The Cause of Grace: God Alone Deifies, with Christ's Humanity and the Sacraments as His Instruments (Summa I-II, Q.112, Article 1)

Orientation #

He says they have just finished the first part of the treatise on grace (necessity, essence, division) and now begin the second part, the cause of grace (prev. lecture: the division of grace, gratia gratis data and gratum faciens). He also glances ahead to q. 113, on the effects of grace. The following class continues into q. 112, aa. 2–4.

The class, in order #

1. Where we are in the treatise (“just back at the start now of the causes”) #

He reads ahead to the prooemium of q. 113: after grace come its effects — first the justification of the impious, an effect of gratia operans, secondly merit, an effect of cooperating grace (“that’s beautiful, isn’t it?”). Then back to the prooemium of the whole treatise (q. 109): God as the exterior principle of human acts, in so far as we are aided by Him through grace to act rightly; divided into grace itself, its cause, its effects. The first part had three parts: necessity of grace, grace as to its essence, its division — all now finished.

2. Rule of two or three: how wholes get divided (“the rule of two or three or both”) #

The point: major divisions are normally into two or three, and often a text admits both.

• Theology as a whole (and SCG): God in Himself, God as beginning of things, God as end of things.
• But the SCG’s four books divide really into two: what can be known by natural reason as well as by faith (I–III) and what can be known by faith alone (IV) — and Book IV repeats the same three: God in Himself (the Trinity), God as beginning, God as end, in the things Aristotle did not know. The division into four is only editorial.
• New Testament: editorially twenty-eight books, but Thomas divides into three — origin of grace (the Gospels), nature of grace (Paul’s epistles), effect of grace (Acts and the canonical epistles), the effect as a whole being the Church, her beginning in Acts and her growth in the canonical epistles (Jude on building up the Church).
• Old Testament: usually two, on the basis of law — the law of the king (Pentateuch and prophets) and the law of the father (sapiential books: “my son, do this”). Sometimes three, separating prophets from Pentateuch, as the Jews have it and as Christ does: “the law and the prophets and the psalms.”
• Aristotle divides the plot both ways: beginning, middle, end (three), and tying the knots / untying the knots (two).
• Family: father, mother, children — or parents and children.

Asides: he distinguishes teachers who taught him by spoken word (De Koninck, Dionne and others [names uncertain in recording]) from those who taught him by written word, “like Aristotle.” — On father and mother: the father sees the child more as a continuation of himself, the mother as a kind of fulfillment of herself; hence a man’s mistake of insisting on a male heir, “as the eighth did.” — Funeral that morning: the priest joking about a family of five boys and one girl, being himself from such a family.

3. The five questions of q. 112 (“about this five things are asked”) #

1. Whether God alone is the efficient cause of grace.
2. Whether some disposition is required for grace on the part of the one receiving it, by an act of free will. (He notes the Latin preposition — “for” rather than “to” — and expects the answer yes, citing Augustine: God who created you without you does not save you without you.)
3. Whether such a disposition can necessitate grace. “That’s very important” — and where the Pelagians go wrong; “see if you’ve got any heretics here.” A Pope said that Augustine on grace is the Church on grace.
4. Whether grace is equal in all — against “your democratic view.”
5. Whether someone can know whether he has grace. Joan of Arc was asked this; scripture asks whether a man can know whether he is worthy of love or hate. The Greeks say “know thyself,” but can you here? “Sometimes I think I’m rotten to the core, sometimes I take a more benign view of myself. I guess I don’t really know.”

His division of the five (a student proposes 1 against the rest; he disagrees): three parts — (a) aa. 1–3, all about the cause of grace: God as efficient cause, then whether the disposition is in some way a cause, then whether it necessitates; (b) a. 4, not about a cause but about whether grace received is equal; (c) a. 5, something entirely different, self-knowledge. And aa. 1–3 subdivide into two, a. 1 against aa. 2–3, which deal with the disposition. “But Thomas doesn’t bother to be so pedantic” — unlike the commentary on the Sentences.

Aside: Hippo — from hippos, horse; hippopotamus is a river horse.

