Hope in Shakespeare's All's Well and the Theological Virtues; New Law vs. Old Law (ST I-II q.107, aa.1-2)

Orientation #

He says at the turn: “Okay, we’re up to question one oh seven” — the comparison of the New Law to the Old, listing its four articles. (prev. lecture) The preceding class had been in q. 106. The next class continues in q. 107 and opens q. 108.

The class, in order #

1. Hope in the Sentences, and why three theological virtues (“why must you read as you like it?”) #

He is currently reading the Sentences commentary, book III, distinction 26 — two questions, each about five articles: the first on hope as an emotion (in the irascible sense appetite), the second on the virtue of hope, which is not an emotion but has a likeness to it. Thomas leads you to the virtue from the passion it is named after.

• The question: the theological virtues direct us to our last end; why not just one in reason and one in the will? Faith knows the end, charity loves the end — why a third?
• Student/his answer: because of the difficulty of getting there — and difficulty is the object of the irascible. Hope is for a difficult good you think you can get.
• Aside: his childhood catechism, “who made me? God made me. Why’d you make you? To know Him and love Him in this world and to be happy with Him for the next.”

2. Helena’s soliloquies: the emotion of hope dramatised (“the hind that would be mated by the lion”) #

The illustration is All’s Well That Ends Well, Act I sc. 1. Characters: Bertram, the young count going off to the king’s court, and Helena, daughter of the dead famous physician Gerard de Narbonne, a commoner secretly in love with him.

• First soliloquy — the good known and loved but seemingly impossible: “my imagination carries no favour in it, but Bertram’s”; “’twere all one that I should love a bright particular star and think to wed it, he is so above me”; “in his bright radiance and collateral light must I be comforted, not in his sphere”; “the ambition in my love thus plagues itself”; “the hind that would be mated by the lion must die for love.” She knows him and loves him — but cannot pursue.
• Second soliloquy, after Parolles and Lafeu exit — the turn to possibility: “our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven”; “the fated sky gives us free scope, only doth backward pull our slow designs when we ourselves are dull”; “impossible be strange attempts to those that weigh their pains in sense”; “who ever strove to show her merit, that did miss her love?” He notes: in hope you must have merits to get the thing.
• Her means: the secret potion left by her father, and the king’s incurable disease. “My project may deceive me, but my intents are fixed and will not leave me.” She goes to cure the king — which puts her at court, near Bertram.
• The point: pursuit needs a third thing beyond knowing the good and loving it — that it be possible for her to obtain. So too the theological virtue of hope, but in the will.
• Student: perhaps that is why the other version of the catechism answer says “know him, love him and serve him.” He agrees.
• His own case: he knows it is good to be president, has even flown on Air Force One and pictures the Marine saluting — but he has no hope of it: he does not know how to raise money (his brother Mark knows that art), so he will not pursue it. What’s missing is hope.
• Objection from Thomas he recalls: knowing and loving should be enough — but the will is of the possible and the impossible; hope requires the ability.
• Asides: a student — if he were president he wouldn’t have time to read Shakespeare or drink tea; on the radio, Rubio spending more on ads and less on airplane trips.

3. How three virtues can have one object (“that’s not the formal object though, God”) #

Virtues are distinguished as powers are, by acts, and acts by objects; but all three theological virtues have God as object. Answer: not the same formal object.

• Example: blindfolded in this room, he could learn by touch that the middle tabletop is a rectangle and this one curved at the ends — the same shape he now knows by sight. But the formal object of the eye is color (color extends this far and curves off), of touch hardness (the hardness stops and the air begins). Same shape, different formal object.
• So: God is object of faith as first truth; of charity as summum bonum, the highest good (Thomas’s last chapter on the goodness of God); of hope as the most difficult of all to get.
• Why beatitude is sometimes named hope’s object: faith is “the substance of things hoped for”; Boethius — happiness is a state produced by the accumulation of all goods; nothing is harder to get than all goods, and when you get God you get all goods. Therefore God is the arduum.

4. Hope and the moral virtues (“magnanimity is concerned with hope”) #

An objection asks which moral virtue is most like hope. Fortitude is close but not it — fortitude has something bad to repulse. The answer is magnanimity, the virtue that aims at great things and is concerned with hope; magnanimity makes great human things possible, hope something supernatural.

