Grace, Part 1 (ST I-II q.109 a.1): Can We Know Truth Without Grace? God as First Mover, and How Words Like 'Act' and 'Motion' Carry Over

Orientation #

He says only “we’re up to 109 here,” re-reading the prologue to locate the question. (prev. lecture) The previous class treated articles of the treatise on the New Law, precepts and counsels.

The class, in order #

1. The plan of the treatise on grace (“we’re up to 109 here”) #

He re-reads the prologue: the exterior source of human acts is God, as He aids us by grace to act well. Three considerations: grace itself (q. 109–111), its cause (q. 112), its effects (q. 113). He notes the parallel with the treatise on love — love itself, its causes, its effects. The first consideration is again threefold: the necessity of grace (109), grace itself as regards what it is, its essence (110), its division (111). The question of necessity is “kind of like the question whether something is,” as distinguished from what it is. Aside: Fr. De Koninck had a prejudice against the word “essence,” especially in French, where it can mean gasoline.

2. The ten articles listed (“or ten things are asked”) #

He reads the ten: can man without grace know something true; will or do good; love God above all things; observe the precepts; merit eternal life; prepare himself for grace (“that seems like you’re going to have an infinite regress”); rise from sin; avoid sin; do good and avoid sin without divine aid (“kind of redundant, Thomas”); persevere in good. On the fifth he remarks, “I kind of doubt that.”

3. Objections and replies of a. 1, taken first (“let’s look at the objections… one by one”) #

He deliberately treats the three objections with their answers before the body.

1. Gloss of Ambrose on 1 Cor 12:3: every truth, by whomever spoken, is from the Holy Spirit; the Spirit dwells in us by grace; so no truth without grace. — Reply: true, as the Spirit pours in our natural light and moves us to understand and speak truth; but not every truth is from the Spirit as indwelling by grace making us acceptable, or by a habitual gift above nature — only some truths, chiefly those of faith. He grounds this in the general proposition that no creature does anything without being moved by the first mover; the proof is not here but in Summa Contra Gentiles III. His aside on the objection: “Very well. Even the devil.”
2. Augustine, Soliloquies I: the sciences are like things lit by the sun so they can be seen, God being the one who enlightens; reason is in minds as eyes in the body; bodily eyes, however pure, see nothing without the sun’s illumination; so the mind needs divine illumination. — Reply: the bodily sun enlightens exteriorly, the understandable light which is God enlightens within; the natural light of the soul is God’s enlightenment, sufficient for natural knowledge; another illumination is required only for what exceeds it, the articles of faith. He ties this to St. John on the light enlightening every man. Aside on the Soliloquies: an early work, around the time of his conversion, with the prayer “May I know myself, may I know you.”
3. Augustine, De Trinitate XIV with 2 Cor 3:5: the mind understands only by cogitating, and we are not sufficient to think anything of ourselves. — Reply: we always need divine aid for thinking, in so far as God moves our understanding to acting; but to understand in act is to think. That does not mean grace: “God’s not giving grace when he moves plants to be produced.”

4. Sed contra: Augustine’s Retractions (“Every tenure professor should write a book of retractions”) #

Augustine retracts his prayer “God, who does not wish any but the clean to know truth”: many who are not clean know many true things, and a man is made clean by grace (Ps 52 [Vulg.], “Create a clean heart in me”). Therefore without grace man can know some truth. Asides: tenure should be conditioned on writing a book of retractions, and one should not be allowed to retire until one writes it — Augustine’s proper academic humility. Then a news item: Pope Francis said Trump is not a Christian because a Christian builds bridges, not walls, while the Vatican is shown surrounded by walls; somebody made the same joke about Ted Kennedy building bridges.

5. The body begins: knowing truth is a use of the understandable light (“the use implies a certain what motion”) #

To know truth is a use or act of the understandable light (Eph: everything manifest is light). But use implies a motion — motion taken broadly, as understanding and willing are called motions, De Anima III.

6. Digression: all our names come from the continuous (“all of our names come from the continuous”) #

The point: the word “motion” here is used in an extended sense, and this is how all our naming works.

