Confession of Faith and the Definition of Faith: Substance of Things Hoped For (ST II-II q.3 a.2, q.4 a.1)

Orientation #

He opens: “We’ve seen that confession is the exterior act of faith” (prev. lecture, the end of the previous class began q. 3 a. 1). He then reads q. 3 a. 2 and moves “on a little bit to question 4,” reading the prologue and the whole of a. 1. The previous class worked through II-II q. 1–2 on faith and closed at the start of the question on whether confession is properly an act of faith.

The class, in order #

1. Objections 1–2: is confession necessary for salvation? (“the conjunction of the human mind to the divine truth”) #

The point: Thomas answers the first two dubia by referring faith’s end to charity and by distinguishing necessity from ordinary instruction.

• Obj. 1: what suffices for salvation is to attain the end of the virtue; faith’s end is the conjunction of the mind to divine truth, which can be had without exterior confession. He glosses with a question: is teaching a geometrical theorem necessary to knowing it?
• Reply 1: the end of faith, like that of every virtue, is referred to the end of charity, love of God and neighbor; so when the honor of God or the usefulness of the neighbor requires it, a man should not be content that by his own faith he is joined to divine truth, but ought to confess. A student: so confession is ultimately an act of charity rather than of faith. He agrees: “common sense… Thomas is even a man of common sense.” Aside: Washington Irving, common sense as the only reliable foundation of human knowledge.
• Obj. 2: exterior confession makes one’s faith clear to another, which is needed only by those who instruct others in faith.
• Reply 2: in a case of necessity, when faith is endangered, each one is held to confess, for the instruction or confirmation of the faithful or to repress the insult of the faithless; but at other times to instruct men about faith does not pertain to all the faithful.
• Aside on danger: grade-school and high-school teachers who “go over the five proofs” so the kids know God is not a figment; the kids do not understand the proofs but think they do. De Koninck: “I think I get proofs of God, but not be so presumptuous as to say so”; a fortiori for young teachers. What draws most people is the evidence of miracles and the holiness of the saints; his neighbor, a lapsed Catholic, would not call John Paul II or Mother Teresa stupid, yet they believed all these articles.
• Aside: Ron MacArthur taught Euclid with great seriousness and certainty, then taught theology with the same seriousness; this respect for reason and clarity had a good effect on students.
• Student: reply 2 would apply to bishops when the faith is in danger, “Christopher the faithful” if he fails his duty; another adds that God can supply what the bishop fails to supply. Padre Pio anecdote, recalled by the student: rebuked for sending people from confession without absolution (“what if he dies?”), he answered that if he makes a mistake God does not make a mistake; God can move them to penance. Same principle for the bishop’s failure.

2. Objection 3, scandal; sed contra (“Do not give the holy things to dogs”) #

The point: confession that only provokes the faithless is not praiseworthy, but when usefulness or necessity is present one confesses publicly despite their disturbance.

• Obj. 3: what verges on scandal is not necessary for salvation; the Apostle (1 Corinthians) says be without offense to Jews, Gentiles and the Church of God; confession sometimes provokes unbelievers.
• Reply 3: if the disturbance of the faithless arises from a confession made without any utility to faith or the faithful, it is not praiseworthy; hence Matthew 7:6, do not give holy things to dogs. He recalls Philip running to the man on the road (“how can you understand unless somebody explains it?”): there it was proper to explain. But if some usefulness to faith is hoped for, or necessity is present, one confesses publicly “with contempt for the disturbance of the faithless”; his case: Muslims who sometimes force people to confess or deny. Matthew 15:14: told the Pharisees were scandalized, the Lord says leave them alone, blind leading the blind. He notes Thomas takes up the scandal of the Pharisees under scandal against charity; his case: if a neighbor is scandalized that I go to Mass on Sunday, I do not stop, because he is being pharisaical.
• Sed contra: Romans 10:10, “corde creditur ad justitiam,” by the heart one believes unto justice, by the mouth confession is made unto salvation. “That’s an authority there.”

