Relations of Reason, the Divine Power, and the Grace of Union (ST III, Q.2, aa.10–11)

Orientation #

He opens by correcting something he told the class before about relations of reason (“my guardian angel pulled me up”) and adds a text of Thomas “going back to Trinity”, then says “we’re up to the eleventh article here… excuse me, tenth” and reads aa. 10 and 11 of q. 2. He ends “let’s take a little break before going to the [next]”. The previous class read the earlier articles of this question on the hypostatic union; the next continues with the grace of union and q. 3.

The class, in order #

1. Correction: relation of reason in knower/known, not in lover/loved (“my guardian angel pulled me up”) #

Point: a self-correction of what he told them about relations of reason.

1. Aristotle’s strange case: a relation real on one side, of reason on the other. Example: the knower is really related by his knowledge to the known; the known is related to the knower only by a relation of reason. Reason: knowing is receiving the form of another as other while keeping your own; this immaterial being is in the knower, nothing in the chair relates it to me.
2. Contrast: if I kick you, kicker and kicked share a motion, so the relation is real on both sides.
3. The correction: Avicenna and Thomas both say love/loved is not like knowing/known. Reason, from “the sixth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VI, inferred]: truth and falsity are chiefly in the mind (though measured by the thing), but the good is chiefly in things. So one must not call the relation of the loved to the lover a relation of reason as one does the known to the knower.

2. De potentia aside: power to generate the Son and power to create (“the power to generate the son”) #

Point: a text of Thomas he “ran across” (from the questions on the potentia generandi, “second question”) and found interesting for its likeness to us.

• Question: is the Father’s power to generate the Son the same power as the power to create? Bob’s first answer: generating involves the divine power as in the Father; creating is common to all three. Thomas defends that they are really the same power.
• Objection: the Father naturally generates the Son (nature), but God chooses to create (will and choice). Per “the ninth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX, inferred], nature is determined to one, will is open to opposites (restaurant menu: chicken or not chicken, chicken or steak; Coriolanus: nature not able to be more than one thing — “part of the reason why it’s one Son”). Opposites, so not one power.
• Thomas’s answer: (i) in God nature and will are the same; (ii) more precisely, one should not say the power to create is the will; the will uses the power to create, whereas the Father does not choose to produce the Son; (iii) nothing prevents the same power going to one thing naturally and being moved by the will to another.
• His example (more known to us): my reason. I naturally think the whole is more than the part — everyone does; the man who denies it will “scream and rave” if given part of his pay, car or meal. But I think that God became man not naturally but as my reason is moved by my will (under grace). So one power: gives rise to the Son naturally, gives rise to creatures as moved by the divine will choosing us to be.
• Added: reason also comes to some things by reasoning from what it naturally knows (the Pythagorean theorem: first held by will, then reasoned out).
• Aside: we should thank God for choosing a universe, and a Church, of which we could be a part.

3. Article 10, objections and sed contra (“was not through what grace”) #

Point: three objections that the union is not by grace, one sed contra that it is.

• Obj. 1: grace is an accident (as said in the second part); the union is not made through any accident (that would “get you down to Nestorius or somebody”). He calls it “a very good argument”.
• Aside on grace vs. the theological virtues: the soul is a form in the genus of substance and naturally gives rise to its powers, reason and will, which are not the soul. Likewise sanctifying grace is in the soul, making it godlike (Peter: partaking of the divine nature), and from it flow faith into reason, hope and charity into the will. So grace is not the soul’s substance but added, an accident, yet fundamental.
• Aside, the sung Mass as A B C B A: Kyrie and Agnus Dei are prayers for mercy (hope); Gloria and Sanctus/Benedictus are praise (love); Credo (faith). Praise goes with love per Augustine, amare in laudibus, laudare in amore, quoted at length by Paul VI to the St Cecilia Society. Benedict XVI (addressing Benedictines) notes Gloria and Sanctus both come from angels (Luke, Isaiah’s seraphim, “I will sing in the presence of the angels”) — fitting, since angels have love but not faith and hope, seeing God as he is.
• Obj. 2: the subject of grace is the soul; but Colossians 2, the fullness of divinity dwells in Christ bodily (“think about that when you say Corpus Christi”).
• Obj. 3: every saint is united to God by grace; then Christ would not be God in a different way from other holy men.
• Sed contra, Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum: by the grace by which each man becomes a Christian from the beginning of faith, that man was made Christ.
• He anticipates: Thomas will distinguish meanings of “grace”, a word “you can’t quite translate except by the word grace”.

4. Article 10, body: two senses of grace, two elevations to God (“grace is said in two ways”) #

Point: the union is by grace in the first sense and only in a qualified way in the second.