• A line, a motion down the line, and the time it takes: three continuous things. Continuous is defined in logic as that whose parts meet at a common boundary (parts of a line at a point, of a plane at a line, of a body at a surface), or as what is forever divisible; the indivisible in the continuous is the point, neither length nor width nor depth.
• These three give senses of a word: beginning of a line, of a motion, of a time.
• Before: its first sense in Metaphysics V is in time (with before-in-motion and before-in-magnitude very close).
• In: of its eight senses in Physics IV the first is place — “we are in this room”; the water in the glass, contained. Thomas notes Aristotle seems to have left out “in time,” and says it would be attached to the first sense by proximity.
• Boundary case raised in class: above/below seem closer to place than to time; but in in you are surrounded by your place, so not above or below it. My heart is in my body as part in whole (the second sense of in) — but you would not say my heart is before or above my body.
• The continuous not yet used as a starting point: motion. Metaphysics IX: the first meaning of act for us is motion, because our knowledge starts from the senses — Shakespeare: “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.” Among motions, local motion (the most continuous) comes first, and is carried to others: “I came to be in 1935” — “come to be” is named from coming and going, local motion.

7. Motion as imperfect act, and act carried over (“it’s an imperfect act”) #

Motion is defined in Physics III as the act of what is able to be, in so far as it is still able to be: an act incomplete by its nature, which when completed is no longer there. Examples: while walking home I have not walked home, and when I have walked home I am not walking home; “Are we there yet? — as long as you’re getting there, you’re not there.” Against this the perfect acts: when I see you, I have seen you; when I understand, I have understood; “when I’m loving you, have I loved you yet? — yes.” Application from the Sentences: an objection says charity is a motion toward God, and a completed motion no longer exists, so charity does not survive in heaven. Thomas answers that it is not motion in the strict sense but a perfect act. Second extension of “act”: to form. The soul is “the first act of a natural body furnished with tools” (organon = tool) — yet no one would call the soul an activity. So “act,” known first from motion, is carried both to form and to perfect activities. Further examples of falling back on the earlier sense: hope is more like motion than love is — love is not eliminated by the presence of the beloved but increased (people meeting relatives at the airport; his Italian mother-in-law ecstatic at the airport, and the children of the French-Canadian and Italian families fighting, “I’m the biggest Swede”). Desire likewise is more like motion, which is why the power is named the appetitive power, from what is more known to us; anger, the irascible, is very “movable.” The common error with words equivocal by reason is to fall back from a later sense to an earlier one — as an objection does when it thinks of love of God as an emotion-like motion. “Monsignor Dionisio said, he can’t move the word.” Modern philosophers make up their own words but cannot move a word over.

8. The two divisions of being, and “undergoing” (“the two main divisions of being”) #

Being divides (a) according to the figures of predication — substance, quantity, quality — and (b) into act and ability. Substance etymologically is “standing under,” which goes back to place. He confirms the Greek in Paul’s definition of faith: Latin substantia sperandarum, Greek hypostasis; Thomas uses the word “hypostasis” himself (“light is the hypostasis of color”), so he seems to know the Greek. Undergoing (Greek for suffering/to undergo) is first used of inanimate things: the marble underwent Michelangelo’s chipping. Aristotle says the senses undergo rather than act on their object — but in a different sense of undergoing from matter’s. Clay or Christmas-cookie dough receives the tree-shape as its own shape; the eye does not receive the apple’s shape as its own shape (“men get taken by the shape of a woman… but the eye doesn’t take on the shape of a woman”). Even so, under-going contains “under” and “going”: place and motion again. Likewise form: act is named from motion, but form itself names the termination of the continuous — the form of the glass, of a statue, of a man, of a chair.

