https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/Recent content in 5. Tertia Pars on The Duane Berquist LecturesHugoenThu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/001-from-the-head-to-the-feet-the-word-made-flesh-and-the-plan/Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/001-from-the-head-to-the-feet-the-word-made-flesh-and-the-plan/Starting from John’s account of the two angels at the empty tomb, Berquist reads their position at the head and feet as a figure of Christ’s divinity and humanity, and uses it to explain antonomasia and synecdoche — rhetorical devices that name a whole by a part — while showing how Arius and Apollinaris went wrong by taking such figures literally. He then works through the handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” and Summa Contra Gentiles III, ch. 17 to compare how Augustine, Aquinas’s Compendium, and the Summa Contra Gentiles order God, creation, and the end differently, before opening Summa Theologiae III, q. 1 to introduce the Tertia Pars and its coming questions on the fittingness of the Incarnation.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/002-why-god-became-man-summa-iii-question-1-articles-1-2/Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/002-why-god-became-man-summa-iii-question-1-articles-1-2/Berquist takes up the first two articles of Aquinas’s treatise on the Incarnation. He asks whether it was fitting for God to take on flesh and whether doing so was necessary to repair human nature, working through Thomas’s objections and replies and his use of Augustine, Dionysius, and Damascene. He traces the reasons Thomas gives—advancing faith, hope, charity, right conduct, and participation in divinity, while countering pride, presumption, and the devil’s claim on man—for why the Word’s assumption of flesh was the fitting, though not strictly necessary, way of redemption. He digresses on Augustine’s influence on Thomas’s style and on devotion to Saint Joseph.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/003-why-god-became-man-summa-contra-gentiles-iv-54-and-the-thirteen/Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/003-why-god-became-man-summa-contra-gentiles-iv-54-and-the-thirteen/Berquist asks why it was fitting for God to become man, tracing Aquinas’s argument in Summa Contra Gentiles IV, 54 alongside the parallel treatment near Summa Theologiae III, q. 1. He matches roughly eight reasons in the Contra Gentiles against about ten in the Summa, showing where they overlap—arguments from faith, the example of virtue, reparation for sin—and where each text adds something distinct, such as separate arguments from hope and from charity. Along the way he takes up despair versus hope in the pursuit of truth, citing Aristotle and Plato’s Phaedo, and weighs the difference between calling Christ a “human being” and a “human person.” He counts roughly thirteen distinct reasons once both texts are combined.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/004-would-god-have-become-incarnate-without-sin-original-sin/Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/004-would-god-have-become-incarnate-without-sin-original-sin/Berquist takes up three linked questions from Aquinas on the Incarnation’s cause and timing: whether God would have become man apart from sin, whether Christ came chiefly to remedy original sin or actual sin, and whether he should have appeared at the very start of history rather than after a long delay. Working through the objections, the sed contra citations from Augustine and Ambrose, and Aquinas’s replies, he and the students trace the reasoning about human pride, the pedagogical unfolding of salvation history, and man’s place as a microcosm joining creation to God. The session breaks off partway into the reply of Article 5, mid-argument on why the delay was fitting.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/005-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-its-timing-the-plan-of-the-third/Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/005-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-its-timing-the-plan-of-the-third/Berquist closes out Summa Theologiae III, q. 1, a. 6, where Aquinas, leaning on Augustine and Chrysostom, asks why the Incarnation happened neither at the world’s beginning nor at its end. He then maps the whole plan of the Tertia Pars—Incarnation, the Gospel narrative, the sacraments—before turning to q. 2 on how the Word is united to human nature. Working out the meaning of “nature” through Aristotle’s Physics and Boethius, he shows why Christ cannot have one composite nature, as Eutyches and readings of Cyril and the Athanasian Creed suggested, but must have two, against the mixture heresies Chalcedon rejected.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/006-the-union-in-one-person-cyril-the-athanasian-creed-the-human/Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/006-the-union-in-one-person-cyril-the-athanasian-creed-the-human/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s account of the hypostatic union in Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 1–2, asking how one person can subsist in two really distinct natures without their blending into a third thing. He follows Aquinas’s replies through the Second Council of Constantinople, the Athanasian Creed, John Damascene, and Boethius’s definition of person, weighing the soul-body union as an analogy for the divine-human union and noting where it breaks down, with a parallel glance at the Summa Contra Gentiles. He closes with a geometric image—a single point as the shared origin of two distinct lines—to show how the man Christ, though truly human, is not a human person.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/007-summa-iii-q-2-arts-3-5-one-hypostasis-in-christ-the-sense/Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/007-summa-iii-q-2-arts-3-5-one-hypostasis-in-christ-the-sense/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s careful sorting of person, hypostasis, and suppositum to ask where exactly the union of God and man occurs in Christ, and why saying it happens only “in the person” risks the Nestorian error condemned at Ephesus and Constantinople. He then asks whether Christ’s person can be called “composed” of two natures, and, turning to the union of soul and body, why this union is drawn into the already-existing person of the Word rather than constituting a new hypostasis. Along the way he reaches for grammatical and geometric analogies—including a line’s endpoint—to pin down the aliud/alius and hypostasis/persona distinctions doing the real work in the arguments, drawing also on a handout page and a passage in the School of Aristotle volume.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/008-summa-iii-q-2-arts-5-6-christs-soul-and-body-joined-to-a/Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/008-summa-iii-q-2-arts-5-6-christs-soul-and-body-joined-to-a/Berquist takes up two articles of Summa III, q. 2: whether Christ’s body and soul were united less perfectly than in ordinary men, and whether human nature was joined to the Word by accident. He traces the Nestorian and Eutychian errors that pushed the Church to define the union “according to hypostasis” rather than accident or nature, drawing on Damascene and the councils alongside Aquinas’s own text. Along the way he digresses into Aristotle’s categories and the sense of touch before returning to the main line. He closes by using the analogy of body and soul reunited at the resurrection to show how human nature subsists in the Word’s person without adding a new accident or hypostasis.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/009-summa-iii-q-2-arts-7-8-the-union-is-created-real-relations/Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/009-summa-iii-q-2-arts-7-8-the-union-is-created-real-relations/Berquist opens with a few pages from St. Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography, chapter 24, on her rapture during the “Veni Creator” and her gradual visions of Christ’s hands, face, and glorified body. He then turns to Summa III, q. 2, a. 7: is the union of Christ’s two natures itself something created? Article 8 presses the further question of why “union” and “assumption” name different things, since assumption is the act terminating in the union. Working through Aristotle and Avicenna on real versus rational relations, and Thomas’s De Potentia, he ties the argument back to divine immutability, the Trinity, and Mary’s Assumption.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/010-thomas-as-teacher-of-things-and-words-q-2-art-9-the-greatest/Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/010-thomas-as-teacher-of-things-and-words-q-2-art-9-the-greatest/Berquist begins with Thomas’s exposition of Psalm 48, where he distinguishes teaching res (things)—as in the Summa’s treatment of God and the Incarnation—from teaching verba (words), as in scriptural commentary, placing Pseudo-Dionysius’s De Divinis Nominibus between the two and linking this to Vatican II’s and Leo XIII’s praise of Thomas as both dogmatic and scriptural teacher. He then reads closely through Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 9, on whether the hypostatic union is the greatest of unions, following the objections, the sed contra from Augustine’s De Trinitate, and Thomas’s replies. Along the way he digresses on unity versus numerical oneness, the convertibility of being and good, and the difference between real distinction and distinction of reason as it applies to the divine persons and nature.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/011-relations-of-reason-the-divine-power-and-the-grace-of-union/Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/011-relations-of-reason-the-divine-power-and-the-grace-of-union/Berquist reads closely through two articles of the Summa’s third part on the hypostatic union, pressing the question of whether the grace by which Christ’s human nature was joined to the Word could in any way have followed upon merit, or whether it must simply precede it as pure gift. He draws on Aristotle’s distinction between what belongs to nature and what belongs to will to sharpen how the Father’s generation of the Son differs from God’s power to create, and uses this to clarify what a “relation of reason” actually is. Along the way he ties the argument to sanctifying grace, the theological virtues, and the meaning of the Mass, pausing to question students on the Latin text.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/012-grace-natural-to-christ-the-assuming-person-and-simply-vs/Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/012-grace-natural-to-christ-the-assuming-person-and-simply-vs/Berquist closes out Question 2 with the question of whether the grace of union was natural to Christ, sorting out “nature” taken as birth versus as essence, and “simply” versus “in some way” as ways of qualifying a claim. He then turns to Question 3 on the hypostatic union viewed from the side of the person who assumes: article one asks whether it belongs to a divine person to assume a created nature, article two whether it belongs specifically to the divine nature to do so. Along the way he leans on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and Plato’s Meno to clarify how person and nature function as distinct principles of action.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/013-summa-iii-q-3-arts-3-6-assuming-a-nature-without-personality/Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/013-summa-iii-q-3-arts-3-6-assuming-a-nature-without-personality/Berquist reads four consecutive articles of Aquinas on the Incarnation. He asks whether the divine nature, considered apart from the properties distinguishing the three Persons, could itself assume a created nature; whether one Person could assume flesh without the others also doing so; whether the Father or the Holy Spirit, rather than the Son, could have become incarnate; and whether several divine Persons could jointly assume a single human nature. Working through each article’s objections, sed contra, and resolution, he leans on Aquinas’s distinction between the act of assuming and its term, and between common divine power and personal termination, drawing comparisons to Augustine, Damascene, and Dionysius along the way.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/014-summa-iii-q-3-arts-7-8-one-person-in-two-human-natures-the/Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/014-summa-iii-q-3-arts-7-8-one-person-in-two-human-natures-the/Berquist takes up Article Seven’s question of whether a single divine person could assume two distinct human natures, working through objections about suppositum, personal unity, and the communication of properties, with a digression into the logical fallacies of accident and figure of speech. He then turns to Article Eight: why fittingness argues for the Son’s incarnation rather than the Father’s or Holy Spirit’s, developing three reasons—the Word as exemplar of creation, natural sonship grounding adoptive sonship, and the Word as remedy for the first sin’s disordered desire for knowledge. He closes with a tangent on Aristotle’s distinction between making and self-perfection.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/015-summa-iii-q-4-arts-1-3-why-human-nature-could-be-assumed/Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/015-summa-iii-q-4-arts-1-3-why-human-nature-could-be-assumed/Berquist takes up Question 4 of the Tertia Pars, asking why human nature—rather than an irrational creature, an angel, or the whole universe—was fitting for the Word to assume. He then works through whether the Son of God assumed a person or a man, sorting out the technical vocabulary of person, suppositum, and nature. Along the way he digresses into the Disputed Questions on the Power of God, where relations like paternity constitute and distinguish the divine persons, and closes by distinguishing two senses of ’through’ as applied to generation, creation, and the sacraments.