1. Grace (as in the second part) is said (a) of the very will of God giving something gratis, (b) of the gratuitous gift of God. Aside: translations rendering grace as “favor” catch only sense (a): God’s approval is something in him, not in me; sense (b) is something in us.
2. Human nature needs God’s gratuitous will (not owed) to be elevated to God, since this is above the power of its nature.
3. Human nature is elevated to God in two ways: by operation, by which the saints know and love God (the old catechism: made to know, love and serve him); and by personal being, unique to Christ, in which human nature is assumed into the Person of the Son.
4. Perfection of operation requires the power be perfected by a habit (faith, hope, charity are habits, firm dispositions); but a nature’s having being in its suppositum does not come about by a habit — “it’s immediate”.
5. Conclusion: if grace means God’s will acting gratuitously or having someone as acceptable, the union is by grace, as the saints’ union is through knowledge and love. If grace means the gratuitous gift, the union can be called a grace insofar as no preceding merits brought it about, but not because some habitual grace is the means of the union. Christ’s human nature is united immediately to the Person of the Son; he merits later (on the cross), not the union.

5. Article 10, replies, with a Eucharistic digression (“dwell in Christ, even bodily”) #

• Ad 1: grace as accident is a likeness of the divine nature partaken by man (Peter’s consors); in the Incarnation human nature is not said to partake of a likeness but to be joined to the divine nature in the very Person of the Son, which is greater than a partaken likeness. Christ has habitual grace too, but that is not what “Incarnation” means.
• Ad 2: habitual grace is only in the soul; but grace as the gratuitous gift of being united to the divine Person pertains to the whole human nature, body and soul — hence the fullness of divinity dwells bodily. (He connects the prayer sanctifica me corpus.)
  • Digression, the Eucharist: by “this is my body” the body is there; blood, soul and divinity are there “by being joined” [ed.: concomitance] — the blood joined to the body, body and blood to the soul, and the divinity; likewise the reverse at “the cup of my blood”. The Eucharist is the end of all the sacraments, all ordered to it; all get efficacy from Christ’s death; blood and water from his side taken for baptism and Eucharist, which most symbolise the passion (Paul: buried with Christ in baptism, more explicit when one went down into the water — “that doesn’t mean our baptisms aren’t legal”). Put to the priests: if a priest consecrated the bread and stopped, the bread would be the body of Christ, but a great irregularity, not allowed; the two consecrations represent the separation of body and blood on the cross, so the sensible representation of Christ’s death is “most essential” to the Eucharist. A priest he once asked had not thought of this.
  • Second explanation of “bodily”: not umbraliter, in a shadowy way, as God dwelt in the sacraments of the Old Testament, “shadows of things to come”; body divided against shadow.
  • Third: some say “bodily” in three ways, like the body’s three dimensions — by essence, presence and power (as in all creatures); by grace making one acceptable (as in the saints); by personal union, proper to him.
• Ad 3: the union is not only through habitual grace (Christ has that as other saints do) but according to subsistence, the very persona. Student: the Litany of the Sacred Heart says “substantially united to the Word of God” — he agrees.

6. Article 11, objections and sed contra (“as we have hoped in you”) #

Point: was the union consequent upon (subsecuta) some merits?

• Obj. 1: Psalm 32, “may your mercy be upon us as we have hoped in you”; the gloss finds here the prophet’s desire for the Incarnation and merit of its fulfilment.
  • Aside on hope: he ties mercy to the Kyrie/Agnus Dei and hope; faith has God as first truth, charity God as supreme good, hope God as a difficult good gotten only through his mercy.
  • Aside: “If God had created nothing, would he have been selfish?” — the average person thinks yes; James: then it wouldn’t have been a Trinity. The other side: if he created us to praise him he’s selfish, an ego trip. Cardinal Schönborn’s reply to a scientist’s “guy with a white beard”: he wished he spoke as intelligently about theology as about his own field.
• Obj. 2: whoever merits a thing merits what it cannot be had without; the ancient fathers merited eternal life, unreachable without the Incarnation (Gregory, Morals: the just before Christ, however just, could not on leaving the body be received at once into the celestial fatherland, since he who would gather them had not come).
• Obj. 3 (“now we’re getting serious”): of the Blessed Virgin it is sung that she merited to bear the Lord of all, which was through the Incarnation. “Pretty good these objections.”
• Sed contra, Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum: whoever finds preceding merits in our Head’s singular generation, let him find them in his members’ multiplied regeneration; but none precede ours, Titus 3:5 (“not from works of justice… through the washing of regeneration”).

