Summa I-II q.112 a.5 and q.113 a.1–2: Knowing Whether One Has Grace, and the Justification of the Sinner

Orientation #

He says they have now treated grace in itself and the causes of grace and are moving to the effects of grace (q. 113 and 114, “the last two questions” of the Prima Secundae). He refers back to what “we learned a while back” (grace in the soul through its essence) and to q. 110 for love of God implying an effect of grace. The previous class covered q. 112, aa. 2–4 (preparation for grace, its inequality), and the next continues q. 113 with aa. 3–5.

The class, in order #

1. Objection 1: grace is in the soul by its essence (“the most certain knowledge of the soul”) #

Point: q. 112, a. 5, whether a man can know himself to have grace; he notes this was Joan of Arc’s question, answered by someone who could not read.

• Objection 1: grace is in the soul through its essence (as learned earlier); the soul’s most certain knowledge is of what is in it by essence (Augustine, twelfth book of On Genesis to the Letter); therefore grace is most certainly known by its possessor. His remark: that grace is in the soul by essence does not mean it is in the mind by essence.
• Reply 1: things in the soul by essence are known by experimental (experiential) knowledge, insofar as a man experiences them through the inward beginnings of their acts, as we perceive will by willing and life in the works. He holds the reply “in abeyance” until the body.
• Student: but grace is habitual; Thomas answered the same about knowing whether one has charity. Student asks whether grace has “a physical reality”: he objects to the English translation using “physical reality” for essence (“can’t trust the translators, Sam; they tell many a lie”); a student suggests the translator chose it because the reply concerns life signs.

2. Objection 2: knowledge is a gift and known to be had (“it’s of the ratio of knowledge”) #

• Objection 2: knowledge, like grace, is a gift of God; whoever receives knowledge knows he has it (Wisdom 7: God gives true knowledge of the things that are); so likewise for grace. His aside: people often have a hard time knowing that they don’t know.
• Reply 2: it is of the ratio of knowledge, and of faith, that one has certitude about what one knows or believes, because certitude pertains to the perfection of the understanding, in which these gifts exist; so whoever has science or faith is certain he has it. Not so for grace and charity, which perfect not the mind but the desiring power.
• He stresses: Thomas admits a man can know he has faith but not for certain that he has charity; to be explained when the virtues are treated. Charles De Koninck story: he thought he had faith because he had certitude about things not knowable by natural reason, but would never presume to say “I know I have charity” — even love of wife and children might be only an actual love.
• Student adds: the light of faith is a stronger, more certain light than natural reason, hence the certitude. He: one can be certain there are three persons in God without being able to answer objections or explain it all. Bonaventure spoke of knowing charity by signs; Thomas on charity notes that kinds of love can closely resemble one another.
• Aside: one can see why Muslims think Christians polytheists.

3. Objection 3: sin, a darkness, is known with certitude (“the eye of the bat”) #

• Objection 3: light is more knowable than darkness (Ephesians: everything made manifest is light); sin, a spiritual darkness, is known with certitude by the sinner; much more grace, a spiritual light. He: “that’s damn good, that one.”
• Reply 3: sin has as beginning and object a changeable good, known to us; the object or end of grace is unknown to us because of the immensity of its light (1 Timothy: God inhabits inaccessible light). He adds Aristotle: our mind before such things is like the eye of the bat before daylight — and notes he is “supposed to quote Aristotle” but scripture gives a better text; faith is a kind of dark, imperfect interpretation.
• Dickens example (a novel where a murderer waits for the body to be found): the sinner’s inner state vividly known, enough to deter murder — sin’s object known to us.

4. Objections 4 and 5: the Spirit given to know God’s gifts; Abraham (“now I know that you fear the Lord”) #

• Objection 4: 1 Corinthians, we receive the Spirit from God “that we might know the things given us by God”; grace is especially a gift; so the recipient knows it by the same Spirit.
• Reply 4, two readings: the apostle speaks of the gifts of glory, given in hope and known most certainly by faith, though we do not know with certitude that we have the grace by which we merit them; or he speaks of a privileged knowledge by revelation (“God reveals these to us through the Spirit”).
• Objection 5: Genesis 22, “Abraham, now I know that you fear the Lord,” i.e. I have made you know; chaste fear is not without grace.
• Reply 5: either experiential knowledge by the exhibition of the deed (from the work Abraham did it can be known by experience that he feared God), or revelation.
• Sed contra: Ecclesiastes 9:1, no one knows whether he is worthy of hate or love; grace makes us worthy of God’s love; so no one knows he has grace.

