Explicit and Implicit Faith: The Learned and the Simple, and Belief in the Mystery of Christ (II-II q.2 aa.5-7)

Orientation #

He begins straight in on the fifth article and ends with “good time for another article… I’m overloaded”, stopping at the start of the eighth. Back-references “as has been said above” are to Thomas’s earlier articles, not to the previous class. The verified source list also flags a Hamlet handout (p. 49) and a printed volume (DHB Vol III p. 736), but the transcript shows no trace of either being read. The previous class worked through q. 1 a. 4 on believing what reason could demonstrate; the next continues q. 2 (Trinity, merit, reason and merit) and opens the question on confession of faith.

The class, in order #

1. Fifth article, the objections (“whether man is held to believing something explicitly”) #

Point: three objections argue that no determinate content need be believed, only a readiness to believe.

1. Rom. 10: no one is held to what is not in his power; faith is ex auditu, and how can they hear without a preacher, or preach unless sent? So explicit belief is not in man’s power.
2. Charity, like faith, orders us to God, yet for charity’s precepts a “preparation of the soul” suffices (offer the other cheek etc., as Augustine expounds in the book on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount). Aside: the Sermon is fuller in Matthew; Luke’s version, where the Our Father is found, is shorter. He notes against the objection that at the last judgment Christ says “I was hungry, and you…” - you actually have to do something for the hungry man.
3. The good of faith is a kind of obedience (Rom. 1:5, “to obeying faith in all nations”); obedience requires only a prompt soul (Ps. 118: paratus sum, “I am prepared, I am not disturbed, that I might keep the commandments”), not determinate precepts. Sed contra: Heb. 11:6, one approaching God must believe that He is and that He rewards those who seek Him. “What sounds reasonable, huh?” - his flag on objection 2.

2. Fifth article, the body: per se object vs. what is praeter intentionem (“the object of faith per se is that by which”) #

Point: only what is the proper and per se object of a virtue falls under the necessity of precept.

1. Precepts of the law are about acts of virtue, the way to salvation; an act of virtue is taken from the habit’s relation to its object.
2. In the object of any virtue, two things: what is properly and per se its object (necessary in every act), and what is per accidens or secondary. Fortitude: per se, to sustain death and approach danger for the common good; per accidens, that a man be armed or strike with a sword in a just war - this is “reduced to” the object but is praeter intentionem.
3. Hence determination of the act to the per se object falls under precept as the act itself does; determination to the secondary does not, “except sometimes for this place and this time.”
4. The per se object of faith is that by which man is made blessed (said above); secondarily, everything contained in Scripture (that Abraham had two sons, that David was the son of Jesse - the name is lost in the recording). Conclusion: a man is held explicitly to the first things to be believed, the articles of faith (“so we say the creed on Sunday”), just as he is held to have faith; other things only implicitly, in preparation of soul to believe whatever Scripture contains - and explicitly only once it is established that a thing is contained in the teaching of faith. Student exchange: does “the cross does not have the fullness of faith” apply to the praeter? - “Could be, could be.” Left open. Aside: Washington asked how to win a war with undisciplined troops; Julius Caesar in his fifties led a charge himself when the troops lacked courage, and Washington sometimes did too.

3. Fifth article, the replies (“thus, to many things a man is held which he cannot”) #

Ad 1: “in his power” must be taken with the assistance of grace. Many things a man is held to that he cannot do without grace (loving God and neighbour, believing the articles); to whom grace is given, it is given mercifully; to whom not, from justice, in punishment of a foregoing sin, “at least original sin,” as Augustine says. Aside: “that’s probably to the new pope.” Ad 2: man is held determinately to love the per se objects of charity, God and neighbour; the objection concerns consequent precepts, which are to charity as the secondary things are to faith. Ad 3: obedience properly consists in the will, not in reason; so promptness of will subject to the commander suffices, the per se object; this or that precept is consequent.

4. Sixth article, the objections and Job’s oxen (“whether all are equally held to having an explicit faith”) #

Point: three objections argue everyone is equally bound.

1. What is of the necessity of salvation binds all (as with the precepts of charity); making things explicit is of that necessity.
2. No one is examined about what he need not believe; but the simple are sometimes examined about the articles.
3. If the lesser have only implicit faith, in the faith of the greater, that is dangerous, since the greater can err. (Aside to a student: “when you write your letter… cut these.”) Sed contra: Job 1, the oxen plough and the asses pasture beside them - the lesser, signified by the asses, must cleave in things to be believed to the greater, the oxen (boves), as Gregory expounds in book two of the Moralia. He calls it “an interesting metaphor” and Gregory “a big, big authority… very great.”

