping people keep the common name observances; insofar as they fall short of the foregoing they are not called sacra, having no immediate respect to God’s worship as tabernacle and vessels do, but are ceremonial by a certain consequence, pertaining to a suitability of the worshippers. Example: the old fast from midnight, now one hour — not a sacred thing but a matter of being suitably disposed; “down on hamburgers and going to communion, that’s kind of irreverent.” Some like to wait a little after Mass before eating.
• ad 5: as sacrifices are offered in a determined place, so at determined times — so solemnities are numbered among the sacra; oblations and gifts are numbered with sacrifices, being offered to God, as the Apostle says every priest is taken from men and constituted for men in the things that are to God, offering dona and sacrifices.
• “Okay, we’ll let Thomas off then on this one, shall we?”

10. The plan of q. 102 and “the sense of the letter” (“four things are asked”) #

Four questions: (1) whether the ceremonial precepts have a cause; (2) whether a cause in the letter or only a figural one; then (3–6) the causes of the sacrifices, sacraments, sacra, observances. The first two are more general than the last four, which follow the division of a. 4.

• He prefers “sense of the letter” to “literal sense,” because we now oppose “literal” to “figurative” and so exclude metaphor. “The Lord is my rock”: the sense of the letter is not that God is a rock, but what the metaphor signifies — in metaphor a thing is signified which in turn signifies something, and that is still within the sense of the letter.
• He notes this order as an instance of “looking before and after,” in the fifth sense of Aristotle’s list (which he left aside in the second sense, though it is not fifth in order); likewise grace treated in itself, then its causes, then its effects.

11. Q. 102, a. 1: whether the ceremonial precepts have a cause (“sapientis est ordinare”) #

Objections:

1. The gloss on Ephesians 2:15 — emptying the old law regards the fleshly observances, replaced by decrees, i.e. evangelical precepts, which are ex ratione; if the old observances were from reason, it would be in vain to empty them by the reasonable decrees of the new. (“We emptied out that nonsense.”)
2. The old law succeeds the law of nature, in which there was a precept with no reason except to prove man’s obedience — Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter VIII, on the prohibition of the tree of life [he says “wood of the life to real life”; ed.: the tree of knowledge, as in his later reply].
3. Human works are called moral according as they are by reason; if the ceremonial precepts had a reason they would not differ from the moral precepts.

• Sed contra: Psalm 18, “the precept of the law is lucid, enlightening the eyes”; the ceremonial precepts are precepts of God, therefore lucid, which requires a reasonable cause.
• Aside: someone said you exercise the body but not the mind; Aristotle gives as the first use of dialectics the exercise of the mind — especially if you are given the objections and let stew a while before the body of the article.
• Body, his argument:
  1. It belongs to the wise man to order — sapientis est ordinare, Aristotle, Metaphysics I, in the prooemium, the culminating item of a six-part description of the wise man; Thomas quotes it at the start of the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics before dividing order into the four. The reason: wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and it is proper to reason to know order, so the wise man most of all orders. “That’s beautiful — the wise man most of all looks before and after,” and most of all appreciates beauty, since that involves order.
  2. So what proceeds from divine wisdom must be ordered: Romans 13:1, quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt.
  3. Order requires two things: (a) being ordered to a suitable end, which is the beginning of the whole order in things to be done — what happens by chance apart from the intention of an end, or is done not seriously but in play, is called inordinata; (b) that what is ordered to the end be proportioned to it, whence the reason of what is for the end is taken from the end: the reason for the disposition of the teeth of a saw is taken from cutting, its end (Physics II).
  4. The ceremonial precepts, like all the precepts, are instituted by divine wisdom — Deuteronomy 4, “this is your wisdom and understanding before the people.” Conclusion: they are ordered to some end, from which their reasonable causes can be assigned — an end “we’ve got to discover.”
• Replies: ad 1 — the old observances can be called without reason in that they have no reason in their own nature (that a vestment not be of wool and linen), but have a reason from their order to something else, as signifying or including something; whereas the decrees of the new law, consisting especially in faith and love, are of their very nature reasonable acts. This is why natural law is called natural: it is about what is by its very nature good or bad and naturally known, the reason being in the act itself. “Is it reasonable to go around killing little lambs? In itself? It might signify something.” ad 2 — the prohibition of the tree of knowledge of good and bad was not because the tree was naturally bad, but had its reason from its order to something else, as figuring something; so too the ceremonial precepts, in ordinatione ad aliud. ad 3 — moral precepts secundum suam naturam have reasonable causes (thou shalt not kill, not steal); the ceremonial have them ex ordinatione ad aliud.

12. Q. 102, a. 2: cause in the letter as well as figural (“the end of the ceremonial precepts is twofold”) #

Objections:

1. Chief among the ceremonies are circumcision and the immolation of the paschal lamb — immolatio meaning the burning up, the destroying of the offering — and both are given as signs: Genesis 17:11, cut around the flesh, that it may be a sign of the covenant between me and you; Exodus 13 of the Passover (phase, the passing over), “this will be a sign in your hand and a monument before your eyes.” So even these have only a figural cause — much more the rest. Aside on branding cattle in the West: the stamp shows whose it is, and if your bin holds one with my mark, “my sheriff shooter is coming out” — taking the law into your own hands was all right where there was nobody else around. He notes the objection uses the dialectical place “much more so,” useful for exercising the mind.
2. Effects should be proportioned to their cause; all the ceremonials are figural (q. 101, a. 2); therefore their cause is only figural.
3. What is of itself indifferent, done thus or not thus, seems to have no literal cause; but some ceremonial determinations seem indifferent, as the number of animals offered and like circumstances.

