Aquinas on the Old Law Sacrifices (Holocaust, Sin and Peace Offerings) and the Trinity as Alpha and Omega

Orientation #

He picks up mid-article (“to the eighth”), finishes the replies of article 3, and announces “Article 4 — this got long replies too,” before turning aside to a Trinitarian digression that occupies the last third of the class. The previous class began this same article and stopped partway through its replies.

The class, in order #

1. The three genera of sacrifice (“there was a threefold genus of what sacrifices”) #

The point: each kind of sacrifice fits a state of life and is divided accordingly.

1. Holocaust — totum incensum, wholly burnt. Offered for reverence of God’s Majesty and love of His goodness; belongs to the state of perfection, the fulfilling of the counsels. The whole animal resolves into vapour and ascends: signifying that the whole man and all that is his is subject to God and offered to Him. (Aside to the students: “So you people are entirely burnt up, I assume.”)
2. Host for sin — offered from necessity for remission of sin; pertains to the penitent (“that’s me now”). Divided in two: one part burnt, one to the use of the priests — signifying expiation comes from God but through the ministry of priests. Boundary case: when offered for the sin of the whole people, or of the priest himself, the whole was burnt — because what is offered for the priest’s own sin must not come back into his use, so that nothing of his sin remain in him; and if something were left to the use of those for whom it was offered, it would seem not to have been offered at all.
3. Hostia pacifica, peace offering — for thanksgiving for a benefit received, or for salvation and prosperity hoped for; belongs to those progressing, fulfilling the commandments. Divided in three: one part burnt to God’s honour, one ceded to the priests, one to those offering — signifying that man’s salvation proceeds from God, directed by God’s ministers, with the cooperation of the men who are saved.

2. Why blood and fat were withheld (“blood was what poured out at the … foot of the altar”) #

Neither blood nor fat came to the use of priests or offerers: blood poured out at the foot of the altar in God’s honour, fat burnt in the fire. Four reasons:

1. To exclude idolatry — the idolaters drank the blood of victims and ate the fat (Deuteronomy 32: “of whose victims they ate the fats and drank the wine of the offering”). He notes Thomas in the Compendium of theology on how man fell into idolatry after the fall, thinking to receive his share of earthly goods from the demons.
2. To inform human life — blood forbidden so that one hold in horror the shedding of human blood (Genesis 9: “You shall not eat flesh with blood; I will require the blood of your animals”); fat forbidden to avoid [luxury/softness — he leaves the term hanging], citing Ezekiel 34 on “that which was fat” (crassum).
3. Divine reverence — blood is most necessary to life, whence “the soul is in the blood” (Leviticus); fat shows the abundance of nourishment; so that it be shown that from God come both life and the sufficiency of all goods.
4. Figurative — the pouring out of Christ’s blood and the fatness (pinguedo) of His charity. He notes the word “fatness” in the Psalms, and “the fatness of devotion.” He jokes: “if I give you an exam now, what are the four reasons?”

3. Student exchange: blood in the Mass (“the priest does this intinction”) #

A student describes the rite after the consecration: the priest dips a part of the host into the chalice and signs with it — “the blood is what’s coming back into the body,” a beautiful image of the resurrection, everyone rising as the host is raised. Berquist adds that the wine so signed is not itself consecrated, “so it’s not his, but then it’s kind of his,” and that the Anima Christi’s “Sanguis Christi, inebria me” refers rather to charity — which goes with the fat.

4. Breast and right arm; spatulamancy (“which is called what? — Spatula”) #

Of the peace offerings the breast and the right arm were ceded to the priests’ use, (a) to exclude a species of divination called spatulamancy, since diviners divined in the shoulder-blades of immolated animals and likewise in the breastbone; and (b) figuratively, because priests need wisdom of heart for instructing the people — signified by the breast, the covering of the heart — and fortitude to sustain defects, signified by the right arm. A student recalls drawing “spatulamancy prohibited” as a crossed-out spatula in a circle.

5. Digression: Jews without sacrifice (“they kind of lose that sense”) #

A student reports Dr. Feingold (a Jewish convert) on the loss of the sense of sin among Jews now that the graphic pouring out of an animal’s blood for one’s sin is gone. Question from the class: how is the absence of sacrifice justified, since they do not have the New? Answers offered: it ended with the destruction of the Temple, whence the two rabbinic schools (Hillel and another, name not recalled), the winning one holding that sacrifice can be replaced by praise in the synagogue. On reinstituting sacrifice on the Temple Mount: “They’re trying”; it would cause a war; they need a red heifer, whose blood is necessary for purification.