• Aside: working out the definition of comedy long ago (reading the Sentences and De veritate), he realised hope is one of the principal passions — it had to be hope rather than boldness. The distinction of the eleven emotions is useful for comedy and tragedy, for the virtues about the emotions, and for music, which is an imitation of emotions.
• Ending the play: she cures the king, the marriage is forced, Bertram is indignant at marrying a commoner and takes off — more difficulties to overcome.

5. The plan of q. 107 (“what a thorough man this Thomas is”) #

Four articles on comparing the New Law to the Old: (1) whether the New is another law from the Old — “that was already known by now”; (2) whether the New fulfils the Old — “oh, this is marvelous”; (3) whether the New is contained in the Old — “my goodness, Thomas, excel yourself”; (4) whether the New or the Old is more grave, burdensome.

6. a. 1, objections and replies (“both law give faith of God”) #

He reads each objection and goes straight to its reply.

• Obj. 1: both laws give the faith of God, since without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11), and the faith of ancients and moderns is the same (gloss on Matt. 21) — so the same law. Reply: the unity of faith attests the unity of the end (the object of the theological virtues is the last end); but faith has a different status: they believed as future what we believe has been done.
• Obj. 2: Augustine (Contra Adamantium) makes the brief difference of Testaments fear and love — but the Old also proposes charity (Lev. 19:18; Deut. 6:5). Nor does Augustine’s other difference hold (Contra Faustum): temporal vs. spiritual promises — for the New promises temporal things too (Mark 10: a hundredfold, houses and brothers), and the ancient fathers hoped for spiritual and eternal ones (“now we desire a better fatherland, the heavenly one” — Hebrews). “Let’s see if he’s going to defend his master, Augustine.” Reply: all the assigned differences are taken according to perfect and imperfect. The precepts of both laws are about acts of virtue; but the imperfect, lacking the habit of virtue, are moved to virtuous works by something extrinsic — threat of punishment or promise of extrinsic reward, honor or riches (“if you’re brave, you’ll be honored”). Hence the Old Law, given to those not yet having spiritual grace, is the law of fear with temporal promises. Those having the virtue act from love of the virtue itself: hence the New Law, whose principality is spiritual grace poured into hearts, is the law of love with spiritual and eternal promises — we are inclined to them per se, as to our own, not as to something extraneous. Hence the Old restrains the hand but not the soul; the New restrains the soul itself. Boundary case he stresses: some in the Old Testament had charity and the Holy Spirit and expected spiritual promises — they pertain to the New Law though living in the time of the Old; and some in the New Testament are fleshly and must still be led by fear and temporal promises. “So you’re kind of in the old law.” Also: the Old gives precepts of charity, but through it the Holy Spirit is not given, through whom charity is poured out in our hearts (Rom. 5). “That was a good explanation.” Asides: “that’s kind of a sign that Islam is imperfect”; Reverend Ike out of Chicago — “if you serve God, gold, diamonds, and cars, they’re going to send more money.”
• Obj. 3: the Apostle distinguishes the law of works from the law of faith — but the Old was of faith too (Heb. 11, Abraham), and the New is of things to be done (Matt. 5, “do well to those who hate you”; Luke 22, “do this in my commemoration”). Reply: the New is the law of faith in so far as its principality consists in grace given inwardly to believers — the grace of the faithful. Secondarily it has things to be done, moral and sacramental, but its principality does not consist in them, as the Old Law’s does. Those in the Old Testament accepted by God through faith pertain to the New Testament; none are justified except by the faith of Christ, author of the New Testament. Whence of Moses the Apostle says he thought the reproach of Christ (improperium Christi) greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.
• Sed contra: the priesthood being transferred, there must be a translation of the law; but the priesthood of New and Old differ; therefore another law.

