Summa I-II Q.103 aa.2-3: Did the Old Law's Ceremonies Justify, and Did They End When Christ Came?

Orientation #

He opens mid-question, taking up “the second” article and then, after a break, Article Three, remarking that “Saint Thomas has cut down the number of objections” there while lengthening the replies. He makes no statement about the next class; at the end he mentions he will be in Missouri next Thursday.

The class, in order #

1. Three objections that the old ceremonies did justify (“it seems that the ceremonies of the old law had the power of justifying”) #

He is amused that Thomas argues the opposite side first (“Oh, he’s going to take the opposite side”).

1. Expiation from sin and consecration of man pertain to justification; but Exodus 29 has priests and vestments consecrated by sprinkling of blood and anointing of oil, and Leviticus 16 has the priest expiating the sanctuary from the uncleannesses and transgressions of the sons of Israel by the blood of the bull.
2. What pleases God pertains to justice (“Just is the Lord, and He loves just things,” Psalm 10); but some pleased God by ceremonies (Leviticus 10: how can you please God in your ceremonies with a lugubrious mind? — he savours the word, “we got the right English”).
3. Divine cult belongs more to soul than to body (Psalm 18: “The law of the Lord is immaculate, converting souls”); but the ceremonies cleansed the leper (Leviticus 14), so much more should they cleanse the soul.

Sed contra (Galatians 2): if a law had been given which could justify, Christ died gratis, without cause — which is unfitting. He notes there are other such statements in the New Testament, “maybe the Summa Contra Gentiles” has more than one citation.

2. The body: two uncleannesses, and why the ceremonies cleansed only one (“a twofold uncleanness was observed”) #

• Spiritual uncleanness = uncleanness of guilt. Bodily uncleanness = what takes away suitability for divine worship (the leper; one who touches something dead); this second “was nothing other than a certain irregularity.”
• From the second the ceremonies did cleanse, because they were remedies applied by the ordaining of the law against an uncleanness itself “induced from the statute of the law.” Hebrews 9: the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes sanctified “to the cleansing of the flesh”; hence Paul calls them justitiae carnis, justifications of the flesh, imposed until the time of correction.
• Of the uncleanness of mind they could not expiate, since expiation comes only through Christ, “who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). The mystery of the incarnation and passion not yet enacted, those ceremonies could not really contain the power flowing from Christ incarnate and suffering, as the sacraments of the new law do. Aside, attached to this: the chief sacraments, baptism and the Eucharist, come from the water and blood of Christ’s side — “a very concrete way of seeing how it comes from Christ incarnate and suffering.”
• Hebrews: impossible that the blood of bulls and goats take away sins. Galatians 4 calls them “needy and infirm elements” — infirm because they cannot cleanse from sin, and this infirmity comes from their being needy, i.e. not containing grace as our sacraments do.
• The positive point: the minds of the faithful under the law could be joined through faith to Christ incarnate and suffering, and so be justified by faith in Christ — a faith of which the ceremonies were a professing, as figures of Christ. So sin-sacrifices were offered not because they cleansed of themselves but as professings of the faith that cleanses.
• Student parallel, and his agreement: as one may be forgiven on the intention to confess before actually confessing, and a catechumen may be in a state of grace by desire before he is immersed.
• Leviticus 4-5 insinuates this in its way of speaking: the priest prays for him and it is dismissed — dismissed not by the strength of the sacrifice but by the faith and devotion of those offering.
• Finally: that the ceremonies expiated bodily uncleanness was itself a figure of the expiation from sins through Christ.

3. Replies to the three (“was nothing other than a deputatio”) #

1. The sanctification of priests, sons and vestments by sprinkling of blood was only a deputatio — deputing them for divine worship — and removal of impediments, a cleansing of the flesh, prefiguring the sanctification by which Jesus sanctifies His people by His own blood. Proof that no guilt is in question: the sanctuary is said to be expiated, and a sanctuary cannot be the subject of guilt.
2. The priests pleased God by their obedience, devotion and faith in the thing signified, not by the things considered in themselves (consideratis).
3. The leper’s ceremonies were not ordered to removing leprosy, since they were not applied until he was already cleansed — hence Christ’s “go show yourself to the priest,” and Leviticus 14, where the priest going out of the camp judges of leprosy already cleansed, not to be cleansed. They removed the uncleanness of irregularity. If sometimes the leper was cured, that was by divine power, not by the sacrifice’s power — as, miraculously, the thigh of the adulterous woman rotted after drinking the waters.

