Summa III, Q. 40, Art. 1: Why Christ Lived Among Men, Not Alone (with a Side-Discussion on Church Music)

Orientation #

He says question 40 begins the second of the four parts on Christ’s life: what pertains to his coming into the world (with baptism attached as preparatory) is finished; now comes the public life, then a third part on suffering and death, a fourth on his exaltation (resurrection, ascension, sitting at the Father’s right hand), and after that the treatise on the sacraments — “which we maybe won’t do.” The previous class worked through q. 39 on the circumstances of Christ’s baptism (prev. lecture).

The class, in order #

1. Opening prayer and its two thanks (“I say thank you, God, twice”) #

Prayer to God, the guardian angels and Thomas Aquinas. He explains that he thanks God twice — once for himself, once for giving us guardian angels and Thomas — hence the Latin Deo gratias at the end; “that’s not just to show off my Latin.”

2. The four parts, and why the sacraments hang on Christ rather than the Spirit (“the word comes to the element”) #

Point: the Summa’s order differs from the Creed’s. The Creed attaches the sacraments to the Holy Spirit (“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the forgiveness of sins”) by a kind of appropriation; Thomas attaches them to Christ. Both are reasonable, but he finds the Christ-ordering more interesting:

• St. Paul: baptized, you were buried with Christ.
• The Eucharist is very much Christ — body, blood, soul and divinity.
• Sacraments have a spiritual and a sensible element and so fit our double nature.
• Augustine: “the word comes to the element and it becomes a sacrament” — almost the Incarnation, the Word made flesh.

3. Digression: symbolic theology and the metaphor of fire (“something refreshing for the mind”) #

He once meant to go through the Summa finding the metaphors for everything learned there; he never completed it. Fire as a metaphor of the divine nature: light = divine understanding, warmth = divine love, power to transform = divine power. Fire as metaphor of the Trinity: the substance of the fire = Father, the light proceeding = Son, the warmth coming from fire and light = Holy Spirit. Applied to us: fire lightens the world before it warms it, so God lightens us with faith before warming us with charity — Augustine, quoted in the proemium to Dei Verbum (Vatican II): believing gives rise to hoping, hoping to loving. Hence the Fathers: Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob — “faith begot hope, and hope begot love.”

Aside: reading Luke, he notes Augustine on the Gospels narrating Peter’s denial and the mocking of Christ in reverse orders (Luke one way, Matthew and Mark the other) — different order of narration, no contradiction.

4. The proemium of q. 40 and its four questions (“those things which pertain to his progress”) #

After what pertains to Christ’s entry into the world or his beginning, now his progress. He cannot help recalling Aristotle’s praise of Homer: he taught the other Greeks how to make a plot with a beginning, a middle and an end. Thomas’s four: (1) his conversatio — not “conversation” but his association, way of life among men; (2) his being tempted; (3) his teaching; (4) his miracles. On doctrina vs. disciplina: doctrina is teaching, named from the teacher; disciplina is learning, named from the learner. Hence sacra doctrina and mathematics — in mathematics the student is most (though not completely) self-sufficient; in sacra doctrina you are most dependent on the teacher, on revelation. “I think it’s significant.” The four articles: whether Christ should have led a solitary life or mixed with men; whether an austere life in food, drink, clothing; whether abjectly or with wealth and honor; whether according to the law (the Old Testament law, he supposes).

Aside: the students try to name the order that lives alone — the Camaldolese more than the Carthusians.

5. The three objections for the solitary life (“either a beast… or a god”) #

1. Christ’s way of living ought to show him God as well as man; but conversing with men does not belong to God — Daniel 2: “except the gods, of whom there is no conversation with men.” And Aristotle, Politics I: the man who lives solitary is either a beast, if from savageness, or a god, if for contemplating truth. He recalls Thomas’s advice to a student who wants to think: love your cell, close the door, be quiet and solitary. His own experience learning the syllogism: “I got to do it all by myself with nobody else around, no distractions whatsoever.”
2. Christ ought to have led the most perfect life; the contemplative is most perfect (second part, on the end of man; Mary chose the better part); solitude suits contemplation most — Hosea: “I will lead him into solitude, and there I will speak to his heart.”
3. Christ’s way of life ought to be uniform, since what is best should always appear in him; but he sought solitary places, fleeing the crowds. Remigius on Matthew: the Lord had three places of refuge — the boat, the mountain, the desert — to one of which he went whenever oppressed by the crowds. So he ought always to have lived solitary.

Aside on the word “disturbed” — he wonders whether it comes from turba, crowd.

Sed contra: Baruch — “Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.” “I always love this quote from Baruch.”

