Justification of the Impious (I-II q.113 aa.6-7): Remission of Guilt and Why Justification Happens in an Instant

Orientation #

He opens with “we’re up to Article Six” and works through a. 6 and a. 7 of the question on the justification of the impious (verified sources: ST I-II, q. 113, a. 6 and a. 7). He stops at the end of the body of a. 7 (“we’ve got to stop now”). The previous class covered aa. 3–5 of the same question; the next takes up aa. 8–10.

The class, in order #

1. Article 6, objection 1: the substance of a thing is not numbered with its requirements (“the justification impious is the remission of sins”) #

Point: whether remission of sins should be counted among the things required for justification.

• Objection: the substance of a thing is not numbered with what is required for it (“a man ought not to be numbered with his soul and his body”); justification is remission of sins; so remission should not be counted.
• Reply as he reads it: justification is called remission of sin because every motion takes its species from its term; but many other things are required for reaching the term.
• His gloss: remission is “kind of like the end there,” not something presupposed; the body of the article will bring this out.

2. Objection 2: infusion of grace and remission of guilt are one thing (“illumination and expulsion of darknesses”) #

• Objection (“philosophical objection”): infusion of grace and remission of guilt are the same thing, as illumination is the same as expulsion of darkness; one thing cannot be numbered with itself, since one is opposed to multitude.
• Reply: they can be considered (a) in the substance of the act, and so they are the same, God bestowing grace and remitting guilt by one act; (b) on the side of the objects, guilt taken away vs. grace given, and so they differ, as generation and corruption differ though the generation of one is the corruption of another.
• His examples: reading the Summa Contra Gentiles and coming to know is also losing ignorance, yet ignorance is not knowledge; “fill my wine glass” is getting rid of the emptiness; in the old science air becoming fire is the corruption of air; carrots and broccoli becoming flesh is their corruption and the generation of more flesh.

3. Objection 3: an effect is not numbered with its cause (“division of a genus into species”) #

• Objection: remission follows the motion of free will (through faith and contrition) as effect follows cause; things numbered together are “same in nature,” so an effect should not be numbered with its cause.
• Reply: this is not a numbering by division of a genus into species, where the things numbered must be same; it is an enumeration of things required for the completion of something, in which one thing can be before and another after, as among the beginnings and parts of a composite.
• His gloss: this is perhaps why Aristotle discusses “before” and “same” together: the genus is before the species, but species under one division are same, e.g. play divided into tragedy and comedy: tragedy and comedy are same, play is before, “as John knows, before the particular.”

4. Sed contra: do not omit the end (“this is all what fruit”) #

• The end is “most potent” (potissimum) in each thing and must not be omitted; Isaiah 27:9 makes the taking away of sin “all the fruit” (fructus).
• Aside on the word: when he first read Aristotle’s Ethics in English it said “happiness”; Thomas says felicitas; the Greek is eudaimonia; felicitas comes from fruitfulness, and fruit is “the last thing produced” from the tree, “very much the end.”
• Student exchange: is knowledge required for the teaching of the ignorant? His answer: knowledge is the end of teaching; if the students acquire none you have not succeeded. Aside: much “higher education” teaches slogans and emoting, not thinking: “education, but crimes are committed in thy name.”

5. Body of a. 6: four things required, divided into three (“in every motion by which something is moved by another”) #

Point: the four things (infusion of grace, motion of free will to God through faith, motion of free will against sin, remission of guilt) are grounded in the three things required for any motion by another.

1. Justification is a motion by which the soul is moved by God from a state of guilt to a state of justice.
2. In every motion by which one thing is moved by another, three things are required: the motion of the mover, the motion of the movable, the consummation or arrival at the end.
3. On the side of God’s motion: infusion of grace. On the side of free will: two motions, recess from the term from which, access to the term to which. Consummation: remission of guilt, “in which the justification is consummated.”

