Aquinas on the New Law (ST I-II q.106): Grace of the Holy Spirit, Justification, and Why the New Law Came Late and Lasts to the End

Orientation #

He begins by re-reading the body of q. 106 a. 1, saying it “ties up with what’s going to be taken up in article two,” and ends by calling a break “before we go on to one seven here.” The previous class had already begun q. 106 a. 1 on the New Law as instilled grace.

The class, in order #

1. Review of a. 1: what is potissimum in the New Law (“each thing seems to be that which is in it most”) #

• Aristotle (Ethics IX): each thing seems to be that which is potissimum in it — as when Aristotle says reason more than anything else is man.
• What is potissimum in the law of the New Testament, and in which its whole power consists, is the grace of the Holy Spirit given through faith in Christ. He remarks it is “kind of a strange thing at first you hear that.”
• Supports: Romans 3 (“your glorifying is excluded… through the law of faith” — Paul calls grace a law of faith); Romans 8 (“the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus frees me from the law of sin and death”); Augustine, De spiritu et littera — the law of things to be done written on stone tablets, the law of faith in the hearts of the faithful; the laws God writes in our hearts are nothing other than the presence of the Holy Spirit, present by grace.
• Secondarily the New Law has (a) things disposing to receive that grace and (b) things pertaining to the use of that grace. So chiefly an inward law, secondly a written law — “it’s an order there, first and second.”

2. Reply to obj. 1 of a. 1: what the gospel writings contain (“not contained except those things which pertain to the grace”) #

• Disposing on the side of understanding, by faith: what makes known the divinity and humanity of Christ.
• Disposing on the side of affection: what pertains to contempt of the world, by which a man becomes capable of the Spirit — “the world, that is the lovers of the world, cannot receive him” (John 14).
• Use of the grace: the works of the virtues, to which the New Testament scriptures exhort in many ways.

3. a. 2, objections 1 and 2, with replies: does the New Law justify? (“no one is justified unless he obeys the law of God”) #

• He notes the objections arise from thinking of the law chiefly as the written one.
• Obj. 1: Hebrews 5:9 — Christ is cause of eternal salvation to all obeying; but Romans 10, “not all obey the gospel”; so it does not justify. Reply: the objection proceeds about the New Law not as to what is principal but as to what is secondary — the documents or precepts proposed exteriorly, by word or writing.
• Obj. 2: the Old Law did not justify since its arrival increased praevaricatio (students offer “wandering away,” “transgression”) — Romans 4, “the law worked anger; where there is no law there is no transgression”; and the New Law adds greater guilt, since Hebrews 10 says he who voids the law of Moses dies without mercy on two or three witnesses, how much more he who tramples the Son of God. Reply: the grace of the New Testament aids men not to sin but does not confirm them in good so that they cannot sin — that belongs to the status of glory. So one who sins after receiving it deserves greater punishment as ungrateful for greater benefits and not using the aid given. But the New Law does not on that account “work anger,” since of itself it is a sufficient aid against sin. He adds the scriptural tag about stirring up the grace in you (Timothy, “or somebody”).

4. a. 2, objection 3 and reply: one God, two ways of giving (“this is a different objection”) #

• He flags that obj. 3 is the reverse of the first two: it argues the Old Law also justifies, since to justify is God’s proper effect (Romans 8) and God gave the Old Law too. “That’s why it’s separated from the other two.”
• Reply: unus Deus gave both — he insists on this, “because it’s not a bad God that gave the old law like they said” — but aliter et aliter: the Old written on stone tablets, the New “in the fleshly tables of the heart” (2 Corinthians). Augustine, De spiritu et littera: the letter written outside a man, a ministry of death and damnation; that of the New Testament a ministry of Spirit and justice, since through the Spirit’s gift we work justice and are freed from the damnation of transgression.

5. a. 2, sed contra and body: it justifies by grace, not by letter (“the letter kills, the Spirit gives life”) #

• Sed contra: Romans — “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone believing”; and there is no salvation except for the justified.
• Body: two things pertain to the gospel law. (1) Chiefly, the grace of the Holy Spirit given inwardly — as to this it justifies. Augustine: in the Old Testament the law was laid down extrinsically, by which the unjust were terrified; here it is given inwardly, by which they are justified. “That’s a amazing difference, isn’t it?” (2) Secondarily, the documents of faith and the precepts ordering human affection and acts — as to this it does not justify; here it is like the Old Law. 2 Corinthians: “the letter kills, the Spirit gives life”; Augustine takes “letter” as a writing existing outside a man, even of moral precepts contained in the gospel — “whence also the letter of the gospel kills,” unless within there be the healing grace of faith. He comments: “that’s a pretty strong statement for Thomas to say.”
• Aside on “chief”: “chief is a prince… in English we say chief, because we’re influenced by the Indians.”

