The Manifestation of Christ's Birth: Angels, the Star, and the Order of Revelation (ST III, Q.36, aa.5–7)

Orientation #

He opens with family news (a new granddaughter born that morning) and goes straight into q. 36, a. 5. No statement about last time or next time. The previous class treated the earlier articles of q. 36 on the manifestation of Christ’s birth.

The class, in order #

1. Objections of article 5 (“whether the birth of Christ ought to be manifested through the angels and through a star”) #

Four objections, two against angels and two against the star, as he himself notes mid-way.

1. Angels are spiritual (immaterial, bodyless) substances — “who makes his angels spirits” (Ps. 103) — but Christ’s birth was according to the flesh. He connects this to the earlier argument that angels cannot exercise priesthood: priesthood needs the mixture of spirit and body to be conformed to Christ in the sacraments.
2. The just have greater affinity to the angels than others (“the angel of the Lord came in the circle of those fearing God”), yet the birth was not made known to Simeon and Anna by angels — so not to the shepherds either.
3. A star would be an occasion of error for those who think the stars dominate men’s births; occasions of sin should be removed. Aside: Shakespeare’s characters constantly think the stars influence things down here.
4. A sign ought to be certain, and a star is not a certain sign of Christ’s birth. Sed contra: Deuteronomy 32, “the works of God are perfect” — a syllogism, he says: this making-known was a divine work, therefore done through suitable signs.

2. The body of article 5: signs fitted to the receiver (“through those things which are more known”) #

The point: as demonstration by syllogism proceeds from what is more known to the hearer, so manifestation by signs proceeds from what is familiar to those to whom it is made known.

• The just are accustomed to be taught by the inward instinct of the Holy Spirit, without sensible signs, through the spirit of prophecy — hence Simeon’s answer from the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before seeing the Christ of the Lord (Luke 2).
• Those given over to bodily things are led through sensible apparitions — so to shepherds and Magi.
• Because the birth was not purely earthly but in some way celestial, the signs were celestial in both cases. Augustine (Sermon on the Epiphany): angels inhabit the heavens, stars adorn them; by both the heavens narrate the glory of God.
• To the shepherds, as Jews, among whom angelic apparitions were frequent (Zachary, Mary, Joseph), through angels; the Jews received the law “in the disposition of angels” (Acts 7) — a role, he says, not much emphasised in modern classes.
• To the Magi, accustomed to consider the celestial bodies, through a star; Chrysostom: the Lord called them through what was customary to them, condescending to them. Student exchange on condescension: God puts on our language in Scripture; Mary likewise speaks in the language and appearance of the place where she appears. His story: the judge from Limousin asked Joan of Arc whether her voices spoke French — “yes, better than you.”

3. Two further reasons, from Gregory and Augustine (“the mute elements preach”) #

2nd reason (Gregory): to the Jews, as using reason, a reasonable animal — an angel — ought to preach; to the Gentiles, who do not know how to use reason to know God, not by voice but by signs. And as the Lord, once able to speak, was announced by heralds who spoke, so before he could speak he was announced by speechless elements. He works this reading out aloud with the class and marks it as his understanding. 3rd reason (Augustine, Sermon on the Epiphany): Abraham’s promised offspring was to be generated not by the seed of flesh but by the fecundity of faith, and so compared to the multitude of the stars; hence the Gentiles, designated in the stars, are aroused by a new star’s rising to come to Christ and be made the seed of Abraham. Aside on Thomas’s unoriginality: one reason from Chrysostom, one from Augustine, one from Gregory. Cajetan’s answer — he so venerated the Fathers that he seems to have inherited the mind of them all. Fr. Rutler: the treasury of the Church, the writings of the Fathers, “is meant to be plundered.” He reads a passage of St. Bernard (Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin) on the Annunciation — Mary’s son and God’s son are one son, one nature from her, another from God — and jokes, “What a plagiarist Thomas was.” Also the story from Francis de Sales (Treatise on the Love of God, inferred): the Cistercians asked the dying Thomas for a commentary like Bernard’s; “give me Bernard’s perfection and I’ll give you a commentary.”

