Dividing the Four Gospels and the Fourteen Epistles of St. Paul

Orientation #

He opens “let’s come back now to the four Gospels” and “let’s look at Thomas here again,” resuming the Thomistic division of the New Testament begun last time (prev. lecture); the class ends with the group undecided about what to do next (II-II on faith, hope, charity; tertia pars; Metaphysics; Categories; De anima), and “I’ll be here next week.” The text-matching system identifies the text read in class with handout “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 6 (about eight minutes read from it); in the transcript the text read is Thomas’s division of the Gospels and of Paul’s epistles. The previous class traced our final end through Scripture and Vatican II and centred on Thomas’s prologue to John, dividing the New Testament into Gospels, Pauline epistles and the other apostolic writings.

The class, in order #

1. The problem of a distinction of four (“cannot understand the distinction of four all at once”) #

Point: the mind cannot take in four (or fourteen) members at once, so one must ask whether to divide a four first into two or into three.

• His own case: his favourite theology book, the Summa contra Gentiles, has four books “just like the four Gospels” — same problem.
• Student aside: “It’s obvious he wasn’t thinking of you when he did it.”
• The bigger problem ahead: the fourteen epistles of Paul; recalls Thomas dividing the ten categories.

2. Shakespeare: a four divided into three, then two (“How would you divide the 27 plays that remain”) #

Point: some fours are naturally reached by three-then-two.

1. Setting aside the ten history plays (special problem: mixing fiction with history), 27 plays remain.
2. Aristotle in the Poetics divides fiction into tragedy and comedy, which are contraries.
3. The Renaissance noticed plays in between — too serious for comedy, not quite tragic — and called them “tragicomedy.” Example: bitter and sweet chocolate, and “bittersweet” in between: is it bitter or sweet? In between.
4. So the natural first division is into three: tragedies (ten), comedies (five), plays in the middle (twelve).
5. The twelve middle plays divide into two: six “mercy and forgiveness romances” (closer to tragedy; critics now adopt his word “romances”) and six “love and friendship romances” (critics call them “dark comedies” or “problem comedies”). Example: The Merchant of Venice, which he is re-reading in the Arden playgoers’ edition — a love-and-friendship play. Conclusion: a four can be a three with one member split into two. He could force the plays into two-and-two (tragedy/near-tragedy, comedy/near-comedy), but three makes more sense.

• Later aside (same topic): Aristotle assimilates epic to tragedy (Iliad, Odyssey) and the lost Margites to comedy — “the Margites is to comedy what the Iliad is to tragedy”; only quotations in Plato and Aristotle survive. He himself never found the Odyssey as tragic as the Iliad — already approaching the serious-but-not-tragic middle.

3. The Gospels: three and one, by Christ’s two natures (“In Christ, however, can be considered a twofold nature”) #

Point: the customary grouping of the first three as “synoptic” against John is a division into two, and Thomas gives its ground.

• Reads Thomas: in Christ a twofold nature; the divine — chiefly John’s Gospel, beginning “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, and the Word was God”; the human — chiefly the other three evangelists.
• Qualification: every Gospel treats both natures; the difference is emphasis and detail.
• Order, not just distinction, must be explained. The order is not according to excellence, else John would come first. Contrast: the Summa theologiae takes the divine nature in the prima pars and the incarnation in the tertia pars — the reverse — because Thomas is imitating John’s own order (“In the beginning was the Word…” then “the Word was made flesh”).
• The Gospels’ order (human before divine) follows Peter’s profession of faith: “What do men say that I am?” (John the Baptist, the prophet…) then “Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God” — Christ (“anointed”) is first the human nature, then the divine. Student: the order of learning. He: the third order, the order of our knowledge; Christ’s human nature is more known to us than his divine nature, true even for the apostles and the Pharisees — nobody denied he was a man (“he wasn’t a dog or a cat”), but the Jews asked “why do you insist that he’s God?”
• Same order in John read that day: “I am the way [hodos, road], the truth, and the life” — as man he is the road, as God truth itself and life itself. Aside: Paul VI says the Church is built on the faith of Peter and proceeds from it.

4. Parallel: the four books of the Summa contra Gentiles (“divide the first three books against the fourth”) #

Point: the SCG divides three-and-one like the Gospels, and for a like reason (more known before less known).

• Books I–III: what can be known of God both by natural reason and by faith (each chapter gives arguments of reason, then scriptural authorities). Book IV: what is known by faith only — Trinity, Incarnation, last things.
• Books I–III subdivided: God in himself (I), God as beginning of all things (II), God as end of all things (III); Book IV also ends with the end (Trinity, then the Word made flesh, the greatest thing God made, then the supernatural last things).
• Likeness: in both, the first three are about what is more known — but “in a different way.”

5. Distinguishing the three synoptics: three dignities, and the four figures (“distinguuntur secundum tres dignitates”) #

Point: Thomas’s principal way distinguishes the first three Gospels by Christ the man’s three dignities, drawn again from Peter’s “the Christ, the Anointed One.”

