Aquinas on the Passion of Christ (ST III, Q.48 a.4 – Q.49 a.1): Redemption, Christ the Redeemer, Efficient Cause, and Freedom from Sin

Orientation #

He is continuing through the Summa’s questions on the effects of Christ’s Passion, finishing q. 48 (aa. 4–5) and beginning q. 49, a. 1. He refers back to “the previous question” on the causes of Christ’s suffering (the human will obeying God, and God’s will as remote cause) (prev. lecture). He closes with “I guess we got to stop here now.”

The class, in order #

1. Objections against redemption (“no one buys or redeems what is his own”) #

Point: three objections to q. 48, a. 4, whether the Passion worked salvation by way of redemption.

1. You do not redeem what never ceased to be yours; men never ceased to belong to God — Psalm 23, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” His image: you take your things down to the pawn shop, they cease to be yours, and you must redeem them; but we never ceased to be God’s.
2. From Augustine, De Trinitate XIII: the devil was to be overcome by Christ’s justice, distinguished from his power; justice requires that one who deceitfully invades another’s property be deprived of it, since theft and deceit are patronised by no one, and human laws say so. So man ought not to have been freed by way of redemption from the devil at all.
3. He who redeems pays the price to the one who possesses; Christ did not pay his blood to the devil who held us captive. “How can Christ redeem us by his blood if he doesn’t give his blood to the devil?” Sed contra: 1 Peter — “you were not redeemed by corruptible gold and silver… but by the most precious blood of the spotless Lamb”; Galatians 3:13 — Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, i.e. suffering on the wood. Aside: a hostage story in the news — a woman released after a large payment, two men still held; he lets the students run with it. Aside: “our liturgy uses a provocative expression since the Blessed Mother paid our price.”

2. The body of a. 4: two obligations, one price (“man is in two ways obliged”) #

Point: sin binds man twice over, and the Passion is the price freeing him from both.

1. By the slavery of sin — “he who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34), and “by what one is overcome, to that he is addicted as a slave” (2 Peter 2). The devil overcame man by inducing him to sin, hence servitude to the devil.
2. By the obligation of punishment due according to God’s justice — and this too is a kind of slavery, because it belongs to slavery to suffer what one does not want, since it belongs to a free man to use himself as he wants. Because the Passion was a sufficient and superabundant satisfaction, it is a price freeing us from both. Satisfaction, for oneself or another, is a kind of price — Daniel 4:24, “redeem your sins by alms.” Christ satisfied not by money but by giving what was greatest, himself.

3. Replies of a. 4: the price is paid to God (“never does man cease to be of God”) #

• Reply 1: man is God’s in two ways — as subject to his power (Daniel 4: the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he wills), and through the union of charity (Romans 8: “if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not of him”). In the first way man never ceases to be God’s; in the second he does, by sin, and from that he is redeemed. He calls it “kind of a subtle thing.” A student asks whether there is a way in which a sinner is not God’s; he answers: yes, that is the distinction just made.
• Reply 2: in sinning man is obligated both to God and to the devil. As regards guilt, he offended God and subjected himself to the devil by consenting — he did not become God’s servant but incurred the devil’s service, God justly permitting it. As regards punishment he was obligated chiefly to God as highest judge, but to the devil as to the torturer — Matthew 5:25, lest your adversary hand you to the judge and the judge to the minister, “that is, to the cruel angel of punishment.” So though the devil deceived unjustly as regards himself, it was just that man suffer this, God permitting as to guilt and ordering as to punishment. Hence justice required redemption with respect to God, not with respect to the devil. (Illustration: the devils with pitchforks in the illustrated Dante.) He adds a text he had hunted for that morning and now recalls: Matthew 18, the servant forgiven a great debt who strangled his fellow and was “delivered to the torturers until he paid all his debt” — noting that Matthew 5 says only “minister,” so the torturer language is from Matthew 18.
• Reply 3: since redemption was needed with respect to God and not the devil, the price was not paid to the devil but to God. He recalls Thomas’s Adoro te: “pie pellicane.”

