Summa III, Q27 a.6 & Q28 a.1–2: John the Baptist and Jeremiah Made Holy in the Womb; Mary a Virgin in Conceiving and Giving Birth

Orientation #

He picks up at the last article of q. 27, noting “we already corrected Thomas last time” — last week, with the encyclical of Pius IX, on the Immaculate Conception (prev. lecture). He then moves into q. 28 on the virginity of the Mother of God, articles 1 and 2. The class ends with “Should we take a little break?”

The class, in order #

1. Whether sanctification in the womb was proper to Mary (“it seems that to be made holy in the womb”) #

The objections of q. 27, a. 6: (1) sanctification in the womb was given so she might be fit to be Mother of God, which is proper to her alone; (2) others (David, Abraham, Isaiah, the apostles) came nearer to Christ than Jeremiah and John and are not said to be sanctified in the womb; (3) Job says mercy grew with him from infancy and came out with him from the womb, yet we do not say he was sanctified in the womb. Sed contra: Jeremiah 1:5 (“before you came out of the womb I sanctified you”) and Luke 1:15 (“filled with the Holy Spirit even from the womb of his mother”).

• He reframes: since Mary was immaculately conceived, set her aside and ask whether others, not immaculately conceived, were made holy in the womb.

2. Augustine’s doubt and Thomas’s answer (“Augustine… seems to speak in a dubious way”) #

Augustine (epistle to Dardanus) hesitates: John’s leaping may have been only a sign of a great thing, known from the greater, not from the less — the gospel says not that the infant believed but that he rejoiced, and leaping belongs to beasts too. Aside: a dog given to his son, so excited on his return he had to run it round the house. Augustine grants it may have been an accelerated use of reason and will, a miracle of divine power.

• Thomas’s answer: because Scripture expressly says both things, it must be asserted that Jeremiah and John were sanctified in the womb, though in the womb they did not have the use of free will — as baptized infants do not at once have it. That was Augustine’s difficulty.
• No one else is to be believed sanctified in the womb of whom Scripture does not speak: such privileges outside the common law are ordered to the usefulness of others (1 Cor. 12, “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit unto profit”), and nothing would come of it unless made known to the Church.
• Why these two: as prefiguring the sanctification Christ would give — first through his passion (Heb. 13: Jesus suffered outside the gate to sanctify the people through his blood), which Jeremiah foretold in word and prefigured in his own sufferings; secondly through baptism (“you are washed, you are sanctified”), for which John’s baptism prepared men. He notes Paul’s “buried with Christ” in baptism, especially vivid when the whole person was immersed and came up out of the water.

3. Student exchange: what “sanctified” means here (“does that mean that they’re being made without sin”) #

Q: does sanctified mean made without sin? A: cleansed of original sin — they have no actual sin in the womb, but they have original sin and are washed from it. Q: does that mean they could not sin thereafter, like our Lady? A: no — it is like baptism. And the effect of baptism is not restricted to water; that is only the common way God does it.

4. Replies in a. 6, with his correction of Thomas (“I’ve got to correct Thomas here”) #

• Ad 1: Thomas says Mary obtained a fuller sanctification than John and Jeremiah — a sign being that she would sin neither mortally nor venially. He corrects: we also say she did not contract original sin at all, she was immaculately conceived (“happily conceived” in the recording). To others it was given not to sin mortally, divine grace protecting them — e.g. St Thérèse of Lisieux never committed a mortal sin; but not an excuse from venial sins (1 John: if we say we have no sin, we are liars).
• Ad 2: some saints were more joined to Christ in other respects, but Jeremiah and John were most joined to him as express figures of his sanctification. Jeremiah’s specialty as prophet is the passion and death of our Lord.
• Ad 3: Job’s mercy is not infused virtue but a natural inclination to the act of that virtue.

5. q. 28 opened; objections against a virginal conception (“whether she was a virgin in conceiving”) #

Four articles announced: virgin in conceiving, in giving birth, after giving birth, and whether she vowed virginity. He says here he thinks “Thomas would be one hundred percent okay,” and recalls Jerome as a great defender of the perpetual virginity. Objections to a. 1: (1) no offspring having both father and mother is conceived of a virgin, and Luke 2 calls Joseph Christ’s father (“his father and mother were marveling”; “I and your father, sorrowing, have sought you”); (2) Matthew 1 proves Christ son of David and Abraham through Joseph’s descent, which would prove nothing unless Joseph were his father; (3) Gal. 4, “made from a woman,” and “woman” customarily means one known by man; (4) things of the same species have the same manner of generation, since generation takes its species from its term, and Christ was of the same species with other men — here he interjects “What about Adam? And what about Eve?”; (5) each natural form has a determined matter, and the matter of the human form seems to be the seed of male and female. Sed contra: Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive.”