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/016-summa-iii-q-4-arts-4-6-not-abstract-human-nature-not-all/Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/016-summa-iii-q-4-arts-4-6-not-abstract-human-nature-not-all/Berquist takes up three articles from Aquinas’s question on the Incarnation: whether the Son of God should have assumed an abstract human nature, whether he should have assumed it in all individuals, and why he took it specifically from Adam’s line. He walks through Aquinas’s rejection of a separately-subsisting universal nature, aimed at Platonist thinking, and his distinction between a cause that is universal and a predicate that is universal—drawing on Aristotle’s Metaphysics for the point. He also explains Aquinas’s reasoning for Christ assuming nature from Adam’s corrupted lineage rather than from an unfallen source, with digressions through Heraclitus, Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel to sharpen the contrast.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/017-summa-iii-q-5-a-1-2-did-the-son-of-god-take-a-true-earthly/Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/017-summa-iii-q-5-a-1-2-did-the-son-of-god-take-a-true-earthly/Berquist opens with notes on Aquinas’s Compendium Theologiae — the causality of Christ’s death and resurrection, and why Christ is called “firstborn” of the resurrection — before turning to Summa III, q. 5. There Aquinas asks whether the Son of God took a real, earthly human body, weighing objections rooted in Manichaean and Valentinian errors that would make the body apparent or heavenly rather than truly human. Berquist follows Aquinas’s replies, which draw on Scripture, Augustine, Hilary, Damascene, and Aristotle, to defend the truth of the Incarnation and what it means for divine dignity. The class ends partway into article two, mid-argument.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/018-summa-iii-q-5-a-3-4-and-q-6-a-1-christs-soul-and-mind-and/Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/018-summa-iii-q-5-a-3-4-and-q-6-a-1-christs-soul-and-mind-and/Berquist reads Aquinas’s articles on whether the Word assumed a human soul and a human intellect, laying out the Arian and Apollinarian positions that reduced Christ to flesh alone, or to a soul without a mind, and showing why Scripture and the Fathers require both. He then opens question six’s article on the order of the union—whether the Word took on flesh through the medium of the soul, in time, dignity, and causality—citing Augustine, John Damascene, and Aristotle. He pauses over John 1:14 and the Magnificat’s “soul” and “spirit,” comparing the union to sacramental and miraculous causality.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/019-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-6-a-2-3-spirit-soul-and/Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/019-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-6-a-2-3-spirit-soul-and/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of the order of the Incarnation: did the Word assume spirit, then soul, then flesh—or flesh through soul, and soul through spirit? Working through articles 2 and 3, he draws on Augustine, John Damascene, and Leo the Great, and sets Paul’s spirit-soul-body language in 1 Thessalonians alongside Teresa of Ávila’s account of Trinitarian visions. He also confronts Origen’s theory that souls pre-exist their bodies, using it to sharpen the distinction between priority in time and priority in nature, and asks why God fittingly assumed a rational rather than an animal or angelic nature.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/020-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-6-a-4-6-flesh-and-soul/Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/020-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-6-a-4-6-flesh-and-soul/Berquist takes up three articles from Aquinas’s question on the union of the Word with the body: whether the flesh was assumed before the rational soul, whether the Word took on human nature through its parts or as a whole, and whether grace acted as a medium in the hypostatic union. Leaning on Aristotle’s account of soul as the substantial form of an organic body, along with Augustine and John Damascene, he sorts out the order of nature from the order of time, and distinguishes intention from execution. He digresses briefly into ensoulment and abortion before closing with a look ahead to question 7, on the grace, knowledge, and power assumed together with Christ’s human nature.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/021-can-a-human-being-be-god-nature-and-person-and-christs-habitual/Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/021-can-a-human-being-be-god-nature-and-person-and-christs-habitual/Berquist begins from a current event—a priest publicly denying Christ’s divinity—and asks how someone could hold that a man cannot also be God. He shows that Aristotle’s logic, especially the distinction between an individual substance or person and a nature, dissolves the apparent contradiction, and he explains why Scripture’s language of the Word “becoming” flesh implies no change in God, using examples like a geometric point and relative height. He then moves into Summa Theologiae III, question 7, laying out the structure of the treatise on Christ’s grace before working through article 1’s case for habitual grace in Christ’s soul, grounded in union with the Word, the soul’s nobility, and Christ’s mediatorial role.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/022-virtues-faith-hope-the-gifts-and-fear-of-the-lord-in-christ/Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/022-virtues-faith-hope-the-gifts-and-fear-of-the-lord-in-christ/Berquist takes up five articles of the Tertia Pars in which Aquinas asks whether Christ possessed the virtues, faith, hope, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and fear. Working through objections and replies, he traces Thomas’s argument that Christ’s perfect grace included every virtue except those that imply imperfection or unfulfilled expectation—faith, hope, and servile or “chaste” fear—while still allowing him a filial fear of the Lord grounded in reverence for divine excellence rather than dread of punishment. Along the way Berquist draws on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Augustine, and digresses into Aristotelian moral psychology, the distinction between the soul’s powers and its essence, and a brief aside on Shakespearean textual emendation.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/023-summa-iii-q-7-a-7-9-christs-freely-given-graces-prophecy/Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/023-summa-iii-q-7-a-7-9-christs-freely-given-graces-prophecy/Berquist takes up three articles of Question 7 on the grace of Christ. He asks whether Christ possessed the “graces gratuitously given”—gifts like prophecy ordered to others’ benefit rather than his own sanctification—and how prophecy could belong to one who already saw God face to face as comprehensor while still journeying as viator. Working through objections, sed contra, and Thomas’s replies, he ties Christ’s teaching office to the shape of Matthew’s Gospel and distinguishes sanctifying grace from these gratuitous gifts. He closes by looking ahead to whether the fullness of grace found in Christ belongs to him alone, glancing at Mary’s own “fullness of grace.”https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/024-summa-iii-q-7-a-10-11-is-fullness-of-grace-christs-alone/Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/024-summa-iii-q-7-a-10-11-is-fullness-of-grace-christs-alone/Berquist takes up two articles from the Summa on Christ’s grace. First he asks whether fullness of grace is Christ’s alone, distinguishing fullness “on the side of grace itself,” which is Christ’s exclusively, from fullness “on the side of the subject,” which others, including Mary, can share by degree. He then turns to whether Christ’s grace is infinite, working through Aquinas’s objections and answers by separating infinity “simply” from infinity “in some way.” Along the way he draws on Luke, Acts, Ephesians, and John, and digresses at length on envy, friendship, and historical and literary examples before closing with a remark on papal encyclicals.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/025-can-christs-grace-increase-st-iii-q-7-a-12-natural-limits/Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/025-can-christs-grace-increase-st-iii-q-7-a-12-natural-limits/Starting from Pius X’s encyclical on St. Anselm and a look at Cur Deus Homo as a forerunner of Aquinas’s method, Berquist turns to Article 12 of Question 7 in the Tertia Pars: could Christ’s grace have increased? He draws Aquinas’s distinction between a limit set by the recipient and a limit set by the form itself, reaching for analogies from Planck and Einstein and the technical difference between something being true “simply” versus “in a qualified sense.” He closes on the fullness of Christ’s grace from conception, grace proportioned to one’s end, and a short reflection on why the blessed are free from envy.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/026-habitual-grace-follows-the-union-q-7-a-13-mixing-up-word/Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/026-habitual-grace-follows-the-union-q-7-a-13-mixing-up-word/Berquist takes up Article 13 of Question 7, where Thomas asks whether Christ’s habitual grace follows upon the union of natures — answering that it does, in the order of nature though not of time, using the analogies of the divine processions, light proceeding from the sun, and the priority of a suppositum to its action. He then works through the replies to the three objections, distinguishing Augustine’s sense of “grace,” dispositive from consequent properties via the fire-and-heat example, and what is common versus private within and across genera, pausing to warn against mixing senses of terms. He closes by outlining the eight articles of Question 8, on Christ’s grace as head of the Church.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/027-aquinas-summa-iii-q-8-articles-1-3-christ-as-head-of-the/Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/027-aquinas-summa-iii-q-8-articles-1-3-christ-as-head-of-the/Berquist opens with John 6 and John 3 on the Father as source of grace and the Eucharist, then turns to Summa III, q. 8. He follows Thomas’s three articles asking whether Christ is head of the Church according to his human nature, whether that headship governs bodies as well as souls, and whether he is head of all men or only the faithful—including Thomas’s fivefold gradation of union with Christ, from glory and charity down through faith, potency, and non-predestination. Along the way he brings in Ephesians, Romans, Corinthians, 1 John, and Augustine to explain the headship metaphor.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/028-aquinas-summa-iii-q-8-articles-4-8-christ-as-head-of-the/Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/028-aquinas-summa-iii-q-8-articles-4-8-christ-as-head-of-the/Berquist takes up five articles of question 8 on Christ’s headship, moving from Christ’s rule over the angels through the question of whether the grace by which he heads the Church is one with his own personal grace. He examines how headship can extend, analogously, to popes, bishops, and other ministers within the body, distinguishing genuine headship from merely partial or delegated influence. The class then turns to the grim counterpart: whether the devil, and finally the Antichrist, can be called head of the wicked, sorting out headship by interior influence versus mere external rule, and by order, perfection, and causal power. Along the way he brings in Ephesians, Colossians, and Job to fill out the scriptural background.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/029-the-knowledge-of-christ-i-why-christ-has-human-knowledge/Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/029-the-knowledge-of-christ-i-why-christ-has-human-knowledge/Berquist takes up the opening articles of Summa Theologiae III, q. 9, where Aquinas asks whether Christ, besides his divine knowledge, also had a created human knowledge, and then whether that knowledge included the vision the blessed have of God. He walks through Aquinas’s arguments, objections, and replies, drawing on Aristotle’s De Anima and Metaphysics, Ambrose, and the letter to the Hebrews to explain why a merely divine intellect would leave Christ’s human nature incomplete. Along the way he addresses Christ’s headship over the Church and warns against errors that either overstate his self-emptying or reduce him to ordinary humanity, before turning toward the next article’s question of innate versus infused knowledge.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/030-the-knowledge-of-christ-ii-infused-and-acquired-knowledge/Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/030-the-knowledge-of-christ-ii-infused-and-acquired-knowledge/Berquist takes up the objections and responses of Article 3 of Summa Theologiae III, q. 9—whether Christ possessed infused, or “endowed,” knowledge in addition to the beatific knowledge of his soul—before turning to the opening of Article 4 on acquired knowledge gained through the senses and experience. He distinguishes blessed, infused, and acquired knowing by analogy to Augustine’s angelic “morning” and “evening” knowledge and to Aristotle’s agent and possible intellect from the De Anima, asking why one kind of knowledge does not simply make the others redundant. Along the way he digresses on brevity and wisdom, contrasts Cartesian epistemology with Thomistic dialectical method, and notes the inverse relation between certitude and precision.