Replies on the Theandric Operation, Christ's Human Operations, and Christ's Merit for Himself and for Us (ST III q.19 a.1-4)

Orientation #

He is finishing the replies to the first article of q. 19 and works straight through articles 2, 3 and 4, ending “Okay, so question twenty, huh?” No other statement about the neighbouring classes. The previous class began q. 19 on the unity of Christ’s operation.

The class, in order #

1. Dionysius’ theandric operation (“a doing that is what theandricum”) #

Point: Dionysius’ “divine-human” (theandricum) operation does not mean confusion of the two operations or of the powers of the natures.

• Two reasons for the name: (a) the divine operation uses the human; (b) the human operation partakes of the power of the divine operation.
• Dionysius (in a letter): “above man he does those things which are man” — because of that partaking. Examples: the Virgin conceiving supernaturally, and the water sustaining the weight of his feet as he walked on it — to conceive and to walk are of human nature, yet both were supernatural in Christ. Conversely divine things were done humanly: healing the leper by touching him.
• That Dionysius still holds two operations is clear from Divine Names ch. 2: the things of the human operation the Father and the Holy Spirit share in in no way except “according to their most kind and merciful will” — they willed Christ to do and undergo human things. Berquist glosses: what Christ does as God, Father and Spirit do too (same power); what he does as man they do not do — “they ratify it. They affirm it.”

2. Tool and chief agent; the Magnificat digression (“moved by the chief agent”) #

Point: the instrument’s action as instrument is not other than the chief agent’s, though as a thing it has its own.

• A tool is so called from being moved by the chief agent — “sometimes they define a tool as a moved mover” — yet it can have its own operation from its own form (the fire example).
• So Christ’s human nature as instrument of the divinity has not another operation: “there is not another salvation by which the humanity of Christ saves, and his divinity”; but as a certain nature it has its own operation apart from the divine.
• Aside (thirst prompts it): the Magnificat calls God “my Saviour,” yet Mary is without sin, original and actual. How was she saved? The definition of the Immaculate Conception says that in view of Christ’s passion she was preserved from it — and that is being saved. Image from St. Teresa of Jesus: one who runs ahead and removes a stone from your path saves you from falling. “You could argue… that she must have been saved from sin in some way by Christ, but not in the way that other[s] are.”

3. Doing is of the hypostasis according to a form (“fire has two operations differing in species”) #

Point: species of operation follows the form or nature; numerical unity of operation follows the hypostasis.

• To do belongs to the subsisting hypostasis, but according to some form or nature, from which the doing takes its species. Hence diverse natures give operations diverse in species; unity of hypostasis gives numerical unity within the species.
• Fire: to enlighten and to heat differ in species (light and heat differ), but the one illumination of the one fire is one in number.
• So in Christ two operations differing in species, each one in number, done once — “just as one walking.”
• His own check: your understanding and mine, even simultaneous, are still two understandings.

4. Esse and operari; two lines to one point (“to be and to do is of the person”) #

Point (obj. 4: one esse, why not one operation?): being and doing belong to the person through the nature, aliter et aliter.

• To be belongs to the very constitution of the person, so unity of person requires unity of complete personal being; but operation is an effect of the person according to some form or nature, and he has two natures. “The plurality of operations does not prejudice the unity that is personal.”
• He recalls his own blackboard figure from the first meeting: two lines drawn to the same point. He calls the personal union “the miracle of miracles, as he calls it, in the De potentia.”
• Reply 5: the proper things done differ — the healing of the leper is the proper effect of the divine operation, the touching is the proper operation of the human; but both run together to one thing done, each nature acting in communion with the other.
• Break called here.

5. Article 2 objections: many human operations? (“whether there are in Christ many human doings”) #

Three objections, each of which he finds obvious: (1) as man Christ shares the nourishing nature with plants, the sensing with animals, the understanding with angels, and these operate differently; (2) powers and habits are distinguished by acts, and Christ’s soul has many powers and habits; (3) tools are proportioned to operations, and the human body is organic, composed of members differing in form. “Who could deny that?”

• Sed contra: Damascene (Bk. III) — operation follows nature; in Christ one human nature, therefore one human operation.
• His aside on method, from the definition of reason as the ability for large discourse, looking before and after: large discourse includes small discourse, and looking before and after includes looking for distinctions. “I’m looking for a distinction… Looking for Thomas to make a distinction.”

6. What is simpliciter human (“goes forward from reason through the what will”) #

Point: man is what he is by reason, so an operation is human without qualification only if it proceeds from reason and from will, the desire of reason.