• Kingly dignity: Matthew — begins by showing descent according to the flesh from kings; adored by the magi kings.
• Prophetic dignity: Mark — begins from the preaching, the voice in the desert.
• Priestly dignity: Luke — begins in the temple and the priesthood, ends in the temple (praising God), and frequently returns there; Thomas cites Luke 2, “they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the teachers” — found only in Luke, one of the mysteries of the Rosary.
• Thomas’s second way, by mystery and figure: Matthew, the Incarnation — figure of a man; Luke, the Passion — figure of the ox (bovis), an animal for immolation; Mark, the victory of the Resurrection — the lion (tribe of Judah); John, “who sails up to the heights of divinity” — the eagle.
• Textual note he reads: the division of Paul’s epistles is missing from this text, “deest in codice saltem in textu vulgato”; the class turns to it from a note.

6. Paul’s fourteen epistles: one, four, nine — grace in head, chief members, body (“Est enim haec tota doctrina de gratia Christi”) #

Point: the fourteen are first divided into three by addressee, and Thomas grounds that in three ways of considering the grace of Christ.

• Obvious division by addressee: one to the Hebrews (Israel), four to prominent individuals (bishops, or one layman — “principes itaque reges”), nine to the churches of the Gentiles.
• Thomas: this whole teaching is about the grace of Christ, which can be considered three ways (tripliciter): (1) as in the head itself, Christ — Hebrews; (2) as in the chief members (membris principalibus) of the mystical body — the epistles to prelates; (3) as in the mystical body itself, the Church — the epistles to the Gentiles.
• Hebrews stands alone and needs no subdivision here (only in the commentary itself, “we’re not going to get that far today”).
• Recap after “close your book, children”: fourteen; first into three; by “to whom he wrote” — Gentiles, leaders, Jews. He grants this fits what a letter is (written to somebody) but may not give what is most profound — “you’re not an Ephesian or a Thessalonian.” Aside: Paul’s rebuke in Galatians, which Monsignor Dionne used to apply to Quebec students.

7. The four to prominent individuals: three and one (“prelates … both spiritual and temporal”) #

Point: the four are divided like the Gospels, three-and-one.

• Temporal prelate: Philemon (a prominent layman with an escaped slave, being taught to accept him back — “big contributor to the bishop’s fund”). Spiritual prelates: two to Timothy, one to Titus — bishops set over congregations.
• The three: (1) 1 Timothy — the institution, instruction and governing of ecclesiastical unity (the bishop’s duty); (2) 2 Timothy — firmness against persecutors; (3) Titus — defence against heretics.
• He briefly misreads Ephesians here (de institutione ecclesiasticae unitatis in epistola ad Ephesios), catches himself: “I got mixed up here.”
• Aside on “heretic”: from the Greek word for choose — one who chooses what he wants to believe; the story of the man worried about a definition (the Virgin, under Pius XII?) told “don’t worry, you’re already out”; Kasurik and “God’s not going to punish me for skipping Sunday Mass”; Kasurik expelling a student, which “you couldn’t do today”; a student reports the Loyola Marymount case of an administrator charged for saying there are only two genders — “It’s frightening.”

8. The nine to the Gentiles: grace itself, in the sacraments, as unity (“grace of Christ tripliciter can be considered”) #

Point: the nine again divide into three.

• (1) Grace in itself — Romans, standing alone and first.
• (2) Grace as in the sacraments — 1 Corinthians (the sacraments themselves), 2 Corinthians (the dignity of the ministers), Galatians (excluding superfluous sacraments, against those who wished to add the old sacraments to the new — the big controversy in Acts, settled at Jerusalem). Aside: in the treatise on grace in the prima pars Thomas says little about the sacraments, which appear in the tertia pars as tools of Christ; here grace goes straight to sacraments.
• Student exchange on last rites: are anointing and last rites different? He: the same thing, unless one includes viaticum or the prayers for the dying — no additional sacrament; it used to be called extreme unction; confession normally precedes if the person is conscious.
• (3) Grace according to the effect of unity it makes in the Church (“one baptism, one faith” — “he emphasizes one”) — five epistles: institution of ecclesiastical unity, Ephesians; its confirmation and progress, Philippians (reminiscent of origin-then-progress in the third part of the NT (prev. lecture)); its defence, subdivided: against errors, Colossians; against present persecutions, 1 Thessalonians; against future ones, especially under Antichrist, 2 Thessalonians (a student: “at least a partial fulfillment” today). Conclusion: Thomas distinguishes the fourteen, as the ten categories, by successive divisions of two or three.

9. Digression: dividing boards, seasons, the day (“divide that into portions that were kind of evenly divided”) #

Point: two-or-three division holds even for material things.

• A board: you would divide it into two or three, not ten — so the standard system (half, quarter, eighth…) is more sensible for material things than the metric, which is “great on paper.”
• The four seasons: he divides winter against the other three (spring = springing up, summer = summit/height, fall = “the fall of the leaf,” the older name; winter the dead season — in paradise fall was followed by spring). Sign: people choose spring, summer or fall as a favourite, hardly winter unless a skier (his relatives in building, off in winter, became ski instructors in Vail). Student: Florida has one season. Aside: the school-year grouping (fall, winter, spring vs. summer) is “the warping of the mind of school teachers.”
• The day: Augustine uses four — morning, day, evening, night; but day (morning, afternoon, evening) against night, like the year.

