Summa I-II q.110 a.1: Does Grace Place Something in the Soul? The Three Senses of Grace, the Four Causes, and Our Knowledge Beginning from the Continuous

Orientation #

He places the class: we have had the necessity of grace, now the essence of it (“what it is”), and next will come the division of grace. “We’re starting one ten now.” The neighbouring class continues in Question 110 on grace as a quality of the soul.

The class, in order #

1. The plan of Question 110 (“about this, four things are asked”) #

Four articles: (1) whether grace places something in the soul; (2) whether grace is a quality; (3) whether grace differs from an infused virtue; (4) the subject of grace — is it in the powers of the soul or in the soul itself.

2. Objection 1 and its reply: having the grace of a man (“the grace of another man”) #

• Obj.: as a man is said to have God’s grace, so he has the grace of another man — Joseph found grace in the sight of the prince of the prison (Genesis 39). But there nothing is put in the one who has the grace; it lays down only an acceptance of the person in the one whose grace he has. So grace puts nothing in the soul.
• Reply: even there something acceptable is understood to be in the man — but in a different way. What is acceptable in another man is presupposed to our love of him; whereas it is caused by the divine love that a man be pleasing to God.
• He turns this into a question to the class: is the good in a man the effect or the cause of my love? Cause — “I love him because he’s good.” With God it reverses: God’s love is the cause of the good in me. He calls this “a beautiful example of looking before and after,” the fifth sense Aristotle gives but really attached to the second (prev. discussion of the senses of before).

3. Objection 2: the soul vivifies the body immediately (“He is your life”) #

• Obj.: as the soul makes the body alive, God makes the soul alive (Deuteronomy 30, “He is your life”); but the soul vivifies the body immediately, so nothing falls between God and the soul; so grace places nothing created in the soul.
• Reply (given here in advance, and read later): God is the life of the soul by way of efficient cause; the soul is the life of the body by way of formal cause — Aristotle’s first act, the substantial form. Grace, by contrast, is a cause of the life of the soul as a form; whether in the powers or in the soul itself comes in article 4.
• Example: his three pills morning and evening — he is healthy by his health as formal cause, by the medicine as assisting efficient cause. Aside: Kasurik (ASR uncertain) thanking the wealthy woman who paid for graduate school — an assisting efficient cause.

4. Digression: the four causes and the word CAT on the board (“What does the word C A T depend upon?”) #

A cause is that upon which something depends for its being or coming to be. He teaches the kinds from the classroom board:

1. Matter — the letters C, A, T: erase them and there is no word. Matter is “that from which something comes to be, existing in it” — not the writer (not in it), not the opposite it came from (sickness is not in health).
2. Form — write A C T next to CAT: same letters, different word; the difference is the order.
3. Mover/maker — why is C before A? Not from the letters; from the writer.
4. End/purpose — he wrote CAT to talk about his favourite animal; ACT for human acts, or the ninth book on ability and act, or Shakespeare’s five acts. Applied: the letters are cause as matter, their order as intrinsic form, the writer as efficient cause. Aside: a dog barking outside — “he just needs classes.”

5. Why the mover is named before the maker (“things in motion sooner catch the eye”) #

Motion is better known. He quotes the line (Shakespeare) and notes it seems to be in trochaic meter, not the conversational iambic.

• Student’s question: in De Anima color is the proper object of sight and motion only a common sensible — why does Shakespeare say motion rather than color catches the eye? His answer: “because he thinks that’s true.” Evidence: the sports page — every sport has a ball moving, players moving, and that is what holds attention; waving to someone at the gate who does not see you (you do not shout “here, here”); the hunter who stays still and waits for the animal to cross.

6. Is the thing in motion, or the motion in the thing? — the senses of “in” (“the eight senses of in”) #

Two senses of in are in play. From Aristotle’s eight:

• 3rd: the genus is in the species — as a composing part of the species, which is composed of genus and differences.
• 4th: the species is in the genus — as in a universal whole, in potency, not composing it. Else the meaning of animal would be a composition of dog, cat, horse, elephant, and a cat as animal would be composed of all four.
• 5th: form in matter — where the accident in the substance belongs. “A thing in motion,” and “he is in health,” are not among the eight, but can be attached to one by some likeness.