4. Student question: salvation versus redemption (“why do we call him the savior?”) #

A student asks whether redemption is a kind of salvation and whether Thomas specifies salvation elsewhere. His answer: salvation comes from the word for health, so renewing health; in Syriac the word has to do with life, giving back life or new life. Under that general sense fall cleansing from sins, and freeing from the devil, which is more properly redemption — so saving involves more than one of these things: he redeems us, satisfies for our sins, and so on. Why is he called Savior? “He saved us from our sins,” as the angel said — hence the name Jesus at the beginning of Matthew — but he saves us from sin by dying and satisfying for them; “Behold the Lamb of God.” A student distinguishes paying the debt from the healing, since the baptised child still has the effects of sin, the sacraments supplying the healing. Asides: mobile phones going off at daily Mass, in the confessional, at liturgies in Halifax and Cyprus. Christopher West and the theology of the body, said to be denying the effects of original sin, and Alice von Hildebrand’s article against him; report that he has since pulled in the reins.

5. Article 5: is being Redeemer proper to Christ? (“to be the Redeemer is something private to Christ”) #

Objections:

1. Psalm 30, “you have redeemed me, Lord God of truth” — but that belongs to the whole Trinity; Christ has it only by appropriation.
2. He redeems who gives the price; the Father gave his own Son — Psalm 110, “he sent redemption to his people,” which the gloss says is Christ, who gave redemption to captives. He calls this “a nice argument.”
3. Not only Christ’s passion but the saints’ is efficacious — Colossians 1:24, filling up what is lacking in the passion of Christ in his flesh for the Church. Sed contra: Galatians 3 — only Christ was made a curse for us.

6. Body and replies of a. 5: immediate and first cause (“two things are required”) #

Two things are required for redeeming: the act of paying, and the price paid. If one pays with a price that is another’s, he is not said chiefly to redeem, but rather the one whose the price is. Now the price is Christ’s blood, or his bodily life, “which is in the blood,” as Leviticus says, and Christ paid it out; both belong to Christ immediately as man, but to the whole Trinity as to a first and remote cause, from whom Christ’s life is as first source, and by whom the charity in which he died was inspired in him. So being immediately Redeemer is proper to Christ as man, while the redemption may be attributed to the whole Trinity as first cause. His parallel, drawn from what they have met before: what causes the conclusion of a syllogism? the premises — but remotely, reason itself. Do I know the area of this room by my calculation or by my reason? One should not be caught saying one rather than the other: reason is the remote cause, the calculation (multiplying length by width) the proximate. Aside on Latin mens being related to mensura, measure.

• Reply 1: the gloss expounds “you have redeemed me, God of truth” as “in Christ, crying into your hands I commend my spirit” — redemption pertains immediately to the man Christ, but to God as principal cause. He is unsure whether the gloss is Peter Lombard’s, since it is not named; leaves it as a disputed question.
• Reply 2: Christ immediately paid the price, but by the command of the Father as the primordial authority — the same ordering of causes as in the previous question, where the cause of Christ’s suffering is his human will obeying God, with God’s will as remote cause. He mentions Fr. Hardon insisting that the Mass is a sacrifice not because we crucify Christ again but because he still has a will and can still make that offering: “the hinge of sacrifice is always in the will.”
• Reply 3: the passions of the saints help the Church not by way of redemption but by way of exhortation and example — 2 Corinthians, “whether we are troubled, it is for your exhortation and salvation.”

7. Break digression (“you can tell the devotion of the priest”) #

Priests remembered for how they said Mass; Padre Pio, whom people went to see for his Mass rather than the stigmata or confessions. Confessions across a language barrier: a German-speaking woman; a Polish woman confessed through her daughter by the Ten Commandments and fingers for the number of times. Monsignor Stinger, who came to the microphone after a young priest preached polygenism, declared it heresy condemned by Pius XII (Humani Generis), and had him suspended. Fr. Neuhaus’s parishioner who believed in a “quaternity” and told him his sermon on Mary Mother of God confirmed everything she believed.

