The Nativity of Christ: Born Without Pain, in Bethlehem, at the Fullness of Time (ST III, q.35, a.6–8)

Orientation #

He opens by locating the class: “So up to thirty-five, six, right? Question thirty-five, article six” — continuing the reading of the Tertia Pars begun earlier (prev. lecture). The class reads and comments on articles 6, 7 and 8 in order, with a long digression before the replies of article 8, and breaks for a nap at the end of the question.

The class, in order #

1. Opening prayer and the question of article 6 (“whether Christ was born without the pain of his mother”) #

Prayer to God our enlightenment, the guardian angels and St. Thomas. He then puts article 6.

Three objections, read and glossed:

1. Death follows the sin of the first parents (Genesis 2, “in whatever day you eat, you will die by death” — he notes the doubled Latin, morte moriemini), and so does birth-pain (Genesis 3, “in pain you will bear thy sons”); Christ willed to undergo death, so by like reason his birth should be with pain.
2. The end is proportional to the beginning; Christ’s life ended in pain (Isaiah, “truly he bore our pains”); so his nativity too. He adds his own phrase: “Born another’s pain, we died our own.”
3. The book On the Origin/Birth of the Savior says midwives came, which would only be needed by one in pain.

Sed contra: Augustine’s sermon on the Nativity, to the Virgin Mother — “neither in conception without modesty, nor in birth with pain.”

2. The body of article 6 (“there was no opening of the muscles there”) #

1. Birth-pain is caused by the opening of the passage through which the offspring comes forth (he hesitates over the Latin word — “the channel of the body”).
2. But it was said above that Christ came forth from his mother’s closed womb — as he came through the wall after the Resurrection.
3. Therefore no opening, therefore no pain and no corruption, but the greatest joy, that a God-man was born into the world; Isaiah 35, “germinating it will germinate like a lily, and will exult with joy and praise.”

Aside: “My mother always said this is a marvellous kind of giving birth. She was quite taken up with this.”

3. Replies of article 6 (“she was both mother and the what obstetrician”) #

• To 1: Birth-pain follows in woman upon commixture with the male — Genesis 3:16 joins “you will bring forth in pain” to “you will be under the power of the man.” Augustine (sermon on the Assumption): the Virgin is excepted from that sentence; without the pollution of sin and without the detriment of male commixture she received Christ, generated him without pain, her virginal integrity unviolated. Christ took death by free will to satisfy for us, not from the necessity of that sentence, since he owed nothing to sin — and, he adds of Mary, “she wasn’t in debt to [it] either… a little bit, Bon Thomas.”
• To 2: Christ by dying destroyed our death and by his pain freed us from pains, so he willed to die in pain; but the mother’s birth-pain did not pertain to his satisfaction, so she need not bear in pain.
• To 3: Luke 2:7 says the Virgin herself wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger; so the Orto Salvatoris narration is apocryphal, i.e. false. Jerome against Helvidius: no midwife there, no woman’s care — she was both mother and midwife. “Which opinion overcomes the delirious sayings of the apocryphal books.”

4. Article 7, objections (“whether Christ ought to be born in Bethlehem”) #

1. Isaiah 2: “from Zion the law comes forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”; Christ is the Word, so he should come forth from Jerusalem.
2. Matthew 2: he shall be called a Nazarene, taken from Isaiah 11, “the flower shall come forth from its root” — Nazareth means blossom/flower; and men are named most of all from their birthplace. Examples: Thomas of Aquino, Augustine of Hippo, and the counter-case Anthony of Padua (“if you ask any Portuguese they’ll tell you”).
3. He was born to announce the truth (John 18, “for this was I born… that I might give testimony to the truth”) — which would be done more easily at Rome, then mistress of the world; Paul to the Romans, “our faith is announced to the whole world.”

Aside on the John 18 text: Thomas quotes it in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and St. Alphonsus at the beginning of the Meditations on the Passion quotes Christ’s “I came to kindle fire”; he objects to his English text’s “alone for this” — “he came also for this here,” i.e. for both purposes.