6. The corpus: four fittingnesses of a virginal conception (“it should be confessed, simpliciter”) #

It must be confessed without qualification that Christ’s mother conceived as a virgin; the contrary belongs to the heresy of the Ebionites (after Ebion) and Cerinthus, who held Christ a pure man born of both sexes. Then, fides quaerens intellectum, four reasons:

1. To preserve the dignity of the Father sending him — since Christ is the true and natural Son of God, it was not fitting he have another father, lest the dignity of God be transferred to another. He calls this “a subtle, subtle reason.”
2. To the property of the Son sent, who is the Word: the word is conceived in the heart without corruption; corruption of the heart does not admit the conception of a perfect word — which is why our thoughts are so imperfect, as against God’s one thought. So the flesh taken by the Word was fittingly conceived without corruption of the mother.
3. To the dignity of Christ’s humanity, in which sin could have no place and through which the world’s sin is taken away (John 1:29, “Behold the Lamb of God”). Aside: this is said three times at the Agnus Dei; a participant notes a similar morning doxology. Corruption comes through the male; with Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence) nothing could arise in the flesh of sin without concupiscence, from which he who would be without sin willed not to be conceived.
4. On account of the end of the Incarnation: that men be reborn sons of God, not of the will of the flesh nor of man but of God — of which an exemplar had to appear in Christ’s conception. Augustine (On Holy Virginity): the head is born by miracle of a virgin, that it might signify his members born of the virgin Church according to the spirit. He notes the order: the one sending, the one sent, the humanity taken on, the end.

• Aside: the Protestant neighbour arguing over the fence with him and his brother Mark that Christ “had brothers”; Thomas quotes the Old Testament where kinsmen (Abraham and Lot) are called brothers; Jerome distinguishes four ways of being brother.

7. Replies on Joseph as “father” and on the genealogy (“putabatur — he was thought”) #

• Ad 1: Bede on Luke — Joseph is called father not truly (against the Photinians) but to preserve Mary’s good name; hence Luke’s “as was supposed, the son of Joseph.” Augustine (On the Good of Marriage): he is father in the way he is husband of Mary, without mixture of flesh, by the bond of marriage — more truly than by adoption; a man is sometimes father of one he did not procreate but adopted.
  • Aside: a Greek philosopher (heard as “Democritus”) said one should not generate a son but adopt one — generating, you don’t know what you’re getting; adopting, you do. He calls this a rationalism he does not agree with, though it has some point: you take what the good Lord gives you, all the problems included.
• Ad 2: Jerome on Matthew — the order of generation is drawn to Joseph because Scripture does not customarily set down the order of women, and because Mary and Joseph were of one tribe, the law binding one to marry within one’s tribe (he remarks this still holds in Afghanistan and the like). Augustine (On Marriage and Concupiscence): lest injury be done to the more worthy male sex; yet nothing is lacking to the truth, since Mary too was of the seed of David. Example: the multiplication of loaves counts five thousand men, not women and children, though they were fed too.
• Ad 3: the gloss — “woman” is used in Hebrew idiom for the female, not for one who has lost virginity.
  • Digression on Christ calling Mary “woman” at Cana and “mother” on the cross: Augustine and Thomas sometimes explain that she is mother of the human nature that suffered, not of the divinity by which he changed water into wine. But he reports another explanation he read (possibly in Thomas on John): he calls her “woman” because of her mercy — it is more characteristic of woman to be merciful, and so Mary is called Mother of Mercy and never Mother of Justice; shown in her pity for those running out of wine. The two explanations are compatible. The apostles share in judging at the last judgment; that role is not fitting for Mary as the woman. Asides: Washington Irving on the trial of Aaron Burr, women pitying the man who shot Alexander Hamilton; children run to the mother rather than the father to be consoled (“Shut up, kid… just walk it off”).

