Studiorum Ducem and Christ's Infused Knowledge: Does It Reach All Things, and Does It Need Images? (Summa III, Q.11, aa.1–2)

Orientation #

He says the essence of God is known “only through the first, the beatific vision, that we talked about last week” (prev. lecture), and notes that Christ’s natural, image-using knowledge belongs to “the next question.” He also recalls having done “a few books of the soul” and the treatise on the soul in the Summa with some of the students.

The class, in order #

1. Pius XI on Thomas (“He more enlightened the Church than all the other doctors”) #

He reports reading the encyclicals of Pius XI on the Vatican website, and has reached Studiorum Ducem (available only in Italian and Latin). Two quotations of John XXII (the pope who canonized Thomas), addressed to the cardinals in consistory:

• Ipse plus illuminavit ecclesiam quam omnes alii doctores — “he more enlightened the Church than all the other doctors”; he calls this “a very strong statement.”
• In cuius libris plus proficiat homo uno anno quam in aliorum doctrina toto tempore vitae suae — a man profits more in one year in Thomas’s books than in a lifetime of others’ teaching.

Other items from the encyclical: Thomas is locupletissimum — the richest author of dogmatic theology (he guesses locuples originally meant land-rich); neque idem quisquam penetravit altius aut subtilius exposuit the august mysteries; in moral theology he gave a solidum doctrinam de moribus, fit to direct human acts to their supernatural end, and this for domestic and civil society, not only the individual; and Thomas bears the surname doctor eucharisticus — Sane mirabitur nemo quod hic doctoris eucharistici quoque cognomen exhibet — his hymns being sung wherever the Church is. He will make copies for those who can work a little Latin.

Asides: Paul VI (he hesitates) also calls Thomas doctor of the Eucharist in an encyclical on the Eucharist; the Maronite benediction hymn “Every tongue shall sing in glory” is a translation of Pange Lingua; it was in this part of the Summa that the crucifix spoke — Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma, carved in stone at his College of St. Thomas — “what do you take as a reward?” “You alone.”

2. The proemium of question 11 (“the infused knowledge of Christ”) #

Six items (he reads them, though the text announces four): whether by this knowledge Christ knew all things; whether he could use it without turning to phantasms; whether it was discursive (composing and reasoning from one thing to another); its comparison with angelic knowledge; whether it was habitual; whether distinguished by diverse habits. He reads “about this four things are asked” and then lists six — the discrepancy stands as he left it.

3. Article 1, objections (“by this knowledge Christ did not know all things”) #

1. This knowledge was poured in to perfect the possible (undergoing) intellect; but that is in potency only to what the agent intellect can reduce to act, i.e. what is knowable by natural reason; so not what exceeds natural reason. — He comments at once: this infused knowledge is not natural but supernatural, lower than the beatific vision, “something like what the angels have.”
2. De Anima III: images are to the human understanding as colors to sight — “a very important proportion.” This is why a teacher must use a sensible example, and why in geometry you imagine a triangle while considering something universal in it. But sight’s perfection does not extend to what is wholly without color; so the understanding’s perfection does not extend to what cannot be imaged, i.e. separate substances.
   • Aside on false imagination as “the great cause of deception”: imagining things otherwise than they are, or trying to imagine what cannot be imagined. Example: most people imagine the soul as a ghost-like body-shaped thing — which is how Dante represents the souls he recognizes in hell and purgatory — “well, that’s not what the soul is at all.”
3. Knowing singulars does not belong to the perfection of the understanding. Through sense I know this man and that man; through reason I know what a man is — and knowing what a man is does not let me know all men, except in the sense that it is said of all men.

Sed contra (Isaiah 11): the Spirit filled him with wisdom, understanding, science and counsel — under which all knowables are comprehended: wisdom, all divine things (true even for Aristotle — wisdom is knowledge of God); understanding, immaterial things; science, all conclusions; counsel, all things to be done.

4. Article 1, corpus: the twofold passive power (“potentia obedientiae”) #

Point: Christ’s soul was perfect through all its power being reduced to act.