6. a. 3, objections 1-3 with replies: why not from the beginning of the world? #

• He states the two questions ahead: whether it ought to have been given from the beginning of the world, and whether it will last to the end — “or is the age of the Holy Spirit coming, as some people say?”
• Obj. 1: no accepting of persons with God (Romans 2); all sin and need God’s glory (Romans 3); so it should have been given from the start so all could be aided. Reply: the human race, through the first parent’s sin, merited to be deprived of the aid of grace; not to be given it is from justice, to be given it is from grace (Augustine, De perfectione iustitiae). Hence no accepting of persons; the law of grace was to be proposed in a suitable order.
  • Aside on succurrere: a student hears “sucker”; he notes it is the same Latin transliterated, and recalls New York cops giving a lost child an ice cream cone “to succor him.”
  • Applied aside: visitors ask, given ISIS beheadings, whether the God who had the Jews wipe out peoples is the same God — his answer: “we had to learn certain things first before we were ready for this,” and he does not think it easy to answer. With the parable of the labourers hired for the land: he was just to all, more generous to some. The translation is poor because it does not render the letter — the Greek has “Is your eye evil because I am good?” — and “the evil eye” is the definition of envy: you cannot bear the goodness given to another.
• Obj. 2: as there are diverse men in diverse places, so in diverse times; God wills all to be saved (1 Timothy) and commands the gospel preached in all places (Matthew, Mark); therefore in all times. He praises it — place and time are very similar, “that’s where Aristotle picks him up in the fourth book” [ed.: Physics IV]. Reply: diversity of places does not vary the status of the human race, which is varied through succession of time; so the New Law is proposed in all places but not in all times — though in every time there were some things pertaining to the New Testament (“shadows,” a student adds).
• Obj. 3: more is needed for spiritual, eternal salvation than for bodily, temporal salvation; God from the world’s beginning provided for bodily salvation, putting in man’s power all things created for his sake; so also the New Law from the beginning. He calls it “a pretty good argument.” Reply: bodily things serve man as regards his nature, which is not taken away by sin; spiritual things pertain to grace, which he loses by sin — so there is not the same reason for both. He takes the correction on himself: “there’s not the same reason as you thought, Berquist… think twice before I challenge the doctor.”

7. a. 3 sed contra and body: the three reasons for the delay (“not before what is spiritual, but what is animal”) #

• Sed contra: 1 Corinthians — not first what is spiritual but what is animal; the New Law is maxime spiritual.
• He asks the class to supply each reason after a pause.

1. The New Law is chiefly the grace of the Holy Spirit, which ought not to be given abundantly before the impediment of sin is removed from the human race, consummated by Christ’s redemption. John 7: “not yet was the Spirit given, because Christ was not yet glorified.” Romans 8: God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us. (Why Christ did not come at the world’s beginning is “another question that comes up when he takes up the incarnation.”)
2. From the perfection of the New Law: nothing is brought to perfection at once from its beginning, but by temporal succession — first a boy, afterwards a man. Galatians: the law was our pedagogue in Christ; when faith comes we are no longer under the pedagogue. He explains the pedagogue was a slave who took the boy to school and kept him from loitering. His formula: in time the imperfect is before the perfect; in goodness the perfect is before the imperfect.
   • Aside: he never had a pedagogue, but his older sister reported his wrongs; and Sister Carolyn the principal on the steps — “Look at the person to whom you are speaking” — and being called to the office for missing the children’s mass.
3. The New Law is the law of grace, so man was first to be left to himself under the Old Law, that falling into sin and knowing his own infirmity he might recognize his need of grace. Romans: the law entered that sin (delictum, “crime”) might abound, and where it abounded grace abounded more. Hence three states of man: not knowing what was bad; knowing what was bad but unable to avoid it; grace. “Man’s pride is a hard thing to cure.”
   • Aside: the Mass for the start of the forty days and the account of a clinic worker (name given as Davis) who kept a copy of a destroyed record after a botched abortion; the doctor went to jail, and she became a Catholic.
   • Aside on brevity: a student condenses the reasons; he says “Brevity is a soul virtue.” [ed.: usually “brevity is the soul of wit”]