6. Ad 9: males, and the birds of the poor (“the feminine is a imperfect animal”) #

The holocaust being the most perfect sacrifice (by ad 8), only the male was offered in it, “for the feminine is an imperfect animal.” (Aside: “Are they teaching this still in the seminaries?”) Turtle-doves and doves were allowed on account of the poverty of those who could not offer greater animals; but since peace offerings were offered freely and never demanded, birds were not offered among them, only among holocausts and hosts for sin, which at some time had to be offered. Birds suit these by the height of their flight (agreeing with the perfection of the holocaust) and by the mourning quality of their song (suiting sacrifice for sin).

7. Ad 10: the four grades of sanctity (“the third grade was held by the peaceful offerings”) #

1. Holocaust — wholly burnt, nothing eaten.
2. Host for sin — eaten only in the atrium, by the priests, on the day of the sacrifice.
3. Peace offering of thanksgiving — eaten the same day, but anywhere in Jerusalem.
4. Peace offering ex voto — flesh could be eaten the next day. Reason for the order: man is most obligated to God on account of His Majesty, second on account of the offence committed, third on account of benefits received, fourth on account of benefits hoped for. “So Thomas is ordering all these things.”

8. Ad 11: the status of the sinner and the vileness of the animal (“as Rabbi Moses says”) #

Sins are made graver by the status of the one sinning, hence different hosts for the sin of a priest, of a prince, of a private person. Per Rabbi Moses: the graver the sin, the more vile the species offered — the goat (capra), most vile, for idolatry, the gravest sin; a bull-calf for the ignorance of the priest; a ram for the prince. (He asks in passing what Abraham offered — the ram caught in the thicket.)

9. Ad 12: providing for poverty; bread as figure of Christ (“would at least offer a what bird”) #

A descending scale for the poor: four-footed animal, else a bird, else bread, else flour or ears of corn. Figurative cause: bread signifies Christ, the true bread come down from heaven (John 6) — as grain in the state of the law of nature, in the faith of the Fathers; as flour in the law of the prophets; as bread formed once humanity was assumed, cooked by fire, that is formed by the Holy Spirit in the virginal womb; and cooked “in a pan” by the labours He sustained in the world and on the cross. (The list as he reads it is partly garbled and he does not complete every member.)

10. Ad 13: food, drink, condiment, medicine (“we still have that in the supermarkets — condiments”) #

Things from the earth that come into man’s use are for food (bread offered), drink (wine), condiment (oil and salt), or medication (incense, as aromatic and consolidating). Figuratively: bread = Christ’s flesh, wine = His blood, by which we are redeemed; oil = the grace of Christ; salt = knowledge (“take it with a grain of salt” — some judgment, some knowledge); incense = [he breaks off].

11. Aside: incense and altar boys (“a woman… the incense is too much for them”) #

Someone left the chapel during benediction downtown because of the incense; a tough priest who was told “next time you do that”; he and his friend Tom Jennings racing each other to be first at the daily Mass, arriving an hour early, the priest already there praying — “I thought we were more saintly than we were.” Then the pastor who first wanted to be a priest at his First Communion, feeling God’s presence; and the striking attachment of converts to the Eucharist heard on EWTN’s The Journey Home.

12. Ad 14: honey, leaven, salt, incense (“salt is offered because it impedes the corruption”) #

• Honey not offered: it was offered in the sacrifices of idols, and to exclude all carnal seductiveness and pleasure from those intending to sacrifice. (“They don’t use soda pop instead of wine.”)
• Fermented bread not offered: to exclude corruption, and perhaps because it was customarily offered to idols.
• Salt offered: it impedes the corruption of putridity, and the sacrifices of God ought to be incorrupt; also salt signifies the discretion of wisdom (“that’s what I like”), or the mortification of the flesh. He adds Thomas’s etymology: sapientia from sapor — savoury knowledge; “your meat is not savoury if you don’t have some salt.” Aside: other animals eat their meat without salt, and don’t cook it either; the farm cat splattering the wall when given cream — “they have a bit of a sweet tooth.”
• Incense (a student notes “incense” usually means frankincense) designates the devotion of mind necessary in those offering — in the virtue of religion devotion is the primary act, from which prayer and sacrifice follow — and the odour of good fame, since incense is both fat and odiferous; hence the flowers, the odour of good fame, about the bodies of the saints. Because the sacrifice [for sin] did not proceed from devotion but from [contrition/“suspicion” as he reads it], incense was not offered in it. He remarks how analytical it all is, and that all these animals had to be before the children’s eyes.

13. Digression: appropriation, and the Holy Spirit as end (“I am the Alpha and the Omega”) #

The point: what Scripture says of God as such is appropriated to the persons, and the end is appropriated to the Holy Spirit as the beginning is to the Father.

