The Fitting Time and Place of Christ's Passion (ST III q.46 a.9-10)

Orientation #

He is reading straight on in the Summa’s treatment of the Passion, taking article 9 (the time) and then, when someone asks whether there is time for one more, article 10 (the place). He notes in passing that the numbering of the replies in his own Latin text is confused (ad primum, then ad secundum, ad tertium, ad secundum again, ad quartum).

The class, in order #

1. The objections on the time (“Christ did not suffer in a suitable time”) #

Four objections read out of a. 9:

1. The Passion is figured by the Paschal Lamb (“Christ our Pasch is immolated,” 1 Cor 5), immolated on the fourteenth day at vespers; but on that day he celebrated the Pasch with his disciples (Mark 14), and suffered the next day.
2. The Passion is his exaltation (“it is necessary that the Son of Man be lifted up,” John 3), and he is the Sun of Justice (Malachi 4); the sun is most exalted at the sixth hour — but Mark 15 says the third hour.
3. Likewise the sun is most exalted at the summer solstice; so he should have suffered then, not in springtime.
4. His presence lights the world (“as long as I am in the world I am the light of the world”); so it would have been better for salvation that he live longer, and die old — as Peter did — not at thirty.

Sed contra: “Jesus knowing that his hour had come” (John 13) against “my hour is not yet come” (John 2:4); with Augustine — when he had done as much as he judged sufficient, then came his hour, “not of necessity, but of power.”

2. The body of the article (“the passion of Christ was subject to his own will”) #

The Passion was subject to his own will, and his will was ruled by divine wisdom, which “disposes all things suitably and sweetly” (Wisdom 8); therefore it was celebrated at a suitable time. He backs this with the Book of Questions of the New and Old Testament: “the Savior did all things in their proper places and times” — and remarks that Augustine stands behind this material.

Aside on the word celebrated: a young woman he knows, becoming Catholic, emailed “Happy Good Friday” — which he had never heard; and he recalls as a child expecting Good Friday to be a dark day, “so much for that.”

3. Reply on the fourteenth day (“some say that Christ suffered on the fourteenth day”) #

He follows Thomas through three positions, none tidied:

• Some say Christ suffered on the fourteenth, the day the Jews immolated the lamb — with John 18–19 (they would not enter the Praetorium, that they might eat the Pasch) and Chrysostom: the Jews kept their Pasch then, but Christ kept his one day earlier, reserving his death to the sixth day, Friday, when the old Passover came round. This agrees with John 13, “before the festal day.”
• Against this: Matthew 26 (“the first day of the unleavened”) shows that the first day of the unleavened is the fourteenth; with Jerome, on the fourteenth Christ made the supper, on the fifteenth he suffered — confirmed by Mark 14 and Luke.
• Some therefore say Christ ate the lamb on the proper day, showing (Chrysostom on Matthew) that to the last he was not contrary to the law, while the Jews, busy procuring his death against the law, delayed their celebration a day.
• But neither does this fit Mark. So, with Bede: Christ and the Jews kept the old Pasch together, though Christ, our Paschal Lamb, was crucified the next day (the fifteenth); in the night the lamb was offered he handed on the mystery of his body and blood, and being taken and bound he “made sacred the beginning of his immolation.” John’s “before the festal day” means the fourteenth, because the day begins the evening before — the Jewish solemnity starting from the vespers of the preceding day. When it is said the Pasch was to be eaten on the fifteenth, “Pasch” there is not the lamb but the paschal food, the unleavened bread. And Augustine offers yet another exposition: the Pasch can stand for the whole seven-day feast.

He comments dryly: “That’s perfectly clear now.” He notes that Christmas Eve ranks below Christmas Day with us, as the fifteenth was the most solemn day with them; and mentions in passing the dispute with the Orthodox over leavened or unleavened bread.

4. Reply on the third hour and the sixth (“most truly they crucified him when they cried out”) #

Augustine (On the Agreement of the Gospels): it was “as it were the sixth hour” when Pilate handed him over (John) — the fifth finished, something of the sixth begun; the sixth completed, he hung on the cross and darkness came. The third hour is when the Jews shouted that he be crucified, and most truly they are shown to have crucified him then — lest the greater crime be taken from the Jews and given to the soldiers. Hence Mark: “it was the third hour, and they crucified him.”

• Example: in a close presidential race a man makes a stupid remark — “that’s when he lost the election,” though he loses it a week later.
• Example: when David put Uriah in the front line, he had already killed him.
• He recalls the principle stated earlier: one who makes a mistake but does not suffer its consequences — the thing exists already in its principle.

