Aquinas, Summa III q.8, Articles 4-8: Christ as Head of the Angels, Grace of the Head, Other Heads, and the Devil and Antichrist as Heads of the Wicked

Orientation #

He begins straight at “the fourth article” and refers back to “the other article” where Christ was shown head of those who see God face to face, and to the threefold grace “said above” (prev. lecture). No mention of next time. The previous class treated q. 8 aa. 1-3 (Christ head of the Church as man, of bodies, of all men), and the next opens q. 9 on Christ’s knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. Article 4: is Christ as man head of the angels? (“Is he the head of the angels only as God”) #

Point: the question is reframed as “head of the angels only as God and not as man?”, and Thomas answers that as man he is head of angels too.

• Obj. 1: head and members are of one nature; Christ as man shares nature only with men, not angels (Hebrews 2: he did not “grasp” the angels but the seed of Abraham).
• Obj. 2: the Church is the congregation of the faithful (Ephesians 1); angels do not walk by faith but by sight (species), else they would be “wandering distantly from the Lord” (2 Corinthians). Berquist notes the difficulty already: the earlier article made Christ head of those who see God face to face “even more so.”
• Obj. 3: Augustine on John: the Word with the Father vivifies souls, the Word made flesh vivifies bodies; angels lack bodies. “How is he going to get around all this stuff?”
• Sed contra: Colossians 2, head of every prince and power; he glosses princes as heads of the third hierarchy, powers in the second, and says the same reason holds for the other orders.
• Body (numbered as he reads it):
  1. Where there is one body, one head must be laid down; one body means by likeness one multitude ordered to one end according to distinct acts or duties.
  2. Men and angels are ordered to the one end, the glory of divine enjoyment; so the mystical body consists of angels too.
  3. Christ is head of this whole multitude because he is closer to God and more perfectly partakes of his gifts; so angels too receive of his influence.
  4. Ephesians 1:20: set at the right hand “above every prince and power and virtue and lord” (he sorts these into the second hierarchy in ascending order, lords/virtues/powers, then princes; Greek archai = prince; angels and archangels below), all subjected under his feet. Matthew 4:11: angels approached and ministered to him, so he is before them in order and they receive from him.

2. Student exchange: do angels get grace through the passion? (“derived from the passion of Christ”) #

Point: a student asks whether the angels’ grace is derived instrumentally through Christ’s passion, since Paul speaks of reconciling all things in heaven and earth by the cross.

• Berquist: the incarnate Christ had the fullness of grace and truth, so he could be source of grace and illumination for the angels even before the passion; redemption was needed by man, not by angels, who never sinned (though they were raised above their nature). Reconciling heaven and earth may mean that, being at enmity with God, we were at enmity with the good angels; the breach was between earth and heaven. A third of the angels fell; the angels had no chance of redemption.
• Student presses: in the realm of efficient causes, does their grace derive from the passion? Berquist: God can give grace without its coming through the passion; “I’ve never seen that in Thomas or anybody else”; he argues that they have the grace of Christ, but how, “I don’t know” — left open.

3. Replies to a. 4; the Panis Angelicus aside (“chiefly with regards to their soul”) #

• Ad 1: Christ’s influence on men is chiefly on the soul, and in soul men agree with angels in the genus (intellectual creatures with will) though not in species; bodily disconformity does not destroy the headship.
• Ad 2: the Church in the state of the way is the congregation of believers; in the state of the fatherland, of comprehensors. Christ was viator and comprehensor, so head of both, “as most fully having grace and glory.” Berquist: this again suggests it is not through his passion that he is their head. A student cites Paul (he emptied himself, obedient unto death, therefore exalted above the angels) and asks whether Christ’s sonship already meant total self-emptying, so the passion was one unique event within it — “it’s Ratzinger… pre-pope thing.” Berquist: Christ suffers as a viator; his glory is in relation.
• Aside: the Eucharist is called Panis Angelicus, but not because angels receive it (we will not receive it in heaven either, and the Eucharist comes from the death on the cross); rather the Word itself is bread of angels — Luke’s Gospel, “Blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom,” which commentaries read as the vision of God; and Thomas’s prayer that angels feed on him and man according to his measure.
• Ad 3: Augustine speaks by a likening of cause to effect, bodily acting on bodies, spiritual on spiritual; nevertheless Christ’s humanity, by reason of the divine nature, can cause something in the spirits of angels too, on account of the greatest joining to God, the personal union. Berquist: so the humanity is an instrument of the divinity, “even for the angels in some way.”