• He notes Thomas explains the four by dividing into three (“maybe I’m a fanatic about two and three”); a student suggests the first is divided against the other three; he agrees the two middle ones pertain to the movable. The sed contra’s insistence on the end fits this third member.
• On “towards sin”: Laplace once told him that credo in Deum can in Latin mean “believe against God” (not our sense); “in” here is “in regard to” or “against,” so he does not know why they translate “towards.”
• His analogy: teacher’s teaching (pouring in), student’s learning, and the end, some knowledge: three things.

6. Article 7, objection 1: choice presupposes deliberation (“deliberation implies a certain discursum”) #

Point: whether justification is in an instant or successive; before looking he says he would think instantaneous.

• His prior reason: in SCG II Thomas shows creation has no succession, and creation is not a motion or change because those are successive; Thomas calls justification recreatus, so “recreation is an instant too.” A student adds Chrysostom comparing transubstantiation and baptism: divine power is instantaneous (the rite around it takes time).
• Objection 1: justification requires the motion of free will; its act is to choose, which presupposes the deliberation of counsel; deliberation is a discourse (discursus, “Shakespeare’s word”) with succession; so justification is successive.
• Reply: the motion of free will concurring in justification is consent (to detesting sin, to acceding to God), and consent subito fit, comes about instantly. Deliberation may precede, but it is not of the substance of justification; it is a road to it, as locomotion is the road to illumination.
• His gloss: Aristotle and Thomas held enlightenment is all at once; it “takes time” only because the sun must come over the horizon. So justification is all at once even though something that takes time may precede; consent is indivisible.
• Asides: “pro-choice” people do not allow the woman counsel; a theory that Shakespeare went to Italy; modern measurement of the speed of light with a mirror on the moon; Kassirka warning him about De Koninck’s jokes.

7. Objection 2: one cannot understand many things at once (“nothing prevents two things being understood simul”) #

• Objection: the motion of free will requires actual consideration; a human cannot understand many things at once; justification requires free will moved to diverse things (to God, against sin); so it cannot be in an instant.
• Reply (referring to the first part of the Summa): two things can be understood together insofar as they are in some way one, as subject and predicate are understood together in a statement; likewise free will can be moved to two things at once when one is ordered to the other. A man detests sin because it is against God, to whom he wishes to adhere; so free will at once detests sin and converts itself to God, as a body at once recedes from one place and accedes to another.
• His development: in the first act of reason (what a thing is) I cannot think square and circle together; in the second act, “a square is not a circle,” I must know both together (or “Michael is not Patrick”). A student: a false statement “a square is a circle” also joins them. Comparison too (“Mozart is better than Beethoven”). In the third act, judging a syllogism valid, one sees conclusion following from premises and knows them together: “that’s what it means to resolve in the beginning” (student’s phrase, he assents).
• Will example: “I want money to buy candy,” money and candy together.
• Motion example: student says “going home” for Thanksgiving, mother says “coming home”; same motion, two terms. A student invokes Heraclitus’s way up and down; he agrees with caution: house to monastery and monastery to house is the same road but is it the same motion? (left with “same road”).
• Aside: “a man is not a woman” now “depends on who you’re talking to”; California “fruits, flakes and nuts.”

8. Objection 3: a form receiving more and less is received successively (“grace receives more and less”) #

• Objection: forms that admit more and less, like heat, whiteness, blackness, are received successively; grace admits more and less; so it is not received subito.
• Example: the kettle heats gradually before it whistles; aside, the Church does not canonize subito either.
• Reply: admitting more and less is not the reason a form is received successively, otherwise light (which can be more or less) would not be received subito in air; the reason is the disposition of matter or the subject, “as will be said in the body.” He gives Thomas a “temporary pass” until the body.

9. Objection 4: grace must precede the meritorious motion (“it moves what upwards”) #

• Objection: the motion of free will in justification is meritorious, so it proceeds from grace; what has the form is before what acts by the form; so grace is poured in first and free will moved after; hence succession.
• Reply: in the same instant the form is acquired the thing begins to operate by it, as fire the moment it is generated moves upward, and that motion would be instantaneous if it were completed in the same instant. The motion of free will, which is to will, is instantaneous, not successive; so no succession is required.

