Christ's Wonder and Anger, Christ as Both Wayfarer and Comprehensor, and a Look Ahead to Q.16 (Summa III, Q.15, Arts. 8–10)

Orientation #

He picks up wonder “next,” linking it to the fear treated just before — “sometimes wondering is what tied up with fear” (prev. lecture treated sadness and fear). He ends by previewing q. 16 and telling the class to “rest up for this.”

The previous class treated Christ’s sadness and fear (ST III, q. 15, aa. 6–7).

The class, in order #

1. Wonder: the objections (a. 8) (“it harrows me with fear and wonder”) #

Three objections that there was no wonder in Christ:

1. Aristotle (Metaphysics I — he calls it “the first book of wisdom,” then corrects himself to the Metaphysics): wonder is caused by seeing an effect and not knowing the cause; so only the ignorant wonder. Christ had no ignorance.
2. Damascene (bk. II): wonder is fear from imagining something great; hence Ethics IV says the magnanimous man does not wonder, nothing being great to him. Christ was maximus magnanimus.
3. No one admires what he himself can do; Christ could do whatever was great.

Sed contra: Matthew 8 — hearing the centurion, Jesus “marveled” (miratus est). Aside: “this pesky text from the Gospels keeps showing up here” — and Vatican II said the four gospels are the greatest part of Scripture.

Aside on magnanimity: Warren Murray directed a thesis on it; every candidate (Winston Churchill and the rest) “turns out not to be altogether magnanimous,” and the only example found was Christ.

2. Wonder is of the new and unaccustomed (“de novo aliquo insolito”) #

His point: wonder is properly about something new and uncustomary — so Damascene says nothing different from Aristotle.

• Examples: let go of a rock and it falls, you do not wonder — that is what you expect; if it went up, you would. Einstein as a boy wondering at his father’s magnet: one body moving another without touching it. The Greek geometers’ discovery that the diagonal of the square is incommensurable with the side — contrary to expectation. A person acting out of character makes you wonder what is wrong with him.
• Augustine in the Golden Chain on miracles: a miracle is not the greatest thing God has done — creating and preserving the world is greater, and a reasonable soul is more marvelous (St. Catherine of Siena saw a reasonable soul in a vision and called it the most beautiful thing in the world). We do not wonder at these because they are always with us — “the world is too much with us.” The miracle arouses wonder because it is not the customary way of nature; “miracle is taken from the word wonder.”

3. The answer: wonder only in experiential knowledge (“according to his experiential knowledge”) #

Nothing could be new to Christ as regards his divine knowledge, or his beatific knowledge (seeing God face to face), or his infused knowledge (per species inditas). But new things could daily occur to his experiential knowledge, and there wonder could be. He notes as interesting that in the Sentences commentary Thomas did not grant Christ experiential knowledge, and that it is here tied to his being able to wonder.

Christ took on this affection for our instruction — Augustine (On Genesis against the Manichees I): when the Lord wonders, he signifies to us what ought to be wondered at. Such motions are not signs of a disturbed soul but of a teaching magisterium.

Replies: (1) though ignorant of nothing, something new could occur to his experiential knowledge; (2) he wondered at the centurion’s faith not as great to him but as great in comparison with others — “not found such faith in all of Israel.” Parallel: a small child (Mary Sophia) says something wise — great compared with other children. (3) He could do all things by divine power, in which there is no wonder; wonder was only by human experimental knowledge.

Aside with doctrinal weight: against the heresies denying Christ a human soul (some put the divinity in place of the soul, others in place of reason, leaving him an animal soul), Thomas points to Christ’s admiratio — wonder requires reason, so Christ had a rational soul.

The centurion himself: a pagan who says “I am a man, I give commands and they do it” — as if to say you can command nature the way I command. “You gotta respect the military sometimes.”

4. Digression: tragedy and arousing wonder (“a certain magnification of words arousing wonder”) #

Aristotle on tragedy arousing wonder; Hamlet’s friend at the end offering to tell Fortinbras, “if you would see out of woe or wonder” — woe being another word for pity, wonder standing where one expects fear; the heap of bodies “befits the field but not the throne.” In Physics VI (inferred) Aristotle says Zeno’s Achilles-and-the-tortoise argument, though on the same basis as another, arouses more wonder: it is a tragōdia, which Thomas glosses as a magnification of words arousing wonder.