4. Article 5, objections and sed contra (“Is that knowledge I have”) #

Point: is the grace by which Christ is head the same as his individual grace? He expects Thomas to say the distinction is not two graces.

• Obj. 1 (Romans 5): as Adam’s actual (personal) sin differs from original sin (Adam’s was forgiven, original sin persisted “down to us miserable creatures”), so Christ’s private personal grace differs from his grace as head. “A kind of a subtle objection.”
• Obj. 2: habits are distinguished by acts; personal grace is ordered to the holiness of his own soul, the grace of the head to sanctifying others.
  • His own example: is the knowledge that perfects him as a man something other than the knowledge by which he teaches? “It would be strange if it were.” A student pushes: Thomas concedes the acts differ (my understanding of the Pythagorean theorem is not my teaching of it) yet holds the habit the same.
• Obj. 3: of the threefold grace (union, head, singular grace of that man), singular grace differs from grace of union, so also from grace of the head. “So we don’t maybe understand this distinction… as well as we thought we did.”
• Sed contra, John 1:16, “of his fullness we have all received” — “beautiful text.” We receive from him as head; he has fullness by personal grace; so by personal grace he is head: “just like the teacher.”

5. Article 5, body and replies (“the same heat by which fire is hot”) #

Body:

1. Each thing acts insofar as it is in act, and the same act by which a thing is in act is that by which it acts — the same heat by which fire is hot and by which it heats.
2. But not every act suffices to be a principle of acting on another: the agent is more outstanding than the patient (Augustine, Genesis to the letter book 12; Aristotle, De Anima book 3, on the acting intellect being better than the undergoing), so the agent needs act with a certain eminence.
3. In Christ’s soul grace was received with the greatest eminence; hence it belongs to that grace to be derived to others, which is the notion of head. Conclusion: personal grace and grace of the head are the same in essence, differing only in notion (ratio). Berquist: the teacher’s knowledge as perfecting his mind and as source of his teaching differ in meaning but are the same knowledge; “otherwise I’m very much mistaken as to what I’ve been doing for the last forty or fifty years.”

• Ad 1: original sin (sin of the nature) was derived from Adam’s actual (personal) sin because the person corrupted the nature to be handed down, and the corrupt nature corrupts persons; grace is not derived from Christ by means of human nature but only through his personal action, so no twofold grace of nature and person. He adds that when Adam did penance nature was not repaired; “easier to follow if you knew a little more about original sin.”
• Ad 2: diverse acts of which one is the reason and cause of the other do not diversify a habit; making the possessor holy (formally) is the reason for justifying others. Teacher’s eminent knowledge again; and fire heats water not by a different heat than it has.
• Ad 3: personal grace and grace of the head are ordered to act; grace of union is ordered to personal being; so the first two agree in essence of habit (habitual grace), the grace of union does not — though personal grace can in some way be called grace of union insofar as it makes one suitable for the union, and in that sense all three are one in essence, differing in reason. Berquist stresses: the real distinction is between grace of union (the hypostatic union, ordered to being the same person in two natures) and the other two, which are ordered immediately to act.
• Asides: his first public lecture, a grade-school paper on Lindbergh read to the seventh/eighth grade (“got the bug”); a sixth-grade astronomy lecture from library books; a student on Jesuit schools dividing pupils into Romans and Carthaginians to debate — “That’s awful. Very good.”

