Christ's Merit and Beatific Vision from the First Instant of His Conception; Is Birth Said of the Person or the Nature?

Orientation #

He begins from the opening prayer and the reasons in the Summa Contra Gentiles why men left to themselves err about God; then takes up q. 34, a. 3 as the next article in course. He notes that the manifestation of Christ’s birth “will be in the next question.”

The neighbouring classes treat the conception of Christ (before) and Christ’s temporal birth, two sonships and Mary as Mother of God (after).

The class, in order #

1. The prayer and the two causes of error (“the weakness in their ability to judge”) #

Point: the class prayer matches Thomas’s diagnosis in Summa Contra Gentiles (bk. I, ch. 4 — he corrects himself from “third chapter” to fourth).

• Two reasons men go wrong about God: the debilitas of their power of judging, and the permixtio of phantasms/images.
• Hence the prayer: strengthen the light of our mind (it is the light of the mind that lets us judge) and order our images (so we are not led astray by images).

2. q. 34, a. 3, objections: could Christ merit in the first instant? (“just as free judgment is to meriting”) #

• Obj. 1: free will stands to meriting as to demeriting; but the devil could not sin in the first instant of his creation (Prima Pars); therefore Christ’s soul could not merit in the first instant of its creation. Aside: “as Plato says, likeness is a slippery thing” — the devil and Christ may not be alike here.
• Obj. 2: what one has in the first instant of conception seems natural, and by natural things we do not merit — “I didn’t merit today by digesting my food,” his grandchildren did not merit by growing. So Christ’s first use of free judgment would be a natural, not a free, act.
• Obj. 3: what one merits at once one already makes in some way his own, and no one merits what is his own; so Christ would afterwards have merited nothing, which is clearly false.
• Sed contra (Augustine on Exodus): increase of merit was impossible to the soul of Christ — which could not be so unless he had merited in the first instant.

3. Digression: natural and free in God (“in one the same act is natural and free”) #

Prompted by obj. 2. God loves himself by natural necessity; could he by the same act freely love us? Yes — the same act is natural and free, but not with respect to the same things; it is not necessary for God to love us. In us and in the devil the natural act is not the free act. “It’s very hard for us to understand the simplicity of God” — we must know his simplicity in a composite way, as when we say God has a will because of his understanding, though understanding and will are the same thing, neither really causing the other.

Aside: Augustine’s Letter 120 — teach people to understand what they believe according to their capacity; a threefold distinction, some cannot understand at all yet still believe, some a little, some more. Applied to instructing grandchildren beyond their years.

4. a. 3, body: sanctification by one’s own act (“actus est perfectior quam habitus”) #

1. Christ was sanctified by grace in the first instant of conception (established above).
2. Sanctification is twofold: of adults, according to their own act; of children, not by their own act of faith but by the faith of parents or the Church.
3. The first is more perfect, because act is more perfect than habit, and what is per se than what is per alio.
4. Christ’s sanctification was perfectissima, since he was sanctified so as to be the sanctifier of others.
5. Therefore he was sanctified according to his own motion of free will towards God — an actual, not merely habitual, motion; and that motion is meritorious. Therefore Christ merited in the first instant.

He glosses: like St Paul telling the slack man to “stir up the grace that is in you” — habitual grace roused into something more actual. Aside on the fifth book of wisdom [Metaphysics V (inferred)], the book of names: after “perfect” and “whole” it takes up three words connected with perfection — end, per se, and half.

Exchange: was that first act enough to save us? “He didn’t have to do much… but he chose the most glorious, most painful, so that we would have no excuse not to love him.” He remembers Fr. Baumgartner stressing that Christ can merit for us from the very instant of his creation. “You can breathe freely once you know he’s been conceived.”

