Aquinas on Faith, Part 2: The Light of Faith, Whether Faith Can Be Scientific Knowledge (A.5), and the Articles of Faith (A.6)

Orientation #

He picks up at the second reply of a.4 (“the second and third argument”) and refers back to “the old distinction of simply and somewhat” which “we talked about before” (prev. lecture), and to “the way in which the understanding is moved” said earlier. He says “Time to stop now, I guess. We’re going to go on a little bit” and then begins a.6, which he calls the start of “the next group of articles,” about the articles themselves. The previous class covered aa.3–4 of the same question; the next covers aa.7–8.

The class, in order #

1. a.4 ad 2–ad 4: the believer sees in general, not in particular (“he would not believe unless he saw”) #

Point: there is a real but limited seeing in faith.

• Ad 2: things of faith considered in particular cannot be seen and believed at once; considered in general, “under the common notion of believable,” they are seen — “he would not believe unless he saw that they were to be believed,” either from evidence of signs (he instances the wounds of Christ seen by Thomas) or something of the sort. The virtue of faith, “poured into us,” disposes us to see something as believable.
• Ad 3 (objection: faith is a spiritual light, so a seeing): lumen fidei facit videre ea quae creduntur — as through other virtue-habits a man sees what is suitable to that habit, so through the habitum fidei the mind is inclined to assent to what befits right faith “and not to others.” Modesty in speech (won’t say goofy things on the wrong occasion) and courage (sees he should go forward): virtue makes one see what suits it.
• Ad 4: auditus signifies the things of faith, not the things about which faith is — so they need not be seen in themselves.
• Student: is it that he sees the evidence of credibility, sufficient reason to believe? — Yes: he judges they are believable / should be believed, but “he doesn’t see them in themselves that they are true.” He calls this “kind of a subtle point that Thomas is making.” Another student recalls the epistemology teaching: the evidence of credibility (the truth proposed, the good will of the witness) is what moves one to believe.
• De Koninck on why he thinks he has the virtue of faith: he sees the strength of his adherence yet does not see the things themselves, so it must be by faith, not by sight. Cardinal Ratzinger, asked why he was so confident: “The faith makes us confident.”

2. Digression: the light of glory is a light in another sense (“It’s not a light in the same sense”) #

Point: the light of faith shows that things should be believed; the light of glory does something different again.

• The light of glory does not make God understandable or make visible what was invisible; it “disposes your reason to receive God as that by which you see God as He is.” God sees Himself through Himself; no created form could enable us to see God as He is; so our reason must be raised by the lumen gloriae so God Himself can be received as the form by which He is seen. He quotes St John’s epistle: when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. “It’s a very subtle thing.”
• Student: is this the Orthodox “uncreated energies” seen on Tabor, with the scholastic reply that this makes God have parts? — He does not adjudicate (“Who knows”); he says the inner excellence of Christ shines forth through the body, an effect in the body of the elevation of the soul; likewise Moses coming down the mountain (joke: if everyone shielded their eyes when you walked in you’d feel self-conscious), and glory shining through our bodies after the beatific vision — “a light in a different sense,” the glorified body.

3. The moral-virtue analogy filled out (“The coward thinks he should run away”) #

Point: as prudence cannot see what should be done without moral virtue, so reason cannot see what should be believed without the inclination of the virtue of faith.

• Aristotle’s necessity of moral virtue for prudence: unless the desiring powers are disposed by virtue you cannot see what should be done here and now. Coward vs. courageous man facing possible death; the unjust man won’t find by prudence the just thing; the intemperate won’t see he should stop drinking or stop pursuing a woman not his wife. He has never seen Bacchic [unclear name] or Dion drunk — they have temperance.
• Student’s news story (a church shooting in Tennessee, the usher who fetched his gun and faced the shooter down without firing): the courageous thing — “face him down.”
• Faith is a virtue, a habit; every virtue gives an inclination, hence one sees what accords with it and not other things. He re-reads ad 3 and stresses “to those things which fit right faith and not to others” — “some truths and not others.”
• Aside: a man with no respect for the Blessed Virgin he “wouldn’t trust at all in matters of faith”; the joke of the old monk who thought himself the fourth person of the Trinity.