4. The three objections of a. 1 (“it seems that none solus, not alone, is God”) #

1. John 1:17: “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” In the name Jesus Christ is understood not only the divine nature assuming but the created nature assumed — for “Christ” means the anointed one, and God is not anointed; it is the assumed human nature that is anointed. Therefore some creature can cause grace. (He notes Thomas takes the whole verse — “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” — as a hint that the Old Testament is about law, the New about grace.)
2. The difference laid down between the sacraments of the new and the old law: the new cause grace, the old only signify it. But the sacraments of the new law are certain visible elements. Therefore not God alone causes grace. (A student recalls that the grace of the Holy Spirit is the new law; he adds that causing grace is what gives the new sacraments their excellence over the old.)
3. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy (commented on by Albert, as Thomas commented on the Divine Names): the angels purge, enlighten and perfect both lower angels and men. But the rational creature is purged, illuminated and perfected by grace. Therefore not God alone.

Student question: how would an unfallen lesser angel be cleansed? Answer: of ignorance — not of mistakes, since angels are not “rash like fire” as we are, jumping to conclusions. Aside: voters who do not know what the candidate stands for and vote against their own interests; the press lionising the last-minute deciders as prudent.

5. Reply to the first: the humanity of Christ as tool (“a tool does not act by its own power”) #

The humanity of Christ, which is other than God, is a certain instrument (tool) of His divinity, as Damascene says in Book III. A tool does not bring forth the action of the principal agent by its own power, but by the power of the principal agent. So the humanity of Christ does cause grace — really, instrumentally — but by the power of the divinity joined to it.

• Michelangelo and the chisel and hammer: did they make the Pietà? As tools — he could not have done it with his fingers.
• Do the teacher’s words teach you, or the teacher? Do Thomas’s words teach me, or Thomas? Thomas, through his words as instrument. Christ taught us to pray by means of words.
• He notes that in treating the third kind of cause (the mover or maker), Thomas distinguishes principal cause, instrument, and also the one that disposes — which will come up in the later articles.
• A Dominican teacher’s maxim: “Never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.”

6. Reply to the second: the sacraments and the Holy Spirit (“chiefly through the power of the Holy Spirit”) #

As in the person of Christ the humanity causes our salvation through grace, the divine power chiefly operating, so in the sacraments of the new law, which are derived from Christ, grace is caused through the sacraments but chiefly by the power of the Holy Spirit operating in them. He flags the interest: elsewhere Thomas speaks of the sacraments as instituted by Christ or as tools of Christ, but here the Holy Spirit, because the text cited says so. John 3:5: unless one be reborn (renatus) of water — the instrument — and the Holy Spirit — the principal cause. “That’s a beautiful text… it’s called instrumentality.”

• Organon: the living body is called organic because organon means tool; Aristotle’s logical works are the Organon, logic being the tool of philosophy, not its principal part. Did I learn philosophy by my reason or by logic? Principally by reason, by my ability for discourse, “looking before and after” — but not without the tool.

Aside: Mother Angelica’s death and EWTN; a woman who joined the nuns’ rosary each night; Mother Angelica saying John was her favourite gospel — “I kind of suspect maybe Thomas’s.”

7. Reply to the third: purgation as instruction, not justification (“not however by justifying through grace”) #

The angel purges, enlightens and perfects angel or man by way of a certain instruction — purging the lesser angels of ignorance, purging us of error as well as ignorance — not by justifying through grace. Dionysius, Divine Names c. 7: this purgation, illumination and perfection is nothing other than an assumption (taking on) of divine knowledge. He stresses the contrast with the first two replies: those were solved by the distinction of principal and instrumental cause, this one by denying that grace is given at all. “My teachers enlightened me, gave me knowledge I didn’t have. They didn’t give me grace.” Aside: “So we’ve got to pray to those angels.”

8. Sed contra and body (“nothing is able to act beyond its own species”) #

Sed contra: Psalm 83[84], “The Lord gives grace and glory” — one of the psalms the priest says in preparation for Mass. He notes the word order differs from ours.

The body, as an argument:

1. Nothing can act beyond its own species — because the cause must always be more potent than the effect.
2. But the gift of grace exceeds every faculty (ability) of created nature — because it is nothing other than a certain partaking of the divine nature (the text from Peter seen earlier — he corrects himself from “Saint Paul” to “Saint Peter”), and the divine nature excels every other nature. “That’s extremely profound.”
3. Therefore it is impossible that any creature cause grace; God alone deificat, communicating a consortium of the divine nature by a certain partaking of a likeness to it.
4. Example: just as it is impossible that anything ignite except fire only.