4. Replies to objections 1 and 2, and a long digression on metaphor and meaning (“that needs to be made known, which is of itself occult”) #

Reply 1: manifestation is of what is hidden of itself, not of what is manifest. His flesh was manifest, his divinity hidden; hence the birth is made known through angels, God’s ministers — and the angel appeared with brightness to show that the one born was the splendour of the Father’s glory. Reply 2: the just do not need the visible appearance of angels; the inward instinct of the Holy Spirit suffices, on account of their perfection. A student balks at the word “instinct” (it sounds sub-rational, as in animals doing reasonable things without knowing them; here it is being led by One above us, who has more reason for what he does than we could have). He compares Thomas’s reply on metaphor: the poet and Scripture share that both deal with what is beyond our mind, but in the one case below reason, in the other above it. Scripture’s metaphor brings down what is above us; poetic metaphor raises what is below reason and gives it more meaning. Examples of giving more meaning than a thing has:

• the Iliad: perhaps a pirate raid behind it, but when Homer is finished it seems the whole meaning and struggle of human life (Job: our life on earth is a warfare);
• Mozart’s operas: a mundane thing set to music seems to say more than it does — his old teacher’s rebuke, “Duane, you think it has more meaning than it does have”; Mozart gives the emotions more meaning than they have in reality;
• the portrait painter (Titian): one expression captures the whole character of a man, which no single expression of a friend’s face in real life does;
• Aristotle’s beginning, middle and end in tragedy and epic: order is what reason looks for, before and after, so a plot has more intelligibility than his own day (trash out for Thursday, a bit of physics, prayers) which fits into no coherent whole;
• the neighbour killed in a car accident: her flip-flops left at the door — “her soul came out of her body like her feet came out of her shoes” — a mundane gesture loaded with meaning, as a novelist would do. Aside: his friend Jim Francis on girls loving to be told you don’t understand them — and that saying “I don’t understand God” is a compliment to God.

5. Replies 3 and 4: the star does not confirm astrology (“nor is this the work of astronomy”) #

Reply 3: the star took away every occasion of error. Augustine (Contra Faustum): no astronomer ever held that a star leaves its own order of circuit and travels to the one born — which is what happened here. The astrologers hold that the stars determine men, not that men’s births change the stars; here it is the reverse. Chrysostom: astronomy does not learn from the stars who is born, but from the hour of birth foretells future things; the Magi did not know the time of the birth, so they went the reverse way. Reply 4 (how the star could be a certain sign), four accounts, which he stresses Thomas does not rank as true and false but offers as ways their minds could have been helped beyond the sight of the star:

1. Chrysostom, from apocryphal writings: a nation in the extreme east by the ocean had a writing from Seth about the star and the gifts, and watched for its rise, ascending a mountain where they afterwards saw a child and the likeness of a cross.
2. From Questions on the New and Old Testament (Augustine, he says): the Magi followed the tradition of Balaam — “there shall arise a star out of Jacob” (Num. 24:17) — and seeing a star outside the order of the world understood it.
3. Augustine, Sermon on the Epiphany: by some revelation from the angels the Magi heard that the star signified Christ born.
4. Leo the Great, Sermon on the Epiphany: besides the outward form that drew their bodily eyes, a more brilliant ray enlightened their minds with the light of faith. He notes the fittingness of being led both by spiritual illumination and by a sensible star — “like our sacraments, you know, have both.” A student describes images by the artist Brodie Barth: an angel leading the three kings holding the star on a pole, and another with the infant Christ inside the star.

6. Article 6: the objections to the order of manifestation (“in an unsuitable order the nativity of Christ was made known”) #

1. It should be made known first to those nearest and most desiring — but the just, Simeon, “just and devout (timoratus), expecting the redemption of Israel” (Luke 2), were nearest through faith, so before shepherds and Magi.
2. The Magi are the first-fruits of the Gentiles; but the fullness of the Gentiles comes first and afterwards all Israel is saved (Romans; he cites 9, and notes his brother Richard first pointed him to the text) — so the Magi should have been told before the shepherds.
3. Herod killed boys of two and under, “according to the time he had learned from the Magi” (Matt. 2) — so the Gentiles learned of it two years after the birth, too long a time. Sed contra: Daniel 2:21, “he changes times and ages.” Aside: C. S. Lewis — you have time, or rather time has got you; but God has time, time does not have God.

7. The body of article 6: the order and what it prefigures (“first to the shepherds, on the day of the birth”) #

The order in fact: (1) the shepherds on the day of the birth (Luke 2, the shepherds keeping the night watches, who said “Let us go over to Bethlehem”); (2) the Magi on the thirteenth day, which we celebrate as the Epiphany — for had they come after a year or two they would not have found him in Bethlehem, since after fulfilling the law they returned to Nazareth (Luke 2); (3) the just in the temple, Simeon and Anna, on the fortieth day (Luke 2:22). The reason for that order: the shepherds signify the apostles and the first believers from the Jews, among whom were not many powerful or noble; the Magi prefigure the fullness of the Gentiles; the just prefigure the fullness of the Jews at the last — and fittingly Christ was made known to them in the temple of the Jews.