7. a. 1, the body: two ways laws differ (“according to nearness to the end or distance from it”) #

1. Every law orders human behaviour to some end.
2. Things ordered to an end are diversified two ways by the notion of the end: (a) by being ordered to diverse ends — a diversity of species, most often by the proximate end; (b) by nearness to or distance from the same end.
3. Parallel from motion: motions differ in species by diverse termini, and within one motion one part is nearer the limit than another — a difference according to perfect and imperfect end.
4. Example (a): the law of a city ordered to the people dominating differs in species from one ordered to the best men dominating. Example (b): in one and the same city, a law laid on perfect men able to follow the common good, and another about the discipline of boys, instructed so that afterwards they may pursue the works of men.
5. Conclusion: in the first mode the New is not another law, since both have one end — that men be subject to God; and there is one God of New and Old Testament, according to the Orthodox faith (Rom. 3: one God who justifies circumcision from faith and the uncircumcision through faith). In the second mode it is another: the Old is a pedagogue of boys, the New the law of perfection, the law of charity, which the Apostle calls the bond of perfection.

• Student aside: what he likes in Thomas’s scriptural commentaries is that he always asks the matter — of all the books of the Old Testament, “Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ.” He answers: the same matter is in a similar way the same end.

8. a. 2, objections and replies: does the New fulfil the Old? (“fulfilling is contrary to eliminating”) #

• Obj. 1: fulfilling is contrary to evacuating, but the New takes away the observances of the Old (if we are circumcised…). Reply: it eliminates only the ceremonial, which were figures of the future; once the ceremonial precepts are fulfilled they should no longer be observed, for observing them would still signify something as future, not fulfilled — as the promise of a future gift has no place once the gift is exhibited.
• Obj. 2 (he calls it more serious): the Lord proposed precepts contrary to the Old — divorce (Matt. 5, the bill of repudiation), swearing, retaliation, hatred of enemies, and the discretion of foods (“it is not what enters into the mouth”). Reply, from Augustine Contra Faustum: they are not contrary. The law did not say “whoever wishes should dismiss his wife” — that would be contrary; it interposed a delay (the bill), so the man might think it over; and the Lord, confirming that one should not easily dismiss a wife, excepts only the cause of fornication. Same for the oath. For retaliation: the law of talion was that they not proceed to immoderate revenge; the Lord perfectly removes the man by admonishing abstention from revenge altogether. On hatred of enemies he removes the Pharisees’ false understanding: not to hate the person but his fault. On foods: this was ceremonial — no food is unclean according to nature, only according to a figure.
  • Aside on the person/act distinction: this comes up constantly with the pro-life people — “we’re not condemning them, we’re condemning the act”; a student recalls Augustine: love your neighbour so much that you do not love his sin.
• Obj. 3: Christ acted against the law — he touched the leper (Matt. 8), and seems often to have violated the Sabbath (“this man is not from God, who does not guard the Sabbath”). He notes: “that’s only what they thought — your objection proceeds from your enemies.” Reply: touching the leper was prohibited because it incurred a certain uncleanness/irregularity, as touching a corpse; but the Lord, the cleanser of leprosy, could not incur uncleanness. On the Sabbath: it was not violated secundum rei veritatem — he worked miracles by divine power, which always acts in things; he did works of human salvation (the Pharisees themselves saved animals on the Sabbath); and by necessity he excuses the apostles gathering grain. He seems to violate it only on the Pharisees’ superstitious understanding, that even salubrious works must cease — which was against the intention of the law.
• Obj. 4: the Old contained moral and judicial precepts, and no mention is made of judicial and ceremonial fulfilment. Reply: the ceremonial are not commemorated because their observance is wholly excluded by their fulfilment; as to the judicial, he does commemorate the precept of talion, teaching that the law’s intention was not punishment out of rage or revenge — man ought rather to be prepared to suffer greater injuries — but only on account of the law of justice, which still remains in the New Law.
• Sed contra: “I came not to dissolve the law but to fulfil it,” and “one iota or one tittle shall not pass from the law till all be done.”
• Student aside: the tassels on his garment — one of the ceremonial things.

9. a. 2, the body: three ways the New fulfils the Old (“everything perfect fulfils that which is lacking”) #

The New is to the Old as perfect to imperfect, and everything perfect supplies what is lacking in the imperfect.