• In the human soul, as in every creature, there is a twofold passive power: one in comparison to the natural agent, one in comparison to the first agent, who can lead any creature to a higher act than the natural agent can — this second is the potentia obedientiae, the power of obeying the divine command in the creature.
• Both powers in Christ’s soul were reduced to act by the infused knowledge. Hence he knew (a) whatever man can know by the light of the agent intellect — all the human sciences (“it doesn’t mean humanities, it means geometry as well”); (b) whatever becomes known to men by divine revelation, whether by the gift of wisdom, of prophecy, or any other gift of the Holy Spirit — and all of this more abundantly and fully than others.
• But not the essence or substance of God through this knowledge, only through the beatific vision. His reason: the infused forms by which he knows, though above the forms drawn from images, are still created forms; God is seen as he is only when God himself is joined to the mind as the form by which he is seen.

5. Replies 1 and 2: the via negativa and the separated soul (“you know him by creatures and ultimately by some negation”) #

• Reply 1: the objection proceeds from the soul’s natural action in comparison to its natural agent, the agent intellect. Aristotle (De Anima III): the natural object of our reason is the “what it is” of something sensed or imagined, the image being nearer to reason than sense. Hence the problem in theology of speaking of angels and God with no image of them: they must be known chiefly by negation — God is incorporeal, i.e. bodiless; simple, i.e. not composed. You imagine a body and say God is bodiless; so you know him not in himself but through creatures and by negation of creaturely imperfections.
• Reply 2: in this life the soul, being tied to the body, cannot understand without an image, hence cannot understand separated substances as they are (only by some likeness to our own mind plus negations of defects). After this life the soul knows separated substances in some way through itself — most manifest in the souls of the blessed. Christ, before the passion, was simul viator et comprehensor: viator because his body was not yet glorified, comprehensor because he enjoyed the vision of God. Hence his soul could know the separated substances — indeed with a greater knowledge than a separated soul has, because of the beatific vision.
• Aside: at Laval, Thomas Aquinas started in the faculty of theology, had to explain the philosophy used in theology, ended up teaching philosophy, and moved to the philosophy faculty. “Repetition is the mother.”

6. Reply 3: singulars, practical knowledge and foresight (“prudence… memory of past things”) #

• Boethius: the thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood. Albert the Great: the first thing considered in logic is the universal — he prefers “names said of many things,” more in the sense of a word, more suited to a lowly intellect being instructed.
• Thomas’s reply: knowing singulars does not belong to the understanding’s perfection in speculative knowledge, but does in practical knowledge, which is not perfected without knowledge of the singulars in which action takes place.
• Examples (from Aristotle’s remark at the beginning of the “fourteen books of wisdom” that the man of experience often succeeds better than the man of art): you cure not man but this man; you may start your own car better than the mechanic, knowing that car’s peculiarities; you may relieve your own nausea better than the doctor, knowing from experience what works for you.
• Prudence/foresight requires memory of the past, knowledge of the present, foresight of the future — providentia is a contraction of pro-videntia, foresight; and reason “looks before and after,” which the word foresight shows.
• Conclusion: having the fullness of foresight by the gift of counsel, Christ knew all singulars past, present and future — “like you and I here.”
• Asides: Thomas cites Cicero as “Tullius,” a change of names we are not accustomed to — relevant to modern scholars’ doubts about apostles’ names; a student raises Nathaniel, and he holds Nathaniel is an apostle, appearing among the six or seven at the shore at the end of John — “we’ll leave that for when we talk about words rather than things.” And: Descartes repeating mistakes made over the centuries; so too moderns who say Christ did not know he was Christ or the Son of God — “how many times do you have to fall on the same vomit?”

7. Digression before article 2: the brain is not the organ of thought (“a blow on the light bulb”) #

He recalls a student in his De Anima class convinced the brain is the organ of reason, and takes that side: a blow on the eye interferes with seeing, so the eye is the organ of sight; a blow on the brain (or alcohol) interferes with thinking, so the brain is the organ of thought.