8. a. 4, objections 1-3 with replies: will another status succeed? (“whether the new law ought to endure to the end of the world”) #

• Obj. 1: 1 Corinthians — when the perfect comes, the imperfect is eliminated; but the New Law is ex parte (“in part we know, in part we prophesy”). He glosses: Aristotle in Physics III — whole and perfect mean almost the same, so partial is imperfect; “we have a partial understanding of what Thomas understood.” He notes Thomas usually quotes this passage about faith being eliminated by the beatific vision, and that the objection mixes up two things. Reply (Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy — Thomas did not comment on it, Albert the Great did; Thomas commented on the Divine Names): threefold status — Old Law, New Law, and a third which succeeds not in this life but in the patria. The first is figural and imperfect with respect to the gospel; so too this status is figural and imperfect with respect to the fatherland — “now through a mirror and in enigma, then face to face.”
  • Asides: patria as fatherland vs. motherland, “our football team is called the Patriots, not the Matriots”; Jeter’s honours and the Patriots quarterback’s “we goofed”; the British composer’s “Enigma” piece.
• Obj. 2: John 16 promises the Paraclete will give knowledge of all truth; the Church does not yet know all truth; therefore another status is to be expected. Reply (Augustine, Contra Faustum): Montanus and Priscilla held the promise was fulfilled not in the apostles but in them; the Manichees, that it was fulfilled in Mani, whom they called the Paraclete — both therefore rejected Acts. The promise was fulfilled in the apostles: “you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence” (the class reckons nine or ten days after the Ascension — “that’s kind of the first novena”), and John 7’s “not yet was the Spirit given because Jesus was not yet glorified” shows that once Christ was glorified in resurrection and ascension the Spirit was given. This excludes “the vanity of some” who expect another time of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit taught the apostles all truth about what is necessary for salvation — things to be believed and done — but not all future events; not when the world will end, “it is not yours to know the times and moments” (Acts 1). Aside: “Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
• Obj. 3: as Father, Son and Spirit are each alius, so there was a status suited to the Father (the Old Law, where men intended generation), one to the Son (the New Law, where clerics aiming at wisdom are in charge), so a third of the Holy Spirit, where spiritual men would rule. He comments: “That’s a real power grab, right? That’s what some people want.” Reply: the Old Law was not only of the Father but also of the Son, since Christ was figured in it — John 5, “if you believed Moses you would believe me, for he wrote of me”; and the New Law is not only of Christ but of the Holy Spirit — Romans 8, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” So no further law of the Holy Spirit is to be expected.
  • Aside: Bernard Lonergan had “that kind of mentality,” reinventing transcendentalism; the power grab was academic — dogmas are unchanging but formulated in changing historical contexts, which only academics understand, so academics must tell the bishops what dogmas mean today.

9. a. 4, objection 4 and reply: the gospel preached in the whole world (“this gospel will be preached… and then will come the consummation”) #

• Obj. 4 (Matthew 24): the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world and then the end will come; the gospel of Christ is already preached everywhere and the end has not come; so the gospel of Christ is not the gospel of the kingdom, and another gospel of the Spirit is to come.
• Reply: since Christ at the outset of his preaching said “the kingdom of heaven is drawing near,” it is stultissimum to say the gospel of Christ is not the gospel of the kingdom. Preaching can be understood two ways: (a) as regards the opening up of the knowledge of Christ — thus it was preached in the universal world even in the apostles’ time (Chrysostom), and “then will come the consummation” is understood of the destruction of Jerusalem; (b) with full effect, so that a church is founded in each nation — thus, as Augustine says to Hesychius, it is not yet preached in the whole world, and when it is, the consummation of the world will come. He notes it stays “kind of ambiguous” exactly when.
  • Aside: the North American martyrs — what they put up with for so long, compared with ISIS killings that “get over it kind of quick.”

10. a. 4, sed contra and body: no more perfect status in this life (“nothing can be nearer to the last end”) #

• Sed contra: Matthew 24, “this generation will not pass away until all these things are fulfilled,” expounded by Chrysostom of the generation of the faithful of Christ; so the state of Christ’s faithful remains to the end of the world.
• Body: the status of the world can vary in two ways.

