Summa III, Q. 47 a. 3–6: The Father Handing Over the Son, Jews and Gentiles, the Persecutors' Knowledge, and How Grave Their Sin Was

Orientation #

He continues the line-by-line reading of the Summa on the efficient cause of the Passion, beginning “Article three, right?” and reaching a. 6 before “time for a nap.” He notes that the effect of the Passion “That’s the next question, right? The effect.” The previous class read q. 46 on why Christ was crucified between two thieves and opened this question on who killed Christ.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3: did the Father hand Christ over? (“God is faithful and without any iniquity”) #

Three objections: (1) to hand an innocent man over to suffering and death is iniquitous and cruel, but Deuteronomy 32 says God is faithful and without iniquity; (2) one is not handed over both by himself and by another, yet Isaiah 53 says Christ “handed over to death his own soul”; (3) Judas is blamed for handing him over (“one of you is a devil”), the Jews are blamed for handing him to Pilate (“your nation and your priests have handed you over to me”), and Pilate for handing him to be crucified — and there is no agreement of justice with iniquity. Sed contra: Romans 8 — “God did not spare his own Son, but for all of us he handed him over.” Aside: “Must be important book this Romans are.”

2. The three ways the Father handed him over (“according to three things”) #

Because Christ suffered voluntarily out of obedience to the Father:

1. by his eternal will pre-ordaining the Passion for the liberation of the human race (Isaiah 53: “God placed on him the iniquity of all of us”; “God wished to break him”);
2. by breathing into him a will of suffering for us, pouring in charity — “he was offered because he willed”;
3. by not protecting him but exposing him to persecution — whence on the cross, “My God, why have you abandoned me?”, i.e. why did you allow this; he exposed him to the power of his persecutors, as Augustine says.

3. Replies: consent, one will, and the root of the act (“scienti et volenti non fit injuria”) #

• To 1: handing an innocent man over against his will is impious and cruel; the Father did not do that, but inspired in him the will of suffering. He glosses with the moral-theology tag scienti et volenti non fit injuria: if you tell me to smash your windshield with a baseball bat and I do, you cannot hold me responsible. In this both God’s severity (sin not dismissed without punishment) and his goodness are shown: since man could not satisfy, God gave a satisfactor — Romans 3, Christ set forth as propitiator in his blood, “one to make atonement.” Aside: the man who gives his life for another in A Tale of Two Cities (“a far better thing I do…”).
• To 2: as God, Christ handed himself over by the same will and action as the Father, since they have one will in the divine nature; as man, by a will inspired by the Father. No contradiction. “Thomas sees the thing so clearly… just because he was looking up instead of down.”
• To 3: the same action is judged diversely in the good and the bad according as it proceeds from a diverse root. The Father and Christ handed him over from charity, and are praised; Judas from cupidity, the Jews from envy, Pilate from worldly fear of Caesar — and are rightly held in contempt.

4. Article 4: fitting that he suffer from the Gentiles (“truth ought to correspond to the figure”) #

Objections: (1) fewest possible should sin in his death, and the Jews already sinned (“here is the heir; let us come and kill him”); (2) the figurative sacrifices of the old law were offered by Jews, not Gentiles, so the true sacrifice should not be completed by Gentile hands; (3) the charges (breaking the Sabbath, calling God his father) were against Jewish law only, and their “to us it is not licit to kill anyone” is false, since the law punished many sins with death — they stoned the adulteress; St Stephen. Corpus: in the very manner of the Passion its effect is prefigured. It had its effect of salvation first in the Jews, many baptized at Acts 2:41; then, the Jews preaching, it passed to the Gentiles. So Christ began to suffer from the Jews and, they turning him over, his Passion was completed by Gentile hands. He notes this is the division of John’s Passion: chapter 18 he suffers from the Jews, chapter 19 from the Gentiles — “Thomas many times says explicitly the division of the text.” Replies: (1) to show the abundance of his charity he asked forgiveness for his persecutors, and willed to suffer from both so the fruit of that petition would reach both. (2) It was a sacrifice as Christ sustained death from charity by his own will; as something suffered from the persecutors it was not a sacrifice but most grave sin. (3) Four readings of “it is not licit for us to kill anyone”: Augustine — not licit on the festival day; Chrysostom — they wished to kill him as a public enemy and king, which was not theirs to judge; or they wished crucifixion, not stoning; or better, the Romans had forbidden them the power of killing. He prefers the last as “more common,” and adds that this is why Pilate mockingly said “crucify him yourselves” — John says Pilate knew they handed him over out of envy, so he was mocking their pettiness.