6. The body: the three ends of the Incarnation (“suitable to the end of the incarnation”) #

Principle: Christ’s manner of life ought to be such as suits the end for which he came into the world. Three ends:

1. To make known the truth — John 18, to Pilate: “For this was I born, and for this I came into the world, that I might give testimony to the truth.” Therefore he ought not to hide himself in a solitary life but preach publicly — Luke 4, to those who would detain him: “I must evangelize the kingdom of God to other cities, because for this I am sent.”
2. To liberate men from sin — 1 Timothy 1, Christ came into the world to save sinners. Chrysostom: though remaining in one place Christ could have drawn all to himself, he did not, giving us an example to go about and seek — as the shepherd the lost sheep, as the doctor goes to the sick.
3. To give us access to God — Romans 5:2. Therefore, living familiarly with men, it was fitting he give men fiducia, confidence in approaching him. Matthew 9:10, publicans and sinners sitting down with Jesus and his disciples; Jerome: seeing the publican changed from sin to better things, they found place for penance and did not despair of salvation.

He notes the ordering: “truth’s got to come first.”

Example attached to familiarity: Zacchaeus, a short man, running ahead and climbing the tree just to glimpse Christ, and told “come down, I’ll be at your house tonight” — he did not expect that familiarity. Like people rushing to find a spot to see the president: a human scene.

7. Digression on fiducia, faith, hope and trust (“I hope and I love you”) #

Fiducia is like hope, yet its name seems to come from faith. He thinks preachers equivocate on “faith,” using it for hope; and in the devotion to the Divine Mercy, “mercy” corresponds more to the virtue of hope, but the translation uses “trust.” “Berquist trusts St. Thomas” is more human faith than the virtue of hope. A student adds: the Fatima angel’s prayer is usually rendered “I believe, I adore, I trust and I love you,” but the Portuguese is hope — we don’t say “I hope you,” we say “I hope in you,” so it gets turned into “I trust you.”

8. Replies to the first two objections (“contemplata aliis tradere”) #

Ad 1: Christ willed to make his divine nature known through his human nature; so conversing with men, which is proper to man, he made his divinity known by preaching, by miracles, and by living among men innocently and justly. He remarks how often the Gospels say the crowds came to hear him speak, and that he spoke as one having authority.

Ad 2: the contemplative life simpliciter is better than the active life occupied about bodily acts; but the active life in which one hands on to others what he has contemplated is more perfect than the merely contemplative, since such a life presupposes an abundance of contemplation. This is the Dominican motto, contemplata aliis tradere — the excellence of contemplation overflowing into others; and “Christ chose such a life,” so “he chose to be a Dominican.” He recalls a saying he credits to Cajetan (who he thinks became Master General): a Dominican who does not study some eight hours a day is living in mortal sin.

Asides: the Pope’s white garment came from a Dominican pope who kept his habit; talk of Franciscan popes (Clement XIV, who suppressed the Jesuits, perhaps the last); the present Holy Father asked whether he is a Thomist, answering that the Pope has to be a Thomist; the papal theologian (Master of the Sacred Palace) is Dominican ex officio.

9. Reply to the third: the three reasons Christ withdrew (“the action of Christ was our instruction”) #

Christ’s action is our instruction: to give preachers an example that they should not always give themselves to public life, he sometimes withdrew — for three reasons:

1. Bodily quiet — Mark 6: “Let us go into a desert place and rest a little,” for so many came and went they had not space even to eat.
2. Prayer — Luke 6: he went up the mountain to pray and spent the whole night (pernoctans) in prayer. Ambrose: he informed us to the commands of virtue by his own example.
3. To teach us to avoid human favor — on Matthew 5, “seeing the crowds he went up the mountain,” Chrysostom: by being not in the city or the forum but on the mountain, sitting in solitude, he taught us to do nothing for show and to withdraw from the tumults, most of all when necessary things must be discussed.

He applies it to the purely human teacher, who must withdraw to study.

10. Emmanuel d’Alzon, and a chain of asides (“he was a peritus in Vatican one”) #

d’Alzon (1810–1880), founder of the Assumptionists — Augustinians of the Assumption — from Nîmes in Languedoc; studied many hours at night yet was very active by day; a peritus at Vatican I; always refused to be made a bishop. A pilgrimage is planned to Paris, Nîmes, Rome. Talk of religious orders driven from France after the Revolution. Then Philip Neri (a story of a man saying he would go be scrubbed and washed because he is so dirty; Neri on his deathbed resolving to live better if he recovered), his oratory in Rome, and his link with Palestrina.

