Summa III q.49 aa.4–6: Reconciled to God, the Gate of Heaven Opened, and Christ's Exaltation

Orientation #

He opens by looking back to the previous article — “So we are entirely liberated then from punishment, by Christ’s death? Eventually” — and moves straight into a. 4. He ends by announcing the next question: “Death of Christ, now. The burial. Death, burial, descent.” The preceding class treated the earlier articles of q. 49 on remission of sin, liberation from the devil, and freedom from the debt of punishment (prev. lecture).

The class, in order #

1. Article 4, the objections: reconciliation among friends (“reconciliation has no place among friends”) #

The question: are we reconciled to God through the Passion?

• Obj. 1 — Reconciliation has no place among friends; but God always loves us (Wisdom 11: he loves all things which are, and hates none of those he has made). He interjects: but God hasn’t made sin, has he?
• Obj. 2 — More of the same cannot be the beginning and the effect; grace, the beginning of meriting, does not fall under merit. But God’s love is the beginning of the Passion (John 3: God so loved the world). So the Passion does not reconcile us — as though God would newly (de novo) begin to love us. He notes he is unsure whether de novo means “in a new way” or simply anew.
• Obj. 3 — The Passion was fulfilled by men killing Christ, gravely offending God; so it causes indignation rather than reconciliation.
• Sed contra: Romans 5:10, we are reconciled to God through the death of his Son.

Discussion with the class: the prodigal son. Is he reconciled to his father, when the father never stopped loving him? Answer offered: the father loved the son but not his stupidity, not the obstacles the son placed; the son still had to come back.

He remarks that these objections “seem like Jehovah’s Witness arguments,” and that this shows how theology and Scripture help each other — you study a text here, then are struck when you read it again.

2. Article 4, the body: two ways the Passion reconciles (“insofar as it is a sacrifice most acceptable”) #

He notes that Thomas has a distinct knowledge of things compared to we who have a confused knowledge.

1. Insofar as it removes sin, by which men are constituted enemies of God — Wisdom 14, hateful to God are the impious man and his impiety. He presses the class: “Who says God doesn’t hate the sinner but just the sin? You have to make some distinctions there” — citing a Psalm (5 or 7), he hates all who do iniquity.
2. Insofar as it is a sacrifice most acceptable to God, for it is the proper effect of sacrifice that God be placated. He checks himself: “not what the Greeks thought” — “must have got this from Homer, Thomas.” He notes the three meanings sitting together: appease, placate, reconcile. Example from 1 Kings 26: if the Lord incite you against me, let him accept the sacrifice [ed.: he corrects his own reading mid-sentence]. The good freely found in human nature — that Christ voluntarily suffered — placated God for all the offense of the human race, as regards those who join themselves to Christ by faith and charity.

He points out the article looks back to the first article (freed from sin), and that the material of the second and third is taken up here too.

3. Article 4, replies (“greater was the charity of Christ suffering”) #

• Ad 1: God loves all men as regards the nature he made, hates them as regards the guilt they commit — Ecclesiasticus 12, the Most High has sinners in hate. He suggests this belongs in a sermon.
• Ad 2: Christ is not said to reconcile us by beginning to love us anew — “I have loved you with a perpetual love” — but because the Passion takes away the cause of hate, both by washing away sin and by the recompense of a more acceptable good (back to the sacrifice).
• Ad 3: Those who killed Christ were men, and the Christ killed was a man; but greater was the charity of Christ suffering than the iniquity of those killing. So the Passion is more powerful to reconcile the whole human race than to provoke anger. He notes Christ himself is said in Scripture to be angry at the hardness of their hearts, and connects the point to charity as a kind of friendship — for the sake of this friend, mercy rather than hatred.

Asides: a meditation of St. Bernard of Clairvaux to gain the fear of the Lord, and St. Robert Bellarmine on the torments of the damned — “what you don’t very often find nowadays”; the four last things as the standard matter of old parish missions; two stories of men collapsing dead after church (“not because of the sermon — we hope”); Cotton Mather, “the old fire and brimstone,” buried in a historic cemetery in downtown Boston. Shakespeare’s late plays of mercy and forgiveness, and Measure for Measure (title taken straight from Scripture) — Angelo, one man’s charity pleasing more than another’s iniquity.

4. Article 5, the objections: the gate of heaven (“Elias was taken up into heaven”) #

• Obj. 1 — Proverbs 11:18, to the one sowing justice there is a faithful reward; the reward of justice is entry into the heavenly kingdom; so the holy fathers got in without the Passion.
• Obj. 2 — Elias was taken up into heaven before the Passion (4 Kings); the effect does not precede the cause.
• Obj. 3 — At Christ’s baptism the heavens opened (Matthew 3), and baptism precedes the Passion.
• Obj. 4 — “He ascended, preparing the way before us”: preparing the way is nothing but opening the gate; so heaven is opened by the Ascension, not the Passion. He comments on the technique: “You thoroughly confuse the matter — no teacher can say this teacher is [failing] to confuse the issue.”
• Sed contra: Hebrews 10, we have confidence in entry to the holy places in the blood of Christ.