4. Four objections that the ceremonies did not cease (“did not cease in Christ’s advent”) #

1. Baruch 4: this law is in aeternum; the ceremonies pertain to the law, so they endure forever.
2. The gospel itself commands the cleansed leper to make the offering — “So Christ Himself is violating the law, if it’s not to be done.” His own gloss here: Thomas holds Christ fulfils the old law until his death and resurrection, “it’s really when his death that it takes over.”
3. The cause remaining, the effect remains; the ceremonies have reasonable causes as ordered to divine worship, apart from figuring Christ.
4. Circumcision signed Abraham’s faith, the Sabbath recalled creation, other solemnities other benefits — and Abraham’s faith is still to be imitated (“he’s the father of us in faith”), creation still to be thanked for.

Sed contra: Colossians — let no one judge you in food or drink or festival day or new moon or Sabbath, “which are the shadow (umbra) of things to come”; Hebrews 8 — in saying “New Testament” the first is made aged, and what is antiquated is near its end.

5. The body: three states of interior worship (“a threefold status of the interior worship”) #

Principle: all ceremonial precepts are ordered to the worship of God; outward worship must be proportioned to inward worship, which consists in faith, hope and charity; so as the inward worship differs, the outward must differ. He flags the division as news to himself: “That’s new to me. I never knew that. Did you ever know that?”

1. Faith and hope about celestial goods and about the things by which we are led to them, both as future — the status of the old law.
2. Celestial goods still future, but the things introducing us to them present or past — the status of the new law; “Christ said, do this in memory of me.”
3. Both had as present, nothing believed as absent or hoped as future — the status of the blessed (“Well, I think I’ll take the third here. I’m tired of this world”).

In the third status nothing is figurative: only thanksgiving and the voice of praise. He notes the same order in the psalm, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise” — gratiarum actio first; and his own gloss: in heaven you will be knowing God and loving Him, and then thanking and praising Him. Apocalypse: no temple is seen in the city, for the Lord God omnipotent is its temple, and the Lamb. By like reason, the ceremonies of the first status, which figured the second and third, had to cease when the second came, and other ceremonies be brought in fitting a time when celestial goods are future but the benefits leading us there are present.

6. Reply 1 and the digression on the Jews without a temple (“How do they think that they are fulfilling their commands of God?”) #

Reply: the old law is in aeternum as to the moral precepts simply and absolutely; as to the ceremonial, in respect of the truth figured by them, not in their ancient status.

He then puts a real question to the class: we have Thomas’s reasons for not sacrificing — what are theirs? Students answer: no temple, hence no place for sacrifice; after the destruction of the temple the Pharisaic line held that the praise offered is their sacrifice (“they turn it into a figurative”); the loss of the sense of a coming Messiah (attributed to Feingold) knocks out a chunk of the meaning; the spread of positions across traditional, conservative, reform and more progressive groups, some seeing themselves as akin to Jews in exile yearning for Jerusalem, some saying “we’ve evolved beyond all this.” He asks why they do not rebuild the temple as after the Babylonian captivity — answer: it would start World War III, the Dome of the Rock sits on it; and a reported attempt around the third or fourth century AD stopped by supernatural events, mentioned in some Father, “I think it’s St. Augustine.” Is that not a sign? Yes.

Further exchanges: Richard John Neuhaus’s figure that two-thirds of Mediterranean Jews converted within the first few generations; a claim that ninety per cent of current Jews are atheists, with the observation that atheism does not prevent being Jewish (Freud counted himself a good Jew but did not go to synagogue); a friend’s remark that secular Jews retain a God-given sense of mission but apply it to secular, materialistic ends — heaven on earth, socialism, the Frankfurt School and its impact on New York.

Two anecdotes of his own: a Jewish schoolfriend whose shopkeeper offered Warren an under-the-counter deal, taking Warren for a Jew; and a business associate of his father who insisted on paying for the family’s restaurant dinner — his father let him, explaining he was Jewish and did not want to be thought stingy, going out of his way to be generous, against the Shylock reputation.