11. Church music: Palestrina, Mozart, Bach, Handel (“with church music, you have to say the reverse”) #

Mozart: in opera the words ought to be the obedient servant of the music; in church music the reverse. Gregorian chant emphasizes the words; Palestrina gives the music more to say; Benedict says Gregorian chant is the official music of the Roman rite — “that’s fairly severe… not even Palestrina.” On operatic masses: he was shocked to find an aria from The Marriage of Figaro made from (or into) the Agnus Dei; students note melodies moving between secular and sacred settings — Maronite melodies from folk music, “Greensleeves” with religious words. He used to say a Christian gentleman may listen to Mozart’s masses at home, and protects himself with John Paul II’s words at a Mozart Requiem — the Church could not fail to do homage to the genius of Salzburg — praising the Ave verum, the litany of the Blessed Sacrament, and the unfinished Great Mass; “but you’ve got to have discretion about Mozart.”

Aside on “austere”: he asked Monsignor Dionne whether he preferred Bach or Mozart, and Dionne — prefacing that his remarks had no authority whatever — found Bach too austere.

Handel: an EWTN life of Handel, of doubtful authenticity but fun; he said that in writing the Messiah he saw the heavens open; the tradition of standing for the Hallelujah chorus began because the king stood up and everyone followed. A student recalls a sixth-grade Christmas performance with a boy as Isaiah processing down the dark aisle, raising his arm, the nativity scene unfolding during the Hallelujah; Sister Mary Cyril did not stand. Closing: daily 8:30 Mass, and the first grade singing their little song well.

His words #

• Deo gratias — his second thanks, for the guardian angels and for Thomas.
• “Appropriation” — how the Creed attaches Church, forgiveness of sins and sacraments to the Holy Spirit.
• “Symbolic theology” — stating properly-known truths in figurative form; refreshing to the mind.
• Conversatio — “not just conversations; it is his association with other men”; his way of living.
• Doctrina / disciplina — teaching, named from the teacher / learning, named from the learner.
• Fiducia — confidence in approaching God; like hope, though its name seems to come from faith.
• Simpliciter — the contemplative life is better simpliciter than the active occupied about bodily acts.
• Contemplata aliis tradere — handing on to others what has been contemplated; the Dominican life.
• Pernoctans — spending the night through, in prayer.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 40, proemium — the division of the question into four articles.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 40, a. 1 — objections, sed contra, body, and the three replies.
• Within a. 1, as quoted by Thomas: Daniel 2; Aristotle, Politics I; Hosea (Osee); Baruch; John 18; Luke 4; 1 Timothy 1; Romans 5:2; Matthew 9:10; Mark 6; Luke 6; Matthew 5; Chrysostom, Jerome, Ambrose, Remigius on Matthew.

Mentioned

• Augustine, “the word comes to the element and it becomes a sacrament.”
• Augustine, quoted in the proemium to Dei Verbum, Vatican II.
• Augustine on the order of narration in the Gospels (Luke, Matthew, Mark).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, proemium (using John 18 on testimony to the truth).
• Thomas Aquinas, letter of advice on study (love your cell, close the door).
• Alphonsus Liguori, Meditations on the Passion (“I came to cast fire on the earth”).
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary/division of Matthew (into three parts).
• Summa Theologiae II (second part) — on the end of man and the contemplative life.
• Cajetan, on the Dominican duty of study.

His questions #

• Why does Thomas attach the sacraments to Christ rather than, as the Creed does, to the Holy Spirit? Because of the special connection between sacrament and incarnate Word: word coming to element, sensible and spiritual fitted to our double nature.
• How should conversatio be translated? Not “conversation” but his association, his living among men — he says he never knows exactly how to translate it.
• Why is one science named sacra doctrina, from teaching, and the other named from learning? Because in mathematics the learner is nearly self-sufficient, while in sacred doctrine one is most dependent on the teacher and on revelation.
• Ought Christ to have led a solitary life rather than associating with men? No — his manner of life had to fit the threefold end of the Incarnation: making known the truth, freeing men from sin, giving access to God.
• Which of the three ends comes first? Truth: “truth’s got to come first.”
• If the contemplative life is the most perfect, how could Christ live actively? The contemplative is better simpliciter than an active life about bodily acts; but the life that hands on to others what it has contemplated is more perfect still, and presupposes abundance of contemplation.
• Then why did Christ sometimes withdraw into solitude? For our instruction: for bodily rest, for prayer, and to teach us to shun human favor.
• Is fiducia faith or hope? It is like hope, though named from faith; preachers and translations equivocate here.
• In church music, are the words servants of the music or the reverse? The reverse of Mozart’s rule for opera: in church the music serves the words.