A second reading: some take John’s “parasceve” (preparation) as the third hour of the day; the true Pasch began to be prepared from the ninth hour of the night, when the chief priests said “he is worthy [of death]” — from that hour to the crucifixion is the sixth hour of preparation (John) and the third of the day (Mark).

A third: some say the divergence is a copyist’s error, since in Greek the figures for three and six resemble each other — gamma and (he and a student settle on) zeta. He notes he was taught the Greek alphabet by sounds, not letter names. He himself thinks the first explanation is the one to take: they killed him when they became responsible by shouting “Crucify him.”

5. Reply on the season (“he wished to redeem the world when he created it”) #

From the Questions of the New and Old Testament: the Lord wished to redeem and reform the world at the time he created it, that is at the equinox — day and night equal, and from then the day begins to increase over the night, because by the Passion one is led from darkness to light. The perfect illumination belongs to the second coming, which is therefore compared to summer: “when the branch is tender and the leaves are born, you know that summer is near … so also you, when you see all these things.” Then will be the greatest exaltation of Christ.

Asides: the morning and evening knowledge of the angels, God’s knowledge called the noonday because there is no darkness in it at all; someone’s remark that the Latin of Thomas and Bonaventure is sunny Italy while Scotus is London fog. Then a long digression on Westerns (High Noon with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly; a John Wayne scene — “if they come across the river, baptize them” — and Wayne’s Catholic death; Gene Autry and his horse Champion at a St. Paul rodeo), the Lipizzaners, Washington Irving on taming horses in the West, and a student’s sister who trained a pony at twelve. “Who’s in the saddle? That’s it.”

6. Reply on youthful age (“Christ willed to suffer in youthful age”) #

Three reasons:

1. That he might the more commend his love, giving his life for us when he was in the most perfect state — “see how loving Thomas is,” coming down to the very age at which he died.
2. That no diminution of nature appear in him (“like the old man, like me”), just as no sickness, as was said above.
3. That dying and rising at that age he might show beforehand the quality of those who rise — Ephesians 4, “until we all come together … into the perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.” A man of 114 will not rise at 114.

Discussion: we count a young death more tragic, and giving up life young seems more generous than waiting until the old man is on his crutches — as Socrates in the Apology at seventy will not do something dishonourable to prolong a life soon ending, and Eleazar in Maccabees says that by sacrificing to the pagan gods he would gain little life and wreck the reputation of his old age, whereas this way he gives an example to the young. A student recounts his father in tears over an eleven-year-old nephew with cancer; another, that ambulance workers find injured children trigger a heightened response.

Aside on celebrate and exaggerate: the Latin words do not carry our sense — students who treat graduation as a sacrament are equivocating. He looks up celebratio: celebrating a festival or mass; a throng, crowd, gathering; common use or vogue.

7. The objections on the place (“Christ did not suffer in a suitable place”) #

Article 10, three objections:

1. He suffered according to the flesh conceived at Nazareth and born at Bethlehem; so he should have suffered at one of those.
2. Truth should answer the figure: the sacrifices were offered in the temple; so he should have suffered there, not outside the gate.
3. Medicine should answer the sickness: the Passion is medicine against Adam’s sin, and Adam was buried not at Jerusalem but at Hebron — “the name of Hebron before was called Arbe” (Joshua 14).

Sed contra: Luke 13, a prophet does not perish outside Jerusalem. Body: with the Book of Eighty-Three Questions, all things the Savior did in their proper places and times, since as all things are in his hand, so also all places.

8. Why Jerusalem (“most suitably he suffered in Jerusalem”) #

Four reasons:

1. Jerusalem was the place God chose for sacrifices, which figured the true sacrifice — Ephesians 5, “he handed himself over as a host in the odor of sweetness”; Bede: as the hour approached he went to Jerusalem, arriving five days before the Pasch, as the lamb was brought to the place of offering on the tenth day by the law’s precept. (He asks whether that is Palm Sunday; a student describes the rites — washing, prayer over the lamb, then the killing — and mentions St. Alphonsus on Christ fulfilling these figures.) Figure here has almost the sense of signify.
2. The power of the Passion was to be diffused to the whole world, so he suffered in the middle of the inhabited earth — Psalm 73 (Vulg.), “he worked salvation in the middle of the earth,” that is Jerusalem, called the umbilicus. He remarks he looked it up: umbilicus in Latin just means middle, centre; and quotes Samuel Johnson that the goal of all travel is the Mediterranean.
3. It suited his humility: choosing the most shameful death, he did not refuse to suffer confusion in so celebrated a place — confusion being the opposite of glory. Pope Leo, in a sermon on the Epiphany: he who took the form of a slave chose the little-known Bethlehem for his birth, Jerusalem for his passion.
4. That the iniquity of his killers be shown to come forth from the princes of the people — Acts 4, “they came together in this city against thy holy child Jesus whom thou hast anointed: Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the people of Israel.”