7. Can the matter be said to be in the form? (“where do we get the word form first?”) #

Boundary case. The shape of the table is in the wood — form in matter, said first. But the first meaning of form is in the continuous: triangle, sphere, cube — and form is a limit, so the matter of a sphere is contained in its surface, as we are in this room contained by its inner surface. In that sense matter is in form, as in what limits and contains it — “that’s how people think of their soul in their body.” Historically: the early Greeks took matter as substance and every form as an accident of it; Plato somewhat and Aristotle saw form in this other sense, and eventually form was carried over to what a thing is — St Paul: Christ “in the form of God,” “took on the form of a slave.”

8. All our names begin from the continuous (“the sensible senses don’t transcend the continuous”) #

From the opening of the De Potentia: knowledge begins with the senses, the senses do not transcend the continuous, so our first names name something continuous — the first meaning of in is in place, the first meaning of before is in time. He tests this on the order of the Summa contra Gentiles on God’s substance:

1. Unchanging, hence eternal — starts from motion, something continuous, and negates it. So too the proofs of God’s existence begin from motion (in SCG the first two).
   • His own life: beginning about April 1935, born 18 January 1936, an end not far off, and a before and after, because it is in motion. God’s life: no beginning, no end, no before and after — Boethius: tota simul, “perfect possession of interminable life.” Not a frozen now: the fairy-tale picture of everyone spellbound holding the turkey until Prince Charming comes. The now that flows makes time, the now that stands still makes eternity — but it is not the now of time stopped, for in the now of time he cannot even say both syllables of “Duane.”
2. Not composed — “composed” in native English is “put together,” whose first meaning is things touching or becoming one, i.e. the continuous, here magnitude rather than motion (you cannot easily put together Tuesday and Wednesday; the week is seven days only loosely). Hence the first thing shown is that God is not a body, then not of matter and form, then not of essence and being, then no accidents.
3. Perfect, hence good — less obviously continuous; he had to think about it, prompted by a student’s challenge (“what’s a continuous thing there, Mister Berquist?”), and answers: Aristotle in the Physics, “whole and perfect mean almost the same thing,” and the first meaning of whole is the integral or composed whole, all the parts together. The whole is plainly better than the part: whole car vs. fender, chair vs. a leg, whole dinner vs. part, whole wage vs. part; in Quebec the repas complet. That is why perfect comes third — further removed from the continuous. Also on “perfect”: from factum, made — and mover and maker both cause an act, the best-known act being motion and the maker’s act being form; so we are led again to act being better than ability, and from God as pure act to His perfection and goodness. Asides: the complete meal has three parts, and Aristotle says we use “three” in praising God; Mozart’s three movements. The Alka-Seltzer ad, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” Closing irony: there are two definitions of the continuous — parts meeting at a common boundary, and that which is divisible forever. God is not divisible at all; so we reason from what is divisible forever (cut the line in half, and again, forever) to the wholly simple. Aside on division against oneself: a man divided against himself has multiplicity, one part against another (the radio ads about drugs and alcohol); Shakespeare compares it to a little city in civil war — and so, he jokes, is the Republican party in this campaign.

9. Objection 3: grace as the remission of sins (“God does not impute sin”) #

• Obj.: on Romans, “Grace to you and peace,” the gloss says grace is the remission of sins; but remission places nothing in the soul, only in God not imputing sin (Psalm 31). He notes: “this is like Luther or somebody.”
• Reply: Augustine in the Retractations — grace is called the remission of sins and peace the reconciliation with God, but not as though peace and reconciliation did not pertain to grace generally; rather by the name “grace” the remission of sins is specially signified. Not only remission belongs to grace but many other gifts; and the remission of sins does not come about without some effect divinely caused in us.

10. Sed contra: grace is a light (“light places something in the thing enlightened”) #

Augustine, On Nature and Grace: the one who disobeys the law is rightly deserted by the light of truth and becomes blind. Therefore grace lays down something in the soul. His gloss: when Christ cures a blind man, they now have something that was not there.

11. The body: three senses of grace (“grace is accustomed to be taken in three ways”) #

1. The love of someone — “this soldier has the grace of the king,” i.e. the king holds him grateful/pleasing; in English, “in my good graces.”
2. Some gift given gratis — “he did it gratis.”
3. The recompense for a benefit received gratis — giving thanks; if you pay what you owe I do not say thank you, but if you do it gratis I do; holding the church door, “be my guest” — “thank you”; gracias. Is “grace” univocal or equivocal? Equivocal — but equivocal by reason, not by chance, because reason looks before and after and there is an order among the senses: the first is in a way the cause of the second, the second of the third. I must give you something gratis before you thank me, and I give it gratis because I like you. (Compare the ordered eight senses of in and the four main senses of before.)

