Truth Crowned, the Wine of Wisdom, and Whether God Creates by Nature or Will; Christ's Two Operations (ST III q.19 a.1)

Orientation #

He says “let’s go then back to our texture,” meaning the Summa, after roughly the first half of the class spent on Shakespeare and the De Potentia; he recalls the treatise on the will of God in the Prima Pars and the earlier articles on Christ as instrument of the divinity (prev. lecture material he cites as “has been said above”). Verified sources place the class at Summa III q.19, a.1 (matched), with the surrounding material falling between III q.18, a.6 and q.19, a.1 (inferred).

The class, in order #

1. Pericles: truth and justice juxtaposed (“thou seemest a palace for the crown of truth to dwell in”) #

He quotes Pericles V.1: “Falseness cannot come from thee, for thou lookest modest as justice, and thou seemest a palace for the crown of truth to dwell in.” Why couple justice and truth?

• Both are modest: Kent in King Lear, “All my reports go with the modest truth… nor more, nor clipped, but so”; and we say a thing “just fits” — neither bigger nor smaller.
• Both are equality: in Measure for Measure Shakespeare calls injustice inequality; the medievals define truth as the equality of the mind with things — falsity is saying that what is is not, or that what is not is.
• Scripture does the same: the article in the Prima Pars asks whether in all the works of the Lord there is mercy and justice, but its sed contra (Ps. 24) says “all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth”; a second text, he thinks Tobias, does likewise. He looked in Thomas’s commentary on the Psalms expecting an explanation of why truth stands for justice, and found none — apparently it was too obvious to him.

2. Why truth is “crowned”: wisdom and kingship (“the reasoned-out knowledge of the truth”) #

The point: calling truth crowned says truth is king, and that fits what Aristotle says of wisdom.

1. In book II of the Metaphysics [“wisdom”] wisdom is the episteme of the truth — truth by antonomasia.
2. The reason is the principle of the “because of moreso”: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. Example: sweet is said of the sugar and of the coffee, but the coffee is sweet because of the sugar, so the sugar is more sweet. So if the effect is true because of the cause, the cause is more true — and the first causes are most true of all. “I am truth itself.”
3. In the Proemium wisdom is knowledge of the first causes; therefore it is most of all knowledge of the truth.
4. Also in the Proemium, the six-part description of the wise man culminates in his directing and ordering all others and being ordered by none — a likeness to the king. So truth, wisdom and kingship run together.

• John 18: Pilate says “Then you are a king”; Christ agrees and explains — “for this I was born… that I might give testimony unto the truth.” His kingdom is a kingdom of truth.
• Splendour: the Son is called splendour of the Father; Ps. 92 “The Lord is king, in splendour robed”; Ps. 109 “Yours is princely power… in holy splendour… before the day-star I have begotten you.”
• Shakespeare also uses crown for the end, and the end crowns all — and Augustine’s gaudium de veritate, joy over the truth, is our end, so “crown” fits that way too.
• Aside on titles: Ps. 109 gives king and priest; elsewhere king, priest and prophet. The old catechisms put the commandments under the King, the truths of faith under the prophet/teacher, the sacraments under the priest. If you keep only two, he would put the teaching with the kingship — as “the way, the truth, and the life” would appropriate life to the priesthood (taken in his divinity) and truth to his kingship.

3. The wine of wisdom and the rule of two or three (“two or three measures”) #

On John 2: why does Scripture say the jars held two or three measures, when at the end of John they count exactly a hundred and fifty-three fish? Joke: “they’d already been drinking.” Real answer: Christ is the teacher of the rule of two or three — divide into two or three or both.

• Thomas on Mary’s “they have no wine”: three wines are failing — charity, wisdom, justice. Wine burns on a sore, hence justice (the Good Samaritan’s oil and wine = mercy and justice); wine inebriates, hence charity (Anima Christi, inebria me); vinum laetificat cor hominis — “good wine rejoices the heart of man,” as the French improve on Scripture — hence wisdom, and the text used at the start of the Summa contra Gentiles that there is no bitterness in wisdom but delight and joy.
• His own added explanation from wisdom: wisdom is about two or three — the humanity and divinity of Christ (two); Father, Son and Holy Spirit (three); theology as of God in himself, God as beginning, God as end (three), or two. So John follows the rule of two or three. Aside: “the devil can quote scripture after all.”

