The Kinds of Christ's Miracles: Casting Out Demons and the Darkening of the Sun at the Passion (ST III q.44 aa.1-2)

Orientation #

He wants to finish the treatment of miracles this spring, since it is the break before the next part; he notes q. 45 has four articles, so next time they may have to do five articles — articles 3 and 4 of q. 44 and then q. 45, and he is “dying to get to” the transfiguration. The neighbouring classes treat the earlier articles of q. 44 and then aa. 3–4 on miracles concerning men and irrational creatures.

The class, in order #

1. The division of the singular kinds of miracles (“notice the way he divides them”) #

He points out Thomas’s ordering of the species of miracles: those about spiritual substances, about the celestial bodies, about men, about irrational creatures.

2. Four objections against miracles about spiritual substances (“neither about the demons should he have done”) #

Article 1’s objections, as he reads them:

1. Among spiritual substances angels are superior to demons (Augustine, De Trinitate III: the deserting, sinning rational spirit is ruled through the pious and just spirit of life) — yet Christ is not read to have done miracles about the good angels; so none about demons either.
2. Christ’s miracles are ordered to making known his divinity; but his divinity ought not be made known to the demons, since that would impede the mystery of the passion — 1 Cor. 2: “if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.”
3. His miracles are ordered to God’s glory (Mt. 9:8, the crowds glorify God for the healed paralytic); but glorifying God does not pertain to demons, “not beautiful is praise in the mouth of the sinner,” and Mark 1 says he did not allow the demons to speak.
4. His miracles are ordered to men’s salvation, but the expelled demons harmed men — tearing the man so he was left “as if dead,” and the demons sent into the pigs, a loss of property, after which the citizens asked him to leave. Sed contra: Zechariah 13, “I will take the unclean spirit from the earth.”

3. The body of a. 1: miracles as arguments of the faith he taught (“now is the prince of this world cast out”) #

Christ’s miracles were arguments or signs of the faith he taught; he was in the future going to exclude the demons’ power from those who would believe in him (John 12:31, spoken as the passion approaches — he notes the tense: not that it has been done, but that it is so near). Hence it was fitting that among the other miracles he free those obsessed by demons.

4. Reply 1: why no miracles about the angels (“the angels are our neighbors”) #

As men were to be freed by Christ from the demons’ power, so through him they were to be made associates — neighbours — of the angels (Col. 1:20, peace through the blood of his cross for those in heaven and on earth). So about the angels it sufficed that they appear to men: at his birth, resurrection, ascension. Aside: “important events.”

5. Reply 2: how much the demons knew (“more from suspicion than from certitude”) #

Christ was made known to the demons as much as he wished and as was suitable — not as to the holy angels (through whom is eternal life), but through temporal effects of his power.

• Seeing him hunger after the fast, they guessed him not to be the Son of God; Ambrose on Luke 4 (“if you are the Son of God”): what does this beginning of the speech mean except that he knew the Son of God was to come, but did not think he would come in this infirmity of body? He glosses: not only “ridiculous to the Greeks” — ridiculous to the demons.
• Afterwards, seeing miracles, they guessed him to be the Son of God (Mark 1, “I know that you are the holy one of God”). Chrysostom: they had no certain or firm knowledge; they knew him to be the Christ promised in the law (Luke 4).
• Their confession was “more from suspicion than from certitude” — and he stops to place this in logic: suspicion is weaker than opinion; opinion is the effect of dialectical reasoning, suspicion of rhetorical reasoning.
• Bede on Luke: the devil, seeing him weakened by fasting, understood him a true man; failing in the temptation, he doubted whether he was the Son of God; then through the power of the signs he understood, or rather suspected. He would not have persuaded the Jews to crucify him because he thought him not the Son of God, but because he did not foresee he would be the loser by that death. Hence 1 Cor. 2 again: the princes of this world did not know.

6. Reply 3: why he silenced the demons (“we would learn never to believe a liar”) #

The expulsions were for men’s benefit, not the demons’, and so he forbade their praise, for three reasons:

1. Athanasius: as an example, to accustom us not to care about such speech even when they say true things — since you might then believe them when they speak falsely.
2. Chrysostom: they must not usurp the glory of the apostolic office, nor should the mystery of Christ be published by a fetid tongue — “not beautiful is praise in the mouth of the sinner.”
3. Bede: lest he enkindle the envy of the Jews; hence the apostles too are ordered to be silent, lest the preaching of the divine majesty defer the dispensation of the passion. Examples and exchanges: Macbeth — the witches say “hail, king,” true speech from liars. He recalls a commentary contrasting Simon Peter’s confession (“blessed are you”) with the demons’ (“shut up”): so that we would never believe a liar even when he speaks the truth. Today’s gospel: Matthew’s confession, and the command to tell nobody. A student’s question (attributed to “Tom”): was it sinful for those healed to disobey and publish it? — left without a settled answer; he only notes the more he told them, the more they spoke.

