Summa I-II Q.102 a.6 (end) and Q.103 a.1: Clothing, Animal and Priestly Laws, and Whether There Were Ceremonies Before the Law

Orientation #

He opens asking where they are: “we’re in 102, Article Six… up to about the sixth objection.” After finishing that article he announces “we have to consider about the duration of the ceremonial precepts,” lists its four questions, and works through the first; at the very end he reads the title of the second article and leaves it for next time. The previous class treated the Mosaic dietary prohibitions in the same treatise.

The class, in order #

1. Mixed garments and cross-dressing (“a vestment from wool and linen”) #

Reply 6. Ecclesiasticus: “the clothing of the body announces about the man” — so the Lord wished His people distinguished from other peoples not only by circumcision, which was in the flesh, but by a distinction of clothing (habitus). Two literal reasons: (a) to avoid the cult of idolatry, since the Gentiles used vestments put together from diverse things — in the worship of Mars women used the weapons of men, in the worship of Venus, a converso, men used women’s clothing; (b) to decline luxuria, since a woman in male dress or the reverse is an incentive of concupiscence and an occasion of lust, and the forbidden mixtures excluded all disordered mixture of intercourse. Figurative reason: the mixture of wool and linen forbids joining simple innocence (wool) to subtle malice (linen); also that a woman not usurp teaching or other offices of men, nor a man decline to the softness of woman.

Aside: the many kinds of nuns and their habits, and trying to remember which order a habit belonged to; a student jokes about “a field guide for nuns.”

2. The violet fringes (“in the four angles of their garments”) #

Reply 7, from Jerome on Matthew: the Lord commanded hyacinth (violet) fringes at the four corners of the garment to distinguish Israel from other peoples; by professing themselves Jews and by the sight of the sign they were led into remembering the law. The Pharisees badly interpreted “you will bind them in your hand, and they shall be always before your eyes” by writing the decalogue on membranes and tying them in front like a crown. The Lord’s intention: bound in the hand = in operation; before the eyes = in meditation. His gloss: “if I say keep this before your eyes, it doesn’t mean a piece of paper in front of your eyes, especially when you’re driving.” The hyacinth inserted in the clothing signified the celestial intention that ought to be joined to all our works. Added reason: that people was carnal and stiff-necked, so sensible things of this sort were needed to arouse them to observe the law.

3. Kindness to brute animals (“the affection of man is twofold”) #

Reply 8, the distinction he draws out: affection according to reason vs. affection according to passion.

1. By reason it makes no difference what man does about brute animals, since all are subject to him by God’s power — Psalm 8, “you have put all these under his feet”; and the Apostle, “there is no care for God about the cattle,” because God does not ask men what they do about cattle.
2. But by passion man’s affections are moved about animals, since the passion of mercy arises from the afflictions of others, and brute animals do sense pain.
3. So mercy can arise about animals’ afflictions, and one exercised in mercy toward animals is thereby more disposed to mercy toward men — and conversely, cruelty to animals can pass over into cruelty to men. “The just man knows the souls of his beasts, but the viscera of the impious are cruel.” He connects this to Aristotle on the poetic art: tragedy moves us to pity and fear, and pity is like mercy — “the kind of a fiction has a civilizing influence.” Application: because the Jewish people were prone to cruelty (“It’s really whacking, isn’t he?”), the Lord exercised them in mercy even about brute animals: not to cook the kid in its mother’s milk, not to muzzle the ox (it should feed while working), not to kill the mother with her young. Alternative reason — detestation of idolatry: the Egyptians held it wicked to let the ox eat of the grain while threshing; evildoers used mother bird and young captured together for fecundity and good fortune about their children’s nourishment, and took it as a favourable augury to find the mother incubans with her young.

Asides: as a boy finding a mother cat with kittens on the way to the corner grocery, and running off when he sensed her nervousness; his daughter in tears at her cat giving birth.

4. Mixing animals of diverse species (“do not mix together easily”) #

Threefold literal sense: (1) to detest Egyptian idolatry, which used diverse mixtures in service of the planets, whose diverse conjunctions have diverse effects on diverse species; (2) to exclude coming together against nature; (3) to take away universally the occasions of concupiscence, since animals of diverse species do not mix easily unless procured by men, and the sight of animals coupling excites concupiscence in men — whence the Jewish tradition, as Rabbi Moses says, that men should avert their eyes from animals going together. Figurative reason: the ox grinding = the preacher bringing forth the seeds of doctrine, from whom food should not be subtracted (the Apostle: you can live from your profession); not to hold mother with children, because some spiritual senses are to be retained as sons while the observance is dismissed as the mother, as in all the ceremonies of the law — “this is very solemn stuff”; and the beast, i.e. the popular man, is not to be joined with other kinds, i.e. Gentiles.