6. Article 6: is being head proper to Christ? (“Now, what about Benedict XVI?”) #

• Obj. 1: 1 Kings 15 [ed.: 1 Samuel 15 in modern numbering], Saul made head in the tribes of Israel. Obj. 2: others also give grace to hearers (Ephesians 4). Obj. 3: Christ is also pastor and foundation, yet does not keep those names to himself (1 Peter 5, prince of pastors; Apocalypse 21, twelve foundations = the apostles). Aside: Thomas playfully assigns one of the twelve articles of faith to each apostle, which is why Berquist follows the division into twelve rather than fourteen.
• Sed contra: Colossians 2, the head from which the body is constructed and administered belongs to Christ alone.
• Body: the head flows on the members (a) by inward inflowing, as motive and sensitive power derive from the head, and (b) by exterior governing, as a man is directed in outward acts by senses rooted in the head. Inward inflowing of grace is from Christ alone, whose humanity joined to divinity has the power of justifying; exterior governing can belong to others, so others are called heads (Amos 6, heads of the people), but differently: Christ is head according to every place, time and state; others by place (bishops of their churches), by determined time (the Pope, during his pontificate), by state (wayfarers); Christ by his own virtue and authority, others as carrying out office in the person of Christ (2 Corinthians 2; “we are legates,” “as it were God exhorting through us” — “we’re a tool”).
• Ad 1: Kings speaks of head by exterior governing, as a king is head of his kingdom. Ad 2: man gives grace not by inward inflowing but by persuading to the things of grace. Ad 3 (Augustine on John): those placed before are pastors only as members of the one pastor; likewise foundations and heads as members of the one head and foundation; but “the gate” (ostium) none of us is called — Christ keeps it proper, since it implies chief authority, that through which all enter the house; the other names can imply secondary authority.

7. Article 7: is the devil the head of the bad? (“king over all the sons of pride”) #

• Obj. 1: head pours in sense and motion (gloss on Ephesians 1); the devil cannot pour in sin, which proceeds from the sinner’s will — “seems like a put down.” Obj. 2: not all sins are from the devil: the demons sinned by no one’s persuasion, and (book of ecclesiastical dogmas) not all bad thoughts are aroused by the devil’s instinct, some from our own judgment — “you can do it by yourself.” Obj. 3: the bad have nothing uniting them, since bad is contrary to bad, arising from diverse defects (Dionysius).
• Sed contra: gloss (Gregory, per his footnote) on Job 18: each bad man is turned back to his head, the devil.
• Body: a head inflows inwardly and governs outwardly, directing acts to an end; one may be head by both (Christ) or by exterior governing alone (each prince or prelate). So the devil is head of all the bad: Job 41, “king over all the sons of pride” — “beautiful passage”; pride is the devil’s original sin, envy toward us comes later; our Lord calls him prince of this world. The governor leads to his end; the devil’s end is aversion of the rational creature from God (he tempted man away from obeying the precept). “Very interesting”: aversion from God has the ratio of an end insofar as it is desired under the likeness of liberty — “you gotta be kind of careful about this democracy, liberté, égalité”; “you broke the yoke,” “I will not serve.” Those led to this end by sinning fall under his rule.
• Ad 1: no inward inflowing, but by suggestion he induces to evil (Shakespeare’s “sweet suggesting love” — context not recalled). Ad 2: a governor does not suggest his will to each one but proposes a sign of his will, some following by being led, others spontaneously — like soldiers following the leader’s sign with no one persuading; the devil, who sinned from the beginning (1 John 3), is proposed to all, imitated by some through suggestion, by others spontaneously; head of all insofar as they imitate him (Wisdom 2, envy of the devil, “they imitate him who are of his side”). Ad 3: all sins agree in turning from God, differing by turning to different changeable goods.
• Aside: abortion as the devil’s leading those he hates to hate themselves, with special hatred in the mother; Shakespeare’s “to thine own self be true … canst not then be false to any man” — the woman is false to herself, hence to baby and husband; a student on levels of self-loathing in the culture and Mike Tyson’s line that no one hates him as much as he hates himself.

8. Article 8: is the Antichrist the head of the evil? (“the fullness of all malice”) #

• Obj. 1: one body has not two heads, and the devil is head. Obj. 2: the Antichrist is a member of the devil. Obj. 3: he has no influence on the bad who came before him.
• Sed contra: gloss (Gregory again; the Moralia on Job, which Thomas quotes much in the second part on the species of pride) on Job 29: speaking of the body of all the bad, the words turn suddenly to their head, the Antichrist. Aside: Thomas wrote the greatest work on evil, the Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo.
• Body: a natural head has three things, order, perfection, and power of inflowing. By order of time the Antichrist is not head, since the devil’s sin precedes; by inflowing, not head of all, only of some of his time whom he converts in an exterior way, not of those before, who did not imitate him as they imitated the devil. It remains that he is head of all by the perfection of his malice: gloss on 2 Thessalonians 2:4, as all fullness of divinity dwells in Christ, so in the Antichrist the fullness of all malice — not that the devil assumes his humanity in unity of person, but because the devil’s evil flows more eminently into him by suggestion than into others; all preceding evil ones are a figure of him (2 Thessalonians: the mystery of iniquity already at work — the apostles say he is already in the world in some way).
• Ad 1: devil and Antichrist are not two heads but one, since the devil’s malice is most fully impressed in him; the gloss says the head of all evils, the devil, king over the sons of pride, “will be in him” — not by personal union nor intrinsic habitation (the Trinity alone is inside the mind) but by the effect of his malice. Student: is this possession? Berquist: no; like the devil entering Judas — not as God enters us, but Judas is under his control. Ad 2: as God is the head of Christ and Christ is head of the Church, so the Antichrist is member of the devil and yet head of the evil. Ad 3: head not by likeness of influence but of perfection: the devil brings his evil “to a head” as one brings an intention to a head when he perfects it.
• Closing: two “worthy things” in the last two articles, one worse than the other. A teacher could say: you can’t be as bad as the devil any more than as good as God; “your choice for preeminence, in either direction, is cut off. We should be the other.”