• Counter-case: in a black room lit by one bulb, a blow on the bulb, or your walking out, interferes with my seeing you — so the bulb, or you, is the organ of my sight?
• The distinction: there are two ways of interfering with my seeing you — on the side of the organ (hitting the eye) or on the side of the object (breaking the bulb, leaving the room). A blow on the brain shows only a connection between brain and thinking, not on which side.
• Separate argument that the power of understanding the universal is not in a body: every body is continuous, and what is received in the continuous is for that very reason singular; so what is received universally is not received in a body.
• Therefore the interference is on the side of the object: the proper object of reason is the “what it is” of something sensed or imagined; remove the image and you remove the object. Just as my seeing your color takes place in my eye, not in you, yet removing you removes the seeing.
• Also from Aristotle: images are needed not only in first learning what a triangle is, but afterwards too — to think again that the triangle’s angles equal 180 degrees, you must imagine a triangle, because you understand the what it is of this thing imagined.

8. Article 2, objections (“except by turning to the phantasms”) #

1. Phantasms are to the understanding as colors to sight (De Anima III) — “a ratio, a proportion in Euclid’s sense,” and “philosophy is filled with proportions that are necessary.” Christ’s power of sight cannot go into act except by turning to colors; so neither his understanding except by turning to images.
2. Christ’s soul is of the same nature as ours, else he would not be of the same species with us — against Philippians 2:7, “made in the likeness of men.” But our soul cannot understand without images.
3. The senses are given to serve the understanding; if the soul could understand without images taken from the senses, the senses would be in vain in Christ, which is unfitting.
   • Aristotle’s reason in the De Anima why we have more than one sense, drawn from the good of reason and of geometry: with only one sense we could not separate surface from color. I know surface without color by touch, and surface without hardness by sight; so I can separate surface, and shape, from both. But I cannot see the top of this thing without blue, or the frame’s gold.

Sed contra: Christ knows some things that cannot be known through images — separated substances; so he can understand without turning to images. (He notes Thomas will grant some force to objection 3, since Christ also has natural knowledge — the subject of the next question.)

9. Student exchange: why “before the passion” and not “before the resurrection” #

A student objects that during the passion Christ’s body was still not glorified, so “before the resurrection” would be more exact. He grants the point — Thomas is “being extra careful,” and “that’s where the turn took place around that time.” Discussion of John: “now is the Son of Man glorified,” said when Judas went out, is a different sense of glory, or means that glorification is now a sure thing. A student asks whether “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” means he lost his comprehension; that is not affirmed — left open (“that’d be interesting though”). Later a student suggests “before the passion” may be said because once dead his body could no longer suffer, so he was no longer viator.

10. Digression: the seven last words (“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”) #

Occasioned by the psalm verse; he recalls meditations on the seven words in St. Francis de Sales and St. Alphonsus Liguori, which refer to still earlier works.

• One word, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” is in Matthew and Mark only, and in the same words — the word that most of all signifies his suffering, in soul as well as body.
• Three are in Luke only, and are connected: “Father, forgive them” (mercy to his crucifiers); “This day you shall be with me in paradise” (mercy to the penitent thief); “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (asking mercy). United by “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” — fitting to Luke, who emphasizes Christ’s priesthood, and priesthood is concerned with showing mercy. Saints on their deathbeds say the third word.
• Three are in John only: “Behold your mother / behold your son”; “I thirst”; “It is consummated.” The last two he sees connected more clearly: “I thirst” means not chiefly bodily thirst but thirst for the salvation of mankind, showing the charity out of which he died and which makes the death meritorious; and from the Catena Aurea on John 4 (the Samaritan woman, the apostles returning with food, “my food is to do the will of my Father”) a second meaning — he thirsts to do the Father’s will, “not my will but thy will be done.” Hence “it is consummated”: salvation is perfected because he died out of love for us and in obedience to the Father, which is why it is efficacious.
• The first Johannine word he cannot tie in as clearly. From the Catena Aurea on John 2 (Cana): the Fathers notice Christ calls her “woman,” not “mother,” because a miracle is performed insofar as he is God, and his divine nature he did not get from his mother; but on the cross, suffering in the flesh he got from her, he acknowledges her as mother. One might tie it to the last two because one must come to Christ through Mary, the mother of grace.
• Further asides: he was shocked at first that John’s Last Supper has no account of the Eucharist — but the first three have treated it abundantly, and John supplies what was missing (though John 6 speaks of it). John’s account of the public life goes back earlier. A student reports Thomas on the differing calls of the apostles in the synoptics and John: perhaps more than one calling — an initial introduction, then closer discipleship, then apostleship.
• Chrysostom in the Catena on “no prophet is honored in his own country,” on the effect of custom — our proverb, “familiarity breeds contempt.” He applies it to theologians who praise Thomas but do not read him: familiarity, at least of the name, breeds a certain contempt. And the story of Vincent Smith, from Notre Dame to St. John’s (where he founded an institute for philosophy of science) to Columbia, saying he was freer to teach Aristotle at Columbia than at the Catholic school; and the formula “Catholic in the ecumenical sense.”