• Student analogy he accepts: adulthood completes childhood — “I put away the things I did as a child,” yet the things of the child are ordered to that, so it is perfection, not contrariety.
• Two things to consider in the Old Law: the end and the precepts.
• The end of any law is that men become just and virtuous. (Aside: “that’s very well observed here, isn’t it? Don’t they pass a law about abortion somewhere? Make people worse.”) The Old Law’s end was the justification of men, which it could not effect but only figured in ceremonial deeds and promised in words. So the New fulfils it (i) by justifying through the power of Christ’s passion — Rom. 8, God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh damned sin in the flesh, that the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us; (ii) by showing what the Old promised — 2 Cor., how many promises of God there are, in him (in Christ) it is Yea; (iii) by completing what the Old figured — Colossians: the ceremonials were shadows of things to come, the body was Christ. Hence the New is the law of truth, the Old of shadow or figure.
• The precepts Christ fulfilled by deed — he wished to be circumcised and to observe the other legal things then to be observed, “made under the law” (Gal. 4) — and by teaching, in three ways:
  1. by expressing the true understanding of the law: in homicide and adultery the scribes and Pharisees understood only the prohibition of the exterior act; the Lord showed that the interior acts of sins also fall under prohibition;
  2. by ordering how the precepts might be more safely observed: the Old said do not commit perjury, the New that one abstain from swearing altogether except in necessity — “you can’t perjure yourself if you don’t take an oath”;
  3. by adding counsels of perfection: Matt. 19, to the man who said he had kept the precepts and wanted more — “one thing is lacking to you; if you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you have and come follow me.”
• Closing: “A lot of stuff in Thomas, isn’t there?”

His words #

• “ability” — what hope adds to knowing and loving: that the difficult good be possible to obtain [ed.: potency/possibility].
• “formal object” — what a power or virtue attains its object under (color for sight, hardness for touch).
• arduum — the difficult; God as hope’s object is “the most difficult of all.”
• summum bonum — the highest good, God as object of charity.
• “principality” — his rendering of principalitas: that in which a law chiefly consists.
• “defunded, poured in, spread out” — his groping renderings of diffunditur (Rom. 5).
• improperium Christi — “the reproach of Christ” (of Moses, Hebrews).
• “translation of the law” — carrying over of the law, following the transfer of the priesthood.
• “pedagogue of boys” — the Old Law as discipline of boys, preparing them for the works of men.
• “grave” — burdensome, weighing you down (the topic of a. 4).
• secundum rei veritatem — “according to the truth of the thing” (the Sabbath was not really violated).
• “law of talion / Italian” [ASR: talionis] — the law of retaliation, eye for an eye.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 107, a. 1 (objections 1–3, replies, sed contra, body).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 107, a. 2 (objections 1–4, replies, sed contra, body).
• Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Act I, sc. 1 (two soliloquies of Helena).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis III, d. 26 (two questions: the passion of hope, the virtue of hope); d. 25 on faith, d. 27 (presumably) on charity.
• Thomas Aquinas, De veritate (read long ago on hope).
• Augustine, Contra Adamantium Manichaei discipulum; Contra Faustum.
• Boethius, on happiness as the state produced by the accumulation of all goods.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (fortitude, magnanimity) (inferred as the work meant by “the virtues Aristotle takes up”).
• Scripture: Heb. 11; Matt. 21 (gloss); Lev. 19:18; Deut. 6:5; Mark 10; Rom. 5; Rom. 3; Matt. 5; Luke 22; Matt. 8; Matt. 19; Gal. 4; 2 Cor.; Colossians; Rom. 8 (inferred).

His questions #

• Why do you need three virtues to direct us to the last end — isn’t knowing and loving enough? Because of the difficulty of attaining it; hope regards the arduous good as possible to obtain.
• In what way is God the object of hope, if he is object of faith as first truth and of charity as highest good? As the most difficult of all goods to get — when you get God you get all goods.
• Which moral virtue most resembles hope — fortitude? Magnanimity, since magnanimity is about hope; fortitude has something evil to repulse.
• Would you think the Old Law has a different end from the New? No — one and the same ultimate end, that men be subject to God, and one God of both Testaments.
• How then are they different laws? By nearness and distance from that end: the Old a pedagogue of boys, the New the law of perfection and charity.
• Are the Lord’s precepts contrary to the Old Law’s? No — they express the law’s true intention; only the ceremonial observances are taken away, by being fulfilled.
• Did Christ act against the law in touching the leper and on the Sabbath? No — the cleanser of leprosy could not incur uncleanness, and the Sabbath was violated only on the Pharisees’ superstitious understanding.
• In how many ways did Christ’s teaching fulfil the precepts? Three: true understanding of the law, safer observance, and adding counsels of perfection.