5. Sixth article, the body, and the senses of “in” (“Aristotle has distinguished eight senses of the word in”) #

Point: things to be believed are unfolded by revelation, which comes in an order, to the lower through the higher. Body: things to be believed exceed natural reason, so are unfolded by divine revelation; revelation reaches the lower through the higher - men through angels, lower angels through higher (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy). He notes Thomas always quotes quae a Deo sunt, ordinata sunt, and treats Dionysius with a deference he does not show Aristotle, whom he counts as an equal. “Thomas is one of the few people that could really fully understand Aristotle.” Digression, his own puzzle: Aristotle gives four senses of before and after in order in the Categories, then seems to add a fifth (the cause before the effect). Is it fifth in the line, or laid alongside? Model case: Thomas on the Physics (“Natural Hearing” - a student corrects him and he accepts it), where Aristotle gives eight senses of “in” but our text has no ordering, so Thomas orders them as Aristotle teaches in “the fifth book of wisdom”. The senses as the class recovers them, in order:

1. in a place (“in this room here, right now”);
2. part in the whole;
3. genus in the species - as part of the definition in the whole definition, “more hidden” than pages in a book because it is in the mind;
4. species in the genus - “just the reverse. What the hell is that guy doing?” Thomas: two kinds of whole, the composed whole (senses 2-3) and the universal whole (sense 4), “even more hidden”;
5. form in matter - like species in genus, since the species is in the genus only in ability: if actually, then when a dog is an animal, cat would be in dog;
6. in the active power (“I’ve got you in my power”), “one of my favourite ones”;
7. finally, in the end: “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be.” [ed.: the class names seven of the eight; one sense is not recovered in the recording.] Then Aristotle adds “in time” (“the nerve of that guy”), and Thomas lays it alongside in-place, since both are extrinsic measures, rather than forcing it into the line. His conclusion: not every sense of a word equivocal by reason goes in one linear order; there are central senses, and others with a special likeness to one of them are set beside or beneath it. So, “armed”, he takes cause-before-effect as laid alongside the second sense, before in being: as effect depends on cause, so what is after in being depends on what is before. Consequence he draws: everyone else is “condemned” to the fallacy of equivocation, especially with words equivocal by reason (whose senses are connected), the constant fault of modern philosophy. De Koninck: “every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason”; you cannot even state the axioms without such words. Classroom story (his mother): “man is an animal” - “that doesn’t sound good to me, Duane”; “an animal that has reason” - “that’s better.” So animal is only a part of what man is; yet animal contains dog, cat, horse, elephant besides man - a part containing more than the whole? Resolution: two senses of whole. A composed whole is put together from its parts (animal as part of man’s definition, which contains more, as his mother saw); a universal whole is not composed but said of its subject parts. Each is “of more than one” of its parts, in different senses; mixing them makes students doubt an axiom, “a statement known through itself by all” - “something very fundamental.”

6. Sixth article, the replies, and imitation (“man is the most imitative of the animals”) #

Body concluded: the higher men, whose office is to instruct, are held to a fuller knowledge and more explicit belief. Aside: Msgr. Dionne held that the grace of Mary is of the hypostatic order - he has to have that explicitly, unlike the man in the Sunday pew. Ad 1: making explicit is not equally necessary for all; the greater, the more educated, are held to more because they instruct. “Common sense.” Ad 2: the simple are not to be examined about the subtleties of faith, except when heresy is about and there is suspicion they have been “depraved” by heretics (“the hard way of speaking”); if they fail in such things without pertinacity (stubborn adherence to perverse doctrine), it is imputed to simplicity, not to them. Aside on neighbour and common good: Adam was lonely, so God made Eve, close to him in nature; angels each differ in species, so are they neighbours? Thomas: the more understanding, the more one appreciates the common good. His daughter’s cat Tabitha, who tipped the other cat off the sofa to nap there: “a real sense of the private good”; he now imitates the cat’s hiss at drivers who cut him off. Ad 3: the lesser have implicit faith in the faith of the greater only insofar as the greater adhere to divine teaching (1 Cor. 4, “be imitators of me as I am of Christ” - “it’s beautiful”). Digression: Aristotle, man is the most imitative of animals and first learns by imitation - hence Plato’s dialogues are imitations of men in philosophical conversation, unlike Aristotle’s lecture-works (On the Soul, “Natural Hearing”); Aristotle too wrote dialogues, mostly lost, Cicero rating them above Plato’s; from the fragments: either you ought to philosophize or not; if not, you must philosophize to show why - so in either case you must. Personal: watching De Koninck lecture in St Paul and at the College of St Thomas, his professors had picked up his gestures unawares; he himself came home from Quebec with Dionne’s nervous gestures; Kaserick, wisest man at the College, running on stage to fix the master’s microphone - “respect for the great master”; the Imitation of Christ, to which Thérèse was attached. Ad 3 concluded: human knowledge is not the rule of faith but divine truth; if some of the greater fall short, it does not prejudice the simple who hold the true faith, unless they pertinaciously adhere to errors against the universal faith of the Church, which cannot fail (Luke 22, “I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith not fail”).