Aside: Thomas’s commentary on Psalm 22, “why have you abandoned me,” where he uses abiectio plebis, the cast-off of the people — literally fulfilled when the people said “take him away, crucify him.” “That psalm is so remarkable.”

9. Why outside the gate (“he suffered outside the gate”) #

Three reasons:

1. Truth answers the figure: the ox and the goat offered in the most solemn sacrifice for the sin of the whole multitude had their blood brought into the holy place by the high priest and their bodies burnt outside the camp (Leviticus 16); so Jesus, that he might sanctify his people, suffered outside the gate.
2. To give us an example of going out from worldly conversation — “let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach” (Hebrews).
3. Chrysostom, in a sermon on the Passion: he would not suffer under a roof nor in the Jewish temple, lest the Jews take the sacrifice to themselves and it be thought he was offered for that people alone; outside the city, outside the walls, that his sacrifice be known as common, an offering for the whole earth, a common purification.

10. Calvary, not Adam’s tomb (“a favorable interpretation, but not over true”) #

Jerome on Matthew: some expound Calvary as the place where Adam is buried, and say it is so named from his head; Jerome calls this a favourable interpretation, sweetening the ears of the people, “but not over true.” Rather, outside the city and outside the gate are the places where the heads of the condemned are cut off, and Calvary takes its name from the beheading; Christ was crucified there so that where the area of the damned had been, the standard of the martyrs would be raised. Adam was buried next to Hebron, as we read in the book of Jesus son of Nun [Joshua]. And it was more fitting that Christ be crucified in the common place of the damned than at Adam’s sepulchre, to show that the cross was a remedy not only against Adam’s personal sin but against the sin of the whole world. He notes that “notions are popular.”

His words #

• “not of necessity, but of power” — Augustine’s phrase for why his hour came when it did.
• “celebrated” — of the Passion; he stresses it does not carry our sense of festivity, and equivocation on “celebration” (graduation as a “sacrament”) is a change of meaning, like Latin “exaggerate.”
• Parasceve — “preparation,” John’s word for the day.
• “Figure” — here “almost has the sense of signify.”
• “Confusion” — the shame Christ did not refuse at Jerusalem; “the opposite of glory.”
• Abiectio plebis — “the cast-off of the people,” from Thomas on Psalm 22.
• “Not over true” — Jerome’s verdict on Calvary as Adam’s grave.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 9 (whether Christ suffered at a suitable time), objections, body and replies.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 10 (whether he suffered in a suitable place), objections, body and replies.
• Scripture cited within: 1 Cor 5; Mark 14, 15; Matt 26; Luke 13 and the Passover text; John 2:4, 3, 13, 19; Mal 4; Wis 8; Lev 16; Heb 13 (inferred); Eph 4, 5; Ps 73 (Vulg.); Acts 4; Josh 14.
• Authorities cited within: Augustine (On the Agreement of the Gospels; Eighty-Three Questions; Questions of the New and Old Testament), Chrysostom, Jerome, Bede, Pope Leo.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on Psalm 22 (Vulg. 21).
• Plato, Apology (Socrates at seventy).
• 2 Maccabees, Eleazar.
• St. Alphonsus, on Christ fulfilling the figures.

His questions #

• Why did Christ suffer at that time rather than another? Because the Passion was subject to his will, ruled by the divine wisdom that disposes all things suitably and sweetly.
• Did he suffer on the fourteenth or the fifteenth day? Left as Thomas leaves it: three positions weighed, Bede’s preferred — he kept the old Pasch with the Jews and was crucified the following day.
• Mark says the third hour, John the sixth: how? Sixth when Pilate handed him over; the third hour is when the Jews shouted, and most truly they crucified him then — he takes this explanation over the copyist-error one.
• Why spring rather than the summer solstice? He redeemed the world when he created it, at the equinox, when light begins to overtake darkness; summer is kept for the second coming.
• Why did he want to suffer in youthful age? To commend his love at his most perfect state; that no diminution of nature appear in him; and to show beforehand the age of those who rise.
• Why Jerusalem rather than Bethlehem or Nazareth? “No prophet is [honoured] in his own country” — and four reasons: the place of sacrifice, the middle of the earth, humility in a celebrated place, and the guilt of the princes.
• Why outside the gate and not in the temple? To answer the figure of the victims burnt outside the camp; to give the example of going outside the camp; and that his sacrifice be known as common to the whole earth, not that people’s alone.
• Was Christ crucified over Adam’s grave? No — a pleasing but not true interpretation; Calvary is the place of beheading the condemned, Adam was buried near Hebron, and the common place of the damned better shows the cross a remedy against the sin of the whole world.