7. Reply 4: why he permitted harm to bodies and property (“he wasn’t there to make you wealthy”) #

Christ came to teach and work miracles for men’s utility, chiefly the salvation of the soul; so he permitted the expelled demons to do some harm in body or exterior possessions for men’s instruction. Chrysostom on Matthew gives three reasons for the pigs: (1) to instruct men in the magnitude of the harm the demons do; (2) that all might learn the demons would not dare even against the pigs unless he conceded it; (3) to show they would have done graver things to those men, were men not aided by divine providence. For the same reasons he let the liberated man be more grievously afflicted for a time. Bede: after sin, when one seeks to turn back to God, the ancient enemy attacks with greater and new assaults, to inculcate hatred of virtue or avenge his expulsion. Jerome: the healed man is “like dead,” as it is said, Mortui estis, et vita vestra abscondita est cum Christo in Deo — which he recalls a Dominican using as the text of a retreat to nuns.

8. Dionysius, and a warning about his authority (“who has more authority than he perhaps should have”) #

Aside before article 2: Dionysius has more authority than he perhaps deserves, because he was taken for the Dionysius converted by Paul at the Areopagus (Acts); hence “Dionysius the Areopagite,” and now “the pseudo-Areopagite.” Student quip: “the liar.”

9. Three objections against miracles on the heavenly bodies (“it does not belong to divine providence to corrupt”) #

1. Dionysius, Divine Names 4: it does not belong to divine providence to corrupt nature but to save it; the celestial bodies are by nature incorruptible and unalterable (Aristotle, De Caelo I) — so no change should be made in their order. He flags twice that “we don’t fully agree with this thing about the heavenly bodies.” Digression on the title: the Greek word means heaven or the whole universe, and the book is really about the universe, so it should be translated “On the Universe”; because the Latin De Caelo seemed not to cover the whole book, it got the title De Caelo et Mundo — a good instance of the point he made earlier about a word used both for a part and for the whole.
2. The course of time is marked by the heavenly motions (Gen. 1:14, lights for signs and times and years); so a change would change the order of times — yet the astrologers (i.e. astronomers, Isa. 47, who contemplate the stars and compute the months) are not read to have noticed it.
3. It was more fitting to do miracles living and teaching than dying (2 Cor.: crucified from infirmity but lives by God’s power; and his miracles confirmed his teaching); yet in his life he worked no miracle on the heavens, and refused the Pharisees a sign from heaven. Sed contra: Luke 23, darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour, the sun obscured.

10. The body of a. 2: only God changes the heavens (“which by God alone are unchangeably ordered”) #

Christ’s miracles ought to be such as sufficiently show him God. This is not evidently shown by changes in lower bodies, which can be moved by other causes, as it is by change in the course of the heavenly bodies, which God alone orders unchangeably. Dionysius, Epistle to Polycarp: the motion of the order of the heavens can never be changed unless by the cause that made all things and changes them by his word. So it was fitting he work miracles on the heavenly bodies, to manifest his divinity more fully.

11. Reply 1: God does nothing against nature (“Nihil contra naturam facit”) #

As it is natural to lower bodies to be moved by the higher — his example, the tides, natural though not following from the nature of water by itself — so it is natural to every creature to be changed by God according to his will. Augustine, Contra Faustum XXII, in the gloss on Romans 11: God, creator of all natures, nihil contra naturam facit, because what he does to a thing is that thing’s nature. “That’s a marvellous thing.” Hence the heavenly bodies are not corrupted when God changes their course, though they would be if changed by another cause. He notes Thomas treats this in a chapter of the Summa Contra Gentiles: miracles are not unnatural.

12. Reply 2: the three explanations of the darkness, and Dionysius’s five marvels (“I’ll take that with a grain of salt”) #

The order of times was not perverted. Three accounts:

• Some: the sun withheld its rays, with no change in the heavenly motions by which times are measured. Jerome on Matthew: the luminous body withdrew its rays. Thomas corrects the image — the sun does not emit or withdraw rays by choice but by nature (Dionysius, Divine Names 4); it is “said to withdraw them” insofar as by divine power the rays did not reach the earth.
• Origen on Matthew: dark clouds ran together over Jerusalem and Judea from the sixth to the ninth hour. He thinks likewise the other passion-signs (the veil, the earthquake) were only in Jerusalem or Judea, and “the whole earth” means the whole land of Judea — as in 3 Kings, Obadiah to Elijah, showing Ahab sought him in the nations around Judea. Aside: as a schoolboy he expected Good Friday to be a dark day, and it was bright blue.
• Dionysius, who oculata fide — with the eye of faith, as an eyewitness — reports the moon coming between. Five marvels: (1) a natural eclipse happens only at conjunction, but this was at the full moon, the fifteenth day, the Jewish Pasch — “no agreement of time”; (2) at the sixth hour the moon was seen with the sun in mid-heaven, and by evening was back in its own place in the east, diametrically opposite the sun — supernaturally leaving and then restored in due time; (3) a natural eclipse begins from the west and moves east, since the moon moves faster eastward and overtakes the sun; but then the moon, already half a circle past, had to revert eastward, so the eclipse began from the east; (4) in a natural eclipse the sun clears from the same side it was first obscured, the western; here, the moon reversing from east to west, the light returned first on the western part — the translator’s note: repurgationem, which recent interpreters render by accessum and recessum, meeting and withdrawing; (5) Chrysostom on Matthew adds that the darkness lasted three hours, whereas an eclipse passes in a moment and has no delay — unless the time is counted from the first obscuring to the total repurging.
• Origen’s objection from “the sons of this age”: how is it that no Greek or barbarian wrote of it? A certain Phlegon in his chronicles records it at the beginning of the rule of Tiberius, but does not note it was at the full moon. Reply: astronomers elsewhere were not watching, since it was not the season for an eclipse, and took the darkness for some passion of the air; but in Egypt, where clouds are rare, Dionysius and his companions were moved to observe. He then says plainly: “I’ll take that with a grain of salt,” salva reverentia — and warns how easily an enemy of the Church would say, “see how easy it is to fix up these stories.”

