Operating and Cooperating Grace; the Nine Graces Freely Given and Why Grace That Makes Us Pleasing to God Is Higher (Summa I-II, Q.111, Articles 4–5)

Orientation #

He opens by going back to the earlier article on operating vs. cooperating grace before taking up article 4, and closes the reading of article 5 by calling a break. He does not say what comes next.

The class, in order #

1. His two prayers: “move me” versus “help me” (“Help us, God, to know and love you”) #

Point: his own spontaneous wording tracks the distinction between operating and cooperating grace.

• Prayer 1: “Help us, God, to know and love you” — asks cooperating grace, because we have already begun to know and love God in this course and seek his help to continue and perfect the act.
• Prayer 2: “Move me, God, to love you above all other things, and all other things for the sake of you, even myself” — asks operating grace: Thomas speaks of God as the mover; this is something I could never even begin, since it goes beyond natural self-love (“why don’t you love yourself the most?”).
• Order: first “move me… to know and love you,” then “help me… to know and love you.”
• The Divine Office shows the same order: “O Lord, open my lips, and my tongue shall announce your praise” (operating — you are closed, he must open you) followed by “hasten to help me” / “incline unto my aid” (cooperating). Both from the Psalms.
• Student aside: a workshop tool you turn on and it spins by itself — we get a little motion, then need more moving.
• Student objection: doesn’t the very desire that leads us to pray already show operating grace, so that in both cases we ask cooperating grace? — He allows God may already have moved us in some ways, but you want to be moved by God first, since he is the origin of all things, and then to be helped to continue and perfect the motion; the order of the office repeats that order. “Don’t be too sure of yourself… you need someone to move you.”
• Student: John Cassian has a whole conference on that verse as the prayer for all monks.

2. Why one member of a division keeps the common name (“keeps the common name”) #

Point: gratia gratis data is a case of a common name retained by one member while the other, having something noteworthy, gets a new name. Examples:

• Aristotle: habit vs. disposition — yet habit is a stable disposition; stability is noteworthy, so it gets the new name.
• Man and “the animals”: man is an animal, but animals with reason get the new name man.
• Thing vs. person: a person is a thing; what has reason and will gets the new name person. (Aside: the priest saying “you can’t treat a girl like a thing.”)
• Ethics VI: sophia/sapientia distinguished against episteme/scientia; yet in the Metaphysics wisdom is called an episteme — no contradiction: it is knowledge of the greatest things, the first cause, God, and so gets a new name. (His granddaughter Sophia: wisdom is about God.)
• His daughter: “I don’t like this, I love it” — intense liking gets the name love.
• So too: all grace is gratia gratis data; the grace that makes one gratum to God gets the new name gratia gratum faciens, the other keeps the common name. He remarks modern philosophers never explain this.

3. The objections of article 4 and Thomas’s replies (“cannot be comprehended under some certain division”) #

Point: he reads the objections and replies before the body.

1. Everything given us by God is given gratis, and the goods of soul and body are infinite — so gratuitous graces cannot be comprehended under a certain division. Reply: only what exceeds the faculty of nature counts — as the fisherman (Peter) abounding in the word of wisdom and knowledge.
   • Here he notes the other way a name divides: sometimes the member keeping the common name has the fullness of the thing — man/boy, woman/girl; the boy gets a new name not from something noteworthy added but because he is undeveloped. (His mother’s Rosary Society liked being called “girls.”) What is according to nature you have a kind of right to; what is above nature is truly gratis — his mother called it “gravy”: potatoes are fine, gravy is something more.
2. Faith belongs to gratia gratum faciens, since by it we are justified (Romans 5), so it is unsuitably listed among gratuitous graces — especially as hope and charity are not. Reply: faith is listed not as the virtue justifying a man in himself, but as implying a supereminent certitude fitting him to instruct others; hope and charity pertain to the appetitive power, ordering man himself to God.
3. Healings and kinds of tongues are miracles, and interpretation of speeches pertains to wisdom or knowledge (Daniel 1:17) — so the division overlaps. Reply: healing is distinguished from the working of powers because it has a special reason for inducing to faith — a man is made more prompt to faith by the benefit of bodily health; likewise tongues and interpretation have special reasons of moving to faith.
4. Wisdom and knowledge are gifts of the Holy Spirit (with understanding, counsel, piety, fortitude, fear). Reply: as gifts they name the mind’s being easily moved by the Holy Spirit; as gratuitous graces they imply an abundance by which one can instruct others and overcome contradictors — hence sermo sapientiae and sermo scientiae. Augustine, De Trinitate XIV: it is one thing to know what a man must believe to obtain blessed life, another to know how it is useful and how it is defended against the impious.

