Summa III q.18 a.5–6: 'Not My Will but Yours' – Christ's Human Will and the Divine Will, With No Conflict Between Them

Orientation #

He picks up after a break with article 5, resuming distinctions about the several wills in Christ that he says were drawn “in more than one of the articles” (prev. lecture). The previous class treated the earlier articles of this same question on Christ’s wills and free judgment.

The class, in order #

1. Article 5, the objections: Christ’s human will and God’s will (“that I might do Your will, my God”) #

The question: did the human will in Christ will something other than what God willed? Three objections say no.

1. Psalm 39 (Vulgate numbering), in the person of Christ: “that I might do Your will, my God, I will.” He who wills to do another’s will wills what that one wills.
2. Christ’s soul had the most perfect charity, which exceeds our comprehension — Ephesians 3:19, “the charity of Christ supereminentem scientiae.” It belongs to charity that man will the same as God; and charity is a kind of friendship (as Thomas argues in the treatise on charity), and the Philosopher in Ethics IX — one of the two books on friendship — says it is a mark of friends to will and choose the same things.
3. Christ was a true comprehensor on the side of his soul (not his body until the end). The saints who are comprehensors in the fatherland will nothing other than what God wills, else they would not be blessed — “the blessed man is the one who has whatever he wants and wishes nothing [more],” as Augustine says in the De Trinitate.

He remarks the objections are strong, and therefore so is the sed contra: “my mind is tied in a knot, isn’t yours?”

2. The sed contra and where the knot unties (“not what I will, but what you will”) #

Augustine Against Maximinus: in saying “not what I will, but what you will,” Christ shows himself to will something other than the Father — which he could do only by a human heart, since he transfigured our infirmity into his own, not divine but human, affection. He says the knot is untied by explaining what Christ means by “I will.”

3. The body: the several wills in Christ, and the will of sensuality (“called the will by participation”) #

In Christ according to his human nature a multiple will is laid down: (a) the will of sensuality, the sense appetite, called will by participation; (b) the rational will, considered either by way of nature or by way of reason. On participation he cites the Nicomachean Ethics: reason is one part of the soul, and another part can obey or be habituated to obey reason — reasonable not by having reason essentially but by partaking of it. Asides attached to this: Austin Farrer on eighteenth-century music being superior to Romantic music, because it represents the emotions in harmony with reason and so disposes to virtue (Mozart, Handel); Politics VIII on listening to the right kind of music; the riot of sailors at Newport when rock and roll first came out, chairs flying — the effect of wild music. “If I go home tonight and listen to Mozart, I’ll be virtuous in the morning — well, not necessarily, but I’m being disposed that way.”

4. Why the lower wills willed otherwise (“permitted His flesh to act and undergo”) #

1. By a dispensation of God, the Son before his passion, and so before the glorification of his body, allowed his flesh to do and suffer what is proper to it (hunger, thirst), and likewise permitted all the powers of the soul their proper acts.
2. The will of sensuality naturally flees sensible pain and bodily injury; the will as nature repudiates what is against nature and is in itself bad, e.g. death.
3. But the will per modum rationis can choose such things from their order to the end. Example: in a purely human case, sensuality and the will absolutely considered refuse cautery/burning, which the will secundum rationem chooses for the end of health.
4. God willed that Christ undergo pain, passion and death — not as such, but for the end of human salvation. Conclusion: according to the will of sensuality and the will of reason considered by way of nature, Christ could will something other than God; according to the will per modum rationis, all things considered, he always willed what God wills — which is clear from “not as I will, but as you.” He notes a confusion in the language: the will of reason was earlier contrasted with the will of sensuality, but here “will of reason by way of nature” reappears. A student sums it up and he approves: what was natural to him to want was one thing, but what he chose was God’s will — “that’s perfectly worded. There is no disagreement.”