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/031-aquinas-on-christs-beatific-knowledge-st-iii-q-10-a-1-2-the/Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/031-aquinas-on-christs-beatific-knowledge-st-iii-q-10-a-1-2-the/Berquist takes up Summa Theologiae III, q. 10, on Christ’s beatific knowledge, asking first whether his human soul comprehended the divine essence and then whether it knew all things in the Word. He distinguishes scientia visionis from scientia simplicis intelligentiae, and comprehension from vision, showing that clarity of knowledge is not the same as quantity of things known. Objections drawn from Isidore, Damascene, and Augustine are weighed, along with the Gospel’s troubling statement that Christ did not know “the day or the hour.” The discussion situates these questions within the hypostatic union, touching along the way on divine and human love and judgment.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/032-christs-knowledge-of-the-infinite-and-his-supreme-vision/Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/032-christs-knowledge-of-the-infinite-and-his-supreme-vision/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether Christ’s human soul knows infinite things, distinguishing an infinity of form from the infinity of privation or matter, and knowledge held in act from knowledge held only in potency. He then moves into article 4, asking whether Christ’s soul sees the Word more perfectly than any other creature, comparing the grades of grace and vision given to Christ, Mary, and the angels. Along the way he digresses on Berkeley and Anaxagoras and on the sophism of “simply” versus “in a certain respect,” tracing it back to Plato’s Meno and Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. The class ends with the proemium to question 11, previewing the treatment of Christ’s infused knowledge.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/033-studiorum-ducem-and-christs-infused-knowledge-does-it-reach/Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/033-studiorum-ducem-and-christs-infused-knowledge-does-it-reach/Berquist begins with Pius XI’s encyclical Studiorum Ducem and John XXII’s praise of Aquinas as Doctor of the Eucharist, then turns to Summa III, q. 11, on Christ’s infused knowledge. Working through article 1, he asks whether this knowledge reaches all things a human mind can know; in article 2, whether understanding through it still requires turning to phantasms, the mental images Aristotle’s De Anima makes central to ordinary human cognition. He compares Christ’s mode of knowing to that of angels and separated souls, who know without recourse to images. The class also digresses into harmonizing the Gospel accounts of Christ’s seven last words.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/034-christs-infused-knowledge-reasoning-step-by-step-compared/Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/034-christs-infused-knowledge-reasoning-step-by-step-compared/Berquist takes up four articles on Christ’s infused knowledge. He asks whether that knowledge proceeded discursively, distinguishing knowledge gained through reasoning from knowledge that is simply used in a reasoning process, then compares Christ’s knowledge to that of the angels. He turns to whether this knowledge was habitual, weighing the knowledge’s divine source against the human soul that receives it, and finally whether it should be divided into several distinct habits rather than one. Along the way he digresses into Mozart’s sacred music, the hidden life of Christ, and anecdotes about Aquinas.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/035-christs-acquired-knowledge-did-he-know-all-things-grow-in/Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/035-christs-acquired-knowledge-did-he-know-all-things-grow-in/Berquist takes up Question 12 of the Tertia Pars, on Christ’s acquired or experiential knowledge, distinguishing it from the infused and beatific knowledge treated earlier in Question 9. He asks whether by this acquired knowledge Christ knew all things, whether he made progress in knowledge, and whether he learned anything from men or angels, working through the objections and responses article by article and noting where Aquinas revised a position he had held in the earlier Commentary on the Sentences. The session opens with remarks on Pius XI’s encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor on Mary as co-offerer and mediatrix, linked to Christ’s words from the Cross in Luke and John.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/036-christ-the-angels-and-the-limits-of-his-souls-power-omnipotence/Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/036-christ-the-angels-and-the-limits-of-his-souls-power-omnipotence/Berquist takes up two linked questions in the Tertia Pars: whether Christ’s human soul received knowledge from the angels, and whether that soul held omnipotence, absolutely and in its power to change creatures. Working through the articles’ objections and responses, he draws on Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy, Bede, Augustine, and Jerome to sort infused knowledge from experiential knowledge, and speculative from practical knowledge. The key distinction is between power belonging to Christ’s soul by nature and power exercised as the Word’s instrument. He illustrates the points with references ranging from Aristotle’s Ethics to Shakespeare and Cajetan’s commentary.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/037-christs-power-over-his-body-and-his-will-st-iii-q-13-a-3/Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/037-christs-power-over-his-body-and-his-will-st-iii-q-13-a-3/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether Christ’s soul had power over his own body and whether his human will always executed what it willed, reading closely through the objections and replies of articles three and four before turning toward the defects Christ assumed in question fourteen. Along the way he follows Christ’s saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life” through the Catena Aurea’s patristic voices—Damascene, Augustine—and the Catechism’s structure, then draws on Summa Contra Gentiles I, chapter 60, on the intellectual creature’s end in knowing God. Anecdotes and tangents thread through the textual commentary throughout.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/038-the-bodily-defects-christ-took-on-st-iii-q-14-a-1-4/Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/038-the-bodily-defects-christ-took-on-st-iii-q-14-a-1-4/Berquist reads Aquinas on why Christ assumed bodily defects such as hunger, fatigue, and death: to satisfy for sin, to confirm the reality of his humanity against those who denied it, and to give an example of patience. He traces the distinction between natural and coercive necessity, and between defects common to fallen human nature and those tied to particular causes or incompatible with Christ’s perfect grace and knowledge — so Christ could hunger but not, say, suffer disease. Along the way he takes up whether Christ “contracted” these defects in the technical sense of inheriting them through original sin, with digressions on Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the Transfiguration, and modern hermeneutical disputes, before returning to the text.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/039-summa-iii-q-15-a-1-3-whether-christ-had-sin-the-fomes-of/Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/039-summa-iii-q-15-a-1-3-whether-christ-had-sin-the-fomes-of/Berquist takes up Question 15 of the Tertia Pars, where Aquinas asks whether Christ’s soul bore three defects: sin (article 1), the fomes peccati—the tinder of concupiscence left by original sin (article 2)—and ignorance (article 3). Moving through each article’s objections, sed contra, and replies, he brings in Augustine on the will and Aristotle’s account of reason’s rule over the passions, using literary examples to sharpen the distinctions. He also criticizes Roger Haight’s contemporary account of Christ’s humanity. The session opens with brief talk of Shakespeare’s birthday and closes as article 3, on ignorance, is still under way.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/040-summa-iii-q-15-a-4-5-the-passions-of-christs-soul-and-his/Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/040-summa-iii-q-15-a-4-5-the-passions-of-christs-soul-and-his/Berquist takes up two connected questions: could Christ’s soul undergo passion, and did he feel true sensible pain in the body? He distinguishes bodily undergoing from the soul’s own undergoing, propassion from full passion, and pain from sorrow, showing how Christ’s emotions matched ours in kind but differed in their object, origin, and effect. Along the way he stops repeatedly on words themselves—“passion,” “undergo,” logos and verbum, discursus as “running through”—tracing how their Latin and Greek senses have shifted before returning to Hilary’s difficult text and Thomas’s answer to it.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/041-aquinas-on-christs-emotions-sadness-and-fear-summa-iii-q/Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/041-aquinas-on-christs-emotions-sadness-and-fear-summa-iii-q/Could Christ, being sinless and perfect, actually feel sadness and fear? Berquist walks through the objections and responses of III, q. 15, articles 6 and 7, introducing Aquinas’s distinction between a full passion and a “propassion”—an emotion that begins in the sensitive appetite but never overturns reason’s rule. Drawing on Augustine, Jerome, Hilary, and Damascene, he shows how Christ genuinely suffered sorrow and fear in his human nature. He also sets this against the Stoic ideal of the wise man untouched by sadness, using the threefold division of goods—of soul, body, and external things—to explain why sorrow and fear can befit even a perfectly virtuous man, with reference to Summa Contra Gentiles III, ch. 33.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/042-christs-wonder-and-anger-christ-as-both-wayfarer-and-comprehensor/Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/042-christs-wonder-and-anger-christ-as-both-wayfarer-and-comprehensor/Berquist works through articles 8 through 10 of Summa III, q. 15, taking up whether wonder and anger could truly belong to Christ and how Christ could be at once a wayfarer, still journeying toward God, and a comprehensor, already possessing the vision of God. Along the way he brings in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Ethics, Euclid, Shakespeare, and Augustine’s commentary on John to sharpen the distinctions Aquinas is drawing. He closes by looking ahead to question 16, sketching Aquinas’s plan for treating the union of Christ’s two natures and the twelve articles on how divine and human predicates can be said of Christ.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/043-summa-iii-q-16-a-1-is-it-true-that-god-is-a-man-predication/Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/043-summa-iii-q-16-a-1-is-it-true-that-god-is-a-man-predication/Berquist takes up the first article of question 16 in the Tertia Pars, where Thomas asks whether the proposition “God is man” is true. He situates the question among the twelve the proemium raises about predication concerning Christ, then works through the objections and Thomas’s answer, distinguishing abstract from concrete signification and explaining how “God” and “man” can properly stand (supponere) for the one divine person possessing both natures. He contrasts this with the errors of the Manichaeans, Photinus, and Nestorius, touching along the way on Greek grammar in John 13, the order of faith and charity, and Anaxagoras’s cosmology, before replying to the four objections and turning toward the next article.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/044-summa-iii-q-16-a-2-4-man-is-god-the-lordly-man-and-saying/Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/044-summa-iii-q-16-a-2-4-man-is-god-the-lordly-man-and-saying/Berquist takes up three articles from the Tertia Pars on Christ: can “God is man” and “man is God” be truly said, is “homo dominicus”—a phrase Augustine himself later retracted—a fitting title for Christ, and how far can divine and human predicates be swapped between the two natures. Against Nestorius, he argues that it is the single person, not a fused nature, that grounds these statements, and returns repeatedly to two lines meeting at one point as an image of that unity. Along the way he stops to sort out the fallacies of equivocation and accident, reads from a handout on dividing Shakespeare’s plays, and reflects on humility and Christ’s self-emptying.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/045-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-16-a-5-6-can-human-things/Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/045-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-16-a-5-6-can-human-things/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae III, q.16, a.5–6, pressing the question of whether what belongs to human nature can rightly be predicated of the divine nature in Christ, and what it means to say God was made man. He works through Aquinas’s distinctions between abstract and concrete names and between nature and person, showing why concrete predication holds where abstract predication fails, and draws on Damascene, Athanasius, and Leo the Great alongside Aquinas’s own Summa Contra Gentiles and his commentary on John. The class opens with remarks on Benedict on faith and reason and a brief aside on reconciliation in As You Like It before settling into the text.