Summa III, Q. 46 a. 11–12 and Q. 47 a. 1–2: Christ Crucified Among Thieves, the Passion and His Divinity, Laying Down His Life, and Dying Out of Obedience

Orientation #

He opens with the prayer and goes straight into article 11 of the question on the Passion, then finishes the question, reads the division of the whole treatise (passion, death, burial, descent into hell), and begins q. 47 on the efficient cause of the Passion. He breaks after article 2, announcing article 3 next. The previous class treated the fitting time and place of the Passion, and the next takes up whether the Father handed Christ over.

The class, in order #

1. Was it fitting that Christ be crucified with thieves? (“What partaking of justice with iniquity?”) #

Three objections: (1) 2 Corinthians 6 — no partaking of justice with iniquity, and Christ was made justice for us; (2) Origen on Matthew 26 and Ambrose on Luke 22 — the Passion “has imitators but not equals”, so dying with Jesus who dies for all is not fitting; (3) Matthew 27 says the thieves insulted him, Luke 23 has one asking to be remembered — so a non-blaspheming thief was crucified there too. Sed contra: Isaiah 53, “he was reputed among the wicked.”

On the third objection he remarks: “First time I ever heard that” — the usual account being that both blasphemed at first and one later turned.

2. Two reasons: the Jews’ intention and God’s ordering (“as regards the intention of the Jews”) #

Corpus: Christ was crucified among thieves for one reason on the side of the Jews’ intention, for another on the side of God’s ordering.

• The Jews’ intention (Augustine): that he be made a sharer in the suspicion attaching to them. This did not come about: nothing is said of them, while of him the cross is everywhere — kings laying aside their crowns take up the cross; it is in purples, in crowns, in arms, in the sacred meal.
• God’s ordering, four reasons: (1) Jerome on Matthew — as he was made a curse on the cross for us, so for the salvation of all he was crucified among the wicked as if one of the noxious; (2) Leo Papa, sermon on the Passion — one on the right, one on the left, so that the cross itself would show the distinction to be made in the judgment of all men; with Augustine on John: the cross was a tribunal, the judge in the middle, the believer freed, the insulter damned, signifying the right and the left at the judgment; (3) Hilary — the two thieves fixed right and left show every diversity of humankind called to the sacrament of the Lord’s passion, though the division of faithful and unfaithful puts one on each side, and the one on the right is saved by the justification of faith; (4) Bede on Mark — the thieves signify those who under the confession of Christ undergo martyrdom: those who bear it for eternal glory are designated by the thief on the right, those who look for human praise by the one on the left.

He notes all four are about what God wished to be signified by this, and signified at the time of the Passion. A student asks whether the Gospels make clear that the good thief is on the right; he cannot remember, but notes the Good Friday liturgy with two candles, the right one lit.

Asides: on “sinister” as meaning left but also harmful; the “white martyrdom” of the Irish monks. On Thomas quoting Jerome, Leo and Hilary — “Thomas is plagiarizing, he’s got nothing to say for himself” — he cites Charles Talis (?) [unclear in recording]: some things we should say better than our predecessors, others just as well; some are said so well it is presumptuous to try to improve on them, and you say it as well by quoting them.

3. Replies to the three objections (“he wished to be reckoned among the wicked”) #

• To 1: as Christ did not owe death but underwent it voluntarily to overcome it by his own power, so it was not his desert to be placed with thieves, but he wished to be reckoned among the wicked to destroy iniquity by his power — not to partake of it. Chrysostom on John: the thief converted on the cross and brought into paradise is no less than the splitting of the rocks.
• To 2: it was not fitting that anyone suffer with Christ from the same cause; Origen — all were in sin and all needed someone to die for them, not they for others. He ties this to the good thief’s “we got what we deserve.”
• To 3: Augustine, De consensu evangelistarum — Matthew put a plural for a singular (“that’s always kind of a strange explanation”); or, per Jerome, both blasphemed at first and then one, seeing the signs, believed — “which I think is a little more” likely. He defends Augustine’s reading with a homely case: if he told Rosie “they attacked me” when only one student had, that is not a pure invention — we do speak that way.

