The Manifestation of the Newborn Christ: To Whom, Why Hidden, Shepherds and Magi (ST III, q.36, a.1–4)

Orientation #

He opens the new question (“the manifestation of Christ”) and lists its eight articles, then works straight through articles 1–4, checking at the end whether there is time for “one more article.” No statement about the next class. The neighbouring classes treat q. 35 (birth, Bethlehem, timing) and q. 36, aa. 5–7 (shepherds, Magi, the star).

The class, in order #

1. The eight articles of the question (“eight things are asked”) #

He reads off the division: whether the birth ought to be made known to all; to some; to whom; whether Christ ought to manifest himself; through whom others were manifested; the order of the making known; the star; the veneration of the Magi.

• He asks whether Thomas invented these questions and answers no: Cajetan says Thomas so venerated the Church Fathers “that he seems to have inherited the mind of all of them” — he inherited their questions.
• Aside: the “wonder star” with glass rays he loved as a boy, set above the crib under the Christmas tree; never found another in a store.

2. Article 1, objections: it seems it ought to be made known to all (“God manifestly comes”) #

Three objections, each with its text:

1. Fulfilment must answer the promise; Ps. 49 promises “God manifestly comes,” and he comes by the nativity of his flesh.
2. 1 Tim.: Christ came to save sinners; but only if his grace is made known — Titus, “there appears the grace of our Savior God to all men, instructing us that denying impiety and worldly desires we may live soberly, piously and justly.” (He notes Thomas has no explanation of that phrase here.)
3. God is more prone to mercy (Ps. 144, “his mercies are over all his works”); yet the second coming, in justice, is manifest to all (Mt. 24, lightning from east to west); therefore much more the first. He calls these “good arguments.”

• Sed contra: Isa. 45, “You are a hidden God”; Isa. 53, his face as it were hidden and despised.

3. Article 1, the body: three reasons for hiddenness (“would impede human redemption”) #

1. It would have impeded the redemption wrought by the cross — 1 Cor. 2:8, “if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory.” He remarks this reason seems “kind of a silly reason” at first and that he had never thought of it.
2. It would diminish the merit of faith (Rom. 3, justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ): if most manifest signs showed the nativity to all, faith would lose its notion as “the argument of things that appear not.”
3. It would put the truth of his humanity in doubt — Augustine, Letter to Volusianus: if he had not grown from infancy to youth, taken no food, no sleep, all things done marvelously, men would think he had not truly taken flesh, and it would take away what he mercifully did. “So then we have to weigh this — doctoral thesis on this article.”

Replies: (1) the Psalm text, per the Gloss from Augustine, is about the coming to judgment; (2) the grace instructing all men is for after the salvation wrought “in the middle of the earth” — “Going, teach all nations” comes after passion and resurrection; so Thomas does not deny the premise but the timing; (3) judgment requires the judge’s authority be known, but the first coming was for salvation through faith, which is of what is not seen, therefore it ought to be hidden.

4. Digression on faith, unbelief, and the cross (“In cruce latebat sola deitas”) #

Occasioned by the third reply.

• Einstein’s letter (he had it in his computer) showing contempt for religion as puerile; Niels Bohr’s agnosticism when he heard him in the Twin Cities — a scandal to him then; “a lot of great scientists are like that.”
• Student: this makes one admire the difficulty Augustine, a great intellectual, had in submitting to baptism — “then that’s when it flowered.”
• He quotes Adoro te devote: “In cruce latebat sola deitas, at hic latet simul et humanitas; ambo tamen credens atque confitens, peto quod petiit latro poenitens” — the good thief believed in a man dying beside him.
• Student: Chrysostom takes the centurion, not only the thief — Christ’s loud cry at death showed he chose the moment, since the dying have no strength to cry out; that death alone moved the centurion to believe. But the good thief saw none of that.
• Aside on capital punishment: one may call it unmerciful, not unjust; the good thief says “we receive the just reward of our deeds” and Christ does not contradict him.

5. Article 2: it had to be made known to some (“the things that are from God are ordered”) #

Objections: (a) hiddenness suited salvation, so it should be known to no one; (b) Mary and Joseph were already told beforehand, so no one else was needed; (c) no wise man makes known what causes disturbance and harm — Herod and all Jerusalem were troubled, and the boys of Bethlehem under two were killed. He lingers: “these poor little babies, their poor mothers.” “How do you get out of this now? Houdini is tight.”