5. Replies of article 5 (“whose motion does not extend to the will of God”) #

• To 1: Christ willed the Father’s will fulfilled — not, however, by the will of sense desire, whose motion does not reach to the will of God, nor by the will considered by way of nature, which is borne to objects absolutely and not in order to the divine will.
• To 2: conformity of human to divine will is taken according to the will of reason, by which too friends’ wills are in harmony, insofar as reason considers something to be willed in order to the friend’s will. Example: doing what the grandchildren want; the green apple at the Getty Museum, passed round and eaten up by the grandchildren, showing the trust that makes them free with Grandpa’s apple. (Jokes follow about Obamacare and an “Obama” bumper sticker.)
• To 3: Christ was at once comprehensor and viator — comprehensor as enjoying God by his mind, viator as having passible flesh; so on the side of the passible flesh something could arise in him repugnant to will and to sense.

6. A short exchange on translations (“the Septuagint is the source of the Vulgate”) #

Over a variant reading (“hers” in the NAB), he says one must find out what the Hebrew is, and that the Septuagint is the source of the Vulgate. Left unresolved.

7. Article 6, objections: was there a contrariety of wills in Christ? (“the contrariety of wills is noted by the contrariety of objects”) #

He points out that article 6 follows from article 5 — if one will conforms and another does not, is there contrariety? — but that Thomas takes the opposite side.

1. Contrariety of wills is taken from contrariety of objects, as contrariety of motions from contrariety of terms (Physics V — “the fifth book of Natural Hearing”). By his divine will Christ willed the death he fled by his human will; Athanasius, Against Apollinaris, on “Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless not mine but your will be done,” and “the spirit is prompt but the flesh is weak” — two wills, the human refusing the passion from infirmity of flesh, the divine prompt to undergo it. (Aside: Falstaff — “I’ve got more flesh than other men, so take that into account.” Aside: a typo, “Christo” written with an h.)
2. Galatians 5:17, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. In Christ the will of charity wrought by the Holy Spirit in his mind willed the passion — Isaiah, “he was offered up because he himself willed it” — while according to the flesh he refused it.
3. Luke 22: he was in agony and prayed at length; agony implies a fight in the soul tending to contraries, “a little war going on, as Shakespeare would say — like a civil war.” Sed contra: the determination of the Sixth Synod (his book says the Third Council of Constantinople): we preach two natural wills, not contrary as the impious heretics assert, but his human will following and not resisting or fighting his divine and omnipotent will, rather subject to it.

8. The body of article 6: two requirements for contrariety (“in the same and according to the same”) #

Contrariety requires opposition in the same thing and according to the same; diversity in diverse things does not suffice, any more than for contradiction. Example: a man called beautiful or healthy according to his hand but not according to his foot — no contradiction.

1. First requirement: diversity of wills noted according to the same reason. If one wills something under a universal reason and another wills it not under a particular reason, there is no contrariety. Example: the king wills the thief hanged for the good of the republic; a relative wills him not hanged from private love — no contrariety, unless the private love extends so far as to wish to impede the public good so as to preserve the private.
2. Second requirement: it be about the same will. If a man wills one thing by the desire of the understanding and another by sense desire, no contrariety — unless the sense desire so prevails that it changes or at least retards the will of reason, for then something of the contrary motion of the sense appetite reaches the will of reason.

Application: although the natural will and the will of sensuality in Christ willed something other than the divine will and the will of reason,

• first, neither repudiated the reason for which the divine will and Christ’s human reason willed the passion: the absolute will in Christ willed the salvation of the human race, but it did not belong to it to will this in order to another, and the motion of sensuality could not extend that far;
• second, neither the divine will nor the will of reason was impeded or retarded by the natural will or the appetite of sensuality; nor, conversely, did the divine will or will of reason refuse or retard the natural motion of the human will and of sensuality — for it was pleasing to Christ, by the divine will and the will of reason, that the natural will and sensuality be moved according to the order of their nature. He adds: this is against the extreme position of the Stoics, that one should not be moved at all in one’s emotions.