• Sed contra: the ceremonial precepts figure Christ, but so do the historical narratives — 1 Corinthians, omnia in figura contingebant illis; yet the histories have, besides the mystical or figural sense, a sense of the letter; so too the ceremonial precepts. Aside, mock distress: “Don’t leave me here, Thomas. I’ll be in confusion the rest of my life… all night long I will be thinking about this.”
• Body: since the reason of what is ordered to an end is taken from the end, and the end of the ceremonial precepts is twofold — the worship of God for that time, and the figuring of Christ — their reasons are twofold. Comparison: the words of the prophets regard the present time but are also said in figure of the future, as Jerome says on Osee (“a good, interesting prophet”).
  • Literal reasons, from the divine worship to be observed at that time: to avoid the cult of idolatry; to recall [he corrects a student’s “some dependence of God” to “remembering”] some dependence on God; to insinuate the divine excellence; to designate a disposition of mind required in those then worshipping God.
  • Figural and mystical reasons, as ordered to figuring Christ: from Christ himself and the Church — allegory; from the morals of the Christian people — the moral sense; from the state of future glory into which we are introduced through Christ — the anagogical sense. He notes Thomas sometimes uses “mystical” for the spiritual sense, and that this goes back to the senses given in q. 1 of the Summa.
  • Aside: who wrote the encyclical on Scripture studies dedicated to Jerome? Answer supplied: Benedict XV, about a hundred years ago.
• Replies: ad 1 — as the understanding of metaphorical speech in Scripture is according to the letter, so the meanings of the ceremonies which commemorate God’s benefits or other things of that state do not transcend the order of the letter; hence assigning as cause of the Passover that it is a sign of the liberation from Egypt, and of circumcision that it is a sign of the pact God made with Abraham, pertains to the literal cause. ad 2 — the argument proceeds as if the precepts were given only to figure the future, not also for worshipping God in the present. ad 3 — as in human laws what is said universally has a reason but not as regards the particular conditions, which are left to the judgment of those instituting it, so many particular determinations of the old ceremonies have no literal but only a figurative cause; in common they have both.
• He breaks off before “the four points in particular”: “Take a little break here before.”

His words #

• “pain of learning” — the discomfort of learning; ethics is painful to learn because uncertain compared to some sciences.
• “infinite by negation, not by privation” — God’s infinity negates any potency contracting his actuality; a line’s infinity is a lack of endpoint.
• “rule of two or three” — his name for Thomas’s habit of dividing into two or three; a four is reduced to “one and three” or “two and two.”
• “the four central senses” of before and after — being, knowing, better, time; with cause as a “quasi-fifth sense.”
• sacra — “sacred things, holy things”; the instruments of worship.
• conversatio — “not just conversation, but way of life.”
• “mood changer” — an easily changed disposition, against habit as a firm disposition.
• “sense of the letter” [ed.: the literal sense] — his preferred rendering, since metaphor belongs to it.
• sapientis est ordinare — it belongs to the wise man to order.
• inordinata — disordered: what is by chance apart from the intention of an end, or done in play.
• immolatio — the burning up, the destroying, of the offering.
• quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt — “the things which are from God are ordered.”
• ex ordinatione ad aliud — from the order to something else: the source of the ceremonial precepts’ reasonableness.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 101, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–5)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 102, prologue and a. 1
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 2
• Scripture quoted within these: Ephesians 5; Ephesians 2:15 with gloss; Deuteronomy 8:11; Deuteronomy 4; Colossians; Hebrews 9:9; Hebrews (sanctified by his own blood); Numbers 15; Leviticus 7; Exodus 38; Genesis 17:11; Exodus 13; 1 Corinthians (omnia in figura); Psalm 18; Romans 13:1; Matthew 16
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, prooemium (six marks of the wise man)
• Aristotle, Physics II (teeth of the saw)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology (substance of God; the Trinity, Father and generation)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae prima pars (five parts on the substance of God; q. 1, senses of Scripture); I-II, q. 101, a. 2
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles; commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (fourfold order); commentary on the Sentences II (spark of reason); De Venerabili Sacramento Altaris
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (virtue by repeated acts); Topics (inferred) on dialectics as exercise of the mind
• Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter VIII
• Jerome, on Osee; Benedict XV’s encyclical on Scripture dedicated to Jerome
• Shakespeare, “looking before and after”

His questions #

• Why does Thomas divide the substance of God into five in the Summa and only three in the Compendium? Left open; his guesses: to fix God’s unity before the Trinity, and to draw out infinity for understanding creation.
• Is the human nature of Christ before the divine, or the divine before the human? Each in a different sense: the divine in being (second sense), the human in our knowing (third sense); “the Father is greater than I” in better and in cause.
• Are studying and passing the exam each before the other in the same sense? No: studying is cause as mover/maker, passing the exam as end.
• Did the Father generate the Son because he is Father, or is he Father because he generated? As relation, Father is after the generation; as subsisting person, before it; in the Son’s case, after in both ways.
• Guess what animal represents the irascible? The lion, king of the forest; the calf the concupiscible, the eagle the spark of reason.
• How do you divide four into two or three? Either one and three (order relative to reason; prudence against the three appetitive virtues) or two and two, as here.
• Do the ceremonial precepts have a cause? Yes: they come from divine wisdom, and it belongs to the wise man to order to an end, from which their reasons are taken.
• Do they have a cause in the letter, or only a figural one? Both, because their end is twofold — worship of God for that time (literal) and the figuring of Christ (allegorical, moral, anagogical).
• Is the fast before communion a sacred thing or something for suitability? For suitability — a proper disposition in the worshippers, hence an observance, not a sacrum.