5. Article 5: did the persecutors know him? (“if they had known, never would they have crucified”) #

Objections: (1) Matthew 21, the vinedressers say “here is the heir”; Jerome — most manifestly Christ shows the princes crucified the Son of God not by ignorance but by envy, for they understood him to be the one to whom the Father said “ask of me and I will give you the Gentiles as your inheritance”; (2) John 15, “now they see and hate me and my Father” — what is seen is manifestly known; (3) a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (a quotation they had met before): as one tearing up the emperor’s image is put to death, so the Jews crucifying the one they saw imposed punishment on God himself — which presupposes they knew him. Sed contra: 1 Cor 2, “if they had known, they never would have crucified the Lord of glory”; Acts 3, Peter: “I know that through ignorance you did this, as did your princes”; Luke 23, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Corpus: distinguish greater and lesser Jews. The princes knew, as the demons knew, that he was the Christ promised in the law, since they saw all the signs foretold by the prophets; but the mystery of his divinity they were ignorant of — they knew he was the Christ but not the Son of God. Their ignorance does not excuse, because it was in a way studied: they saw evident signs of divinity but perverted them out of hatred and envy, and refused to believe his words. John 15: “if I had not come and spoken to them they would have no sin… if I had not done works no one else does, they would have no sin”; Job 21: “they said to God, go away from us, we do not wish the knowledge of your ways.” The lesser ones, ignorant of the mysteries of Scripture, did not fully know him to be Christ or Son of God; some believed, the multitude did not, and sometimes doubted on account of the multitude of signs and the efficacy of the teaching — but were afterwards seduced by their princes.

6. Digression: voluntary ignorance today (“we live in the information age”) #

He wonders whether abortion involves this kind of voluntary ignorance; a student recalls Thomas calling it “voluntary inadvertence” — “I don’t want to look over there to see.” Of people who say they were never taught what the Church teaches he is sympathetic but replies: we live in the information age — the Vatican website, the public library, an encyclical.

7. Replies of a. 5 and the appetite in the life of the mind (“the role of the appetite”) #

To 1: the words are spoken from the person of the vinedressers, signifying the rulers, who knew him heir in knowing him the promised Christ. But against this reply stands Psalm 2, where “ask of me and I will give you the nations” is said to the same one told “you are my Son, this day I have begotten you”; Chrysostom says they knew him to be the Son of God; Bede on Luke 23 says he does not pray for those who understood him to be the Son of God and would rather crucify him than confess it — so the prayer is not said for everybody. Answer: they knew him Son of God not by nature but by excellence of singular grace; or they are said to know because they had evident signs, to which they would not assent out of hate and envy. This is where the appetite shows itself in the life of the mind — the subject of his last course from Msgr. Dionne, who used the Confessions: Augustine’s mother asks the bishop to speak to him and he says “not yet, he is not yet docile” — like our Lord’s silence before Herod. Anecdote: Dionne tested his docility with a few innocuous questions and a re-ordering of his thesis outline, then asked “who do you think is going to direct your thesis?” From Thomas’s commentaries on St Paul, pride is a cause of deception in two ways: you overestimate your ability and apply your mind to what is above its capacity; and you do not submit your mind to those greater than you in the matter — reading Thomas would have pulled you back from error.

8. Asides: blood as thought, and Mr Gatto (“boneheads!”) #

Empedocles says the blood is thought. If the main parts of the body are bone, flesh and blood, and thought must be one of them, blood is the best guess: it is subtler and penetrates — put bone or flesh on a handkerchief, nothing; put blood, it goes right through. His high-school biology teacher Mr Gatto (where he first met Warren Murray) slammed the desk and shouted “Boneheads!” when nobody knew the answer; people were physically afraid of him, and he studied more for Gatto’s exams than for anyone in his career. And commonly “to live according to the flesh” is to live badly, “to think according to the flesh” is to think badly (St Paul’s expression).