Sed contra: Micah 5, “and you, Bethlehem Ephrata… from you shall come forth for me the one who is Lord in Israel.” He wonders aloud at “Ephrata” — “our Syriac scholar isn’t here” — and a student distinguishes it from the word meaning “be opened.”

5. Body of article 7: two reasons for Bethlehem (“the house of bread”) #

1. Christ was made of the seed of David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3), and a special promise about Christ was made to David (2 Kings/Samuel); so he willed to be born in Bethlehem, David’s city, that the fulfilment of the promise be shown from the very place — as the evangelist designates, “of the house and family of David,” and the angel said to the shepherds, “in the city of David.” “That gives David a great deal of prominence.”
2. Gregory in the homily: Bethlehem means house of bread, and Christ said “I am the living bread come down from heaven.” So the reason is in the very name.

6. Replies of article 7 (“he chose Bethlehem for his nativity, Jerusalem for his passion”) #

• To 1: David was born in Bethlehem but chose Jerusalem for the seat of his kingdom and the temple; Jerusalem was thus at once royal and priestly. Christ’s priesthood and kingdom were consummated in his passion; so fittingly Bethlehem for the nativity, Jerusalem for the passion. At the same time he confounds the glory of men who glory in drawing origin from noble cities: he chose to be born in an ignoble city and to suffer opprobrium in a noble one. Examples: Churchill born at Blenheim; “he just goes against the grain all the time… backwards.” Chesterton on his conditional baptism: “I bowed my head and the whole world came upright.” His father wanted burial not at the parish church but at the cathedral, “a real church.”
• To 2: Christ willed to flower according to virtuous life, not according to the origin of his flesh; hence he was nourished and educated at Nazareth, to flower there, growing in wisdom and strength; but at Bethlehem he willed to be born as a traveller/wanderer away from home. Gregory: through the humanity assumed he was born as in an alien nature — not according to his power but according to nature. Bede: diversorium (he works out the word — an inn or stopover), that he who found no room at the inn might prepare many mansions for us in his Father’s house.
• To 3: from a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (footnote: Theodotus [ASR: “Theodorus”]) — had he chosen great Rome, men would have attributed the transformation of the world to the power of its citizens; to show his divinity he chose a poor mother and a poor native country, for “God chose the infirm of the world to confound the strong” (1 Corinthians 1). Yet in Rome, head of the world, he established the head of his Church, in sign of perfect victory, that faith be derived thence to the whole world; Isaiah 26, “he humbled the sublime city… the foot of the poor one” (Christ), “the steps of the needy” (Peter and Paul, the princes of the apostles). He notes John Paul II’s usage “princes of the apostles.”

He sums the replies: “you see why he was born in Bethlehem, why he grew up in Nazareth, why he died outside Jerusalem, and then why he established Peter eventually in Rome.” Aside: the Quo vadis story — Peter leaving Rome meets Christ, “I am going to be crucified again,” and turns back.

7. Article 8, objections (“whether Christ was born in a suitable time”) #

1. He came to call his own back to liberty, but was born in a time of slavery, when the whole world was tributary to Augustus (Luke 2 — which is why they went to Bethlehem). He finds the objection odd: “it seems like he came to free us.”
2. The promises were made to the Jews, not the Gentiles (Romans 9:4); but he was born under an alien king, “in the days of Herod the king” (Matthew 2) — Herod an Edomite, not really a Jew.
3. Christ’s presence is compared to the day, since he is the light of the world (“I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day”); but the day is longer in summer, and he was born in the depth of winter, octavo Kalendas Januarii — which he glosses as eight days before the beginning of January, admitting “I never understood how they calculate the thing.”

Sed contra: Galatians 4:4, “when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made from a woman, made under the law.” “It’s very interesting expression, the fullness of time. How could time be more full?”

8. Body of article 8 (“the Lord and the Maker of all times”) #

Other men are born subject to the necessity of time; Christ, Lord and maker of all times, chose for himself a time to be born, as he chose a mother and a place. And the things that are from God are ordered (Romans 13:1) and he did all things in wisdom; so he was born at a most suitable time. A footnote dispute follows: his text gives “8:1” for both Romans citations; the class compares editions and he concludes “this is a misprint,” Romans 13:1 for the one and Wisdom for the other.