11. Article 2, corpus: viator and comprehensor (“the soul… wholly dominates it”) #

1. Before the passion Christ was at once viator and comprehensor. (Aside: viaticum is so named because you are still on the road. And: the first act of reason is simplex apprehensio, grasping what something is — you know what God is only as comprehensor, not comprehending him as much as he is knowable, but grasping him; “get hold of God, so to speak.”)
2. The conditions of a viator he had chiefly on the side of his body, insofar as it could suffer; those of a comprehensor chiefly on the side of his understanding soul.
3. It is a condition of the comprehending soul that it is in no way subject to the body or dependent on it, but wholly dominates it — whence after the resurrection glory overflows from the soul into the body.
4. The wayfarer’s soul needs to turn to images because it is tied to and dependent on the body. The blessed souls can understand without turning to images. Therefore this must be said of Christ’s soul, which fully had the faculties of a comprehensor — even before the passion, just as in the beatific vision.

• Appended point on the separated soul: now the soul does not understand itself through itself but knows itself through its powers, the powers through their acts, the acts through their objects — discoursing from objects to acts to powers to soul. If it knew itself through itself the order would be the reverse. Separated from the body, the soul will know itself through itself, being then actually intelligible, since things become intelligible when separated from (singular) matter. “So you got some surprises coming to you.”
• Student question: does this explain the clarity about ourselves at the judgment? Answer: yes, but there will also be infused knowledge then, so we shall see the justice of the judgment on everyone. “It’s kind of frightening.”

12. Article 2, replies 1–3 (“the likeness… is not to be observed as regards all things”) #

• Reply 1: the philosopher’s likeness does not hold in every respect. The end of sight is to know colors; the end of understanding is not to know the images but to know the intelligible species it takes from and in the images, according to the present state. So the likeness holds as to that toward which both powers look, not as to that in which the condition of both terminates. He remarks Thomas is here returning upon the proportion and seeing exactly how far the two ratios are alike. Then: nothing prevents something in diverse states from tending to that one end by diverse means; a thing’s own end is always one; hence sight knows nothing without color, but the understanding in some state can know without the image.
  • Student objection: is the end of the intellect to know the intelligible species, or to know things through the species? He answers that the species can be taken as object too; there is ambiguity in the use of those words. He cites Bernard Lonergan as saying explicitly that Thomas holds we know the image and not the thing — and a text of the Summa Contra Gentiles he was reading that morning where Thomas speaks explicitly of knowing things in themselves. On ratio: we take it for a thought, but in English “I know the reason why he did that” means something in the thing itself, what causes him to act — and ratio, and species, can have that sense. Species can be taken in the sense of Aristotle’s “what it is of something sensed or imagined”: “What is that?” “That’s a man.” So I know what it is of something sensed, rather than what is sensed strictly. And species is something universal — said of many differing in number, signifying what it is.
  • Summary he gives: while the soul is in the body it naturally turns to images, the body sharing in the activity; separated, it knows itself through itself without turning to images.
• Reply 2: though Christ’s soul is of the same nature as ours, it had a state ours do not now have in reality but only in hope — the state of comprehension.
  • Student objection: Christ is comprehensor by the beatific vision, not by the infused knowledge, so how can that state be the principle of the conclusion? His answer: the argument is a fortiori — if even as viator he had the state of the blessed, he is not limited to our natural way of knowing, and can have a further supernatural knowledge, much less than the beatific vision but much more than our natural knowledge, like what the angels have. Aside: one reason of fittingness in the Incarnation is that he take on the whole universe — man being a little cosmos of body and soul — and by this knowledge he takes on what the angels have naturally, so “in a sense, he’s all everything.”
• Reply 3: though Christ’s soul can understand without turning to images, it can also understand turning to images, so the senses were not in vain in him — especially since the senses are given to man not only for intellectual knowledge but also for the necessity of animal life. He notes Thomas is distinguishing himself here from an earlier work where he apparently denied this (“he changes mind”), and that the reason is not only animal life but also that Christ had the image-using knowledge too.
• Closing aside: Christ marvelling at the centurion’s faith seems to belong to the human, image-using knowledge, not the infused — “it’s a strange creature, you know, in front of my eyes, making this beautiful profession of faith.” Break.