8. Replies on nature, divine power and the seed as agent (“not determined to one way of producing”) #

• Ad 4: the argument holds for things proceeding by way of nature, which is determined to one effect and one way of producing it; but divine power can do infinite things, so it is determined neither to one effect nor to one way. As the first man was formed from the clay of the earth, so Christ’s body from a virgin without male seed. He adds that Adam and Eve each were generated without a couple.
  • Attached argument, from Thomas: God produced the universe by choice, not naturally — many things (all the angels, having no matter) had to be brought into existence by creation, so he was not limited to one; producing some and not others, he must have chosen. If he produced by natural necessity, as Spinoza and seemingly Avicenna hold, he could produce only one thing. Spinoza’s comparison: creation follows from God as having angles equal to two right angles follows from being a triangle. His own examples of natural necessity: if you are two, you are half of four; if a triangle, your angles equal two right angles.
• Ad 5: according to the Philosopher in On the Generation of Animals, the male seed is not matter in conception but only agent; the female alone supplies the matter — “we don’t quite go along with that exactly in our thinking anymore.” So the absence of male seed does not mean suitable matter was lacking. And even if the seed were matter, it would be matter changed, not remaining in the same form; and while natural power transmutes only determined matter to a given form, infinite divine power can transmute any matter into any form — as clay into Adam’s body, so the matter supplied by the mother, even if not sufficient for natural conception.

9. Article 2: objections to virginity in giving birth (“nature after giving birth does not know a virgin”) #

• (1) Ambrose on Luke: he who sanctified another’s womb that a prophet be born, he it is who opened the womb of his mother that the immaculate one might go forth — and opening the womb excludes virginity.
• (2) Nothing in the mystery of Christ should make his body seem imaginary rather than real; to pass through what is closed belongs to an imaginary body, since two bodies cannot be together. (He notes “fantastic” has shifted in meaning toward “imaginary.”) Aside: his own mother thought this a marvelous way of giving birth; another mother, told of it, said “that’s the way to go” — but painless birth seemed to the objector something unreal.
• (3) Gregory (homily on the octave of Easter): by coming to the disciples through closed doors Christ showed his body of the same nature but another glory; so passing through the closed belongs to the glory of the body. But Christ’s body at conception was not glorified but passible, in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8). (Aside: perhaps when glorified we shall go through walls.) Sed contra: a sermon of the Council of Ephesus — nature after giving birth knows a virgin no longer, but grace both shows one giving birth and makes a mother, and does not harm virginity.

10. Corpus of a. 2: three fittingnesses (“she shall bring forth a son”) #

Without any doubt it is to be asserted that she was a virgin in giving birth, for the prophet says not only “a virgin shall conceive” but “and shall bring forth a son.”

1. It fits the property of the one born, the Word: the word is conceived in the heart without corruption and proceeds from the heart without corruption. A sermon of the Council of Ephesus: she who brought forth pure flesh did not cease from virginity; God guarded the virginity, showing thereby that he was the Word — our word does not corrupt the mind when brought forth.
2. It fits the effect of the Incarnation: he came to take away our corruption, so it was not fitting he corrupt his mother’s virginity. Augustine, sermon on the Nativity: let it not be said that her integrity was violated by his coming, who came to heal what was corrupted.
3. Lest he diminish the honor of his mother in being born, who commanded parents to be honored. He remarks this argument can also be used for the Immaculate Conception, and recalls Alphonsus Liguori in The Glories of Mary arguing it from the Trinity: the Father because she is his daughter, the Word because she is his mother, the Holy Spirit because she is his spouse.

11. Replies in a. 2: manner of speaking, mixing marvels with humble things, and the gifts (“all these things were done miraculously”) #

• Ad 1: Ambrose is expounding the law that every male opening the womb be called firstborn and dedicated; as Bede says, this is said after the customary manner of birth. “Opening” signifies not any tearing or loss of virginity but only the going forth of the offspring from the mother’s womb.
• Ad 2: Christ willed to show the truth of his body and at the same time declare his divine nature, mixing marvelous things with humble ones: born of a woman, he shows a true body; born of a virgin, his divinity — “such a coming forth befits God,” as Ambrose says in his Nativity hymn. He notes Thomas’s observation that the gospels narrate now something showing divinity, now something showing humanity: Christ left a place because they wanted to kill him, though he could have stayed invisible or stopped them; and he was hungry.
• Ad 3: some said Christ took on the gift of subtlety at his birth in going forth from the closed womb, and the gift of agility in walking dry-shod on the sea. This does not fit what was determined above: the gifts of the glorified body come from the overflow of the soul’s glory into the body, and before his passion Christ permitted his flesh to do and suffer what is proper to flesh, with no such overflow. Therefore all these were done miraculously by divine power. Augustine on John: closed doors did not stand in the way of the bulk of his body where divinity was — he who could enter without their being opened is the one at whose birth his mother’s virginity remained unviolated. Dionysius, in a certain epistle: Christ did above man the things that are of man — a virgin conceiving supernaturally, and unstable water sustaining the weight of earthly feet; i.e. these are miracles.