Asides: St. Thérèse praying for the criminal Pranzini, who kissed the cross before dying; Chrysostom or Thomas on Matthew on Christ’s crying out with a loud voice as a sign that he laid down his life when he chose, since a crucified man has no energy left to shout — and the centurion was converted just by seeing him die.

4. Does the Passion belong to his divinity? (“the nature of God remaining, the Word is not able to suffer”) #

He calls this article “kind of a footnote.” Objections: (1) 1 Corinthians 2 — they crucified “the Lord of glory,” and Christ is Lord of glory according to his divinity; (2) the beginning of man’s salvation is the divinity itself (Ps. 36, “the salvation of the just is from the Lord”), so if the Passion did not pertain to the divinity it could not be fruitful for us — “that’s an interesting argument”; (3) the Jews were punished as homicides of God himself, as the magnitude of their punishment shows. Sed contra: Athanasius, Epistle to Epictetus — remaining God by nature, the Word cannot suffer.

Corpus (going back to the mystery of the Incarnation): the union of human and divine nature was made in the person — Greek hypostasis, Latin suppositum — the distinction of natures remaining, the same person of both natures, the properties of each preserved. So the Passion is attributed to the suppositum of the divine nature, not by reason of the divine nature, which cannot suffer, but by reason of the human. Cyril’s synodal epistle: if anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in his flesh and was crucified in his flesh, let him be anathema.

Replies: (1) the Lord of glory is said to be crucified not as Lord of glory but as passible man — “it’s interesting how the understanding of the Incarnation goes into that very statement”; (2) a sermon of the Council of Ephesus — the death of Christ was as it were made the death of God, and so destroyed death, because he who suffered was both God and man, yet the divine nature was not injured nor changed nor did it undergo passions; (3) the Jews crucified not a mere man but hurled presumptions against God. The image given there: the emperor speaks, his words are written on parchment and sent to the cities; a rebel who tears up the document is put to death not for tearing parchment but for destroying the imperial message. So the Jew is not secure in crucifying a mere man: what he saw was as the parchment, what lay hidden under it was the imperial word, the Son of God by nature, not a mere utterance put forth through the tongue. His footnote gives Acts, Part Three, ch. 10, homily 2, Theodosius of Ancyra (?) (inferred, from his reading of the footnote).

Aside: John XXIII did not want anathemas in the texts of Vatican II, yet going back and reading, “you find anathemas all over the place.”

5. The division of the treatise and the plan of q. 47 (“whether Christ was killed by others or by himself”) #

Four considerations on Christ’s exit from this world: his passion, his death, his burial, his descent into hell. Under the passion, three: the passion itself (the question just finished), its efficient cause (q. 47), and its fruit. Six articles in q. 47: (1) killed by another or by himself; (2) from what motive he handed himself over; (3) whether the Father handed him over; (4) whether it was fitting he suffer at the hands of the Gentiles rather than the Jews; (5) whether those who killed him knew him — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”; in some sense they knew him; (6) the sin of those who killed Christ.

Aside (from the students and himself): the common Jewish objection — “he was a nice man, but why did he have to make himself God?” Rabbi Jacob Neusner, whom the Pope quotes and answers, objects not that Jesus teaches against the law but that he adds himself to it, claiming the whole law points to him. “I’m always amazed because the Jews see something that so many contemporary Catholic scholars refuse” — that he said he is the fulfillment of all that went before.

6. Article 1: was Christ killed by another or by himself? (“no one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down”) #

Objections: (1) John 10:18 — no one takes my soul from me, and to kill is to take someone’s soul; (2) those killed by others fail bit by bit as nature is debilitated, most of all the crucified — Augustine, De Trinitate IV, those hung on wood die a long death — but Christ cried out with a great voice and sent forth his spirit (Matthew 27); (3) those killed by others die by violence and so not voluntarily, since the violent is opposed to the voluntary (“good philosophical principle”), but Augustine, De Trinitate IV, says Christ’s spirit did not leave the flesh unwillingly but because, when and how he wished. Sed contra: Luke 18 — after they had flagellated him, they killed him. (He notes heretics reply that it only says they thought they had killed him: “these disputes of the heretics” can be endless.)