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/046-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-16-a-7-10-was-man-made/Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/046-aquinas-on-the-incarnation-st-iii-q-16-a-7-10-was-man-made/Berquist takes up four articles of the Summa’s Tertia Pars, q. 16, where Aquinas tests statements the Incarnation tempts us to say carelessly: that man was made God, that Christ is a creature, that God began to be man, and that “that man” began to be. Working through each article’s objections, sed contra, and response, he shows how the truth or falsity of these propositions turns on whether a term is taken materially, for the person, or formally, for the nature—the distinction that keeps such language from collapsing into Arian error. He also digresses briefly on the difference between the names “Christ” and “Jesus,” on how to teach Scholastic texts, and on points of Latin grammar bearing on the argument.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/047-aquinas-on-christs-unity-whether-christ-as-man-is-a-person/Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/047-aquinas-on-christs-unity-whether-christ-as-man-is-a-person/Berquist takes up the question of Christ’s unity in the Tertia Pars, asking whether “man” said of Christ is predicated by reason of suppositum or by reason of nature, and whether Christ should be called one or two. He works from Boethius’s definition of person and his De Duabus Naturis, alongside Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s logic, to show how abstract terms like “deity” and “humanity” differ from concrete terms like “God” and “man” when applied to the two natures united in one person. Along the way he pauses on the discipline of definition itself, citing Aristotle’s Topics and Shakespeare’s account of reason, as training for following Aquinas’s distinctions closely.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/048-aquinas-on-christ-st-iii-q-17-a-1-q-18-a-1-one-being-and/Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/048-aquinas-on-christ-st-iii-q-17-a-1-q-18-a-1-one-being-and/Berquist continues his reading of Aquinas on Christ, taking up the replies to objections in q.17, a.1–2, where the question is why Christ, having two natures, cannot simply be called “two,” and why there is only one esse in him—an analogy to how soul and body make one existing thing. He then opens q.18, a.1, tracing the heresies (Apollinarian, monophysite, Nestorian, Monothelite) that each denied Christ a full human will, and explaining how the Church, at Constantinople III, affirmed two wills united in one person without erasing his human freedom.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/049-christs-sense-desire-st-iii-q-18-a-2-the-emotions-reason/Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/049-christs-sense-desire-st-iii-q-18-a-2-the-emotions-reason/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether Christ possessed a sense will—a “will of sensuality”—separate from his rational will, working through the concupiscible and irascible passions and how reason governs or is moved by them. He shows how this Thomistic account of the emotions stands behind Aristotle’s Poetics, Rhetoric, and Nicomachean Ethics, drawing examples from Mozart’s operas and Shakespeare to make the psychology concrete. The class closes on Thomas’s answers to the article’s three objections, including Augustine’s image of the serpent and the question of how Christ’s will remains one despite this distinction.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/050-summa-iii-q-18-a-3-4-the-will-as-nature-and-as-reason-and/Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/050-summa-iii-q-18-a-3-4-the-will-as-nature-and-as-reason-and/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s will in Summa III, q. 18, articles 3 and 4. He unpacks Damascene’s Greek distinction between thelesis, will as bare nature, and boulesis, will as guided by reason, lining it up against the more familiar pairing of intellectus and ratio. From there he turns to whether Christ had liberum arbitrium, free judgment, weighing objections from Damascene and from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on choice, counsel, and doubt. He grounds the technical argument in homely examples—choosing what to read, animal instinct—and in reflections on providence and the goodness of creation.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/051-summa-iii-q-18-a-5-6-not-my-will-but-yours-christs-human/Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/051-summa-iii-q-18-a-5-6-not-my-will-but-yours-christs-human/Berquist takes up two articles from the Tertia Pars on the structure of Christ’s willing. The first article asks whether Christ’s human will ever willed something other than what the divine will willed; the second asks whether there was any contrariety among Christ’s own several wills—sensuality, natural will, and rational will. Working through objections, the sed contra, and Aquinas’s responses, Berquist shows how these distinctions let Christ’s Gethsemane prayer, “not my will but thine,” express ordered, non-conflicting willing rather than inner struggle. He clarifies the technical vocabulary with analogies drawn from music’s effect on the passions, friendship, and personal anecdote.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/052-truth-crowned-the-wine-of-wisdom-and-whether-god-creates/Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/052-truth-crowned-the-wine-of-wisdom-and-whether-god-creates/Berquist opens by pairing a passage from Shakespeare’s Pericles with Aquinas on mercy, justice, and truth, drawing on the Psalms, Aristotle on wisdom, John’s Gospel, and the Disputed Questions on Power to ask whether God creates from natural necessity or from intellect and will. He then turns to Summa Theologiae III, q.19, a.1, where Aquinas asks whether Christ’s divine and human natures act through one operation or two. Working through Dionysius, Ambrose, Pope Leo’s Letter to Flavian, and the Sixth Ecumenical Council’s rejection of monothelitism, Berquist traces Aquinas’s answer: two distinct natural operations, unconfused, with the human nature acting as instrument under the divine.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/053-replies-on-the-theandric-operation-christs-human-operations/Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/053-replies-on-the-theandric-operation-christs-human-operations/Berquist takes up the theandric operation in Christ, asking with Dionysius, Damascene, and Augustine whether the divine and human natures act through one operation or two, and works the analogy of a tool moved by an agent to explain how Christ’s humanity operates under his divinity without being swallowed up by it. He then turns to whether Christ’s human acts were meritorious, both for himself and for others, weighing his simultaneous status as wayfarer and one already possessing the vision of God, and how, as head of the mystical body, his merit reaches the faithful through baptismal incorporation. He closes article four and opens onto question twenty.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/054-summa-iii-q-20-is-christ-subject-to-the-father-and-to-himself/Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/054-summa-iii-q-20-is-christ-subject-to-the-father-and-to-himself/Berquist takes up Summa Theologiae III, q. 20, articles 1 and 2: is Christ subject to the Father, and can he be said subject to himself? Reading the objections and replies, which draw on Cyril, Damascene, and Augustine, he lays out Aquinas’s threefold distinction of the ways Christ’s human nature is subject to God. He pauses over Aristotle’s senses of “before” from the handout “The First Definition of Reason,” the definition of law from the Prima Secundae, and a passage on God’s self-understanding from the Disputed Questions on Power, with a brief aside on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, before turning toward the next question on Christ’s prayer.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/055-summa-iii-q-21-the-prayer-of-christ-whether-he-prayed-through/Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/055-summa-iii-q-21-the-prayer-of-christ-whether-he-prayed-through/Berquist takes up Christ’s prayer as Aquinas treats it in Summa III, Q. 21, moving article by article: does prayer belong to Christ at all, does it pertain to him according to sensuality rather than reason, did he pray for himself as well as others, and was every one of his prayers heard? He follows Aquinas closely, working through Damascene’s definition of prayer and the objections and replies drawn from Hilary, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Dionysius, while pressing key distinctions—reason versus sensuality, absolute will versus mere velleity, motion as imperfect act against operatio as perfect act. Along the way he ties the question to the Our Father, the virtue of religion and devotion, and Aristotle’s psychology.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/056-the-priesthood-of-christ-part-1-christ-as-priest-and-victim/Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/056-the-priesthood-of-christ-part-1-christ-as-priest-and-victim/Berquist opens with a short reflection on love and friendship and the Aristotelian contrast between truth in the mind and good in things, using it to distinguish faith from charity. He then turns to Aquinas’s Commentary on John 6, on the multiplication of loaves, before taking up Summa Theologiae III, q. 22, articles 1 through 3: whether Christ is properly a priest, whether he is at once priest and victim, and whether the effect of his priestly sacrifice is the expiation of sin. Hebrews supplies the recurring scriptural anchor, alongside patristic testimony. Along the way he digresses briefly into the Our Father, the Psalms, and present-day moral commentary.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/057-the-priesthood-of-christ-part-2-a-priest-for-others-a-priest/Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/057-the-priesthood-of-christ-part-2-a-priest-for-others-a-priest/Berquist glosses three articles of Aquinas’s question on the priesthood of Christ. He traces Thomas’s distinction between offering and consummating a sacrifice to ask whether Christ’s priesthood profits Christ himself as well as others, then takes up whether that priesthood is eternal, and finally why Scripture calls Christ a priest “according to the order of Melchisedech” rather than the Levitical order. Along the way he weighs prayer against sacrifice as priestly acts and touches lay participation in the Mass, Fatima’s teaching on sacrifice, and stories of Charles Borromeo and Peter Canisius, before returning to Thomas’s case for the eternity and superiority of Christ’s priesthood.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/058-summa-iii-q-23-adoption-does-god-adopt-sons-and-is-christ/Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/058-summa-iii-q-23-adoption-does-god-adopt-sons-and-is-christ/Berquist takes up Question 23 of the Tertia Pars, asking whether God adopts sons, whether this adoption belongs to the whole Trinity or to the Father alone, and whether it is proper to rational creatures. Working through each article’s objections, sed contra, and Thomas’s response, he arrives at article 4’s conclusion: because Christ possesses only one divine person, or hypostasis, he cannot properly be called an adopted son despite having a genuine human nature. Along the way Berquist digresses into appropriation in Trinitarian theology, the meaning of the Our Father, and the Boethian definition of person as it bears on Christology and Mariology.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/059-summa-iii-q-24-the-predestination-of-christ-and-why-it-is/Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/059-summa-iii-q-24-the-predestination-of-christ-and-why-it-is/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s four articles on the predestination of Christ, asking whether Christ can properly be called predestined, whether this applies to him according to his human nature rather than his divine sonship, and whether his predestination serves as both the model and the cause of our own. He reads closely through the objections and responses of each article, drawing on Augustine’s De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and Paul’s Letter to the Romans to sort out how sonship, grace, and human nature relate in Christ. Digressions into Shakespeare, Aristotle’s Poetics, and mid-century political anecdotes punctuate the lecture before he returns to Thomas’s text.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/060-summa-iii-q-25-arts-1-3-one-adoration-of-christ-latria-for/Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/060-summa-iii-q-25-arts-1-3-one-adoration-of-christ-latria-for/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question on the adoration due to Christ. Article 1 asks whether one act of adoration is shown to his divinity and humanity together, since it is the person, not the nature, who is adored. Article 2 pushes further: does Christ’s flesh itself receive latria, the worship owed to God alone, or only a lesser honor? Article 3 extends the question to images of Christ, weighing conciliar texts and Damascene against the iconoclast objection, with Berquist distinguishing latria, dulia, and hyperdulia along the way and touching briefly on relics and Marian devotion.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/061-summa-iii-q-25-arts-4-6-and-q-26-the-cross-marys-hyperdulia/Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/061-summa-iii-q-25-arts-4-6-and-q-26-the-cross-marys-hyperdulia/Berquist takes up three linked questions of worship: whether the cross of Christ is owed latria, whether the Blessed Virgin receives the higher dulia called hyperdulia, and whether the relics of the saints deserve veneration. He works each article’s objections, sed contra, and corpus, drawing on Damascene, Augustine, and Jerome, and sharpens the standing distinctions among latria, dulia, and hyperdulia with concrete devotional cases. He then turns to q. 26 on Christ’s mediatorship, asking whether it belongs to him alone and according to his human nature, closing with a glance ahead to q. 27 on Mary.