9. Replies of article 6 (“to show his humanity”) #

• To 1: that the human will in Christ willed something other than the divine will itself proceeded from the divine will, which was pleased that human nature be moved by its own motions in Christ. Part of the reason: he wanted to attest to his humanity — if Christ had not been bothered at all by dying on the cross, we would question his human nature; just as after the resurrection he ate with the disciples, not from necessity but to show his humanity.
• To 2: in us the concupiscence of the flesh impedes or retards the desire of the spirit; not so in Christ, so the contrariety of flesh and spirit in us was not in him.
• To 3: the struggle in the rational part — a concertum/“concert” — was not in Christ. Digression on the word: the concerto grosso, a struggle between two groups of instruments; the piano concerto, where the piano can put up a better fight against the orchestra than the violin can, the orchestra plays the tune and then the piano — whose melody is this? Such struggle occurs when reason, considering one thing, wills this, and considering another wills the contrary, and it happens from weakness of reason, which cannot judge which is simply better — “you’ve experienced that kind of situation.” Not so in Christ, who judged by his reason that it was simply better that through his passion the divine will about the salvation of the human race be fulfilled. But there was in Christ agonia as regards the sensitive part, as implying fear of an imminent misfortune, as Damascene says in book III.

His words #

• will of sensuality (voluntas sensualitatis) — the sense appetite, the emotions; called will “by participation,” by partaking of reason.
• will by way of nature (per modum naturae) — the rational will as borne to objects absolutely considered, repudiating what is against nature, e.g. death.
• will by way of reason (per modum rationis, secundum rationem) — the will choosing a thing “all things considered,” from its order to the end.
• comprehensor / viator — one who enjoys God (Christ, by his mind); one on the way (Christ, by his passible flesh).
• “Natural Hearing” — his rendering of Aristotle’s Physics.
• agonia — fear of an imminent misfortune, in the sensitive part.
• concertum / concerto — a struggle between two parties, used to explain the “agony” of contrary judgments.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 18, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 18, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)

Mentioned (within those articles or by him)

• Psalm 39 (Vulgate); Ephesians 3:19; Galatians 5:17; Isaiah (he was offered up because he willed it); Luke 22; Matthew/Mark, “let this chalice pass,” “the spirit is prompt but the flesh is weak”
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX (friendship); Nicomachean Ethics (the part of the soul that partakes of reason); Politics VIII (music); Physics V (contrariety of motions)
• Augustine, De Trinitate; Augustine, Against Maximinus
• Athanasius, Against Apollinaris; John Damascene, book III
• Third Council of Constantinople / Sixth Synod, determination on the two natural wills
• Thomas’s treatise on charity (charity as friendship); Austin Farrer on music; Shakespeare (civil war in the soul); Falstaff

His questions #

• Did the human will in Christ will something other than what the divine will willed? Yes — according to the will of sensuality and the will as nature; not according to the will of reason.
• What does Christ mean by “I will” in “not what I will, but what you will”? The will of sensuality and the will by way of nature, which flee death as against nature.
• Why is the will of sensuality called “will”? By participation — it partakes of reason, as the obedient part of the soul in the Ethics.
• Did God will Christ’s death as such? No: only in order to the end of human salvation, as one wills cautery for health.
• Was there then a contrariety of wills in Christ? No — contrariety requires opposition in the same thing and according to the same reason, and in the same will.
• When does diversity of will become contrariety? When the private will extends to impeding the public good, or when the sense appetite changes or retards the will of reason.
• Why did God will that Christ’s lower wills be moved at all? It pleased the divine will that human nature move by its own motions, and Christ wished to attest his humanity — as he ate after the resurrection, not from necessity.
• Was the “agony” a struggle of reason in Christ? No — that comes from weakness of reason unable to judge which is simply better; Christ’s agony was in the sensitive part, fear of imminent misfortune.
• Is the NAB’s “hers” supported by the Hebrew? Left open — “you’ve got to find out what the Hebrew is.”