Summa I-II Q.102 a.3: The Reasons for the Old Law Sacrifices (Worship, Rejecting Idols, and Figures of Christ)

Orientation #

He opens “where are we now? We’re in the body. Article three” — continuing the reading of the ceremonial precepts. He announces early that this “is going to be the last article of the day,” and ends by asking the class whether to stop before the reply to the eighth objection: “Would you like to stop here for next time?”

The class, in order #

1. The fourteen objections against any reason for the sacrifices (“There’s fourteen objections here”) #

He reads them rapidly, remarking that here “is where you get kinda depressed” because it is so much into particulars. The line of them: God needs no sustenance (Ps. 49, “nor do I eat the flesh of bulls”); more noble animals exist than cattle, sheep, goats, turtle doves, doves and (in cleansings) sparrows; fish are excluded though man has dominion over them; the young of doves vs. turtle doves are treated differently; God is author of life, so living hosts should be offered (Rom. 12); the manner of killing should not be determined; defective, lame or blind animals should not be excluded, since every defect tends to death; parts (blood, fat, breastbone) are withheld though offerers should partake (1 Cor.); females are offered in peace and sin offerings but not in holocausts, and birds not in peace offerings; peace offerings are one kind yet differ over leftovers to the next day (Lev. 7); all sins turn one from God, so one genus of sacrifice should suffice; the grain offerings vary (ears of corn, simila, bread, cooked, oven, pan, gridiron); only bread, wine, oil, frankincense and salt are added; honey (sweet, as the inward sacrifice is sweet — “my spirit is sweet more than honey”) is prohibited while biting salt and bitter incense are commanded.

• Asides: on the fish objection, “I’m in favor of excluding fish, especially salmon,” with Washington Irving’s account of Indians preserving salmon for the white man. On the females objection: “that was the objection of the medieval national organization of women.” On honey: the Jewish custom of reading the scroll with a pointer so as not to damage manuscripts, and of letting a boy touch the scroll once, then dipping his finger in honey and putting it in his mouth.

2. Sed contra (“whatever is acceptable to God is with wisdom”) #

Lev. 1:13 says the holocaust is an odor most sweet to the Lord; Wis. 7:28 says God loves no one who does not dwell with wisdom. Therefore whatever is acceptable to God is with wisdom, hence these ceremonies had reasonable causes. His comment: “That’s a good answer. Covers all the bases.”

3. The body: twofold cause, and sacrifice as profession of first beginning and last end (“the first beginning of the creation of things”) #

1. The ceremonies of the old law have a twofold cause: literal, as ordered to the worship of God; figurative or mystical, as ordered to figuring Christ. Both can be assigned here.
2. Under the literal, a first way: sacrifice represents the right ordering of the mind to God — a man recognizes all he has is from God as from a first beginning and ordered to God as to a last end (he notes the “circle,” and Heraclitus that beginning and end are the same).
3. Textual supports he gives: 1 Paralipomenon, “Yours are all things, and what we have taken from your hand we give to you”; Augustine, “all our goods are either God or from God”; and the presentation of the firstborn in the temple (“gotta give them back to God”).

4. Digression: looking before and after (“you look before and after, right?”) #

The point: order of knowing — what comes before “before and after,” and what comes after it.

• Before before-and-after stands distinction: there can be a distinction without a before and after (Father, Son, Holy Spirit — Thomas argues the Father is in no way before the Son), but no before and after without a distinction. He recalls Thomas saying the first thing pertaining to order is distinction, or rather is presupposed to it.
• After before-and-after comes order, then first and last, then beginning and end, and last of all first beginning and last end — least known to us, though “we found that about God.”
• Aristotle in the Poetics: a beginning is before something but not after anything; an end after something but not before anything; the middle both. Homer taught the Greeks to make a plot with beginning, middle and end rather than merely about one man, since one man goes through things with no connection.
• Affirmative before negative: “I’m not a carpenter” presupposes knowing a carpenter. Hence in logic you know first something that is both a genus and a species; a genus that is not a species (the ten categories) and a species that is not a genus come later. (A student, Tony, first said the genus-that-is-not-a-species is known first; he pushes back that the negative is known through the affirmative.)
• Same pattern: father-and-son before a father who is no son; whole-and-part (Massachusetts in New England, New England in the United States) before a whole that is not a part or a part that is not a whole. Einstein, after relativity, went looking for the cosmos — a whole that is not a part; Heisenberg and the quantum physicists looked for elementary particles — a part that is not a whole; “and they both thought they’d found it.” Heisenberg said he never thought the division would go on forever.
• His own case of beginning: born January 18, 1936, but begun in his mother’s womb before that — there was nothing before his beginning, though there was something before his knowledge of it.