• Connects to the start of the Ethics: the subject there is operatio humana, so digesting food is not considered in ethics.
• Non-human-simply operations belong to man by some part of his nature: (a) by the bodily element, which must be borne down — hence it is hard to climb stairs, and he is short of breath uphill, not downhill (“too much earth in me”; mentions his stress test); (b) by the living (nutritive) soul — to nourish and grow; (c) by the sensing part — to see, hear, imagine, remember, have sense desire, be angry.
• A further distinction, also from the Ethics: operations of the sensing soul are in some way obedient to reason, hence in some way reasonable and human; those following the living soul or the bodily element are not subject to reason at all — “I can’t accustom the earth in my body to go up rather than down.”
• Aside on obedient passions: Mozart and eighteenth-century music are “more human and rational” than the Romantic period or “the so-called music of our time.” His cousin Donald, four years in the Navy, hearing only that; then a symphony in Chicago (he thinks Wagner) and being overwhelmed with relief. Soldiers with radios on all night — “no wonder they used this to break down people.”

7. One properly human operation, and why Christ’s are more human (“no motion of the sensitive part, which was not ordered by reason”) #

Point: in a pure man there is one properly human operation; in Christ even the lower operations are more human.

• Principle recalled: when the lower agent acts by its own form, its operation is other than the higher agent’s; when it acts only as moved by the higher, the operation is the same. Example: you and the axe chopping a tree on your property do the same operation.
• So in a pure man the operations of element and living soul are other than the will’s; the sensitive part’s operation, as moved by reason, is the same as the rational part’s. Of the rational soul there is one operation if we look to the principle (reason or will), diversified only by objects — a diversity some call one of things done, but unity of operation is judged from the operating principle alone.
• In Christ no motion of the sensitive part was unordered by reason, and even natural and bodily operations pertained to his will, that his flesh should do or suffer what is proper to it. He quotes: “No one takes away my life… I lay it down myself.” Hence “much more” is this so in Christ than in any other man.
• Exchange with a student: the nearest case apart from the Blessed Mother would be Adam and Eve in their natural integrity — whence the point “that always kind of interests me”: in paradise there could be no venial sin, only mortal.
• Replies: (1) nutritive and sensitive operations are not properly human, yet in Christ were more human than in others; (2) powers and habits are diversified by objects, and that diversity of operations he does not intend to exclude from Christ’s humanity — nor diversity by time (doing today what he did not yesterday) — but only diversity according to the first active principle. (“Well, thank God… Okay, Thomas. Redeem yourself over there.”)

8. Article 3 objections: could Christ merit for himself? (“Christ before death was a comprehensor”) #

Four objections: (1) Christ saw God face to face; a comprehensor does not merit, since the charity of one who comprehends belongs to the reward of beatitude, being enjoyment — and the same thing is not merit and reward. (2) No one merits what is owed him; as natural Son of God the eternal inheritance was owed him. (3) Whoever has the principal thing does not properly merit what follows from it; Christ had the glory of the soul, from which by common order the glory of the body follows (Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus), though by dispensation it did not redound to his body — “they let it flow down in the Transfiguration.” He calls this “a good argument.” (4) Manifestation of Christ’s excellence is the good of those who know him, not his own — John 14: “I will make myself known to him” is promised as a reward to others.

• Sed contra: Philippians 2:8-9 — obedient unto death, “on account of which God has exalted him”: he merited his own exaltation.

9. Body of a. 3: more noble to have through oneself (“the cause which is per se… is potior”) #

1. To have a good through oneself is nobler than through another — the man who discovers the truth himself is nobler than the man who learns from another; the per se cause is potior, “as is said in the eighth book of Natural Hearing.”
2. One has a good “through himself” when he is in some way its cause. God is the first cause of all our good by authority, so no creature has any good of itself (1 Cor. 4:7, “What do you have that you have not received?”); but secondarily one is cause of his own good by cooperating with God — which is merit.
3. Therefore what is had by merit is had more nobly. “It’s more noble to merit a raise than to be given a raise without merit.” (Aside on a peace prize given by the Norwegians: “no justice, just mercy.”)
4. Every perfection and nobility is to be attributed to Christ, so he has by merit what others have by merit — except where the lack would injure his dignity more than merit would increase it. Since merit is only of what is not yet had, Christ would at some time have lacked it. Hence he did not merit grace, knowledge, beatitude of soul, or the divinity itself.
5. But the glory of the body and the things of his outward excellence — ascension, veneration — are less than the dignity of meriting, which belongs to charity; these he had by merit.

• Aside: the articles of faith divide into those of descent and of ascent; by his death on the cross he merited his resurrection, by his descent into hell his ascension. And “to some extent the second coming is merited by the first”: the first humble, no place for him to stay; the second so impressive that there will be no place for us to hide.

10. Replies of a. 3: viator and comprehensor (“he was at the same time viator… and a comprehensor”) #

(1) Fruition, the act of charity — “you enjoy possessing what you love” — belongs to the glory of the soul, which Christ did not merit; so no same thing is merit and reward. He merited not by charity as a comprehensor’s but as a wayfarer’s, because of his body: he was at once viator and comprehensor. “Could say he arrived and never had to go there.” Now, being in no way a wayfarer, he is not in the state of meriting. (2) As God and natural Son, divine glory and dominion were owed him; but as a blessed man, glory was partly to be had without merit and partly with — “I suppose the glory of the body.” (3) The redundance of glory from soul to body is from divine ordering according to the fittingness of human merit: as man merits by acts of the soul exercised in the body, so he is repaid by the soul’s glory redounding to the body (Rom. 8:11, “he will vivify our mortal bodies on account of the indwelling Spirit”). So the body’s glory falls under merit, and did so for Christ. (4) The making known of Christ’s excellence does pertain to his good according to the being he has in others’ knowledge, though chiefly to the good of the knowers according to the being they have in themselves — and that too refers to Christ inasmuch as they are his members. “Kind of convoluted.”