• Sed contra: if hidden from all, the nativity would profit no one, and he would be born in vain.
• Body: Rom. 13:1, “the things that are from God are ordered” — “we Aristotelians love that,” since Aristotle makes it the act of the wise man to order. Divine wisdom gives its gifts not equally to all, but immediately to some, and through them derived to others — Acts 10, the risen Christ shown “not to all the people but to witnesses preordained by God.” So too the nativity: to some through whom it can reach others; they share in the role of teacher (the shepherds). Faith would be taken away either way: by total manifestation, or by there being no witness from whom testimony could be heard, since “faith is ex auditu.” He adds the hymn: “Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur, sed auditu solo tuto creditur.”
• Reply to (b): Mary and Joseph were told so as to revere the child conceived and serve him born; but their testimony, being domestic, would be suspect — “Isn’t my son wonderful? That’s my boy” — so outsiders were needed; and no prophet is honoured in his own country.

6. Reply on the disturbance: Herod, the devil, the Jews, the Innocents (“the King of Earth is disturbed”) #

The disturbance itself is fitting, for three reasons with three authorities — and he stresses the pattern: “You see how Thomas is inheriting the mind of Leo Papa and Chrysostom and Augustine” in one reply.

1. It shows Christ’s heavenly worth — Gregory, homily: “at the King of Heaven born, the King of Earth is disturbed; for earthly height is confounded when the heavenly heights are opened.”
2. It figures his judicial power — Augustine, sermon on the Epiphany: “what will the tribunal of the judge be, when proud kings feared the cradle of the infant?”
3. It figures the casting down of the devil’s kingdom — Leo the Great, sermon on the Epiphany: not so much Herod as the devil in Herod was disturbed, Herod thinking him a man, the devil God; both feared a successor, the devil a heavenly kingdom, Herod an earthly one. Superfluously, since Christ did not come for an earthly kingdom: “Christ does not take your kingdoms, nor is the Lord of the world content with the narrowness of your power.”

• Why the Jews were disturbed rather than glad: Chrysostom — the wicked cannot rejoice at the Just One’s coming; or they wished to court Herod whom they feared. He and the students wrestle with the ending clause: the English has “the populace is inclined to favor too much those whose cruelty it endures,” but the Latin plus justo (“more than is just / more than the just”) does not come out in the translation; he leaves the phrase unresolved and declines to draw current politics into it.
• The Holy Innocents: not their detriment but their progress — Augustine, sermon on the Epiphany: far be it that Christ, coming to liberate men, did nothing about the reward of those killed for him, who on the cross prayed for those who killed him.
• Aside: his firstborn Paul, born December 1, baptized on the feast of the Holy Innocents — he asked the priest for a baptism of water, not of blood.

7. Article 3: the fitness of the witnesses chosen (“I know whom I have chosen”) #

Five objections: (1) the apostles were forbidden the way of the Gentiles, so the Gentile Magi from the East should not have been first; (2) divine truth is for God’s friends (Job 37), but Lev. 19 forbids turning aside to magi, who seem God’s enemies; (3) Christ came to free the whole world (Mal. 1, “from the rising of the sun to its setting”), so not only easterners; (4) the sacraments of the old law were dispensed by priests, so the temple priests rather than shepherds in the field; (5) born of a virgin mother and himself little, it suited youths and virgins rather than old men, married and widows (Simeon and Anna). He jokes about Thomas the objector (“I don’t say objectionable”) and about Thomas telling off the objections on his fingers and pulling them down as he answers.

• Sed contra: John 13, “I know whom I have chosen”; what is done by God’s wisdom is fittingly done.
• Body: the salvation to come touches every diversity of men — Col. 3:11, in Christ no male and female, Gentile and Jew, slave and free — so it was prefigured at the birth by making it known to every condition: Augustine, sermon on the Epiphany — shepherds Israelites, Magi Gentiles; these near, those far; both run together to the cornerstone; and another diversity, the Magi wise and powerful, the shepherds simple and lowly; also to the just (Simeon and Anna), to sinners, to men and to women.
• Aside on the fourth objection: this is something “we priests now have to take into consideration.”