4. Sed contra and the body: the threefold requirement (“But for this, three is required”) #

Point: gratuitous grace is ordered to a man’s cooperating in leading another back to God, whereas gratia gratum faciens is for one’s own happiness.

• Sed contra: 1 Cor 12:8ff — word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, grace of healings, working of powers, prophecy, discretion of spirits, kinds of tongues, interpretation of speeches. He asks whether “the Apostle” (so called by antonomasia) divides into two or three: neither — he simply lists, counting off on fingers.
• Body: man cannot move another inwardly — that belongs to God alone — but only by teaching exteriorly and persuading. Aside: you can’t get inside and straighten out another’s head.
• Three things are required to instruct another in divine things above reason: (1) fullness of knowledge; (2) ability to confirm or prove what he says, else the teaching is not efficacious; (3) ability to put fittingly what he conceives.
• On (2): his first professor Kasurik left philosophy because he was taught “this is so because you are a Catholic” — not efficacious teaching; he told De Koninck he would walk out mid-class if taught that way, and stayed. Stories of De Koninck lecturing at St. Paul Seminary with Kasurik leaping up to fix the microphone — filial piety; through him he met De Koninck and Msgr. Dionne.
• On (3): from Warren Murray’s book on Canadian saints — a Jesuit professor fluent in five languages who could not learn the Indian languages and so served in the house; a saint, but lacking the third thing. The Indians mocked as an idiot anyone who could not master their language; Algonquin is far more complex than French.

5. The subdivisions: three, four and two, making nine (“So four and three is what? Seven”) #

Point: each of the three heads subdivides, giving nine gratuitous graces.

• First head (fullness of knowledge), by analogy with human teaching, requires three: certainty about the principles — hence faith, certitude about invisible things taken as principles in Catholic teaching; rightness about the chief conclusions — hence sermo sapientiae, knowledge of divine things; abundance of examples and knowledge of effects by which causes are manifested — hence sermo scientiae, knowledge of human things (“the invisible things of God through the things that are made”). Aside: Augustine’s catechetical instruction has faith, hope, charity as ingredients.
• Second head (confirmation): in things subject to reason, by arguments; in things above reason, by what is proper to God’s power, in two ways, each divided in two — doing what God alone can do: for bodily salvation, grace of healings; for manifesting divine power only (sun standing still or darkened, the sea divided), working of powers; manifesting what God alone can know: future contingents, prophecy; hidden things of hearts, discretion of spirits. That is four.
• Third head (faculty of pronouncing): as regards the idiom in which something is understood, kinds of tongues; as regards the sense of what is put forth, interpretation of speeches. Two.
• Total nine. He contrasts this with the nine choirs of angels, three hierarchies each of three, each divided into beginning, middle and end — easier to follow; here it is three, four and two, each divided by a different number. Joke: Thomas said he would start with two or three, and with pages left “he might start messing up.”

6. Article 5, objections: is gratuitous grace more worthy? (“Grace gratis data is more worthy”) #

Point: three objections press that gratuitous grace is nobler.