4. De Potentia: did God produce creatures naturally or voluntarily? (“four different arguments”) #

Avicenna held the reverse, and one must respect him — Thomas’s Sentences and Albert draw much from him — but here he erred: since nature is determined to one (“nature not being able to be more than one,” Coriolanus), one creature proceeds from God, and multiplicity arises from that creature contemplating God, itself, its own potency, and so on; so the universe as a whole is not distinguished and ordered by God. Thomas’s four arguments:

1. Nature acts for an end but does not know the end and cannot adapt things to the end; so natural action presupposes an agent acting for an end by mind and will. God made a world where things act for an end by nature, therefore he has understanding and will.
2. Nature produces one thing equal to itself, unless the matter is unsuitable or the maker’s power falls short. (“Thou art thy mother’s glass… calls back the lovely April of her prime” — if the daughter is less beautiful, it is the matter or the maker.) Neither defect can be in God: he creates the matter too, and his power is infinite. So what proceeds from him naturally must be equal to him — and that is the Son. Thomas warns that the caution of argument 1 (nature cannot act for an end without something prior) does not apply: the Son does not proceed for the sake of an end, but proceeds as the end of all things.
3. God’s understanding is the same as his nature; creatures exist in him in an intelligible way; what is in understanding proceeds through will.
4. From the Categories and Physics III: acting upon and undergoing are the same reality, called action as from the agent, passion as in the patient from another. My kicking you and your being kicked are not two realities — otherwise double indemnity — so my kicking is in you. Hence a creature cannot create: it needs something to receive its acting. But God’s activity is his very substance, so it cannot be essentially transitive; therefore it is the activity of understanding and willing, which remains in the doer.

5. Same power moved by nature and by will: Thomas’s manuductio (“no one believes unless he chooses to believe”) #

Objection in a later article: the power to generate the Son (naturally) and the power to create (by will) must really differ, since nature and will are two different kinds of beginning — natural ability is determined to one (Metaphysics IX; Coriolanus again), the will is open to opposites. Thomas replies that it is not impossible for the same power to be moved by nature and by will. He notes that his teacher Monsignor Dionne made much of I q.117 a.1 on the teacher: the teacher leads from known to unknown either by proposing the order of principles to conclusions (enough in geometry), or by manuductio — leading by the hand with less universal things we can judge, sensible examples, likenesses (similia), or posita. Here Thomas gives exactly that: our own reason assents naturally to axioms like “the whole is more than the part,” but assents to the articles of faith only as moved by the will — “no one believes unless he chooses to believe” (Augustine). One and the same power, moved naturally in one case, by will (helped by grace) in the other.

6. Aside: reading Shakespeare, and DeKoninck’s wonder (“if you think you understood everything”) #

Pericles is Act V scene 1; the play was added in the third folio (the original folio had thirty-six plays); some doubt his authorship of the early acts, he thinks it all Shakespeare’s. He re-reads a few scenes and savours the words rather than staying up for the plot, and keeps noticing new things — as DeKoninck, teaching the eight books of the Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] since the 1930s, still came down the hall filled with wonder: “if you think you understood everything, it means you understood nothing.”

7. Question 19, prologue and the five objections (“whether there is one operation of both the divinity and the humanity”) #

Four articles: (1) one operation of divinity and humanity or many; (2) whether in Christ there are many operations according to human nature; (3) whether by his human operation Christ merited for himself; (4) whether through it he merited for us. Aside: in the De potentia Thomas calls the Incarnation the miracle of miracles, and elsewhere says all other miracles are somehow ordered to it. Objections for one operation:

1. Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2: the Word “did and underwent those things suitable to his human-divine operation” — one operation named theandrikē, “the virile-God” operation (the name Andrew means virile). So there is one composed operation.
2. Of the chief agent and the instrument there is one operation — the Pietà is not two operations, Michelangelo’s and the chisel’s — and the human nature in Christ was the instrument of the divine.
3. Two natures in one hypostasis; operation belongs to the hypostasis, since nothing operates except a subsisting suppositum, and “acts are of singulars” (the Philosopher). One person, one doing.
4. As to be belongs to the subsisting hypostasis, so does doing; but in Christ there is one esse because of the one hypostasis, so one operation. (“You’ve got to be before you can do.”)
5. Where there is one thing done there is one doing; but divinity and humanity do the same thing — healing the leper, raising the dead, changing water into wine. Aside on John 2 vs. the Cross: Thomas explains that Christ calls her “woman” at Cana because the miracle is from the divinity he did not get from his mother, and “mother” at the Cross because he suffers in the nature he got from her.

8. Sed contra and the corpus: ordered movers and one operation (“the acts of the lower beginning are more things done”) #

Sed contra: Ambrose, To Gratian II — how can there be the same doing of diverse power? Can the lesser do what the greater does? Or one doing where there is a diverse substance — here substance means hypostasis, not nature (Aristotle’s two chief senses). Corpus: the heretics who put one will in Christ put one operation. To see their error: where there are many ordered agents, the lower is moved by the higher — body by soul, lower powers by reason. So the acts of the lower beginning are things done rather than doings, and only what belongs to the highest beginning is properly operation. Walking (of the feet) and touching (of the hands) are things man does through feet and hand; from the side of the doer, the one soul, the doing is one and undifferentiated, but from the side of the things done there is difference. So in Christ the human nature is moved and ruled by the divine: one operation from the side of the divinity operating, diverse things done — the divinity does some things through itself (carrying all things by the word of his power) and others through the human nature (walking bodily). He reads the sixth synod’s citation of Severus the heretic to the same effect (what is human — walking on the ground; what is of God — giving “hale” steps to sickly limbs), and notes how orthodox such formulations can sound page by page: “actually, read some of these heretics.”