8. Replies of article 6 (“Israel, following the law of justice, did not arrive at it”) #

Reply 1: Romans 9 — Israel following the law of justice did not arrive at justice, while the Gentiles who did not seek it came to the justice of faith first. Simeon, expecting the consolation of Israel, knew Christ last; the Magi and shepherds, who did not solicitously expect him, came before. He stresses that the signification counts for more here than the fact that Simeon and Anna were just: the Jews most expected the Christ and will be the last fully to accept him. Reply 2: though the fullness of the Gentiles comes before the fullness of the Jews, the first-fruits of the Jews came to faith before the first-fruits of the Gentiles — hence the shepherds first. Reply 3: two opinions about the star’s appearance. (a) Chrysostom on Matthew (Opus imperfectum, which he notes his text marks as falsely ascribed — he puzzles over whether the abbreviation reads “Chrysostom” or something else) and Augustine: the star appeared two years before the birth; the Magi meditated and prepared, then came from the remotest East on the thirteenth day; Herod, finding himself deceived, killed boys of two and under, doubting whether Christ was born when the star appeared. Note the “before and after” question: whether the two years fall before or after the birth. (b) Others: the star appeared at the birth, and the Magi made the journey in thirteen days, partly by divine power, partly by the speed of dromedaries; or they came from a near region, being successors of Balaam’s teaching and called “from the east” only relative to Judea — and then Herod killed the boys not at once but after two years, having desisted for a while, being accused of wrong or agitated by fear of some dangers. Or (Augustine, On the Harmony of the Gospels) he could have believed the Magi deceived by a false vision and too embarrassed to return. And he killed not only the two-year-olds but those below because (Augustine, a sermon on the Innocents) he feared the boy whom the star served might transform his appearance. Asides: the class sorts out which Herod is which — the one who beheaded John the Baptist was the son, a tetrarch; another appears in Acts. His joke: Herod could not look before and after either, since he did not know what she was going to ask after his stupid promise.

9. Article 7: was the star one of the celestial stars? (“the star which appeared to the Magi”) #

Objections:

1. Augustine, a sermon on the Epiphany: “while God yet clings to the breast and suffers himself to be wrapped in humble swaddling clothes, suddenly a new star shines forth in the heaven” (novum de caelo sidus effulsit) — from heaven, therefore celestial. He notes the text looks like it says a new star, which seems to work against the objector’s point.
2. Augustine: angels show Christ to the shepherds, a star to the Magi; both speak the tongue of the heavens, since the prophets’ tongues have ceased. But the angels were truly heavenly angels; therefore the star was truly a heavenly star.
3. Stars not in the heaven but in the air are called stellae comatae, comets, which do not appear at kings’ births but signify their death; this star designated a king’s birth — “where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East.” Sed contra: Augustine, Contra Faustum — not from those stars which from the beginning of creation kept their course under the Creator’s law, but for the new birth of a virgin a new star. Aside: comata means long-haired — that is what comets look like; at the local observatory’s Halley’s comet presentation they raised the suggestion that the Magi saw Halley’s comet.

10. The body of article 7: five signs it was not a celestial star (“this is manifest in many ways”) #

Chrysostom on Matthew: it was not one of the celestial stars, and this is clear in five ways.

1. Its course: it went from north to south, not the way of the other stars — Persia, whence the Magi came, lies so with respect to Judea.
2. Its time: it appeared not only at night but in the middle of the day, which is beyond the power of a star or even the moon. (Joke: “Thomas, you’re not observing enough — stays inside, being cold too much.”)
3. It appeared and hid itself: hidden when they entered Jerusalem, shown again when they left Herod.
4. Its motion was not continuous: it moved when the Magi needed to go and stood when they needed to stand — like the pillar of cloud in the desert. A student adds that the liturgy compares Christ’s descent to the dead to that cloud leading the Jews.
5. It did not remain above but descended to show the birth — it had to come down far enough to designate the particular house. (His family’s Christmas “wonder star” above the crib; the text says it stood over the place where the child was.) Hence “we have seen his star in the east” does not mean that, they being in the east, the star appeared in Judea, but that they saw it while it was in the east and it went before them to Judea — though some leave this in doubt; his text refers to Remigius, quoted in the Catena Aurea, whom he recalls looking up once, a monk. It could not distinctly indicate the house unless it came down; and as Chrysostom says, this seems proper not to a star but to a certain rational power. Whence some say it was some invisible power transformed into such an appearance; some (with reference to Augustine, De mirabilibus sacrae Scripturae) that as the Holy Spirit appeared in the species of a dove at the baptism, so he appeared to the Magi in the species of a star; others that the angel who appeared to the shepherds in human form appeared to the Magi in the form of a star. Thomas says “more probable” (probabilius) — so, he notes, not altogether certain — that the star was newly created (de novo creata), not in heaven but in the air near the earth, moved according to God’s will. Leo the Great, Sermon on the Epiphany: a star of new clarity, more illustrious and beautiful than the others, turned the eyes and souls of the beholders to itself, so that they at once understood such an unwonted event could not be devoid of purpose.