3. Respondeo: affirmative precepts oblige semper but not ad semper (“do not obligate ad semper”) #

The point: confession is necessary for salvation in the way something can fall under an affirmative precept of divine law.

1. What is necessary for salvation falls under the precepts.
2. Confession is something affirmative, so it can fall only under an affirmative precept.
3. Affirmative precepts, as said above, do not oblige ad semper, though they always oblige; negative ones (murder, adultery) oblige always. They oblige for the place and time and other due circumstances by which the human act is limited to an act of virtue.
4. Therefore confession is not always and everywhere necessary for salvation, but in some place and time: when by its omission the honor due to God or the usefulness of the neighbor is subtracted. If someone interrogated about faith stays silent, and from this it is believed that he has no faith, or that the faith is not true, or others are turned from the faith by such taciturnity, then confession is necessary for salvation. He finds it “interesting” that Thomas says necessary for salvation; a student: copy this to “the bishop in Rome.”

• Asides: you need not confess your faith when you get on the bus; a boy in a rough neighborhood who rode up to gang kids saying “want to talk about God” and was punched in the nose. His baptism as Hugo Duane, the old Tiverton pastor saying “there’s no Saint Duane,” the names switched; a Saint Hugo devoted to the Blessed Virgin, killed for singing through a dangerous part of town, who sang from the catafalque at his funeral until the priest told him to be quiet. His mother baptized Mary Gertrude, names reversed; today is St. Gertrude; Sister Gertrude gave him a relic; disappointment that the German Pope did not make her a doctor of the Church. Christ found “in the heart of Gertrude”; his father’s attachment to his sister Gertrude and hiring his mother.

4. Question 4 prologue (“eight things are asked”) #

The point: the virtue of faith is treated in four parts (faith itself; those having it; its cause; its effects), the first in eight articles: what faith is; in what power of the soul as subject; whether its form is charity (he flags the puzzle: how can its form be another virtue? “we’ll see”); whether formed and unformed faith are the same in number; whether it is a virtue; whether one; its order to the other virtues; its certitude compared with the intellectual virtues of Ethics VI.

5. Q. 4 a. 1, the objections against Hebrews 11:1 (“Faith is the substance of things hoped for”) #

The point: five objections claim the Apostle’s words are an incompetent definition.

• On the text: substantia is an etymologically correct rendering of the Greek (hypostasis: the two parts, standing under); “always check this in the Bible” to see how it is translated. The second term he renders “evidence” or, better, “conviction” of things that do not appear.
• Obj. 1: “this guy has obviously studied the categories”: no quality is a substance; faith, a theological virtue, is a habit, hence in the species of quality; so not a substance. He suspects an equivocation, like the boy who “saw” the blind man who could not see at all.
• Obj. 2: diverse virtues have diverse objects; res speranda is the object of hope, so should not be put in faith’s definition. “Sounds a good objection, doesn’t it? No.”
• Obj. 3: faith is more perfected by charity than by hope, so res diligenda should be placed rather than res speranda. “Paul’s really mixed up. You need a good editor.”
• Obj. 4: the same thing should not be placed in diverse genera; substance and argumentum are diverse, neither under the other: like calling it both dog and cat (whereas dog and animal is fine, one under the other). Aside: Voltaire, “our French guy,” would enjoy it; he read the objections and left out the explanation.
• Obj. 5: through argument truth is made manifest, but the apparent is what has manifest truth; so “argumentum non apparentium” implies a contradiction, an argument that demonstrates nothing. “You better go take logic courses.”
• Sed contra: the authority of the Apostle suffices. “This is theology.”

6. Respondeo: why the words are a definition; the act of faith and its two objects (“all the things of which faith is able to be defined”) #

The point: though not in grammatical form, the words touch everything by which faith can be defined, as philosophers omit syllogistic form while giving the principles.