His words #

• “made holy in the womb” — sanctified in the womb, i.e. cleansed of original sin before birth.
• “known from the greater, not known from the less” — Augustine’s principle about John’s leaping as sign.
• “the common law” / “the common way” — the ordinary manner in which God gives an effect (e.g. baptism by water), from which privileges of grace depart.
• “happily conceived” — his phrase in place of immaculately conceived [ed.: probably a slip or ASR; he elsewhere says “immaculately conceived”].
• “simpliciter” — without qualification; how the virginal conception must be confessed.
• Fides quaerens intellectum — faith seeking understanding; how he labels Thomas’s move from authority to reasons of fittingness.
• “incubitus” — the sexual union in marriage; he pauses over how to translate it, and the title of Augustine’s On Marriage and Concupiscence (“nuptials and concupiscence”).
• putabatur — “he was thought” (the son of Joseph).
• “fantastical / fantastic” — imaginary, not real; he notes the word has shifted in meaning.
• “gift of subtlety,” “gift of agility” — two of the four gifts of the glorified body.
• “the flowing back… of the glory of the soul to the body” — the redundantia by which the gifts come to the body.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 27, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 28, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 28, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Quoted within these: Jeremiah 1:5; Luke 1:15; 1 Cor. 12; Hebrews 13; Luke 2 (“his father and mother”); Matthew 1 (genealogy); Galatians 4; Isaiah 7:14; John 1:29; Romans 8; Augustine, Epistle to Dardanus, On Marriage and Concupiscence, On the Good of Marriage, On Holy Virginity, sermon on the Nativity, On John; Ambrose on Luke and his Nativity hymn; Bede on Luke; Jerome on Matthew; Gregory, homily on the octave of Easter; a sermon of the Council of Ephesus; Dionysius, a certain epistle; Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals.

Mentioned

• Encyclical of Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception (prev. lecture)
• 1 John (“if we say we have no sin”)
• Jerome’s four ways of being “brother”
• Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary
• Spinoza; Avicenna; “Democritus” (inferred, on adopting rather than generating a son)
• Washington Irving on the trial of Aaron Burr

His questions #

• Was sanctification in the womb proper to the Blessed Virgin, or were others so sanctified? Scripture forces us to say Jeremiah and John the Baptist were; no others, since Scripture does not mention them.
• Did they have the use of free will in the womb? No — that was Augustine’s difficulty; like baptized infants, they do not at once have its use.
• Does “sanctified” here mean they could no longer sin, as with our Lady? No; it is like baptism — cleansed of original sin, not confirmed against sinning.
• Why these two and not others closer to Christ? They were most joined to him as express figures of his sanctification — through his passion (Jeremiah) and through baptism (John).
• Why was it fitting that Christ be conceived of a virgin? Four reasons: the dignity of the Father sending, the property of the Word sent, the dignity of his sinless humanity, and the end of the Incarnation.
• If all men of the same species are generated the same way, why not Christ? Nature is determined to one way; divine power is not — as Adam was formed from clay.
• Is the male seed the matter of conception? Aristotle says it is agent only, the female supplying the matter — “we don’t quite go along with that exactly anymore”; and in any case divine power can transmute any matter into any form.
• Why is the genealogy drawn to Joseph rather than to Mary? Scripture does not set down the order of women, and both were of the same tribe; nothing is lost, since Mary too was of David’s seed.
• Why does Christ call Mary “woman” at Cana and “mother” on the cross? Either because she is mother of the nature that suffered and not of the divinity, or because “woman” bespeaks her mercy — the two are compatible.
• Was Mary a virgin in giving birth, and by what power did Christ pass through the closed womb? Yes, without any doubt; not by the gifts of a glorified body (his flesh was still passible) but miraculously, by divine power.