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/062-aquinas-on-marys-sanctification-in-the-womb-st-iii-q-27-a/Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/062-aquinas-on-marys-sanctification-in-the-womb-st-iii-q-27-a/Berquist reads Aquinas’s question on Mary’s sanctification in the womb, tracking the arguments in q. 27, a. 1 and a. 2 over whether her sanctification preceded birth and, more precisely, whether it preceded animation—the moment the rational soul is infused. He follows Aquinas’s objections and replies, then turns to Pius IX’s Ineffabilis Deus to show where the later dogma of the Immaculate Conception pushes past what Aquinas himself could affirm. Along the way he pauses on the distinction between peccatum and culpa, and brings in Aquinas’s remarks on Mary’s sinlessness from his commentary on the Hail Mary.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/063-mary-free-of-the-fomes-and-of-actual-sin-and-her-fullness/Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/063-mary-free-of-the-fomes-and-of-actual-sin-and-her-fullness/Berquist takes up three articles of Summa Theologiae III, q. 27, asking whether the fomes peccati—the “tinder” of concupiscence left by original sin—was wholly or only partly removed from Mary, whether she committed any actual sin, and whether her grace was full. He moves through each article’s objections, sed contra, corpus, and replies, drawing on Augustine, Damascene, Chrysostom, Basil, Ambrose, and Dionysius alongside Scripture (Canticles 4, Luke 2), with an aside comparing Mary’s death to Eastern tradition. A digression on Raphael, Murillo, Mozart, and Vivaldi illustrates knowing when a work of art should stop, before he returns to Mary’s exercise of the gifts of wisdom and prophecy.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/064-summa-iii-q27-a-6-q28-a-1-2-john-the-baptist-and-jeremiah/Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/064-summa-iii-q27-a-6-q28-a-1-2-john-the-baptist-and-jeremiah/Berquist finishes Summa III, q. 27, a. 6, where Aquinas explains that Jeremiah and John the Baptist were also made holy before birth—not to equal Mary’s sanctification but to prefigure Christ’s passion and baptism. He then turns to q. 28, working through articles 1 and 2 on Mary’s virginity in conceiving and in giving birth, weighing objections drawn from Joseph’s presumed paternity and Matthew’s genealogy. Along the way he brings in Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose, and points forward to the later doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to situate Aquinas’s argument within the Church’s fuller teaching.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/065-summa-iii-q28-a-3-4-mary-ever-virgin-christs-brothers-and/Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/065-summa-iii-q28-a-3-4-mary-ever-virgin-christs-brothers-and/Berquist takes up Articles 3 and 4 of the Summa’s question on Mary’s virginity, where Thomas answers objections built on Matthew’s “before they came together,” “until she brought forth her firstborn,” and Paul’s references to Christ’s “brothers.” Leaning on Jerome’s Against Helvidius and Augustine, he shows why these texts do not overturn Mary’s virginity before, during, and after birth. He then asks whether she had vowed virginity before her betrothal, concluding she had entrusted the desire to God beforehand and sealed the vow with Joseph afterward. The class ends with reflections on Joseph’s own holiness and De Koninck’s remark on a “Marian century” giving way to Joseph.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/066-aquinas-on-the-betrothal-of-the-virgin-why-christ-was-born/Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/066-aquinas-on-the-betrothal-of-the-virgin-why-christ-was-born/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether Christ ought to have been born of a betrothed virgin, and whether Mary and Joseph’s union was a true marriage. He traces Aquinas’s fourfold reasons on Christ’s behalf, threefold reasons on Mary’s behalf, and further reasons on humanity’s behalf, then works through replies to objections touching on hiding the virgin birth from the devil, shielding Mary from suspicion of adultery, and safeguarding how the miracle was to be made known. A student question sends him briefly into the Compendium of Theology, weighing how Mary’s Immaculate Conception coheres with her still bearing bodily defects and suffering, via the notion of the “debitum” owed to fallen nature.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/067-the-true-marriage-of-mary-and-joseph-and-the-annunciation/Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/067-the-true-marriage-of-mary-and-joseph-and-the-annunciation/Berquist takes up Summa Theologiae III, q. 29, a. 2 and q. 30, aa. 1-2, asking how Mary and Joseph could have a real matrimony without consummation. Drawing on Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, and Chrysostom, he distinguishes marriage’s “first perfection,” the marital consent and bond, from its “second perfection,” consummation and offspring, to show consent alone suffices for true matrimony. He then opens the Annunciation question, asking why it was fitting for the Incarnation to be announced to Mary in advance and through an angel, citing Bernard, Bede, and Dionysius. Along the way he digresses into canon law on consummation and annulment, betrothal customs, and consecrated chastity.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/068-de-malo-on-punishment-and-sin-summa-iii-q-30-a-3-why-the/Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/068-de-malo-on-punishment-and-sin-summa-iii-q-30-a-3-why-the/Berquist begins with De Malo, Question 1, Article 5, asking why mortal sin is a graver evil than losing the beatific vision — because sin sets itself directly against God’s own goodness, not merely against a benefit owed to us. He then turns to Summa Theologiae III, q. 30, a. 3, where Aquinas asks why the Annunciation came through a bodily, sensible vision rather than an imaginary or purely intellectual one, weighing objections about the certainty of sense knowledge and Mary’s dignity, and noting her response of wonder rather than fear. Along the way he digresses on Origen, Augustine’s debt to Plato, and how Aquinas’s spare prose compares with the more poetic styles of Bernard of Clairvaux and Shakespeare.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/069-summa-iii-q-30-a-4-the-order-of-the-annunciation-and-wonder/Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/069-summa-iii-q-30-a-4-the-order-of-the-annunciation-and-wonder/Berquist asks whether the Annunciation unfolded in a fitting order—why Gabriel first arouses Mary’s attention, then instructs her, then seeks her consent. He digresses to wonder as the beginning of philosophy, drawing on Aristotle, Plato’s Theaetetus, and Shakespeare’s Tempest, plus counterintuitive examples from Euclid and number theory, to clarify Aristotle’s distinction between a “beginning” and a “cause.” He then turns to q.31 a.1, opening Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s conception as regards the matter of his body: whether Christ took his flesh from Adam without contracting original sin.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/070-summa-iii-q-31-a-2-3-christ-as-son-of-david-and-the-two-genealogies/Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/070-summa-iii-q-31-a-2-3-christ-as-son-of-david-and-the-two-genealogies/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s Davidic and Abrahamic descent, working through objections raised by Mary’s lineage, her kinship with the Levite Elizabeth, and the prophecy against Jeconiah. He then turns to Article 3’s harder problem: Matthew and Luke give different fathers for Joseph, and different lines back through David, so Aquinas must show how both genealogies can be true. Drawing on Augustine, Jerome, and Julius Africanus, he lays out the traditional explanations—legal versus natural descent, levirate marriage—before Berquist digresses into related historical and philosophical asides along the way.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/071-summa-iii-q-31-a-3-4-the-symbolism-of-the-genealogy-numbers/Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/071-summa-iii-q-31-a-3-4-the-symbolism-of-the-genealogy-numbers/Berquist continues through Summa III, q. 31, tracing Aquinas’s use of Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, and Chrysostom to explain why Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies differ in structure, generation-counts, and the women they include, and what these differences symbolize about Christ’s kingly and priestly roles and his taking away of sin. He then takes up article 4, on whether it was fitting for Christ to be conceived and born of a woman, working through objections about the nobility of the male sex, containment within the womb, and the uncleanness of conception, and Aquinas’s replies defending the fittingness of the Virgin Birth. He draws parallels to Aristotle’s psychology and to Trinitarian reasoning to show how numerical and hierarchical patterns recur across Aquinas’s arguments.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/072-summa-iii-q-31-a-5-8-the-matter-of-christs-body-the-virgins/Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/072-summa-iii-q-31-a-5-8-the-matter-of-christs-body-the-virgins/Berquist works through four articles of the Tertia Pars on the material origin of Christ’s body. He asks whether Christ’s flesh was formed from the most pure blood of the Virgin, whether that flesh existed in a determinate, individually-signed way in Adam and the patriarchs before him, whether it was thereby infected by original sin as it lay in his ancestors, and whether Christ can be said to have been tithed in Abraham’s loins as Levi was. He reads Aquinas’s objections, sed contra, and corpus closely, drawing on Damascene and Augustine, with asides on ancient biology and etymology, plus a tangent into Aquinas’s John commentary on the post-Resurrection appearances and the 153 fish.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/073-summa-iii-q-32-a-1-3-the-holy-spirit-and-christs-conception/Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/073-summa-iii-q-32-a-1-3-the-holy-spirit-and-christs-conception/Berquist takes up three articles of the Tertia Pars on the Holy Spirit’s role in Christ’s conception. He asks whether the Spirit acted as efficient cause, then examines the phrase “conceived of the Holy Spirit,” weighing the Latin prepositions de and ex to pin down exactly what kind of causality is meant. A third question asks why, given this causal role, the Spirit is not called Christ’s father according to the flesh, which turns on the difference between perfect and imperfect sonship. Throughout, he draws on Thomas’s citations of Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Damascene, and explains the principle of appropriating a common divine work to one Person of the Trinity.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/074-summa-iii-q-32-a-4-q-33-aa-1-2-marys-role-in-conceiving-christ/Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/074-summa-iii-q-32-a-4-q-33-aa-1-2-marys-role-in-conceiving-christ/Berquist opens with informal remarks connecting Aquinas’s division of the sacraments—confession and extreme unction—to the Hail Mary’s two petitions and to other paired distinctions such as body and soul, reason and imagination, matrimony and holy orders. He then turns to Summa III, Question 32, Article 4, asking whether the Virgin Mary was an active or merely material principle in conceiving Christ, before moving into Question 33’s opening articles on whether Christ’s body was formed and given a rational soul in a single instant. Along the way he brings in Aristotelian natural philosophy—motion, change, and the puzzle of instantaneous transformation—to clarify what is at stake theologically.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/075-summa-iii-q-33-aa-3-4-q-34-aa-1-2-flesh-taken-on-as-it-was/Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/075-summa-iii-q-33-aa-3-4-q-34-aa-1-2-flesh-taken-on-as-it-was/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s account of Christ’s conception in Summa III, q. 33, aa. 3–4 and q. 34, aa. 1–2. He asks whether the flesh assumed by the Word pre-existed or was taken on precisely as conceived, and whether that conception was a natural act or a miraculous one worked by the Holy Spirit. Turning to q. 34, he examines whether the child possessed sanctifying grace, free judgment, and sensation from the first instant, drawing on Aristotle’s distinction in the De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics between perfect and imperfect operations to explain how a conceived infant could already act humanly. He glosses the Latin closely and pauses to connect the argument to Augustine and the Athanasian Creed.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/076-christs-merit-and-beatific-vision-from-the-first-instant/Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/076-christs-merit-and-beatific-vision-from-the-first-instant/Berquist reads and glosses St. Thomas’s text article by article: did Christ merit in the very first instant of his conception, and was he from that instant a perfect comprehensor possessing the beatific vision, not merely a wayfarer moving toward it? He draws on Augustine’s letters and Aristotle’s Physics to press the underlying questions about grace, free will, and how the hypostatic union bears on Christ’s soul. Passing then to question 35 on the nativity, the class begins asking whether birth is properly said of a nature or of a person, setting up the distinction that will govern the rest of the treatment.