1. Habits are known by acts, acts by objects; so faith, a habit, is defined through its own act in relation to its own object (he renders proprium “its own,” not “proper”).
2. The act of faith is to believe: an act of the understanding determined to one side of a contradiction from the command of the will.
3. So the act of faith is ordered both to the object of the will (the good and the end: every good is an end or ordered to one) and to the object of the understanding (the true).
4. Since faith is a theological virtue, its object and end are the same thing, so they must correspond proportionally. The first truth, object of faith as not seen, stands to the act of faith as end under the ratio of a thing not seen, which pertains to a thing hoped for (Romans 8:25, what we do not see we hope for). To see truth is to have it; one does not hope for what he has (cannot hope to be rich when already rich).

• Student: does that hold of love too? He: love goes both to what you have and what you do not have; hope only to what is not had.
• He notes habitudo carries the sense of a relation.
• Aside: “I hope Dr. Berquist will be here today.”

7. Substance as first beginning: foundation, principles, the geometry example (“the first indemonstrable beginnings are the substance of a science”) #

The point: “substance of things hoped for” signifies the relation of faith’s act to the end, since substance means what stands under, the first beginning of a thing, most of all when the whole that follows is contained in the power of that beginning.

• Foundation of a house; the Latin substantia and the Greek word here (not ousia, which lacks the etymological sense) carry “standing under.”
• Aristotle, fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V], on the equivocal word beginning: the edge of the table is a beginning but not a part; the foundation of the house is a beginning that is a first fundamental part; the prow of the boat.
• The indemonstrable first principles are the substance of a science: definitions, axioms, properties known without reasoning, on which all else is built; per se nota to all (a whole is more than its part) vs., as Boethius says, per se nota to the wise (no odd number is even, obvious to one with a little geometry).
• Worked example, vertical angles equal: a straight line meeting a straight line makes either two right angles or angles equal to two right angles (from the definition of right angle); so each pair is equal to two right angles; from equals subtract equals, the remainders are equal. The conclusion is “in the power of these premises.”
• Student: Augustine’s image of faith, hope and charity as building a house, faith the foundation, hope the walls, charity the roof, the sacraments the tools, the four parts of the catechism.
• Conclusion: faith is the substance of things hoped for because it is the first beginning in us of things hoped for, through the assent of faith, containing in its power all things hoped for; we hope to be made blessed by seeing in clear vision the truth we now hold by faith.

8. Argumentum: conviction; the definition in form; what it excludes; other definitions (“the intellect of the one believing is convinced”) #

The point: “conviction of things not seen” signifies the relation of faith’s act to the object of the understanding.

• Argumentum is taken for the effect of argument: through argument the understanding is induced to adhere to something true; so the firm adherence of the understanding to the truth of faith that does not yet appear is called argumentum; another reading has convictio, because through divine authority the intellect of the believer is convinced, “conquered,” to assent to what it does not see. “Beautifully said.”
• Definition in form: faith is a habit of the mind by which eternal life is begun in us, making the intellect assent to things that do not appear.
• Distinctions: argumentum separates faith from opinion, suspicion and doubt, which lack firm adherence (opinion stronger than suspicion but not certain; dialectic is about opinion, suspicion belongs to rhetoric; “the news” is suspicion and doubt; Thomas calls opinion and suspicion both guesses, with more basis in opinion; in the De Veritate he defines believing by distinguishing it from all other acts). Non apparentium separates it from what is obvious or proven from the obvious. Substance of things hoped for separates the virtue of faith from faith commonly taken, not ordered to beatitude: “I believe it’s going to rain tomorrow” (a kind of opinion); a student adds human faith on human witness, believing the man at the pharmacy is a pharmacist.
• All other definitions unfold the Apostle’s: Augustine, faith is a virtue by which things not seen are believed; Damascene, faith is a non-inquisitive consent; Hugo of St. Victor, faith is a certain certitude of things absent (quaedam certitudo de absentibus); Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 7, faith is a remaining foundation (manens fundamentum) of believers, the same as substantia.
• Asides: Montaigne’s “voyez-vous”; the two famous men of St. Victor, Hugo and Richard, “in the stars” given his own names; a student’s uncertainty whether St. Victor was in Paris.

9. Replies to the five objections (“diverse relations of one act to diverse objects”) #

The point: each objection fails, the first by equivocation.