5. Body: three ways something can be known (“no one is able to know himself to have grace”) #

Point: the body “flattens our minds more fully”; three ways of knowing.

1. By revelation: God sometimes reveals it by special privilege, so that the joy of security begins even in this life and they pursue magnifica opera and bear present evils more confidently — as to Paul, “My grace suffices for you” (“a beautiful use of Paul’s text”).
2. By oneself, with certitude: impossible. Argument: certitude about a thing requires judging it by its own beginning (as demonstrated conclusions are certain through indemonstrable universal beginnings; no one knows a conclusion scientifically while ignorant of the beginning); the beginning and object of grace is God Himself, unknown to us through His excellence (Job 36:26, “the great God conquering our knowledge”); therefore His presence or absence in us cannot be known with certitude (Job 9:11, “if He comes to me I will not see Him; if He goes away I will not understand”; 1 Corinthians 4, “nor do I judge myself; the one who judges me is the Lord”; “my conscience doesn’t accuse me, but I’m not thereby justified”).
3. Conjecturally, per aliqua signa (conjecture = Latin for guess): one can know he has grace insofar as he perceives himself to delight in God and contemn earthly things and is not conscious of mortal sin; so Apocalypse 2:17, the hidden bread (manna) known only by the one who receives it, through experience of its sweetness. But this knowledge is imperfect: 1 Corinthians, “I am not conscious to myself of anything, but not in this am I justified”; Psalm 18, delicta quis intelligit … ab occultis meis.

• Asides: he tries to recall which medieval saint said the Job 9 line to his friars (settles on Bernard of Clairvaux, “don’t trust a forgetful man”; compares King Lear coming to himself). “Manna” is Hebrew for “what is it?” — so the hidden manna is even more hidden.

6. Prologue of q. 113: the effects of grace, ten articles (“beginning of question one thirteen”) #

Point: having treated grace in itself and its causes, the effects: first justification of the impious, effect of operating grace (q. 113); second merit, effect of cooperating grace (q. 114, de merito). These are the last two questions of the Prima Secundae; “we can’t do the whole second part of the second part.”

• He reads the ten articles: (1) what justification is; (2) whether infusion of grace is required; (3) a motion of free will; (4) a motion of faith (interesting that these are separate articles); (5) a motion of free will against sin (“I bet you have to be sorry for your sins and sorry not to continue”); (6) whether remission of sins is to be numbered among them; (7) whether there is an order of time or it is subito (all at once; he wonders if Italian subito comes from it); (8) the natural order of the things concurring; (9) whether it is the greatest work of God; (10) whether it is miraculous (“only God can do it — we’ll see; let Thomas instruct us”).

7. Q. 113, a. 1, objections: is justification the remission of sins? (“a certain motion to justice”) #

• Objection 1: sin is opposed to all virtues, not only justice; justification names a motion to justice; motion is from contrary to contrary; so not every remission of sin is a justifying. He: “I assume there’s some equivocation here in the word justice” — the most common mistake, as Aristotle says; example: the Supreme Court on marriage (“marriage is about love — can’t I just love someone?”).
• Reply 1: every sin, as implying a disorder of a mind not subject to God, can be called injustice, contrary to the justice defined in the body (1 John: everyone who sins makes iniquitas, against equity); so remission of any sin is called justification. He notes Thomas often puts an objection from equivocation first because the word must be cleared up first; refers to Aristotle’s “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V (inferred)] and to reading an equivocation in the Summa Contra Gentiles that day.
• Objection 2: a thing is named from what is potissimum in it (second book On the Soul); remission of sins is especially by faith (Acts 15, “by faith purifying their hearts”) and charity (Proverbs 10, universa delicta operit caritas), theological virtues greater than cardinal ones; so it should be named from faith or charity.
• Reply 2: faith and charity name a special order of the mind to God, according to understanding (faith) and affection (charity); justice implies generally a whole rectitude of order, hence the change is named from justice. His aside: this goes back to Plato, who could not distinguish will from emotions — fortitude in the irascible, temperance in the concupiscible, prudence in reason, justice as the order of all; “original justice” likewise means the order of all.
• Objection 3: remission of sin seems the same as calling (one distant through sin is called); but vocation precedes justification (Romans 8, “whom he called, these he justified”); so justification is not remission.
• Reply 3: calling refers to God’s aid inwardly moving and arousing the mind to desert sin; this motion is not the remission but its cause.
• Sed contra: Romans 8 with the Gloss, “he justified them by the remission of their sins.”

