Matthew 28 (2): The Galilee Appearance, 'All Power Is Given to Me', and Why God the Father Cannot Envy the Son

Orientation #

He picks up right after the guards’ episode (“heard from guard”): “now he goes to that appearance in Galilee.” He refers back to what “we saw” about the spiritual sense of Galilee and to Thomas’s earlier remark that the preacher must be without fear (Christ to the women: “do not fear, go announce it”) (prev. lecture). Looking forward: “we’re going to go eventually to the Gospel of John.” The class ends at a break (“I’m going way… to your break”). The previous class covered Thomas’s division of Matthew 28 through the women, the angel, the earthquake and the guards’ bribery.

The class, in order #

1. The eleven go to Galilee and the mountain (“the eleven disciples went into Galilee”) #

The point: the literal and spiritual senses of Galilee and of the mountain where Christ meets them.

• Letter: Christ was accustomed to appear in Galilee, and the disciples would be more secure there; they are “scared stiff even afterwards” and need the Holy Spirit for courage (as Thomas said earlier of the preacher: without fear).
• Spiritual: going from sin to grace in this mortal life; also the Gentiles.
• The mountain: Thomas stops on “ascends the mountain”; it signifies a height (of Christ, glorified; of the apostles, by virtue, so as to see Christ). Mountain is contrasted with valley; the valley as “valley of tears” (Hail Holy Queen), though he notes the valley does not always carry that metaphor (the psalm).

2. “They worshipped him, but some doubted”: counting the appearances (“Look at verse fourteen, then chapter sixteen”) #

The point: the doubt in Matthew 28:17 is corroborated by Mark 16:14, and the appearances can be counted.

• He recalls his count: perhaps five appearances on the day of the resurrection (two to the women, one to Peter, one to the two disciples at Emmaus, one to the disciples minus Thomas) and five more, including the one here in Matthew, one shortly after, one after the ascension, the one with Thomas present, and the one at the lake of Tiberias in John.
• Question put: which appearance is Mark 16:14 (to “the eleven as he sat at meat”, upbraiding their unbelief)? It cannot simply be the one to the eleven minus Thomas, since that would be ten. It seems to be “a kind of general one”; taken as separate it adds to the count.
• Mark 16:9: he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, so that (counted in John) was perhaps the first; the second the one to the two women in Matthew who embraced his feet; third perhaps to Peter, before the Emmaus pair returned; then the ten minus Thomas. People “have a difficulty” with accepting a third (separate) appearance.
• Undoubtedly he appeared to his Mother, though no account or mention; so there are appearances not counted.
• Why he went to Mark: it explicitly says he upbraided all of them, not just Thomas; and here in Matthew, “even at this late day, some doubted.”
• Aside: today’s polls of Catholics who do not believe in the real presence, a “doubtful stage”; the medieval story (told him by the St. Joseph sisters in grade school) of a priest who doubted the real presence and found blood in the host; his version: a man took the host home in a handkerchief for a woman who wanted it for a prophecy. As a kid it impressed him; he does not know whether it happened.

3. Thomas divides Christ’s words into three parts (“Thomas divides what Christ says into three parts”) #

• (1) “All power in heaven and earth has been given to me”; (2) the threefold command or order he gives them; (3) what he says about being with them. This class takes only the first.

4. Three explanations of “all power has been given to me” (“Thomas gives three explanations of that”) #

The point: Thomas reads the giving of all power in more than one way.

• First: it refers to the Word as God, the Father giving him the divine nature. Argument: (1) God’s nature is simple, so the divine nature and the power of God are identical; (2) God is all-powerful; therefore, in giving him divinity the Father gives him all power. So it can refer to the eternal generation of the Word or Son. He flags this as “very interesting”, a foretaste of the Gospel of John.
• Second: is there some way even Christ the man can be said to have all power, though all power belongs to the divine nature, not the human? Thomas distinguishes the grace of union (human and divine nature joined in one person) from the grace of his human nature, which is an effect of the grace of union.
• The third explanation is not in the recording: the transcript breaks off here and resumes in the middle of talk about a father who brags of his son (his son “makes more money”, has a better position). [unclear in recording]

5. A father’s delight in his son: Shakespeare and Homer (“Shakespeare’s thirty-seven sonnet”) #

The point: the father-son relation is the poets’ image of a friendship free of envy.

• Sonnet 37 is not about a father and son but about two men, one enjoying good fortune, the author “made lame by fortune”; yet he compares his rejoicing in his friend’s good fortune to that of a “decrepit father” who takes delight in seeing his active child do deeds of youth. He calls the first quatrain “beautiful”: the father on crutches, the son winning the game, the crutch up in the air. Whatever the friend has (beauty, birth, wealth, wit), the poet grafts his love to it and lives by a part of his glory; “what is best, that best I wish in thee”: “That’s what friendship is, right? To wish well.”
• Homer, the other greatest poet, uses the same simile: Achilles mourns Patroclus as a father mourns his son. Both great poets compare envy-free friendship to the love of father for son.

6. Could God the Father envy God the Son? (“could God the Father envy God the Son”) #

The point: several reasons why this is impossible, and why the human father is the fitting image.