7. Replies 2-4 and the succession of the feasts (“the truth now consummated”) #

2. The mystery of redemption was completed in the passion — “it is consummated,” his last words on the cross — so the legal observances wholly ceased, the truth now consummated; in sign of which the veil of the temple was torn (Matthew 27). Before the passion, while Christ preached and worked miracles, “the law and the gospel ran together,” the mystery begun but not consummated; hence he commanded the leper to observe the legal ceremonies, and himself kept the Paschal dinner.
3. The literal reasons of the ceremonies referred to a worship that stood in faith in what was to come; the thing to come having come, the worship and all reasons ordered to it ceased.
4. Abraham’s faith was in the promised seed in whom all nations would be blessed; while future it had to be professed by circumcision, once perfect by another sign, baptism, which succeeded circumcision (Colossians: circumcised by a circumcision not made by hand, buried with him in baptism). The Sabbath of the first creation changed to the Lord’s Day, commemorating the new creature begun in Christ’s resurrection. Then the list of successions: Passover → the passion and resurrection; Pentecost of the old law → Pentecost of the law of the Spirit of life; the new moon (neomenia) → the feast of the Blessed Virgin, “in which first appears the illumination of the Sun, that is of Christ, through the fullness of grace” (“Thank goodness”); trumpets → the apostles; expiation → the martyrs and confessors; tabernacles → the consecration of the church; coetus et collectionis → the angels, or all the saints. “It’s quite a little summary there — bear that in mind when you read the Old Testament.”

Students add: tabernacles is recalled at the consecration of a church and in October at “Transfiguration Day”; the thatched roof of the booths let them see the stars and keep their eyes on heaven, and at the Transfiguration Peter spoke of building tabernacles while Christ gave a foretaste of heaven; in John the episode falls historically near the Feast of Tabernacles.

8. Closing aside (“So where’s Feingold teaching now?”) #

Talk of Lawrence Feingold teaching at a seminary in St. Louis, emails, his wife’s family from the area, and the plan to visit; he will be in Missouri next Thursday.

His words #

• immunditia — “uncleanness”/“uncleanliness”; he notes the awkwardness of the usual translation.
• lugubrious — his kept rendering of the Leviticus objection: not a joyful mind.
• irregularity — his name for the bodily uncleanness: what removes suitability for divine worship, nothing more.
• justitiae carnis — “justifications of the flesh,” Paul’s name for the old ceremonies.
• “needy and infirm elements” — Galatians 4; needy = not containing grace.
• deputatio — “deputing,” setting up for divine worship (of the priests’ consecration).
• consideratis — “considered by themselves,” i.e. the ceremonies apart from faith and obedience.
• in aeternum — “forever”; true of the law quantum ad moralia, and of the ceremonial only as to the truth figured.
• umbra — “shadow” of future things (Colossians).
• status of interior worship — the threefold division: old law, new law, the blessed.
• gratiarum actio — thanksgiving, which he notes comes first, before the voice of praise.
• neomenia — the new moon feast.
• coetus et collectionis — the feast of assembly and gathering.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 103, a. 2 — objections, sed contra, body, replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 103, a. 3 — objections, sed contra, body, replies.
• Within these, read and commented: Exodus 29; Leviticus 4-5, 10, 14, 16; Psalm 10; Psalm 18; Galatians 2 and 4; Hebrews 8 and 9; John 1:29; Baruch 4; Colossians (twice); Matthew 27; Apocalypse.

Mentioned

• Summa Contra Gentiles — as possibly having more than one citation against justification by the law.
• The psalm “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise.”
• A Father, “I think it’s St. Augustine,” on the failed rebuilding of the temple.
• Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, on Jewish conversions.

His questions #

• Do the ceremonies of the old law have the power of justifying? No — only of cleansing a bodily uncleanness, an irregularity induced by the statute of the law itself.
• Then how were men justified under the law? By faith joining their minds to Christ incarnate and suffering, which faith the ceremonies professed as figures.
• Why then were sin-sacrifices offered for sins? Not because they cleansed of themselves, but as professings of the faith which cleanses; “it is dismissed” by the faith and devotion of the offerers.
• Was the leper’s cleansing done by the ceremony? No — the priest judged of leprosy already cleansed; any cure was by divine power, as the adulterous woman’s thigh rotted miraculously.
• Why must outward worship change? Because it must be proportioned to inward worship, and there are three states of inward worship — old law, new law, the blessed.
• Did you ever know there were three states of interior worship? He says it was new to him.
• How can the law be in aeternum if the ceremonies cease? Simply as to the moral precepts; as to the ceremonial only in the truth they figured, not in their ancient status.
• How do the Jews think they fulfil God’s commands with no sacrifices? Left open — the class offers the lack of a temple, praise taken as sacrifice, and the differences among modern groups.
• Why don’t they rebuild the temple as after the Babylonian captivity? It would start World War III; the Dome of the Rock stands on the site, and an earlier attempt was reportedly stopped.
• Why did Christ tell the cleansed leper to make the offering? Because before the passion law and gospel ran together, the mystery begun but not yet consummated.