9. Reply to the second objection, and denial of final causality (“they see and they hate me”) #

To 2: the preceding words are “if I had not done works no one else has done, they would not have sinned,” then “now they see and hate both me and my Father” — showing that, seeing the marvellous works, it proceeded from hate that they did not know him to be the Son of God. The will interferes. Parallel: modern scientists denying that nature acts for an end, because admitting it lets God in — a scientist (he thinks at Harvard) said “we can’t admit that, you’d have to admit God,” and was resented for giving away the secret. St Alphonsus drew the same conclusion about the free thinkers of his day: it is a moral problem, they are attached to their sin and would have to change. “Talk about a misnomer, free thinkers.” They must say eyes are not made for seeing, though you can see with them — make a virtue out of necessity. Snow peas and vines send out feelers to swing around and pull themselves up: acting for an end. Plato (Symposium) and Aristotle (De Anima) both say reproduction in plants and animals is to become like God, immortal so far as possible; hence Shakespeare’s first sonnet, “From fairest creatures we desire increase, that thereby beauty’s rose might never die.” Against those who call the desire for life everlasting arrogant: Hume said he was no more bothered by non-existence after death than before birth — which infuriated Samuel Johnson.

10. Reply to the third: affected ignorance (“ignorantia affectata… does not excuse”) #

Affected (affected/studied) ignorance does not excuse from guilt but aggravates it, for it shows a man so vehemently affected to sinning that he wills to incur ignorance lest he have to avoid the sin. The class works through the odd-sounding clause: he wants to sin, so he wants to be ignorant, so he does not have to change. Therefore the Jews sinned not only as crucifiers of the man Christ but of God. Story from the Russian Revolution: revolutionaries shot the priest at Mass, the consecrated host fell, the killer ground it under his heel — “that’s your God under my heel” — and a peasant said, “Father, forgive him, even if he knows what he’s doing.”

11. Article 6: was the sin of the crucifiers the gravest? (“they exceeded the measure of their fathers”) #

Objections: (1) a sin with an excuse is not gravest, and the Lord excused them — “they know not what they do”; (2) John 19:11, “he who handed me over to you has the greater sin,” so Judas’s sin exceeds that of the crucifiers, since Pilate had Christ crucified through his ministers; (3) Ethics V — no one willingly suffers injustice, and where no one suffers injustice no one does injustice; Christ suffered voluntarily, so crucifying him was not unjust. Sed contra: Chrysostom on Matthew 23, “you fill up the measure of your fathers” — in truth they exceeded it: those killed men, these crucified God. Corpus: the princes knew Christ, and any ignorance in them was affected and cannot excuse; their sin was gravest both from the genus of the sin and from the malice of their will. The lesser Jews sinned most gravely as to the genus of sin, but their sin is somewhat diminished by ignorance — Bede on Luke 23: he prays for those who did not know what they did, having the zeal of God but not according to knowledge. Discussion: it seems he prays for the people and not the princes; a student notes Acts says many of the priests became believers, but nothing about the high priest. Our Lord foretold “there will be those who kill you thinking they serve God” — fulfilled first in himself: zeal for God, unenlightened. More excusable still was the sin of the Gentiles, who did not have the knowledge of the law. Replies: (1) the Lord’s excuse refers not to the princes but to the lesser people — “that’s an interesting explanation of that” (and perhaps to the Gentiles too). (2) Judas handed Christ over not to Pilate but to the chief priests, who handed him to Pilate (John 18); the sin of all these was greater than Pilate’s, who killed Christ out of fear of Caesar (“no friend of Caesar if you tolerate this man”), and greater than the soldiers’, who crucified at the command of the one presiding, not from cupidity like Judas nor from envy and hatred like the princes. (3) Christ willed his own Passion as God wills it, but did not will the evil action of the Jews; and one who kills a man does injury not only to the man but to God and to the republic, as does the suicide (Ethics V) — “I guess Aristotle is going to come down against mercy killing now.” Hence David condemned to death the man who did not fear to lay hands on the Lord’s anointed (2 Kings/2 Samuel — the man who killed Saul).