4. a.5 objections: can what is of faith be known? (“There’s some subtle tricking going on here”) #

Point: scita is ambiguous — “known” vs. reasoned-out knowledge (scientia).

1. Ignorance is opposed to knowledge; things of faith are not unknown, since such ignorance is infidelity (1 Timothy, Paul on his own ignorance in incredulity — “knocked off his horse”); so they are known.
2. Scientia is acquired by reasons; sacred authors give reasons for things of faith. (Student: Peter says give a reason for the hope in you — so in an “ecumenical session” you’re asked why you believe.)
3. What is demonstrated is known; philosophers demonstrate things contained in faith (God exists, God is one; Aristotle proved God is pure act). He flags the “subtle trickery.”
4. Opinion differs more from knowledge than faith does, yet opinion and knowledge can be about the same thing, one man guessing what another knows (Posterior Analytics I); so faith and knowledge can too. Opinion = conjectura, a guess, with fear of the opposite; guess divides into opinion (stronger) and suspicion.

• Sed contra: Gregory — things that appear have knowledge, not faith. He asks: do you know there are three persons in God, or believe it?
• Episteme (Plato and Aristotle) carries the idea of coming to a halt: the mind stops reasoning when it sees it is so — the mathematician jumping from the bath, “Eureka” [ed.: transcript has “Beckley”; presumably Archimedes]. “Knowledge makes you stop thinking.”

5. a.5 body: same thing not known and believed by the same man (“that which is seen or known by one”) #

1. Every scientia is through beginnings known to themselves — not proved by other statements; positively, known through their parts (Euclid’s axioms and postulates); hence seen.
2. So whatever is known demonstratively is in some way seen; but the same thing cannot be believed and seen by the same one; so it cannot be known and believed by the same one. He warns that translating visum as “known” loses the sense: seen = known from other things that are certain.
3. What is seen by one may be believed by another: what we believe of the Trinity we hope to see (1 Cor 13, “through a mirror in an enigma… then face to face”), a vision the angels already have. Likewise in the state of the way (via): what one man knows demonstratively another may believe — he notes the SCG division: books I–III on what can be known by faith and by natural reason, book IV on what only by faith.
4. What is commonly proposed to all to be believed is communiter non visum — Trinity, transubstantiation — and this is simpliciter subject to faith. So faith and scientia are not about the same thing.

• Simply vs. somewhat: the black man is somewhat white (his teeth), he himself somewhat black (under the eyes, hair once), but simply white. Arguing from Aristotle’s knowing God exists that faith and science are about the same thing is the fallacy of simply and somewhat.
• Do you know or believe that God exists? Student: “I’d like to say I know it, but I know I believe it too.” De Koninck: “I think I can prove that God exists, but I would not be so presumptuous as to say so.” Proofs given to high-schoolers — for most it remains belief, but only somewhat, since if we converted Aristotle he would come already knowing God exists.
• Aside: with Joshua last night in De Anima III, Thomas shows Averroes on the possible intellect deceived by the fallacy of per se and per accidens, which “deceives even the wise.”