10. Objection 5: last instant of guilt, first instant of grace (“there is not a last instant in which I’m ignorant”) #

• Objection: there must be a first instant in which grace is in the soul and a last instant in which the man is subject to guilt; they cannot be the same instant (opposites together); two instants have time between (Physics VI); so justification is successive.
• His setup: there is a last instant in which Berquist is ignorant of the Pythagorean theorem and a first in which he knows it; they cannot be one; between two instants there is time, as between two points a line.
• Reply, as he reads it: the succession of opposites in a subject is judged differently in things subject to time and things above time. In things subject to time there is no last instant of the prior form, but there is a last time, and a first instant of the following form; because in time no instant immediately precedes another, instants not being consecutive, as points in a line are not (Physics VI, the book on the continuous). Time is terminated at an instant; in the whole preceding time the thing is under the opposite form, and the last instant of that time is the first instant of the following time, in which it has the form that is the term of the motion.
• Eucharist example: no last instant in which it is bread, a last time; the first instant it is the body of our Lord; otherwise either a time between that is neither, or an instant that is both.
• Hegel: if the last instant of ignorance is the first of knowledge, one is both at once, “all becoming is a contradiction,” whence Marx. Aristotle “saw the difficulty of Hegel” and solved it: a first instant in which, no last instant in which not. “It’s a very subtle thing to see.” Student: any utility in Hegel’s error? Answer: the philosophy of revolution, historical dialectic; but they deny that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way, on which everything is based. Father Owen Bennett: nobody learns it; a child with a toy, “mine, no, mine.” Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” is a question only because you cannot be both; Hegel would answer “to be and not to be.”
• Points: can two points touch? Aristotle’s either-or: part to part, part to whole, whole to whole; a point has no parts (Euclid), so whole to whole would be to coincide, one point; so two points always have a line between. So two nows (now in the strict sense, no past or future, “like a point”; loose sense “now we’re having class”) always have time between.
• Dying: no last instant of being alive; the first instant of being dead pertains to the subsequent time. A student jokes “I’m never going to die”: a misunderstanding.
• Things above time: a succession of affections of the will or of intellectual conceptions, as in angels, is measured by discrete not continuous time (referring to the first part on angels); there a last instant of the first and a first instant of the following are given with no middle time.
• The human mind is above time in itself but subject to time per accidens through the senses, since it understands with the continuous and time in phantasms; “we don’t think without imagining”; the proper object of our mind is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined (his squirrels). So the change is judged by this condition: no last instant of guilt but a last time, and a first instant in which grace is in us, “the first instant which I’m cured.”
• Asides: Kastriik’s opponent, “a contradiction I’ve learned to live with”; Whitman “I contradict myself… I contain multitudes”; Rush Limbaugh on wives agreeing to husbands’ affairs, a contradiction people rejoice in; “putting the adult back into adultery.”

11. Sed contra: the Holy Spirit comes suddenly (“Factus est repente”) #

• Justification is by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who comes subito to men’s minds, Acts: “there was made suddenly from heaven a sound as of a vehement spirit coming”; the gloss (Ambrose in his footnote) says the grace of the Holy Spirit knows no slow efforts (tarda molimina).
• Student on molimina: effort, violence, also bulk or weight; moles a pile; “like the motion of something heavy.”

12. Body of a. 7: the whole justification in an instant (“the infusion of grace comes about in the indivisible instant”) #

1. The whole justification consists originally in the infusion of grace, through which free will is moved and guilt remitted.
2. Infusion of grace is in an indivisible instant, without succession, because a form is not impressed subito only when the subject is not disposed and the agent needs time to dispose it: when matter is disposed by preceding alteration, the substantial form is acquired at once (his example: heating paper until it bursts into flame); the diaphanous, of itself disposed to light, is illuminated at once.
3. God requires no disposition for pouring in grace except the one He makes, and He makes it sometimes suddenly, sometimes paulatim and successively (as said above).
4. A natural agent does not dispose suddenly because of disproportion of the form to matter that resists the agent’s power; a stronger agent disposes faster; the divine power, infinite, can dispose any created matter suddenly, as in God becoming man; much more the free will of man, whose motion is instantaneous by nature. So justification is done by God in an instant.