12. Closing aside: Richard II (“high stomached are they both”) #

He has begun reading Richard II: Henry IV and even Henry V keep prayers for Richard, fearing punishment for what the father did. Of Bolingbroke and Mowbray: “high stomached are they both” — froward, from their appetite — “in rage, deaf as the sea,” “hasty as fire.” These are the two causes of error and the two ways pride deceives: hasty as fire, attempting something more quickly than you should; in rage deaf as the sea, not listening to those above you — the sea rages but has no hearing. It applies more to Richard himself, who does not listen to John of Gaunt and the Duke of York.

His words #

• “handed over” / “handing over” — tradere, the thread of the whole question.
• “satisfactor” — “one who could satisfy,” whom God gave because man could not satisfy.
• “propitiator” — “an offering, one to offer… one to make atonement.”
• “root” — the principle from which the same action proceeds, making it praise- or blameworthy.
• “studied ignorance” / ignorantia affectata — “we have a word like that in English, right? Affected”; a student’s gloss: “voluntary inadvertence.”
• “genus of the sin” vs. “malice of their will” — the two heads under which gravity is measured.
• “the greater” and “the lesser” Jews — princes versus people.
• “high stomached” — “a way of saying kind of froward… because their appetite.”

Texts #

Read in class: Summa Theologiae III, q. 47, a. 3 (with Deut. 32; Isa. 53; John 6/13 “one of you is a devil”; John 18:35; Rom. 8:32; Rom. 3:25; Matt. 27:46; Augustine); a. 4 (Matt. 21 parable; John 5:18; Deut.; Acts 2:41; Augustine, Chrysostom); a. 5 (Matt. 21; Jerome; John 15:22–24; sermon of the Council of Ephesus; 1 Cor. 2:8; Acts 3:17; Luke 23:34; Job 21:14; Psalm 2:7–8; Chrysostom; Bede); a. 6 (Luke 23:34; John 19:11; Aristotle, Ethics V; Chrysostom on Matt. 23:32; Bede on Luke 23; 2 Samuel, inferred).

Mentioned: Thomas’s commentaries on the Epistles of St Paul; Augustine, Confessions; Plato, Symposium; Aristotle, De Anima; Empedocles; Shakespeare, Sonnet 1 and Richard II; Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities; Hume; Samuel Johnson; St Alphonsus.

His questions #

• Whether God the Father handed Christ over to his Passion? Yes, in three ways: eternal pre-ordination, inspiring in him the will to suffer by pouring in charity, and not protecting but exposing him.
• If Christ handed himself over, how can the Father have handed him over? As God, by the same will and action as the Father, since they have one will; as man, by a will inspired by the Father.
• Why are the Father and Christ praised and Judas, the Jews and Pilate blamed for the same handing-over? Because the same action is judged by its root: charity in the one, cupidity, envy and worldly fear in the others.
• Was it fitting that Christ suffer from the Gentiles? Yes: the manner prefigures the effect — salvation begun in the Jews and finished in the Gentiles.
• Was the Passion a sacrifice on the part of the persecutors? No — only as Christ sustained death from charity; as suffered from them it was most grave sin.
• Did the persecutors know Christ? The princes knew him to be the promised Christ, as the demons did, but were ignorant of the mystery of his divinity; the people did not fully know either, and were seduced by the princes.
• Does affected ignorance excuse? No — it aggravates, since the man wills ignorance so that he need not avoid the sin.
• Was the sin of the crucifiers the gravest? The princes’ was gravest, by genus and by malice of will; the people’s was diminished by ignorance, the Gentiles’ more excusable still.
• For whom did Christ pray “Father, forgive them”? For the lesser people, not the princes — and perhaps the Gentiles.
• Did the princes convert afterwards? Left open: Acts says many priests became believers, but nothing of the high priest.