8. Two stray replies from q. 48 (“the weakness of God”) #

• The Passion, as regards Christ’s flesh, fits the infirmity assumed; as regards the divinity it draws an infinite power — 1 Corinthians 1, “what is weak of God is stronger than men.” “Kind of strange, the weakness of God, but it is the weakness of God for reason of the hypostatic union.”
• Though a bodily passion, it has spiritual power from the divinity united to it, and so gets its efficacy through a spiritual contact, not necessarily bodily — Christ need not go down to the man’s house to cure his son. It is applied through faith and the sacraments of faith: Romans, “whom God proposed… through faith in his blood.” The Fathers often cite the woman with the hemorrhage: “if I can only touch his tassel” — she touched him by faith, touched his divinity.

9. The prologue of q. 49 (“the effects themselves of the Passion”) #

Having treated the mode of the effects, he turns to the effects. He reads the list: liberation from sin; from the power of the devil; from the obligation of punishment; reconciliation to God; the opening of the door of heaven (as spoken of in baptism). The sixth is divided against the other five, since the first five regard us, while by the Passion Christ obtained his own exaltation. (He announces “four things are asked” as the text has it, then reads six.)

10. Objections of q. 49, a. 1 (“we are not liberated from sin”) #

1. To liberate from sin is proper to God — Isaiah 43, “I am he who blots out your iniquities for my own sake”; but Christ suffered as man, not as God. (He gestures at “that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth,” but leaves it unfinished.)
2. The bodily does not act on the spiritual; the Passion is bodily, sin is in the soul, a spiritual creature. His comment: “Well, they should have read the last question.”
3. No one can be freed from a sin not yet committed; many sins are committed after the Passion, and all day long.
4. When a sufficient cause is posited nothing more is required; but baptism and penance are still required. His comment: there are primary and secondary causes, chief causes and tools — the sacraments are the tools of Christ in his Passion and death.
5. Proverbs 10, charity covers all sins, and by mercy and faith sins are purged; but many other things provoke us to faith and charity. So the Passion is not the proper cause of remission. Sed contra: Apocalypse 1:5, “he loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood.”

11. Body of a. 1: three ways (“a very interesting text here”) #

The Passion is the proper cause of the remission of sins in three ways:

1. By provoking us to charity — Romans 5, God commended his love in that Christ died for us while we were enemies; and by charity we obtain forgiveness — Luke 7 on Mary Magdalene, “many sins are forgiven her, because she loved much.”
2. By way of redemption — since he is our head, by the Passion sustained out of charity and obedience he redeemed us as by a price; just as a man by a meritorious work of his hand redeems himself from a sin committed by his feet; and as the natural body is one out of diverse members, so the whole Church, the mystical body, is counted as one person with its head, Christ. (Aside attached to the hand/foot image: the church picketing the funerals of soldiers returned from Afghanistan, a picture of one of them kicking the American flag — “so it’s into the foot here… get a hammer, whack her in the hand.”)
3. As instrument of the divinity — the flesh in which he suffered is instrumentum divinitatis; his text italicises the phrase and footnotes Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa III. From this his passions and actions work in divine power to expelling sin. He notes this repeats what was made in the earlier article. “That’s very interesting text.”