9. Reply to 1: three reasons the time was suitable (“Maxima pax fuit mundo”) #

• Bede: as he took our mortal nature to bring us back to life, he willed to be incarnate at the time when, once born, he would be written down in Caesar’s census — subject to servitude for our liberation.
• That time had the whole world under one prince, and there was the greatest peace, the Pax Romana; fitting for him “who is our peace, making both one” (Ephesians 2 — Jews and Gentiles). Jerome on Isaiah: looking over the old histories, up to the twenty-eighth year of Augustus’s reign there was discord in the whole world; the Lord being born, all wars ceased — “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” (Isaiah).
• That one prince dominated the world fits him who came to gather his own into one, “one flock” (unum ovile).

He counts: “he gives what three reasons why that time was suitable” — freeing us, peace, unity. Asides: Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra on the world at peace under Augustus; a student notes 28 is the second perfect number and he compares the rabbinic conundrum why Genesis begins with beth, not aleph; the Pope reigning from Rome as succeeding the emperor in unifying.

10. Digression (“Caesar, you know, is kind of comparing himself to God”) #

On Julius Caesar: Caesar as the unmoved North Star, everything revolving about him, refusing to change his mind on an exile — which he links to his rereading of his favourite book, the Summa Contra Gentiles, ch. 13 on God’s existence, 14 and 15 on God as altogether unchangeable and eternal. Then Sophocles’ seven surviving plays: Ajax’s trouble with the gods (he tells Athena “go away, I don’t need you”); Antigone’s “I cannot love a friend whose love is words”; Philoctetes on Odysseus persuading Achilles’ son against his nature, and self-contempt; Oedipus at Colonus as apotheosis rather than tragedy. The old saying: Sophocles is Homer writing tragedy, Homer is Sophocles writing epic. A student raises orbis terrarum as evidence the ancients knew the earth round — “so I don’t know where they come up with this flat earth idea”; the Pope’s Urbi et Orbi. Then penances: John Paul II sleeping on the floor; Paul VI’s hair shirt and near-fasting, weeping over a seventy-year-old priest’s dispensation; General McChrystal on one meal a day and four hours’ sleep; MacArthur “too tired to eat,” at the front two hours before dawn. A student draws the moral: if a natural man can do that with no supernatural help, the saints’ extraordinary penances become more believable. He adds: “make it supernatural, make it purgatory.”

11. Replies 2 and 3 of article 8 (“Christ wished to be born in the time of an alien king”) #

• To 2: so that Jacob’s prophecy be fulfilled (Genesis), “the scepter shall not be taken from Judah, nor the ruler from his thighs, until he come who is to be sent.” Chrysostom on Matthew: as long as the Jewish nation was under Jewish kings, though sinners, it was held in its kingdom and prophets were sent for its remedy; but when God’s law was under the power of a wicked king, Christ was born, because great and desperate infirmity required a more skilful physician. He debates the translation of the word: not “artful,” not “artificial” (now pejorative) — “skillful.”
• To 3: from Augustine’s Questions on the New and Old Testament — Christ willed to be born when the daylight begins to increase, to show he came that men might grow in the divine light; Luke 1 (Zachary’s canticle), “to illumine those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” He remarks that this is why the ancients kept the solstices: the shortening days worry you, then it turns around, “so even those pagan things, there’s something to be said for their celebrating that particular feast.” He notes the light on his own drive home now reaches almost to Worcester. Likewise Christ chose the harshness of winter for the Nativity, to undergo affliction of the flesh for us — as St. Alphonsus brings out in his meditations on the Incarnation: he wanted to suffer from the beginning, and so inspired his mother to lay him down. Aside: he was born January 18th, “I don’t know why I can’t apply some of this to me?” — a student: “you were coddled in a nice warm little bed.”