5. Sacrifice to God alone, and the pantheism digression (“one is prohibited in the law to offer a sacrifice to anything except God”) #

Because right ordering of the mind requires recognizing no other first author and constituting one’s end in nothing else, sacrifice to any other is forbidden: “you can play Hail to the Chief when the president walks in, but you can’t sacrifice to him.” Pantheists like Karl Rahner deny the difference between God and creation. He recalls 19th-century popes in the Enchiridion Symbolorum correcting German theologians for pantheistic ideas; a student notes Warren Murray reporting C. S. Lewis that pantheism is the natural religion of man, and another that Tocqueville warned of democracies lapsing into pantheism.

6. Second literal cause: withdrawing the people from idolatry (“until after they had declined to idolatry”) #

Sacrifices were instituted so that a people prompt to sacrifice would offer to God rather than idols; the precepts about sacrifices were not given until after the golden calf. Jer. 7: “I did not command them… about the word of holocausts and victims.”

7. The figurative cause: Christ’s one sacrifice (“as it were the perfect through the imperfect”) #

Of all goods given to the fallen race the greatest is the Son (John 3:16 — “they should say that to begin their sermon”); the most potent sacrifice is Christ offering himself in the odor of sweetness (Eph. 5:2); all other sacrifices of the old law figured this one, the perfect through the imperfect; Heb. 10, the old priests offered the same hosts often, Christ offered himself once “in sempiternum.” From the thing figured is taken the reason of the figure.

• Student question: did the prophets who died in God’s friendship get the beatific vision before or after Christ’s sacrifice? He does not settle it; he says that with the soul separated from the body there is no distraction, so the intensity of the desire to see God must be very great — “not that they were in purgatory, but there must have been something.”

8. Reply 1: God does not need the offerings (“those three things”) #

Isa. 1 — holocausts of rams, fat, blood of cattle, goats, lambs, “I do not wish.” God wished them offered for three reasons: to exclude idolatry, to signify the suitable order of the human mind to God, and to figure the mystery of redemption through Christ. These three govern the order of the following replies.

• Discussion of the Mass: “Do this in memory of me”; the separate consecration of bread and wine signifies the separation of body and blood; a student cites Fr. Hardon that since Christ still has a human will he can still offer himself though he can no longer die. Question whether the Mass has the same efficacy as the Cross or derives from it — answer reached in class: the same sacrifice, same victim, same offering, different manner; a continuation of the same offering.

9. Reply 2: why these animals and not nobler ones (“most of all useful… and they have a most pure nourishment”) #

Under the same three heads:

1. Against idolatry: these animals were the ones offered to idols, or used for bad things; and they were abominable to kill among the Egyptians, with whom the Jews lived — Exod. 8, “the abominations of the Egyptians shall we offer to the Lord our God?” The Egyptians venerated lambs and goats, because demons appeared under their figure, and used them for agriculture, which was held sacred.
2. For the ordering of the mind: these animals are most useful for sustaining human life and have the purest nourishment (“there you go, there’s your steak”), whereas others are wild and not commonly deputed to men’s use, or domestic with unclean nourishment, like the pig and the chicken — only what is pure should be offered. These birds especially because abundant in the land of promise. Also, their immolation designates purity of mind — by the gloss on Leviticus: the calf, when we overcome pride of the flesh; the lamb, when we correct irrational emotions; the goat, when we overcome lasciviousness; the dove, simplicity and charity (“the loving bird”); the turtle dove, chastity; unleavened bread, sincerity. “Be wise as serpents and simple as doves” — “we’re not going to offer up serpents.”
3. As figures of Christ, by the same gloss: the calf for the strength of the cross, the lamb for innocence, the ram for sovereignty, the goat for the likeness of sinful flesh, the turtle dove and dove for the conjunction of the two natures — chastity in the turtle dove, charity in the dove. He recalls “that obscure poem by Shakespeare… about the turtle dove.”

• Aside: the Indian parishioners he asks, “Are you one of those Thomas Christians?” — the boy who did not know and whose mother answered “Yes, you are”; that they are from Kerala and trace their families to the Apostle. Warren Carroll on Thomas coming to know our Lord through his senses, and God’s providence sending him to India, to people who do not trust their senses: “No, I took my finger. Really, I really did it.”

