Virtues, Faith, Hope, the Gifts and Fear of the Lord in Christ (ST III, q.7, aa.2–6)

Orientation #

He refers back to what “has been said in the second part” (the Secunda Pars) on grace, virtue, hope and the gifts, and to what “will be clear below” (Christ’s beatific vision, his impeccability). He ends by announcing the next section: the gratia gratis data and the fullness of Christ’s grace (prophecy falls under the gratia gratis data). The previous class began Question 7 with Article 1 (habitual grace in Christ); the next treats Articles 7–9.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, the objections (“in Christ there were not what virtues”) #

The point: four reasons why Christ might seem to lack virtues.

1. Christ had abundant grace, and grace suffices for doing all rightly (2 Cor: “My grace is sufficient for you”).
2. Aristotle, Ethics VII, divides virtue against a “heroic or divine habit” attributed to divine men; that belongs most to Christ, so he has something higher than virtue. — Digression on the plan of the Ethics: books 2–6 on human virtue (2–5 moral, 6 virtues of reason), the division given at the end of book 1; book 7 treats habits that fall short of virtue or go beyond the common human measure. In Greek mythology a hero is between man and god (one parent divine, e.g. Achilles with a goddess mother). Aristotle sometimes calls the higher thing “virtue” too, sometimes keeps the word for the human level.
3. All virtues go together (Secunda Pars), but liberality and magnificence, about wealth (divitiae), do not fit Christ, who contemns wealth (nowhere to lay his head; refused the kingdoms offered by the devil). Liberality is about small gifts, magnificence about big ones (“endowing the chapel at TAC”); Aristotle treats them in book 4 after courage and temperance in book 3.
4. Temperance and continence are about base desires, which Christ did not have. Sed contra: Psalm 1:2, “in the law of the Lord is his will” — Christ shown full of every good; Augustine’s definition of virtue begins bona qualitas mentis, so he is full of every virtue.

2. The response: virtues flow from grace (“grace regards the essence of the soul”) #

The point: virtues follow on grace as powers follow on the soul.

1. Grace regards the essence of the soul; virtue regards its powers (Secunda Pars).
2. The powers are derived from the essence — in logic, like properties: outside the nature but following upon it.
3. So the virtues are derived from grace; and the more perfect a cause, the more it impresses its effects.
4. Christ’s grace was most perfect; hence virtues went forth perfecting every power as to all its acts: Christ had all virtues. Example: if you are two, you are half of four; so if you have grace, you have virtues — the one follows from the other. It is fitting that the partaking of the divine nature be in our nature.

3. Replies to Article 2 (“grace is enough for a man”) #

• Ad 1: grace is enough for everything ordering man to beatitude, but it perfects some things immediately (making the soul pleasing to God, gratia gratum faciens) and some through the virtues that proceed from it. Joke: homeroom teacher says “money isn’t everything”; wise guy: “what it isn’t, it’ll buy” — grace isn’t everything, but it produces the virtues.
• Ad 2: the heroic habit differs from common virtue only by a more perfect mode; so Christ had virtues, but most perfectly, above the common way — “just as Plotinus laid down a sublime way of virtues, said to be of the purged soul.” He links this to the order Proverbs (human mode: moderate use of goods, a little wine at a meal), Ecclesiastes (vanity — even moderate pleasures are contemned, the soul purged), Song of Songs (the purged soul, higher virtues); Thomas uses this dividing the Old Testament books in the Commendatio Sacrae Scripturae.
• Ad 3: liberality and magnificence are commended in that one does not value wealth so much as to retain it and omit its proper use; he who wholly contemns wealth for love of perfection values it least of all — so Christ shows the highest grade of these virtues. Poverty thus has a value, seeking perfection of soul (a man entering the Dominicans: “I’m legally dead now”). Christ also exercised the act, giving to the poor what was given him; so the disciples took “what you do, do quickly” to Judas as a command to give to the poor. Note: the act of virtue is giving according to one’s circumstances — generous in one man is extravagant in another who then can’t feed his family.
• Ad 4: Christ had no base desires, yet had temperance, which is the more perfect the more one lacks such desires. Distinction (Ethics VII): temperate vs. continent — the temperate man has no base desires, the continent man undergoes them and his reason wins after a struggle (“I had to call my AA buddy”); the incontinent man’s passion wins but he regrets it; the vicious man has bad desires and enjoys satisfying them. Scheme: virtue, vice, and in the middle continence and incontinence; also the “bestial” below vice. Continence is less than virtue, so Christ, having every virtue, did not have continence. He praises Aristotle’s thoroughness; confessors deal mostly with continent and incontinent people. Asides: Bias of Priene, “most men are bad”; Aristotle in the Rhetoric on fear: being in another man’s power is to be feared, since it is the rule that men do evil whenever they can — current appointees (commerce, treasury, attorney general) confirm it; “Obama” read backwards is amabo, “I will love.”