9. The heavenly body as first bodily mover, and Aristotle’s mistakes (“the first mover in the order of bodies”) #

The text: for motion in bodies there is required not only the form which is the source of the action but also the motion of the first mover; the first mover in the order of bodies is the heavenly body — however perfect fire’s heat, it alters nothing except by motion of the heavenly body. He notes Thomas does not demonstrate this here but recalls it from elsewhere. Why Aristotle held the heavens eternal: for centuries men saw no change in the sun. In the commentary on De Caelo Thomas says change might take more time than many generations — so he is aware this argument of Aristotle is not necessary. Against Anaxagoras’s hot stone on fire: a stone on fire would burn out within some generations, as the great fire of London and the western forest fires do not last long; Anaxagoras may have been thinking of meteorites (“falling stars”), one of which the Indians of the southwest spoke of and whose site can now be photographed. Aristotle’s two mistakes: illumination is all at once (the reverse problem — it takes so little time that light from the bulb to the wall seems instantaneous), and the sun is eternal (it changes so slowly; a log in the fire burns out, the sun does not seem diminished) — to question these you need very good measurements. He mentions a pupil of Heisenberg (name uncertain in recording) explaining why the sun does not burn out fast. He adds: Aristotle knew the earth was round but not that it turns — a rock, or earth molded into a ball, falls in a straight line toward the center and does not spin; terrestrial bodies move up or down in straight lines, the heavens circularly, and circular motion is more able to be eternal. Evidence of heavenly influence for us: the tides (from the moon), and human moods. Scripture too speaks of the heavens as eternal — as of “eternal hills,” which we know are not. Aside: the sun at 93 million miles radius, we receive only a fraction of its light; his own garden at the back of his property, behind a New England stone wall, shaded by trees growing in.

10. The conclusion of the body: two dependences on God (“depends upon God, as regards two things”) #

All bodily motions reduce to the heavenly body as first bodily mover; so all motions, bodily and spiritual — “motion” now equivocal by reason — reduce to the first mover simply, God. Hence no nature, however perfect, bodily or spiritual, can proceed to its own act unless moved by God: “without me you can do nothing.” God’s motion is by reason of His providence, not by necessity of nature as the heavenly body’s is — he names Avicenna (uncertain) as holding creatures proceed from God by natural necessity rather than will. And from God is not only every motion, as from a first mover, but every formal perfection, as from a first act. Therefore the action of the understanding, and of any created being, depends on God two ways: (1) it has from Him the form by which it acts (my natural light of reason); (2) it is moved by Him to acting. A student asks whether this is by nature still — “it can be by nature, yes.” He notes the Summa Contra Gentiles background: book II, that only God can bring something into existence without matter, being source of matter as well as form; book III, God as mover of all things.

11. Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX and pure act (“pure act is the middle term”) #

Thomas’s division of book IX into three parts: (1) ability, especially as found in things that move — ability in comparison to motion in the strict sense, with active and rational abilities distinguished; (2) a wholly universal consideration of act, through which other senses of ability appear (ability to understand, to love), since ability is known through act; (3) the order of act and ability — act is before ability in knowledge and as a cause. Though in what goes from ability to act the ability is first in that thing, it goes over only by something already in act: his water is cold before hot, able to be hot before actually hot, but goes over because of the stove. Hence in Metaphysics XII the first being is pure act — the middle term for showing that God is altogether simple, unchanging, and altogether perfect (since act is more perfect than ability, and ability is for the sake of act), and that God’s understanding and loving are the same as His substance, since otherwise His substance would be an ability for an act that is not itself. But ability and act must first be met in natural philosophy. Aristotle always wants to stay as close as he can to the senses, so he looks concretely for the order of movers and moved, and the heavenly bodies seem to stand between God and things here.

12. Each form’s determined efficacy, and the added light (“unless it be perfected by a stronger light”) #

Every form put into things by God has efficacy toward some determined act, within which it can go by its proper nature, beyond which it cannot except through a form added above it: water cannot heat unless it be heated by fire. So the human understanding has the understandable light, of itself sufficient for what we can reach through sensible things, following the road from the senses into reason; but higher intelligibles, like the Trinity, it cannot know unless perfected by a stronger light — the light of faith, or of prophecy, called the light of grace as added above nature. Conclusion: for knowing any truth man needs divine aid so that his intellect be moved by God to its act; but he does not need a new enlightenment above the natural light for all truths, only for those exceeding natural knowledge. Footnote of the article: sometimes God miraculously instructs some men by grace about things knowable by natural reason, just as He sometimes miraculously does what nature can do. Two asides from his morning reading: the Catena Aurea on John, where more theology is taught than in the other Gospels, and his divinity — “the Father and I are one” — whence “John the theologian”; and Thomas on the order of charity in heaven: you love God above all things, even yourself, but your own beatitude more than the saints’; this is natural, and grace does not go against nature, so even in heaven we love our neighbor as ourselves.