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/077-christs-two-births-mary-as-true-mother-and-mother-of-god/Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/077-christs-two-births-mary-as-true-mother-and-mother-of-god/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether a temporal birth belongs to Christ alongside his eternal generation, and whether this commits him to two sonships rather than one person with two births. He follows the articles’ objections and replies closely, bringing in John Damascene, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria against errors that would split Christ into two subjects. Central to the resolution is Aquinas’s distinction between real relations and relations of reason, which lets one eternal hypostasis be truly called son of a temporal mother. That same distinction grounds the final question: why Mary is rightly named Mother of God, not merely Mother of Christ.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/078-the-nativity-of-christ-born-without-pain-in-bethlehem-at/Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/078-the-nativity-of-christ-born-without-pain-in-bethlehem-at/Berquist takes up three fittingness questions Aquinas poses about the Nativity: whether Christ’s birth spared Mary the pains of labor, whether Bethlehem was the fitting birthplace, and whether the timing of His birth—under Roman peace, in winter darkness—was rightly ordered. Working through each article’s sed contra and respondeo, he draws on Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Bede, and Chrysostom to show how Davidic prophecy and cosmic symbolism converge on this child and this place. Along the way he digresses into papal asceticism, Shakespeare and Sophocles, and the traditional pairing of the four Gospels with Old Testament prophets.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/079-the-manifestation-of-the-newborn-christ-to-whom-why-hidden/Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/079-the-manifestation-of-the-newborn-christ-to-whom-why-hidden/Berquist takes up q. 36 of the Tertia Pars, asking whether the Nativity should have been made known to everyone, to no one, or only to some — and why it fell to shepherds and Magi in particular, representing Jews and Gentiles. He follows Thomas’s arguments and replies to objections article by article, drawing on Augustine, Leo the Great, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Gregory to explain the ordering of divine wisdom in revelation and the merit of faith. He also treats the final article’s question of why Christ made himself known through others rather than directly, pausing along the way for reflections on faith and the Eucharist.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/080-the-manifestation-of-christs-birth-angels-the-star-and-the/Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/080-the-manifestation-of-christs-birth-angels-the-star-and-the/Berquist takes up three articles of Question 36 in the Tertia Pars: why the shepherds were told of Christ’s birth by angels while the Magi were led by a star, why shepherds, Magi, and the just—Simeon and Anna—learned of the Nativity in that particular sequence, and whether the star itself was an ordinary heavenly body or something created expressly as a sign. He follows Aquinas’s use of Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory, and Leo the Great, drawing out the fittingness of each mode of revelation and pausing over questions of symbolism and providence along the way.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/081-the-magis-adoration-and-gifts-the-circumcision-of-christ/Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/081-the-magis-adoration-and-gifts-the-circumcision-of-christ/Berquist closes out ST III, q. 36, a. 8, working through objections on why the Magi’s homage, gifts, and inquiry at Jerusalem were fitting, drawing on Augustine, Chrysostom, Leo the Great, and Gregory as Aquinas cites them. He then turns to q. 37, articles 1 and 2, opening Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s circumcision and the imposition of the name Jesus, translating and glossing the Latin sentence by sentence. Along the way he digresses into stories about naming and history—Bonnie Prince Charlie, a papal visit to England—before returning to the text. The session traces Aquinas’s ordered account of the events immediately following Christ’s birth: the Epiphany, the circumcision, and the naming.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/082-the-faith-of-peter-the-articles-of-faith-and-christ-presented/Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/082-the-faith-of-peter-the-articles-of-faith-and-christ-presented/Berquist opens by asking how the Apostles’ Creed divides between Christ’s divinity and humanity, sketching a six-article scheme for the divine attributes before turning to the human articles. He then works through q. 37 of the Tertia Pars on the Presentation and circumcision in the Temple, tracing the objections and Thomas’s replies on why turtledoves or pigeons were offered in place of a lamb and what the birds signify. He also pauses over a textual puzzle in Luke’s Gospel—the plural “their purification”—comparing how the Vulgate and the Catena aurea render the passage concerning Mary.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/083-the-baptism-of-john-why-john-baptized-whether-it-was-from/Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/083-the-baptism-of-john-why-john-baptized-whether-it-was-from/Berquist takes up Question 38 of the Tertia Pars, where Aquinas asks whether it was fitting for John to baptize, whether his baptism was divinely instituted, and whether it actually gave grace. He works through the objections, sed contra, and responsio of each article, showing how Aquinas argues John’s rite was preparatory rather than grace-conferring, distinct from circumcision, and draws together scattered authorities—Augustine, Chrysostom, Gregory, Bede, Jerome—into a single account. He also compares this method of harmonizing sources to Aquinas’s procedure elsewhere, and touches on modern parallels like adult baptismal preparation and Dei Verbum.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/084-the-creeds-articles-on-christs-humanity-johns-baptism-why/Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/084-the-creeds-articles-on-christs-humanity-johns-baptism-why/Berquist takes up Summa Theologiae III, q. 38, working through articles 4 through 6 on John’s baptism. The questions at issue: why did John keep baptizing after Christ himself had been baptized, and why did people who had already received John’s baptism need to be baptized again under Christ’s? He follows Thomas’s use of Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, and Bede to draw out the difference between John’s baptism of repentance and Christ’s baptism of grace, likening the shift to how confirmation and matrimony each build on and complete an earlier rite. He also reads from a handout on the causes of love.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/085-the-baptism-of-christ-why-he-was-baptized-why-by-john-and/Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/085-the-baptism-of-christ-why-he-was-baptized-why-by-john-and/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s baptism in Summa Theologiae III, q. 39, moving through the first three articles in turn. He asks whether it was fitting for Christ, sinless as he was, to undergo baptism at all; why he received John’s baptism specifically rather than some other rite; and why he waited until thirty, the age Aquinas and the tradition call the “perfect age.” Along the way Berquist draws out Aquinas’s use of Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Gregory Nazianzen to answer objections, pausing over side matters like Homer’s Odyssey and questions of etymology to sharpen points about humility and fatherhood before turning toward the next article’s problem of Christ’s place among John’s followers.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/086-aquinas-on-christs-baptism-st-iii-q-39-a-4-5-why-the-jordan/Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/086-aquinas-on-christs-baptism-st-iii-q-39-a-4-5-why-the-jordan/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s baptism in Summa Theologiae III, q. 39, articles four and five, reading the objections, the sed contra, and the responses in turn. He asks why the Jordan was the fitting place for baptism rather than the Red Sea, and why the heavens were opened as Christ came up from the water, tracing Aquinas’s use of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Joshua, and Hebrews alongside Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine. Along the way he digresses into humility versus charity as causes of merit, the symbolism of sitting versus standing in confession and in Stephen’s vision, and how baptism, faith, and prayer relate to one another.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/087-aquinas-on-christs-baptism-st-iii-q-39-a-6-8-the-dove-whether/Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/087-aquinas-on-christs-baptism-st-iii-q-39-a-6-8-the-dove-whether/Berquist takes up three articles of Aquinas on the circumstances of Christ’s baptism: whether it was fitting for the Holy Spirit to appear in the form of a dove, why fire rather than a dove marked the Spirit’s descent at Pentecost, and whether the Father’s voice was rightly heard proclaiming the Son. He works through each article’s objections, sed contra, and corpus, drawing on Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome, Hilary, and Rabanus Maurus, and lingers over the dove’s seven traditional properties as figures of the Spirit’s gifts and over how the Trinity is manifested in the scene. The session closes partway into the next question on the baptism.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/088-summa-iii-q-40-art-1-why-christ-lived-among-men-not-alone/Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/088-summa-iii-q-40-art-1-why-christ-lived-among-men-not-alone/Berquist begins Question 40 of the Tertia Pars, on Christ’s “manner of life” during his public ministry. The article at hand asks whether Christ ought to have lived among men or apart in solitude; working through Aquinas’s sed contra and respondeo, Berquist ties the answer to the purposes of the Incarnation itself—teaching truth, freeing men from sin, and giving them confidence to approach God—and compares it to the Dominican motto of handing on to others what one has contemplated. Along the way he digresses at length into symbolic theology, church music (Palestrina, Mozart, Handel), and assorted historical asides, before circling back to the text to explain why Christ nonetheless periodically withdrew from the crowds.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/089-summa-iii-q-40-arts-2-4-christs-ordinary-way-of-life-his/Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/089-summa-iii-q-40-arts-2-4-christs-ordinary-way-of-life-his/Berquist takes up three articles of the Tertia Pars on the fittingness of Christ’s manner of life. Article 2 asks whether Christ ought to have led an austere life, weighing his ordinary eating and drinking against John the Baptist’s asceticism. Article 3 asks whether he ought to have lived in poverty, and article 4 whether he kept the Law, including Sabbath observance and dietary precepts. Working through objections, sed contra, and responses, Berquist draws out Aquinas’s authorities—Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Bede—with anecdotes along the way.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/090-question-41-articles-1-2-why-christ-willed-to-be-tempted/Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/090-question-41-articles-1-2-why-christ-willed-to-be-tempted/Berquist takes up Question 41 of the Summa Theologiae, where Aquinas asks whether it was fitting for Christ to be tempted and why the desert was the place chosen for it. He traces Aquinas’s reasons—drawing on Augustine, Gregory, Chrysostom, and Hilary—and the devil’s uncertain grasp of Christ’s divine identity, opening with reflections on the second commandment of love and God’s design in making unequal creatures so some illuminate others. A long digression compares structural symmetry in Mozart’s late symphonies, Shakespeare, and Plato’s dialogues on Socrates’ death, before returning to close commentary on the text.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/091-question-41-articles-3-4-temptation-after-fasting-and-the/Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/091-question-41-articles-3-4-temptation-after-fasting-and-the/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of why Christ let himself be tempted only after forty days of fasting, and why Matthew and Luke record the three temptations—gluttony, vainglory, and pride or avarice—in that particular order and manner. He works through Thomas’s objections and responses, drawing on Gregory, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, and Bede to show the devil’s escalating strategy of suggestion and Christ’s choice to answer each temptation with Scripture rather than with divine power. Along the way he digresses into preaching and monastic formation before closing near the end of article four.