• Digression on the fertilized egg: the soul is the first act of a body composed of tools (organs); until the body has some distinction of tools it is not the proper subject of the soul but the seed of a human body (“not the seed of the soul”). A student objects that mitochondria and cell structures are tools; he holds that the first fertilized egg seems more a seed than a body composed of tools. The Incarnation was all at once because it was not fitting to assume a body not yet human. Exactly when the organs are sufficiently distinguished is obscure; when there are arms and legs the subject is there; pro-life people often do not see this difficulty.

His words #

• remission of sin: name of justification “according as every motion takes its species from its term”
• “philosophical objection”: objection 2 of a. 6, one not numbered with itself
• fructus / felicitas: fruit, fruitfulness; the end, “the last thing produced”; Greek eudaimonia
• “in” (in regard to / against): Laplace’s note on credo in Deum; not “towards”
• recreatus: Thomas’s word for justification, hence instantaneous like creation
• discursus: “Shakespeare’s word” discourse; deliberation of counsel
• consent: the motion of free will in justification, subito fit
• road (via): deliberation as road to justification, locomotion to illumination
• three acts of reason: what a thing is; the statement (subject and predicate together); the syllogism (premises and conclusion together)
• instant: “the indivisible of time, the now in the strict sense”
• consecutive (consequenter): technical term, one instant not following another without something of the same kind between
• discrete time: measure of succession in angels’ affections and conceptions
• phantasms: the mind understands “with the continuous and time” through them; “we don’t think without imagining”
• molimina: student’s gloss, effort/violence, bulk/weight; moles a pile
• diaphanous: the transparent, of itself disposed to light
• paulatim: little by little, successively
• tools: organs, in “first act of an actual body composed of tools” [ed.: organic body]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 113, a. 6 (objections, replies, sed contra, body)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 113, a. 7 (five objections, replies, sed contra, body)
• Isaiah 27:9 (in a. 6 sed contra)
• Acts 2 “Factus est repente” (in a. 7 sed contra), with the gloss attributed to Ambrose (inferred locus)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles II, creation without succession, not a motion
• Aristotle, Physics VI (instants and points not consecutive; points cannot touch)
• Thomas, first part of the Summa: two things understood as one; angels and discrete time; intelligible species in phantasms (no articles given)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (on “happiness”); Euclid’s definition of point
• Chrysostom on transubstantiation and baptism (student); Shakespeare, Hamlet; Whitman, Leaves of Grass; Heraclitus (student); Hegel, Marx

His questions #

• Is coming to know and losing ignorance the same? Same act, but ignorance is not knowledge; like generation and corruption differing by objects.
• Is knowledge required for the teaching of the ignorant? Yes, as the end of teaching; otherwise you have not succeeded.
• Justification in an instant or successively: what would you answer before you look? Instantaneous, on the analogy of creation and recreatus.
• Is there a way we can sometimes understand two things at the same time? Yes, when they are in some way one: subject and predicate (“a square is not a circle”), premises and conclusion.
• Why do you call it going home and she calls it coming home? Same motion, two terms; receding from one place is acceding to another.
• Is going from my house to the monastery and back the same motion? Same road; left open whether the same motion.
• Can two points touch? No: a point has no parts, so whole-to-whole touching would be coincidence; there is always a line between.
• Is there a last instant in which I’m alive? No; a last time, and a first instant of being dead in the subsequent time.
• Was there any utility in Hegel’s error? Only the “philosophy of revolution”; it denies that a thing cannot both be and not be.
• Is the soul there in the fertilized egg? He holds it is the seed of a human body, not yet a body composed of organs; when exactly the soul comes is obscure.