13. Closing miracle stories (“that’s kind of striking”) #

On the footnote about miracles, the class exchanges stories: the parish priest’s report from the pro-life meeting of a boy in Mexico who walked the morning after Pope Francis hugged him, and a child in Philadelphia whose tumor was gone after he kissed her; Pope St. Pius X holding a crippled boy who then ran about, and the socks sent without his knowledge to a sick girl who was cured (“imagine that, she put on my socks — I wear them every day, my legs are killing me”); two crippled old nuns whose taxi driver did not recognize them coming out. He mentions a small biography of Pius X with a photograph of the body laid out; a student names Cardinal Merry del Val’s volume of reminiscences. Also: Pope Francis’s devotion to Pius X, appearing unexpectedly at his tomb for a Mass on his feast day.

His words #

• “ability” — potency; ability is known through act [ed.: potentia]
• “the continuous” — that whose parts meet at a common boundary, or what is divisible forever
• “equivocal by reason” — words like in, before, act, motion, whose senses are ordered, one from another [ed.: analogous / *pros hen*]
• “the ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX]; “the fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V]
• “understandable light” — the natural light of the human soul, itself God’s enlightening [ed.: lumen intelligibile]
• “undergoing” — being acted upon, said differently of matter and of sense [ed.: passio]
• “first act of a natural body furnished with tools” — the definition of soul; “organic” from organon, tool
• “largiendum motum” — taking motion broadly [ed.: as read from the Latin text]
• “indita rebus” — forms put into things by God
• “calefacere / calefacta” — to heat / heated (water and fire)
• “he can’t move the word” — Msgr. Dionisio’s phrase for failing to carry a word to a later sense

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 109, prologue; list of the ten articles; a. 1, objections 1–3 with replies, sed contra, and body
• Augustine, Soliloquies I (quoted in obj. 2); De Trinitate XIV (obj. 3); Retractions I (sed contra)
• 1 Cor 12:3 with the Gloss of Ambrose; 2 Cor 3:5; Eph (everything manifest is light); Ps 52 (Vulg.)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (senses of “before”), IX (act and ability, three parts), XII (first being as pure act); Physics III (definition of motion), IV (eight senses of “in”), VI; De Anima II (definition of soul), III (understanding and willing called motions); De Caelo, with Thomas’s commentary
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles II and III; Commentary on the Sentences (charity in heaven); Catena Aurea on John; the order of charity (I-II/II-II, not specified)
• Shakespeare, “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs”
• Anaxagoras (sun as a hot stone on fire); Avicenna (uncertain) on emanation by natural necessity
• Cardinal Merry del Val, reminiscences of Pius X

His questions #

• Where are we in the Summa, and how is the treatise on grace divided? Grace itself (109–111), its cause (112), its effects (113); and within grace, its necessity, its essence, its division.
• What is the first sense of “before” in Metaphysics V? Before in time.
• What is the first sense of “in,” and did Aristotle omit one? Place; “in time” was omitted, and Thomas attaches it to the first sense by proximity.
• Is my heart before, after, above or below my body? No — it is only in it, as part in whole, the second sense of “in.”
• Which continuous thing had not yet been used as the starting point of a word? Motion — whence “act” is first named.
• When I am walking home, have I walked home? When I see you, have I seen you? No, and yes — motion is imperfect act, seeing a perfect act.
• What is the definition of the soul? First act of a natural body furnished with tools — “act” here carried over to form.
• What are the two main divisions of being? According to the figures of predication (substance, quantity, quality), and into act and ability.
• In how many ways does the action of the understanding depend on God? Two: it has from Him the form by which it acts, and it is moved by Him to acting.
• Does man need a new light above nature to know any truth at all? No — only for truths exceeding natural knowledge, such as the articles of faith; but he always needs God’s motion.