5. Mixtures in agriculture (“seeded with diverse seed”) #

Reply 9. Literally, all mixtures in agriculture are prohibited in detestation of idolatry, since the Egyptians in venerating the stars made diverse mixtures in seeds, animals and clothing, representing diverse conjunctions of the stars; or else to detest union against nature. Figuratively: the Church is the spiritual vineyard, not to be planted with alien doctrine; the field that is the Church not to be seeded with diverse seed, i.e. Catholic and heretical doctrine; nor the ass and the ox to plough together, because the foolish ought not to be associated in preaching with the wise, since one impedes the other. He notes how Thomas uses the word “ass” there.

6. Priests, the dead, marriage, hair and beard (“the malefici, the doers of evil”) #

Reply 11. Evildoers and the priests of idols use in their rites the bones and flesh of dead men; so, to remove the cult of idolatry, the lesser priests who ministered at set times were not to be defiled (inquinati) by contact with the dead except for close kin — father, mother and persons of this sort — while the high priest, who ought always to be prepared for the sanctuary, was totally forbidden access to the dead, however close. Priests were to marry only a virgin, both for the reverence due the priesthood, whose dignity would seem diminished by such a conjugal relation, and for the sons, to whom the baseness of their mother would be an ignominy — most to be avoided since the priestly dignity passed by succession of the tribe. They were not to cut hair or beard nor make incisions in their flesh, against the rite of idolatry: the Gentile priests cut their hair and beard — Baruch 6, “the priests sat having cut tunics and their heads and beards shaved” — and in worshipping idols cut themselves with knives and little lances; hence contrary precepts for the priests of the old law. Spiritual reason: priests should be wholly removed from works of the dead, which are the works of sin; not to cut the hair of the head, i.e. lay down their wisdom (hair signifies thoughts), nor put down the beard, i.e. the perfection of wisdom; nor cut vestments or flesh, lest they incur the vice of schism.

Aside, twice: bones stolen from a mausoleum at Hope Cemetery in Worcester, and a second such theft — “what people are doing that for? … are they malefici?” A student exchange on Jewish burial customs and hygiene: quick burial, washing hands, burying excretions, avoiding shellfish that spoils quickly without refrigeration, “millennia before anybody else” and without germ theory; he remarks that Jews are “very excellent medical people… quite a few doctors for their number.”

Aside on method: he contrasts the “all over the place” detail here with the clean threefold division in the treatise on grace (grace itself, its causes, its effects) and the treatise on love (love itself, causes, effects). He recommends reading through the books of the Old Testament and then coming back to this: “then one will interest you, and the other.”

7. Opening q.103: the four questions (“the duration of the ceremonial precepts”) #

Whether there were ceremonial precepts before the law (i.e. before Moses); whether in the law they had power of justifying, i.e. freeing from sin; whether they ceased at Christ’s coming; whether it is mortal sin to observe them after Christ.

8. The objections that there were ceremonies before the Law (“Melchizedek was a priest of the high God”) #

Four objections, all from Genesis:

1. Sacrifices and holocausts pertain to the old law’s ceremonies; but Cain offered fruits of the earth, Abel the firstborn of his flock and their fat (Gen. 4), Noah offered holocaust (Gen. 8), Abraham likewise (Gen. 22). He notes these are before the law “by anticipation,” and that a law “cannot be before itself.”
2. Building and anointing altars pertains to the ceremonies of sacred things; Abraham built an altar (Gen. 13), Jacob set up a stone and poured oil on it (Gen. 28).
3. Circumcision would seem first among the legal sacraments — “like baptism for us” — and it is before the law (Gen. 17); likewise priesthood, for Melchizedek was priest of the Most High (Gen. 14) — and Christ is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. “So this one from Melchizedek is really strong.”
4. The distinction of clean and unclean animals pertains to the ceremonies of observances, and is found in Gen. 7, seven and seven of the clean, two and two of the unclean. (“What seven and seven and two and two mean, I don’t know.”) Sed contra: Deuteronomy 6, “these are the precepts and ceremonies which the Lord your God commanded that I teach you” — they would not need teaching if the ceremonies already were. He glosses Deuteronomy as “the second law,” a summary, the law presented a second time.