8. Body of a. 1: justice in two senses, justification in two ways (“justice metaphorice metaphorically called”) #

1. Justification, taken passively, implies a motion to justice, as calefactio a motion to heat.
2. Justice, implying a rectitude of order, is taken two ways: (a) right order in man’s acts — a virtue, particular justice (toward another individual) or legal justice (toward the common good), Ethics V; (b) rectitude of order in man’s inward disposition, the highest part subject to God and the lower powers subject to reason — what the Philosopher in Ethics V calls justice metaphorically. He: sense (b) is closer to Plato’s use than to the particular virtue in the will.
3. Justice (b) comes to be in man two ways: by simple generation, privation to form — justification of one not in sin, as Adam received original justice; or by motion from contrary to contrary, form to form — transmutation from the state of injustice to justice, the justification of the impious (Romans 4:5, “to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the impious”).
4. Motion is named from the term-to-which rather than the term-from-which; so this change is called justification (term to which: justice), while remission of sins names the term from which.

• Student objection, why “metaphor” rather than a new imposition? His answer, left somewhat open: “metaphor” sometimes means strictly a figure of speech, sometimes a more distant, “most carried over” meaning; the word means “carried over”; here there is an obvious likeness (an order), so it is not necessarily metaphor in the strict sense. In strict metaphor the word is not really carried over as a new imposition — hence its shock (“you pig, you ate the whole pie”; “you jackass”), which is why metaphors matter in poetry; if it were another meaning of the word the force would be lost. Student: every analogous name is carried over; he: metaphors are a kind of analogy — “metaphor is being used metaphorically.” Thomas’s term impositio nominis implies a stable meaning; in poetic metaphor the meaning is tenuous, “because it’s moving.”

9. Q. 113, a. 2: is infusion of grace required for remission of guilt? (“a middle state of innocence”) #

• Objection 1: one can leave a contrary without going to the other if the contraries are mediate; guilt and grace are mediate, since there is a middle state of innocence with neither. Class discusses the child as candidate for the middle state (original sin, no grace, no virtues — “look what you’ve piled up”).
• Reply 1: more is required for an offense to be remitted to an offender than for one not offending simply not to be hated; among men one may neither love nor hate another, but dismissing an offense needs special benevolence; God’s benevolence to man is said to be repaired through the gift of grace; so before sin man can be without grace and guilt, but after sin he cannot be without guilt unless he has grace.
• Objection 2: remission consists in the divine non-imputation (Psalm 31, “blessed the man to whom God does not impute sin”); infusion places something in us; so not required. He: “sounds almost like Luther” — Luther hated Thomas but never read him; “familiarity breeds contempt, but it’s not the only” cause.
• Reply 2: God’s love consists not only in the act of the divine will but implies an effect of grace (said above, q. 110, he guesses); so God’s not imputing sin implies an effect in the one to whom it is not imputed, proceeding from divine love.
• Objection 3: no one is subject to two contraries at once; some sins are contrary (prodigality and illiberality, “the two brothers”); so by sinning by prodigality one is freed from illiberality — a sin remitted without grace. “Two wrongs make a right.”
• Reply 3: Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence: if ceasing to sin were to be without sin, Scripture would only say “you have sinned, do not add to it,” but it adds “pray that the former ones be remitted.” Sin passes in act and remains in guilt; one who passes from one vice to its contrary ceases the former act but not its guilt, so has the guilt of both — sins are not contrary on the side of turning away from God, from which they have guilt. His illustration: not murdering anyone now does not mean one needs no remission of a murder. Student note: Aristotle says two vices are opposed to each virtue.
• Sed contra: Romans 3:24, “justified gratis through his grace.”
• Body: by sinning man offends God; an offense is remitted only when the soul of the offended is at peace with the offender; God’s sin is remitted when God is at peace with us, a peace consisting in the love by which God loves us; that love as a divine act is eternal and unchangeable, but its effect impressed on us is sometimes interrupted, as we fall from it and recuperate; the effect of divine love taken away by sin is grace, by which man is worthy of eternal life, from which mortal sin excludes; therefore remission of guilt cannot be understood without infusion of grace. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
• Aside: Sylvester of Ferrara’s commentary on the Summa Contra Gentiles, printed with the Leonine edition.