12. Why the first sense too puts something in the creature (“the will of man is moved from a good pre-existing”) #

In senses two and three it is manifest that grace puts something in the receiver. In the first sense a difference must be noted between God’s grace and man’s:

• God’s will, i.e. His love, wills good to a creature, and thence some good flows into the creature. Man’s will is moved by a good pre-existing in things, so human love does not wholly cause the goodness of the thing but presupposes it, in part or wholly. “I love the girl because she’s beautiful. She’s not beautiful because I love her” — but a soul is beautiful because God loves it.
• Hence some good in the creature follows every love of God, caused by it, though not co-eternal with the eternal love. God does not “decide suddenly one day.”
• Two loves according to the good willed: a common love, by which He loves all things that are, bestowing natural being (Wisdom 11; the Latin largitor — he notes Shakespeare’s “large discourse”); and a special love, by which He draws the rational creature supra its condition to a partaking of the divine good. By this second He is said to love someone simpliciter; the others secundum quid. “I call you no longer servants, but friends” — you love friends simply, other things in some respect. By this love God wills the creature the eternal good, which is Himself.
• Conclusion: to say a man has the grace of God signifies something supernatural coming into man from God. Nevertheless grace is sometimes said of God’s eternal love itself, as in “the grace of predestination,” since God predestines gratuitously and not from merits — Ephesians 1:5, “unto the praise of the glory of His grace.” That gratia is the grace in God, not the grace put into us.

His words #

• “places something in the soul” — the question of a.1: whether grace puts a created effect in us.
• “looking before and after” — the mark of reason, used to show an equivocal term is equivocal by reason.
• “ability” and “act” [ed.: potency and act] — as in “the ninth book on ability and act.”
• “the mover and the maker” — his rendering of the third cause, mover named first because motion is better known.
• “put together” — his native-English rendering of composed.
• tota simul — Boethius on eternity, “all at once,” perfect possession of vita interminabilis.
• “equivocal by chance” vs. “equivocal by reason” — the latter when the senses are ordered as cause to effect.
• largitor — “bestower,” in the Wisdom text on natural being.
• simpliciter vs. secundum quid — God loves the rational creature simply, other things in a certain respect.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 110, prologue and a. 1 (three objections, replies, sed contra, body).
• Genesis 39 (Joseph); Deuteronomy 30 (“He is your life”); Psalm 31; Wisdom 11; Ephesians 1:5; the gloss on Romans “Grace to you and peace.”
• Augustine, Retractations; Augustine, De natura et gratia.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia, opening (our names begin from the continuous).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles I: proofs from motion; God unchanging, eternal, not composed, perfect and good.
• Aristotle, Physics (“whole and perfect mean almost the same thing”); De Anima (color the object of sight, motion a common sensible); the eight senses of “in”; the senses of “before.”
• Boethius on eternity. St Paul on the form of God and form of a slave. Shakespeare (motion catching the eye; man as a city in civil war; “large discourse”).

His questions #

• What does the word CAT on the board depend on for its being there? — On the letters C, A, T as matter, on their order as form, on the writer as maker, on his purpose as end.
• Is God the cause of the soul’s life as the soul is of the body’s? — No: God as efficient cause (mover and maker), the soul as formal cause; grace is a formal cause of the soul’s life.
• Why does Aristotle name the mover before the maker? — Because motion is better known: things in motion sooner catch the eye.
• Why does Shakespeare say motion rather than color catches the eye? — Because he thinks it true; sports, waving at the gate, the hunter’s stillness.
• Is the thing in motion, or the motion in the thing? — Two different senses of “in,” neither among Aristotle’s eight, attached to them by likeness.
• Can matter be said to be in form? — Yes, in a later sense: form as limit containing matter, as the room’s surface contains us.
• Where do we get the word “form” first? — From the continuous: shapes, sphere, cube.
• Is “perfect” reducible to the continuous? — Yes, but less obviously, through “whole and perfect mean almost the same thing” and the integral whole; that is why Thomas shows it third.
• Is “grace” univocal or equivocal? — Equivocal by reason, not by chance: the three senses are ordered, each in a way causing the next.
• Does the first sense of grace (being loved) put anything in the creature? — Yes, in God’s case: His love causes the good in the creature, unlike ours, which presupposes it.