1. The good of the nation is better than the good of one (Ethics I); gratum faciens serves one man, gratis data the common good of the church. “Now, how the hell are you going to get out of there?”
2. What can act on another has greater virtue than what is only affected in itself — as a bright body that can illuminate others is greater than one that only shines. Hence Aristotle (Ethics V) calls justice the most splendid of virtues, by which man is rightly disposed toward others. By gratum faciens a man is perfected in himself; by gratis data he works for others’ perfection.
3. What is proper is more worthy than what is common to all — reason, proper to man, over sense, common to all animals; gratum faciens is common to all members of the church, gratis data the proper gift of the worthier members.

• Asides: Thomas “has tied himself up — Houdini”; students recount Houdini’s death by burst appendix after an unready punch, and his failed spiritualist bet to return after death — “those are chains he couldn’t get out of.”

7. Reply to the first objection, and a digression on words (“the wisdom of nature”) #

Point: Metaphysics XII — the good of a multitude is twofold, the order within it and the separated good (the leader); the separated is better, since the other is ordered to it.

• Digression prompted by “the twelfth book of wisdom”: Shakespeare in King Lear calls the philosophy of nature “the wisdom of nature” — beautiful, because it has a double meaning: the wisdom nature shows and the wisdom that is about it; like “the word of God,” which means both the second Person and the Bible (best short answer to “what is the Bible?”: the written word of God).
• Shakespeare’s similes, “false as water, hasty as fire”: water keeps no shape of its own, adapts to its environment — hence Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona, named from the shape-changing god in the Odyssey; the man who always agrees with the last person he talked to, his head changing like his hat with each new fashion.
• Application: a chair’s parts are ordered to each other, but the whole chair to sitting, and the end is always better; the army’s order is ordered to the leader, i.e. to victory — “in war there is no substitute for victory” (MacArthur). An army rejoices in victory, not in its order.
• So: gratis data is ordered to the common good of the church, the ecclesiastical order; gratum faciens to the separated common good, God himself. Therefore gratum faciens is nobler.
• Student story: a man about to make final vows who would not part with his money, arguing the good of many (nieces’ college) is better — he would have done better to burn it; he tinkers with money instead of making vows.
• Etymological digression (from SCG I.28 on God’s perfection): God is not “perfect” quantum ad id a quo nomen ponitur, since perfectum comes from per factum, made; the Greek word in “be you perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” comes from telos, end or finished — better etymology than the Latin, since the good is chiefly the same as the end (Aristotle: take away the end and you take away the good). Likewise English “understanding” is better than intellectus and far better than nous: senses know only accidents, but the understanding knows substance, what stands under the words. Latin felicitas (fruitfulness — fruit is the tree’s natural product) is better than “happiness,” from hap, what happens (Shakespeare’s “partaker of your happiness”); Greek has both eudaimonia (Ethics) and, in the Poetics, a word from luck. Msgr. Dionne: one language’s word is sometimes better than another’s. Aside: an old Ray Charles song, “Born to Lose.”

8. Replies to the second and third objections (“it causes certain dispositions towards this”) #

• Reply 2: if gratuitous grace could effect gratum faciens in another, it would be nobler — as the sun’s brightness illuminating exceeds the illuminated body’s. But by gratuitous grace a man cannot cause in another the conjunction with God that sanctifying grace gives; it causes only dispositions toward it. So too the heat in fire, the species through which it induces heat in another, is not nobler than the fire’s own form — being more like a disposition.
• Reply 3: sense is ordered to reason as to an end, so reason is nobler; but here it is the reverse — the private (gratuitous grace) is ordered to the common as to an end. So the graces gratuitously given are ordered to helping others obtain the grace that makes one acceptable, and the end is always better.
• Aside: a lady who went about saying “I have the gift of tongues.”

9. Sed contra and body of article 5 (“a more excellent way”) #

Point: sanctifying grace is far more excellent.