5. a. 3, replies (“to the good per se and naturally”) #

• Ad 1: free will does not stand the same way to good and to bad: to the good per se and naturally, to the bad by way of defect and outside nature. Citing “the philosopher in the second book about the universe” [ed.: De Caelo II (inferred)], what is outside nature is a cutting-off or falling-away from what is according to nature. Hence a creature whose nature is whole (as the angel’s was at creation) can in the first instant be moved to merit good, but not to sin. He adds: it is no defect in God’s will that he cannot will the bad. Aside: Cicero in De Republica on the natural law — the man who goes against it departs from himself and his nature, and will be punished most severely; the same thing Thomas says of the devil’s fall and Shakespeare says of evil.
• Ad 2: natural is what a man has at the beginning by the common course of nature; but nothing prevents a creature from receiving some benefit of grace at the beginning of its creation, and such grace is said, by a certain likeness, to be natural to that man (Augustine, Enchiridion). Student: one might call it co-natural. Adam was created in grace too — but much more so for Christ, since his human nature is joined to the person of the Word: “full of grace and truth” (John), one following on the other.
• Ad 3: nothing prevents a thing being someone’s from diverse causes. The glory of immortality merited in the first instant he could also merit by later acts and sufferings — not that more would be owed him, but that we owe it to him for many causes. Example: being so indebted to someone you could not be more indebted; his daughter thanking her mother on her birthday for giving her life.

6. q. 34, a. 4, objections: was Christ a perfect comprehensor at conception? (“merit precedes reward”) #

• Obj. 1: merit precedes reward as guilt precedes punishment; Christ merited in the first instant; the status of comprehensor is the chief reward; so he was not then a comprehensor.
• Obj. 2: “these things it was necessary for Christ to suffer, and so to enter into his glory”; glory pertains to comprehension; he had not yet suffered.
• Obj. 3: what belongs neither to man nor to angel seems proper to God; but always to be blessed belongs to neither — for had they been created blessed they would not afterwards have sinned. Comment: that sounds like what a modern scriptural scholar would say — he earned it like the rest of us, “like us in all things but sin.”
• Sed contra: Psalm 64 (Vulgate), Beatus quem elegisti et assumpsisti, referred by the gloss to Christ’s human nature, taken on by the Word in unity of person — and it was taken on in the first instant of conception.

Aside (on the sed contra): in the Summa Contra Gentiles nothing is more perfect for man than the pursuit of wisdom, because he already partakes in some way of his end, beatitude — “Blessed is the man who dwells with wisdom” (Ecclesiasticus). Already having something of the end is the third sense of “perfect” Aristotle gives in the fifth book.

Asides: an evening of logic with two visitors, syllogisms through the impossible converted to direct proof in another figure and the letters changing — “it would be great to be in heaven and do that stuff”; Obama’s “corpse man” for corpsman, and Biden on Iraq.

7. a. 4, body and replies (“he was in act a comprehensor”) #

1. It was not fitting that Christ receive habitual grace only, without the act (clear from what was said in a. 3).
2. He received grace not to some measure or limit; but wayfarer’s grace, falling short of the comprehensor’s, has a lesser measure.
3. Therefore in the first instant he accepted not only as much grace as the comprehensors have, but greater than that of all of them.
4. And since that grace was not without act, he was in act a comprehensor, seeing God through his essence more clearly than any other creature.

• Ad 1: Christ did not merit the glory of the soul, by which he is called comprehensor, but the glory of his body, at which he arrived through his passion.
• Ad 2: answered the same way — “and so enter into his glory,” i.e. the glory of his body.
• Ad 3: because he was both God and man, even in his humanity he had something beyond other creatures: statim, from the beginning, he was blessed, full of grace and truth (John).

8. Digression on the Gospels and on understanding Scripture (“intellectum valde ama”) #

Prompted by the Johannine text. Does the Church call John the greatest Gospel? Not known — Origen says so; Vatican II sets the Gospels above the other New Testament books but does not choose among them. Peter’s confession: Mark and Luke have only “the Christ”; only Matthew has “the Son of the living God” and the building of the Church — you cannot build the Church on “you are the Christ” alone. Two eyewitnesses (Matthew, John) and two disciples of eyewitnesses (Mark of Peter, Luke of Paul). Thomas wrote commentaries only on Matthew and John. Why no institution of the Eucharist in John’s Last Supper, when the supper takes nearly a quarter of the gospel? — John wrote last and fills in what others omitted (ch. 6). An aside on growing up before the cycle of gospel readings and assuming the priest was changing the text.