His running joke: “I’m convinced about all this, aren’t you? How can he possibly think the other thing? Just perversity, always taking the opposite side” — and the story of the California student who came in each day sure he had an unanswerable objection, then watched it untied: “that’s good for students like that.”

9. His answer: private devotion, not law (“as it were from a private law”) #

The ceremonies of the law are ordered to two things: to the worship of God, and ad figurandum Christum, to signifying Christ.

1. Whoever worships God must worship by some determined things pertaining to exterior worship; the determination of divine worship is what “ceremonies” means, just as the determination of what orders us to our neighbour is the judicial precepts (which, he notes, come up after this).
2. As among men there are judicial arrangements not instituted by the authority of divine law but ordered by human reason, so there are ceremonials not from the authority of any law but only according to the will and devotion of men worshipping God.
3. And since before the law there were special men enjoying the spirit of prophecy, credendum est that by a divine instinct, “as it were from a private law” (he flags this: “that’s kind of strange thing to say, private law”), they were led to a way of worshipping God both suitable for inward worship — the first reason for it — and congruent for signifying the mysteries of Christ, which were figured through some of the things they did: 1 Cor., omnia in figuram contingebant illis, “everything happened to them in figure.” (“Look up what Thomas says about that sometime.”) Conclusion: there were certain ceremonies before the law — Thomas is not denying it, “there’s a large element of truth he saw in the objections” — but not ceremonies of the law, since they were not instituted by any lawgiving.

Digression on “figure”: figurative speech is where what is immediately signified is not what is meant. We recognize a dog, a cat, a tree, a chair by its figure or shape; the shape is not the animal, but a sign of the kind of animal he is; likewise a statue of a man “is a man” only by having the shape of a man. Lafayette returning after Washington’s death recognized in the statues the man he had known — “this was really a likeness.” A student notes his translation says “foreshadow”; he accepts shadow as carrying the sign, and mentions silhouettes of famous people from early America.

10. The four replies (“circumcision is not from Moses”) #

1. The ancients offered their gifts, sacrifices and holocausts from a certain devotion of their own will, as seemed to them suitable in the things they received from God, offered in reverence for God, protesting that they worship God who is beginning and end of all things. (He notes this is how Thomas divides the Summa, and the Contra Gentiles even more explicitly: God Himself, God as beginning, God as end.)
2. They likewise instituted certain sacred things that seemed suitable in reverence for divine things — that some places be set apart for divine worship; hence the altar and its anointing.
3. Circumcision was established by divine command before the law; so it cannot be called a sacrament of the law as instituted in the law, but only as to be observed in the law. Authority — and “the argument of authority is the strongest” — John 7: circumcision is not from Moses but from the fathers, i.e. Abraham. Priesthood too was before the law among those worshipping God, by human determination, this dignity being attributed to the firstborn. (Joke: “So my brother Richard should be offering up — that’s his prerogative.”)
4. The distinction of clean and unclean was not before the law as regards eating, since Gen. 9 says everything that moves and lives will be for you food (cibum); only as regards offering sacrifices, which were from certain definite animals. Any distinction as to eating was not because eating was illicit — none was prohibited by law — but on account of abomination or custom, as some foods in some lands are abominable which in others are eaten. (He does not eat eels, he does not know why.)

11. Digression: Contra Gentiles vs. Summa Theologiae (“I like to think about God”) #

A student asks whether the Summa Contra Gentiles is his favourite book. His answer: for what can be known about God by natural reason and by faith, it is more expansive than the Summa Theologiae. On the divine goodness the Summa has God is good, God is goodness itself, nothing bad in God, God is summum bonum; the Contra Gentiles has five chapters, including the one missing from the Summa — that God is the good of every good, as Augustine says — and unfolds its reason. Likewise more arguments there for God’s simplicity, infinity, unity. Order of proceeding: the argument from motion is far more complete there (a premise shown by three arguments where the Summa gives one; two arguments from motion rather than one), and because of that emphasis he takes up God’s unchangeableness first, which introduces act and ability naturally — whereas in the Summa pure act must be developed at the head of the treatise on simplicity, where it does not arise so naturally. In both, one argument for the unmoved mover begins from the fact that nothing moves itself, argued from the definition of motion, the act of what is able to be insofar as it is able to be: what is in ability must be actualized by something already in act, so act is before ability — and the Contra Gentiles gives almost a summary of the ninth book of Aristotle on act being simply before ability. Against this, the Summa Theologiae is very good for the objections, which the Contra Gentiles largely lacks, and for the great expansion of moral theology — the whole secunda secundae, the thickest part, on all the virtues. He adds that the Contra Gentiles treats the Incarnation in the fourth book rising out of Scripture, so in that sense it is better to begin there; and that “he’s giving these guys plenty of ammunition with the Muslims down there in Spain.”