• Sed contra: after enumerating the gratuitous graces in 1 Cor 12, the Apostle adds “I will show you a yet more excellent way,” and, as what follows makes clear, speaks of charity — which belongs to gratia gratum faciens. He notes Thomas simply refers back to the text used in the previous article. This is the text St. Thérèse of Lisieux quotes when she says she will be the heart of the church.
• Body (shorter than the objections): every virtue is the more excellent the more it is ordered to a higher good; always (semper — “that’s a strong word”) the end is more potent than what is for the end. Sanctifying grace orders man immediately to union with the last end; gratuitous graces order him to things preparatory to that end — by prophecy, miracles and the like men are led to be joined to the last end (i.e. by the other grace). Therefore sanctifying grace is multo excellentior.
• Aside on principles: Jude, a very short epistle of twenty-five verses, about faith, hope and charity leading to the end, eternal life, bringing in the mercy of Christ at the end — “kind of hard to fully deserve it.”
• Closing aside: a bookmark card of the Triumph of St. Thomas, from friends (third order Dominicans) touring Dominic’s places from Spain to Bologna and Florence. Break called.

His words #

• “gratia gratis data” — grace gratuitously given; he notes he doesn’t know how best to translate it.
• “gratia gratum faciens” — grace making one pleasing/acceptable to God [ed.: sanctifying grace].
• “operating grace” / “cooperating grace” — the one God works as mover, the other helps a motion already begun.
• “by antonomasia” — why Paul is simply “the Apostle.”
• “sermo sapientiae / sermo scientiae” — speech of wisdom (divine things) / of knowledge (human things).
• “wisdom of nature” — Shakespeare’s phrase [ed.: philosophy of nature, i.e. Physics].
• “the twelfth book of wisdom” — Metaphysics XII, “after the books in natural philosophy.”
• “semper” — always; he flags it as a strong word in the body of a. 5.
• “multo excellentior” — much more excellent; he notes excellentior is comparative.
• “preparatoria” — preparations for the last end.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 111, a. 4 (objections 1–4, replies, sed contra, body)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 111, a. 5 (objections 1–3, replies, sed contra, body)
• 1 Corinthians 12:8–10 and 12:31 (sed contra of both articles)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII — good of the multitude twofold (quoted in reply 1 of a. 5)

Mentioned

• Romans 5 (obj. 2 of a. 4); Daniel 1:17 (obj. 3 of a. 4)
• Augustine, De Trinitate XIV; Augustine’s catechetical instruction (faith, hope, charity)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (good of the nation), VI (wisdom vs. knowledge), V (justice most splendid); Poetics
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. 28 (God’s perfection)
• Jude (25 verses); Matthew, end of the Sermon on the Mount, “be you perfect” (inferred)
• Shakespeare, King Lear; Two Gentlemen of Verona (Proteus; “happiness”); Homer, Odyssey (Proteus)
• John Cassian, Conferences; Warren Murray’s book on Canadian saints

His questions #

• Which of my two prayers asks for operating grace, which for cooperating? — “Move me” asks operating; “help us” asks cooperating.
• Doesn’t the desire to pray already show operating grace, so both prayers ask cooperating grace? — God may already have moved us, but the order is: be moved first, then helped to continue and perfect.
• How can one kind of grace be called gratis data when all grace is given gratis? — One member keeps the common name; the other, having something noteworthy (making one gratum), gets a new name.
• Does the Apostle divide into two or three in 1 Cor 12? — Neither; he simply enumerates nine.
• How many gratuitous graces result from Thomas’s division? — Nine: three, then four, then two.
• Is gratuitous grace more worthy than sanctifying grace, since it serves the common good of the church? — No: sanctifying grace is ordered to the separated common good, God himself.
• Why does the greater power to act on another not make gratuitous grace nobler? — Because it cannot cause union with God in another, only dispositions toward it.
• What is the end of faith, hope and charity? — Eternal life (Jude), received through Christ’s mercy.