4. Article 3: whether in Christ there was faith (“Christ did not teach the virtues which he did not have”) #

Objections: (1) faith is nobler than the moral virtues found in Christ, so much more faith — “a nice dialectical argument”; (2) Christ taught nothing he lacked (Acts 1, “began to do and to teach”, the order stressed) and Hebrews 12 calls him author and consummator of faith — “a beautiful text”, to be explained without strengthening the objection; (3) faith is in the blessed (gloss on Romans 1:17, “from faith to faith”: from faith of words and hope to faith of things and sight), so implies no imperfection — “a strange text.” Sed contra, Hebrews 11:1: faith is the hypostasis, substance or foundation, of things hoped for, and the elenchos — Aristotle’s word for refutation, with a sense of overcoming — of what is not seen; he translates “the conviction of what is not seen”: the mind is overcome and accepts without seeing. “Assurance of things hoped for” is wrong; “evidence of what is not seen” also, since evidence comes from what is seen. He checks this verse in every new Bible. But nothing was unseen to Christ (John 21: “You know all things”). Response: the object of faith is a divine thing not seen; a habit takes its species from its object; remove “not seen” and you remove faith. Christ from the first instant of conception saw God through his essence (beatific vision, “as will be clear below”); so no faith. Student: so did Mary have faith? — yes, she is then the supreme example of faith.

• Ad 1: faith is nobler because of its nobler matter, yet implies a defect toward that matter (not seeing), which Christ lacked; moral virtues imply no defect toward their matter. “That’s beautiful. Beautifully solves that.”
• Ad 2: the merit of faith is that from obedience to God one assents to what he does not see (Romans 1:5, “obedience to the faith among all nations”); Christ had obedience most fully (Philippians 2, obedient to death of the cross); so he taught nothing meritorious he did not more excellently fulfil — “interestingly argued.”
• Ad 3: faith properly is of things not seen; of things seen only improperly, by likeness as to certitude and firmness of adherence — “seeing is believing,” “I’ll believe it when I see it,” St. Thomas the apostle’s finger in the wound. Aside: so Christ lacked a theological virtue — “nobody’s perfect.”

5. Article 4: whether in Christ there was hope (“someone expects that which he does not yet have”) #

Objections: (1) Psalm 30:2 in Christ’s person, “In you, Lord, I have hoped”; (2) hope is expectation of future beatitude, and Christ awaited the glory of his body — he notes this is not what one chiefly hopes for; (3) something future pertained to his perfection, the building of the body of Christ (Ephesians 4) — the mystical body. Sed contra, Romans 8:24: what one sees one does not hope for; as faith is of things unseen, hope of things not had; no faith, so no hope. Response: as faith assents to what is not seen (Thomas defines believing as assenting while thinking), hope expects what is not yet had. Theological faith is not about just anything unseen but God unseen; so theological hope has the enjoyment of God as object; ex consequenti one with hope may also expect divine aid in other things, as the believer believes other divinely revealed things. Christ had full divine enjoyment from conception, so lacked the virtue of hope, yet had hope for what he had not yet attained (immortality and glory of body); he had faith about nothing, since he knew all things. So a qualified admission of hope, not the theological virtue.