7. Seventh article, the objections (“whether to explicitly believe the mystery of Christ”) #

Point: is explicit faith in Christ necessary for salvation among all, “even the minores”?

1. Man is not held to what the angels are ignorant of, since revelation reaches men through angels (“that’s why I always say mental prayer… about the angels”); but angels asked “Who is this king of glory?” (Ps. 23) and “Who is this that comes from Edom?” (Is. 63), as Dionysius expounds. Aside: Jews who respect Christ as teacher ask why he had to be God; Edith Stein’s mother: “why did he have to make himself God?”
2. John the Baptist, greatest born of women (Mt. 11), asked from prison “Are you the one who is to come?” - so even the greater lacked explicit faith.
3. Many Gentiles were saved by the ministry of angels (Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 9), with no faith of Christ, explicit or implicit, since no revelation was made to them. Sed contra: Augustine, De correptione (a student puzzles over the title; he settles on “correction… reproof”): no one, of greater or lesser age, is freed from the contagion of death and the obligation of sin except through the one mediator, Jesus Christ.

8. Seventh article, the body: the mystery believed diversely by times and persons (“before the state of sin”) #

1. What per se pertains to faith is that through which man reaches beatitude; the way for men is the mystery of the incarnation and passion (Acts 4:12, no other name). So the mystery of the incarnation must be believed in some way at all times by all, but diversely by times and persons.
2. Before sin: explicit faith in the incarnation as ordered to the consummation of glory, not as ordered to liberation from sin through the passion and resurrection, since man did not foreknow his sin. Yet he was somehow prescient of the incarnation: “a man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife,” which the Apostle (Ephesians) calls a great sacrament in Christ and the Church, not credible unless the first man had it.
3. After sin: the mystery believed explicitly as to passion and resurrection too, otherwise the sacrifices before and under the law would not have prefigured it; the greater knew what the sacrifices signified explicitly, the lesser under the veil of the sacrifices, believing God’s disposition about the Christ to come.
4. Things of the mystery are known more distinctly the nearer to Christ; after the time of revealed grace, greater and lesser alike are held to explicit faith in the mysteries of Christ, especially those solemnly held and publicly pronounced, the articles of the incarnation (which Thomas listed before, alongside the articles on the divinity); more subtle considerations bind more or less according to state and office.

9. Seventh article, the replies: angels, the Baptist, the Gentiles (“Behold, the Lamb of God”) #

Ad 1: the mystery was not entirely hidden from the angels (Augustine, Super Genesim ad litteram V); some reasons they knew more perfectly when Christ revealed them. (A student asks if that was a reply to Jerome; left unresolved.) Ad 2, four answers as Thomas gives them: (a) John did not ask about the coming in the flesh as ignorant - he had confessed “this is the Son of God”; he asked “are you the one who is to come,” future, not past; nor was he ignorant of the passion, having said “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” foretelling the immolation the prophets predicted, especially Isaiah 53. Aside: so the Blessed Virgin was not ignorant either; she meditated more than anyone and suffered in knowing. (b) Gregory: he asked whether Christ would descend to hell in his own person, his own prison - he knew the passion would reach those detained in limbo (Zechariah, “you have sent forth the bound from the lake in which there is no water” - he says “Zachariah two”, the locus is 9:11 (inferred)), but was not bound to believe it explicitly before it was done. Aside: how much they wanted to see God as He is - people are puzzled by “he descended into hell” and never investigate it; in purgatory the greatest punishment is not fire but the wanting to see God. (c) Ambrose: he asked from piety, not doubt. (d) Chrysostom: not as ignorant himself, but so Christ might satisfy the disciples - hence Christ answers by showing his signs. He says he had always read it Chrysostom’s way; a student offers “the dark night of the soul” as another interpretation. Ad 3: some revelation about Christ was made to many Gentiles: Job 19, “I know that my redeemer lives”; the Sibyl (Augustine); the Roman histories under Constantine and his mother Irene of a sepulchre with a man bearing a golden plate on his chest, “Christ shall be born of the Virgin, and I believe in Him.” Those saved without such revelation were not saved without faith in the mediator: they had implicit faith in divine providence, believing God the liberator of men in ways of his choosing, as he reveals to some who know the truth (Job, “who teaches us above the beasts of the earth” - he garbles the line). Closing aside: Laval students misreporting what Dionne was “talking about these days”; students’ mistaken exam answers are “punishment for us professors, to hear our mumbled thoughts coming back.” He stops: “I’m overloaded.”