• Set-up: the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and Son “like the friendship of the two”; a human father does not really envy his son; so a fortiori the Father cannot envy the Son as if honour shown the Son took away a unique honour the Father would have alone. (Student: like the pagan gods, who are envious of each other, and horrible things happen between father and son among them.) Joke: if the Father could envy the Son, “have to call a meeting of the UN.”
• Reason 1 (what he remembers Thomas saying): everything in creatures is ordained to God and manifests God’s excellence, so God cannot see the good in a creature as diminishing his own good. This he later calls a reason drawn from the difference of envy (God cannot see another’s good as his own loss). He thinks Thomas touches it “in the physics” [ed.: locus uncertain in recording; he later cites Contra Gentiles I.19].
• Reason 2 (from the genus): (1) the genus of envy is sadness; (2) sadness has as object something bad inflicted; (3) no evil can be inflicted on God in his divine nature; therefore no sadness in God, therefore no envy.
• He calls it worth thinking about particularly why the Father cannot envy the Son, given that the Creed has the Spirit “glorified with” Father and Son. In human terms one might want to be uniquely glorified: scientists fighting over who made a discovery first, not wanting to share the Nobel Prize. (Student: the Son is the perfect image.)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: friendship among equals is taken up first, then friendship among unequals, whose main example is father and son. In God, what is divided in creatures is one: the Father-Son friendship is both a friendship of father and son and a friendship of equals.
• “Can you envy yourself?” A friend is another self, Greek philos estin allos autos; Shakespeare calls a friend “a second self”. The human father naturally thinks of his son as another self and so is freer of envy toward him than toward another man; father-son friendship is thus a measure of what friendship should be as regards freedom from envy.
• Boundary: human father and son are one in species, not in number, two men; God the Father and God the Son are one God, not two. So for the Father the Son is “another self” even more so (“the Father and I are one”); to envy the Son would be to envy himself. Caution: “you gotta be careful”, there is a real distinction between Father and Son.
• Summa Contra Gentiles compared with the Summa Theologiae on simplicity: ch. 18 shows no composition in God; ch. 20 that God is not a body (the first article in the Summa); between them ch. 19 shows nothing violent or unnatural in God, which touches envy: envy is unnatural, and though it may seem natural to a fallen man to envy his son, God is the measure, so it is unnatural for the Father to envy the Son.

7. Why friendship belongs to ethics, and is by nature (“friendship seems to be a virtue”) #

The point: Aristotle’s reasons for treating friendship, and how the natural ones still belong to ethics.

• Reasons most proper to ethics: friendship is a virtue or with virtue; ethics is the foundation of political philosophy and friendship among citizens matters even more than justice; no one wants to live without friends; the inductive argument (the poor need friends, the well-to-do need friends to keep their money with, etc.).
• Then reasons that are “deeply natural”: friendship is natural between parents and offspring, even in other animals; among those of the same tribe; among all men (we spontaneously help a stranger who asks directions), so in some sense every man is a friend of every man, even across nationalities.
• His teaching question: does the naturalness of friendship make it belong to natural philosophy rather than ethics? Reply: if nothing about friendship were natural, nothing good or bad by nature, it would not be ethics at all but “sociology or something.”
• Back to the sonnet: the decrepit father as model of a man free of envy; fundamentally the father-son friendship is the root of everybody else’s.

8. The fourth commandment between the first three and “thou shalt not kill” (“honor your father and mother”) #

The point: the order of the commandments shows an affinity backward and forward.

• Honour your father and mother is first of the second table and closest to the first three: honouring parents resembles honouring God.
• Why honour them? Basically because they gave you life. The next commandment forbids killing; there is a contradiction in honouring parents for the gift of life while taking someone else’s life (“if you give me a pig I’d probably honor you; but if you give me life, my goodness”). Applied to abortion or any killing. When things are in order, each has an affinity with what comes before and some anticipation of what comes after.
• Can the commandments be reduced to terms of friendship? He grants a great similarity between God the Father / God the Son and human father / son here. (Student: in Near Eastern covenants the parties address each other as “my son” / “my father”.)
• He stops for the break.

His words #

• “all power in heaven and earth”: the divine nature and power of God are identical because God’s nature is simple.
• grace of union vs. grace of his human nature: the latter an effect of the former.
• “to wish well”: his gloss on friendship (from the sonnet).
• philos estin allos autos: a friend is another self; Shakespeare’s “second self”.
• friendship among equals vs. among unequals (father and son, Aristotle).
• one in number vs. one in species: God Father and Son one God; human father and son two men.
• genus of envy is sadness; the difference: seeing another’s good as one’s own loss.
• nothing violent, nothing unnatural in God (SCG I.19).

Texts #

Read in class

• Matthew 28:16-18 (Galilee, the mountain, worship with some doubting, “all power… has been given to me”), with Thomas’s commentary.
• Mark 16:14 and 16:9.
• Shakespeare, Sonnet 37 (first quatrain and closing lines, quoted).

Mentioned

• John (appearance to Mary Magdalene; the lake of Tiberias; Thomas present); the Emmaus account.
• Homer on Achilles mourning Patroclus (inferred: Iliad).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics on friendship (equals/unequals; reasons for treating friendship; natural friendship).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I, chs. 18, 19, 20; Summa Theologiae, first article on God’s simplicity (God is not a body).
• Hail Holy Queen (“valley of tears”); the Creed/Gloria on the Spirit glorified with Father and Son; Exodus/Decalogue, fourth and fifth commandments.

His questions #

• Which appearance is Mark 16:14, to “the eleven as he sat at meat”? Not simply the one to the ten minus Thomas; a general one, counted separately.
• Is there some way even Christ the man can be said to have all power? Yes, through the grace of union, human and divine nature joined in one person.
• Could God the Father envy God the Son? No: every good manifests God; envy is sadness and there is no sadness in God; the Son is another self.
• Can you envy yourself? No; and the Son is the Father’s other self more than any human son, though really distinct.
• Does friendship’s being by nature make it belong to natural philosophy rather than ethics? No; if nothing were good or bad by nature there would be no ethics at all.
• Why should you honour your father and mother? Basically because they gave you life, which is why killing contradicts it.
• Why particularly is it impossible for the Father to envy the Son? left open as “interesting to think more about.”