Summa III, Q. 20: Is Christ Subject to the Father and to Himself? (with the 'crowning' sense of before and conjecture about the Trinity)

Orientation #

He says “we’re up to question twenty here in the Tertia Pars,” and locates it by re-reading the proemium of q. 16 and the division of the material finished “the last class.” He closes by opening q. 21, the prayer of Christ, and calls a break. The neighbouring classes treat Christ’s operations and merit before, and q. 21 on Christ’s prayer after.

The class, in order #

1. “All’s well that ends well” and the crowning sense of ‘before’ (“still the fine, the crown”) #

• Shakespeare: “All’s well that ends well. Still the fine [from the Latin for end] crowns the work” — and “Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.” Another case of crown used for end.
• Recalls Aristotle’s Categories: four central senses of before — in time, in being, in the discourse of reason, in goodness — and then a further sense added afterwards, not counted fifth in order: the cause before its effect. It is most like the second sense, because as the effect depends on the cause, so what is after in being depends on what is before in being.
• He calls this the “crowning sense,” because reason is not content to know that something is so but wants the reason why.
• Example (faith seeking understanding): why is “love the Lord your God with your whole heart” the greatest and most fundamental commandment? A student offers “you love what’s good”; he asks for something more precise. The middle term comes from the treatise on law (Prima Secundae): law is an ordering by reason for the common good, promulgated by one in authority. God is the common good of the whole universe; therefore love of God is the foundation of all law. And loving neighbour is for God’s sake, not the reverse.

2. Aside: whether reason can reach the Trinity (“but you can conjecture”) #

From De potentia, read that morning: an objection says reason knows God understands, so it knows the Word proceeds. As you naturally form an image when you imagine and a thought when you think, so a thought would proceed from God thinking himself. Thomas: we know that God understands, but not the way he understands — so we have only an imperfect grasp. Still, he says, you can conjecture (Latin for guess) that God is like us in this; and faith then teaches that there is some such likeness. Thomas always denies natural reason arrives at the Trinity.

3. Placing q. 20 in the plan of the Tertia Pars (“look just back at the proemium here”) #

• q. 16 proemium: after the hypostatic union come things that follow upon it — (1) what belongs to Christ in himself, (2) what belongs to Christ in comparison to God the Father, (3) what belongs to Christ as regards us.
• Part (1) was divided into things belonging to Christ according to being and becoming, and things belonging to him by reason of unity (q. 17 ff.) — finished last class.
• Proemium of q. 20 divides part (2) into five: said of Christ toward the Father — his subjection, his prayer, his priesthood (whether according to the order of Melchizedek); said of the Father toward him — whether adoption belongs to him, and his predestination. That carries to about q. 24; q. 25 begins the third part, Christ in comparison to us.
• Aside on language: in English “pray” needs a preposition (“I pray to God”), in Latin it is one word; the prepositionless use survives in Shakespeare’s English and in Thomas More (“I pray you this”).
• Aside: Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma — “quite an endorsement”; carved in stone under the statue at the College of St. Thomas.

4. Article 1, objections: is Christ subject to the Father? (“it seems it should not be said”) #

1. Everything subject to God the Father is a creature (De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus: in the Trinity nothing is serving or subject). But Christ ought not be called a creature simply. So not subject simply. — He calls this “a pretty good” objection.
2. To be subject to God is to be subservient to his dominion; but servitude cannot be attributed to the human nature in Christ, since Damascene (bk. III) says lordship and servitude are not names of nature but of things toward something (relatives), like fatherhood and sonship.
3. 1 Cor 15: when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject. But Heb 2:8 — “not yet do we see all things subject to him.” So not yet subject. (He links the psalm: “Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.”)

• Sed contra: John 14, “the Father is greater than I”; Augustine, De Trinitate I — Scripture reasonably says both that the Son is equal to the Father (according to the form of God) and that the Father is greater (on account of the form of a servant), without confusion of the two natures; but the lesser is subject to the greater.