8. Article 3, the replies (“to choose the stupid, that they might confound the wise”) #

1. This manifestation was a foretaste of the full one to come: as later the grace was preached first to Jews then Gentiles, so first the shepherds, firstfruits of the Jews, as near; afterwards the Magi from afar, firstfruits of the Gentiles (Augustine). He notes the shepherds come the night of the birth and the Magi at the Epiphany — and that the Magi found them “in the house.”
2. Augustine, sermon on the Epiphany: as inexperience prevailed in the rusticity of the shepherds, so impiety in the sacrileges of the Magi; yet he attaches both to himself as cornerstone, who came to choose the foolish to confound the wise and to call not the just but sinners — that no great man be proud and no weak man despair. He adds that some authors say the Magi were not malefici but wise astronomers, called magi among the Persians and Chaldeans; whether they were sinners is unclear, though certainly Gentiles.
3. Why from the East: Chrysostom — whence the day is born, there the beginning of faith proceeds, for faith is the light of souls (students recall the psalm, the watchmen waiting for daybreak); or because all who come to Christ come from him and through him — Zach. 6, “Behold a man, and the East is his name.” Literally, either from the farthest East or from parts near Judea lying to its east. Signs likely appeared elsewhere too: at Rome a flowing [of oil, per Eusebius’ account]; in Spain three suns gradually merging into one. He connects the three suns to Shakespeare’s history plays (Edward, the House of York, Richard the Hunchback), and recalls Thomas citing the signs in Egypt at Christ’s death.
4. Why shepherds, not priests: Chrysostom — the angel did not go to Jerusalem to the scribes and Pharisees, for they were corrupt and out of envy crucified him (“a supreme example of the evil of envy, though God brought good out of it”); the shepherds were sincere, keeping the ancient way of the patriarchs and Moses. Through the shepherds are signified the doctors of the Church, to whom the mysteries hidden from the Jews are revealed. Digression: their Lenten reading of Genesis, and a correction back and forth over which of Cain and Abel was shepherd and which tiller; the English tradition of pastoral poetry; John Paul’s letter on priests, Pastores dabo vobis, from Ezekiel, “I will give you shepherds.”
5. Why old men: Ambrose — the Lord’s generation ought to receive testimony not only from shepherds but from old and just men, whose testimony is more believed because of their justice. Asides: “don’t trust anybody over thirty” (a sixties slogan) — “that’s when you realize not many men are wise, especially the ones under thirty”; “no fool worse than an old fool”; Lear’s clown, “you’re old before you’re wise”; his father’s “too soon I get old, too late I get smart,” which he had also seen on a barber’s wall in Worcester.

9. Article 4: Christ did not make his own birth known (“through some other creatures”) #

Objections: (1) the per se cause is always more potent than the per accidens (Physics VIII — he calls it “Natural Hearing,” and adds that Aristotle puts the per se before the per accidens at the start); (2) Ecclus. 20, “wisdom that is hidden and a treasure not seen, what use is in either?” — Christ had the fullness of wisdom and grace from conception, so it would be given in vain, and God and nature do nothing in vain (Aristotle, De Caelo I); he compares his brethren’s “show yourself”; (3) the book on the Savior’s infancy reports miracles in his youth — “I think Thomas is going to challenge this authority.”

• Sed contra: Leo the Great — the Magi found the boy in no way different from other infants; and other infants do not manifest themselves. Aside: Italian friends’ baby “John Paul” who “ever since he was born started doing this.”
• Body: the birth is ordered to salvation by faith, and saving faith confesses both the divinity and the humanity; so the making known must not let the showing of divinity prejudice faith in the humanity. Hence in himself Christ showed the likeness of human infirmity, and through God’s creatures showed the power of his divinity: he made known his nativity not through himself but through other creatures.
• Replies: (1) in generation and motion one goes through the imperfect to the perfect, so he is made known first by other creatures, and afterwards makes himself known by a perfect manifestation; (2) hidden wisdom is useless, but it does not belong to the wise man to show himself at every time, only at the apt time — Ecclus. 26, one is silent knowing the time; his being hidden for a fitting time is itself a sign.

10. The apt time, and the first miracle (“water into wine”) #

Extension of the second reply.