6. a.5 replies (“the reasons which are induced by the saints”) #

• Ad 1: infidels neither see/reason out these things nor know them to be believable; the faithful “know” them not by demonstration but insofar as through the light of faith they are seen to be believable.
• Ad 2: the saints’ reasons for what is of faith simply are not demonstrative but persuasions, showing what is proposed is not impossible; or they proceed from the beginnings of faith, the authorities of Scripture (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2), as other sciences from naturally known principles — hence theology is a science “as said in the beginning of the work.” He adds: a science subordinated for its principles to the knowledge of those who see the articles in heaven — the kind of subordinate science Aristotle talks about. Reasoning from one article to another is a kind of scientia.
• Ad 3 (makes simply/somewhat explicit): what can be demonstrated (God’s existence, by demonstration quia, from effect) is counted among things to be believed by those without the demonstration — not as of faith simply, but as presupposed to what is of faith.
• Ad 4: among diverse men the same thing can be opined, known, believed; in one man, knowledge and faith about the same thing only secundum quid — same subject, not same aspect (the doctor knows some things wrong with you, guesses others). Science excludes opinion because what is known is judged impossible to be otherwise, what is opined possibly otherwise; faith, by its certitude, also judges impossible-otherwise, so its incompatibility with knowledge is on another ground: the known is seen, the believed is not.

7. a.6 objections and sed contra (“distinguished by definite articles”) #

1. Faith is to be had about everything in Scripture, which cannot be reduced to a number — “too many things to believe.”
2. Material distinction goes to infinity and should be omitted by art; the formal ratio of the believable, the first truth, is one and indivisible; so the material distinction into articles should be omitted.
3. An article (per Albert, Bonaventure, Richard of St Victor) is an indivisible truth about God “forcing” us to believe; but believing is voluntary (Augustine); so distinguishing by articles is unsuitable.

• Sed contra, Isidore: an article is a perception of divine truth tending toward it; such perception is according to a distinction — one in God, multiplied in our intellect.

8. a.6 body: what an article is, and what distinguishes them (“a special reason not seen”) #

• Etymology: Greek arthron / Latin articulus, an agreement (adaptation) of distinct parts — bodily members; students offer: articles of the constitution, of a newspaper (adapted to each other? “I don’t know”); grammatical articles adapted to other parts of speech showing gender, number, case; rhetorical articles; Cicero (“Tullius”): single words distinguished by intervals. The Summa itself: questions divided into articles coaptata — this question’s articles all about the object of faith, others on the act, the habit.
• Principle: the object of faith is the unseen about divine things; where something is not seen “for a special reason,” there is a special article; where many things are unknown for the same reason, no distinct article. Passion vs. resurrection: different difficulties (that God should suffer; that a man rise from the dead), so distinct articles; suffered, died, buried: one difficulty, one accepted the rest follow — one article. “So we’re going to distinguish the articles by the difficulties of believing.”
• Joke: Washington Irving visiting Sir Walter Scott — asked whether someone had died: “If he didn’t, they treated him very badly, because they buried him.”

9. a.6 replies, ending on “necessary” as equivocal by reason (“restricted by the necessity of the end”) #

• Ad 1: some things are believable as of faith as such, others in order to these, as sciences propose some things per se and others for the manifestation of others. Faith is chiefly about what we hope to see in the fatherland (“substance of things hoped for,” a foundation); so what pertains per se to faith orders us directly to eternal life — three persons, omnipotence, the incarnation — and by these the articles are distinguished. That Abraham had two sons, that the touch of bones raised a dead man, are narrated for the manifestation of the divine majesty or of the incarnation; no articles for these (joke: whether Tobias’s dog really wagged its tail).
• Ad 2: the formal ratio of the object taken on the part of the thing believed is one (the first truth) — no distinction there; taken on our part it is “not seen,” and from this side the articles are distinguished.
• Ad 3: that definition follows the Latin etymology, not the true meaning from the Greek. Thomas often notes etymology is not meaning: a Johnson is not necessarily the son of John; Berquist means “mountain branch” but that is not the meaning of the word.
• Ad 4: no one is forced to believe by necessity of force, since believing is voluntary; but one is restricted by necessity of the end — for one approaching God it is necessary to believe; “without faith it’s impossible to please God” (St Paul).
• His old example of a word equivocal by reason: “necessary.” Two is necessarily half of four (never otherwise, not by choice) vs. it is necessary to eat (if you are going to live), to study logic (if you want to think well), to go to confession (we’re all sinners; John Paul II daily), to have a car to get home (you could walk or call a cab — but not before supper). Sacraments are not necessary as two is half of four, since people can live without them, but if you want the end you must. Is it necessary to understand “necessary”? Only to achieve a particular end (e.g. to understand demonstration), not as two is half of four — not everyone understands the word. One sense: an end cannot be achieved at all without this means. Without understanding words equivocal by reason “you’re going to make a lot of mistakes” and be confused about the universal.