11. Article 4: merit for others, and the mystical body (“constituted the head of all men as regards grace”) #

Objections: (1) Ezekiel 18:20, the soul that sins shall die — so by like reason the soul that merits is itself rewarded. (2) All have received of Christ’s fullness (John 1), yet other men with Christ’s grace cannot merit for others — Ezekiel 14: Noah, Daniel and Job would not deliver son or daughter, but their own souls by their justice. (3) What is merited is owed according to justice, not grace (Rom. 4); so if Christ merited our salvation it is not of grace, and he acts unjustly toward those he does not save, since his merit extends to all.

• Aside: “I wonder if Thomas dictated standing up or sitting, or laying down… I’ve often wondered when these thoughts came to him.”
• Sed contra: Rom. 5:18 — through one man’s crime condemnation came to all, so through one man’s justice justification of life; if Adam’s demerit reached others, much more Christ’s merit. “It’s hopeful thought here.”
• Body: in Christ grace was not only as in an individual man but as in the head of the whole church, to which all are joined as members to the head, so that one person is mystically constituted. Berquist: the mystical body is “probably the most profound statement of what the church is”; in the prayer before communion Thomas asks to receive the body born of Mary so as to be incorporated and numbered among its members. “So if you’re cut off from him, like the branch from the plant… you’re not going to benefit from his merit.” As in one man the head’s action pertains to all the members, sensing not for itself alone.
• Replies: (1) an individual person’s sin harms only himself; Adam’s, as constituted beginning of the whole nature, is derived by propagation of the flesh — likewise Christ’s merit, as constituted head of all men in grace, extends to his members. (2) Others take of Christ’s fullness a particular grace, not the fountain of grace, so they cannot merit for others as he does. He adds his own qualification: “you exclude maybe Mary and some excellent saints from this” — Thomas does not go into it here. (3) As Adam’s sin is derived only by bodily generation, so Christ’s merit only by the spiritual generation of baptism, by which we are incorporated into Christ (Gal. 3, “as many as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ” — the words that converted Augustine: “put on Christ, take no more concern for the body”); and that we be regenerated in Christ is of grace, so man’s salvation is from grace.

His words #

• theandricum — “divine-human,” a doing that is both, without confusion of operations or powers.
• Tool / instrument — “a moved mover”; moved by the chief agent, yet able to act by its own form.
• Operatio humana — a doing proceeding from reason and will; the subject of ethics.
• Organic body — “a body composed of tools.”
• “The ability for large discourse, looking before and after” — his rendering of the definition of reason.
• Simpliciter — “simply, without qualification.”
• Comprehensor / viator — “he had arrived” / “on the road.”
• Fruition — enjoyment; “you enjoy possessing what you love.”
• Potior — “more potent,” of the per se cause.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• Articles of descent and of ascent — the division of the articles of faith about Christ.
• Redundance / overflowing of glory from soul to body.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 19, a. 1, replies 1-5; a. 2 entire; a. 3 entire; a. 4 entire.

Mentioned (in Thomas’s text or by him)

• Dionysius, Letter (to Caius); De divinis nominibus ch. 2
• John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa III
• Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus
• Aristotle, Physics VIII; Nicomachean Ethics, opening (inferred)
• Thomas, De potentia (“the miracle of miracles”); the prayer before communion
• Scripture: Luke 1 (Magnificat); Matthew 1; John 1, 10, 14, 17; 1 Cor. 4:7; Rom. 4, 5:18, 8:11; Gal. 3; Phil. 2:8-9; Ezekiel 14, 18:20
• The definition of the Immaculate Conception; St. Teresa of Jesus

His questions #

• Why does Mary call God “my Saviour” if he did not save her from sins? In view of Christ’s passion she was preserved from sin — like one who removes the stone before you trip.
• If Christ has one esse, why not one operation? Being belongs to the constitution of the person; operation belongs to the person through a nature, and he has two.
• Are there many human operations in Christ? Only one properly human, from reason and will; other operations belong to him by parts of human nature, and in him even these are more human, being ordered by reason.
• Could Christ’s human action be meritorious for himself? Yes — not grace, knowledge, beatitude of soul or divinity, but the glory of the body and his outward excellence (ascension, veneration).
• Does Christ merit now? No: he is in no way a wayfarer, so not in the state of meriting.
• Could Christ merit for others? Yes, as head of the church, so that his merit extends to his members, reached through the spiritual generation of baptism.
• Can any others merit for others as Christ does? No — they receive a particular grace, not the fountain; but he adds that Mary and some excellent saints might be excepted, which Thomas does not discuss here.