His words #

• “grasped” (Hebrews 2): Christ did not take hold of angels but of Abraham’s seed [ed.: apprehendit].
• species: the angels’ sight of God as against faith.
• comprehensor / viator: one who sees God / one on the way; Christ was both.
• status of the road / of the fatherland: state of the way and of glory (status viae / patriae).
• personal grace, grace of the head, grace of union: the threefold grace; the first two “habitual grace,” the third ordered to personal being.
• differing “according to notion” / “in reason”: differing in ratio, not in essence.
• flowing in inwardly vs. exterior governing: the two ways a head acts on members.
• legates of Christ: others acting in the person of Christ.
• ostium: the gate, the name Christ keeps proper to himself.
• sons of pride: Job 41’s phrase for the devil’s subjects.
• suggestion: the devil’s way of inducing to evil, as against inward inflowing.
• “bring to a head”: the devil perfecting his evil in the Antichrist.
• Panis Angelicus: bread of angels; properly the Word, not the Eucharist as received by angels.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 8, aa. 4-8 (verified), read in full with objections, sed contra, body and replies.

Mentioned

• Hebrews 2; Ephesians 1 and 1:20; 2 Corinthians (walking by faith); Colossians 2; Matthew 4:11; Romans 5; John 1:16; Ephesians 4; 1 Kings 15; 1 Peter 5; Apocalypse 21; Amos 6; 2 Corinthians 2; Job 18, 29, 41; 1 John 3; Wisdom 2; 2 Thessalonians 2:4.
• Augustine on John (twice); Augustine, On Genesis to the Letter, book 12; Aristotle, On the Soul, book 3; Gregory, Moralia on Job (glosses); book of ecclesiastical dogmas; Dionysius.
• Thomas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo; Thomas’s prayer on angels feeding on Christ; Thomas on the twelve articles of faith and the apostles.
• Paul on Christ emptying himself (Philippians, inferred); Ratzinger on kenosis and sonship; Luke’s Gospel, “Blessed is he who eats bread in the kingdom”; Shakespeare, “sweet suggesting love” and “to thine own self be true”; biography of John Yves [unclear in recording]; Mike Tyson.

His questions #

• Is he the head of the angels only as God and not as man? No: as man too, since men and angels form one multitude ordered to the enjoyment of God and he is closer to God than any.
• Does the grace the angels have derive from Christ’s passion? Left open; he has never seen it treated, and thinks the headship over angels is not through the passion.
• Is the knowledge that perfects me as a man something other than the knowledge whereby I teach you? No; the same knowledge in essence, differing only in notion — his model for personal grace and grace of the head.
• Why does the distinction of acts not distinguish the habit? Because one act is the reason and cause of the other, as fire heats by the heat it has.
• Why is the singular grace distinct from the grace of union but not from the grace of the head? Grace of union is ordered to personal being, the other two to act.
• Can others be called heads of the church? Yes, by exterior governing only, limited by place, time or state, and in the person of Christ.
• How can the devil be head of the bad if not all sins come from him? He governs by proposing a sign of his will; some follow by suggestion, others spontaneously; all imitate him in turning from God.
• Is the devil’s being “in” the Antichrist a case of possession? No; like the devil entering Judas — by the effect of his malice, not by personal union or indwelling.
• Are the devil and the Antichrist two heads? One head: the devil’s malice is most fully impressed in the Antichrist.