His words #

• Studiorum Ducem — the encyclical of Pius XI on Thomas.
• locupletissimum — “most wealthy”; originally, he guesses, owning much land.
• “poured in knowledge” — his rendering of scientia indita, infused knowledge.
• “the undergoing understanding” — [ed.: possible intellect].
• “the acting upon understanding” — [ed.: agent intellect].
• “images” / “phantasms” — he notes phantasm is the Greek word for images.
• potentia obedientiae — “the power of obeying the divine command in the creature,” a passive power toward the first agent, not the natural agent.
• viator — “one on the road”; comprehensor — “one who has grasped,” who knows what God is.
• via negativa — knowing God by negating creaturely imperfections.
• providentia — “a contraction of pro-videntia,” foresight; what prudence means.
• “the fourteen books of wisdom” — [ed.: Aristotle's Metaphysics].
• simplex apprehensio — the first act of reason, grasping what something is.
• “proportion in Euclid’s sense” — his gloss on the ratio image:understanding :: color:sight.
• species — “said of many differing in number, signifying what it is”; also usable for the object known.
• “Tullius” — Thomas’s name for Cicero.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 11, proemium; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies); a. 2 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies).
• Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem (in Latin), quoting John XXII.
• Isaiah 11:2 (sed contra of a. 1); Philippians 2:7 (obj. 2 of a. 2).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III (images as colors to sight; the object of reason; why we have more than one sense).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (inferred) — the man of experience vs. the man of art.
• Boethius (singular when sensed, universal when understood); Albert the Great (the universal first in logic).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (knowing things in themselves); Catena Aurea on John 2 and 4, and on “no prophet is honored in his own country” (Chrysostom).
• The seven last words; meditations of St. Francis de Sales and St. Alphonsus Liguori.
• Dante; Descartes; Bernard Lonergan; Vincent Smith; Pange Lingua; Hebrews 11:1 (the faulty translation “the reality of things hoped for”).

His questions #

• Did Christ by this infused knowledge know all things? Yes — all the human sciences, all that is revealed to men by any gift of the Spirit, and all singulars past, present and future; but not God’s essence.
• Why not God’s essence by this knowledge? Because the infused forms, though above those drawn from images, are still created; God is seen as he is only when he himself is the form by which the mind sees.
• Does knowing what a man is enable me to know all men? No, except in the sense that it is said of all men.
• Does knowledge of singulars belong to the perfection of the understanding? Not in speculative knowledge, but yes in practical, where action is in the singular.
• Does a blow on the brain interfering with thought show the brain is the organ of thought? No — interference may be on the side of the object rather than the organ; and since what is received in a continuum is singular, the power receiving universally is not a body.
• Can Christ’s soul understand by this knowledge without turning to phantasms? Yes, since even before the passion he was comprehensor and his soul had fully the faculties of the blessed, which do not depend on the body.
• Why “before the passion” and not “before the resurrection,” since during the passion his body was still unglorified? He grants the student’s point; Thomas is being extra careful, the turn taking place around then.
• Is the end of the intellect to know the intelligible species or the thing through it? The species can be taken as the object too; the terms are used ambiguously, and Thomas elsewhere speaks explicitly of knowing things in themselves.
• If Christ is comprehensor only by the beatific vision, how can that ground the conclusion about infused knowledge? The argument is a fortiori: having the higher state, he is not confined to our natural way of knowing.
• Were the senses then in vain in Christ? No — he could also understand turning to images, and the senses serve the necessity of animal life as well.
• Did Christ lose his comprehension when he cried “why have you forsaken me”? Left open.