5. The body of a. 1: three subjections of human nature to God (“a threefold subjection to God”) #

To anyone having a nature belong the things proper to that nature. Human nature by its condition has a threefold subjection to God:

1. According to the grade of goodness — the divine nature is goodness itself (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1, beginning with the name Good), while created nature only partakes of divine goodness, subject as to the rays of that goodness — as the emotions are subject to reason when they partake of reason.
2. According to God’s power — human nature, like any creature, is subject to the operation of the divine disposition.
3. By its own act — insofar as by its own will it obeys his commands. Christ confesses all three of himself:
4. “Why do you ask me about the good? One is good, namely God” — Jerome: he called him good master, not God or Son of God; though a holy man, in comparison to God he is not good. And since in things not great by quantity to be greater is the same as to be better (Augustine, De Trin. VI), the Father is said greater than Christ according to his human nature.
5. All done about the humanity of Christ was done by divine disposition — Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy ch. 4: Christ is subject to the orderings of God the Father; this is the subjection of servitude (Wisdom 16: the creature serving its maker), and in this sense the Son of God took the form of a servant, i.e. as it were the form of a creature.
6. “What is pleasing to him I always do” — the subjection of obedience; Phil 2, “made obedient to the Father usque ad mortem, even death on the cross.”

• He stresses the method: the objector comes up with one way of being subject; Thomas comes up with three, and shows Christ subject in all three by Christ’s own words — “the argument from authority is the strongest in theology.”
• Aside (from his morning reading of the commentary on John, the regulus whose son is sick): when reason rules the rest of you as it should, it is a king; when it rules imperfectly and they are sick, it is only a regulus, a petty king — the spiritual sense of the passage. Shakespeare uses “king”/“queen” for one whose passions are under reason.
• Aside on Plato, Symposium: the ascent to the beautiful itself; God is beauty itself, so in comparison to God even the saints might be called ugly — “maybe a little hyperbole.”

6. Replies of a. 1 (“only according to his human nature”) #

1. As “Christ is a creature” is not to be said simply but only according to his human nature (whether or not the determination is added), so “Christ is subject to the Father” only according to his human nature — the person is not a creature. The qualification is more fittingly added to avoid the error of Arius, who made the Son less than the Father; for if you say simply that he is subject, you will say simply that he is less, and yet he is equal to the Father.
2. Lordship and servitude are founded on action and passion (the servant is moved by the lord’s command). But acting is not attributed to the nature as to the one doing it but to the person — “acts are of supposita,” of singular supposita, “according to the Philosopher. Who is that guy anyway?” Nature is that by which the hypostasis acts. So though nature is not properly lord or servant, a person can be said lord or servant according to this or that nature. Examples: is it my mind that understands, or I who understand by my mind? does my will love, or I by my will? does my stomach digest, or do I? And: man rules the beasts by his nature, the horse serves by his. (Joke: a cow given counsel for the defence.)
3. Augustine, De Trin. I: Christ will hand over the kingdom when the just, whom he now rules by faith, are brought to the vision of the essence common to Father and Son; then he will be totally subject not only in himself but in his members, through full partaking of divine goodness, and all things fully subject to him by the fulfilling of his will — though even now all things are subject to him as regards power (Mt 28, “all power is given to me”). His gloss: Christ as an individual man is completely subject to the Father now; Christ as mystical body will be so later, when we see him face to face.

7. Article 2, objections: can Christ be subject to himself? (“is the controller and the controlled the same?”) #

He prefaces: this looks strange, like asking whether you can obey yourself — “I do it all the time.” Thomas determines everything formally, dividing; in the ability to look before and after is included the ability to look for distinctions (prev. lecture), and nobody sees distinctions like Thomas. Aristotle somewhere says most men are not good at seeing distinctions — as newspapers show.