Asides in the first objection: Shakespeare speaks of a dead body as a jewel box with the jewel taken out. And on a text of Psalm 48 (?): who teaches, words or things? Teaching faith and morals we teach things; teaching scripture we teach words — hence Dionysius’ work is called On the Divine Names. And these words can be misunderstood: you need the Fathers and the Church, or you go astray on your own.

7. The two ways of causing: acting directly, and not impeding (“because he does not impede”) #

“So the fundamental distinction is the body of the article.” Something can cause an effect in two ways:

1. By acting directly toward it — thus Christ’s persecutors killed him: they inflicted a cause sufficient for his death, with the intention of killing him, and the effect followed from that cause.
2. Indirectly, by not impeding it when one could. Example: a man is said to let in the rain because he does not close the window — he ties it to the open window at home that day.

In this second way Christ was the cause of his own passion and death, for he could have impeded it: (a) by rebuking his adversaries so that they would not wish or would not be able to kill him; (b) because his spirit had power to conserve the nature of his flesh against any injury, which his soul had from being joined to the Word in the unity of person (Augustine, De Trinitate IV). Since his soul did not repel the injury from his body but willed the bodily nature to succumb, he is said to have laid down his soul and voluntarily died.

Aside: “What’s Augustine doing talking about the Incarnation in the book on the Trinity? He’s kind of all over the place.”

8. Laying down one’s head: Thomas More and the martyrs (“Well, he’s not impeding it”) #

A student asks whether Thomas More laying his head on the block dies voluntarily. Answer: he is not impeding it, though he could have tried — fought, run away — and did not. Examples: the Franciscan martyrs in Damascus under the Mamluks, a priest told to confess Allah or die who laid his head on the altar and was split with a poleaxe; and a saint (name unclear in recording) who held out his arm for the needle — used against him at his canonization, and “I had to think it out a little bit: was that good or bad? Just being helpful.”

9. Replies of article 1 (“he never suffered anything unwillingly”) #

• To 1: “no one takes my soul from me” is to be understood as unwillingly; taking properly means taking from one unable to resist. He adds what he remembers hearing: Christ never suffered anything unwillingly.
• To 2: Christ showed that the violence inflicted did not take away his life; he conserved his bodily nature in strength so that even in extremity he could shout with a loud voice — counted among the miracles of his death. Mark 15: the centurion, seeing that he so expired, said “truly this man was the Son of God.” It was also marvelous that death came to him more quickly than to others in like punishment: John 19, the others’ legs were broken to hasten death but they found Jesus already dead; Mark 15, Pilate marvelled that he was already dead. As by his will his nature was kept vigorous to the end, so when he wished he suddenly gave in to the injury.
• To 3: Christ at once underwent violence that he might die and yet died voluntarily, because the violence overcame his body only so far as he willed it to overcome his body.

10. Student objection: was what they did a cause or only an occasion? (“wasn’t his willing the cause of that?”) #

A student presses: death is the separation of soul from body — wasn’t his willing the cause of that? And since his will could have impeded his dying, while mine could not, why is what they did not more an occasion than a cause? His answers: what they were doing was sufficient in the natural order to separate soul from body, and he did not impede it, though he kept strength to cry out; they were directly acting, inflicting what would directly cause death, with the intention of killing; it actually caused the separation. If instead he had directed his own actions toward his death and inflicted it on himself, he would be killing himself — “then he’d be doing it, but not this other way.” In our case, even when we cannot overcome death we can fight it and do what is in our power; that is what is missing in Christ’s case.

Aside (from the exchange): the hospital saying that if a man is not willing to go on living he will not survive — he doubts such a man does wrong by not impeding his death and letting nature take its course, as against another who fights his cancer. Discussion of John Paul II refusing to go to the hospital — was that like suicide? He doubts it; everything needed was at the Vatican, and “let me go to the house of the Father.” And Amy Norris, dying of cancer, who asked a priest whether she could stop eating when food was doing more harm than good, and was told yes.