1. According to diversity of law: no other status will succeed the New Law. The New succeeds the Old as more perfect to imperfect; but no status of the present life can be more perfect than the New Law, since nothing can be nearer the last end than what immediately introduces into the last end — which is what the New Law does. Hebrews: having faith in the entrance to the holies in the blood of Christ, which brought for us a new way. Something is more perfect the closer it is to the last end.
2. According as men relate to the same law more or less perfectly: thus the status of the Old Law changed many times — the laws sometimes best kept, sometimes altogether thrown out — and so too the status of the New Law is diversified by places, times and persons, as the grace of the Holy Spirit is more or less perfectly had. But no future status is to be expected in which it will be had more perfectly than by the apostles, who took the first fruits of the Spirit, before others in time and more abundantly (gloss on Romans 8). The class adds the exceptions: Mary and Christ, “and maybe Joseph.”

• Closing aside: Einstein on Mozart — you cannot perfect this, “because perfection is imperfectible.”

His words #

• potissimum — “most potent,” that which a thing most is; as reason is man.
• “the law of faith” — Paul’s name for grace itself, in Romans 3.
• disposing vs. use of grace — the two secondary contents of the New Law: what prepares the mind (faith in Christ’s divinity and humanity) and affection (contempt of the world), and what employs it (works of the virtues).
• praevaricatio — rendered by the class as “wandering away,” “transgression.”
• unus Deus… aliter et aliter — one God gave both laws, but in different ways: stone tablets vs. fleshly tables of the heart.
• “chief” — his English for principaliter; “chief is a prince.”
• succurrere — to succor, to come to one’s aid (not “sucker”).
• pedagogue — the slave who took the boy to school and kept him from loitering; his image of the Old Law.
• delictum — “crime” as well as sin.
• ex parte — in part; with Physics III, whole and perfect mean almost the same, so partial is imperfect.
• patria — fatherland; the third status, not in this life.
• stultissimum — “most stupid,” Thomas’s word for denying that Christ’s gospel is the gospel of the kingdom.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 106, a. 1 (body and reply to obj. 1)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 106, a. 2 (objs. 1-3 with replies, sed contra, body)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 106, a. 3 (objs. 1-3 with replies, sed contra, body)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 106, a. 4 (objs. 1-4 with replies, sed contra, body)

Mentioned (as quoted within those articles or by him)

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX; Physics III; Physics IV on place and time (inferred)
• Romans 2, 3, 4, 8, 10; 1 Corinthians 13 (inferred); 2 Corinthians 3 (inferred); Galatians 3 (inferred); Hebrews 5:9, 10; 1 Timothy 2 (inferred)
• John 5, 7, 14, 16; Matthew 24; Mark; Acts 1
• Augustine, De spiritu et littera; De perfectione iustitiae; Contra Faustum; Epistle to Hesychius
• Pseudo-Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (commented on by Albert, not Thomas; Thomas commented on the Divine Names)
• Chrysostom; the gloss on Romans 8
• Parable of the labourers hired to work in the land
• Bernard Lonergan

His questions #

• What is potissimum in the law of the New Testament? The grace of the Holy Spirit given through faith in Christ.
• Does the New Law justify? As to its principal element, grace given inwardly, yes; as to its documents and precepts proposed outwardly, no — “the letter of the gospel kills” without inward healing grace.
• Is it the same God who gave the Old Law and the New? Yes, unus Deus, but aliter et aliter: on stone tablets and on the tablets of the heart.
• If the gospel is to be preached in every place, why not in every time? Because diversity of place does not vary the status of the human race, but succession of time does.
• What are the three reasons the New Law was not given from the world’s beginning? Removal of sin’s impediment by Christ’s redemption; the temporal passage from imperfect to perfect; man’s need first to learn his own infirmity.
• Why did Christ not come at the beginning of time? Left open — “another question that comes up when he takes up the incarnation.”
• Is another status, an age of the Holy Spirit, to be expected? No: the promise of John 16 was fulfilled in the apostles, and the New Law is already of the Spirit as well as of Christ.
• How many days after the Ascension was the Spirit given? Nine or ten — “kind of the first novena.”
• Why can no status of the present life be more perfect than the New Law? Because nothing can be nearer the last end than what immediately leads into it.
• When will the gospel be “preached in the whole world”? Ambiguous: already, as regards making Christ known; not yet, as regards full effect, a church founded in each nation.