• Ad 1: the psalm is not about the theological virtue but about other things not yet had.
• Ad 2: glory of the body is not that in which beatitude chiefly consists but an overflow from the glory of the soul — as understanding something produces bodily exhilaration (the man who jumped out of his bath and ran out without his clothes [ed.: Archimedes, name garbled in recording]).
• Ad 3: building the Church does not pertain to Christ’s own perfection but to his leading others to partake of it; hope is properly of what the hoper himself expects. Aside: he notes the parallel with Thomas’s question whether knowledge (e.g. of Euclid) remains in heaven: knowing the truth does not destroy dialectic but lets you order probable arguments more perfectly to lead others; the probable arguments are perfected, not destroyed — so one’s knowledge could be more perfect in heaven.

6. Article 5: whether in Christ there were the gifts (“perfections of the powers of the soul”) #

Objections: (1) gifts aid the virtues, and the perfect needs no outside aid; (2) giving and receiving do not go together, and Christ gives gifts (Psalm 67) — more divine to give than receive; (3) four of the seven — wisdom, science, understanding, counsel (pertaining to prudence; Ethics VI numbers these among intellectual virtues) — pertain to contemplation of the way, but Christ had contemplation of the fatherland. He says the third is hard to assess until one studies the gifts; aside on “wisdom” having many senses (“Wisdom is four years old today”; Sophia). Sed contra, Isaiah 4:1, seven women take hold of one man — the seven gifts and Christ, per Jerome’s gloss. Response: the gifts are perfections of the powers by which they are apt to be moved by the Holy Spirit — virtues are “more on your own,” the gifts move you in a way above the human; Christ’s soul was most perfectly moved by the Spirit (Luke 4, led into the desert). “That’s really a good argument… so simple, but to the point.” He links the gifts to Aristotle’s heroic virtue.

• Ad 1: what is perfect in its own nature still needs aid from a higher nature, as man needs God; so virtues need the gifts.
• Ad 2: Christ gives as God, receives as man — the two natures again; Gregory, Moralia II: the Spirit never deserted Christ’s humanity, from whom he proceeds.
• Ad 3: Christ had knowledge of the way as well as the fatherland (to be said below); and even in heaven there are in some way gifts (Secunda Pars — “we have to go and study that text”).

7. Article 6: whether in Christ there was the gift of fear (“fear regards two objects”) #

Objections: (1) hope is more potent than fear (good vs. evil), and Christ lacked hope, so no fear — the same theological place as before, now arguing from lacking the greater to lacking the lesser; (2) by the gift one fears separation from God (chaste fear) or punishment (servile fear), per Augustine on the Epistles of John; Christ could not sin, and fear is not of the impossible; (3) 1 John 4:18, perfect charity casts out fear. He notes a translation adding “all fear” — interpretation rather than translation; charity does not cast out all fear. Sed contra, Isaiah 11: the spirit of the fear of the Lord filled him. Response: fear has two objects — the terrible evil, and the one with power to inflict it (one fears the king as having power of death); such a one is feared only for an eminence of power one cannot easily resist (cf. Aristotle on being in another’s power); what we can readily repel we do not fear. So Christ had fear of God not as regarding separation or punishment but the divine eminence: his soul moved toward God by an affection of reverence, led by the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 5:7, heard “on account of his reverence”), which he had more fully than others — hence Scripture attributes fullness of fear of the Lord to him. He adds: even in the beatific vision one has this reverence, seeing one’s nothingness and utter dependence; the psalm “the fear of the Lord is holy, enduring forever” is used to argue fear remains; this is remote from the first sense of fear but keeps something of it; Thomas sometimes calls wonder a form of fear, and wonder is at excellence.

• Ad 1: virtues and gifts regard the good per se, evil only consequently, since virtue by definition renders one’s work good (Aristotle: makes its haver and its activity good — the “virtue” of a knife is sharpness); the gift of fear regards not the evil but the eminence of the divine goodness able to inflict evil; hope regards the good as not had, so Christ, having beatitude, has the gift of fear but not hope — his reverence is for himself as God.
• Ad 2: even chaste fear (fear of separation) seems less than the gift; in heaven one fears neither punishment nor separation (even souls in purgatory cannot be lost) yet retains reverence at the infinite distance.
• Ad 3: perfect charity casts out servile fear, which chiefly regards punishment; that fear was not in Christ. Aside (mid-article): Theobald’s emendations in Shakespeare — Macbeth’s “bank and school of time” to “shoal” (New Hudson Shakespeare footnote: “the brilliant emendation,” adopted by nearly all editors, Yale edition included); Henry V, Falstaff’s death, “a table of green fields” to “babbled of green fields,” “the happiest emendation ever made”; Hamlet’s definition of reason, “looking before and after,” which Rolfe’s edition notes is central in Homer — the two greatest poets characterising reason alike; older editions had such footnotes, modern ones don’t (“we got TV”).