His own instance from Euclid II.5: as Euclid states it (a line cut into equal and unequal segments, the square on the half equal to the rectangle on the unequal parts plus the square on the difference), “so what?” But read as the perimeter of a rectangle: 5×5 gives 25, 4×6 gives 24, 7×3 gives 21, all with perimeter 20 — and the shortfall is the square of the departure (1, 4). More strikingly still, a 2×10 rectangle has perimeter 24 but area only 20: with more fence you can gain less area — “you can fence a bigger yard for your kid with less fence than I use.” Stated that way it arouses more wonder, “with a certain tragedy,” though still resting on what Euclid proved. “Euclid was a poet.”

5. Anger: the objections (a. 9) (“the anger of man does not work the justice of God”) #

1. James 1: the anger of man does not work the justice of God; but everything in Christ pertained to God’s justice (1 Cor. 1: he was made justice for us from God).
2. Anger is opposed to mildness (Ethics IV has a virtue moderating anger); Christ was most mild — “learn of me, for I am mansuetus.”
3. Gregory, Moralia V: anger through vice blinds the eye of the mind, anger through zeal disturbs it; in Christ the eye of the mind was neither blinded nor disturbed.

Sed contra: John 2, fulfilling the psalm, “the zeal of your house eats me up.”

Asides: his own anger at the Obama administration and imagined berating of Ted Kennedy for his anti-life record; Shakespeare’s “they are in the very wrath of love — clubs cannot part them” (As You Like It), a likeness from species to species, both love and wrath being emotions needing moderation; Hotspur “drunk with anger” as the same kind of metaphor. When Thomas treats the virtues in II-II he takes the minor virtues by likeness of mode — mansuetudo under temperance, because both moderate.

6. The answer: anger through zeal, not through vice (“anger is an effect of sadness”) #

Anger is an effect of sadness: from sadness there follows in the sensitive part a desire to repel the injury, so anger is a passion composed of sadness and the desire of vengeance (vindicta). He notes the order — sadness was taken up first. Since sadness could be in Christ, so could the desire of vengeance: when sought outside the order of reason it is sin (“anger through vice,” one of the capital sins as he learned them growing up) and could not be in Christ; when according to the order of justice it is praiseworthy — “anger through zeal.” Augustine on John: he whom zeal eats up wishes to amend all perverse things he sees, and if he cannot, tolerates them and mourns. Such anger was in Christ, and it did not disturb the function of his reason.

Replies:

1. Gregory, Moralia V: sometimes anger goes before reason and drags it along — then anger is properly said to operate, since operation is attributed to the principal agent; that is the anger of James 1. Sometimes anger follows reason as its instrument, and the work of justice is attributed not to anger but to reason.
2. Only anger beyond the order of reason opposes mildness; mansuetudo holds the mean in anger.
3. In us the soul’s powers impede one another, so intense anger, even moderated, somewhat impedes the eye of the contemplating soul. In Christ, by the moderation of divine power, each power was allowed its proper act, so none impeded another: as the delight of the contemplating mind did not impede the sadness or pain of the lower part, so a converso the lower passions in no way impeded the act of reason.

Asides: Shakespeare’s pun, “no mean happiness to be constituted in the mean” — virtue is the road to happiness, and moral virtue consists in hitting the mean. But Aristotle’s important clarification: where a word already signifies an act with excess, there is no mean — adultery, drunkenness, theft; “if I steal just the right amount, not too much, not too little” is nonsense. A student supplies a line from The Criterion: contemporary sophisticates pride themselves on standing in the mean between the extremes of right and wrong; and the Clintons’ “safe, legal, and rare.” Another quoted line: “a proud member of the herd of independent minds.” Psalm 6: “my eye is disturbed” — and the observation that in ancient courts the first defendants tried were punished more severely because the judges were still angry, plainly an injustice.