• Appropriation defined by use: power to the Father, wisdom to the Son, goodness to the Holy Spirit — not that one has more power or goodness than another, but there is a connection between the attribute and what is proper to that person. So “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth” does not mean the Son and Spirit did not create.
• Is anything in the Creed appropriated to the Son? A student: what is said of Him is mainly the Incarnation — and that is not appropriation, since He alone became incarnate.
• The Apocalypse texts grow by stages: “I am the Alpha and the Omega”; then “the first and the last”; then “the beginning and the end”; and at the end of the book all together.
• Caution: first and last are defined by before and after, but Thomas has a whole article showing the Father is in no way before the Son, nor Father and Son before the Spirit. Augustine: in the Trinity there is not the order of before and after, but the order of this from that. So the Father is a beginning with no beginning; the Son has a beginning and is a beginning; the Holy Spirit is from a beginning but is not a beginning — a likeness to beginning, middle and end, as in the plot of a tragedy.
• Therefore: beginning and making are appropriated to the Father. End belongs with good — he cites Summa contra gentiles I, cc. 37–41 (God is good; goodness itself; nothing bad in Him; the good of every good; the highest good) — and goodness is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, since He proceeds by way of love and the object of love is goodness. Hence God’s providence, moving things to their end, is appropriated to the Holy Spirit.
• Confirmation from the Creeds, which the Latin texts call symbolum: the symbolum apostolorum and the symbolum patrum (Nicene-Constantinopolitan). In the Creed of the Fathers the Spirit is called Vivificantem, life-giver; and God moving the universe is said to give it life as the soul gives life to the body — a text in Aristotle and also in the Fathers.
• Vocabulary follows: of creation we say maker; of God’s leading us to Himself we say mover. In the Summa’s arguments you first show God the unmoved mover, then the first efficient cause and maker. Compare the plan of the Summa contra gentiles: God in Himself; God as beginning and maker of things (material world, spiritual world, and man with a foot in both); God as end, and then divine providence directing things to Himself — the Trinity not brought in, since the Mohammedans would not know it.
• Aside: his mother at the dining table after dinner, waiting for “the Spirit to move her” before getting up to wash the dishes — and indeed it is appropriated to the Spirit that He moves us.

His words #

• Holocaust / totum incensum — the whole burnt up, “entirely burnt up or consumed.”
• Host for sin — sacrifice of the penitent, divided in two.
• Hostia pacifica — “the peaceful, peace offering,” divided in three.
• Ex voto — the fourth grade of peace offering, eaten the next day.
• Pinguedo / fatness — of charity, of devotion.
• Spatulamancy — divination in the shoulder-blades of immolated animals.
• Sapientia from sapor — “savoury knowledge”; salt signifies the discretion of wisdom.
• Appropriation — attributing to one person what is common to all, because of a connection with what is proper to Him.
• Symbolum — the Latin word for creed: symbolum apostolorum, symbolum patrum.
• Vivificantem — “life giver,” said of the Holy Spirit in the Creed of the Fathers.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 3, ad 8 through ad 14 (inferred locus; he says only “article three,” replies eight through decimum quartum)
• Deuteronomy 32; Genesis 9; Ezekiel 34; Leviticus (“the soul is in the blood”); John 6 — quoted within the replies

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Compendium theologiae — on idolatry after the fall; and on end as the same as the good
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles I, cc. 37–41, and the plan of the whole work
• Apocalypse — “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end”
• Augustine — no before and after in the Trinity, but “this from that”
• Rabbi Moses — the graver the sin, the more vile the animal
• The Anima Christi; the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds

His questions #

• What are the four reasons why eating blood and fat in the sacrifices is not allowed? — Excluding idolatry; forming human life to horror of bloodshed and to avoid excess; divine reverence (life and sufficiency are from God); figuring Christ’s blood and the fatness of His charity.
• How do the Jews justify not having sacrifices anymore? — With the destruction of the Temple sacrifice ceased, and the surviving rabbinic school held that praise in the synagogue replaces it.
• Has there ever been talk of reinstituting sacrifice on the Temple Mount? — Yes, they are trying; it would cause a war, and it requires a red heifer.
• Why was only the male offered in the holocaust? — Because the holocaust is the most perfect sacrifice, and the female is an imperfect animal.
• Why are the four kinds of sacrifice ranked in that order of sanctity? — Because man is obligated to God first by His Majesty, then by offence committed, then by benefits received, then by benefits hoped for.
• Why is salt offered when honey and leaven are not? — Salt impedes corruption, and signifies the discretion of wisdom or mortification of the flesh; honey and leaven were offered to idols and signify pleasure and corruption.
• Is anything in the Creed appropriated to the Son? — No: what is said of Him is the Incarnation, which is proper, not appropriated; He stands as the middle.
• To whom do we appropriate the “end” of I am the beginning and the end? — To the Holy Spirit, with goodness, providence and the moving of things to their end, as beginning and making are appropriated to the Father.