1. Cyril, in the synodical epistle received by the Synod of Ephesus: Christ is neither servant nor Lord of himself; to say or think so is foolish, rather impious. Damascene bk. III agrees: he cannot be servant and Lord of himself; he is called servant of the Father insofar as subject to him. — “Sounds like a contradiction… big, big names here.”
2. Servitude is said with reference to a lord, but there is no real relation of a thing to itself — Hilary, De Trinitate: nothing is like or equal to itself. “Socrates is the same as Socrates” is a relation of reason, since there are not two Socrateses. (Bill Cosby joke: at funerals people say “doesn’t he look like himself” — so he’ll have a tape recording, “Don’t I look like myself?”)
3. As rational soul and flesh are one man, so God and man are one Christ (Athanasius). But a man is not said subject to himself or servant of himself because his body is subject to his soul; so neither is Christ because his humanity is subject to his divinity.

• Sed contra (three): Augustine, De Trin. I — truth shows that in the way the Father is greater than Christ according to human nature, Christ is also less than himself; again, the Son took the form of a servant without losing the form of God, and according to the form of God the Father is greater than the Son according to human nature, so the Son too is greater than himself according to his human nature; third, Christ according to human nature is servant of God the Father (Jn 20, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God”), and whoever is servant of the Father is servant of the Son, else not all things of the Father would be of the Son. A student calls this last “a very good argument.”

8. The body of a. 2: two ways of understanding, one heretical (“this pertains to the heresy of Nestorius”) #

Lordship and servitude are attributed to a person or hypostasis according to some nature. So “Christ is lord/servant of himself,” or “the Word is Lord of the man Christ,” can be understood two ways:

1. By reason of another hypostasis or person — one person of the Word lording, another of the man serving: the heresy of Nestorius, anathematized at Ephesus (if anyone says the Word is Lord of Christ and does not confess the same one to be at once God and man, let him be anathema). In this sense Cyril and Damascene deny it, and in this sense it must be denied that Christ is less than or subject to himself. There is not one person in Christ subject to another person in Christ.
2. According to the diversity of natures in one person — according to the nature in which he agrees with the Father, it belongs to him with the Father to preside and dominate; according to the nature in which he agrees with us, to be under and to serve. In this way Augustine says the Son is less than himself.

• Caution: since “Christ,” like “Son,” is the name of the person, what belongs to him by reason of his eternal person is said of him per se and absolutely — most of all relations, which more properly pertain to the person. What belongs to him by human nature should be said cum determinatione. So: Christ is simply Lord; he is servant, subject, less, only secundum humanam naturam.

9. Simpliciter and secundum quid (“the mistake of mixing up what is so simply”) #

• The distinction names one of the fallacies outside speech: confusing what is so simply with what is so only in a certain respect. It is the second kind of fallacy outside speech; the first is the fallacy of accident, “which deceives even the wise,” as Aristotle says.
• Meno: can you look for what you don’t know? (We pay researchers to look for a cure they don’t know.) Answer: you know it in some way, though simply you don’t; if you didn’t know it in some way you could not direct your thinking toward it. Aristotle returns to this at the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, coming to know what we don’t know through what we do. He notes that in answering Meno, Socrates makes the same kind of mistake — “did Plato do that on purpose?”
• He stresses to students: “your life is based upon this” — you do what is bad simply because it is good in some way, and omit what is good for you because in some way it is bad. Aristotle, Ethics: the bad man thinks what is bad good and what is good bad — that kind of mistake.
• Aside (added qualification diminishes): Annette wanting to be called Anne; Jacob’s son “Jakey”; a grown cousin still “Charlie Boy”; “mannequin” as a little man.

10. Replies of a. 2 and the naturalness of self-relation (“so one part of you is controlling the other”) #

1. Cyril and Damascene deny Christ is Lord of himself as implying a plurality of supposita, which is required for someone to be simpliciter lord of another.
2. Simply, lord and servant must be other; but some notion of lordship and servitude can be observed in one who is lord of himself according to something else in him. His confirmation that this is not Thomas’s invention: we speak of self-control — “control yourself,” “get in charge of yourself” — and one part is controlling the other. A student asks whether one is in control of oneself the same way as of one’s children; he answers there is something like this there. He notes people dismiss distinctions as “our way of speaking” and then speak that way themselves. Again the regulus: when reason rules the emotions it is king (also in Shakespeare).
3. Because of the diverse parts of man, one above and one below, the Philosopher says in Ethics V that there is a justice of man toward himself, insofar as irascible and concupiscible obey reason; so one man can be said subject and servant according to diverse parts — and so Christ according to diverse natures.