• Reply 1: substance is not taken as the most general genus divided against the others, but as the likeness of substance found in each genus: what is first in a genus and contains the others in its power is called their substance.
• Reply 2: faith pertains to the understanding as commanded by the will, so it must be ordered, as to an end, to the object of the virtues perfecting the will, among which is hope; hence the object of hope is in the definition, since that object carries the note of not being had.
• Reply 3: love can be of a thing seen or not seen, present or absent; so res diligenda does not fit faith as res speranda does, since hope is always of things absent and not seen, as faith is of things not seen. He adds: charity would be more the form of faith, but faith is defined more by hope.
• Reply 4: substance and argumentum do not imply diverse genera or diverse acts, but diverse relations of one act to diverse objects: the true as object of reason, the thing hoped for as object of the will.
• Reply 5: an argument from the proper principles of a thing makes the thing apparent; an argument from the authority of God does not make the thing apparent in itself, and that is the conviction placed in the definition. He notes the Greek word is the one Aristotle uses for refutation [ed.: elenchos, inferred]: being refuted does not mean you see the truth, but the strength of the refutation.

His words #

• confession: the exterior act of faith, “properly understood”.
• semper vs. ad semper: affirmative precepts always oblige but not for always; they oblige for place, time and due circumstances.
• taciturnity: the silence under interrogation that makes others believe one lacks faith.
• substantia: “standing under,” the first beginning of a thing, especially one containing in its power all that follows; renders the Greek hypostasis, not ousia.
• argumentum: taken for the effect of argument, the firm adherence of the intellect to unseen truth; another reading convictio, “conviction”; he notes the Greek is Aristotle’s word for refutation.
• proprium: rendered “its own,” not “proper.”
• habitudo: carries the sense of a relation.
• beginning: Aristotle’s equivocal word; edge of table vs. foundation of house.
• per se nota: statements known through themselves, to all or, per Boethius, to the wise.
• opinion, suspicion, doubt: both opinion and suspicion are “guesses”; opinion has more basis.
• faith commonly taken: belief not ordered to beatitude (“it’s going to rain tomorrow”).
• non-inquisitive consent: Damascene’s definition of faith.
• manens fundamentum: Dionysius’s “remaining foundation,” same as substantia.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 3, a. 2 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 4, prologue
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 4, a. 1 (whole article)
• Hebrews 11:1 (in the article)
• Romans 10:10, Romans 8:25, Matthew 7:6, Matthew 15:14, 1 Corinthians “be without offense” (as cited in the articles)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories (obj. 1 “has studied the categories”)
• Aristotle, Ethics VI (intellectual virtues, prologue a. 8)
• Aristotle, “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V], on beginning
• Thomas, De Veritate, on what it is to believe
• Thomas, the question on scandal against charity (Pharisees)
• Boethius on per se nota to the wise
• Augustine, Damascene, Hugo of St. Victor, Dionysius Divine Names ch. 7 (definitions quoted in a. 1)
• Euclid (vertical angles; MacArthur’s teaching); Voltaire; Washington Irving; Montaigne; Augustine’s house image (student)

His questions #

• Is teaching the geometrical theorem necessary too? Put as a gloss on obj. 1; left open.
• So confession is ultimately an act of charity rather than an act of faith? Yes; the end of faith is referred to the end of charity, “common sense.”
• Does obj. 2’s principle apply to bishops when the faith is in danger? Yes, and God can supply what the bishop fails to supply (Padre Pio principle).
• If my neighbor is scandalized because I go to Mass, do I stop? No; he is being pharisaical, like the Pharisees the Lord said to leave alone.
• How can faith’s form be charity if that is another virtue? Left open, “we’ll see.”
• Does it have to be not had for love too? No; love goes to what you have and do not have; hope only to what is not had.
• How do you know the opposite angles are equal when straight lines intersect? From straight lines making angles equal to two right angles and subtracting equals from equals.
• Why the object of hope rather than of love in the definition? Because love can be of what is present and seen; hope, like faith, is of what is absent and not seen.