11. Article 2: did Christ die from obedience? (“Factus est obediens Patri usque ad mortem”) #

Objections: (1) obedience regards a precept, and it is not read that Christ was commanded to suffer — he interjects that this may not be entirely true, since he obeyed Pontius Pilate, and some say he was obedient even to his executioner; (2) what one does from obedience one does from the necessity of a precept, but Christ suffered voluntarily, not from necessity; (3) charity is a more excellent virtue than obedience, and Christ is said to have suffered from charity (Ephesians 5, “walk in love, just as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us”). Sed contra: Philippians 2, Factus est obediens Patri usque ad mortem.

Corpus: convenientissimum — “it’s a strong word” — that Christ suffer from obedience, for three reasons: (1) suitable to man’s justification — as by one man’s disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by one man’s obedience many just (Romans 5); (2) suitable to the reconciliation of God and men (Romans 5, reconciled through the death of his Son), since Christ’s death was a sacrifice most acceptable to God (Ephesians 5, an offering and host in an odor of sweetness), and obedience is set before all sacrifices (1 Kings 15, “better is obedience than victims”); (3) suitable to his victory over death and the author of death, for a soldier cannot conquer unless he obeys the leader — Proverbs 21:28, Vir obediens loquetur victoriam.

Asides: “Kind of wiping out the disobedience of Adam — I’m going to have a talk with that guy when he gets there. What were you thinking?” And on the Proverbs verse as a fit motto for the colonel.

12. Replies of article 2, and the fulfilling of the whole law (“It is consummated”) #

• To 1: Christ did receive a mandatum from the Father that he suffer — John 10:18, “I have power to lay down my soul and to take it up again, and this command I have received from my Father.” Chrysostom: this does not mean he waited to hear and then acted, as though he needed to learn; it shows a voluntary proceeding and destroys any suspicion of contrariety to the Father. Since in his death the old law was consummated (“It is consummated” — he notes the ordinary sense of “consuming” a drink), it can be understood that in suffering he fulfilled all the commands of the old law: the moral precepts, founded in the precepts of charity, since he suffered from love of the Father (John 14, “that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, so I do — arise, let us go hence,” to wit to the place of the passion) and from love of neighbor (Galatians 2, “he loved me and handed himself over for me”); the ceremonial precepts, ordered to sacrifices and oblations, since all the ancient sacrifices figured the true sacrifice he offered by dying (Colossians 2, let no one judge you in food and drink or festival or new moon, shadows of things to come, the body is Christ — Christ compared to them as body to shadow); the judicial precepts, ordered to satisfying injury, since as Psalm 68 says, what he did not steal he paid, letting himself be fixed to the wood for the apple stolen from the tree against God’s command. “I had never made that connection before — he was fixed on the tree because the other one was taken away.”
• To 2: obedience implies necessity with respect to what is commanded, but will with respect to fulfilling the command; such was Christ’s obedience, for the passion and death considered in themselves were repugnant to his natural will, yet he willed to fulfill God’s will — Psalm 39, “that I might do your will, my God, I willed”; Matthew 26, “if this chalice cannot pass from me unless I drink it, your will be done.”
• To 3: for the same reason Christ suffered from charity and from obedience, since he fulfilled the precepts of charity only by obedience, and was obedient out of love for the commanding Father.

13. Charity as universal cause; the Magnificat and Shakespeare (“charity is kind of a universal cause”) #

His gloss: obedience is the virtue proximate to his death, while charity is a universal cause — Thomas often attributes the immediate effect to the proximate cause, the remote but fundamental cause still standing. Parallel he says he long pondered: in the Magnificat the Virgin attributes her exaltation to humility (“he has regarded the lowliness of his handmaid… all nations shall call me blessed”), not to her love of God, because humility is proximate to exaltation (“he who humbles himself shall be exalted”) — yet her humility is formed by her charity. So too Christ undergoes death by obedience to the Father, going to meet Judas in the garden, and that obedience is formed by his charity; and when Christ shows mercy you may attribute the act to mercy, itself informed by love.