On “nature” used of God: in the Physics Aristotle does not distinguish all the senses of nature, but he does in the fifth book of the Metaphysics (“book of wisdom”); one sense is what a thing is, and that is the sense here — though originally nature means birth. “Poets: made or born?”

Aside: Mozart picking up the violin by nature; his father, who wrote a treatise on violin playing, weeping as the boy played alongside the quartet. Wagner’s judgment that Mozart is above all masters in all the arts and all the ages; a high-school friend who nicknamed him “Mozart”; regret that the Ave verum corpus was not played.

9. Fire as metaphor for God (“the burning bush”) #

Prompted by Thomas’s fire example, he develops it: the bush is the humanity of Christ, the fire that does not consume it the divinity — the divine nature does not swallow up and destroy the human; the two natures remain distinct with their own properties. Fire is a metaphor for the divine nature, its light for the divine understanding, its heat for divine love and the power of God to transform. Fire is also a metaphor for the Trinity: the fire is the Father, from whom proceed both light and heat, the heat going through the light — the Holy Spirit.

Closing exchange: people are puzzled by Christ on earth, because some things He says indicate He is more than a man; a visitor asked what “Son of God” means — “that’s the perennial question,” whether Jesus is Son of God as anybody else is, or differently. Ratzinger said this was the whole matter of the early controversies, synods and councils. Christ at the resurrection: “I go to my God and your God,” making the distinction. Recording stops before a. 2.

His words #

• premium [ed.: prooemium] — the little introductory part that divides the question.
• “the rule of two or three or both” — his rule for dividing a whole.
• gratia operans / cooperating grace — the two graces whose effects are justification of the impious and merit.
• “necessitating” — whether the disposition necessitates grace (a. 3).
• “faculty” / “ability” [ed.: potency, facultas naturae] — what grace exceeds in created nature.
• “tool” [ed.: instrument] — his English for instrumentum; organon, the same word, as in the logical Organon.
• “the one that disposes” — a third item beside principal cause and instrument.
• deificat — God alone deifies, communicating a consortium of the divine nature.
• “partaking” [ed.: participation] — grace as a partaking of the divine nature.
• “assumption of divine knowledge” — Dionysius’s account of purgation, illumination, perfection.

Texts #

Read in class

• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 113, prooemium (glanced ahead).
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 109, prooemium (inferred) — the division of the treatise.
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 112, prooemium and a. 1: objections 1–3, replies 1–3, sed contra, corpus.
• John 1:17; John 3:5; Psalm 83[84]:12.
• Dionysius, Divine Names c. 7 (quoted in reply 3).

Mentioned

• Summa Contra Gentiles, four books (his division into two, then three).
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy (obj. 3); Albert’s commentary on it; Thomas’s commentary on the Divine Names.
• John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa III (reply 1).
• 2 Peter, on partaking of the divine nature (inferred; he corrects “Saint Paul” to “Saint Peter”).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V on the senses of “nature”; Physics; the Organon; the Poetics on plot (inferred).
• Thomas’s commentary on the Sentences; Augustine on grace; Exodus, the burning bush (inferred).

His questions #

• Where are we in the treatise on grace? Finished grace itself (necessity, essence, division); now beginning the cause of grace, q. 112.
• Does Thomas divide the New Testament into three or two? Three: origin of grace (Gospels), nature of grace (Paul), effect of grace (Acts and canonical epistles).
• If you divide these five articles into two or three, what would you do? Three: aa. 1–3 on the cause, a. 4 on equality of grace, a. 5 on knowing one has grace; and aa. 1–3 subdivide as 1 against 2–3.
• Is God anointed? No — it is the assumed human nature that is anointed; hence the force of objection 1.
• How would an unfallen lesser angel be cleansed? (student) Of ignorance, not of mistakes; angels are not “rash like fire,” they do not jump to conclusions.
• Did Michelangelo or his chisel and hammer make the Pietà? Do Thomas’s words teach me, or Thomas? The principal agent acts, the tool acting by the principal agent’s power — so the humanity of Christ causes grace instrumentally.
• Did I learn philosophy by my reason or by logic? Principally by reason; logic is the necessary tool, not the principal part.
• Why can no creature cause grace? Nothing acts beyond its own species, since the cause must be more potent than the effect, and grace is a partaking of the divine nature, which excels every nature.
• Are you a Son of God, and is He a Son of God in the same way? “That’s the perennial question” — left open; he notes it was the matter of the early councils, and Christ’s “my God and your God.”