7. Article 11, body: no merit of Christ or of others, ex condigno (“no merits of His could precede”) #

1. As to Christ himself: no merit of his could precede the union, since he could do nothing as man before having that nature. We do not say (with Photinus and other heretics) that he was first a mere man and earned sonship by a good life, but that from conception that man was truly Son of God, having no hypostasis but the Son’s (Luke 1:35). All his doing is subsequent to the union. Not like the mythology where a hero is raised to the gods for great deeds.
2. Nor could any other man’s doings merit the union ex condigno (worthily; some suitability aside), for three reasons:
   • (i) Meritorious acts are ordered to beatitude, the reward of virtue, the full enjoyment of God; the union in personal being transcends the union of the blessed mind to God by its act of enjoyment; so it cannot fall under merit. Gloss: virtue is the road to happiness, vice the road to misery (open any newspaper). If what we merit is the lesser union, we merit less than the Incarnation. The other side: in the Contra Gentiles (“my favorite book”) the first reason for the Incarnation is that man would have hope of the vision as possible — if the greater union happened, the lesser is possible — like the dialectical rule: if what seems less possible is possible, so is the more.
   • (ii) Grace cannot fall under merit, being the beginning of merit (Thomas’s prayers ask for grace and then to reward it); much less the Incarnation, the beginning of grace, John 1:17 (“grace and truth came through Jesus Christ”). Thomas divides the Bible on this verse: Old Testament by the law, New Testament by the origin, nature and effect of grace — near the Vatican II ordering: Gospels (origin), Paul’s epistles (nature), Acts with canonical epistles and Apocalypse (effect, the Church’s origin, growth, final state). “Don’t put the cart before the horse — actually Descartes does.”
   • (iii) The Incarnation was remaking the whole of human nature, so it does not fall under one individual’s merit: the good of a mere man cannot cause the good of the whole nature.
3. But ex congruo: the holy fathers merited the Incarnation by desiring and asking for it, since it is suitable that God hear those who obey him — and this answers obj. 1.

8. Article 11, replies 2 and 3 (“presupposed to merit”) #

• Ad 2: false that everything without which the reward cannot be falls under merit; some things are presupposed to merit — the divine goodness, his grace, even human nature; likewise the Incarnation is the beginning of merit, John 1:16, “of his fullness we have all received”.
• Ad 3: the Blessed Virgin is said to have merited to bear Christ not because she merited that God become flesh, but because from the grace given her she merited the grade of purity and sanctity fitting her to be Mother of God.
• Break.

His words #

• relation of reason: real on one side, said of the other because of the first; knower/known, not lover/loved
• “sixth book of Wisdom”, “ninth book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VI, IX]
• potentia generandi: the Father’s power to generate the Son
• nature “determined to one” vs. will “open to opposites”
• grace: (a) God’s will giving gratis, (b) the gratuitous gift; “favor” catches only (a)
• habitual / sanctifying grace: in the soul, from which faith, hope, charity flow
• elevated to God “by operation” vs. “by personal being”
• suppositum: the underlying substance in which a nature has being
• consors: Peter’s “partaking of the divine nature”
• umbraliter: shadowy, as God dwelt in Old Testament sacraments
• subsecuta: “following upon” merits
• ex condigno vs. ex congruo: worthily vs. suitably
• Summa Contra Gentiles: “my favorite book”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST III q. 2 a. 10 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas, ST III q. 2 a. 11 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 2-3)
• Augustine, De praedestinatione sanctorum (both sed contras)
• Colossians 2 (fullness of divinity dwells bodily); Psalm 32 with gloss; Gregory, Morals; Titus 3:5; Luke 1:35; John 1:16-17

Mentioned

• Aristotle on relations (knower/known); Avicenna and Thomas on love/loved; Metaphysics VI and IX (inferred)
• Thomas, De potentia, questions on the potentia generandi
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus; 2 Peter (partaking of the divine nature, inferred)
• Augustine, amare in laudibus, laudare in amore; Paul VI to the St Cecilia Society; Benedict XVI to Benedictines; Cardinal Schönborn’s NYT exchange
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, first reason for the Incarnation; Thomas’s division of the Bible; Vatican II ordering of NT books; Litany of the Sacred Heart

His questions #

• Is the known related to the knower by a real relation? No, by a relation of reason; but the loved is not so related to the lover, since the good is chiefly in things.
• Are the power to generate the Son and the power to create the same power? Yes, really the same, going to one thing naturally and to another as moved by the will, like our reason.
• Do I naturally think that the whole is more than a part? Do I naturally think that God became man? Yes; no — the second is reason moved by the will under grace.
• How does Thomas distinguish grace from the three theological virtues? Grace is in the soul; the virtues flow from it into reason and will, as powers arise from the soul.
• Was the union of the Incarnation made through grace? Through God’s gratuitous will, yes; through habitual grace, no — the union is immediate in the Person.
• If a priest consecrated the bread and stopped, would it be the body of Christ? Yes, but a grave irregularity; the two consecrations represent the separation on the cross.
• If God had created nothing, would he have been selfish? No (James: then there would be no Trinity); the objection, and its reverse, are childish images.
• Is the union of our mind with God in the vision as great as the Incarnation? No; so what virtue merits is less than the Incarnation, which cannot fall under merit.
• Could other men merit the union? Not ex condigno; ex congruo the fathers merited it by desiring and asking.