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/092-aquinas-on-christs-teaching-why-christ-preached-first-to/Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/092-aquinas-on-christs-teaching-why-christ-preached-first-to/Berquist takes up two articles from the Tertia Pars on Christ’s manner of teaching. The first asks whether Christ should have preached to the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and Berquist follows Aquinas’s objections and replies, drawing on Isaiah, Matthew, Romans, and John alongside Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, to show why preaching to Israel first served the larger plan of salvation. The second article asks whether Christ should have avoided offending the Pharisees, and the reply argues that giving offense to corrupt leaders could still serve the good of the multitude. Along the way Berquist digresses on persuasion, scandal, and historical illustrations.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/093-did-christ-teach-in-secret-parables-the-spoken-word-vs-the/Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/093-did-christ-teach-in-secret-parables-the-spoken-word-vs-the/Berquist takes up two articles of the Tertia Pars asking how Christ chose to teach: whether he ought to have taught publicly (q. 42, a. 3) and whether he ought to have committed his doctrine to writing (q. 42, a. 4). Working through Thomas’s objections and replies, drawn from Augustine, Hilary, and Jerome, he shows why Christ taught openly yet in parables fitted to his hearers, and why he wrote nothing, leaving his teaching to be handed on in order through his disciples. Along the way Berquist digresses on spoken versus written instruction in Socrates, Pythagoras, and Leo Strauss, and on dictation practices from Aquinas to Chesterton, before previewing the coming questions on Christ’s miracles.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/094-christs-miracles-in-general-why-he-did-them-by-what-power/Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/094-christs-miracles-in-general-why-he-did-them-by-what-power/Berquist opens with Anselm’s and Augustine’s account of faith as “belief seeking understanding” before turning to Summa Theologiae III, q. 43. Across its four articles he asks whether Christ ought to have worked miracles, whether he worked them by his own divine power, why he waited until the wedding at Cana rather than performing them in childhood, and whether his miracles sufficiently showed his divinity. Drawing on Chrysostom and Augustine, he reads Cana as prefiguring the Eucharist and examines John 14’s promise of “greater works” than Christ’s own. He closes with asides on devotion to St. Joseph.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/095-the-kinds-of-christs-miracles-casting-out-demons-and-the/Thu, 06 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/095-the-kinds-of-christs-miracles-casting-out-demons-and-the/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether it was fitting for Christ to work miracles on spiritual substances and on the heavens themselves, reading the objections, sed contra, and corpus of articles one and two closely. The darkening of the sun at the Crucifixion becomes the occasion for a lengthy excursus on Pseudo-Dionysius’s eyewitness account of that darkness, with Berquist weighing in with Augustine, Chrysostom, Jerome, Bede, and Origen, and pausing over Aristotelian cosmology and the disputed identity of Dionysius the Areopagite, flagging some of the astronomical claims as needing caution. The class closes agreeing to take up articles three and four next time before moving to the question on the Transfiguration.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/096-summa-iii-q-44-a-3-4-christs-miracles-on-men-and-on-irrational/Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/096-summa-iii-q-44-a-3-4-christs-miracles-on-men-and-on-irrational/Berquist reads closely through the third and fourth articles of Question 44, where Aquinas asks whether Christ’s miracles on human beings and on irrational creatures were fittingly done. He traces the objections and responses on why Christ’s healings reached both body and soul together, and why he so often paired divine power with a physical gesture—touch, spittle, clay. Turning to the miracles involving animals, plants, water, and bread, he brings in the commentary of Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Cyril, and Hilary that Aquinas draws on. He closes by pointing ahead toward Question 45.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/097-summa-iii-q-45-the-transfiguration-of-christ-its-brightness/Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/097-summa-iii-q-45-the-transfiguration-of-christ-its-brightness/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s four articles on Christ’s Transfiguration in Summa III, q. 45. He asks whether it was fitting for Christ to be transfigured, whether the brightness that appeared was truly the clarity of glory, why Moses and Elijah stood alongside Peter, James, and John as witnesses, and what the Father’s voice from the cloud was meant to testify. Working through the objections and Aquinas’s answers, he draws on Jerome, Bede, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Hugh of St. Victor, and turns to Raphael’s painting of the scene to press the question of Christ as exemplar and the order of grace leading to glory.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/098-god-became-man-standing-for-the-fallacy-of-accident-and-the/Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/098-god-became-man-standing-for-the-fallacy-of-accident-and-the/Berquist begins with a logical puzzle: how can “God became man” be true without collapsing the distinction between the divine persons and the divine nature? He works this out through a term’s “standing for” something, as opposed to its strict signification, distinguishing the move from equivocation and from the fallacy of accident. He then places the Incarnation alongside the Trinity as truths that are “necessary” in different senses, drawing on Aristotle’s modes of necessity and Augustine, and uses examples of false imagination, such as mistaken pictures of the soul, to illustrate careful reasoning. He closes by outlining how Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, article 1 structures the Passion itself: its fittingness, its mode, and its circumstances of time, place, and companions in death.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/099-was-christs-passion-necessary-necessity-of-the-end-other/Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/099-was-christs-passion-necessary-necessity-of-the-end-other/Was it necessary for Christ to suffer to free mankind? Berquist takes up Aquinas’s answer by distinguishing, with help from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, absolute necessity from conditional or suppositional necessity: given God’s chosen end, the means becomes fitting rather than strictly required. He follows the articles’ objections and responses on whether some other mode of redemption lay open to God, weighing divine mercy against divine justice and contrasting the irreparability of angelic sin with the reparability of human sin. The class argues that Christ’s suffering, though not absolutely necessary, was the most fitting way for God to have accomplished redemption.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/100-why-christ-died-on-the-wood-of-the-cross-and-whether-he-suffered/Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/100-why-christ-died-on-the-wood-of-the-cross-and-whether-he-suffered/Berquist takes up Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, articles 4 and 5, where Aquinas asks why Christ died specifically by crucifixion rather than some other death, and whether he bore every kind of suffering a human being can undergo. He follows Aquinas’s use of Augustine, Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nyssa on the meaning of hanging as one accursed on wood, weighing objections against the fittingness of this mode of death. Along the way he digresses into angelic hierarchy and inequality among created intellects before returning to close the session with papal reflections on the Requiem.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/101-whether-christs-pain-was-the-greatest-of-all/Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/101-whether-christs-pain-was-the-greatest-of-all/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s article on whether Christ’s Passion was the greatest of all sufferings, working through the sed contra, the body of the article, and its six replies. He traces Aquinas’s fourfold case—the harsh physical mode of crucifixion, the unimpaired perfection of Christ’s senses, an interior sorrow admitting no relief, and a suffering voluntarily proportioned to the weight of human sin—while sorting out the difference between bodily pain (dolor) and spiritual sadness (tristitia). Along the way he sets Stoic and Aristotelian accounts of virtue and suffering against each other, drawing on Chrysostom, Damascene, Augustine’s City of God, and Maccabees, with digressions on sensitivity and reason in the experience of pain.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/102-seeing-god-as-he-is-and-whether-christ-suffered-in-his-whole/Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/102-seeing-god-as-he-is-and-whether-christ-suffered-in-his-whole/Berquist begins by reading 1 John 3 on how believers, already children of God, will become fully like Him in seeing Him as He is, tying that hope to the reasons Aquinas gives for the Incarnation in both the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, III, ch. 51. He then turns to Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 7, asking whether Christ suffered according to His whole soul, and works through Aquinas’s distinctions between integral, universal, and potestative wholes, and between a power suffering from its own proper object versus from the bodily subject in which it is rooted. He digresses into Aristotle’s senses of “end” and “whole” from Metaphysics V and the soul’s presence in the body before reaching article 8.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/103-the-fitting-time-and-place-of-christs-passion-st-iii-q-46/Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/103-the-fitting-time-and-place-of-christs-passion-st-iii-q-46/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s question of whether Christ suffered at the fitting time and place, working through article 9 on the timing—the Paschal season, the spring equinox against the summer solstice, and the puzzle of Mark’s third hour against John’s sixth—and article 10 on the place, why Jerusalem and specifically the site outside the city gate traditionally identified as Golgotha, linked by tradition to Adam’s burial, suited the Passion. He reads and glosses the Latin closely, drawing on Augustine, Bede, Chrysostom, Jerome, and Leo the Great, with digressions on etymology and related customs threaded through the discussion.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/104-summa-iii-q-46-a-11-12-and-q-47-a-1-2-christ-crucified-among/Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/104-summa-iii-q-46-a-11-12-and-q-47-a-1-2-christ-crucified-among/Berquist works through why Christ was crucified between two thieves and whether his suffering belongs to his divine nature or only his human nature, drawing on Augustine, Jerome, Chrysostom, Leo, Hilary, Cyril, and Origen as Aquinas cites them. He then turns to the next question’s opening articles, asking whether Christ was killed by others or laid down his life himself, and whether he suffered out of obedience. Anecdotes—Thérèse of Lisieux, John Paul II’s death, the martyrs—illustrate how obedience and self-gift structure the Passion. The class proceeds as a close, line-by-line reading of Aquinas’s Latin text with running commentary and questions from the room.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/105-summa-iii-q-47-a-3-6-the-father-handing-over-the-son-jews/Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/105-summa-iii-q-47-a-3-6-the-father-handing-over-the-son-jews/Berquist glosses Aquinas’s articles on Christ’s Passion in the Tertia Pars, taking up in turn whether God the Father handed Christ over to suffering, whether it was fitting that Gentiles rather than Jews alone carried out the execution, whether Christ’s persecutors recognized him as the Son of God, and how grave their sin was. He weighs the differing culpability of the Father, Christ, Judas, the Jewish leaders, the crowd, and Pilate, working carefully through objections, the sed contra, and replies. Along the way he digresses on affected ignorance and the will’s role in error, drawing comparisons to Dickens and Shakespeare’s Richard II, and checks the argument against Isaiah, John, Romans, and commentary from Augustine, Chrysostom, Bede, and Jerome.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/106-aquinas-on-the-passion-of-christ-st-iii-q-48-aa-1-3-merit/Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/106-aquinas-on-the-passion-of-christ-st-iii-q-48-aa-1-3-merit/Berquist takes up the opening three articles of Question 48 on the effects of Christ’s Passion, asking whether it saves by merit, by satisfaction, and by sacrifice. He follows Aquinas’s arguments article by article, distinguishing Christ’s human will as the source of merit, his suffering flesh as the ground of satisfaction, and his charity-driven self-offering as sacrifice. Augustine’s authority anchors several replies, and Berquist illustrates the distinctions with vicarious suffering, martyrdom, and victim souls, tying the discussion back to the mystical body, indulgences, and the Eucharist.