12. Replies of a. 1 (“the flesh profits nothing”) #

• Reply 1: though Christ did not suffer as God, his flesh is the instrument of his divine nature, and thence his Passion had a divine power to expel sin. He attaches John 6: after the Eucharistic teaching some turn away and Christ says “the flesh profits nothing, it is the spirit” — heretics take this to undercut the doctrine, but the sense is the flesh by itself; the flesh insofar as it is the flesh of God has power from the divine nature to expel sin.
  • His story: a saint praying long under a crucifix, uncertain whether his sins were forgiven, until a drop of blood fell on him from the crucifix; he cannot place where he read it.
  • A student’s story: St Margaret Mary, told by her confessor to test her vision by asking what her last confession was; the answer came, “I don’t remember” — the devil would have recited a long list; Christ does not remember because he wills not to, having forgiven. Another student adds that Scripture keeps praising David despite what he did, taking this as God’s forgiveness.
• Reply 2: the Passion, though bodily, obtains a spiritual power from the divinity whose flesh it is, united to it as an instrument, and by that power causes remission.
• Reply 3: Christ by his Passion freed us from sin as a cause, instituting the cause of our liberation, from which all sins whatsoever, past, present or to come, can be forgiven whenever committed — as if a physician made a medicine by which any sickness could be healed, even future ones. Digression: Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well — the physician’s daughter with her father’s medicine cures the king and is given her choice of husband, chooses Bertram, who takes off after the marriage; “let Shakespeare untie the knot.”
• Reply 4 (“what do I need these sacraments for?”): since the Passion precedes as a universal cause, it must be applied to individuals for the deletion of their own sins, through baptism, penance and the other sacraments, which have power from the Passion — as will be clear below when he takes up the sacraments. He adds the common theological saying: the efficacy of the sacraments is the blood of Christ, the Passion of Christ; hence “buried with Christ” in baptism.
• Reply 5: the Passion is also applied to us through faith, whereby we perceive its fruit — Romans 3:25, “whom God proposed… through faith in his blood.” But the faith that cleanses is not unformed faith, which can coexist with sin, but faith formed through charity; so the Passion is applied not only as regards the understanding but as regards the affection, the will.
  • Applied to the conditions for a plenary indulgence he mentioned earlier: the rosary, the stations of the cross, half an hour of Scripture, and a fourth he does not recall; in each, faith must be formed, and one is joined to the Passion — not a sacrament but “like a sacramental almost.”
  • Closing aside: popes wanting the Passion read as they died — John Paul II (he thinks the Passion according to John, uncertain), and John XXIII, tranquil until someone accidentally came between him and the crucifix, at which he grew agitated.

His words #

• “pawn shop” — his running image for redemption: what has ceased to be yours and must be bought back.
• “torturer” — his rendering of the tortor to whom man is bound as regards punishment, the devil, “the cruel angel of punishment.”
• “obliged / obligated” — man’s twofold bond, by slavery of sin and by debt of punishment.
• “immediately Redeemer” vs. “first and remote cause” — Christ as man vs. the whole Trinity.
• “tool of his divinity” — his rendering of instrumentum divinitatis [ed.: instrument].
• “spiritual contact” — how the bodily Passion reaches the soul.
• “unformed faith” vs. “faith formed through charity” — the faith that cleanses.
• “universal cause” applied to individuals — the Passion in relation to the sacraments.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 48, a. 4 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 48, a. 5 (whole article)
• Two replies of q. 48 on the infirmity/power of the Passion and bodily contact (a. 6, inferred)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 49, prologue
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 49, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, five replies)

Mentioned

• Augustine, De Trinitate XIII; John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa III
• Psalm 23:1; Psalm 30; Psalm 110 with the gloss; Daniel 4; Proverbs 10:12; Isaiah 43:25; Leviticus
• Matthew 5:25; Matthew 18; Luke 7; John 6; John 8:34; Romans 3:25; Romans 5; Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 1:25; 2 Corinthians 1; Galatians 3:13; Colossians 1:24; 1 Peter 1:18–19; 2 Peter 2; Apocalypse 1:5
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote (“pie pellicane”); Pius XII, Humani Generis; Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

His questions #

• Why is being redeemed necessary if we never ceased to be God’s? — Man is God’s by power always, but ceases to be his by the union of charity through sin; from that he is redeemed.
• “How can Christ redeem us by his blood if he doesn’t give his blood to the devil?” — The redemption was needed with respect to God, not the devil; the price was offered to God.
• Is being the Redeemer proper to Christ? — Immediately, yes, as he is man; the redemption is attributed to the whole Trinity as first and remote cause.
• “Do I know the conclusion by the syllogism, or do I know the conclusion by my reason?” — Both, in different ways: the syllogism proximately, reason remotely; one should not be caught saying one rather than the other.
• “Why do we call him the savior?” — Because he saved us from our sins, as the angel said — and he does so by dying and satisfying for them.
• How can the bodily act upon the spiritual? — The Passion has spiritual power from the divinity whose instrument the flesh is, and touches through spiritual contact, by faith.
• Can sins committed after the Passion be forgiven by it? — Yes: it is the instituted cause, like a medicine that heals any sickness, even future ones.
• “What do I need these sacraments for?” — The Passion is a universal cause and must be applied to individuals; the sacraments are its tools.