7. Viator and comprehensor: the objections (a. 10) (“at the same time a viator and a comprehensor”) #

1. To the wayfarer belongs being moved to the end of beatitude, to the comprehensor resting in it; one cannot at once move toward and rest in the end. (“Can’t disagree with that.” — and if he is both, “he’s going to arouse wonder. He’ll be admirable.”)
2. Being moved to beatitude belongs to man according to soul, not body — Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus: beatitude overflows to the lower nature, the body, but is properly of the one enjoying and understanding. Christ’s mind fully enjoyed God though his body could suffer; so he was pure comprehensor.
3. The saints whose souls are in heaven and bodies in the tomb are called comprehensors only, not viators; so likewise Christ.

He notes on the third that Augustine says the soul will see God more perfectly once reunited to the body — so aren’t the separated saints still on the way? The objection exploits this; why say it of one and not the other?

Sed contra: Jeremiah 14 — like a colonus (colonist, tiller, farmer, tenant — he hesitates over the word) and like a viator turning aside.

8. The answer: comprehensor in soul, viator as to the body (“he tended towards beatitude according to that which was lacking”) #

Viator = tending toward beatitude; comprehensor = having obtained it — 1 Cor. 9 “so run that you may comprehend,” and Philippians 3, same word. Perfect beatitude is chiefly in the soul, in that the mind sees and enjoys God; secondarily in the body, as the body rises subject to the spirit, in power, in glory, in incorruption (the dotes, the gifts). Christ before the passion fully saw God, so had the beatitude proper to the soul; but the gifts to be bestowed on the body were lacking, his soul and body being passible and mortal. Hence comprehensor as to the soul, viator as to what was lacking.

Aside: Thomas holds that seeing God face to face you know other things in God, and argues in Summa Contra Gentiles and elsewhere that you see in God everything you naturally desire to know — “all those theorems in Euclid, I’ll see them all at once.” The beauty of it is that the supernatural order is in harmony with the natural: our natural desire to know is satisfied there, though that is not what beatitude is chiefly about.

Replies:

1. One cannot move toward and rest in the end in the same respect, but nothing prevents it in diverse respects — a man is a knower as to what he knows and a learner as to what he does not. “Can I both be arriving and have arrived? If it’s about the same theorem, either I’m learning it or I know it. But I can know some theorems and be learning others.” The sophist wants to make you appear to contradict yourself.
2. Beatitude consists chiefly and properly in the soul, according to mind (intellect and will); secondarily and as it were instrumentally the goods of the body are required — as Ethics I says exterior goods serve beatitude toolwise. Example: the book in his hand, an exterior good serving his mind as a tool. Because the bodily goods are only secondary, the separated saints can simply be called comprehensors.
3. Two differences from the dead saints: their souls are no longer passible, as Christ’s soul was; and their bodies do nothing by which they tend toward beatitude, whereas Christ through the passions of the body tended toward the glory of his body. In discussion with a student: the saints are not striving through their bodies — “they’re just waiting for the body to be resurrected” — so there is more reason to call Christ a viator.

9. The plan of the Tertia Pars (“those things which follow upon the union”) #

Praise first: “this guy’s really thorough… hard to beat”; Urban IV commanded the Golden Chain, and he thinks the Pope died before it was finished. Ironic aside: “He’s limited. He doesn’t think outside the box.”

The division, from the prologue and proemia: treatment of the Savior is twofold — the mystery of the incarnation, and what the incarnate God did and suffered (beginning at q. 27). The first divides into three: the fittingness of the incarnation; the mode of union of the incarnate Word; and what follows upon the union — which begins at q. 16. Q. 16’s proemium: first what belongs to Christ secundum se; second what belongs to him in comparison to God the Father; third what belongs to him as regards us (q. 25). And secundum se divides again: things belonging to Christ according to esse et fieri, and things belonging to him by reason of unity (q. 17) — which reminds him, as a student of wisdom, that metaphysics is about being and the one; “it may help you to know a little bit of philosophy.”

Digression from the Golden Chain: Christ says none can believe unless the Father draw him; the Fathers ask why this is attributed to the Father, and answer only that he is the beginning of the Son and the Holy Spirit, both proceeding from him. So the drawing is not limited to the Father — it is appropriation; “the Father speaks in the beginning.”