His words #

• ex auditu: faith is “from hearing” (Rom. 10).
• preparation of the soul: readiness to believe or obey, as opposed to explicit belief or a determinate precept.
• paratus sum: “I am prepared” (Ps. 118).
• properly and per se object vs. per accidens / secondary / praeter intentionem: what a virtue’s act necessarily bears on vs. what is reduced to it “beside the intention”; only the first is under precept.
• articles of faith: the first things to be believed, held explicitly by all.
• implicit faith: believing “in preparation of the soul” whatever Scripture contains.
• pertinacious: stubbornly adhering to perverse doctrine.
• boves / asinae: Gregory’s oxen and asses of Job 1, the greater and the lesser.
• quae a Deo sunt, ordinata sunt: revelation comes in order, higher to lower.
• “Natural Hearing”: the Physics [ed.: Physica, “Physical Hearing”].
• “fifth book of wisdom”: Metaphysics V.
• equivocal by reason vs. by chance: senses connected vs. not; central senses and senses laid alongside or under them.
• composed whole vs. universal whole: put together from its parts vs. said of its subject parts.
• ability: [ed.: potency] - the species is in the genus “in ability.”
• axiom: a statement known through itself by all.
• Sicut et ego Christi: “as I also am of Christ.”
• minores / greater: the simple vs. those with the office of instructing.
• Super Genesim ad litteram: Augustine’s literal commentary on Genesis.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 6 (whole).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 7 (whole).
• Scripture quoted through Thomas: Rom. 10; Rom. 1:5; Ps. 118; Heb. 11:6; Job 1; 1 Cor. 4; Luke 22; Ps. 23; Is. 63; Mt. 11; Acts 4:12; Gen. 2 / Ephesians (“great sacrament”); Is. 53; Zechariah (“2” as he says; 9:11 inferred); Job 19; Job (on the beasts of the earth).
• Fragment of Aristotle’s lost dialogues: the “either you ought to philosophize” argument, paraphrased from memory. Mentioned
• Augustine, On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount; De correptione; Super Genesim ad litteram V; Augustine on the Sibyl.
• Gregory, Moralia II; Gregory on the Baptist’s question.
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy (ch. 9 for the Gentiles).
• Aristotle, Categories (senses of before and after); Physics with Thomas’s commentary (eight senses of “in”); Metaphysics V; On the Soul; Plato’s dialogues; Cicero on Aristotle’s dialogues.
• Ambrose, Chrysostom on Mt. 11.
• The Imitation of Christ; Edith Stein’s mother’s remark.
• Verified-source items not evidenced in the transcript: handout “An Exposition of Hamlet’s Exhortation to Use Reason” p. 49; DHB Vol III, p. 736.

His questions #

• Is a man held to believe anything explicitly, or does a prepared soul suffice? Held explicitly to the articles of faith; to the rest only implicitly.
• What are the two things to be considered in the object of any virtue? The proper per se object, and what is per accidens or secondary (praeter intentionem), e.g. fortitude’s sustaining death vs. being armed.
• In what sense is believing the articles “in the power of man”? With the aid of grace, which is given mercifully and withheld justly, in punishment of at least original sin.
• Who are the oxen and the asses in Job? The greater and the lesser; the lesser must cleave to the greater in things to be believed (Gregory).
• What is the second sense of “in”? the third? the fourth? why does Aristotle reverse genus-in-species to species-in-genus? Part in whole; genus in species; species in genus; because there are two wholes, composed and universal.
• Should every sense of a word equivocal by reason go in one linear order? No - central senses, with others laid alongside (time beside place; cause-before-effect beside before-in-being).
• Can a part contain more than the whole? Only by mixing composed whole with universal whole.
• Did John the Baptist not know Christ explicitly? He asked about the future (“is to come”) and had confessed him and the Lamb; or (Gregory) asked about the descent to hell; or (Ambrose) from piety; or (Chrysostom) for the disciples.
• Were the Gentiles saved without faith in the mediator? No; some had revelation (Job, the Sibyl, the sepulchre), the rest implicit faith in providence.
• Is Thomas’s ad 1 on the angels a reply to Jerome? Left open.