His words #

• experimental/experiential knowledge; knowing things in the soul through the inward beginnings of their acts.
• ratio of knowledge; that certitude belongs to knowledge and faith because it pertains to the perfection of the understanding.
• desiring power; the power grace and charity perfect [ed.: appetitive power].
• eye of the bat; Aristotle’s image for our mind before divine things.
• magnifica opera; great works pursued by those to whom grace is revealed.
• conjecturally, per aliqua signa; “almost like a guess,” conjecture being Latin for guess.
• hidden bread / manna; Hebrew “what is it?”
• operating vs. cooperating grace; effects: justification vs. merit.
• subito; all at once.
• potissimum in ipso; what is most potent in a thing, from which it is named.
• iniquitas; sin as against equity and justice.
• justification taken passively; a motion to justice, as calefactio is to heat.
• particular vs. legal justice; toward an individual vs. toward the common good.
• justice metaphorice; the inward order of highest part to God and lower powers to reason.
• term to which / term from which; motion named from the former.
• impositio nominis; placing a stable meaning on a name.
• immediate vs. mediate contraries; whether a middle state exists.
• repaired benevolence; God’s will toward man restored by grace.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 112, a. 5 (objections, replies, sed contra, body)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 113, prologue and list of articles
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 113, a. 1
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 113, a. 2
• Scripture as quoted within the articles: Wisdom 7; Ephesians; 1 Timothy; 1 Corinthians (ch. 4 stated for the body); Genesis 22; Ecclesiastes 9:1; Job 36:26; Job 9:11; Apocalypse 2:17; Psalm 18 (Vulgate); 1 John; Acts 15; Proverbs 10; Romans 8; Romans 4:5; Psalm 31; Romans 3:24

Mentioned

• Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter, book XII
• Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence
• Aristotle, Ethics V; On the Soul II; “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V (inferred)]
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 110 (his guess for “as has been said above”); q. 114
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, with Sylvester of Ferrara’s commentary (Leonine edition)
• Bonaventure on knowing charity by signs; Plato on the four virtues; Dickens (a murder novel); Shakespeare, King Lear

His questions #

• Does grace being in the soul by its essence mean it is in the mind by its essence? No; such things are known experientially through the beginnings of their acts.
• Why can one know he has faith or knowledge but not that he has charity or grace? Certitude belongs to the perfection of the understanding, where faith and knowledge are; grace and charity perfect the desiring power.
• Isn’t sin, a darkness, known with certitude — so why not grace, a light? Sin’s object is a changeable good known to us; grace’s object is God, unknown for the immensity of His light.
• In how many ways can something be known? Three: by revelation, by oneself with certitude, and conjecturally by signs — “that’s news to me.”
• Which medieval saint said “if He comes to me I will not see Him” to his friars? Left open; he settles tentatively on Bernard of Clairvaux.
• Isn’t there an equivocation on “justice” in objection 1? Yes; every sin is an injustice as disorder of a mind not subject to God.
• Why is justification named from justice rather than from faith or charity? Justice names a whole rectitude of order; faith and charity name special orders of understanding and affection.
• Why is the inward order called justice “metaphorically” and not a new imposition? Not fully settled; “metaphor” here may mean only “most carried over,” resting on a likeness of order.
• Is there a middle state between guilt and grace, e.g. the child? Before sin one can lack both; after sin one cannot be without guilt unless one has grace.
• Can sinning by prodigality remit illiberality? No; the act passes but the guilt of both remains, since sins are not contrary on the side of turning from God.