10. Replies 3–7 (“more alien from man than the other animals”) #

• 3, fish: living in water, they are more alien from man than animals that live in the air as man does; and drawn from water they die at once, so they cannot be offered in the temple as the others, which are not killed at once. (“I fully agree that they’re alien from man. I’m gonna get some justification out of this.”)
• 4, turtle doves and doves: in turtle doves the older are better, in doves the reverse; so, as Rabbi Moses says, the older turtle doves and the young doves are commanded, since the best should be attributed to God.
• 5, why killed and burnt: three reasons — they come into man’s use, being given by God for food, and by cooking with fire become apt for human use; the killing signifies the destruction of sin and that men were worthy of death for their sins, these animals being killed in their place, so expiation is signified; and it signifies the killing of Christ. (Aside: the man who kept sending back his steak until the cook burned it; and sushi, “we all have our failings.”)
• 6, the manner of killing: a special manner is determined to exclude the ways idolaters used; or, as Rabbi Moses says, the law chose a death by which the animals are less afflicted — “people don’t understand that today” — which also excludes defect in the offering and deterioration of the animals killed.
• 7, defective animals: stained or defective animals are held in contempt among men, so it was forbidden to offer them to God; likewise forbidden were the hire of a prostitute and the price of a dog; and animals before the seventh day, as abortive and of no good consistency.

11. Stopping point (“Would you like to stop here for next time?”) #

He reads the eighth objection (parts withdrawn from the offerers — the right arm), says “this is a long answer,” and breaks off. Aside just before: “You know how long it took Thomas to write this article. It’s amazing how much he wrote in his short life.”

His words #

• “in the letter” / “figuratively or mystical” — the twofold cause of the old law’s ceremonies: ordered to divine worship; ordered to figuring Christ.
• “first beginning” and “last end” — primum principium, ultimus finis; what sacrifice professes God to be.
• “host” — the victim offered; “holocaust,” “peaceful offerings” [ed.: peace offerings], “hosts for sin.”
• “simila” — the fine flour of the grain offering.
• “Paralipomenon” — [ed.: 1 Chronicles].
• “in sempiternum” — Christ offered himself once, forever (Heb. 10); he first says “in simple term,” then “semper eterna.”
• “the Enchiridion Symbolorum” — [ed.: Denzinger].
• “Rabbi Moses” — [ed.: Maimonides], cited by Thomas in replies 4 and 6.

Texts #

Read in class: Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 3 — objections 1–14, sed contra (Lev. 1:13; Wis. 7:28), corpus, replies 1–7, with obj. 8 begun; the gloss on Leviticus 1 quoted twice within reply 2 (moral and figural significations). Scripture quoted inside the article: Ps. 49; Rom. 12; 1 Cor.; Lev. 7; Ecclesiasticus 24:7; 1 Paralipomenon; Jer. 7; John 3:16; Eph. 5:2; Heb. 10; Isa. 1; Exod. 8. Mentioned: Aristotle, Poetics (beginning, middle, end; Homer and plot); Augustine (“all our goods are either God or from God”); Heraclitus (beginning and end the same); Shakespeare (“look before and after”; the poem on the turtle dove); Washington Irving; the Enchiridion Symbolorum; C. S. Lewis (via Warren Murray) and Tocqueville on pantheism; Fr. Hardon on Christ’s continuing offering; Warren Carroll on St. Thomas the Apostle. (A text-matching system reports Summa Contra Gentiles IV, ch. 88 in about ten minutes of this audio; the transcript does not name it — inferred.)

His questions #

• What do you see always before every before and after? — Distinction; there can be distinction without before and after (Father and Son), but no before and after without distinction.
• Is a genus that is not a species known before something that is both a genus and a species? — No: the negative is known through the affirmative, so what is both is known first.
• What were Einstein and Heisenberg looking for? — A whole that is not a part, and a part that is not a whole; both thought they had found it.
• What is more known to us, before and after, or first and last? — Before and after; first beginning and last end are least known, though we found that about God.
• What is a man doing when he offers sacrifice? — Professing that God is the first beginning of the creation of things and the last end to which all is referred.
• Why were the precepts on sacrifice given only after the golden calf? — So that a people prompt to sacrifice would offer to God rather than to idols.
• Did the prophets who died in friendship with God have the beatific vision before Christ’s sacrifice? — Left open; he says only that a separated soul’s desire to see God must be very intense.
• Does the Mass have the same efficacy as the sacrifice of the Cross, or derive from it? — The same sacrifice, same victim, same offering, in a different manner.
• Why are fish excluded? — They live in water and so are more alien from man, and they die as soon as they are taken out.
• Why are lame, blind or blemished animals excluded? — Because such animals are held in contempt among men, and so must not be offered to God.