13. Reply 3: the greater the infirmity, the greater the sign (“crucified from infirmity”) #

Miracles were most needed to show Christ’s divinity where his human infirmity most appeared. So at his birth a new star appeared — Maximus, sermon on the nativity: if you despise the manger, lift your eyes a little and see a new star protesting the divine birth to the world. In the passion a still greater infirmity appeared, so a greater miracle was needed, about the chief luminaries of the world. Chrysostom on Matthew: to those demanding a sign (“this depraved and adulterous generation… no sign but the sign of Jonah”) he promises the cross and resurrection, and this is far more marvellous in one crucified than walking on the earth. His gloss: there would have been a reason to do it then, not before.

His words #

• “spiritual substances” — the genus under which both angels and demons fall in Thomas’s division.
• “rational spirit” — Augustine’s phrase, used, he notes, for a standing (the sinning spirit vs. the pious and just spirit of life).
• “suspicion” — weaker than opinion; opinion the effect of dialectical reasoning, suspicion of rhetorical reasoning.
• “astrologers” — he glosses: meaning the astronomers.
• De Caelo et Mundo — the title expanded because De Caelo seemed not to cover the whole book; the Greek word covers heaven or the whole universe.
• Nihil contra naturam facit — God does nothing against nature, because what he does to a thing is that thing’s nature.
• oculata fide — “the eye of faith,” i.e. as an eyewitness.
• repurgationem / accessum et recessum — the translator’s note on the sun’s clearing; meeting and withdrawing.
• salva reverentia — “saving reverence,” his formula for taking Dionysius’s report with a grain of salt.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 44, a. 1 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 44, a. 2 (whole article)

Mentioned (within those articles or by him)

• Augustine, De Trinitate III; Contra Faustum XXII (in the gloss on Rom. 11)
• 1 Cor. 2; Mt. 9:8; Mark 1; Zech. 13; John 12:31; Col. 1:20; Luke 4; Luke 23; Gen. 1:14; Isa. 47; 3 Kings (Obadiah and Elijah); Col. 3 (Mortui estis…)
• Ambrose, Chrysostom, Bede, Athanasius, Jerome, Origen, Maximus (sermon on the nativity), Phlegon’s chronicles
• Dionysius, Divine Names 4; Epistle to Polycarp
• Aristotle, De Caelo I
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, chapter that miracles are not against nature (chapter not specified)
• Acts of the Apostles (Dionysius at the Areopagus); Shakespeare, Macbeth

His questions #

• Why did Christ work miracles on demons but none on the good angels? Because men were to be freed from the demons’ power but joined as neighbours to the angels; so for the angels it sufficed that they appear — at his birth, resurrection, ascension.
• Did the demons know he was the Son of God? Only as much as he willed: first they guessed not, from his hunger; then from the signs they suspected rather than knew — “more from suspicion than from certitude.”
• Why did he silence the demons who confessed him? So we would learn never to believe a liar even when he speaks the truth; because a fetid tongue must not publish the mystery; and lest Jewish envy hasten the passion out of season.
• Was it sinful for those healed to disobey and publish what he had done? Left open — he only notes that the more he told them, the more they spoke.
• Why did he let the demons harm bodies and the pigs? Because he came chiefly for the soul’s salvation; the harm instructs men how great the demons’ malice is and how they can do nothing without his leave.
• Is changing the heavens against the nature of the heavenly bodies? No: it is natural to every creature to be changed by God, since what God does is the thing’s nature — nihil contra naturam facit.
• Was the order of times upset by the darkness? No — either the rays were withheld, or clouds intervened, or (Dionysius) the moon moved miraculously and was restored to its place in due time.
• Should we accept Dionysius’s eyewitness account of the eclipse? He takes it with a grain of salt, salva reverentia, warning how easily such stories can be “fixed up.”
• Why work the sign at his death rather than in his life, when he refused the Pharisees a sign from heaven? Because the sign was most needed where his infirmity most appeared; hence the star at his birth and the darkened sun at his passion.