12. Closing game: a Gospel for each season (“which season is the most appropriate to read each gospel?”) #

Played “kind of playfully”: Luke for Lent, since Luke is more explicit about the passion, the blood, the priesthood of Christ, “the gospel of mercy”; Matthew for the Nativity; Isaiah read in the office in Advent, and Isaiah is paired with Matthew on the traditional chart of four prophets over four evangelists (“Emmanuel is found only in those two”). Jeremiah with Luke, Daniel with John, Ezekiel uncertain — the pairing is left unfinished. Break called: “before you got a new question, that’s the appropriate time.”

His words #

• “Morte moriemini” — the doubled Hebrew idiom in Genesis 2, “you will die by death.”
• “Commixture” — union with the male, upon which birth-pain follows in woman.
• “Colluvione” — the pollution of sin, from which the Virgin is free.
• “Obstetrician” [ed.: midwife] — his rendering of obstetrix; “she was both mother and obstetrician.”
• “Apocryphal, which is apocryphal to be false” — his gloss on the Orto Salvatoris.
• “House of bread” — Gregory’s etymology of Bethlehem.
• “Diversorio” — worked out in class as inn or stopover on the road.
• “Fullness of time” — Galatians 4:4; “how could time be more full?”
• “Maxima pax fuit mundo” — the Pax Romana as the setting of the Nativity.
• “Unum ovile” — one sheepfold/flock.
• “Skillful” — his preferred rendering for the physician required by desperate infirmity (rejecting “artful,” “artificial”).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 35, a. 6 (whole article, with objections and replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 35, a. 7 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 35, a. 8 (whole article)

Mentioned (as cited within those articles or by him)

• Genesis 2; Genesis 3:16; Genesis (Jacob’s prophecy, the scepter of Judah)
• Isaiah 2; 11; 26; 35; “truly he bore our pains”; “nation shall not lift up sword”
• Micah 5
• Matthew 2; Luke 1; Luke 2:7; John 18; Romans 1:3; Romans 9:4; Romans 13:1 (his text misprints 8:1); 1 Corinthians 1; Ephesians 2; Galatians 4:4
• 2 Kings [Samuel], the promise to David
• Augustine, sermon on the Nativity; sermon on the Assumption; Questions on the New and Old Testament
• Jerome, Against Helvidius; Jerome on Isaiah
• Gregory, homily (Bethlehem, and the alien nature); Bede; Chrysostom on Matthew; a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (Theodotus, inferred from footnote)
• De ortu Salvatoris (apocryphal)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles chs. 13, 14, 15
• St. Alphonsus, Meditations on the Passion; meditations on the Incarnation
• Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus; Sophocles, Ajax, Antigone, Philoctetes, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus; Homer
• Chesterton (on his conditional baptism); Francis de Sales, letters (on being a bishop)

His questions #

• Why was Christ born without his mother’s pain? Because he came forth from a closed womb; no opening of the passage, so no pain, no corruption, but the greatest joy.
• If Christ willed to die in pain, why not be born in pain? His death satisfied for our sins; his mother’s birth-pain would satisfy nothing, so it was not required.
• Were there midwives at the birth? No — Luke 2:7 has Mary herself swaddle and lay him down; Jerome: she was both mother and midwife, and the book saying otherwise is apocryphal.
• Why Bethlehem and not Jerusalem, Nazareth or Rome? Bethlehem because David’s city and “house of bread”; Jerusalem is kept for the passion, Nazareth for his flowering in life, Rome for the head of his Church.
• Why be born in an obscure town and suffer in a famous one? To confound the glory of men who boast of noble origins.
• What does “the fullness of time” mean — how could time be more full? That Christ, Lord and maker of times, chose his time as he chose mother and place, and all that is from God is ordered.
• Why be born under the census and under Augustus? Three reasons: to be enrolled as a subject for our liberation; the world’s greatest peace fitting him who is our peace; one prince fitting him who gathers all into one flock.
• Why under an alien, wicked king? To fulfil Jacob’s prophecy that the scepter depart from Judah at his coming, and because desperate infirmity needed a more skilful physician.
• Why in the depth of winter? Because the light of day then begins to increase, showing men grow in the divine light; and to undergo the affliction of the flesh from the beginning.
• Which Gospel suits which season? Luke for Lent, Matthew for the Nativity (with Isaiah); the rest of the pairing left open.