9. Where they were deceived: the saw and the bench (“the action of that which is moved by another is twofold”) #

Thomas’s answer:

1. The action of what is moved by another is twofold: one it has according to its own form, one according as it is moved by the other. The saw’s [he first says “sun,” corrects to saw/axe] own form gives cutting; as moved by the artist its operation is to make a bench.
2. The doing that belongs to a thing according to its own form is its own, not the mover’s, except as the mover uses it — heating is fire’s own doing, not the blacksmith’s, except as he uses fire to heat the metal.
3. But the doing a thing has only as moved by another is not distinct from the mover’s doing — making the bench is not a doing of the axe other than the artist’s. (He grants this applies to his Michelangelo example.)
4. Therefore wherever mover and moved have diverse forms or diverse operative powers, the mover has its own proper operation and the moved its own — though the moved partakes of the mover’s operation and the mover uses the operation of the moved, “and thus both act with communion of the other.”
5. In Christ the human nature has its own form and power, and so its own doing distinct from the divine, and conversely; but the divine nature uses the human operation as its instrument’s, and the human partakes of the divine as instrument of the chief agent. Confirmation: Leo the Great (whom he calls the fifth great doctor of the Western Church) to Flavian — “both forms act” with communion of the other, what is of the Word by the Word, what is of the flesh by the flesh. Note form for nature — as Paul has “form of God” and “form of a slave,” so it is not only “that pagan Aristotle.” Finally the dilemma: if there were one operation, either the human nature lacks its own form and power (which cannot be said of the divine), leaving only divine operation — making the human nature imperfect — or the divine and human powers were blown together into one, which is confusion of the natures, toward the monophysites. Hence the sixth synod condemned it: “two natural operations, unconvertible, unconfused, inseparably, in the same Lord Jesus Christ our true God, we glorify.”

• Asides: we owe a great debt to the early councils — a pope said he venerated the first four as the four Gospels; and Vatican II’s image that Tradition, Scripture and Magisterium cannot stand without one another — like the hooks at the military academy where two will not stand, you need three. He closes by posing the next step: “Now, what about the language here of Dionysius?” — left for next time.

His words #

• because of moreso — his fuller rendering: when the same belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause [ed.: propter quod unumquodque].
• antonomasia — using a common word for the pre-eminent instance (“the truth” for wisdom’s object).
• wisdom [ed.: Aristotle’s Metaphysics] — “the second book of wisdom,” “the ninth book of wisdom.”
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] — “the eight books of natural hearing.”
• doing / operation — his English for operatio; “things done” for what belongs to the lower moved beginning.
• theandrikē — “the virile God” operation, human-and-divine.
• manuductio — leading by the hand: less universal things, sensible examples, similia, posita.
• substance — in Ambrose’s text, hypostasis, not nature.
• form — used for nature (Leo, Paul, Aristotle).

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Pericles V.1 (and quotations from King Lear, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, a sonnet line “thy mother’s glass”)
• Thomas, De potentia: the article on whether God produces creatures naturally or voluntarily (four arguments); an article on whether the power to generate and the power to create differ
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 19, prologue and a. 1 in full (objections, sed contra, corpus)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2; Ambrose, To Gratian II; Leo, Epistle to Flavian; the sixth synod’s definition and its citation of Severus

Mentioned

• Thomas, ST I, q. 117, a. 1 (the teacher); the Prima Pars article on mercy and justice in all God’s works; Thomas’s commentary on Psalm 24; his commentary on John 2
• Aristotle, Metaphysics Proemium, II, IX; Categories; Physics III
• John 18; John 2; John 21 (153 fish); Psalms 24, 92, 109; Tobias; Philippians (“form of God”)
• Summa contra Gentiles, opening text on wisdom; Augustine (gaudium de veritate; “no one believes unless he chooses”); the Anima Christi; Avicenna; Vatican II on Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium

His questions #

• Why does Shakespeare juxtapose justice and truth? — Both are modest and both are a kind of equality; Scripture likewise substitutes “truth” for “justice.”
• Why does Thomas not explain the substitution in his Psalm commentary? — Apparently it was too obvious to him.
• Why call truth crowned? — Because truth is king: wisdom is knowledge of the truth by antonomasia, and the wise man directs all others; Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom of truth. Also because the end crowns all, and our end is joy over the truth.
• Why “two or three measures” when they can count 153 fish exactly? — Because Christ teaches the rule of two or three; and wisdom itself is about two or three.
• Did God produce creatures naturally or voluntarily? — Voluntarily, by intellect and will (four arguments); only the Son proceeds naturally, as equal.
• Is the Father’s power to generate other than the power to create? — No; the same power can be moved by nature and by will, as reason assents naturally to axioms and by will to the articles of faith.
• Is there one operation of the divinity and humanity in Christ, or many? — Two: the human nature has its own form and power and so its own operation, used by the divine as its instrument; one operation would make the human nature imperfect or confuse the natures.
• What about the language here of Dionysius? — Left open.