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/107-aquinas-on-the-passion-of-christ-st-iii-q-48-a-4-q-49-a-1/Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/107-aquinas-on-the-passion-of-christ-st-iii-q-48-a-4-q-49-a-1/Berquist reads Aquinas article by article—objections, sed contra, corpus, replies—on whether Christ’s Passion effected our salvation through redemption, whether the title “Redeemer” applies to Christ properly, and how a bodily suffering can produce spiritual effects and free us from sin. He traces the argument through Summa Theologiae III, q. 48, articles 4 and 5, into q. 49, article 1, pulling in Scripture (Psalms, Daniel, Matthew, Galatians, Romans, 1 Peter, Apocalypse) and authorities like Augustine, John Damascene, and Peter Lombard’s gloss. He pauses along the way for anecdotes on confession, Christopher West, and Shakespeare before returning to the text.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/108-summa-iii-q-49-aa-1-3-christs-passion-frees-us-from-sin-the/Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/108-summa-iii-q-49-aa-1-3-christs-passion-frees-us-from-sin-the/Berquist takes up Question 49 of the Tertia Pars, asking how the Passion actually causes our deliverance. He traces Aquinas’s three-fold account of sin’s remission—Christ’s Passion as an example that stirs love, as the ground of our incorporation into His mystical body, and as an instrument of the divinity—then follows the arguments for liberation from the devil’s power and from the debt owed for sin. Along the way he draws in Romans, Hebrews, and Isaiah 53, Aquinas’s own Communion prayers, and remarks from Augustine, Liguori, and Leo XIII’s Providentissimus Deus on reading Scripture with the Scholastics.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/109-summa-iii-q-49-aa-4-6-reconciled-to-god-the-gate-of-heaven/Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/109-summa-iii-q-49-aa-4-6-reconciled-to-god-the-gate-of-heaven/Berquist takes up three linked questions in the Summa on what Christ’s Passion actually accomplished: does it reconcile us to God, does it open heaven’s gate, and does it merit Christ’s own exaltation? Moving through Thomas’s objections, sed contra, and determinations, he glosses the Latin and traces the scriptural warrants in Romans, Hebrews, Philippians, Isaiah, and John, pressing the distinction between God’s love for the sinner and his hatred of sin, and between merit and humility. He also weighs how Christ’s soul and body come to share in glory. The class closes by turning toward Christ’s death, burial, and descent, noting a difference here between the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/110-abstract-and-concrete-names-of-god-and-why-it-was-fitting/Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/110-abstract-and-concrete-names-of-god-and-why-it-was-fitting/Berquist opens with Aquinas’s account of abstract versus concrete names in God: terms like “Fatherhood” and “divine nature” name the same simple reality as “Father” and “God,” yet differ according to how our minds signify it, a point he illustrates with analogies from poetics, geometry, and rhetoric. He then moves to Summa Theologiae III, q. 50, article 1, laying out Aquinas’s five reasons it was fitting for Christ to die—satisfaction for sin, confirming his true human nature, freeing us from fear of death, giving an example of dying to sin, and grounding hope in resurrection—before taking up article 2 and the objection concerning Christ as “fountain of life.” Socrates’s death in the Phaedo comes up as a comparison for what natural reason can know about the soul’s immortality.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/111-christs-soul-and-body-in-death-still-united-to-the-word-not/Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/111-christs-soul-and-body-in-death-still-united-to-the-word-not/Berquist works through Christ’s death in Summa Theologiae III, q. 50, aa. 3–4, and q. 51, a. 4. He asks whether the Word remained hypostatically united to Christ’s soul and body even after their separation from one another, and whether Christ could truly be called “a man” during the three days in the tomb, since a corpse is not, strictly speaking, a man. He then takes up why Christ’s body did not undergo corruption, and explains the traditional count of “three days and three nights” through the rhetorical figure of synecdoche, drawing along the way on Athanasius, Augustine, and John Damascene.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/112-the-descent-into-hell-why-christ-went-down-and-which-hell/Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/112-the-descent-into-hell-why-christ-went-down-and-which-hell/Berquist works through Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, articles 1 and 2, treating what he calls the “forgotten article” of the Apostles’ Creed. Article 1 asks whether it was fitting for Christ to descend into hell; article 2 asks which part of hell he went to, distinguishing his effect on the damned, on souls in purgatory, and on the holy fathers awaiting the beatific vision. He supports the argument with texts from Augustine and Gregory, and sets the descent within the larger pattern of descent and ascent that structures the Te Deum’s threefold Christological division.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/113-christs-descent-into-hell-i-the-whole-christ-in-hell-how/Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/113-christs-descent-into-hell-i-the-whole-christ-in-hell-how/Berquist takes up Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s descent into hell in Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, asking how the whole Christ could be present there when death separates soul from body, why he stayed for a fixed duration rather than freeing the holy fathers immediately, and what that delay meant for their pains and their vision of God. He works through articles 3, 4, and 5 in sequence, leaning on Augustine, Aristotle, and Scripture to sharpen Aquinas’s distinctions between person and nature. Along the way he digresses briefly into the divine names, God as Good, and the argument for a highest good, comparing this material to its parallel treatment in the Summa Contra Gentiles.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/114-christs-descent-into-hell-ii-the-damned-unbaptized-children/Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/114-christs-descent-into-hell-ii-the-damned-unbaptized-children/Berquist takes up three articles from Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, asking whether Christ’s descent into hell liberated the damned, unbaptized infants who died with only original sin, and the souls in purgatory. In each case he traces Aquinas’s answer that the descent’s saving fruit reached only those already joined to Christ’s passion through living faith and charity, not those lacking that bond. He then moves to the prologue introducing Christ’s exaltation—resurrection, ascension, session at the Father’s right hand, and judicial power—drawing out Aquinas’s claim that the eternal processions within the Trinity are the pattern for the rational creature’s own procession from and return to God through wisdom and love.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/115-summa-iii-q-53-the-resurrection-of-christ-why-it-was-necessary/Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/115-summa-iii-q-53-the-resurrection-of-christ-why-it-was-necessary/Berquist begins the Summa’s treatment of Christ’s Resurrection at question 53, working through the first four articles in order. He traces Aquinas’s case for why the Resurrection was fitting and necessary, why it happened on the third day rather than sooner or later, and why Christ is called “first” to rise even though others, like Lazarus, were raised before him. He also takes up the puzzle of how Christ can be both the one who rises and the cause of his own rising, given the union of his divine and human natures, drawing on Scripture and citations from Augustine, Damascene, and Jerome along the way.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/116-summa-iii-q-54-the-quality-of-the-risen-christ-a-true-body/Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/116-summa-iii-q-54-the-quality-of-the-risen-christ-a-true-body/Berquist takes up four articles of Question 54 on the risen Christ’s body: was it a true body, did it rise with full integrity, was it glorious, and why did the wounds remain? Working through objections, the sed contra, and Aquinas’s responses, he draws on Augustine, Gregory, Damascene, and Bede to handle hard cases like Christ passing through closed doors and his altered yet substantially identical appearance. Attention centers on why the wounds’ visibility serves a theological purpose rather than contradicting the body’s glory. Participants’ side remarks punctuate the close reading throughout.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/117-summa-iii-q-55-a-1-4-how-the-resurrection-was-made-known/Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/117-summa-iii-q-55-a-1-4-how-the-resurrection-was-made-known/Berquist reads and glosses Question 55 of the Summa’s Third Part on how Christ’s resurrection was made known. Article by article—objections, sed contra, corpus, replies—he follows Aquinas’s citations from Scripture, Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Gregory, and Dionysius on why the risen Christ was not seen in the act of rising, why he did not remain continuously with the disciples afterward, and why it was fitting for him to appear at times in a changed or unrecognized form, as at Emmaus. Along the way he digresses on angels as mediators of knowledge, the women as first witnesses to the resurrection, and the difference between figurative and deceptive speech. The class stops before taking up the final two articles, on Christ’s use of arguments and proofs.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/118-summa-iii-q-55-a-5-6-and-q-56-a-1-the-signs-that-prove-the/Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/118-summa-iii-q-55-a-5-6-and-q-56-a-1-the-signs-that-prove-the/Berquist takes up three articles from the Tertia Pars on Christ’s resurrection. Article 5 asks whether Christ ought to have demonstrated the truth of his resurrection through arguments and signs; article 6 asks whether those signs sufficiently manifested both the truth and the glory of his risen body. He works through each article’s objections, sed contra, and corpus, drawing on Luke 24, John 20, and 1 Corinthians 15 alongside Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, and Bede, and using Aristotle’s notion of the tekmerion. He then turns to q.56 a.1, on how Christ’s own resurrection functions as an efficient and exemplar cause of the resurrection of the rest of humanity.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/119-christs-resurrection-as-cause-of-the-resurrection-of-souls/Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/119-christs-resurrection-as-cause-of-the-resurrection-of-souls/Berquist works through two questions in the Tertia Pars. First, whether Christ’s bodily Resurrection is the cause of the resurrection of souls—not just bodies—weighing objections against Thomas’s answer and his defense of a disputed text of Augustine, distinguishing exemplar from instrumental causality. He then turns to the opening articles on the Ascension: whether it was fitting for Christ to ascend, and according to which nature, divine or human, the ascension properly belongs. Along the way he digresses into Aristotle, grammar, and the life of grace to sharpen what Thomas means by justification and rising.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/120-christ-ascends-by-his-own-power-above-all-the-heavens-and/Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/120-christ-ascends-by-his-own-power-above-all-the-heavens-and/Berquist takes up four articles of question 57 in the Tertia Pars: whether Christ ascended by his own power, whether he ascended above all the heavens, whether his body rose above every spiritual creature, and whether the Ascension is a cause of our salvation. He reads through each article’s objections, sed contra, and responsio, pressing the textual details while drawing in related passages from Acts, Ephesians, and Hebrews and touching on questions of cosmology and the ranks of angels raised by Christ’s bodily rising above them.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/121-christ-sitting-at-the-right-hand-of-the-father-summa-iii/Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/121-christ-sitting-at-the-right-hand-of-the-father-summa-iii/Berquist takes up Summa Theologiae III, q. 58, Aquinas’s question on Christ sitting at the right hand of the Father, moving through all four articles. Drawing on Damascene and Augustine, he distinguishes two senses of “sitting”—as rest and beatitude, and as judicial-royal power—and shows why “right hand” must be read non-bodily, as glory and authority rather than location. He then works through whether this session belongs to Christ by His divine nature or His human nature, closing with the question of whether it is His alone, with the saints and apostles sharing in it only derivatively, as members under Christ the head.https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/122-the-judicial-power-of-christ-and-the-last-judgment-summa/Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/122-the-judicial-power-of-christ-and-the-last-judgment-summa/Berquist takes up all six articles of question 59, on whether Christ has judicial power over all things. He asks why this power is fitting to the Word made flesh rather than appropriated loosely across the Trinity, whether Christ earned it by merit, and whether it covers every human affair. He works through the distinction between judgment at death and the final general judgment, and the last article’s puzzle of whether Christ’s authority extends over the angels. Along the way he draws on Augustine, Chrysostom, and Dionysius, and touches on Mary’s intercessory knowledge and essential versus accidental rewards in Christ’s human nature.