• Student-led digression on timing: Monsignor Dionne’s course on appetite in the life of the mind, illustrated from the Confessions — the bishop told Monica that Augustine was not ready yet; docility must come first. Students add converts received too soon who grow disillusioned and leave; a missionary priest who asked candidates, “if you walk away now, can you save your soul?” — a yes meant they were not ready; his own mother telling his non-Catholic father not to come in until he was convinced.
• Reply to (3): the infancy book is apocryphal; Chrysostom on John — Christ worked no miracle before changing water into wine (John 2:11, “the beginning of his signs”). He remarks that John’s gospel reaches back earlier in the public life than the other three.
• His own reflection: Cana disposes men to believe in the Eucharist — there the accidents of water did not remain, so the miracle could be seen, whereas in the Eucharist the accidents remain and the blood is not seen; the Eucharist is a supreme test of faith. Fr. Groeschel on EWTN, asked by atheist friends “how can you believe all that stuff,” answers “it’s a gift,” which stops them better than a long argument. A student recalls Chesterton: to the unbeliever it seems blasphemy to assert the Eucharist, to the believer blasphemy to deny it — the same holds for the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the Mother of God; “certainly to the Jews the Incarnation is blasphemous.”
• Last point of the article: had he done miracles in infancy, John the Baptist’s testimony (“that he might be made known to Israel, therefore I came baptizing in water”) would have been unnecessary; and men would have thought the Incarnation a phantasm and an image, and before the opportune time, melted by envy, would have turned him to the cross.

His words #

• “inherited the mind of all of them” — Cajetan on Thomas’s use of the Fathers.
• “the argument of things that had not appeared” — his rendering of faith’s definition.
• “quae a Deo sunt ordinata sunt” — “the things that are from God are ordered” (Rom. 13:1).
• “faith is ex auditu” — faith comes by hearing; hence the need of witnesses.
• “Houdini is tight” — his phrase for an objection that seems inescapable.
• “plus justo” — “more than the just”; a phrase in the Chrysostom quotation he leaves unresolved.
• malefici — evildoers; what the Magi may not have been.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: the Physics].
• “stulta” — the foolish/“stupid” whom God chose, i.e. the shepherds.
• “phantasm” — the unreality men would have ascribed to the Incarnation.

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 36, aa. 1–4 (prologue with the eight articles; each article’s objections, sed contra, body, replies). Mentioned (within those articles or by him):
• Ps. 49; Ps. 144; Isa. 45; Isa. 53; Mt. 24; Mt. 10:5; Mt. 2:1; Job 37; Lev. 19; Mal. 1; Zach. 6; 1 Cor. 2:8; Rom. 3; Rom. 13:1; 1 Tim.; Titus; Col. 3:11; Acts 10; John 2:11; John 13; Ecclus. 20; Ecclus. 26.
• Augustine, Letter to Volusianus; Augustine, sermon on the Epiphany; Augustine, Confessions; the Gloss (from Augustine).
• Gregory, homily; Leo the Great, sermons on the Epiphany; Ambrose; Chrysostom (on Matthew; on John).
• Aristotle, Physics VIII; De Caelo I; Aristotle on the wise man’s act of ordering.
• Apocryphal book on the infancy of the Savior; Eusebius (the sign at Rome); Adoro te devote; Shakespeare’s history plays and King Lear; John Paul II, Pastores dabo vobis (inferred title).

His questions #

• Did Thomas think up these eight questions himself? No — he inherited them from the Fathers, whose mind Cajetan says he seems to have inherited.
• Ought the birth of Christ to have been made known to all? No: it would have impeded the redemption by the cross, diminished the merit of faith, and cast doubt on the truth of his humanity.
• Then ought it to have been made known to no one? No: it would then have profited no one and he would be born in vain; divine order gives to some, through whom it reaches others.
• Mary and Joseph already knew — why tell others? Their testimony was domestic and so suspect; outsiders were needed.
• How do you get out of the objection from Herod’s disturbance and the killing of the Innocents? The disturbance shows Christ’s heavenly worth, figures his judicial power, and figures the devil’s fall; the Innocents gained, not lost.
• Why the shepherds in the field rather than the priests in the temple? The priests were corrupt and envious; the shepherds sincere, keeping the ancient way of the patriarchs, and they signify the doctors of the Church.
• What does Chrysostom’s last clause mean — “the populace favours plus justo”? Left open; the English translation does not bring out the Latin.
• Ought Christ to have made known his own birth? No: he showed human infirmity in himself and his divinity through other creatures, lest faith in his humanity be prejudiced.
• Why was the water-into-wine the first sign, and why do the accidents not remain there as in the Eucharist? So the miracle could be seen — and thereby dispose men to believe the Eucharist, where the accidents do remain.