5. Article 5, the body: a twofold sin impeding entry (“the closing of the gate is a certain obstacle”) #

The closed gate is a metaphor for an obstacle preventing entry; men are prevented by sin — Isaiah 35, the way is called holy and no one polluted passes over it. Two sins impede:

1. the sin common to the whole race, the sin of the first parent — Genesis 3:24, God placed the cherubim and the flaming sword turning about to guard the way of the tree of life;
2. each man’s own sin by his own act. The Passion frees from both — from the common sin as to guilt and punishment, “he paying the price for us,” and from one’s own sins for those who communicate with his Passion through faith, charity and the sacraments of faith. Hence Hebrews 9: through his own blood he entered once into the holy of holies, having found eternal redemption. Figure from Numbers 35: the homicide remains in the city of refuge until the death of the high priest anointed with holy oil; when he has died, the slayer may return home — “the man who has slain without hatred and envy.”

6. Article 5, replies: the fathers, Elias, the baptism, the ascension (“raised up to the aerial heaven”) #

• Ad 1: The holy fathers merited entry by faith in the Passion (Hebrews 11: through faith they conquered kingdoms, worked justice), and each was purged as to his own person; but one man’s faith or justice does not suffice to remove the impediment belonging to the whole human creature, removed only by the price of Christ’s blood. So before the Passion no one entered into the full enjoyment of God.
• Ad 2: Elias was raised to the aerial heaven, not the empyrean heaven, the place of the blessed; similarly Enoch, carried to the terrestrial paradise, where he is believed to live with Elias until the coming of Antichrist. He identifies these as the two witnesses. Aside: Columbus believed something of the sort about the New World — a raised place [as reported in his life].
• Ad 3: At Christ’s baptism the heavens opened not for Christ, to whom heaven was always open, but to signify that heaven is opened to the baptized by Christ’s baptism, which has its efficacy from the Passion. He says: “I knew he was going to say that.”
• Ad 4: By his Passion Christ merited entry and removed the impediment; by the Ascension he has already induced us into possession — hence “ascending, he prepared the way before us.”

7. Article 6, objections: did he merit his own exaltation (“Christ merited from the first instant of his conception”) #

• Obj. 1 — As knowledge of truth is proper to God, so is sublimity (Psalm 112). Christ as man had knowledge of all truth not from preceding merit but from the union (John 1, full of grace and truth); so too his exaltation is from the union alone.
• Obj. 2 — Christ merited from the first instant of his conception, and there was no greater charity in him at the Passion than before — Christ does not grow from virtue to virtue as the saints do; charity being the principle of meriting, he did not merit more by the Passion than before.
• Obj. 3 — The glory of the body results from the glory of the soul (Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus); Christ did not merit exaltation as to the soul, blessed from the first instant; therefore not as to the body either.
• Sed contra: Philippians 2, obedient unto death, the death of the cross, on account of which God exalted him.

8. Article 6, the body: humbled in four ways, exalted in four (“who humbles himself shall be exalted”) #

Merit implies a certain equality with justice — to the one who works, reward is imputed as a debt.

• Whoever by an unjust will attributes to himself more than he ought, it is just that he be diminished in what is owed him: who steals one sheep restores four (Exodus 22); he “merits” this insofar as he is punished.
• Conversely, whoever by a just will takes away from himself what he ought to have merits that something be added: Luke 14, who humbles himself shall be exalted.

Humbled below his dignity in four ways: (1) as regards the Passion and death, of which he was not a debtor; (2) as regards place — his body in the tomb, his soul in hell; (3) as regards the confusion and insults he sustained; (4) as regards being handed over to human power — “you would have no power unless it were given you from above.”

Exalted correspondingly in four: (1) the glorious resurrection (Psalm 138, “you know my sitting down,” that is, the humility of my Passion, and my resurrection); (2) the ascent to heaven (Ephesians 4, he descended into the lower parts of the earth, and he who descends is he who ascends above all the heavens); (3) the session at the Father’s right hand and the manifestation of his divinity (Isaiah 52, he shall be exalted and elevated and very sublime — he reads the following line about many being astonished at his aspect, and remarks they will be astonished at his glory after seeing his humility; with Philippians 2, the name above every name, every knee bending, celestial, terrestrial and infernal); (4) judiciary power (Job 36, “thy cause has been judged as that of the wicked; cause and judgment thou shalt recover”). He notes Thomas does not explain this last text — it is because of the false judgment that he deserves to judge, “cause” like a court case — and recalls a Shakespeare plot where a falsely accused man is made judge of his own case; he cannot place the play.