On the modern denial: they say if Christ had the vision he was not “like us in all things.” Reply: “we’re not there yet, but that doesn’t mean something’s wrong” — the vision is not foreign to human nature, it is supernatural, a gift.

Back to Letter 120: intellectum valde ama — love understanding very much. Heretics accept Scripture but do not understand it and follow themselves, so Scripture becomes harmful to them. The seed on the footpath: those who hear the word and do not understand it, and the birds/demons take it away. If they do not cultivate what is required for understanding, God lets the demons take it away. He mentions Arius and Sabellius and “the Father is greater than I,” to be understood of Christ’s human nature. He notes the humility quotation is in Letter 118. Jest: “Put these Franciscans in their place.”

9. q. 35 introduced: the eight questions on Christ’s birth (“first, whether birth is of nature or the person”) #

After the conception, the birth: first the birth itself, second its manifestation (next question). Eight articles: (1) is birth of nature or person; (2) whether a birth other than the eternal one is to be attributed to Christ — the Christmas masses mark the two births, the midnight mass with John’s gospel; (3) whether according to the temporal birth the Blessed Virgin is his mother; (4) whether she ought to be called Mother of God — Protestants generally do not like to, “they don’t understand”; (5) whether Christ is the son of God the Father and of the Virgin according to two sonships — “I don’t think he’s going to be two sons… but why shouldn’t he, he has two births? We’ll see what the master says”; (6) the manner of the nativity; (7) its place; (8) its time. “Very thorough, Thomas” — the diligent student is a loving one, who wants all the little details.

Asides: two pamphlets from Stratford-upon-Avon — in the year Shakespeare disappeared from the record, five acting companies came to Stratford, several short of personnel, so he may have joined one and reached London; a painting of Sir Walter Scott standing at Shakespeare’s grave, the lighting capturing his reverence. Then the point of the aside: a diligent love of Christ wants every small detail, as Alphonsus does in his meditations on the Passion and on Christ laid on the straw — he quotes a saint that the Blessed Mother was inspired to lay the newborn on a hard surface so that he could suffer.

10. q. 35, a. 1: born is said of the hypostasis, birth is named from nature (“nativity is of the hypostasis, not of nature”) #

• Obj. 1: Augustine (On Faith, to Peter) — the divine and eternal nature cannot be conceived and born of human nature except according to the truth of human nature; so if being born belongs to divine nature by reason of human nature, much more to human nature itself.
• Obj. 2: according to the philosopher in the fifth book, the name “nature” is taken from birth; denominations follow likeness; so birth pertains more to nature.
• Obj. 3: that is properly born which through birth begins to be; the person of Christ does not begin to be, but the human nature does.
• Sed contra: Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa III — nativity is of the hypostasis, not of nature. Aside: he has met a text of Thomas taking “orthodox” not as right opinion but right glory (doxa) — “interesting; you never know.”
• Body: birth is attributed to something in two ways — (a) as to the subject of the birth, (b) as to the term or end. As to subject: to be born is a kind of being generated, and a thing is generated that it might be; but being belongs properly to what subsists; the person or hypostasis is signified in the manner of a thing subsisting (not in another as in a subject), while nature is signified in the manner of the form in which something subsists. So being born is attributed to the person. As to the term: the end of every generation and birth is the form, and nature is signified in the manner of form; whence “birth is a way into nature” (Aristotle, second book of the Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]), and the intention of nature ends at the form or nature of the species. He notes Aristotle argues in Physics II that nature is both matter and form in the genus of substance. Aside: asked why he says “Natural Hearing” rather than “physics” — Thomas says physica because in his day there was no confusion; “natural hearing” is more revealing and is the actual Greek title.
• Ad 1: because in divine things nature and hypostasis are identical, nature is sometimes put for person; so Augustine says the divine nature was conceived and born, because the person of the Son was conceived and born according to human nature. He presses this: John says “the Word was made flesh,” not “the divine nature was made flesh” or “made man.” “God” signifies that which has the divine nature, so one says God became man, “so that man might become God” (Augustine) — but not that the divine nature became man. Likewise one does not say the divine nature generates, but God generates, since the Father who has the divine nature generates; the divine nature is that by which he generates, not what generates. “Be careful.” A student corrects the attribution: the quotation is not Augustine’s but Fulgentius’, who seems to have taken that way of speaking from Greek custom — “so we saved the day for Saint Augustine.” Compare Basil calling the Father the cause of the Son: such speech is to be piously expounded.
• Ad 2: no motion or change is named from the subject moved but from the end of the motion, from which it has its species. Example: coming in from the cold, “I’m not becoming a man, I’m becoming warm” — named from the term. So birth is denominated not from the person born but from the nature at which it terminates.
• Ad 3: nature properly speaking does not begin to be; rather the person begins to be in some nature, since nature signifies that by which something is, while person signifies what subsists, not in another but of itself.