• To the sed contra arguments the response is clear from what was said: Augustine means the Son is less than or subject to himself according to human nature, not according to a diversity of supposita.

11. Closing exchanges (“ex verbis inordinate prolatis”) #

• Cyril is a hero for the Monophysites, since countering Nestorius they went the other way; similarly passages in Augustine get picked on. Augustine grows more precise as he goes on, especially on grace; Thomas’s distinctions do the same.
• De potentia again: whether the relations of Father and Son are real relations — Thomas defends that they are, though the first objection is a text of Damascene whose language is implicit; Thomas explains it “with piety.” But as Jerome says, ex verbis inordinate prolatis heresy [arises].
• A student asks whether Damascene’s work is a compilation of others; he replies De fide orthodoxa is by him “as far as I know,” and declines to comment further.
• Aside: today’s gospel — he went up and prayed all night; talk of differing feast calendars; root beer floats on feasts of an apostle (“root beer and vanilla ice cream, made for each other”), and splitting Simon and Jude onto separate days. On Simon: controversy whether “the Zealot” means the party or zeal in the faith.
• “Then we ought to consider about the prayer” — break called before q. 21.

His words #

• the crowning sense [of before] — the cause before the effect; so called because reason’s end is to know the reason why.
• conjecture — Latin for to guess; what reason can do about a Word proceeding in God, short of knowing it.
• the form of a servant — “as it were the form of a creature.”
• acts are of supposita — action belongs to the person, not to the nature; nature is that by which the person acts.
• determination / cum determinatione — the added qualification “according to his human nature”; simpliciter et secundum quid.
• usque ad mortem — “even to death, death on the cross.”
• anathema — “let him be accursed.”
• ex verbis inordinate prolatis — Jerome, on words uttered in a disordered way [giving rise to heresy].
• regulus — petty king; reason ruling imperfectly, its subjects sick.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 16, proemium (the threefold division)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 20, proemium and aa. 1-2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Within them, as cited by Thomas: De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus; Damascene bk. III; 1 Cor 15; Heb 2:8; Jn 14; Augustine, De Trinitate I and VI; Dionysius, Divine Names 1 and Celestial Hierarchy 4; Jerome on “good master”; Wisdom 16; Phil 2; Mt 28; Cyril, synodical epistle / Synod of Ephesus; Hilary, De Trinitate; Athanasius; Jn 20; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics V

Mentioned

• Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
• Aristotle, Categories (senses of “before”); Posterior Analytics, beginning; Ethics (the bad man’s mistake); the fallacies outside speech
• Thomas, De potentia (God’s thought; real relations in the Trinity); Commentary on John (the regulus); Prima Secundae, treatise on law
• Plato, Meno; Symposium
• Damascene, De fide orthodoxa

His questions #

• Why is loving God with your whole heart the greatest and most fundamental commandment — what is the middle term? Because law is an ordering by reason for the common good, and God is the common good of the whole universe.
• Can natural reason know that a thought proceeds in God? No — we know that God understands, not the way he understands; we can only conjecture, and faith teaches the likeness.
• Ought it to be said simply that Christ is subject to the Father? No — only secundum humanam naturam; simply said, it leads to the error of Arius.
• Is lordship or servitude attributed to the nature or to the person? To the person, according to this or that nature, since acts are of supposita.
• Is Christ already subject to the Father, given that all things are not yet subject to him? As an individual man he is fully subject now; in his members he will be fully subject at the vision of God.
• Can Christ be subject to himself? Not by a plurality of supposita (Nestorius), but yes according to the diversity of natures in one person.
• Is the controller and the controlled the same, when we speak of self-control? One part of you controls the other — as Aristotle’s justice of a man toward himself.
• Can you look for what you don’t know? You know it in some way though not simply; otherwise you could not direct your thinking toward it.
• Is Damascene’s work a compilation of other authors? Left open — De fide orthodoxa is his “as far as I know.”