9. Article 6, replies: soul already perfect, the body’s compensation (“the glory of the soul did not redound to the body”) #

• Ad 1: The beginning of meriting is on the side of the soul; the body is the tool of the meritorious act. So the soul’s perfection, which is the principle of meriting, need not be acquired through merit — unlike the perfection of the body, which was subject to the Passion and thereby the tool of meriting. He glosses: the soul was already perfect, the body could still lack a perfection, so there was room for merit there; and he brings in Hebrews, “he learned obedience from what he suffered.” He notes that of the four exaltations, resurrection and ascension are chiefly of the body, and even the judgment is exercised in bodily human presence.
• Ad 2: By his prior merits Christ merited exaltation on the side of the soul, whose will was informed by charity and the other virtues; in the Passion he merited exaltation by way of recompense on the side of the body — just that the body which from charity was subject to passion should receive compensation in glory.
• Ad 3: By a certain dispensation, the glory of the soul before the Passion did not redound to the body, so that he might obtain bodily glory in a more honorable way, by meriting it through the Passion. The soul’s glory could not fittingly be deferred, since the soul was immediately united to the Word and so fittingly filled with glory from it; the body is united to the Word by means of the soul.

10. Closing: on to death and burial (“the forgotten article”) #

“Thomas doesn’t leave anything untouched here.” Next: the death of Christ, then the burial, then the descent. He recalls their earlier talk of “the forgotten article” — the descent, in one creed and not the other. He and the class work out that it is in the Apostles’ Creed; on the Nicene Creed they note it says he suffered and was buried — “we say it in English, but not actually in Latin” — and leave it that death may be taken as included. [The exchange is left loose.]

His words #

• de novo — “newly,” of God beginning to love us; he flags that it may mean “in a new way” or simply anew.
• placated / appeased / reconciled — the three renderings he gives for the proper effect of sacrifice on God.
• the aerial heaven vs. the empyrean heaven — the sky where Elias was taken, against the place of the blessed.
• the forgotten article — the descent into hell, present in one creed and not the other.
• the tool of a meritorious act — the body, as against the soul which is the beginning of meriting [ed.: instrumentum].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 49, a. 4 (reconciliation to God), objections, body and replies
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 49, a. 5 (the gate of heaven), objections, body and replies
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 49, a. 6 (merit of exaltation), objections, body and replies

Mentioned (within those articles or by him)

• Wisdom 11 and 14; Psalm 5 or 7; Ecclesiasticus 12; Jeremiah, “I have loved you with a perpetual love” (inferred)
• John 3:16; John 1; Romans 5:10; Hebrews 9, 10, 11, and “he learned obedience from what he suffered”
• 1 Kings 26; Proverbs 11:18; 4 Kings (Elias); Matthew 3; Isaiah 35 and 52; Genesis 3:24; Numbers 35; Exodus 22; Luke 14; Psalm 112; Psalm 138; Ephesians 4; Philippians 2; Job 36
• Augustine, Letter to Dioscorus; parable of the prodigal son
• Bernard of Clairvaux, a meditation to gain the fear of the Lord; Robert Bellarmine on the torments of the damned
• Shakespeare, Measure for Measure; an unnamed play where the falsely accused is made judge of his own case

His questions #

• Is the prodigal son reconciled to his father, if the father never stopped loving him? Yes — the father loved the son but not his stupidity or the obstacles he placed; the son still had to come back.
• Who says God doesn’t hate the sinner but only the sin? One must distinguish: God loves men as to the nature he made, hates them as to the guilt they commit.
• Does God then begin to love us anew through the Passion? No — his love is perpetual; the Passion removes the cause of hate, by washing away sin and by a more acceptable good.
• How can a crime — men killing Christ — reconcile us? Christ’s charity in suffering was greater than the iniquity of those killing, so the Passion prevails to reconcile rather than to provoke anger.
• Did the holy fathers enter heaven by their own justice before the Passion? They merited by faith in the Passion; but no private justice removes the common impediment of the first parent’s sin.
• Elias was taken up before the Passion — is not the effect before the cause? He was taken to the aerial heaven, not the empyrean, the place of the blessed.
• Did Christ merit his own exaltation, if his charity was full from the first instant? By prior merits on the side of the soul; by the Passion, by way of recompense, on the side of the body.
• Why did the soul’s glory not redound to his body before the Passion? By dispensation, so that he might obtain bodily glory in a more honorable way, by meriting it.
• What does Job 36 (“thy cause has been judged as that of the wicked”) mean here? Thomas does not explain it; he suggests it is because of the false judgment that Christ deserves to judge — left loose.
• Is the descent into hell in the Nicene Creed? They conclude it is in the Apostles’ Creed; on the Nicene they leave it that death may be taken as included — left open.