Supporting aside: Shakespeare on playing — “o’erstep not the modesty of nature, for anything so done is overdone” and away from the purpose of playing, which is to hold the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own face, scorn her own image. Instead of “virtue and vice,” which would sound pedantic, he says “scorn” — scorn being the effect of pride, hence a metonym for pride, and pride standing for the vices as their queen or mother. So what pride is to the vices, charity is to the virtues: pride in some way commands the vices, charity commands the other virtues and is the form of all the virtues.

He then announces the break before article 3.

His words #

• suppositum — the Latin for what the Greeks call hypostasis; the person to which the Passion is attributed.
• passible / “sufferable” — able to suffer; the divine nature is impassible, “not able to suffer.”
• white martyrdom — martyrdom without blood; he associates it with the Irish monks.
• “the fundamental distinction is the body of the article” — his flag for the two ways of causing in q. 47, a. 1.
• occasion vs. cause — the student’s term, which he refuses for the persecutors: they acted directly and sufficiently.
• convenientissimum — “most suitable,” which he marks as “a strong word.”
• mandatum — a command; what Christ received from the Father (John 10:18).
• universal cause / proximate cause — charity is the universal cause and form of the virtues; obedience (or humility, or mercy) is the proximate cause to which the effect is attributed.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 11 (crucified with thieves), with Augustine on John, Jerome on Matthew, Leo Papa’s sermon on the Passion, Hilary, Bede on Mark, Chrysostom on John, Origen on Matthew 26, Ambrose on Luke 22, Augustine De consensu evangelistarum
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 12 (whether the Passion pertains to the divinity), with Athanasius Epistle to Epictetus, Cyril’s synodal epistle, a sermon of the Council of Ephesus
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 47, prologue (six articles) and the division of the treatise at the head of q. 46
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 47, a. 1, with Augustine De Trinitate IV
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 47, a. 2, with Chrysostom
• Scripture quoted: 2 Cor. 6; Matt. 26, 27; Luke 22, 23; Isaiah 53; 1 Cor. 2; Ps. 36; John 10:18, 14, 19; Mark 15; Luke 18; Rom. 5; Eph. 5; 1 Kings 15; Prov. 21:28; Phil. 2; Col. 2; Gal. 2; Ps. 39; Ps. 68; Ps. 48 (?)

Mentioned

• Dionysius, On the Divine Names (title only)
• Jacob Neusner’s book on Jesus, quoted by the Pope; Neusner’s translation of the Talmud
• Shakespeare, Hamlet’s advice to the players (quoted, not cited); an unnamed play on a dead body as an emptied jewel box

His questions #

• Is it clear from the Gospels that the good thief is on the right? Left open — he cannot remember; he notes the Good Friday liturgy lights the right-hand candle.
• Why does Thomas here say nothing of his own, only quote Jerome, Leo and Hilary? Because some things are said so well that it is presumptuous to improve on them; you say them as well by quoting them.
• Does the Passion pertain to Christ’s divine nature? No: to the suppositum of the divine nature, by reason of the assumed passible nature, not by reason of the divine nature, which cannot suffer.
• Was Christ killed by another or by himself? By others, who acted directly and sufficiently with intent to kill; by himself only in the second way, as not impeding what he could have impeded.
• When Thomas More lays his head on the block, is he voluntarily dying? Yes — he is not impeding it, though he could have fought or fled.
• Wasn’t his willing the cause of the separation of soul from body, so that what they did was only an occasion? No: what they inflicted was sufficient in the natural order and actually caused the separation; had he directed and inflicted it himself, he would have been killing himself.
• Is it suicide to stop fighting for one’s life — John Paul II refusing the hospital, a cancer patient stopping food? He doubts it; not impeding death and letting nature take its course is not killing oneself.
• Did Christ die from obedience, when charity is the higher virtue? For the same reason from both: obedience is the proximate cause, charity the universal cause and form of the virtues.
• Why does the Virgin in the Magnificat attribute her exaltation to humility rather than to her love of God? Because humility is proximate to exaltation, while her humility is itself formed by charity as remote but fundamental cause.