His words #

• “heroic or divine habit”: Aristotle’s habit above the common human measure; in Thomas, not other than virtue but virtue in a more perfect mode.
• bona qualitas mentis: Augustine’s definition of virtue (in part), “a good quality of the rational part of man.”
• “properties”: his logical gloss on the powers of the soul — outside the nature but following upon it.
• gratia gratum faciens: grace making the soul pleasing to God.
• “purged soul”: Plotinus’s sublime mode of virtue; Thomas alludes to it.
• divitiae: wealth, matter of liberality and magnificence.
• continent / incontinent: both have bad desires; in the continent reason wins after struggle, in the incontinent passion wins but he regrets; neither virtue nor vice.
• hypostasis: “substance,” like a foundation, in Hebrews 11:1.
• elenchos: rendered argumentum; Aristotle’s “refutation,” with a sense of overcoming; his translation “conviction of what is not seen.”
• believing: “assenting while thinking about it” (Thomas’s definition of the act).
• ex consequenti: as a consequence — hope’s secondary object, divine aid in other things.
• dona: the gifts of the Holy Spirit; perfections of the powers whereby one is apt to be moved by the Spirit.
• “the way” / “the fatherland”: knowledge of the road vs. of heaven.
• chaste fear (timor castus) vs. servile fear: fear of separation from God vs. fear of punishment.
• “eminence”: the excellence of power on account of which alone someone is feared; object of Christ’s fear of God.
• amabo: “I will love” (aside).

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, a. 2 (virtues in Christ)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, a. 3 (faith)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, a. 4 (hope)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, a. 5 (gifts)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, a. 6 (gift of fear)
• Hebrews 11:1 (his translation of hypostasis and elenchos)

Mentioned:

• 2 Corinthians (“My grace is sufficient for you”); Psalm 1:2; Psalm 30:2; Psalm 67; Isaiah 4:1 (with Jerome’s gloss); Isaiah 11; Acts 1; Hebrews 12; Hebrews 5:7; Romans 1:5; Romans 1:17 (gloss); Romans 8:24; Philippians 2; Ephesians 3; Ephesians 4; Luke 4; John 21 (Peter, “You know all things”); 1 John 4:18
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (division of virtue), II–VI, VII (heroic virtue, continence), III–IV (courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence), VI (intellectual virtues); Rhetoric (on fear)
• Augustine, definition of virtue; on the Epistles of John (chaste and servile fear)
• Plotinus (purged soul); Gregory, Moralia II
• Thomas Aquinas, Commendatio Sacrae Scripturae; Secunda Pars passim (grace/virtue, hope, gifts, knowledge in heaven)
• Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (order of virtue)
• Shakespeare: Macbeth, Henry V, Hamlet (Theobald’s emendations); Homer

His questions #

• Grace suffices — so why does Christ need virtues? Grace perfects some things immediately, others through the virtues that flow from it, as being two entails being half of four.
• Did Christ have liberality and magnificence, since he contemned wealth? Yes, in the highest grade: contempt of wealth for love of perfection values it least; he also gave to the poor.
• Does Christ have temperance if he had no base desires? Yes — temperance is more perfect the fewer base desires; what he lacked was continence, which is less than virtue.
• How can Christ have the less noble moral virtues and not the nobler faith? Faith’s nobility is from its object, but its notion includes a defect (not seeing) that Christ lacked.
• So did Mary have faith? Yes; she is then the supreme example of faith.
• Did Christ have hope? Not the theological virtue, whose object is the enjoyment of God he already had; but hope for the glory of his body, not yet had.
• Can one who gives the gifts also receive them? Yes: he gives as God, receives as man.
• Is there any fear in Christ, or in the blessed? Not fear of separation or punishment, but reverence for the divine eminence — which remains even in the beatific vision.