11. Replies of article 7 (“caelum in sacred scripture sometimes is said to be the air”) #

Reply 1: in Scripture caelum sometimes means the air — “the birds of the air” (volucres caeli) and the fish of the sea. Reply 2: the heavenly angels by their office come down to us, being sent in ministry; the celestial stars do not change their place — so there is no parallel. Reply 3: as this star did not follow the motion of the heavenly stars, neither did it follow that of the “hairy stars,” which do not appear by day nor change their ordered course. Yet the signification of comets is not wholly absent, since Christ’s heavenly kingdom threatens and consumes all earthly kingdoms and stands forever (Daniel 2). Closing aside: Shakespeare’s comets foretelling the downfall and death of kings and transformations of kingdoms — “so, some meaning there.”

His words #

• “inward instinct of the Holy Spirit” — how the just (Simeon, Anna) are taught, without sensible signs, through the spirit of prophecy; a student presses him on the word “instinct” as sounding sub-rational.
• “astronomers” — the term Thomas’s sources use; he warns it “doesn’t mean astrologists necessarily in the modern sense.”
• timoratus — Simeon “just and devout,” with the sense of fear.
• stella comata — “hairy star,” a comet; he notes comata means long hair.
• “the tongue of the heavens” — Augustine’s phrase for what both angels and star speak.
• probabilius — “more probable,” which he flags as meaning “not altogether certain.”
• de novo creata — “created newly,” of the star, in the air near the earth.
• Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum — the commentary his text marks as falsely ascribed.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 36, a. 5 (whole article)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 36, a. 6 (whole article)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 36, a. 7 (whole article)
• Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary (passage on the Annunciation and the one Son)

Mentioned (within the articles or by him)

• Psalm 103 (“who makes his angels spirits”); Psalm on “the angel of the Lord came in the circle of those fearing God”
• Deuteronomy 32 (works of God are perfect); Daniel 2:21; Daniel 2 (the kingdom that stands forever)
• Acts 7 (law received “in the disposition of angels”); Luke 2 (Simeon; shepherds; the fortieth day, 2:22); Matthew 2; Romans 9; Numbers 24:17
• Augustine: Sermon on the Epiphany; Contra Faustum; De consensu evangelistarum; a sermon on the Innocents; Quaestiones Veteris et Novi Testamenti; De mirabilibus sacrae Scripturae
• Chrysostom on Matthew (Opus imperfectum); Gregory; Leo the Great, Sermon on the Epiphany; Remigius (via the Catena Aurea)
• Cajetan on the Summa; Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God (inferred); Aristotle on plot (beginning, middle, end); Homer’s Iliad; Job (“our life on earth is a warfare”); Shakespeare on stars and comets; C. S. Lewis on time

His questions #

• Why was the birth made known through angels and a star at all? Because signs, like syllogisms, must proceed from what is familiar to the hearer: angels to Jews, stars to Gentile astronomers, inward instinct to the just.
• Why to the just was it not shown by visible angels? Because on account of their perfection the inward instinct of the Holy Spirit suffices.
• Does the star confirm the astrologers’ error? No: they never held that a star leaves its own course for a birth, nor that a birth changes the stars — here the order is reversed.
• Which of the four accounts of how the Magi read the star is the true one? Thomas does not say one is correct and the others not; he offers ways their minds could have been helped beyond the sight of the star.
• In what order was the birth made known, and why? Shepherds (day one), Magi (thirteenth day), Simeon and Anna (fortieth day) — prefiguring the first-fruits of the Jews, the fullness of the Gentiles, and the fullness of the Jews at the last.
• Did the star appear two years before the birth or at the birth? Left open: two opinions are given, with different accounts of Herod’s delay.
• Was the star one of the celestial stars? No — five marks show it was not; most probably a star newly created in the air near the earth and moved at God’s will.
• Do comets, which signify the death of kings, fit this star at all? Partly: the signification is not wholly absent, since Christ’s kingdom consumes all earthly kingdoms.