10. The twelve questions of q. 16 (“about the first twelve things are asked”) #

He reads the list, with reactions: (1) whether “God is man” is true; (2) whether “man is God” is true — Augustine’s “God became man so that man could become God” is a different sense; (3) whether Christ can be called homo dominicus; (4) whether what belongs to the Son of Man can be said of the Son of God and conversely; (5) whether what belongs to the Son of Man can be said of the divine nature; (6) and what belongs to the Son of God of the human nature; (7) whether “the Son of God was made man” is true — “I know he was made flesh, but was he made man?”; (8) whether “man was made God” is true; whether “Christ is a creature” is true — “I know there’s something wrong with saying that”; (9) whether “this man began to be” is true, or was he always; whether “Christ as he is man is a creature” — “be careful about that too”; whether “Christ as he is man is God” — “I’m kind of worried about that one”; whether “Christ as man is a hypostasis or person.”

Note: his numbering of the list slips in the recording (two items are both called “tenth” and the count of what he reads does not cleanly reach twelve); the twelve are as stated in the proemium. He ends: “this guy’s got some rough stuff here… take a week off before going into this.”

His words #

• wonder / admiration — properly about something new and unaccustomed (de novo aliquo insolito); admiratio.
• experiential knowledge — the knowledge in Christ to which new things could daily occur, and so the only one in which he could wonder.
• infused knowledge — knowledge by species inditae, placed in him.
• blessed knowledge — seeing God as he is, face to face [ed.: beatific vision].
• maximus magnanimus — “most magnanimous,” said of Christ in objection 2.
• tragōdia — in Zeno’s argument, “a certain magnification of words arousing wonder.”
• mansuetudo / mildness — the virtue holding the mean in anger.
• anger through vice / anger through zeal — anger going before reason and dragging it, versus anger following reason as its instrument.
• vindicta — vengeance, revenge; with sadness it composes anger.
• viator — “man on the road,” one tending toward beatitude.
• comprehensor — “one who has arrived, gotten a hold of things”; from comprehendere, 1 Cor. 9.
• dotes — “the gifts” of the risen body: subjection to the spirit, power, glory, incorruption.
• toolwise — instrumentally; how exterior goods serve beatitude.
• esse et fieri / unitas — being and coming-to-be; unity: the two heads under which q. 16 ff. treat Christ secundum se.
• appropriation — attributing to the Father what is not limited to him.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 15, a. 8 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• ST III, q. 15, a. 9 (whole article)
• ST III, q. 15, a. 10 (whole article)
• ST III, q. 16, proemium (with the prologue and proemia of q. 1)
• Matthew 8 (the centurion); James 1; 1 Cor. 1; John 2 / “the zeal of your house”; Jeremiah 14; 1 Cor. 9; Philippians 3
• Euclid, Elements II.5, restated in his own way

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I; Nicomachean Ethics I and IV; Physics (“eight books of Natural Hearing”), Zeno’s Achilles
• Damascene, bk. II; Gregory, Moralia V; Augustine, On Genesis against the Manichees I, Letter to Dioscorus, on John, and in the Catena Aurea
• Thomas, Commentary on the Sentences; Summa Contra Gentiles; Catena Aurea; II-II on the virtues; I-II on beatitude
• Psalm 6; Shakespeare (Hamlet, As You Like It, Hotspur); The Criterion

His questions #

• Is there wonder in Christ? Yes, but only according to his experiential knowledge, and taken on for our instruction.
• Why did Christ wonder at the centurion, since nothing is great to him? Not because it was great to him, but great in comparison with others — such faith not found in all Israel.
• Do we wonder that a rock falls? No — wonder is at the new and unaccustomed; we would wonder if it rose.
• Is the miracle the greatest thing God has done? No; creation and a reasonable soul are greater, but the miracle is uncustomary and so arouses wonder.
• Was there anger in Christ? Yes, anger through zeal, according to the order of justice; never anger through vice.
• Does anger, even moderated, impede contemplation? In us yes; in Christ, by the moderation of divine power, each power acted without impeding another.
• Is there a mean of adultery, theft, drunkenness? No — these already signify the act with excess, so there is no mean of the extreme.
• Was Christ at once viator and comprehensor? Yes: comprehensor as to the beatitude proper to the soul, viator as to the bodily gifts still lacking.
• Am I a knower or a learner? Both, in different respects — a knower of theorems I know, a learner of those I do not; not of the same theorem.
• Why are the dead saints called comprehensors only? Their souls are no longer passible and their bodies do nothing tending toward beatitude, unlike Christ’s.