Closing question: “So who was born? — The Son.”

His words #

• debilitas — the weakness of the power of judging, one of two causes of error about God.
• permixtio of phantasms — the mixing-in of images, the other cause.
• “likeness is a slippery thing” — attributed to Plato, against pressing the devil/Christ parallel.
• “the fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V], “the book about names,” on equivocals used in wisdom.
• per se vs. per alio — of itself vs. through another; what is per se is more perfect.
• comprehensor vs. wayfarer (via) — one who sees God through his essence vs. one on the way; wayfarer’s grace has a lesser measure.
• statim — at once, from the beginning.
• intellectum valde ama — “love the understanding very much” (Augustine, Letter 120).
• co-natural — a student’s word, adopted for grace given at the beginning of creation.
• hypostasis — the Greeks’ word for the person; what subsists, not in another as in a subject.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics] — he prefers it to “physics” as more revealing and the actual Greek title.
• “birth is a way into nature” — via in naturam, Aristotle, Physics II.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 34, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 34, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 35, prologue (the eight articles) and a. 1 (whole)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. 4; and on the pursuit of wisdom as partaking of the end
• Augustine, Letter 120; Letter 118 (humility); on Exodus; Enchiridion
• Fulgentius, On Faith, to Peter (the text often ascribed to Augustine)
• John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa III
• Aristotle, Physics II; “second book about the universe” [ed.: De Caelo II (inferred)]; Metaphysics V (inferred)
• Cicero, De Republica (natural law)
• Psalm 64 (Vulgate) with the gloss; Ecclesiasticus on dwelling with wisdom; John 1:14; Matthew 16 (Peter’s confession)
• Basil (the Father as cause of the Son); Origen on John; Vatican II on the Gospels; Alphonsus Liguori’s meditations

His questions #

• Why do we ask the angels to strengthen the light of our mind and order our images? Because judgment depends on the mind’s light, and images are what lead us astray — the two causes of error in SCG I.4.
• Could God love himself by natural necessity and freely love us by the same act? Yes — the same act is natural and free, but not with respect to the same things.
• Did Christ merit in the first instant of his conception? Yes: his sanctification was most perfect, hence by his own actual motion of free will towards God, which is meritorious.
• If he merited everything at once, what did his later acts and passion merit? The same glory from diverse causes — not that more was owed him, but that we owe it to him for many causes.
• Was Christ a perfect comprehensor in the first instant? Yes: he had greater grace than all comprehensors, and not without act, so he saw God through his essence more clearly than any creature.
• Then what did he merit by the passion? The glory of his body, not the glory of his soul.
• If he had the beatific vision, was he not unlike us in all things? The vision is not foreign to human nature; it is supernatural, a gift — “we’re not there yet.”
• Is birth of nature or of the person? As to the subject that is born, of the hypostasis; as to its term, it is named from the nature.
• Do we say the divine nature became man, or that the divine nature generates? No: God became man, and God (the Father, who has the divine nature) generates; the nature is that by which, not that which.
• Why say “Natural Hearing” instead of “physics”? Because “physics” is confusing today, and “Natural Hearing” is the actual Greek title and more revealing.