10. Why two or three: opposites, and “all” (“one should always divide by opposites”) #

Point: the reasons behind the rule.

• Aristotle in the biological works divides animals into three (land, fish, birds) and is uncomfortable with Plato’s dividing into two in the dialogues.
• Reason for two: one divides by opposites, and opposites are two (men vs. white people — no opposition; male vs. female — opposites). “A probable opinion.”
• Sign for three: Aristotle, on the three dimensions, says three is the first number of which we say “all” (“the three of us are going — we’re all going”; “all two of them,” “you all,” a corruption of language). A sign, “not as good as the reason.”
• So: divide into two or three or both, “for the most part at least” — partly a custom from reading Thomas, “I like the custom.”
• Etymology asides: “division” and emptying; the military “division” and “major” (not major to everyone), “lieutenant” (in lieu of — his son, a lieutenant colonel, addressed as “colonel”); he does not think “di-” means two; cells divide into two.

11. Is the conclusion a part of the syllogism? Family divisions (“Is the conclusion of the syllogism a part”) #

Point: a syllogism is divided into two premises; the conclusion is an effect, not a part.

1. Definition: speech in which, some statements being laid down, another follows necessarily because of them.
2. So the syllogism is composed of the statements laid down; the conclusion follows as an effect.
3. Analogy: the definition of square — “equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral” — has parts genus (quadrilateral) and differences; the species “square” is made known by it but is not a part of it. Likewise premises make known the conclusion. To make the conclusion a premise would be a fallacy.

• Children not part of a marriage but its effect, “the end of marriage.”
• A family divides into two (parents/children) and three (father, mother, children) — “unless you’re up to date.” His daughter’s ten children: four (three girls and a boy), two (Isabella the Rose, “Lady Wisdom”), four (three boys and a girl) — beginning, middle, end; each four into three and one. “Logic for grandfathers.”

His words #

• synoptic; the first three Gospels, “as if there’s something in common” against the fourth.
• the third order; the order of our knowledge, more known to us first.
• hodos; road, way — Christ as man is the road.
• distinguuntur secundum tres dignitates; kingly, prophetic, priestly dignities of Christ the man.
• animal immolatitium; the ox, animal for immolation (Luke).
• deest in codice saltem in textu vulgato; editorial note that the Pauline division is missing from the text.
• principes itaque reges; the prominent individuals addressed.
• haec tota doctrina de gratia Christi; the whole Pauline teaching is about the grace of Christ.
• membris principalibus; chief members of the mystical body, prelates.
• tripliciter; grace considered in three ways.
• heretic; from the Greek “to choose” — one who chooses what to believe.
• extreme unction; the older name for the anointing / last rites.
• “the fall of the leaf”; the older name for autumn.
• syllogism; speech in which, some statements laid down, another follows necessarily.
• mega biblion mega kakon; Greek proverb, “big book, big evil.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, division of the four Gospels by Christ’s two natures, three dignities, and four figures (prologue to John, prev. lecture; inferred); identified by the text-matching system with handout “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 6.
• Thomas Aquinas, division of the fourteen epistles of Paul by the grace of Christ (from a note supplying what is deest in codice; inferred: prologue to the Romans commentary).
• John 1 (“In the beginning was the Word…”); Peter’s profession (Matthew 16, inferred); John 14:6 (inferred); Luke 2 (as quoted by Thomas).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Poetics (tragedy, comedy, epic, Margites); biological works (animals in three); the three dimensions and “all” (locus not stated).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles I–IV; Summa theologiae prima and tertia pars (grace, sacraments as tools of Christ).
• Shakespeare’s plays; The Merchant of Venice (Arden edition).
• Augustine on the four parts of the day (locus not stated); Paul VI on the Church built on Peter’s faith; Acts (Jerusalem controversy); Galatians; Philemon.

His questions #

• Would you divide the four Gospels into two or into three? Into two — three synoptics against John, by human vs. divine nature.
• Why is the order human-before-divine, when the divine is more excellent? It is the order of our knowledge, following Peter’s profession; the Summa reverses it by imitating John.
• How would you divide the four books of the Summa contra Gentiles? Three against one — reason and faith vs. faith only; then God in himself, as beginning, as end.
• Do you first divide the fourteen epistles into two or three? Three, by addressee: Hebrews, prelates, Gentiles — grace in the head, chief members, body.
• How are the three to Timothy and Titus distinguished? Instituting unity, firmness against persecutors, defence against heretics.
• Where does the word heretic come from? Greek “choose.”
• Would you divide a board first into ten or into two? Two (or three) — hence the standard system beats the metric in material things.
• How do you divide the four seasons? The day? Winter against spring, summer, fall; day (morning, afternoon, evening) against night.
• Why is it reasonable to divide into two? Into three? Opposites are two (a reason); three is the first “all” (a sign).
• Is the conclusion a part of the syllogism? No — an effect, as the species is not a part of its definition.