Asides: the funeral card for his brother Marcus carried a quotation from the Contra Gentiles on the study of wisdom being the best thing there is; his college course “Natural Theology” in the philosophy department, doing the articles on God before the Trinity because the arguments there are from reason — his favourite course. “I think about God because I can’t think of anything better to think about.” Also: reading moral theology makes him see what a bad guy he is and how bad the world is, and “this makes me very unhappy.”

12. Article 2 opened (“could they cleanse you from sin?”) #

He reads the title — whether the ceremonies of the old law had the power of justifying in the time of the law — puts it to the class, who answer no; he adds the qualification to be tested, “but if they were done insofar as they are figures of Christ,” and leaves it: “We’ll see what the Master says.”

His words #

• habitus — clothing, dress, as a distinguishing mark of a people.
• a converso — conversely (men using women’s clothing in the worship of Venus).
• luxuria — lust; the vice the mixed-clothing prohibition declines.
• incubans — the mother bird sitting on her young.
• malefici — “the doers of evil,” those who with priests of idols use the bones and flesh of the dead.
• inquinati — defiled, by contact with the dead.
• ability — [ed.: potency], paired with act in the argument from motion.
• ad figurandum Christum — to signify/figure Christ; he glosses figure as shape-become-sign, and accepts a student’s “foreshadow.”
• omnia in figuram contingebant illis — “everything happened to them in figure” (1 Cor.).
• credendum est — “it should be believed.”
• private law — his flagged phrase for the divine instinct by which prophetic men before Moses were led to a way of worship.
• ex quadam devotione — “from a certain devotion” of their own will.
• cibum — food (Gen. 9).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 102, a. 6, replies 6-11
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 103, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 103, a. 2 (title only)
• Quoted within these: Ecclesiasticus on clothing; Psalm 8; Genesis 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 22, 28; Deuteronomy 6; Baruch 6; John 7; 1 Corinthians (omnia in figuram); Jerome on Matthew; Rabbi Moses

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Poetics, on tragedy moving to pity and fear
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX, on act before ability (inferred: he says “the ninth book”)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Books I and IV
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, treatises on grace and on love; the secunda secundae
• Shakespeare, on “love which great birds call divine” [unclear in recording]

His questions #

• Where are we — 102, article six, about the sixth objection? Yes; they begin at reply 6.
• What does “you will bind them in your hand and they shall be before your eyes” mean? Bound in the hand = in operation; before the eyes = in meditation, not a written membrane tied to the forehead as the Pharisees did.
• Does it matter to God what man does about the brute animals? By reason, no — all are subject to him; but by passion, mercy toward animals disposes to mercy toward men, and cruelty to cruelty.
• When does Moses first appear — in Exodus? Yes; hence the Genesis examples are before the law “by anticipation.”
• What do “seven and seven and two and two” mean? Left open — “I don’t know, but maybe you gentlemen know.”
• To what two things are the ceremonies of the law ordered? To the worship of God, and to signifying (figuring) Christ.
• How do you recognize that this is a chair, or what kind of animal this is? By its figure or shape, which is not the thing but a sign of its specific nature — whence “figure” comes to mean sign.
• Were there ceremonies before the law? Yes, from private devotion and a divine instinct “as it were from a private law,” but not ceremonies of the law, since not instituted by any lawgiving.
• Is circumcision a sacrament of the law? Not as instituted in the law — it is from the fathers, from Abraham — but only as something to be observed in the law.
• Is the Summa Contra Gentiles your favourite book? For knowing God by reason and faith it is fuller and better ordered; the Summa Theologiae is better for objections and for moral theology.
• Could the ceremonies of the old law cleanse you from sin? The class answers no; he defers the qualification about their being figures of Christ to next time.