His words #

• believable (credibile): “under the common notion of what is believable” — what is seen to be believed
• evidence of credibility (student’s term, accepted): reason to believe from the truth proposed and the good will of the witness
• lumen fidei facit videre ea quae creduntur: the light of faith makes one see the things to be believed
• lumen gloriae, light of glory: disposes reason to receive God as the form by which He is seen; not a light that enlightens something
• scita: “known, reasoned out, through something else”; ambiguous with plain “known”
• scientia / episteme: reasoned-out knowledge; carries the idea of coming to a halt
• opinion, conjectura, guess: assent with fear of the opposite; opinion a stronger guess than suspicion
• known to themselves: not proved by other statements; positively, known through their parts
• visum, seen: known from other things that are certain; not adequately rendered “known”
• state of the road / the way (via): this life
• simpliciter / simply vs. somewhat (secundum quid)
• demonstration quia: that something is so, from the effect
• subordinate science: takes its principles from another science; theology from the knowledge of those who see in heaven
• arthron / articulus: agreement/adaptation of distinct parts
• coaptata: adapted to each other (of the articles in a question)
• substance of things hoped for: faith as foundation of what we will see
• necessity of force vs. necessity of the end
• equivocal by reason: his term for a word with related senses, e.g. “necessary” [ed.: analogous]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 1, a. 4, ad 2, ad 3, ad 4
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 1, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, ad 1–4)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 1, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, ad 1–4)

Mentioned

• 1 Timothy (Paul’s ignorance in incredulity), 1 Peter (reason for the hope), 1 John (“we shall see Him as He is”), 1 Corinthians 13, St Paul on “without faith impossible to please God”
• Gregory the Great (sed contra a.5); Isidore, Augustine, Albert, Bonaventure, Richard of St Victor, Cicero (a.6)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics I (opinion and knowledge of the same thing); Aristotle on moral virtue needed for prudence; Aristotle’s proofs of God
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles: division of books I–III vs. IV (SCG III ch. 51 is a verified source match for the light-of-glory passage; he does not name it)
• Thomas, commentary on De Anima III, on Averroes and the possible intellect
• Euclid, Elements (axioms and postulates)
• Washington Irving on Sir Walter Scott

His questions #

• Isn’t there some kind of seeing because of the light of faith? Yes — one sees that these things should be believed, not that they are true in themselves.
• How can we see God as He is? By God Himself joined to the mind, the mind raised by the light of glory to receive Him as the form by which He is seen.
• Is that what the Orthodox call the uncreated energies? Left open (“Who knows”); he speaks of Christ’s inner excellence shining through the body.
• Does Paul tell us to have a reason for the faith in us? It’s Peter, and for the hope — but that presupposes a reason for believing.
• Do you know there are three persons in God, or just believe it? Believe; it is not known.
• Do you know that God exists, or believe it? Student: would like to say know, but believes too; for most men belief, but only “somewhat.”
• Are the articles of the newspaper adapted to each other? “I don’t know if there are.”
• Doesn’t it make sense that suffered, died and buried go together? Yes — one difficulty; if God could die He could be buried; one article.
• Is the word “necessary” equivocal? Yes, by reason: two necessarily half of four vs. necessary to eat, to study logic, to go to confession.
• Is it necessary to understand the word “necessary”? Only to achieve an end (e.g. understanding demonstration), not as two is half of four.